Posted on 01/21/2013 9:48:24 AM PST by jazusamo
The gun control controversy is only the latest of many issues to be debated almost solely in terms of fixed preconceptions, with little or no examination of hard facts.
Media discussions of gun control are dominated by two factors: the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment. But the over-riding factual question is whether gun control laws actually reduce gun crimes in general or murder rates in particular.
If, as gun control advocates claim, gun control laws really do control guns and save lives, there is nothing to prevent repealing the Second Amendment, any more than there was anything to prevent repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that created Prohibition.
But, if the hard facts show that gun control laws do not actually control guns, but instead lead to more armed robberies and higher murder rates after law-abiding citizens are disarmed, then gun control laws would be a bad idea, even if there were no Second Amendment and no National Rifle Association.
The central issue boils down to the question: What are the facts? Yet there are many zealots who seem utterly unconcerned about facts or about their own lack of knowledge of facts.
There are people who have never fired a shot in their life who do not hesitate to declare how many bullets should be the limit to put into a firearm's clip or magazine. Some say ten bullets but New York state's recent gun control law specifies seven.
Virtually all gun control advocates say that 30 bullets in a magazine is far too many for self-defense or hunting — even if they have never gone hunting and never had to defend themselves with a gun. This uninformed and self-righteous dogmatism is what makes the gun control debate so futile and so polarizing.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
The ONLY gun law ANY of us need is Constitutional Carry.
The ONLY gun law ANY of us need is Constitutional Carry.
I wish I could convince him, and other brilliant writers and thinkers on the topic that bullets are only the projectile, and "rounds" or "cartridges" are the completed component of ammunition.
It takes away from an otherwise flawless piece.
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“......As someone who once taught pistol shooting in the Marine Corps, I am not the least bit surprised by the number of shots fired......”
He knows.
Thanks for the ping jaz.
Bump!
The last thing lefties, nanny-staters and gun-grabbers want is to be confused with facts.
It is fascinating to me, though, that lefties don't think the people should have weapons (e.g. guns), but they don't mind it when a stranger uses a gun to save them from injury or death.
Some years ago, Rosie O'Fats went on an anti-second Amendment rant with Tom Selleck who appeared on her TV "show". A few months later, after Rosie and her girlfriend adopted two children, Rosie hired two ARMED bodyguards to ensure the safety and protection of her children (Guns for me, but NOT for thee!).
zero thinks that we shouldn't have guns, either. But, it's ok for him to have ARMED secret service protection around the clock.
zero and his older brother, Clinton, detest the military, but they have no qualms about committing the military to conflict after conflict in places where the US has no security interests.
Hypocrisy, thy name is LIEberals!!
The central issue boils down to the question: What are the facts? Yet there are many zealots who seem utterly unconcerned about facts or about their own lack of knowledge of facts.
Sowell and Daniel Greenfield are easily the most creative intellectuals of our time... What a pleasure both can be read on FreeRepublic...
Thanks for the ping jazusam - here's a link to a Daniel Greenfield piece you'll enjoy:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2980282/posts
Nope, gun control laws control SPEECH!!! Hate crime legislation already treats us like children to be readied for pedophiles.
Now gun laws are out there to provide the media with more dependency on its seeking monopoly over free speech, because once we lose our gun rights and OUR SPEECH becomes REGISTERED through registration of our FIREARMS, the internet will be a moot and dangerous place to talk freely at.
Wewill be relegated to a 1984 situation with Obama’s face speaking and the media having complete mandated participation.
Obamacare forced us to buy their medicines already, now it is their TV it is going to force us to buy.
I like his style of writing, easy to read and understand and like Dr. Sowell he's right on the mark regarding Obama.
You may have to “bite the bullet” on that word issue.
My own pet peeve is “the bully pulpit.”
In fact, Teddy Roosevelt said the presidency was “a” bully pulpit.
In Teddy's time “bully” meant “splendid” or “outstanding.”
Regarding the idea of repealing 2A, corrupt Congress and Obama cannot afford for the vast majority of likely constitutionally ignorant voters to find out about Article V of the Constitution. If voters found out about Article V then they would know that only the states, not Congress or the Oval Office, can ratify proposed amendments to the Constitution, the states thus having absolute control over the federal government despite PC interpretations of the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2).
In fact, corrupt Congress wrongly ignored former Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr.'s resolution to propose a healthcare amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification. Such an amendment would have given Congress the constitutional authority that it needed to establish Obamacare. But Congress ignored the resolution and wrongly established Obamacare without the consent of the Article V state majority.
"H. J. Res. 30: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right of citizens of the United States to health care of equal high quality." --govtrack.us
So as evidenced by the way that Democrats rammed Obamacare while ignoring Article V and Obama's approach to politically watering down the 2nd Amendment with constitutionally undefined executive orders instead of calling for a repeal of 2A, Article V is arguably the best kept secret of the unconstitutionally big federal government imo.
It would be just splendid, however, if those of us who are on the 2A protection side would choose to demonstrate a greater understanding of the entire firearms topic by using just an important few correct terms.
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if the hard facts show that gun control laws do not actually control guns, but instead lead to more armed robberies and higher murder rates after law-abiding citizens are disarmed, then gun control laws would be a bad idea, even if there were no Second Amendment and no National Rifle Association.It is estimated that as many as half of all US households, roughly 45 million, have at least one gun. Likewise, statistics on gun murders run in the neighborhood of 5 per 100,000 people, or 50 gun murders per million people. There are about 300 million Americans, which corresponds to roughly 50 x 300 = 15,000 gun murders annually. It would follow, then, that for each annual murder in America there are 45 million divided by 15 thousand, or roughly 3000 gun owners in America.
The obvious conclusion is that people who legally buy guns almost never do so in order to commit murder. It could be that a larger fraction of people who buy fire insurance do so for the purpose of committing insurance fraud.Trying to "reduce gun violence” by reducing the number of legally held guns looks like a fool’s errand.
Mine is "font," when the proper word is "typeface."
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