Guns -- When the Left Attacks

Whenever I see a tragedy unfold that belongs under the title of "gun violence," I know that the next topic that left wingers will bring up is the famous "gun control" argument they are obsessed with. Their arguments are similar and filled with displaced emotion. To wit:

 "This should never happen and it wouldn't happen if people would just STOP owning guns!!!!" 

Here's an interesting one I found on Facebook. (I have a friend who's all about gun control. Her friend said this:

"He used a semi-automatic weapon. No one needs a gun like that. You have a huge economic engine perpetuating this gun culture with a huge, wealthy lobby perpetuating this hijacked distortion about the second amendment.The laws we have on the books are weak. Statistically, countries with strong, strict gun laws have fewer deaths by guns. Coincidentally, these countries also provide basic, affordable healthcare and education for all it's citizens. Their poverty rates are much lower. They provide for a culture that supports working families; access to cultural and recreation. All of this may sound simple, but it provides for a culture that is much different than our defense-driven, of the corporation, for the corporation, culture."

"Don’t bother with the argument that if more people carried guns, they would deter shooters or interrupt them. Mass shooters typically kill themselves or are promptly caught, so it’s hard to see what deterrence would be added by having more people pack heat. There have been few if any cases in the United States in which an ordinary citizen with a gun stopped a mass shooting." ~NYtimes

Or...

"The way to honor these dead children is to demand strict gun control, free mental health care, and an end to violence as public policy." ~ Michael Moore

First of all, only pagans believe that inanimate objects posses a power to tempt, alter, or do anything other than the intent of the user. Scratch that - Liberals believe this as well.

Next, if we compare our country with others, we find that the United States actually has many laws and restrictions. We already have lots of gun control, unlike what many anti-gun activists like to believe. However, we do have an amendment that is designed for allowing our citizens to be well armed and practice the art of self-defense.

Over the last half-dozen decades, the government has steadily restricted our right to keep and bear arms, and access has been decreasing. However, none of the 20,000 laws on the books are making it any harder for criminals to get guns, because by definition a criminal won't abide by the law.

Some comparative statistics concerning gun ownership and laws, along with homicides can be found by clicking here.

Depending on what country you want to compare with you can see the results indeed vary. The raw data can often leave us more confused than when we first were inspired to answer our question concerning the affects of gun control laws. So, we have to be careful when we try and compare our country with other countries.

Depending on what side of this argument you fall on, you are guaranteed to find a statistic that will support your side of the issue. Obviously the problem with doing this type of comparison is the raw data does not take other factors into consideration. Countries have different histories as well as cultures and these are major influences, especially when considering the use of firearms for protection.

In order to achieve a better understanding of guns in this country and how laws influence our population, it is best to look within our own borders.

New Jersey adopted what might be "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46% and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled. 

In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures, and its murder rate tripled from a low of 2.4 per 100,000 in 1968 to 7.2 by 1977. 

In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134% while the national murder rate has dropped 2%. 

Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws. 

Twenty percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6% of the population—New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C.—and each has (or, in the case of Detroit, had until 2001) a virtual prohibition on private handguns.

 New York City and Washington, D.C. are two of the most restrictive cities in the country with respect to gun control, yet they are also two of the least safest cities in the country.

According to the National Institute of Justice's report "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms", guns are used over 1.5 million times a year in self defense. With tens of thousands of gun deaths a year, that means that firearms are used 40 times more often for protection than for murder.

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Georgia's homicide rate dropped 21% after making it easier to get guns, whereas Wisconsin's rate went up 33% during the same time period after making it more difficult to get guns. 

Most of those people [killed by guns] are criminals killed by criminals, according to the FBI "Crime in the United States" report. 

 In 1982, Kennesaw, GA passed a law requiring the head of household to keep a gun, and burglaries dropped by 89% (see Gary Kleck's "Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force).

Medical malpractice causes more deaths per year than firearms, according to a Harvard Medical Practice Study.

A man named James Wright was a gun control advocate who received a grant from President Carter's Justice Department to study effectiveness of gun control laws. He found that waiting periods, background checks and other gun control laws were not effective in preventing or reducing violent crime ("Second Thought About Gun Control" in The Public Interest, Spring, 1988).

Source websites:

http://westnet.com/~levins/guncontrol5.html

http://www.jeremiahproject.com/trashingamerica/2ndamendment.html

Often when the mainstream media is speaking about guns they like to use terms that are misleading and can easily confuse someone who is ignorant concerning guns. Automatic weapons are machine guns and are illegal to own unless the federal government has given special permission. ~The National Firearms Act in 1934

The term "assault weapon" often refers to AR-15 or AK-47's but these are semi-automatic, as are most all the guns sold in the US. The term merely means that one bullet is fired per pull of the trigger.

After the Colorado movie-theater shooting, the Daily News wrote, “Once, federal law would have kept [shooter James] Holmes' hands off a superdeadly [sic] weapon like the AR-15. In 1994, under President Bill Clinton, Congress outlawed the manufacture and possession of assault weapons, but the statute had a 10-year expiration date.” 

But media ignorance, it seems, has no expiration date. The AWB did nothing to eliminate weapons such as the one Holmes — or Newtown shooter Adam Lanza — used. It simply outlawed the sale of such firearms when they had certain combinations of relatively insignificant, superficial features, such as a bayonet mount and a pistol grip, or a folding stock and a flash suppressor. But the guns themselves were still readily available.

What about the argument that suggests if we have less guns, obviously less crime would occur using a gun? It seems legit, right?

Legal scholar John Lott refuted this years ago in his book More Guns, Less Crime. Thomas Sowell also addressed this myth in the earlier cited article, writing: 

The rate of gun ownership … is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks. For the country as a whole, hand gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.

Another argument against guns concerns the very meaning of The Second Amendment suggesting that it only guarantees a right to raise a militia.

Not according to leading Second Amendment scholar Stephen Halbrook, Ph.D. As he wrote in his book That Every Man be Armed: 

In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the “collective” right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis. The phrase “the people” meant the same thing in the Second Amendment as it did in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments — that is, each and every free person.

Source article:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/13967-10-liberal-lies-people-believe-about-guns

What we can learn from this information is that our country has a unique history in that it is interested in supporting the individual to express themselves, protect themselves, and be primarily responsible for themselves. Our Second Amendment was designed to preserve the pre-existing right for individuals to bear arms.

For more information about the purpose of The Second Amendment, view links:

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/gun01.htm

http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndpur.html

As with every nation, we have problems but concerning the issue of guns our problem is not guns themselves but how our culture has changed towards viewing guns.

When it comes to debating those that advocate gun control, it is important to understand that their arguments are purely based on emotion. Nothing in our founding father's writings, in The Constitution itself, and in the context of our history support any of their arguments that attack the purpose of The Second Amendment.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson, proposed Virginia constitution, June 1776. 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C. J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)

Another popular argument suggests that the founding father's never anticipated for the current guns we have now. They were only speaking of the types of guns that people had when the country was first established.

I like this response:

“...semi-autos didn’t exist back then” argument is as silly as it is spurious. Automobiles, telephones, Reform Judaism, Mormonism, computers, the Internet . . . none of them existed “back then” but no one seriously suggests that they’re not covered by the Bill of Rights. In fact the inclusion of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 (the copyright and patent clause) in the Constitution shows that the Founders did anticipate there would be innovation and invention in the US and sought to encourage it.

All one really has to do is peer into the roots of the democrat party to understand what gun control is really about -- RACISM. Keep the guns out of the hands of minorities -- blacks and Mexicans or other shades of brown people.

There is no denying that liberals have worked hard to control weapons in areas where poor and minorities live. Look at Washington, DC, our nation's capital. Strict gun control has only brought about more crime.

What about people who have committed crimes, served their time in jail, and are then told they can never own a firearm again? Some of these criminals were not violent at all and didn't even use a gun to commit their crime but now their ability to defend themselves and their families is forever taken away by the almighty government, even through they served their time and should be given another chance. Most of these people end up obtaining a gun illegally because they do live in areas of poverty ridden by crime. Most WANT to get out and make better for themselves but fall right back into breaking the law because for them, there is no other way. Who are we really helping here? Just because someone did bad at one time doesn't mean they should remain defenseless for the rest of their lives. It's none of the governments business who owns a weapon.

The fact is, most of the liberals I know who support gun control are sweet, innocent, middle-class, white people who have NO idea what it is like living in an area where you have to lock your doors just in between carrying groceries inside. They have no idea what it feels like having to watch your back every time you go out to get the mail. They have never seen a group of people who are outside of their apartment entrance harassing others that walk by or people trying to go in and out of their own apartment. They have never opened the door to their apartment to be greeted by police tape because a murder had just occurred in one of the apartments (yeah, that happened to me). They do not live in neighborhoods where not hearing a few gunshots at night is considered odd. They grew up with parents that owned their own business or had good, high paying jobs, not parents who were drug dealers that would go out at night and leave them with an "uncle" or in some cases all alone.

The fact is, many, many people in this country live very tough lives in very tough areas and the people who are armed are not law abiding citizens; they are criminals who take over entire areas. I've seen it; I've lived it. Some of these areas are so bad that police will not even enter them at night. So who will be there to protect the ones that follow the strict gun-laws? If police will not even go into those areas? In these rough areas where gun control has been made the law, a person only has so many options -- arm yourself illegally and hope you don't get caught or be at the mercy of criminal thugs who terrorize your neighborhood. These are communities were the poor and many minorities live yet, aren't these the same groups of people the liberals supposedly care about?

What about women? Single mothers living in this country are alone in their homes. Do we really expect someone to just call the police as a viable option for defense? Sure the left pay lip service to supporting equal rights and protecting women but G-d forbid they allow her to have a gun for self-defense. No, let's punish them and keep them slaves of the state and slaves to the thugs controlling the neighborhoods they reside in.

As a single mother myself, I am just like any other mother -- my child is the most precious person in my life. She is my angel, my little piece of heaven's gold. Her worth is more than my own life and protecting her my duty! If someone should come into my home and rape me or do other things I do not want to even think about or mention and I survived, how would I even begin to carry on in life? Is it not my duty to take steps towards gaining a form of protection that can save my daughter and myself from such violence?

Sorry but all of the arguments that liberals can come up with to deter gun possession are absolutely insipid. They ignore reality in favor of the imaginary.

So is there any common ground here? I say, "yes." I think we can hopefully all agree that those who own firearms need to be responsible. They need to educate themselves on how to properly store their guns, how to handle their guns, shoot their guns, and explain this information properly to their family, especially their children. Shooting practice and safety should be a priority for gun owners.

No doubt that the United States has its problems but in this case the problem isn't the gun, it's our culture. Just in the span of my own lifetime I have witnessed a society that went from valuing life to valuing death. We have rapidly increased our support for abortions and now, in some cases have expanded this to killing babies in the third trimester. We talk about euthanasia for older people as if it should be standard practice. We don't even want to bother bringing babies into the world if they have a problem like Down Syndrome. We always focus on stories that involve massive killings but never do we hear about the thousands of stories where people defend themselves with guns and stop killers from doing more harm, stopping them dead in their tracks. Then there are those that DO defend themselves and we demonize them for doing so. Remember the Zimmerman case? We have turned the idea of self-defense into something we should be ashamed of.

It's hard to believe that many liberals like Obama really care about young children being slaughtered when this same man supports the slaughter of children in the womb who have made it to the third trimester. As a women who has been pregnant, I can tell you that such a procedure should be considered nothing other than MURDER.

So what have we learned here?

First, gun restrictions are rooted in racism. These laws hurt the poor, minorities, and even single mothers.

Less guns do not equal less crime. More laws actually seem to increase crime rather than deter it, at least in the cases concerning gun control.

Taking guns away from law abiding citizens knowing full well that criminals will still have guns is like putting a stamp of approval for the enslavement of citizens who follow the law. It literally advocates that they should be controlled by evil criminals who live among us.

Guns are neutral forces. They do not posses special tempting powers. They can be used for both good and evil. They are mostly used for the purposes of fighting evil.

Our Second Amendment is a cornerstone of our culture and our history. Its meaning is complete and complimentary to the ideas that we hold sacred -- that we are a people who should take responsibility for  ourselves. With individuals working hard to express their views, protect their lives, and pursue happiness, this helps the whole of our society. Only through the efforts of individuals can we ever hope to change our country as a whole.

We DO need to advocate gun owners to be responsible with their guns.

We DO need to embrace our right to bear arms. This is a wonderful protection that is G-d given. The Constitution merely expresses its protection and recognizes it as something to VALUE.

Our problem lies in our arrested state of spiritual development, at least for the left in this country. We must get back to valuing LIFE rather than death. We must advocate and speak with our minds and hearts about appreciating human life -- ALL human life. Only when a person understands the amazement of life can they begin to appreciate the value of defending their life and other people's lives as well.

Finally, the advocacy of gun control is emotional, irrational, and a vote for good people to be victims. These laws do not empower the individual and unfortunately the left is scared to death of actually empowering anyone because they themselves feel powerless; they have never found their own individuality and empowerment.

Keep America safe -- love life, arm yourself. Encourage others to do the same.