Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Liberals in general and Democrats in particular are about to lose big on the issue of gun control. It’s not because it’s impossible to create and pass reasonable regulations on firearms; it has been done and can be done. It’s not because “the gun lobby” is too powerful. Yes, the NRA is influential, but if they’re so powerful, why are restrictive laws still in force for many states?
The reason Democrats are going to lose on this issue is because they’ll try to go too far. Senator Feinstein has already proposed a vast expansion to the 1994 assault weapons ban, NY Governor, Andrew Cuomo is talking confiscation of certain weapons, and Biden said just today the White House is considering “executive orders” and “executive action” on the part of the president.
Please note this is a fairly typical human reaction, this tendency to swing towards extremes. Does anyone doubt that, if some of our more liberal elected officials had their way, there would be no Second Amendment? But Americans overall have shown no strong desire to remove firearms from society. On the contrary, gun ownership has seen a steady rise even as (some might say paradoxically) society in general has seen a steady decline in overall crime and violence.
More Americans than ever own guns, yet, as Investors Business Daily reports, “over the last 20 years, the firearm crime rate has dropped, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 6 victims per 1,000 residents in 1994 to 1.4 victims per 1,000 residents in 2009. This has happened as more and more citizens arm themselves.”
Ultimately, Democrats will lose on this because, in their emotional fervor, they are already ignoring reality. Not just the reality of American culture and its pro-firearm philosophy, but the reality of what was really behind the murderous rampages in Sandy Hook, the UVA campus, Columbine, Colorado, and so many other places in this country. The problem of mental illness.
Let’s take a relevant case in point. In July, CNN posted a timeline of the Worst mass shootings in U.S. The timeline begins in 1949 and was recently updated to include the Sandy Hook massacre. Of those listed, most if not all the incidents had to do with people who were mentally ill or mentally unstable.
So, will the type of gun control proposed by many Democrats today deal with that issue? No, of course not. Mainly because that is the more difficult issue to address and does not do nearly as much for fund raising as gun control.
But this is the real issue, and, difficult or not, the one we should be addressing.
January 9th, 2013 at 9:53 pm
Americans have always been a people skating near the edge of hysteria.
Ask Japanese Americans of WWII
Jackknives that open with a button were immediately outlawed in every hamlet from coast to coast, when Yanks was one of the Jets stabbed with a switchblade knife in ‘West Side Story’.
The Hysterical Gun Control Juggernaut Swirling around the Boy from Kenya will destroy his Legacy.
He doesn’t know how to stop it. It will end up killing ObamaCare. It will guarantee his place at the butt of jokes for years to come.
Sometimes Justice prevails even when it seems unlikely.
Larger Than Life Statues of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama should be erected in the lobby of the NRA. They have made the AR-15 more of an American Icon than the Liberty Bell.
January 10th, 2013 at 1:16 am
Good article. As usual wide-eyed liberals in pursuit of their utopian dreamy world will overreach.
January 10th, 2013 at 6:43 am
Crime stats prove that far more people are killed every year with hammers than ‘assault rifles’. Given all of the other pressing issues that Congress faces, I really do not see any gun control legislation going very far this year. But then, of course, we still have to worry about Obama using executive orders to do something blatantly stupid and Unconstitutional.
January 10th, 2013 at 7:10 am
I would like to believe that all this leftist bullsht over automatic rifles was a sincere effort to make society a safer place for all our kids.
Unfortunately bans on these weapons have always proved useless other than to create a jump in sales, a rush to empty gun store shelves before another bullsht bill is passed
Too often weve seen liberals who care so much about the children march them out in front of us only be used as tools to pull at our heart strings, Nancy Pelosi accusing Republicans of trying to kill children with E. coli., Obama signing his healthcare bill with some little black kid behind him.
One would like to believe they give a sht.
But, a closer look at some of Obamas earlier stunts makes it clear that the only thing he wants to do is disarm anyone who would protest being a part his new world order.
The most frightening example would be Obamas Marxist global poverty tax. Obama himself introduced this bill when he was in the Senate, the Global Poverty Act of 2007,a massive redistribution of global wealth under the guise of some green bullsht, also calls for disarming almost everyone on the planet, except of course for those who’d be confiscating these weapons.
The bill has been tucked away for some time now and since his presidency has conspicuously since then never been mentioned by him.
Maybe he realized it was just to large an order at the time and he’d have better luck starting small right here at home.
January 10th, 2013 at 4:00 pm
In California, two more children were shot by a 16 year old today with a 12 gauge shotgun, while he missed hitting a third.
While he had 20 cartridges in his pocket, I sure am glad he only brought a shotgun rather than something that can quickly fire 30 or 100 rounds.
Whew!
January 10th, 2013 at 7:36 pm
Yeah, if banned, criminals won’t have access to anything but a shotgun. Whew! Probably it will work as well as it does in Illinois!