Utter Silly Con Debate on Guns

Last week the York Daily Record offered a pro/con debate on whether the Second Amendment should be repealed and how did the author of the who stated “Yes – guns are too costly for society” try to make his case:

There are 788,258 words in a standard King James Bible. The word “gun” isn’t one of them.

The words TV, Internet, airplane, automobile, and lawnmower aren’t in there either. But no one is opposed of someone mowing the lawn or flying.

He adds:

America today has something else it didn’t have in 1787 – a million law enforcement officers whose job it is to protect the public and enforce the rule of law. They do an exemplary job and every single one of us is safer because of their efforts. Gun owners might feel safer packing their own heat, but data gleaned from the FBI’s 2010 statistics on firearm-related deaths suggests that gun owners are just as likely to die from firearms as their unarmed brethren, which tells me that the “gun for protection” argument doesn’t hold much water.

After 225 years, the Second Amendment has clearly outlived its original purpose. What America needs today is something different. What I’m talking about is a new Constitutional Amendment – one that values a communities’ right to safety over the right of individuals to unfettered ownership of instruments of death. That end can only be accomplished by allowing all levels of government the power to regulate gun ownership in the same way we regulate our right to drive vehicles or conduct other hazardous activities.

So basically another rallying cry for a police state, one where we can only hope criminals don’t get their hands on guns.

Idealist World View From “Journalism Major”

Perhaps part of the problem with the media’s war on guns is that many journalists start out as bright eyed idealists who believe the world can somehow magically be a better place. Last week Jay Omar, a journalism student at the University of Nebraska offered this commentary:

The Trayvon Martin tragedy has given gun control activist new ammo. Another American is dead because we don’t exercise enough control over who carries guns, and few Americans want to admit this is a problem.

Guns seem to be everywhere, including many places where they should not be. Inevitably they end up getting people killed.

The Trayvon Martin death would not have happened if the man accused in his killing, George Zimmerman, had not been carrying a firearm. There was no need for Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watchman of a gated community, to be armed.

There is no need for the average American to be armed.

Let’s tackle this argument one issue at a time. Few Americans want to admit there is a problem because it is widely overstated. Law-abiding citizens are typically not the problem.

Second, people do get killed because illegal guns are often the ones in places they should not be, in the hands of those who shouldn’t have them. Shouldn’t law-abiding citizens have the right to fight back?

And we don’t know how this would have turned out if Zimmerman hadn’t been carrying a gun. Perhaps he’d be dead at the hands of Martin. But it is interesting that such an idealist wouldn’t give Zimmerman his day in court!

The writer later concludes:

If all gun owners acted responsibly — became educated and secured their guns when not in use — guns wouldn’t cause nearly as many problems.

This is a sad comment to make, because the absolute truth is that MOST law-abiding gun owners do in fact act responsibly. As noted, it is those illegal guns that are the problem.

So here we have a future journalist that automatically equates gun owners with criminals, and assumes all gun owners act irresponsibly.

Birmingham News Says: “Gun problem is a First Amendment issue”

This past weekend, John Achibald offered an interesting take on the Second Amendment, he stated, “Gun problem is a First Amendment issue.” By that he states:

Because the biggest threats to the Second Amendment are not the anti-gun, tree-hugging Greenpeace hippies. The biggest threats to responsible gun owners — and to public safety — are idiots with guns.

He later adds:

Prayers and processions, gun buybacks and waiting periods have not solved our problem. Perhaps gun safety training for thugs — or marksmanship — is the answer.

And finally notes:

We need to learn again to talk about guns in realistic, honest ways, without all the knee-jerk political baggage. We need to talk safety, and consequences. We need to discuss ways of limiting gun supplies to criminals without threatening the rights of responsible owners.

OK, so does this make sense – probably to someone who is anti-gun even if they don’t know it. The problem is the First Amendment, yes, but it is because the media – as in the press – hypes only those idiots that Archibald calls out. People do stupid things with cars too, but the media doesn’t call for a ban.

And this nonsense about training is of course non-sense, but in making a joke, Archibald actually addresses why words can’t solve the problem. Thugs won’t take safety classes, but more importantly won’t lay down their guns either. So this “ways of limiting guns supplies to criminals” is just a moot point.

Criminals shouldn’t have guns. We all agree with that fact, but calls for gun control only stop the law-abiding.

Letter to Editor Shows Ignorance of Understanding of the Second Amendment

We don’t often call out letters to the editor, but we do feel it necessary from time to time. In this case, it was a letter to the Santa Maria Times by Robert Hoffman. He writes:

The 2nd Amendment confers the right to bear arms. It is, however, unlikely our founding fathers could have envisioned the muzzle-loading muskets of their era, essential for food and defense, evolving into weapons capable of inflicting the carnage modern weapons make possible.

This is a typical anti-gun rant. But Hoffman should also know that in the time of muzzle-loading muskets of that era a wound was typically a death sentence due to the medicine of the day.

Also, this notion that the guns were “essential” for food is nonsense. Does anyone think that the Founding Fathers, who were rich land owners, needed to hunt to eat? Why do people like Hoffman assume that the United States was all wilderness? There were actually cities in North America, and most people were actually farmers. This notion of backwoods men and rugged Daniel Boone types is not accurate.

He adds:

The price for our gun obsession is about 30,000 killed and 65,000 wounded annually. Most fatalities are not premeditated murders or in self defense and would, likely, not have happened had guns not been part of the equation.

And how many of those are killed are done so with illegal guns? The truth is that the vast majority of people killed with guns are killed with illegal guns. The NRA isn’t out to protect illegal guns in the hands of criminals.

He adds:

The “well-regulated militia” included in the text of the 2nd Amendment were the colonial militias that served as our only defense in the absence of a standing national army, before we had a National Guard and the most potent military in the world.

Yes, we’ve heard this before. So we should lay down our arms, live in a police state and basically except that the army will protect us, and the police will keep the streets safe.

Finally he adds:

Neither the Constitution nor its amendments is set in stone. Both have been amended when changing circumstances warranted change. It is time we revisited the 2nd Amendment and the relevance of the broad interpretation given it by the NRA and the gun enthusiasts it represents.

Spoken like a true anti-gun zealot. He doesn’t like guns so it is time to change the laws. Doesn’t matter that criminals won’t heed the new laws, doesn’t matter if gun enthusiasts want their guns – no for the good of America this anti-gun zealot believes it is time to change.

N. CAROLINA LETS EMERGENCY POWERS RULING

SAF:

North Carolina’s failure to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that struck down the state’s emergency power to ban firearms and ammunition outside the home during a declared emergency adds one more Second Amendment victory to the court record being established by the Second Amendment Foundation. Read more

Does Obama Really Plan To Ease Weapons Export Rules?

From our friend David Codrea:

“The Obama administration is crafting a proposal that could make it easier to export firearms and other weapons to certain countries in an effort to boost sales for U.S. companies, increase trade and improve national security, according to senior government officials,” Sari Horwitz of The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

“The plan, which is part of President Obama’s overhaul of U.S. export rules, is being debated by several agencies and it could be months before a final rule is proposed, according to officials,” Horwitz writes, adding “At least two federal agencies — the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department — have expressed concerns that the changes in the export rules could make it easier for drug cartels and terrorists to obtain weapons and make it harder to stop firearms trafficking.”

[View slide: Obama's true plan for guns is his original plan]

Those are key caveats by players who should know. What we can take from them is that in those development months, and in the comment period that would follow, concerns about Obama’s anti-gun record could be defused with phony “pro-gun” spin that would cost him nothing in terms of actual policy change. Attempts to soothe gun owner fears are already being promulgated by media allies, who point to Obama allowing guns in national parks, disregarding that his administration first tried to let the issue die on the legal vine and only signed on because it was a rider to a credit card bill they wanted. Also, we are told, Obama ended the gun ban on Amtrak—similarly, this was part of a larger funding bill, did not allow for permit holders to carry them, and humorously (?), was initially worded in a way that required gun owners to be locked up in boxes for the duration of the trip!

Continue reading on Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/article/does-obama-really-plan-to-ease-weapons-export-rules

About David Codrea:
David Codrea is a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He is a field editor for GUNS Magazine, and a blogger at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. Read more at www.DavidCodrea.com.

Pincole Bans Private Sales

Last week The Chicago Tribune noted a story that missed much mainstream attention is just the latest example of strict Illinois gun laws:

The Pinole City Council this week formally adopted an ordinance banning the sale of firearms and ammunition from home businesses and restricting them to commercial areas, bringing to a close an often-heated debate centering on Second Amendment rights that dragged on for months.

The council also extended an existing moratorium on home-occupation use permits for firearm and ammunition sales to cover the 30-day waiting period before the ordinance adopted Tuesday becomes effective and give the city clerk time to publish the ordinance in the newspaper.

This essentially bans private sales in Pinole, but here is the bigger issue – it will only deter the law-abiding and not do anything about criminals!

Huff and Puff: NRA Wants Martin Case to Go Away

We have wondered if anti-gun types get giddy when there is a tragic shooting? We are wondering again as it Denis A. Henigan, Brady Campaign VP offered some thoughts this week for The Huffington Post. He noted:

When the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre finally spoke out about the Trayvon Martin shooting, it was to decry the media’s coverage of the tragedy as “sensational reporting from Florida.” It’s understandable that the NRA would be uncomfortable with the intense media attention to this particular shooting tragedy.

The media certainly sensationalized the case, and in many ways found George Zimmerman guilty in the court of public opinion. We say so much for due process. But then Henigan noted:

In the NRA’s world, people are neatly divided into two readily identifiable groups: good guys and bad guys. In this imaginary world, we know that legal carriers of guns must be good guys and that good guys use their guns only in legitimate self-defense — that’s what makes them good guys in the first place.

We respond to say that in the mythic world of the anti-gun zealots criminals will heed gun bans. Bad guys won’t buy guns because the “laws” will stop them.

NRA News: Firearms Instructor Responds to: ‘Bullet Button’ Used To Get Around California Gun Laws

Cam Edwards talks to Brian Normandy, a firearms instructor at Jackson Arms in South San Francisco, California

CCRKBA RIPS TAMPA MAYOR, LAUDS FL GOVERNOR OVER CCW FLAP

From the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

« Previous Page — Next Page »