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.