Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), when asked if she could imagine ANY law that would have prevented the Las Vegas massacre, sighed, “I don’t know. I would have to take a good look at that and really study it. I’m not sure there is any set of laws on the books that could have prevented it.” BINGO! One of America’s most dedicated gun-grabbers finally said it: “Gun-control DOESN’T work!
She said it, but of course she doesn’t GET it because as a creature of the Left, she believes that more government is the answer to everything. Senator Feinstein, what are the three biggest lies in the world? 1.) ” The check’s in the mail.” 2.) “I promise I’ll respect you in the morning.” And 3.) “Hi! We’re from the government and we’re here to help!”
Gun owners and conservatives understand that not only do gun control and many government programs not work, but they often have unintended bad consequences as well. The Left wants “universal background checks”, i.e., EVERY gun sale, even between neighbors, must be run through the FBI to see if the buyer is a felon. No check is made to see if the seller is a felon. Felons aren’t allowed to possess guns in most states, and the firearm he’s selling may be stolen (which is where most felons get their guns), but the FBI only checks the buyer.
If the buyer’s name is Cedric Johnston, the FBI checks it BY NAME ONLY, not by Social Security Number, birthdate, race, or any other ID method! If the name Sedric Jonson comes back as a felon, then the sale to Cedric Johnston will often be denied. It might get cleared up in a few weeks, but 100’s of 1,000’s of false hits delay gun transfers to non-felon gun buyers each year. See, The War on Guns, by John Lott (Regnery Pub. 2016). Notice that the Vegas Killer passed EVERY ONE of the background checks for his 40-plus guns. Plus, since the BATF has ruled that bumpstocks are NOT a firearm or part of one, no background check to buy one is required. Had it been, the Killer would have passed those checks too.
The unintended consequence is that a woman needing a gun to protect her from a violent Ex can be denied based on a name mistake, resulting in her death when the Ex attacks during the appeal period. The same often happens in states with waiting periods to buy guns. Waiting periods of a few days to two weeks would not have stopped the Vegas Killer either.
The next gun-grabber fallacy/fantasy is that gun registration would help. If Nevada knew that the Killer had bought these guns, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. He was law-abiding until he killed 59 and wounded 500. There was no legal reason for the police to be on alert or take his guns.
Every psychiatrist will tell you that there is no way to predict any apparently normal human’s propensity for violence. We all have our normal breaking point, such as a mother defending her child’s life, but to say, “THIS particular guy will go nuts one day and kill.”, is impossible. Remember that in the USSR, “mental illness”, defined by the State as simply disagreeing with the Soviet system, was a major reason to throw people in the Gulag. Gun-grabbers have suggested that even those on anti-depressants should be barred from owning guns!
Registration can only solve a crime after the fact. The theory is that if the cops know who have guns, then when a crime is committed, they just trace the serial numbers and go pick up the suspect at his house. But when the oldest registration law in the US, New York City’s Sullivan Law was studied, it revealed that from 1910 to 1970, NOT ONE crime had been solved by tracing the serial numbers on a gun!
“We just need to know where all the guns are.” says the State. Folks, since the Pesistratid tyranny in Athens in 518 BC to today, the result of weapon registration has ALWAYS resulted in confiscation by the government! In the 20th century over 100 million people were massacred by their OWN governments AFTER registration and confiscation of their guns (more than by ALL the wars of the 20th century). This happened in Turkey to the Armenians, Jews in the Third Reich, the citizens of the Soviet Union, Nationalist and Red China, Cambodia, Sudan, Rwanda, and several others.
When registered guns were confiscated in Great Britain in 1997, gun crime went UP every year for 8 years! The London Daily Mail reported last week that after a downward trend the last several years, gun crime in Britain is up 48% so far this year. Criminals will ALWAYS get guns, because they steal them and don’t register them. Stolen guns can’t be traced, nor does registration help when serial numbers are filed off or numbered parts are switched out. Moreover, to trace a gun, it must be left at the scene to be found by cops. That doesn’t happen much.
Ballistic fingerprinting (putting serial numbers on cartridges or registering fired bullets and cases from guns pre-sale) was the rage about 15 years ago. It can be defeated by a simple barrel change. Canada, California, and Maryland all tried it. NOT ONE case was solved! Maryland spent $5 million in 5 years, Canada spent $2 billion (after telling voters it would “only” cost $4O million) on it as part of a national registration scheme, which was scrapped after 10 years of no crimes solved. Again, Ballistic fingerprints are of no help to preventing massacres. When the killer kills himself with his guns around him, there’s no need to track him.
Useless as well are “one gun a month” laws. I have a friend with a less-than-average income, yet since 1979 he has owned 39 guns. He now has 10, which is about as many as he ever owned at one time. He shot them then traded, sold, or gave the others away. He probably has about 1,500 to 2,000 rounds of ammo for his various guns. He is an average gun owner. If he’d kept all those guns acquired over 38 years and had 5 or 6,000 rounds, he’d still be an average gun owner. He doesn’t have an “arsenal” (which is a misnomer, an arsenal is a factory where weapons are made, an armory is where weapons are stored) It’s a hobby. Gun owners collect guns like women collect shoes. If cars were as cheap as guns, most guys would have 5 to 20 cars at any given time.
The Killer’s weapons were all legal. We don’t know yet if he had any machine guns. Since 1934 machine guns and all parts to make them have had to be registered, the buyer must pass rigorous background checks, pay a transfer tax, and be accountable for the gun to police or BATF at any moment. Depending on who you ask, between 1 and 3 legal machine gun owners (out of over a million-and-a-half) have committed crimes with one. That’s all! The same rules apply for silencers. But if you’re a criminal, with the right machine tools you can make a working copy of a WWII British STEN submachine gun from scratch in 45 minutes! If you’re a trained gunsmith with the substitute parts already made, you can convert a semi-auto to fully automatic in about 2 hours!
In 1986, I asked a BATF middle-management type why they didn’t hold an amnesty so people could register their illegal machine guns. He replied that if they did, “then every employee of BATF would do nothing but register homemade and thus far-hidden factory-made machine guns until 2000”! That 1934 law really works well, doesn’t it? By the way, since 1986 it’s been illegal to sell any machine gun made since then to anyone but law enforcement or the military. The Vegas Killer was a millionaire, He could have bought legal machine guns or illegally made/converted machine guns, or made them himself.
There are AT LEAST 350 million guns in this country. Americans own 48% of the privately possessed firearms in the world. You can’t confiscate them all (or even most of them), they can be home made, or smuggled in, just like illegal drugs.
If you could magically make all guns disappear, then honest citizens would be at the mercy of bigger, stronger criminals, and those who run in packs. Instead, a 110- pound woman’s snub-nosed .38 special revolver makes her safe from a 250-pound rapist. Even the gun-grabbers’ own studies show that there are at least 2-3 times more legal defensive gun uses per year than all deaths by firearm. The actual number is nearer to a 100-times more.
Guns are a positive good in society. No anti-gun law has ever prevented a crime. The problem is the misuse of guns, and that is a matter of the human mind, heart and value systems. We need God and morals, folks, not more gun laws. Lev. 19:18
photo credit: Excerpted from: ciel_photos Sound the Alarm for Climate Action via photopin (license)
