You have to give it to USA Today. In their editorial stance, the McPaper may be just one more predictably anti-gun mainstream media rag, but at least they devote some column inches to prominent voices on the other side. Yesterday it was our own maximum leader pointing out the uselessness and futility of disarming law abiding citizens for the ostensible purpose of making it harder for terrorists to get weapons. Today, the NRA ILA’s Chris Cox refutes the laughable idea that the NRA is somehow to blame (we all know the culprit is really climate change, right?) and calls out the disarmer-in-chief for his shameless opportunism in exploiting a terrorist attack for the purposes of further restricting Americans’ Second Amendment freedoms. As Cox concludes . . .
The NRA is calling on the president to stop exploiting tragedies to push his failed political agenda. It’s shameful. Given the reality that he’s unlikely to listen, however, we will continue to stand and fight for law-abiding gun owners who are both disgusted and heartbroken by these heinous acts — whether committed by madmen, gang members or terrorists. The NRA will neither accept the blame for the acts of murderers, nor apologize for fighting for our right to defend ourselves against them.
Read the whole thing here.
Our friends at the NRA followed up with this helpful fact sheet on the smashing success that strict gun control laws have been:
Gun control supporters have repeatedly referred to California’s gun laws as the “model for the nation.” In their state scorecards, they always give California the highest grade. These laws did nothing to protect the people in San Bernadino. Since 1975, when California began enacting its laundry list of gun control provisions, the state’s annual murder rates have averaged 21 percent higher than the national rate.
• Gun control supporters repeatedly refer to California’s gun control laws as the “model for the nation.”
• Gun control groups always give California the highest grade when it comes to state gun laws.
• California prohibits the sale of semi-automatic firearms that gun control supporters call “assault weapons,” which are commonly owned in most other states.
• California requires a permit to purchase any firearm.
• California requires that all firearm sales are registered
• California requires that all firearm sales are subject to a background check.
• Less than one percent (0.154 %, to be exact) of California’s population is licensed to carry.
• France has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, and yet those laws did nothing to stop the terrorist attacks last month.
• France requires a license to purchase any firearm.
• France requires special permits to own pump-action rifles and shotguns, semi-automatic rifles that hold more than three rounds of ammunition, and any other firearms capable of holding more than 11 rounds.
Shooters who passed background checks:
• Syed Rizwan Farook (San Bernardino shooting)
• Christopher Harper-Mercer (Umpqua Community College shooting)
• Vester Flanagan (Roanoke, VA news crew shooting)
• John Russell Houser (Lafayette theater shooting)
• Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez (Chattanooga National Guard shooting)
• Dylann Roof (Charleston church shooting),
• Elliot Rodger (Santa Barbara campus shooting),
• Aaron Alexis (DC Navy Yard),
• Wade Michael Page (Sikh Temple),
• James Holmes (Aurora theater),
• Jared Loughner (Tucson),
• Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood 2009)
• A new (June 2015) study by the Congressional Research Service stated that mass shootings accounted for a microscopic 0.004 percent of all deaths, about 0.66 percent of all murder victims, and less than one fiftieth the number of non-firearm murder victims in the United States over the 15-year period 1999-2013.
• The number of guns in the country has doubled over the last 2 decades, during that same time: the murder rate in this country is at an all-time low and the violent crime rate is at a 43 year low.
The following efforts would NOT have stopped recent mass shootings:
• Background checks
• Waiting periods
• Online sales restrictions
• Closing the so-called “gun show loophole”