Life is dangerous, and the Left would love for us to believe that we’re at greatest risk from firearms – especially mass shootings. Yet as with so many other issues, those perpetrating this myth are either misinformed or liars.

As we reported earlier this week, the FBI in response to the Sandy Hook school shooting has released a report on “Active Shooter Incidents” during the years 2000 through 2013. Altogether, these tragic events caused 418 deaths, just under 30 per year. They represent a sign of something desperately wrong with American culture. In 1950, such shootings would never even enter the mind of an American child sitting in a classroom or an adult in a movie theater – or of even the most hardened criminal. That sort of violence was associated strictly with communist Russia and China.

Mass shootings aren’t solely a feature of modern American history. Others have occurred sporadically in the past, but until fairly recently, they weren’t random as are today’s. The FBI reports these killing sprees have increased on average nearly three times per year during the period 2007-2013 compared to the years 2000-2006. Obviously, a civil society simply can’t survive if these incidents can’t be stopped, though in a free society, people can’t be controlled before they do something either. The Founders’ vision was of a Republic of informed if not educated citizens with a strong moral ethic. The Founders could never conceive of a Columbine or a Sandy Hook. Clearly, we’ve strayed far from their vision.

As always the Left blames firearms as the cause of these horrific incidents. In service to the gun-control agenda, the New York Times’ headline merrily blared, “F.B.I. Confirms a Sharp Rise in Mass Shootings Since 2000.” Those of us familiar with firearms know what demeaning propaganda the Times is selling. A firearm is a tool, like a knife, a pencil, a hammer, a car or an airliner. Tools are created to help humans improve their world, to enjoy life more and to help others. But they can all be used as weapons – death-dealing instruments – depending on the hand wielding them.

A few examples will suffice: The National Safety Council estimated that during 2013, 35,000 people died in U.S. car accidents. The National Transportation Safety Board says from 2000-2007, large buses had 1,100 fatalities and 3,500 injuries. On another tack, nearly 4,900 murders were committed between 2000 and 2013 using “personal weapons” such as feet or fists; that averages 800+ per year. Between 2006 and 2011 alone, nearly 11,000 murders were perpetrated with “knives and cutting instruments,” or about 1,800 annually. Finally, between 2006 and 2011, some 580 murders per year were committed using fire. It’s worth noting that between 2000 and 2013 the annual murder rate by “active shooters” was just under 30. To selectively choose one stat over the other minimizes those deaths.

A curious aspect to this and other issues of cultural decay is the Left’s apparent blindness to the fact that it is their efforts to change America the Flawed into a socialist utopia that have caused virtually all the greatest problems plaguing us today. They attack guns and ignore the rot and violence in most of our inner cities. More murders were committed in Chicago in 2013 alone (460) than all those by “active shooters” in the 14-year period tracked in the FBI nationwide study. These were largely the result of the gang culture in the Democrats’ poverty plantations.

Half of the world suffers gut-wrenching poverty, but “poverty” in America is a business. With the obvious exception of the elderly and infirm, poverty is a choice, and every day more people make it. But it’s also a condition foisted upon millions by leftists who know better how to manage our lives than we do. And they have the nerve to call it the “Great Society.”

The Left owns education, and while we once had the world’s finest educational system, today we just continue lowering the bar. The College Boards have had to be re-written at least three times so today’s students can score what their parents did on much tougher material.

Entertainment, the Left’s crown jewel, has largely become a toilet. And TV is indeed a vast wasteland. What used to be laughably called “adult material” and not shown until after 10 p.m. can be now seen by 10-year-olds on paid TV while their absentee parents pursue their careers. None of this offends the Left. Why parents are so oblivious befuddles us on the Right.

The Left will use any and all means necessary to deprive us of our rights. Hence, they blame the tool instead of the cultural rot when evil and deranged people do horrible things. Winston Churchill once said, “Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in.” That should do for us who want to preserve our Second Amendment rights amidst an all-out assault by those who hate Liberty.

> Update – Oct. 14: The FBI reportedly used bogus statistics to create its report. That’s far more problematic than an anti-gun group like Michael Bloomberg’s just making things up.