The Patriot Post® · We Must Rethink Guns

By Erick Erickson ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/43406-we-must-rethink-guns-2016-06-24

How many children were gunned down in Newtown, CT? Then there was Aurora, CO, where a gunman went into a theater and began shooting the place up. In Orlando, FL, two weeks ago, roughly 50 people were murdered. All of these shootings are overshadowed by the night after night mounting death toll in Chicago and young black men kill each other.

America, we have a gun problem. To solve it, we can and should do one thing immediate. We should make it vastly easier for law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. We need many, many more guns in America in the hands of law-abiding citizens who know how to use them.

The political left in this country abhors the idea, but it is the only solution. President Obama likes to talk about Australia. That nation rounded up the guns of its citizens years ago, having passed a law rejecting private ownership of handguns. But Australia, unlike the United States, did not have a second amendment to its constitution.

Whether the American left likes it or not, citizens of the United States have a constitutional right to gun ownership. Not a single proposal before the Congress would do anything about the hundreds of thousands of young black men who die from handgun violence. The Democrats’ proposals would only stop long barrel rifles, the guns least likely to be used in instances of gun violence. In fact, the tragedy at Columbine during the Clinton presidency happened after passage of the assault weapons ban.

Laws will not stop evil men. Guns will. It is no coincidence that the states with the most restrictive gun laws have the worse gun crimes. Law-abiding citizens have difficulty obtaining guns while criminals just steal them. Governments that disarm law-abiding citizens just make them easier to victimize.

Even more offensive in the present gun debate, Democrats wish to deny Americans their constitutional right to gun ownership without due process. It sounds like a wonderful idea. But consider that one of the chief champions for doing this, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, was improperly placed on the no-fly list. The no-fly list is, in fact, a very flawed instrument with numerous well-documented examples of Americans being placed on the list who should not be there. The liberal ACLU and the conservative NRA both agree that using the no-fly list to block gun ownership is a terrible idea.

Democrats want to deny Americans the right to buy guns if they are on that list. Imagine if Republicans proposed banning any woman on the no-fly list from having an abortion. Democrats would claim it was an incursion against civil and constitutional rights and, at a minimum, should require a due process hearing.

Abortion, however, is not written into the United States constitution. The right to keep and bear arms is in the Constitution. Democrats, however, could not care less. They have turned a terrorist attack in Orlando into just another “mass shooting” in order to push an agenda to deny Americans their constitutional liberties without due process.

During the Bush era, Democrats said if we curtailed civil liberties the terrorists would have won. Now that Barack Obama has systematically failed to stop terrorist attacks at Fort Hood, in Chattanooga, in Orlando, and elsewhere, the Democrats are finally demanding our liberties be curtailed without due process. It is an admission against interest that Barack Obama has failed and the terrorists have won. The terrorists have won so big against Barack Obama that his own Department of Justice tried to redact the 911 transcript from Omar Mateen to erase all references to ISIS.

The Democrats would rather believe Omar Mateen was a jilted, closeted gay man than face the fact that terrorists want to kill us and the government cannot keep us safe. The only way for Americans to keep themselves safe is to realize the government cannot be anywhere and everywhere immediately. We must rely on ourselves to defend our families and property. That requires more guns, not few guns.

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