The Patriot Post® · Time for a Reality Check

I laughed out loud when I read this email the other day. “Today I swung my front door wide open and placed my Stevens 320 right in the doorway. I gave it 6 shells, and noticing that it had no legs, even placed it in my wheelchair to help it get around. I then left it alone and went about my business. While I was gone, the mailman delivered my mail, the neighbor boy across the street mowed the yard, a girl walked her dog down the street, and quite a few cars stopped at the stop sign right in front of our house. After about an hour, I checked on the gun. It was still sitting there in the wheelchair, right where I had left it. It hadn’t rolled itself outside. It certainly hadn’t killed anyone, even with the numerous opportunities it had been presented to do so. In fact, it hadn’t even loaded itself. Well you can imagine my surprise, with all the media hype about how dangerous guns are and how they kill people. Either the media is wrong… or I’m in possession of the laziest gun in the world.”

If one was to believe the hysterical, irrational and emotionally manipulative hype about guns and gun control, one would think that guns themselves are evil. That is what anti-gun people and groups want you to think. They blame the guns for what happens and want you to believe them. They don’t want you the think logically or realistically. Reality has nothing to do with what they want you to believe! The reality is that guns are inanimate objects.

Guns kill people just the same way spoons make people fat and SUVs run over pedestrians. The individual using the gun, spoon or SUV creates the problem. It is not the object; it is the person using it that is the problem! Any object can be used to do good or bad things. It is the intent and action of the user that makes the difference. Believe me; if there is a bad person using a gun to commit a crime, I want a good guy there with a gun to stop him!

Taking the guns away from the good guys only encourages the bad guys to do more bad things because it is safer for them to do so. Why do you think that crime statistics repeated show that areas where citizens can carry weapons have lower crime rates than areas where carrying weapons is prohibited? Criminals think twice before mugging/raping/stealing when they know the intended victim might be armed.

I am constantly hearing things like, “We need a balanced, comprehensive approach that strengthens enforcement of existing laws, improves access to mental health services, and rids our streets of military-style assault weapons.” WRONG!

First: Do you really think that one more law added to the over 20,000 gun control laws we already have will actually make a difference? Do you really think that taking weapons away from law-abiding citizens will also take weapons away from criminals? They don’t care what laws you pass. They don’t obey laws. That is why they are criminals.

What we need is to enforce the law. Not the gun control laws, but laws that prohibit criminal activity, actual crimes that have actual victims. Crimes like murder, burglary, rape, assault, battery and robbery. Those are the laws that should be better enforced!

Not incidentally, I would like to point out that all of the mass murders have been committed in gun free zones. Just because a person is mentally unbalanced enough to do something like this, doesn’t mean he is stupid! I think gun free zones should be renamed risk free killing zones.

Second: improving access to mental health services. I agree with this. People having severe mental/emotional problems should receive the help they need. But receiving mental health services is not a cure, nor is it the answer. Research by David Kupelian has shown that all the mass murderers in recent decades have either been taking or recently stopped taking mood altering prescription drugs. (And you thought it only increased the risk of them committing suicide!) These mass murderers could not have had these drugs if they had not been prescribed. That means they were already getting some help for their problems.

Third: ridding the streets of military style assault weapons. This is by far the most irrational of the statements. To begin with, fully automatic weapons are not readily available to the public. Automatic weapons in America have been federally controlled, taxed and licensed since the National Firearms Act of 1934. Real “assault rifles” and “assault weapons” are used by the military. None of these are available to private citizens and most certainly are not on our streets.

As they are being used by the media and anti-gunners, “assault weapons” and “assault rifles” are artificial terms. They do not describe any category of guns. The guns that have been described as “assault weapons” by antigun legislation and antigun groups where chosen because of features that have nothing to do with how the guns function. The characteristics chosen to be banned are based on nothing but appearance. In other words, the crime is that they look scary. A folding stock, a pistol grip, a flash suppressor or the color black are either style or cosmetic features and it is an illogical act to make style or cosmetics illegal.

I would also like to point out that “assault weapons” are used in an extreme minority of any crimes involving guns. Check out FBI and police crime statistics. In America, gun related murders and crime are predominantly in cities with a population of over 10,000. In fact, these crimes are in specific areas within those cities. Why punish all law abiding gun owning citizens instead of focusing on crime control in the problem areas of those cities? Probably the anti-gunners don’t suggest that because it doesn’t further their real aim – to take all the guns away from the American citizens.

Another real eye opener would be to check out our violent crime records and compare them to international violent crime records. We are living in an extremely safe country! Our per capita murder rate (from all sources of murder) is LOW by international standards. Our guns are keeping us safer!

You can contact Marie at [email protected].