Gun Control

 In this day and age, comparatively few law abiding  citizens choose to carry (or even own) a firearm.  It's easy to understand why: Having a weapon is a huge responsibility that could have disastrous and tragic consequences.  It also seems likely that a constant anti-gun agenda that has been blasted out by the mainstream media has played a part: Because of what they see on a regular basis, many people believe at their core that "guns are bad."

If someone bombs a building, do we blame the bomber or the bomb?  If someone stabs a person to death, do we blame the stabber or the knife?  If a motorist runs over a pedestrian on the sidewalk, do we blame the driver or the car?  Why is it that when someone loses their mind and shoots innocent people, we blame the gun?  Something tells me that if you were to load a gun and set it out, it would not get up and start killing people of its own volition.

People do not need guns to kill other people.  If you were to look at the crime statistics on fbi.gov, you would see that more people are killed every year by hands and feet than are killed by the dreaded "assault rifle."  Far more people are stabbed to death.  In fact, if you rule out the leading diseases (many of which can be attributed to genetically modified foods and chemicals) and unintentional injuries, the number one cause of unnatural death in the country - which kills twenty to forty times as many people each year as all firearms combined - is medical malpractice.  The bottom line is this: Guns do not kill people.  People kill people.

In 2011, there were about 11,500 total deaths attributed to guns in America.  Of those, about 325 were caused by an "assault" rifle (which, incidentally, is a misused and misleading term).  This means that an "assault" weapons ban would address less than 3% of the problem.  Every single year, it is estimated that anywhere from 800,000 to 2.5 million violent crimes are prevented by the legal use of firearms.  In other words, on the lowest end of the scale, nearly one hundred times more crime is prevented every single year by law abiding citizens than the total deaths caused by guns.  The argument for an assault weapons ban is disingenuous at best.

Lets say you don't agree with any of that and you still want guns to be banned and confiscated.  Getting all the guns off the streets would clearly curb violent crime, right?  You're forgetting one self-evident fact: by their very nature, criminals do not obey laws.  If every single law abiding person were to willingly disarm themselves, we would not see a reduction in violent crime.  History and current events prove that we would see the exact opposite.  Citing the fbi.gov statistics: Over the last 20 years in America, there has been a steady increase in gun ownership and a corresponding decrease in all crime.  The United Kingdom and Australia recently banned guns and they have seen increases of up to 40% in violent crime.

If you saw a gazelle being chased down by a cheetah in the Sahara desert, you would not argue that the gazelle should have to lay down and be eaten.  The argument that the gazelle should not use its horns and hooves to fight for its life simply cannot be made.  Gun control is akin to removing the gazelle's horns and expecting the cheetah to be less likely to attack it because it is now less able to defend itself.  It is a nonsensical argument that does not stand up to even the slightest bit of logic.

Gun Free zones are another example of how laws do not deter criminals.  On the day 26 innocent people were killed in Sandy Hook Elementary School, the shooter broke 41 different laws.  How would passing another law prevent this type of thing from happening?  Obviously, the shooter had no regard for the laws already on the books; what would breaking one more be to him?  What do you think would have happened that day if every single teacher in the school had been carrying a concealed weapon?  All mass shootings in recent history have happened in these "Criminal-Safe" zones.  Instituting a gun free zone is like advertising to a psychopath that there are fish in a barrel inside, just waiting to be terrorized.

Lets say that you still don't buy any of it.  Guns are still bad and you don't like them.  Okay, that's fine - don't own one.  But don't try to tell me that just because you don't want a gun, I can't have one either.  I don't tell you you're not allowed to have that Obama-Biden sticker on your car, do I?

Another issue to consider is the intent behind the Second Amendment.  This law was created at a time when severe government oppression from England prevented the colonists from so much as defending themselves against said oppression.  The Framers of the Constitution created this law so that a corrupt government would never again have a monopoly of power.  The Second Amendment exists as a last line of defense against an out-of-control government, which is exactly what we have today [1][2][3].

Even if you don't see where we are headed right now, you need only look at the history of gun control in the 20th century to understand why it's a bad idea to leave the monopoly of violence in the hands of a corruptible few:

Soviet Union: 1929 - 20 million dissidents exterminated
Turkey: 1915 - 1.5 million Armenians exterminated
Germany: 1938 - 13 million Jews (and others) exterminated
China: 1935 - 20 million dissidents exterminated
Uganda: 1970 - 300,000 Christians exterminated
Cambodia: 1956 - 1 million exterminated
20th Century Post-Gun Control deaths: 55,800,000

I'll leave you with this: Which sign would you rather a criminal see when considering entering your space?



















"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." - Mao Zedong