President Obama is beginning his final year in office pushing for more gun control. It’s a battle the President has fought again and again, and one that Congress has rejected each time.
The President wants to make it harder for law-abiding Americans to buy and own guns. He wants to create a federal registry for gun ownership even though his Vice President admitted the federal government cannot effectively manage such a database. And he wants to ban the sale of firearms that hundreds of thousands of Americans already own.
But, in reality, all these executive actions would do is make it easier for criminals and the mentally ill to kill helpless, innocent Americans.
Prohibitions on the sale of new semi-automatic firearms are not going to prevent criminals from illegally obtaining guns that have already flooded the market. Expanding background checks isn’t going to stop radical Islamic terrorism. And, as we’ve seen too many times across this country, strengthening gun laws in public spaces only leaves good people vulnerable and unarmed.
All but one mass public shooting in this country in the past 65 years has taken place in areas where people are not legally allowed to carry guns. Whether it is a school, a shopping mall, or a city run by anti-gun politicians, gun free zones only help attract violent, crazy people to unarmed victims.
The President will sit down with CNN for a town hall this week, where he will repeat his case for more gun control and threaten to use executive action wherever he can. As your representative, please know that I will aggressively oppose the President as he seeks to limit the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American people.
All but one mass public shooting in this country in the past 65 years has taken place in areas where people are not legally allowed to carry guns
ReplyDeletePatently untrue. I can think of two off the top of my head recently in which legally armed, licensed citizens decided not to intervene, and a third that took place in a public venue with no restrictions.
Because closing gun show purchase loop holes and background checks will make it easier to kill helpless Americans. Really?
ReplyDeleteJonathan Dresner: Citations needed, because I and gun owners in general don't know of them. The only case I know of that wasn't in a gun free zone was the shooting of the Arizona congresswoman in a parking lot, which would have been stopped at about the same time by an armed citizen, the shooter was being wrestled to the ground as he showed up.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous @8:14: Because Obama's reported actions will only make it more difficult for the good guys to arm themselves. His administration's failure to prosecute crimes like felons trying to buy guns but being stopped by the NICS background check system, and Fast and Furious, show he's not in the least interested in stopped the bad guys from getting guns, in the latter they were explicitly allowed to buy them to generate nasty statistics to try to harm us.
3:12 am
ReplyDeleteClosing the gun show/online loophole doesn't make it harder for law abiding citizens to arm themselves. It applies the same background check laws to all gun sales thus keeping guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.
Will this prevent a mass shooting? I highly doubt it. Will it start to stem the flow of guns to felons and gangs? Perhaps... Is this the beginning of the end of private gun ownership? Of course not.
The Oregon community college shooting and the San Bernardino shooting: both times licensed firearm owners were in the vicinity with their weapons and chose not to engage.
ReplyDeleteAnd in the Arizona case, the armed citizen almost shot an innocent bystander who had confiscated the shooter's weapon.
Not much of a track record.
Jonathan Dresner: You're moving the goalposts, from "happened in a gun free zone", which as government buildings with explicit no gun polices they were, to claims that someone outside of them or violating the law by carrying inside them might have chosen to intervene, but didn't. In both places, being caught violating the law would have also resulted in an individual being expelled from the college or losing his job, and in the context of college classes or a normal job discovery would be likely.
ReplyDeleteAnd your second claim needs a specific citation, I've not heard to date any such claim about San Bernardino, which has fairly restrictive rules on issuing concealed carry licenses, with we can assume none at all in cities of any size. As for the Oregon shooting, one guy made contradictory claims in separate interviews that he was prevented from intervening and that he decided not to. Me, I don't believe a word he says, he's obviously not credible, nor to my knowledge did he even show he was licensed.
Try again.
3:12 AM: Closing the gun show/online loophole doesn't make it harder for law abiding citizens to arm themselves.
ReplyDeleteGiven that the specific laws claiming to address this "loophole" would also shut down gun shows entirely, that counts as "mak[ing] it harder for law abiding citizens to arm themselves."
It applies the same background check laws to all gun sales thus keeping guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.
In that case, you're talking about a law to requiring government permission for all gun transfers, since people at gun shows already operate under the laws that require NICS checks for those "in the business" or between people from different states.
And since the new transfer laws in Colorado, Washington state, and Oregon, bought with Bloomberb's money, ban informal transfers as is common in target shooting and informal instruction, hunting in groups, or in emergencies like floods (real example from Colorado), they are direct attacks on US gun culture, trying to curtail teaching novices to shoot. Which I count as "making it hard for law abiding citizens to arm themselves" responsibly. Why are you against gun safety?
Will this prevent a mass shooting? I highly doubt it.
They why, no matter what the current issue of the day is, do gun grabbers always recommend the same things that don't, as you acknowledge, actually address the issue?
Will it start to stem the flow of guns to felons and gangs? Perhaps...
Yeah, the history of alcohol and drug prohibition in the US really shows us "perhaps" it will help. As does a century and a half of US gun control efforts. And to suggest this would seriously hinder jihadists is ludicrous. You do remember that the latest mass shooting was not by felons or gangs, right?
Is this the beginning of the end of private gun ownership? Of course not.
But when the president of the US and the leading candidate from his party to replace him both publicly and repeatedly praise Australia's 1996 and 2003 gun confiscations, I think we're entitled to assume that's what they desire, and what they're trying to incrementally achieve with whatever they're currently proposing, especially since, as I noted above, no matter what the current issue, they propose doing the the same things. We know the gun controllers are not operating in good faith, that's why I call them gun grabbers.
Jonathan Dresner:
ReplyDeleteForgot to address your last point:
And in the Arizona case, the armed citizen almost shot an innocent bystander who had confiscated the shooter's weapon.
Not according to him; he of course considered that actor, no longer a bystander, as a target, but looking at the totality of the situation he made the right judgement. In fact, given that we're not being bombarded by constant repetitions of one or more citizens making the wrong judgement and accidentally shooting an innocent, I think we can safely say we do as or better than cops, who make this mistake all the time.
(Most likely because they have to make hard shoot-don't shoot decisions many more times than we have to; we allow them to be fallible human beings, so why don't you allow the possibility for armed citizens? The way you put it, we "almost shoot" dozens of people every time we walk outside carrying concealed.)
Not much of a track record.
An excellent track record, and certain to stay that way as long as you limit yourself to vague generalities and misstatements of fact that are contradicted by decades of experience of millions of responsible citizens carrying concealed.
The modern wave of concealed carry started with Florida in 1986, and the number with license has got to exceed 10 million today, plus anyone who wants to in the Constitutional carry states of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Maine, Vermont and Wyoming. Note that Kansas is right next to us and pretty well populated, surely if this was a problem we'd be hearing about it? "Blood in the streets of Dodge City!!!" and all that?