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12-19-2012 10:12 AM |
Re: Gun Control Failed Newtown
I have a few disagreements with the following article. I’ll post them…
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Question One in Our National Conversation: Why Did Gun Control Fail the Families of Newtown
It is sickening that we have to discuss this with the dead not all buried, but such is our fallen world.
By: Thomas Crown (Diary) ..|.. December 17th, 2012 at 04:40 PM ..|..
Were we a decent society, we would allow the parents of Newtown to grieve before we started talking about taking away guns. We are not a decent society, and the ghoulish, deranged left is once again trying to use a tragedy as an opportunity.
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I don’t entirely agree. I think that we need to move swiftly while we are actually feeling this loss. All too often we wait until everyone goes back to their molds and entrenched political positions. Also there have been a number of copycat threats. We should move sooner than later. If in two months something more horrendous happens in a school, our waiting could have cost lives. This is a real and present danger in nearly every school system in America. We can’t afford to wait.
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So, as they begin their ritual descent into bathing in the blood of children about whom they wouldn’t care were they just inside the birth canal, let’s have the “conversation” about pretending away the Second Amendment they want. Because they want to change the law, the burden of proof lies on them; so here is the first question they must answer:
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I think this author is being absolutely tasteless. Really??? “Bathing in the blood of children”??? He should be caned. So, if any parents of these children are politically left of center and feeling the need to advocate for stronger gun control laws… they are bathing in the blood of their own children??? This man shouldn’t be employed to write such garbage. Also, this subject has nothing to do with the sovereign authority a woman has over her body and rights that prevent the GOVERNMENT from seizing her body and forcing her to give birth against her will. As wrong as abortion is… it’s an entirely different subject.
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Why didn’t restrictive gun control laws save the victims of Newtown?
This is what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has to say about Connectictut’s gun control regime:
Connecticut has strong gun laws that help combat the illegal gun market, prevent the sale of most guns without background checks and reduce risks to children, according to the Brady Campaign. In the organization’s 2009 state scorecards released for all 50 states, Connecticut earned 53 points out of a total of 100 and has the nation’s fourth strongest gun laws.
“Connecticut has done more than most states to combat illegal guns and has worked to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. In fact, Connecticut has a one-of-a-kind law that allows a judge to remove guns from people who have been determined to be a threat to themselves or others,” said Ron Pinciaro, President of CT Against Gun Violence.
The Washington Post — no opponent of a disarmed citizenry — agrees with this characterization. Connecticut “has among the most stringent gun control laws on the books,” the..Post notes, citing three disparate groups of experts, before allowing Connecticut’s chief Democrat to explain that his state can’t enforce its own laws without adult supervision.
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Actually, the facts tend to prove that Connecticut needs stronger gun control laws. The gun primarily used in the massacre was a semiautomatic assault rifle. It was legally purchased and registered. However, had an assault weapons ban been in place the rifle wouldn’t have been in the hands of Lanza’s possession… because his mother (a law abiding gun owner) wouldn’t have owned it. This may not have prevented the attack. However, this may have reduced the number of dead children.
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I don’t believe that we should be making domestic policy based on anecdote or on a single event. No system is properly tested in a single instance. The proof of a policy is how it performs over time — after hundreds or thousands of events. But gun control proponents do not agree. Piers Morgan, Michael Moore, Rupert Murdoch, and many more..seem to believe that the vicious and evil killings in Connecticut prove the need for more stringent gun control measures. They race to change the law in the wake of tragedies because they know that they long ago lost the policy debate and that cooler heads will reject any such regulation absent the immediate aftermath of a tragedy.
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The author needs to revisit his history. The primary weapon used in the Connecticut school massacre — a semiautomatic assault rifle — has a history in high-profile incidents of gun violence in the U.S. The .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle also was the weapon of choice in the 2002 Washington-area sniper shootings, which left 10 dead and three wounded in a series of attacks that terrorized the capital region. This weapon, weapon analysts say, has a reputation for easy handling and deadly accuracy. Semiautomatic assault rifles have been used to maximize death count in a number of shootings. This isn’t the first assault using a semiautomatic assault rifle wherein the perpetrator intended to kill as many people as possible as fast as possible. Revisiting the legality of the weapon isn’t the overreaction that he is intended you to believe that it is.
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A lesser-noted detail of America’s current demographics is that in the midst of an awful economic downturn, violent crime is falling. Americans recognize that gun crimes have continued to trend down as more law-abiding citizens have gotten access to firearms. So having failed to fool the people into signing onto their policies, they pretend that their ideas have been ignored — rather than considered and rejected again and again — and they call for a “national conversation,” a term of art the Obama Administration has embraced since the beginning that translates into American English as “agree with me, or I’ll regulate it anyway, democracy be damned, you idiots.”
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True, gun crime is dropping as more law abiding citizens have gotten access to firearms. But most of those are handguns, shotguns, and hunting rifles. Your average American gun owner isn’t purchasing the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle. The .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle isn’t bringing crime down.
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Defenders of the Bill of Rights ought to welcome that debate, one that we’ve been having for every year of the roughly four decades I’ve drawn breath on this planet. (We keep having it because the Left, like the Roman legions, refuses to admit defeat until they win.) After all, we can and will win one more time if the sense of the American people (also known to its opponents as “the gun lobby,” “the Israel lobby,” and so on) is allowed to prevail. But if we are to discuss the value of gun restrictions, we first need an explanation from gun control advocates of why their ideas failed the victims in Newtown.
As noted above, according to the Brady Campaign, Connecticut has the nation’s fourth-strongest gun laws. The sale and possession of so-called assault weapons are banned under state law. As noted above, the state empowers judges to remove guns from those who constitute a threat. The state earns high marks for gun dealer regulation, reporting of lost or stolen guns, background checks, permit to purchase, child safety, and earns the maximum score on guns in public places.
So here’s the challenge for gun control advocates: explain why you failed the people of Newtown. You cited Connecticut as a national example. You said its laws “reduce risks to children.” You gave no state a higher rating for keeping guns out of public places — like schools.
And a criminally insane man stole legally-owned guns (owned under Connecticut’s regime) after being denied their legal purchase, broke in through a window, and killed children and adults — adults who were not armed to shoot back, and so died unable to save the children who also died.
You want this one event to be a national test? Fine. Why are there 20 children dead when the state of Connecticut did what you said they should to keep their people safe?
Once you answer that question, we can get this conversation underway.
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It should be noted that the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle isn’t listed as an assault weapon in CT. This is because of a few manufacturer modifications. Stricter laws would be necessary to have kept this gun out of this woman’s hands and as a result… to have prevented her son from having one to steal.
Those are just a few thoughts. |
