Gun Control: The media brought it up as a topic almost simultaneously as they announced the Aurora shootings – just like they usually do in mass shooting stories. What they fail to do in each case is run headlines that tell the truth. If they did, they might look something like this:
“Disarming Citizens Leads to Yet Another Mass Shooting”
“Violation of Rights Opens Citizens Up to “Fish In The Barrel” Attack, Again.”
“More Mass Killings; When Will People Protect Themselves Again?”
“Gun-Free Zone Guarantees Murderer Safety, Again.”
The Anti-Gun Lobby is promoting the idea that stronger Anti-Gun Laws will prevent this from happening in the future. What these people consistently fail to acknowledge or accept is that history demonstrates time and time again that when countries disarm their citizens gun crime goes up, dramatically. The truth of the matter is; Armed Citizens are the Best Crime Control.
The Anti-Gun Lobby in Action
The Anti-Gun Lobby created this situation in the first place. They demonized firearms, created a society where people are scared when citizens legally carry firearms, invented “Gun Free Zones” and in cases like Chicago and other cities, made it illegal for a citizen to protect themselves.
Now, when their creation results in something like the Aurora killing spree they claim their work is not yet done – we need MORE control.
“This tragedy is another grim reminder that guns are the enablers of mass killers and that our nation pays an unacceptable price for our failure to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. We are outraged. … demand Congress take action to stop arming dangerous people. … We are insistent that our elected leaders take action to prevent future tragedies. Political cowardice is not an excuse for evasion and inaction on this life-and-death issue.”
Brady Campaign President Dan Gross
While this statement may sound admirable and like the right thing to do, especially to those who are in mourning and vulnerable to this rhetoric, it is statistically false and intellectually dishonest.
If they truly wanted to never see a mass shooting like this occur again, they would insist that Congress take steps to ensure that responsible law-abiding citizens were properly trained and armed at all times. That places of public gathering, such as a theater, require that their employees be trained and openly armed. They would insist that Congress take steps to ensure that it is not just the relatively few police and the many criminals who are armed. They would implore citizens to take responsibility for their own protection and the protection of the innocents surrounding them.
Demonizing Guns
If someone is intent on killing people, they’re going to find a way to do it. Guns happen to be a convenient way, but sitting here looking at my desk I quickly count more than ten ways to kill someone with the objects nearby. Here’s a list of 500 Ways to Kill Someone.
If someone is intent on killing LOTS of people at once, there are plenty of ways to do that as well – some of them easier than putting yourself in a room with all those people and shooting them point-blank. Fire, poison, smashing, bombs, vehicles all quickly come to mind. The mere existence of guns does not equal violence or mass violence – it is violent people that create violence.
If someone blows themselves or a solitary bomb up and kills dozens of people, the person doing it is called a Terrorist and the doing so is called an Act of Terrorism. It’s never blamed on the bomb or the existence of nails. Yet, if someone does the same or less amount of killing with a gun, it’s the guns fault.
If someone drives their car into a crowd of people, we call for crackdowns on DUI, not for bans on cars.
“This is yet another horrific reminder that guns enable mass killings … I mean, there are so many murders with guns every day, it’s just got to stop”
New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg
We agree Mayor, which is why we implore our readers to GO GET TRAINED and responsibly and legally carry a firearm!
Actual Facts
As for the Mayor’s assertion that “there are so many murders with guns every day”, this statement completely ignores the government studies which reveal an estimated 497,646 times per year that a criminal runs away from a citizen displaying a firearm – as compared to the average 9,571 firearm murders that occur per year. That calculates out to approximately 51 crimes prevented by the presence of a firearm for every 1 firearm murder that occurs.
These statistics clearly inform us that MORE guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens is the answer to this problem – not the CORE of the problem as Mayor Bloomberg would have us believe.
Mayor Bloomberg and The Brady Campaign are arguably complicit in the creation of the environment that allowed the Aurora and other Mass Shootings to occur. Yet, because we maintain an ill-informed populace thanks to the media and the Anti-Gun Lobby, they are able to actually forward their agenda to disarm America as a direct result of encouraging creating the situation in the first place.
The Paradox of Citizen Crime Prevention
This article by the outstanding New American Magazine: “Two Aurora Shootings: One Widely Known; the Other Ignored” provided some of the material for this article but also does an excellent job of demonstrating the paradox of our time: that tragedy gets highlighted and fear results while tragedy averted is ignored due to the fact that nothing very interesting or unusual happened. Most of Aurora and everyone outside of Aurora has no idea that something very similar was prevented just months ago in the same town.
How often are crimes prevented because of responsible, armed citizens? How many Mass Killings have been averted because someone was ready, willing and able to do something about it? How many lives are saved regularly because of Self-Reliant Americans who choose to be capable of defending themselves?
The problem is, we cannot and do not know. This fact is what enables people and groups like Mayor Bloomberg, the Brady Campaign and “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” to prey on America, to demonize guns and to slowly but surely dis-arm us.
Consider this video: Two thugs in Florida try to rob an Internet cafe wielding a firearm. An older gentlemen, clearly well-trained, stands up and proceeds to apply fire on the criminals. Like typical criminal cowards – they run out of the store as fast as they can. Nobody but the criminals were injured.
Click here to view the embedded video.
This, and the previously mentioned story about Aurora, went relatively unnoticed. These incidents certainly did not get 3 days of non-stop airplay, no Presidential Address occurred, no laws were demanded to be changed. As it should be. These men simply did what good, honest, self-reliant, law-abiding citizens should do – they protected the innocent, they were well prepared ahead of time to deal with a situation when it presented itself.
Crime and Punishment
It is somewhat astounding that many of the same people who are devastated by the idea of something like the Aurora shootings occurring, are also devastated by the idea of harsh and severe punishment for the perpetrators of such evil acts.
They demonize the inanimate object abused to perform the act and then humanize the evil which actually did the performing.
In 2006, there were 10,225 firearm murders. Between 2006 and 2010, firearm murders averaged 9,571 per year. Here are the Death Sentences in the U.S. during that time:
Cumulatively, there are less death sentences in the United States in the last 21 years than the average number of firearm homicides per year.
Currently, the recommended sentencing for Murder is anywhere from 10-25 years. In one study of 34 murder sentences, the average sentence was 16.6 years, 13.3 after “good time” with the maximum sentence issued being 32 years, 25.8 for “good time”.
If we truly want to crack down on the nearly 10,000 firearm murders per year – we might want to instead consider actually severely and harshly punishing the perpetrators of those crimes.
The Attack is Just Beginning
Cinemark already has a “No Gun” Policy in all their theaters.
Aurora already has a total ban on concealed carry of handguns, even though Colorado is a shall-issue conceal carry state.
Colorado has laws against discharging a firearm in city limits.
The United States already has laws against killing people.
Each one of these rules, policies and laws were brazenly ignored by the Aurora Shooter. So what laws could they possibly introduce at this point that might further dissuade evil, violent criminals from killing people?
Remember the roughly 500,000 crimes that are prevented each year by armed citizens? Do we want to ensure that those people are unable to defend themselves and prevent a crime from being forced on them?
What the Anti-Gun Lobby wants is for only Police and Government to be able to carry a firearm.
That didn’t work too well for other countries – like England and Jamaica:
In fact, it’s never worked. The only Gun Laws that have resulted in a DECREASE in gun crime are ones that allow citizens to be armed.
Nonetheless, the Anti-Gun Lobby has already started a new assault against our 2nd Amendment Rights and it will likely continue. Their Lobby, their entire platform relies on emotion. They manipulate emotion to convince people that it’s the legality of guns that results in gun crime. This is the only way they get people to overlook and ignore the actual facts.
Given that law-abiding citizens by definition, obey the laws, and criminals by definition, break the laws: If you disarm law-abiding citizens, only the criminals will have guns. That really doesn’t seem like a very good solution.
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