Gun Control Issues.
1. Restrictions on access.
Hard truth: whatever your stand on gun control, you are choosing who dies. So let us take the 2 extreme scenarios and consider.
If you are for allowing anyone to own and carry a gun (with the exception of the criminal and mentally ill), who are you willing to have die?
1. Children who die tragically from accessing unsecured firearms.
2. Those who die in road rage incidents, or bar brawls, or domestic altercations.
3. Suicides.
If you are for banning firearm possession except for police and military, who are you willing to have die?
4. The 80-year-old grandmother confronted by a home invader.
5. The walker in a dark street mugged at knifepoint.
6. The shopkeeper assaulted by a baseball bat or machete wielding robber.
What differentiates the groups?
1. The children can be saved by education of the gunowners.
2. Deaths in these cases can be reduced by education and counseling. And the perpetrator is seldom a career criminal, so the crime, if one (the death may be of the aggressor, self-defense), is not likely to be repeated.
3. Suicides, again reduced by education and counseling, are always possible in the absence of guns, sadly.
4-6. All of these cases are not mitigated by education or counseling of the victims or the perpetrators, for the attackers are usually career criminals and the crimes are not of passion or momentary anger, but planned. These victims are truly innocent.
It is clear that more lives can be saved by allowing people to arm themselves for defense and putting the anti-gun money into increased education and counseling, rather than restrictive laws.
Anti-gun advocates always say "if this law will save 1 life, it is worth it." Yet they never say "if this law costs 1 life, it should not be passed." Why are the lives that will inevitably be lost unworthy, to these advocates, of saving?
2. Restrictions on magazine capacity.
There is a move to restrict the capacity of magazines, often to 10 rounds or less. Why do gun control advocates casually dismiss someone who needed 11 bullets to survive an attack? Is that not a life worth saving to them?
Also, the greater the magazine capacity, the greater the chance of the gun jamming. The Colorado Theater shooter quit and surrendered when his 100-round drum jammed. If he'd used 10 or more 10-round clips, he may have killed many more.
3. Banning semi-automatics.
First, semi-automatics are not assault weapons; assault weapons are fully automatic weapons that are also capable of burst mode (usually 3 rounds) and single shots. They are not available to ordinary citizens. So anti-gun advocates saying they are military weapons shows just how ignorant they are.
Noted gun experts Kirsten Powers and William Kristol (that's a joke) once agreed on Fox News that no hunter needed a semi-automatic weapon. But the advantage of a semi-auto over pump, lever-action, and bolt-action rifles is the ability to keep the point of aim on the target, so if a second shot is necessary the shooter can bring down the animal before it runs off wounded. Semi-autos result in less animal suffering, which should endear them to animal activists.
If you are worrying about how fast a semi-auto can be fired, look up Bob Munden on Youtube and watch: a single-action revolver can be fired faster than any semi-auto. Should we not ban single-actions also, then?
1. Restrictions on access.
Hard truth: whatever your stand on gun control, you are choosing who dies. So let us take the 2 extreme scenarios and consider.
If you are for allowing anyone to own and carry a gun (with the exception of the criminal and mentally ill), who are you willing to have die?
1. Children who die tragically from accessing unsecured firearms.
2. Those who die in road rage incidents, or bar brawls, or domestic altercations.
3. Suicides.
If you are for banning firearm possession except for police and military, who are you willing to have die?
4. The 80-year-old grandmother confronted by a home invader.
5. The walker in a dark street mugged at knifepoint.
6. The shopkeeper assaulted by a baseball bat or machete wielding robber.
What differentiates the groups?
1. The children can be saved by education of the gunowners.
2. Deaths in these cases can be reduced by education and counseling. And the perpetrator is seldom a career criminal, so the crime, if one (the death may be of the aggressor, self-defense), is not likely to be repeated.
3. Suicides, again reduced by education and counseling, are always possible in the absence of guns, sadly.
4-6. All of these cases are not mitigated by education or counseling of the victims or the perpetrators, for the attackers are usually career criminals and the crimes are not of passion or momentary anger, but planned. These victims are truly innocent.
It is clear that more lives can be saved by allowing people to arm themselves for defense and putting the anti-gun money into increased education and counseling, rather than restrictive laws.
Anti-gun advocates always say "if this law will save 1 life, it is worth it." Yet they never say "if this law costs 1 life, it should not be passed." Why are the lives that will inevitably be lost unworthy, to these advocates, of saving?
2. Restrictions on magazine capacity.
There is a move to restrict the capacity of magazines, often to 10 rounds or less. Why do gun control advocates casually dismiss someone who needed 11 bullets to survive an attack? Is that not a life worth saving to them?
Also, the greater the magazine capacity, the greater the chance of the gun jamming. The Colorado Theater shooter quit and surrendered when his 100-round drum jammed. If he'd used 10 or more 10-round clips, he may have killed many more.
3. Banning semi-automatics.
First, semi-automatics are not assault weapons; assault weapons are fully automatic weapons that are also capable of burst mode (usually 3 rounds) and single shots. They are not available to ordinary citizens. So anti-gun advocates saying they are military weapons shows just how ignorant they are.
Noted gun experts Kirsten Powers and William Kristol (that's a joke) once agreed on Fox News that no hunter needed a semi-automatic weapon. But the advantage of a semi-auto over pump, lever-action, and bolt-action rifles is the ability to keep the point of aim on the target, so if a second shot is necessary the shooter can bring down the animal before it runs off wounded. Semi-autos result in less animal suffering, which should endear them to animal activists.
If you are worrying about how fast a semi-auto can be fired, look up Bob Munden on Youtube and watch: a single-action revolver can be fired faster than any semi-auto. Should we not ban single-actions also, then?