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Over at the Washington Post, former Brady Campaign Prez and current Big Apple gun grabber Richard M. Aborn wants you to know why indifference to gun violence is a national crime. It’s an interesting, well-written screed. But let me save you the time: not pursuing gun control is a crime because people are dying. In fact, “More Americans were killed by gun violence last year than all American troops who have been killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. African-American youths are five times as likely to be killed as a result of gun violence than their white counterparts.” I’ve invited Bruce Krafft to deconstruct the misleading numbers, but let’s take this from another angle. At the risk of seeming insensitive, so what? In other words . . .

If gun violence is the price Americans must pay for their freedoms, it’s worth paying.

I know: it’s not my child lying in a pool of blood, dead from a gunshot wound. I haven’t hung with the families of the bereaved as they struggle to cope with what they undoubtedly perceive as a senseless act of ballistic brutality (no matter what the circumstances). It’s easy for me to say so what.

FWIW, I have been touched by gun violence. The Nazis murdered my father’s grandparents before I was born. My extended family extended to 1942 before it was obliterated. All this at the end of a gun. As were six million jews. People who were disarmed before they were destroyed.

The Jewish slogan “never again” doesn’t mean lobbying Congress for equal rights for minorities or encouraging inter-faith understanding, although that’s a part of it. It means never again will you murder us like sheep. Never again will we be sheep.

Guns don’t guarantee individual or collective survival, but they raise the odds of protecting one’s life considerably. Not to mention liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As America’s founding fathers knew well enough, personally held firearms serve a vital purpose in a free society: keeping the government in check.

Check? Check [via bbc.co.uk]:

Venezuela has brought a new gun law into effect which bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition.

Until now, anyone with a gun permit could buy arms from a private company.

Under the new law, only the army, police and certain groups like security companies will be able to buy arms from the state-owned weapons manufacturer and importer.

The ban is the latest attempt by the government to improve security and cut crime ahead of elections in October.

Translation: government troops will be the only people capable of intimidating voters by force of arms during Venezuela’s upcoming election cycle. The only people capable of resisting the government’s firearms-based coercion and democratic subversion will be . . . terrorists? Guerillas? No one.

It gets worse. Well it will get worse for Venezuelans. But from our perspective the most alarming aspect of this story is that western democracies see nothing wrong with civilian disarmament. Auntie Beeb’s [entirely suspicious] use of vox populi to cheerlead the gun ban—followed by stats on gun violence to support civilian disarmament—illustrates the West’s callous not to say suicidal indifference.

One member of the public in Caracas told the BBC: “They’re killing people every day. This law is important but they need to do more, they’re not doing enough now.” . . .

Campaign group The Venezuela Violence Observatory said last year that violence has risen steadily since Mr Chavez took office in 1999.

Several Latin American countries have murder rates far higher than the global average of 6.9 murders per 100,000 people.

According to a recent United Nations report, South America, Central America and the Caribbean have the highest rates of murder by firearms in the world.

It found that over 70% of all homicides in South America are as a results of guns – in Western Europe, the figure was closer to 25%.

Despite what the Beeb and Aborn would have you believe, not grabbing guns is not a crime in the United States or in Venezuela or anywhere else in the world. Not in any real sense of the word “criminal.” It’s grabbing guns that’s the crime. A crime against the natural and fundamental human right to self-defense. A crime against democracy and the rule of law.

You could even say that the Brady Campaign Prez’s attempt to reposition America’s remaining gun control advocates as “realists” who accept the Second Amendment, while working to undermine it, borders on treason. In any case, they’re lying. To themselves and to America. Slippery slope this . . .

The gun-control movement must convince Americans that much work remains: that illegal guns continue to destroy the lives of more American youths than many dare imagine; that our lack of national policy has a deadly impact internationally; and, perhaps most important, that the movement behind gun control does not seek to limit a law-abiding person’s ability to get a gun.

Bullshit. But here’s the funny thing: the truth about guns is so powerful that even those who seek to limit and thus eliminate our right to keep and bear arms can’t help but give voice to reality. For example, I agree deeply and completely with Aborn’s final sentence, just not in the way he intended it.

Continuing to be indifferent to the reality of gun violence in this country would be the most egregious offense.

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74 COMMENTS

  1. At the risk of sounding insensitive, what happened to your father’s grandparents is too far removed to claim “having been touched by gun violence.”

    My father’s grandfather got on a boat from Sicily in 1914 with a wife and 5 kids. For me to claim some heroic connection with that bravery would be a stretch.

    The fact is, Robert, you and your friends are partly responsible for the gun violence in the country. Yours is much worse than the crime of indifference. You actively support those policies which ensure maximum gun flow from the lawful to the lawless, and then have the arrogance to call that freedom.

    • The only ones responsible for violence are those who order it and those who carry it out. Whichever tool is used to commit that violence is irrelevant.

      Stop placing blame on an inanimate object and start assigning responsibility to whom it belongs… to criminals and their handlers.

    • RF and his pro-gun friends are slightly and indirectly responsible for the one to two million plus innocent people SAVED from criminal assault by supporting gun rights in America. Are we partially responsible for the deaths of gang bangers or shootings between thugs? I hope so. What about innocent people being shot by bad people? Who is responsible? Those responsible for innocents harmed are often people like you Mike who encourage people to be defenseless and trust in government and the mommy-state to rescue you.

    • “At the risk of sounding insensitive, what happened to your father’s grandparents is too far removed to claim “having been touched by gun violence.””
      ——
      Who the actual fvck died and left you the arbiter of what is and is not relevant?

      “For me to claim some heroic connection with that bravery would be a stretch.”
      ——
      Agreed. It has nothing to do with the amount of time that has passed, though.

      “The fact is, Robert, you and your friends are partly responsible for the gun violence in the country.”
      ——
      I am responsible for no one’s actions but my own. Individual responsibility: learn it, live it, love it.

      “You actively support those policies which ensure *that any law-abiding individual may purchase the commodities of his or her choice, and have the good sense to call that freedom.”
      ——
      Fixed.

    • “Have the arrogance to call that freedom” It is freedom, freedom from being oppressed and murdered by an armed government with no way to defend yourself, family, or neighbors. You wan’t a glimpse of what happens when a government turns on an unarmed population these days look no further than Syria…. and that’s going great for those civilians…

    • How arrogant of you to decide what is and isn’t “too far removed.” Honestly, who do you think you are?

      Also, this is what you anti-gun people don’t understand. Tragic and horrifying things such as murder, rape, and in this case gun violence have existed in all societies throughout the world. Sure, some countries may have less fatalities than others and vice versa, but crimes of this nature will always happen. Yes, it’s a sad reality, but there’s no slew of laws that can change that.

      I’m not advocating that every single person in the U.S.A age 18 to 80 should be forced to have a gun in their home or carry one strapped to their hip 24/7. What I am advocating is that any law-abiding citizen has and will always have the unalienable and undisputed right to do so IF THEY CHOOSE. Nobody’s forcing anyone to buy a gun because that’s called freedom. and people who live freely can choose to do what they want.

      Gun violence will always exist, and yes I agree, it is a tragic element of society, but it’s here to stay. So we might as well let the law-abiding people defend themselves with a firearm should harm come speeding their way like a runaway freight train.

    • Far removed? If you think that the Second Amendment is some sort of 18th century anachronism and there is no place for private gun ownership in a modern “civilized” world, I’ll remind you that the 20th century was the most brutal of all, by dictators and tyrants.

      Now, we have Syria (et al). So the 21st century is off to a pretty good start.

    • Understatement of the year award:

      “For me to claim some heroic connection with that bravery would be a stretch.”

    • Guns will always flow to those who wish to use them for ill intent. No set of laws, nor the enforcement thereof, will ever keep violent criminals from arming themselves.

      There are two sets of statistics that convinced me of this – rates of gun ownership per nation, and national homicide rates.

      Here are the homicide rates:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

      And here are the gun ownership rates:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership

      Just look at the top 10 for each list:

      Homicide:
      1. Honduras
      2. El Salvador
      3. St Kitts and Nevis
      4. Venezuela
      5. Belize
      6. Guatemala
      7. Jamaica
      8. Bahamas
      9. Colombia
      10. South Africa

      Gun Ownership:
      1. USA
      2. Serbia
      3. Yemen
      4. Switzerland
      5. Cyprus
      6. Saudi Arabia
      7. Iraq
      8. Finland
      9. Uruguay
      10. Sweden

      Zero overlap between those two lists. In fact, there is ZERO empirical evidence to back up your position.

      Your opinion (like all of those that oppose the 2nd Amendment) is based on emotion, not fact.

      • Thank you crosswired. This is the type of truth that Michael will ignore rather than face, but the rest of us understand and appreciate it.

    • Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Mussolini all banned guns to “improve security and cut crime” Chavez in Venezuela is just the next dictator in a long line to tow the people by first stopping any resistance against the government.

      The tavesty here is that the Brady Campaign and you are cheering on a dictator whose only goal it to further suppress his people. That the Anti-gun crowd unable to justify banning guns has turned to supporting a dictator takes the cake. Perhaps you should also support the slaughter in Syria — another govt. that purposely disarmed its citizens so they could rule by terrror and by killing children.

      Hopefully the cancer will get Chavez before October but this law puts into motion a line of dicatorships that will simply devastate its people.

      And you are so wrong MikeB — the people on this board uphold above else the ability to defend one’s self. Black on Black crime is not being done by legal gun owners shooting other legal gun owners and no law is going to stop that from happening — what you and the Brady Campaign should focus on is the reason for the crime — for example, take the Brady funds and put it into focusing on inner city education and job oppurtunity — with jobs and oppurtunity and hope it displaces most of the gun violance — you are focusing on the wrong problem only trying to deny legal gun owners by deflecting from the real problems that cause the gun violence in the first place. Its always easier to make laws against those who will comply than it is to fix the real root of the problem. Case in point, Baltimore is actually going after the illegal guns and trying to create jobs in depressed areas vs NYC which believes that banning guns and frisking people for no reason vs creating jobs and oppurtunity will fix the problem.

      You are FAR to worried about the wrong people and the wrong people

    • Hey Mikey, we do grow weary of your blathering… but to address your comment:
      * I’m not Jewish but given the various levels of prejudice, persecution and extermination leveled their way, I can understand how a certain level of vigilance may have become imbedded in their culture. Further in that same vein, I can understand how they might remember further into their family history than you or I might. So get off RF’s back on that isssue.
      *Next your comment regarding culpability in the violence is amusing since it is the decades of demonization of guns and all gun owners (not just the crimimal ones) using cultural & legal means that has created an environment conducive to criminal activity. So much so that most criminals don’t fear the consequenses of getting caught. The jails & legal system cannot keep up. That falls directly on the shoulders of you and everyone like you trying to get the guns out of criminals hands by punishing legal gun owners. So I say if you want someone to blame for the violence you don’t have to look further than the bathroom mirror. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

    • mikeb

      I disagree.

      I dont think any of us are “too far removed from being touched by gun violence” whether it is the holocaust or the nightly news… I would expect everyone to be upset by it.

      Using the same logic, it also begs the question: If supporting policies which ensure maximum exposure to criminals who seek to actout gun violence, are you partly responsible for gun violence in this country?

      To me it is not the people who exercise their right to be able to defend themselves in the event they ever need to, that is the problem; it is the people who seek to commit the types acts that are the problem.

    • Oh look… *yawn* Mikey’s making outlandish, offensive, baseless attacks on all gun owners. No thank you Mikey, I’m not interested in generating page views for you. I’m gonna go do something more productive, like reorganize my gun safe.

    • Getting on a boat and crossing the Atlantic is a little different than the extermination of an entire group of people (among others) Michael.

      Furthermore he is not claiming a “heroic connection.” He’s demonstrating how an event directly affected him, the course of his existence and the course of human history just as your progenitors’ bravery has altered the course of yours. It happens that one of the major contributing factors that allowed that event to happen was German gun control and disarmament.

      Even “I” am shocked by how unbelievably offensive you are becoming. Maybe I shouldn’t, as your statement is right in lock step (goose step?) with the deep rooted European culture of anti-Semitism. Awful Michael, just awful… even for you. You should be ashamed of yourself.

      Finally, ANY number of guns acquired by criminals is not, and never will be, justification to limit the rights of the law abiding. I know you and I will never agree on that, but there it is and you will NEVER convince a majority otherwise. The reduction/limitation of liberty is not a morally acceptable means to combat crime.

    • People, please quite feeding this troll. He went away for awhile and the average IQ on this site went up a full 20 points. Maybe if we ignore him he’ll go away again—-perhaps permanently!

        • His contrary views, while fully reprehensible, are not the issue here. His malice, rudeness, hypocrisy and cowardice are. Now to add to that: potential anti-Semitism.

    • The idea that all gun owners are partly responsible for all gun deaths, criminal or otherwise, is the same collectivism argument that gave us Wickard and Raich and took a major dump on the idea of liberty and federalism. Growing wheat or pot for your own consumption is somehow related to interstate commerce?

      You, by the fact that you travel and create additional demand for travel resources, are partly responsible for the Dept of Fatherland Security wanting to grope me. I hope you get your jollies from that indirect masturbation material.

      Meanwhile, I, who use guns, am partly responsible for the slight increase in your personal safety because some criminals will not know if you have a gun at home or on your person with which to defend yourself. I am also partly responsible for the liberties you enjoy, shrinking though they may be, because the goons at the Dept of Fatherland Security know there are a lot of people like me who have guns, and they do not know if you are one of them or not.

      I hope you enjoy the liberty and safety I give you as much as you enjoy the groping I get from you.

    • Mike, what Robert was talking about was violence on a scale only possible among disarmed populace. Firearms have nothing to do with it.

      If you think firearms control is the way to stop people from killing each other, I’d ask you to ask the Tutsis of Rwanda. Had 800,000 of them been armed with rifles, they’d have had a decent chance of stopping the Hutu militia armed primarily with Machetes.

      Mike, Evil People will do Evil things regardless of the tools they have easily at hand. It’s a lot easier to resist Evil if you have the same or better tools than Evil does.

      Let’s look at this from a pure numbers race, comparing the number of disarmed people killed by Genocide to the number of people otherwise killed by firearms violence in the past 100 years.
      Let’s assume that the murder rate (discounting Genocides) worldwide for the past Hundred years is the same as the US today (4.8/100,000) and that the population of the world has been a steady 6 Billion. Both are gross overestimations, but that’ll just help my point.

      Assuming all this, the murder rate in the world is 288,000 per year, or 28,800,000 people murdered over the past 100 years (again, gross overestimation, even assuming the rate is constant, the world population in 1927 was 2 Billion, not 6). Let’s further assume that 90% of all Homicides are performed with a Gun and that all Homicides performed with a gun wouldn’t have occurred without one. That gives us 25,920,000 people killed by guns, because of guns, over the past 100 years.

      During the Soviet Union’s long run, the Government killed around 60,000,000 people.
      Under Mao: ~78,000,000 people
      During the Holocaust, the Nazis killed around 15,000,000 million Jews and other “undesireables.”
      In the Congo, under Belgian rule: 8,000,000 (ending in 1908)
      Japanese war Crimes in China: 5,000,000
      In the Armenian/Assyrian/Greek genocides perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, about 3,000,000 people were killed.
      After WWII, Denazification efforts killed 2,000,000 German civillians.
      North Korea has killed at least 1,000,000 people in prison camps and untold more through intentional famine.
      Ethiopia: Just shy of 1 million
      Rwanda: 1 million

      Total right there is 179 million people. And I didn’t count the several dozen Genocides that don’t hit a million people each, which are just annoying to tally up.
      All of those 180 million people are unarmed people killed by their rulers.
      Compare that to 25 million people killed by guns (with the ridiculous assumptions I made to inflate the number of people killed by gun crime) in the same time period.

      Mike, when you find a way to make removing guns from civilian hands prevent 155 million deaths in the next century, I’ll back your play.
      By the way, to help with your math, assuming the population of the world for the next century is 30 billion (5 times the population at the start of the century), ALL homicides will kill 144,000,000 people in the next century, multiply by that 90%, and you get 130 million people killed by gun violence.

      In other words, Mike, convince me that disarmament of civilian populations will prevent at least 25 million people from being killed by their Government over the next 100 years.

    • The people, so called “progressives” who push gun control in this country are far more responsible for the violent criminality that exists than those who are attempting to restore the Constitution.

      “Gun control” has been a direct assault on the rule of law and the Constitution from the start of the “progressive” era.

      Those “progressives” have diligently sought to undermine the rule of law in this country by pushing numerous unconstitutional agendas, pushing for the “rule of man” instead of Constitutional restraints, pushing the whole “identity politics” and “victim status” strategies that undermine individual responsibility and moral standards.

      This intense campaign to undermine the rule of law has had the expected result: less individual responsibility, more crime.

      Poverty does not cause crime. Crime, at least in the United States, causes poverty.

      • Hah!

        The best defense is a good offense, is that your idea? Blaming the opposition for what you are guilty of.

        Gun availability to unfit and dangerous people, which you and your friends are all about, is a big part of the problem. Take responsibility for what’s yours.

        • In the past 100 years, Genocide (by people armed by their governments against people disarmed by their governments) killed approximately 180 million people.

          Assuming the world had a steady population of 8 Billion (higher than the current pop.) and a Murder rate of 4.8/100,000 (the current US murder rate), the total people Murdered by Criminals (not counting the aforementioned Genocides) in the past 100 years was 38 million.

          Mike, in the past 100 years, people armed BY THEIR GOVERNMENT to kill people Disarmed by the same government, have killed almost 5 times as many people as my absurd overestimation of the number of people who could have possibly been killed by Murder. Hell, some Dictators killed more people than ALL Murderers in the past 100 years.

          There’s a reason why we’re wary of having the government control our access to guns. Governments have a worse track record for using weapons for good than Murderers do.

        • mikeb never seems to be a fan of numbers. So much so that he doesn’t even acknowledge their existence.

        • Why can’t it happen here? What makes the US so exceptional that it is immune to the rise of despotism?

          Hitler was elected through a popular electoral process.

          The US does not have an unblemished history on this subject either (nor does Italy). What has happened in the past is not only possible, but likely to reoccur in the future. I’m not saying that it will, or that it will happen soon if it does, but the adage that history largely repeats itself is largely true.

          Anyway, the unifying factor between all of these varied genocides is that the victims were disarmed by their governments some time before the event.

          So, given that the number of people killed by their governments after they’ve been disarmed is more than 5 times higher than any possible number of people killed because civilians have access to guns, how is it hysterical to say that:

          I want all civilians everywhere, who have not otherwise proven themselves unfit, to be able to own firearms of any kind if they so choose.

          And if you’re saying that it can’t happen because it’s the enlightened 21st century, let’s see…
          According to the World Times News Report,* there were 13 active genocides in 2005.
          Darfur
          Uganda
          Democratic Republic of the Congo
          Ethiopia
          North Korea
          Nepal
          Burma
          Sri Lanka
          Indonesia
          Kashmir
          China
          Philippines
          Uzbekistan
          Chechnya

          I don’t quite agree with all of them, but it illustrates that the world is just as violent, just as full of hatred and repression as it always has been. Removing the ability for civilians to fight back in the event that violence, hatred, and repression come knocking will not change that.

          Let’s see if we can find One number that Mike can agree with me on. Can you, Mike, agree that no more than 38 million people in the past century (380,000 people/year) have been murdered, and that not everyone who is murdered would be prevented from being murdered if civilian ownership of firearms were prohibited?

          *http://www.wtnrradio.com/news/story.php?story=13

  2. Obviously, many of us disagree with mikeb30200 and his comments. He believes what he believes, fine. TTAG has a comment policy respecting free speech, and we must respect that.

    However.

    Some of us disagree vehemently, myself included. His commentary indicates that he will not change his point of view. At this point all I can do is shake my head, and pray for mikeb – No, you didn’t misread that. I said pray. Because the way this world is going he’ll someday discover the truth behind Robert Heinlein’s words:

    “Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that “violence never solves anything” I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

  3. “You actively support those policies which ensure maximum gun flow from the lawful to the lawless, and then have the arrogance to call that freedom.”

    We support the Constitution and the 2nd amendment.

    Hey mike why don’t you move to a country that has the type of gun control you desire? There are plenty available. Oh it’s that nasty 1st amendment we have here that you enjoy so much, huh?

    Are you really Mike Bloomberg? That would explain a lot.

  4. “At the risk of sounding insensitive, what happened to your father’s grandparents is too far removed to claim “having been touched by gun violence.”

    MikeB,

    You are a jackass. My parents were young American Jewish adults during WW2 and the Holocaust. Emotionally and culturally it affected all of us, and the generations that were born later much later. Fortunately, all my grandparents that lived in Poland and in the Russian/Ukraine/Odessa areas migrated to America during the early 1900s. Most of the relatives that remained in Europe were killed err murdered during WW2.

    Most of the violent crime killings in this world against civilians are done primarily by the citizen’s own government first, foreign governments second (wars), and lastly by other citizens (crime, hate, etc). ‘Power corrupts and all governments go bad’. Supporting the centralizing of power into an authority or entity such as government is an immoral act.

    Some people here don’t get it why I am so strongly opposed to feminism. Feminism has itself pushed and been used by the elites as a reason or cheap excuse to limit and strip away our liberties, turn justice on its head that now increasingly a man is guilty until proven innocent, and to create a special class of privileged citizens (women) and a secondary class (men). It, more than any other ideology, has encouraged the growth of the big government fascist matriarchal-police state that America has become.

    MikeB, you are part of the problem.

  5. Brazil has highly restricted gun ownership and is seeking to restrict it even further. The gun violence only gets worse and worse. This is no surprise to us, of course, because we understand that gun control serve only to disarm the honest citizen and not the criminal. In fact, millions of guns are smuggled into Brazil every year to supply the demand among criminals for weapons to use against the largely disarmed populace.

    The events here in Seattle have really angered me. A violent individual goes on a murder spree and the anti-gunner’s first impulse is to remove people’s access to tools of self defense and make them more subject to prosecution in case they do defend themselves? Repulsive.

    • The shallow and dishonest reaction to push for gun control avoids dealing with deeper and various complex social/economic issues, excess prescribing of drugs, bad dysfunctional neighborhoods and families, et etc that can lead to a person, in desperation to solve some problem or achieve a goal, choosing violence and a gun to commit that violence.

      • In this particular case, it’s the family. They admit they knew he was violent and that something like this would happen one day. And yet they did nothing. If they had intervened and gotten him psychiatric care, he might have recovered. And if even if he hadn’t, he would have been denied the gun purchases and the CPL. As we know, that still might not have prevented him from getting the guns, but the point is the family shirked its responsibility to take care of its own.

  6. Mikeb, Hugo Chavez, Barack Obama, and other collectivists would like us to believe that a government monopoly on armed force is the only way to protect citizens from criminal violence. The documented truth is that a government monopoly on armed force is the GREATEST killer of citizens on the planet. From 1900 to 1999, GOVERNMENTS murdered 262,000,000 people – not in wars, but in democide against their own citizens/subjects. That is 262 MILLION people, most of them killed by leftist, collectivist governments like the ones mikeb prefers.

    I know mikeb will accuse me of making this up, so I recommend he go to the University of Hawaii web site on “democide”. To save him the effort, it is found at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html.

    Two Hundred and Sixty-Two Million. Killed by their own governments. How does that stack up against deaths “caused” by American gun owners, mikeb? And you and your fellow useful idiots (Stalin’s term) want Americans to believe we will be safer if we give up our right to defend ourselves against government tyranny. Not going to happen on my watch.

    • I understand your position but I don’t see how me enjoying target practice and having firearms near by just in case the are needed to protect my family is at fault for any of the tragedies of spree killings.

      I get your point and it’s a good one but how the hell can you include an American President in that list, like or dislike Obama, respect the rank.

  7. All the ranting aside, being black, born and raised in detroit, the son of a retired detroit police officer, i’ve seen my share of guns and gun violence. Gun laws only legislate those who are law abiding. the majority of murders here don’t involve legally registered and carried weapons. there needs to be a change in the mindset, and people need to start caring about what happens to other people. just because it’s going down in “the hood” today, doesn’t mean it won’t be on your street tomorrow. Here in suburban Detroit, a kid beat his father to death, and nearly killed his mother and brother with a BASEBALL BAT…you gonna outlaw those? We have another case were a 78 yr old woman is convicted with killing her teenage grandson. Five rounds of 40 cal in the chest with a pistol she bought legally a few days earlier….how are you going to legislate that?

    • “Gun laws only legislate those who are law abiding …”

      Nailed it right there. I cannot understand why people believe that someone who is willing to break the law against murder will obey a law banning guns. Britain and Japan have banned all civilian ownership of handguns for many years, and their criminals still manage to get handguns – and to kill people without using guns.

      If you really want to stop the majority of violent crime in this country, decriminalize drugs. Put the billions of dollars we are spending on enforcement – police, courts, lawyers, prisons, parole officers, welfare for the kids of jailed drug users, etc. – into drug rehab and education (sort of the same thing we do with alcohol.) Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s only achieved more violent crime and made the mafia rich – same thing is happening today with the “war on drugs”. (And that concludes your libertarian rant for the day.)

      • And gifted us the NFA to boot.

        I absolutely agree about the moronic “War on Drugs”. Dealing with drug issues through law enforcement is the least efficient and least effective approach we could possibly take. Illegal markets generate violence. Like you said, we’ve seen it with Prohibition and we’re seeing it now.

  8. If it’s through illegal firearms that most criminals commit gun related crimes, then why are the anti-2a folks working so hard to make all civilian-owned firearms illegal?

    • Because then they would be right (for once). If all civilian firearms are illegal, then all crime committed with firearms are committed with illegal guns, and their claim would be valid.

  9. Question for mike and the rest of his kind.Their own stats say”More Americans were killed by gun violence last year than all American troops who have been killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.” IF guns were the problem ,won’t soldiers who are surrounded by LOTS of guns be dieing at higher rate than civilians?As has been stated here often and loudly,CRIMINALS cause violence,not guns. Since criminals do not obey laws(look up definition of criminal) passing gun control laws PROTECT criminals and hurt law abiding citizens.

    • Good points. Using MikeB’s logic if soldier’s did not have guns then their death rate would be lower and so would their killing rate. If the Taliban did not have guns or other modern weapons and neither the Americans in MikeB’s world n0ne would die of gun violence. OK, true. Yet, they would then die from swords and knives. Going on their past history with blades, I would not want to be an American in Afghanistan armed with only using an edged weapon for defense.

      • He’ll only argue that weapons in the hands of the military are held by professionals and that we can trust the government to be the sole controller, overwatch and end user of weapons. He is a Statist. I am in the Army and I am here to tell you that you do not want the government to be the sole force capable of owning and utilizing arms.

        • [shameless inter-service joke]

          I spent 8 years in the Air Farce and let me tell you, I don’t want the Army to be the only ones with weapons, either!

          [/shameless inter-service joke]

  10. Yeah, I also know how it feels to be touched by gun violence – my great, great, great granddad’s brother’s friend’s cousin’s uncle’s housemate dropped his musket on his foot and really bruised his toe once – I still have nightmares about it!

    Seriously though – hyperbole much? I have ACTUALLY been touched by gun violence, as in me, personally. Lots of people here have probably served and been touched by it too. It’s kind of insulting to claim some distant relative you never met being killed has touched you in quite the same way.

    Also I would like to know how the Jews being armed would have really helped them? At least in the grander scale. The entire French army was steamrollered by the Germans, as were the British at Dunkirk at the start of the war – I’m pretty sure they hadn’t turned in their guns before the main event, had they? If two (well, one and a half LOL) professional armies crumbled before the Germans then what would a geographically separated bunch of regular citizens with no military training and just small arms have been able to accomplish?

    • “what would a geographically separated bunch of regular citizens with no military training and just small arms have been able to accomplish?”
      ——
      Assymetric warfare heavily favors the less-organized side. See: American Revolution, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan (again), et al.

      • Asymmetric warfare also requires that you have the support of the local populace, which the Jews didn’t.

        For every Schindler you had fifty or a hundred Hitler youth, brownshirts, Gestapo, and other various civilians who hated the Jews for whatever reason just waiting to turn them in. They didn’t have a chance, armed or otherwise.

        The thing most of the WASPs on this board don’t seem to understand is that the chance of the government coming after THEM en masse is essentially zero. Equally the chances of most of the people on this board taking up arms to help whichever minority is scapegoated is also zero. Most folk here think Fox is a real news source and will probably join in rounding them up if Rush tells them to. Tell me, how many good ol’ boys got out their guns when all the Americans of Japanese descent were interned during WW2?

        • You don’t need the support of the entire populace. Do you think every South Vietnamese citizen supported the VC?

          “The thing most of the WASPs on this board don’t seem to understand is that the chance of the government coming after THEM en masse is essentially zero.”
          ——
          1. I’m a WASA, not a WASP.
          2. Waco.
          3. Ruby Ridge.
          4. Hutarees.
          5. Ken Ballew.

          Shall we keep going?

          “Most folk here think Fox is a real news source”
          ——
          Holy sh!t! You’ve got the REALLY broad brush out now, huh?

        • No broad brush at all – most folks here do think that, it’s just a plain fact.

          Anyway, how many good ol’ boys took up arms and went down to help David Koresh out with his evil government problem then? Did you? Were you rising up and plinking ATF agents from some bushes? Was anybody you know? Was anybody at all?

          So even if you take Waco as a righteous reaction against an oppressive government (which it wasn’t) the total number of gun toting, give me freedom or give me death, I believe in the constitution and will die to protect it Murricans who went to help out with all those private assault weapons they just have to have was……

          Zero?

          So if you aren’t going to use those guns in defense of the constitution, just as NOBODY defended the Americans being interned in WW2, which was far more serious than some fruitcakes in Texas, then why have them in the first place?

          Have them for hunting, have them for home defense, sure, but don’t pretend they have anything to do with keeping the government honest because they don’t – that is nothing but pure romanticism which ignores how the world actually works.

        • Okay. I get it. You’ve got a huge chip on your shoulder regarding our internment of American citizens during WW2. As a white male married to a Japanese woman, I don’t blame you. I’ve taught my children that it was one of the blackest moments in American history, and it is something they should oppose if anything like it happens again. As neither of us has a time machine, let’s move on, shall we?

          You only addressed my point about Waco, so let’s explore that. My point was not that people were rushing to defend some religious nutcase. My point was that it illustrates an instance of the Feds going after “WASPs” (still can’t believe RF let you get away with that, but whatever). And guess what? The atheist in me doesn’t give half a sh!t about their religion. The American in me gets kinda pissed when evidence is fabricated, people are shot in the back and women and children are burned alive by agents of the federal government. Do some Google-fu and find the testimony of those involved. If you still hold the government blameless after doing that, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

        • Waco was a shameful page in the fed’s history, no argument there. My point wasn’t to defend the behavior of the ATF or anybody else – my point was that out of all the other American gun owners, who whistle Dixie and proclaim undying love for the constitution, not one turned up with his assault rifle to help Koresh defend his rights. Not one.

          Also I have no chip on my shoulder about the WW2 internment, I simply use it to demonstrate the rank hypocrisy of claiming you need guns to defend the innocent from the government, when you never use them in that capacity.

          Also I don’t understand why you find the term WASP distasteful, it holds no negative stigma. In any case the Waco people would have been WASBD’s, not WASP’s.

          Anyway, you still stand unable to refute my point – that US citizens have never in their history used their weapons to defend another persecuted minority of citizens from an evil government.

        • “Hmmmmm,” as Americans we do not rush to fight the Government for every poor decision it makes. That is insane. We as a people can arm ourselves for many reasons, to include safeguarding against tyranny. That does not necessitate using force against the Government every time it steps out of line. Your reasoning is flawed. To wit, some American History:

          “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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. “

    • They would have been able to die on their feet. If they were still alive to enjoy the luxury of hindsight, I contest that many of them would have chosen that fate over the camps. Suicide? Maybe… maybe not. Morally superior to being rounded up like cattle and slaughtered? You bet your @ss it is. If they were ABSOLUTELY had to die one way or the other, God’s chosen people deserved better than that.

      Furthermore, I don’t think RF was stating he had been directly touched by the subject in the same way as a Joe under fire. You are taking that statement out of context.

      Lastly, I’ll point to the successes of the Russian resistance when discussing the disadvantages of having an armed force rise up under your feet.

    • It was a colonial occupying force and the French who got steam rolled.The only “professional” army in that fight was the Germans.But to the bigger picture question you posed the Jews would have not faced the German front line troops that rolled the French and Brits.They would have (at least to start) faced German police and reserve type units.If the Jews had been able to stand up to those units then the Germans would have had to pull scarce front line troops to deal with them and that may have shortened the war saving even more lives.

  11. RF, my only quibble is the figure of 6 million.

    10 million people were exterminated in the camps by the Nazi government. Please don’t short the number of victims because 40% of them weren’t Jews.

    Hopefully Venezuela won’t become a front runner for the 21st century’s list of government mass murders.

  12. To tired today to pay any credence to MikeB.
    Enough to say that my relatives, some died in Germany during WWII, some went to Israel and gave their lives during the eventual formation of a nation. Some came here before WWII and escaped the Nazi’s.
    All say never again. I say never again. You have good and bad together. I can only state that an armed populace is one that can remain free.
    With the events in California such as they are even my wife now wants me to train her and our eldest son in gun use. She wants to have on in a safe by the bed.
    When the excrement hits the oscillator we will be able to stay safe.
    Nuff said.
    I am also following the work of the JPFO. Yes they are very staunch in their views, but having said that there should be no compromise period.

    • I’d pat you on the back if I could. And I know that you more than most put those beliefs on the line in the IDF.

  13. Liberals, at their core, recognize the value of firearms. They just deny the fact in their social circles, in nicer times, but their voices change in times of fear. During the LA riots, I had liberal friends calling me if I had a “spare” firearm they could use for the next few days. Prior to Y2K, I had, again, liberal friends calling me if I could spare a firearm “just in case.” I nicely said to “no” to every request except one–he was a conservative in denial living in NY.

  14. “The gun-control movement must convince Americans that much work remains: that illegal guns continue to destroy the lives of more American youths than many dare imagine; that our lack of national policy has a deadly impact internationally; and, perhaps most important, that the movement behind gun control does not seek to limit a law-abiding person’s ability to get a gun.”

    The above is one long sentence, and in the beginning states it’s ILLEGAL guns that cause the PERCEIVED problem, and by the end of the sentence, says gun control, which BY DEFINITION is the infringement of being able to LEGALLY buy a gun, is somehow magically not infringing on a person’s being able to LEGALLY buy a gun. That kind of circular logic leads me right around to the person saying this’s butt from where they speak!

  15. I grew up in the ghetto. My friend was killed execution style, 5 of my friends were shot in separate incidents, 2 of which were drive by’s, and many other friends suffered B&E’s in broad daylight by shotgun wielding Crims. All of this was done with illegal guns, and GANGS! The city grew balls and raided the hell out of the place, a run down government housing complex, and then there were no more gangs. Guess what? No more shootings! Legislate criminals, not guns!

  16. Respectfully, Robert, gun violence is not the price Americans pay for the freedom to be armed. Gun violence is the price Americans pay for an idiotic and inverted morality that treats criminals like victims, and victims (who make themselves nuisances to the state by daring to defend themselves) like criminals.

    As you’ve noted Mexico has wonderful gun control. A guy was arrested yesterday in Chihuahua for just walking along with a .357 strapped to his hip. No one to my knowledge has been arrested for the 49 carved up bodies that were dumped in Nuevo Leon. So the gun grabbers, like those cops, can strike the pretty pose, and pretend to have done something, when they’ve simply helped the criminals.

    There’s a point where appeasement of evil becomes complicity with it. And people who want to make the innocent defenseless have pretty much crossed that line.

  17. Mikeb, Mikeb, Mikeb, so frightened of himself and his potential for violence that he wants everyone to be disarmed, because if he can’t be trusted with a gun, “obviously” no one else can.
    In the end, feel sorry for people like Mikeb and thank G-D enough people here in the USA are waking up and seeing the lies that government worshiping Statists like Mikeb have been pushing for the last hundred years.
    The definition through all of history of a free citizen versus a peasant, peon or slave, are those who could legally carry a weapon and those who could not.
    By that definition, which I hold to, except for the US and Switzerland, the worlds people are living in the darkness of tyranny and oppression, especially those bastions Statist Utopias like Italy, France, Germany and England, among others, what an incredible gift to be an American!

  18. “Among my most sincere of wishes is for the total success of each and every violence prevention organization — most especially those focused on a particular tool among the many used…generically referred to as a GUN.”
    Gw
    Since evidence indicates that these and other like or similar organizations have not yet achieved total success, most especially in certain areas, perhaps some helpful suggestions might be in order.
    BTW,
    Q 1. = Did the Brady Bill in 1994 actually ban ‘assault weapons’ and large-capacity magazines?
    Q 2. = Would you want make a point of publicizing yourself to be the principal strategist behind legislation which utterly failed to produce any results for the intended purpose?
    Just asking.

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