- Messages
- 1,288
- Reactions
- 1,060
To the Editor:
How Gun Control Advocates Work
A wise person once said: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
In the current argument raging over gun control, one side is consistently telling deliberate falsehoods, concocting misleading statistics and generally doing their best to confuse and mislead people. Hint: its not the pro-self-defense side.
1. Gun Deaths
Anti-self-defense advocates consistently cite gun deaths, making the false claim that there is an epidemic of gun-related violence.
What they dont tell you when they cite these numbers is that they include every suicide where a gun was used and every case of a criminal shot dead by police or people protecting themselves. The U.S. actually has a vastly lower overall suicide rate than many other industrialized societies which have gun-control that the ant-self-defense crowd can only dream of enacting. Our crime rates are less than HALF of what they were a little over 20 years ago when gun sales have been at record numbers for nearly two decades. Our VIOLENT crime rates are lower than England, with a complete ban on pistols and semi-auto rifles. This is actually the safest time to be an American in my lifetime of near 50 years.
2. Semi-automatic firearms only belong on a battlefield
If this is true, then why do these same people feel fine half the police officers in the country carry an AR-15 platform rifle in their patrol car? Why is it that the Department of Homeland Security classifies these guns as Personal Defense Weapons but the anti-self-defense crowd calls them assault weapons? And while were talking about battlefields, no army in the world issues semi-automatic rifles as its main weapon. They all issue fully automatic or select-fire weapons. Our troops dont carry an AR-15. They carry the M4 or M-16 machine gun.
3. A ban on lawful citizens selling their property unless they go through an expensive bureaucratic background check process will Keep guns out of the hands of criminals.
We have a pretty good idea of where criminals get their guns and gun shows or private sale loopholes dont account for many. Criminals get their guns mainly from an illegal seller (Its been against the law for near 50 years to sell to a known felon), borrow them from a friend (again, illegal) or have a straw purchaser legally buy the gun from a licensed dealer and illegally give it to the criminal. (A federal crime punishable by 10 years in prison). About 12% personally steal them.
Heres the kicker: We almost NEVER prosecute straw sales or people falsifying information on their attempts to purchase guns illegally. Its less than one successful prosecution for 10,000 reported violations.
So anti-self-defense advocates want to infringe on a basic right that wont have any effect on anyone EXCEPT the good guys. Why are these people not calling for enforcement of existing law instead of calling for stomping on our rights?
The only conclusion one can come to is that theyre either all stupid (unlikely) or that they dont care about solving the problem at all. What they care about is disarming the American public. And they will use every lie, distortion, cooked up study or false choice to attain that goal.
When someone has to use lies, distortions and confusion to argue their case, it means their case has no facts to speak for it. The next time you hear someone calling for stepping on your basic human right of self-defense, ask them why they have to use deception to sell their case.
How Gun Control Advocates Work
A wise person once said: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
In the current argument raging over gun control, one side is consistently telling deliberate falsehoods, concocting misleading statistics and generally doing their best to confuse and mislead people. Hint: its not the pro-self-defense side.
1. Gun Deaths
Anti-self-defense advocates consistently cite gun deaths, making the false claim that there is an epidemic of gun-related violence.
What they dont tell you when they cite these numbers is that they include every suicide where a gun was used and every case of a criminal shot dead by police or people protecting themselves. The U.S. actually has a vastly lower overall suicide rate than many other industrialized societies which have gun-control that the ant-self-defense crowd can only dream of enacting. Our crime rates are less than HALF of what they were a little over 20 years ago when gun sales have been at record numbers for nearly two decades. Our VIOLENT crime rates are lower than England, with a complete ban on pistols and semi-auto rifles. This is actually the safest time to be an American in my lifetime of near 50 years.
2. Semi-automatic firearms only belong on a battlefield
If this is true, then why do these same people feel fine half the police officers in the country carry an AR-15 platform rifle in their patrol car? Why is it that the Department of Homeland Security classifies these guns as Personal Defense Weapons but the anti-self-defense crowd calls them assault weapons? And while were talking about battlefields, no army in the world issues semi-automatic rifles as its main weapon. They all issue fully automatic or select-fire weapons. Our troops dont carry an AR-15. They carry the M4 or M-16 machine gun.
3. A ban on lawful citizens selling their property unless they go through an expensive bureaucratic background check process will Keep guns out of the hands of criminals.
We have a pretty good idea of where criminals get their guns and gun shows or private sale loopholes dont account for many. Criminals get their guns mainly from an illegal seller (Its been against the law for near 50 years to sell to a known felon), borrow them from a friend (again, illegal) or have a straw purchaser legally buy the gun from a licensed dealer and illegally give it to the criminal. (A federal crime punishable by 10 years in prison). About 12% personally steal them.
Heres the kicker: We almost NEVER prosecute straw sales or people falsifying information on their attempts to purchase guns illegally. Its less than one successful prosecution for 10,000 reported violations.
So anti-self-defense advocates want to infringe on a basic right that wont have any effect on anyone EXCEPT the good guys. Why are these people not calling for enforcement of existing law instead of calling for stomping on our rights?
The only conclusion one can come to is that theyre either all stupid (unlikely) or that they dont care about solving the problem at all. What they care about is disarming the American public. And they will use every lie, distortion, cooked up study or false choice to attain that goal.
When someone has to use lies, distortions and confusion to argue their case, it means their case has no facts to speak for it. The next time you hear someone calling for stepping on your basic human right of self-defense, ask them why they have to use deception to sell their case.