An open letter to the local gun control crowd
December 29, 2012 17 Comments
The wake of the tragic Newtown massacre has been an interesting time.
Here in Greensboro, the local daily paper decided to drumbeat calls for more gun control using sequential, strategically-placed front page stories. And some of our prominent, hyperpolitical, ultraliberal local congregations– the Congregational Church of Christ, First Presbyterian Church and Temple Emanuel– got together in remembrance and capitalized on the massacre. And local print media were dutifully on hand to transmit calls for more gun control.
It was all soooo predictable. Was it not Rahm Emanuel who exclaimed that a crisis should never be wasted?
I came across a few interesting statistics recently.
The number of persons killed in the United States during 2007 by a person using some type of gun was 12,632 according to Wikipedia.
And according to the CDC, 10,228 persons were killed because of “alcohol-impaired driving crashes” during 2010.
Conclusion #1: The number of deaths due to gun-related homicide is roughly on the same order of magnitude as the number of deaths associated with drunk driving in the United States.
Here is one more interesting factoid. The state of North Carolina alone accounted for 22,370 abortions during 2011.
Conclusion #2: The number of human lives taken in North Carolina alone– in one individual state– due to abortion nearly doubles the number of lives taken nationwide due to gun-related homicide.
But here is the really interesting part.
I do not recall ever having seen the News and Record drumbeat on its front page the need to make alcohol sales illegal because of the huge number of tragic drunk driving deaths we have nationwide. I have never seen the paper use its front page to drumbeat the horrendous number of abortions in our state, and to transmit repeated calls for its abolition.
Of course, media bias sometimes consists of decisions to highlight certain stories, and ignore others.
Similarly, I do not recall ever having seen our ultraliberal, hyperpolitical local congregations stage memorial services for lives taken due to drunk driving and abortion, and couple these services with political calls to make alcohol and abortion illegal.
It seems that our local paper, and our local liberal congregations, are much more tolerant of deaths due to drunk driving and abortion than they are of deaths by homicide associated with use of guns.
Some killings, you see, are much worse than others according to this worldview.
A few years ago, a significant change took place in our local criminal justice system. We instituted in GuilfordCounty a Mental Health Court. This was a new court designed to take the mentally ill charged with crimes, and divert them away from serving prison time. Instead, they would ostensibly be funnelled into treatment for their mental illness. This, of course, undermines a societal need to hold criminals fully accountable for their behavior, and achieve justice. Newtown and other comparable massacres expose the dangers associated with some mentally ill individuals in our communities; and the difficulties assuring that they will be treated consistently. But the liberal party line is that, when the mentally ill commit lesser crimes, they should not be held fully accountable.
Second Amendment rights are not, by any means, my biggest political priority. I did not grow up in a culture in which law-abiding citizens commonly owned guns. It was mostly the criminals who had the guns in New York City.
But I have a proposal for our friends at the News and Record and at our local ultraliberal, hyperpolitical congregations.
If you want to ban use of certain types of guns, pass a constitutional amendment repealing the second amendment. Go ahead. Try it.
Gun ownership, after all, is a constitutional right. One of the deepest ironies is that those pushing gun control tend to think abortion is a constitutional right– when it really is not. But they apparently want to use legislation to take guns away from citizens even though owning them is a basic civil right in the United States.
Do they really want to use unconstitutional means to achieve their objectives? It appears to be so.
National Review Online Friday highlighted a passage written nearly two centuries ago by then-Chief Justice Joseph Story, not long after the drafting of the Bill of Rights. Story was nominated to the Supreme Court by James Madison himself:
The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers…The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
During the 2008 presidential election season, there was an active effort to make it appear that Senator Barack Obama would not want to threaten gun rights. Of course, that was just another false representation to get him elected. Those who want more gun control tend to share Obama’s overall worldview.
But during the age of Obama, it is quite ironic that increasing numbers of citizens—not decreasing numbers–feel the need to buy and own guns.
Dr. Joe Guarino is a Guardian columnist.
Nugent rips Piers Morgan a new one
http://dailycaller.com/2012/12/27/flashback-ted-nugent-to-piers-morgan-on-gun-control-kiss-my-ass-video/
We as Americans live in a violent culture. There are plenty of other issues in America that kill more than guns, DWI for one. The issue is not the gun that killed the innocent children in Conn but the person who killed the children. The subject/killer and his mom lived in fantasy land and she did not see her son was a mental case and get him help he needed.
We have plenty of laws on the books and I am for new prisons/jails. If we punish the people that need it and stop with probation and parole, maybe then criminals will take the law serious.
Keynote:
Probation does not work people, I seem to arrest a ton of people on probation.
#2 The mainstream media doesn’t really want to talk about the fact that disarming the population has resulted in some of the most horrific massacres in human history. The following is from the Warrior Times…
1911 – Turkey disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1915 – 1917 they murdered 1.5 million Armenians.
1929 – Russia disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1929 – 1953 they murdered 20 million Russians.
1935 – China disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1948 – 1952 they murdered 20 million Chinese.
1938 – Germany disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1939 – 1945 they murdered 16 million Jews.
1956 – Cambodia disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1975 – 1977 they murdered 1 million Educated people.
1964 – Guatamala disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1964 – 1981 they murdered 100,000 Mayan Indians.
1970 – Uganda disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1971 – 1979 they murdered 300,000 Christians.
Here is the article where I got that information in my post above. Pretty interesting article.
article.http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/25-facts-that-the-mainstream-media-doesnt-really-want-to-talk-about-right-now
PRAY for America!!
Here are some things to think about:
Not all abortions are murder (think about abortions done before viability). So, the comparison is weak. Moreover, not all gun deaths are homicides. Suicide and accident account for roughly another 12,000 deaths per year. Those deaths have a far greater economic and social impact on our society than the deaths of the unborn. Thus the cost we all have to bear for them is actually higher. You may dislike that, but it is unarguably true.
Expand the damage guns inflict to non-lethal injury and you’re looking at thousands more cases per year and more than 100 billion in costs. Of course not all of those could be prevented by, let’s say “reasonably restricting access to” guns. But a lot of them could, and that is worth doing. Just as we have done with alcohol. We “reasonably restrict access” to it, making it costly to kill as a result of drinking, and voila, the damage it does to society goes down. It’s not magic. It’s sound policy, And the same could happen with guns if gun lovers weren’t, ironically, some of the most fear-addled people in our midst.
The question I have for you is: is your antiquated and overblown fear a tyrannical power worth the cost in injury and death? There have been more deaths by guns here than there have been military deaths in all American wars since day one. And we have not once overthrown a single tyrant thanks to the second amendment. Is 12,000 deaths a year worth it to you to be prepared to defeat a tyrant or invasion with your handgun? (A laughable scenario, of course. Chances are no second amendment defense would hold up against any well trained army or police force.)
So, what is the problem with trying to make our world safer? Are you really ready to give up just because some greater danger or problem exists?
Thanks, Tom. There was a certain logic and reason behind the Founders’ handiwork– the constitution– for which current generations do not have nearly enough appreciation, and about which they do not have nearly enough knowledge.
Sal, probation in North Carolina has been a big problem. Governor Perdue was supposed to have fixed it– but I infer from your comments that the problem has not been fixed. Mental illness is always going to be a big challenge from the standpoint of finding the right balance between protecting society and maintaining freedom for the mentally ill. Our society most recently has erred in the direction of freedom for that subgroup of the mentally ill who pose a threat.
Paul, what you are stating is not just wrong-headed. It is downright odious.
First, the statistic I quoted about deaths due to gun-related homicide specifically excludes suicides.
Second, you have made a judgment that unborn human life possesses less worth and significance and dignity and value than born human life. That is morally and ethically repugnant. In fact, all human life possesses INTRINSIC worth and dignity and significance. The “economic and social impact” you claim some human lives have (but not all) has absolutely nothing to do with their intrinsic worth and dignity and significance.
Third, perhaps the Second Amendment has a lot to do with why we have not had to overthrow a tyrant in this nation. Of course, this is a completely untestable hypothesis, but it cannot be ruled out, either.
Of course, we are getting dangerously close to tyranny with Obama, but that is another matter.
Fourth, fear of tyrannical power is not the only reason people exercise their civil right to own guns.
Fifth, I think if you want to prevent injury and death by taking away guns, in order to be consistent you also need to take away automobiles and alcohol and abortion, none of which are explicitly guaranteed by the constitution as fundamental rights.
Sixth, if you want to take away the constitutional right to gun ownership, the constitution affords a remedy to you. It is called the constitutional amendment process. Of course, that is a very difficult, laborious process to bring to completion; but that is what is substantively needed for you to achieve your objective the right way. The problem is that your side does not want to do it via proper constitutional channels– because it is too hard, and too unlikely to succeed.
To Paul, Exactly what Joe said!
If anyone thinks that gun control is a good idea, they live in a fantasy world! The bad guys will always have guns.
Go to the CO movie killings, the sign at the door says no guns, so the law abiding folks with Concealed Carry permits, left their guns in the car. The killer sure brought his in! Perhaps if the folks with concealed carry permits had been permitted to bring their guns into the movies, someone could have minimized the killings!
Jack
Why does the damaged liberal mind want ONLY criminals to have guns? Laws are for the LAW ABIDING among us.
The liberal hysteria over any of these senseless tragedies might be taken a bit more seriously if they showed even a tiny bit of outrage over the fact that more people are killed with guns EVERY MONTH than died in Newtown!
I assume the reason is that it is not politically correct to anguish one’s self over gun deaths in our “killing centers,” where criminals run free and murder at will. Why not talk about “confiscating” their guns, rather than the guns of law abiding citizens who NEVER commit gun crimes!
Yes, Tony. It seems that Obama could concentrate his efforts in the city of Chicago, from which he came, where Rahm is mayor, where I understand gun-related homicides are fairly common events…
500 homicides in Chicago this year!
Crickets…
“So, what is the problem with trying to make our world safer?”
Here is some information for YOU to think about, Paul.
There is no logical, fact-based evidence that suggests restrictions on the ownership and use of any firearm will help prevent events like Columbine, the Aurora theater violence, the Newtown slaughter, and the never-ending culture of homicidal urban environments across the nation. There is plenty of evidence that suggests that restrictions on firearms, such as “gun free zones”, are a significant part of the problem.
In addition, “reasonably restrict access” always turns out to be draconian measures, insisted upon by anti-gun hardheads in a thinly veiled attempt to institute one of their personal worldview agenda items. It’s the same basis under which the “Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act” operates, and it is by no means analogous with your alcohol comparison. We all know how Prohibition worked out.
The wiser and more experienced among us know how any measure designed to “reasonably restrict access” works out in it’s numerous odious results. It’s too bad others can’t figure that out by themselves.
Joe.
What Ted Nugent told that worm Piers Morgan
QED
Eric Holder in 1995 on CSPAN
“We just have to be repetitive about this. It’s not enough to have a catchy ad on a Monday and then only do it every Monday. We have to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”
Another quote from the same video
“What we need to do is change the way people think about guns, especially young people”
Excellent article, Dr. Guarino.
We, as a culture share collective grief when an act of particularly horrendous and tragic violence occurs. That’s why a school shooting where 20 children are murdered execution style by a mad man gets more press than the daily DUI-caused death. It’s really not that complicated but I see what you’re doing here. That being said I’m not really sure what your point is, as driving drunk is already illegal.
Bringing abortion into this is ludicrous. Abortion is legal and the majority of people in this country want it to remain as such. T
Scott, many of us think that abortion and DUI-caused death represent “horrendous and tragic violence.” We should not fall into the rhetorical trap that suggests a certain number of killings happening simultaneously is somehow more tragic or horrendous than an equal number that are perpetrated individually.
Driving drunk is illegal– as is shooting a gun in a manner that endangers innocent human life. The alcohol and the guns themselves are not illegal.