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Opinion

Don’t Be Fooled: Here’s What Gun Grabbers Really Want

To begin, I have a definite stance on the Second Amendment, and it’s this: Don’t weaken it in any way. Far too many people in this country do not, or cannot, understand the reason for the Second Amendment (2A). At the time when the British Crown was the law in the colonies, its representatives did pretty much whatever they wanted to, and in, the colonies. Aside from the taxation, without proper representation, there were other irksome things that the colonists were forced to endure. One of the most irritating was the fact that British soldiers could be housed (they called it quartered) in private homes and the owners of those homes had no say-so in the matter.

Another item that might have contributed to the 2A was the fact that the colonists were virtual slaves to the Crown. They had no freedom to express their beliefs, no way to get redress from the Crown and with no voice in the matter they had to yield the majority of whatever goods or services to the Crown. Times were tough…but the Founding Fathers were just as tough. “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” See? It wasn’t JUST the “stamps” or the “Tea Tax” …it was a lot of things that eventually grew to the point where the colonists decided enough was too much.

2A is short and to the point. There are people that will tell you that you don’t need, and shouldn’t have, certain kinds of firearms. They will tell you all sorts of dumb reasons for you not to have them…but, in reality, they are blowing smoke up your you-know-where because they have an agenda that does not include an armed population. There are SO many people that are so eager to tell you that they’re not coming after your guns that they probably could fill a hundred stadiums. Whatever they tell you, it’s a lie. They ARE coming for your guns. Their reasons, their groups, their emotional dissertations are all for one reason…to disarm you.

The beginning of this month, April 2018, a suburb of Chicago, Deerfield Village, issued an ordinance that is in direct contradiction of 2A. It gave the gun-owners of that village 60 days to get rid of “assault” weapons and “high” capacity magazines. Empowering the police chief to confiscate them from those who refuse to give them up. Deerfield previously allowed ownership of such firearms and magazines but had strict storage requirements in place for them. Now, the firearms and magazines will be illegal to possess in one’s home, even if properly stored.

The ordinance warns that stock “assault weapons” are “customizable to become even more dangerous weapons of mass casualties and destruction.” Section 15-91 of the ordinance states, “The Chief of Police or his or her designee shall have the power to confiscate any assault weapon of any person charged with a violation under this article. The Chief of Police shall cause to be destroyed each Assault Weapon or Large Capacity Magazine surrendered or confiscated pursuant to this Article.”

The ordinance does not state whether police will regularly knock on doors and enter homes to check in closets and under beds for “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines. If you want to know what it covers, here’s the link to it: http://www.deerfield.il.us/DocumentCenter/View/1506

Now, here’s “Part 2” of “We’re Not Taking Your Guns” — From the Crime Prevention Research Center, March 27th, and the question is: Do states with stricter gun control laws have fewer gun deaths? No. Do they have fewer homicides and suicides? Definitely not. One of the classic comparisons is the homicide rates between the US and the UK. People will point out that the UK has strict gun control laws, few legally owned guns, and a low homicide rate. But the homicide rate in the UK has always been low, even before they had any gun control law. Indeed, when they banned handguns in January 1997 their homicide rates rose dramatically, up 45% over the next eight years and only came back down after a large increase in the number of police.

Lumping all the different gun control numbers into one number is pretty arbitrary. Not only is there the issue of what gun control laws to include, there is also the issue of how to weight them. Is a three-day waiting period on buying guns the same as background checks on private transfers or a ban on open carrying of guns? Just adding up the number of laws in a state assumes that all the laws have the same importance. There is also the question of how many different ways that one divides up an existing law. For example, the Boston University dataset separately counts whether there is a background required to get a concealed handgun permit and also separately whether a background check is needed to renew the permit, but not whether training is required to get a permit (or the varying lengths of training) or the large differences in permit fees.

Parting shot: 2A was written to protect the people from the government, that’s a fact. “Scary” when applied to a firearm is just plain BS, and you KNOW that.

Image: Excerpted from: John Trumbull – Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14619250

Larry Usoff

Larry Usoff, US Navy Retired. Articulate. Opinionated. Patriotic. Conservative. Cultured enough so that I can be taken almost anywhere. Makes no excuses for what I say or do, but takes responsibility for them. Duty. Honor. Country. E-mail me at: amafrog@att.net

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