| They Just Don't Get It |
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| Written by Daniel White | |
| Wednesday, 21 May 2008 | |
I read an article today that was lamenting the fact that further gun control measures were unlikely to be pursued by legislators in the near future. Gun control advocates tend to lay the blame on the NRA, but the truth of the matter is that gun control is no longer supported by the majority of Americans. They had their chance. They got their Brady Bill waiting period, "assault weapons" ban, ccw bans, etc. As expected, those measures didn't work. Crime rates rose instead of falling and people got tired of not being able to defend themselves against criminals. So, now we see 48 states with CCW laws, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, Castle Doctrine (stand-your-ground legislation), Kartina Bills (to prevent government confiscations of firearms in an emergency), the "Assault Weapons Ban" has sunset, and overall restrictions are being loosened. This isn't all happening because the NRA "owns" thousands of legislators across the country, it is happening because The People want it to happen. The Hill ran a story today, Gun control backers not bold on 2009. The lead sentence is "Lawmakers who favor gun control are not optimistic about next year even though Democrats may be running Congress and the White House." The perception held for many years, and some still believe it today, that Republicans were the pro-gun party and the Democrats were the gun grabbers. This is no longer the case. The article notes "many freshman Democrats — as well as next year’s prospective freshman Democrats — favor gun rights." Ohio, in fact, has a pro-gun Democrat governor in Ted Strickland. Congress. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) grimly acknowledged the reality of the opposition to his anti-gun views, "the national climate has to change." He is acknowledging what many gun control pundits cannot fathom as they watch their proposals for gun rights restrictions defeated time and time again, the general public does not support their views. It seems to some to be a tired cliché, that guns don't cause crime, people do. And the general public is tired of being lied to. They no longer buy the logic that disarming a law-abiding citizen makes them safer. They're not willing to take the risk that a robber will be satisfied with just stealing their wife's purse. They're no longer believing that putting up a "no guns allowed" sign will deter a robber. And with the success of the concealed carry laws sweeping the country, they're no longer falling for the lie that arming citizens will lead to shootouts over fender benders and blood running in the streets. The truth can be a harsh light blotting out the gun control myths and false statistics spewed by the gun grabbers. Gun control doesn't work, and now that the public is beginning to see that, it is going to be harder and harder to convince them otherwise. "Common sense" gun laws just can't stand up against real common sense. When Nadler was asked what it would take to get public sentiment to shift to his point of view, he bitterly replied, "when the kid in your town gets killed". Except, that didn't work either. People bought the lie after Columbine; but, after years of watching unarmed victims at the mercy of merciless criminals, they began to wake up. The Virginia Tech shootings did not cause the same knee-jerk reaction that caused more gun control to be added to the more than 20,000 gun laws already on the books. One more law making the killings illegal won't stop those who have no regard for the law in the first place. It is affecting the presidential race as well. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are trying desperately to hide their anti-gun pasts and present themselves as supporters of the Second Amendment. They wouldn't be going to such lengths if the general public didn't disagree so vehemently with their true positions on gun control. Gun control laws only disarm people who intend to follow the law in the first place. Drug dealers and drug users still get drugs despite all the laws and law enforcement efforts to stop them, and criminals will still get guns despite any effort to try to prevent that as well. The difference now is that citizens at least have a fighting chance against them. People are fed up with having their gun rights and choices whether to be prepared against a violent attack taken away from them. Gun control doesn't work. Punish the criminals, not The People. |