Why Gun Bans Are Dumb
In the wake of Jovan Belcher’s murder-suicide a couple of weeks ago, Bob Costas saw it necessary to come on Sunday Night Football and lecture America on the importance of stricter gun laws. According to Costas, and the reporter he chose to quote ad nauseam, if guns had been banned, Belcher and his girlfriend would still be alive…because everyone knows that it is impossible to commit murder or suicide without guns.
The “logic” behind the push to ban guns in America is astounding. Every time a “gun crime” is committed, liberals take it as just another reason to ban guns – despite the fact that the vast majority of guns in America are never used in crimes, and the vast majority of gun owners in America are not criminals. There is overwhelming evidence showing that areas with fewer gun laws are safer than areas with more restrictive gun laws, yet the facts don’t matter to the Left.
Perhaps the best example of the absurdity of Leftist Logic on guns comes from England – a nation with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world. England’s gun laws haven’t reduced violent crime in that country, they have just made crime easier for the criminals. Knife-wielding criminals can commit robberies with abandon, knowing that the citizenry is disarmed and therefore is less likely to fight back. It was just a month or two ago that an axe-wielding motorcycle gang rode their bikes into a mall in England and robbed a jewelry store. They could be so bold because they knew none of the law-abiding citizens was carrying a gun.
And the situation in England only gets more bizarre. Gun crime is on the rise in England. Got that? Guns are banned in England, yet gun crimes are on the rise. It’s almost like the pro-gun-rights crowd was right when we said that gun laws would prove ineffective in preventing criminals from obtaining guns. After all, if laws were completely effective, there would be no crime. If banning something actually worked, we would probably still have prohibition, and the “War on Drugs” would have ended long ago. And in another story, there is now a push to ban long kitchen knives in England. So criminals are still getting guns, and the criminals who don’t have the resources to get guns are using knives. And if they ban knives, maybe more English criminals will take to using axes, until those, too, are banned. And then they will find something else to use – maybe cricket bats.
Maybe they should just ban crime in England, since banning things is working so well for them.
The data shows that gun ownership helps to deter crime. After the DC gun ban was overturned, the murder rate in that crime-ridden city began to fall. Meanwhile, murder rates in surrounding areas that had much less restrictive gun laws the entire time were consistently low.
And then there is the issue of the Second Amendment. Just like with the data on crime rates, liberals love to bend reality when arguing over the Second Amendment – but let’s face it: the Left is extremely selective on which parts of the Constitution they believe are constitutional.
According to the Left, the First Amendment, which says nothing about privacy, includes a “right to privacy” that secures their right to kill unborn children…but while the First Amendment explicitly states that “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion,” liberals think that means they can restrict references to God by private citizens in public schools, among other things.
And when the Second Amendment states “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” that obviously means that the military and police should be able to carry guns, not private citizens…and when private citizens are allowed to keep and bear arms, we should obviously pass various laws infringing upon that right based on configurations like magazine capacity, pistol grips, etc.
The Left loves to use Thomas Jefferson’s quote “wall of separation between Church and State” to fuel their misinterpretation of the First Amendment’s religion clauses, yet they forget about such quotes as “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” and “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty” and most especially, “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
So if we’re using quotes by Thomas Jefferson as the absolute means to define our Constitution, then it is quite clear not only that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms, but doing so should be almost be a duty for all freedom-loving people.