It’s getting hard to respect people who don’t realize that more, not less guns, are the solution to gun murders in America.
In other smaller, less free nations without equivalents to the 2nd amendment there may be different and better ways of going about pursuit of solution. The stats would appear to disagree with that, considering the gun deaths in other nations seem to rise in response to more gun restrictions, but no one seems to want to explore that very much. In England for example, gun deaths went up after more stringent gun laws were put in place, but that stat is ignored by the popular consensus to instead just focus on the fact that England has lower gun deaths than the United States. This is a comparison I’ve never understood the relevancy of when applied to America ever since Michael Moore used it in 2002’s Bowling For Columbine, but it remains appealing to people for whatever reason.
The answer to bad things people do in a free country is more freedom for civilians to police the bad things, not less freedom in attempts to stop bad things.
Did you hippies learn nothing from Star Wars? Lea tells Governor Tarkin that the more he tightens his grip, “the more star systems will slip through your fingers“. Where there is abhorrent speech in a country without government restriction on free speech, the Right answer (coincidentally both the “right” answer as in “correct” but also “right-wing”) is more speech to correct, shame, and ultimately overwhelm it. The Wrong answer is the Left’s answer, which is to remove speech they deem abhorrent, or potentially abhorrent, or just not 100% Leftist (thereby allegedly eliminating the path to potentially abhorrent thought or speech). It’s crazy totalitarianism when it comes to thoughts and speech but it’s downright dangerous when it comes to deadly weapons and self protection.
If your country has a right to firearms, then similarly like a country with a right to free expression – the answer to the bad parts is more good parts. More guns don’t automatically, mathematically equal Less Crime, but in the context of a free firearm owning nation the formula is solid.
Yet consistently, whenever there is a highly covered murder where guns are used, the emotional/politically-Leftist side of the country calls for more restriction on gun rights. The emotional appeal is obvious, but logically bananas (nonsensical).
At the time of this writing, the latest issue to spark this debate is a racially motivated murder of 9 people at a church in Charleston South Carolina. How would more gun laws have stopped this murder?
-By banning “assault rifles”? Nope; An assault rifle was not used in the murder.
-By instituting more strict gun registration laws? Nope; The gun used in the murder was not registered in accordance with the law.
-By outlawing the right to carry a gun? Nope; South Carolina doesn’t have concealed-carry laws or any carrying of a firearm without a permit.
-By banning guns inside churches (where the murder took place)? Nope; guns are already not allowed in churches in South Carolina.
I don’t know why this is shocking to you hippies, but: Murderers break laws. It’s unfortunate, but true. The bumper sticker “if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns” is undeniably accurate since laws only affect the people who abide by them. When people break those laws, the knee-jerk reaction to make more laws to break is not intelligent. The proper response is to make breaking laws a horrible risk for lawbreakers in proportion to the crime. When the crime is murder, the risk of your attempt being thwarted by your injury or death should be raised, not lowered. The only way to raise the risk of injury or death to someone using a projectile weapon is to have other projectile weapons ready to be used against that rogue A-hole.
(Sign that appears at an Arkansas Christian Academy with armed teachers)
There is only one answer: Restricting the right to firearm ownership all together. This obvious point of mine was even echoed by none other than Karl Rove sparking a whole new debate but the base of it is true: you can’t have a country with an engrained right to firearms and no firearm deaths.
You have to repeal the right or reduce the deaths with safety and a balance of powers from armed law abiding citizens to balance the armed criminals. Those are the only options. Since repeal isn’t in the cards – more, not less guns are the answer to rampage shootings.