The Second Amendment is Not Difficult to Understand

Are Democrats Just Stupid?

Congressional Democrats, intent – still – on controlling everything we do while ensuring we cannot fight back, are, once again, trying to ban an entire class of guns. Without asking “Why do they want to ban guns again … now?” let’s look at the reality of gun control.

A mature Senate and House leadership would, on submission of the mal-named GOSAFE Act, expel every co-sponsor of legislation at odds with the Constitution and Bill of Rights for being in violation of the oath of office required in order to be seated. (In order to be seated in Congress, those elected must take the oath of office to “support and defend” the 2^nd Amendment. Once they submit legislation against it, they have forfeited their seat by violating their oath.)

Alas, we lack mature policy-makers.

This “GOSAFE Act” would ban all gas-operated semi-automatic weapons in civilian hands. That’s nearly all semi-autos for those keeping score at home…

Nothing is “safe” about banning guns – other than for the totalitarians who want to control us, and bad guys who want to shoot us. That aside, below is the UN (not a particularly pro-gun outfit) global map of gun ownership vs homicides. It’s pretty clear that ownership reduces crime. In other words, gun ownership and carrying makes us SAFER.

According to the CDC, guns are used defensively within the US somewhere between 500,000 and 3,000,000 times per year. That doesn’t mean fired at bad guys; often, just the fact of presenting your weapon gets the bad guys to go find something else to do, or someone else – an unprepared someone else – to do it to.

Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). 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.

But if that doesn’t work, shooting the bad guy stops him every time.

For those who talk about the “bloodbath” that will occur on our streets when a state relaxes its gun control policies and adopts more lenient, and constitutional concealed carry regulations, this:

For those interested in the views of various experts and studies on the issue:

The anti-gun crowd also enjoys yakking about the 2^nd Amendment being passed in 1789, when only single-shot flintlocks were available, demanding that the Second Amendment can only apply then-current weapons. Skipping the entire argument that the First Amendment only would apply to parchment and quill pens… what they are demanding is that the Second Amendment dictates that civilians must have access only to what the military has access.

If one extrapolates this anti-gunner demand to today’s infantry squad weapons alone, one is pretty far down the road of allowing machine guns, squad-operated weapons (mortars), and actual (M4) – as opposed to fantasized (AR-15) – assault rifles. I don’t even know a gun enthusiast who thinks we each should have our own M2 .50-cal belt-fed machine gun. Do you? I would note that, until the mid-19^th Century, civilians could acquire and mount naval cannon on their personal ships…

Does gun control even work?

European countries don’t trust their own citizens with guns, which is just weird, in that they trust them with a vote, which is far more dangerous (though they are getting past that by overthrowing elections and outlawing political parties, but I digress.) But it’s rare that a month goes by without someone (usually an illegal immigrant, but, again, I digress), shooting others. Would the Bataclan nightclub shooting have been as bad had one or more CCW holders been present, something essentially outlawed in France? No. Sweden, another country with strict gun control laws, recently experienced a mass shooting, as well.

What makes a “mass shooting” a “mass” shooting?

No one shooting back…

But those examples are thousands of miles away. Chicago, on the other hand, has strict gun control laws, and it’s a rare weekend in which fewer than a dozen people are shot. No – it doesn’t work. As in the initial graphic above, the same is true globally.

A couple of gun facts shine out when looked at in detail. True, America has too many gun crimes. Various internet memes indicate that we rank #3 in homicides, globally. This is not true. And that if a few major cities are removed, we rank #189. Also not true.

But if you look at the governance of high-homicide cities, you’ll notice one interesting fact. It’s a fact that can work with and help bolster the gun control argument Democrats always are making, so if they were serious, they’d make it:

These high-homicide cities all are filled with Democrat voters.

So if we just ban Democrats from owning guns – those who demand strict gun control – we’d all GOSAFE.

How could they object?