In his comments last Tuesday prior to signing an Executive Order
expanding background checks for gun purchases, President Barack Obama
became uncharacteristically emotional and shed tears as he discussed
children killed in mass shootings. His emotional reaction gave weight to
his message, but some doubted the sincerity of his tears, seeing them
as a device to increase support for his proposal. The Executive Order
issued days later expands background checks for firearms purchasers, but
is an action that would not have prevented the shooting that brought
the tears, or other recent horrific shooting events.
This
rare show of emotion calls attention to Obama’s lack of tears for other
tragedies – such as the death of an innocent young woman at the hands
of an illegal alien in California, or the San Bernardino murders by
radical Muslims – as further evidence of his selective use of emotion
for political purposes.
Emotion is the driver of
liberal initiatives, which are highlighted by the generous use of false
information and/or exaggeration, and the twisting of truth. Demagoguery
and shaming are always close at hand, as well. If someone opposes
abortion, they don’t really want to protect life, they just want to deny
women control of their bodies. If someone opposes stronger gun control
measures, it isn’t because they value and want to defend Constitutional
liberties, it is because they don’t care that children and other
innocents are being murdered daily. Although this tactic sounds like it
was developed on an elementary school playground, a lot of people rely
on it and fall for it.
Obama quotes the statistic that
there are more than 30,000 gun deaths each year, and Democrat
presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton breaks that down to an average of
90 gun deaths a day. Those large numbers surely catch one’s attention,
but throwing out large numbers cheats the public of both perspective and
true understanding of gun deaths. For example, roughly 19,000 gun
deaths are suicides. How many of those severely troubled individuals
would decide to go on living because they could not lay their hands on a
gun?
About 1,800 are gang related, and 900 others are
accidents. A majority – 80 percent – of the remaining gun-related deaths
is attributed to urban problems. And, of course, some gun deaths are
justified, as in cases of self-defense. The CDC reports that there are
3.5 gun deaths in the U.S. per 100,000 people while the number of all
deaths is 821.5 per 100,000 people.
The self-defense
aspect receives far too little discussion. In 2013, Obama ordered the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to assess the existing
research on gun violence, and a report prepared by the Institute of
Medicine and the National Research Council stated, in part: “Almost all
national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims
are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of
annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year …
in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in
2008.”
Commentary by James Shott
Some suggest that three million is likely an
unrealistically high number, but if guns are used defensively a
half-million or more times a year, that is compelling. Given the record
of people using guns to defend themselves from criminal activity and
even death, wouldn’t it be appropriate for tears to be shed because so
many have died in “gun-free zones,” where they were denied the ability
for self-defense or protection from other people who were in the line of
fire who were armed? There is a better than average chance that mass
shooters would make a point to avoid places where they knew guns were
being carried by their potential victims.
Americans are
a rebellious lot; they don’t like to be controlled. Thus, in order to
persuade them to go along with ideas like gun control, they have to be
made to believe that existing laws are being enforced but that existing
laws just aren’t enough, and we need more regulation. This is
accomplished through various techniques, including heavy propaganda
based upon myths.
Some examples: Background checks are
not required for purchases on the Internet. Law enforcement is not
present at gun shows, which are a free-for-all for prohibited
individuals to obtain firearms. Obama has made firearms enforcement a
priority, and his executive action on gun control will thwart criminals’
ability to obtain firearms. There is a general consensus in America
that greater gun control is needed to prevent mass shootings in the
United States.
Those statements are all false, and have
been shown to be so by Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, who wrote a commentary published on The
Daily Caller online, listing and disproving 10 myths about guns,
including those above.
Neither gun violence nor climate
change is a critical problem for the United States. The threat of
Islamic terrorism, a government too weak on the world stage, but grown
too large and too controlling here at home, and a president who thinks
he is an emperor, however, are critical problems. And that is why
restoring conservative government is so important in the next election.
Cross-posted from Observations
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