You often hear leftists of various stripes clamoring for more gun control. When those who value their rights resist such predations, the leftists respond that they only want “reasonable” gun control. There is, however, no such thing as “reasonable” controls on guns beyond prohibiting the unsupervised possession and use by the incompetent and untrustworthy.
Gun control is not about controlling guns. A gun is an inanimate object. As such, it is neither good, nor evil. It simply is. You can take a gun, load it, place it on a table in a room full of people, and it will not kill anyone without being picked up and used by some other one. Conversely, if that some other one sincerely wishes to kill anyone (in general or in particular), and no firearm is available, that person will merely find some other more primitive method to accomplish his ends. One of the reasons that progressives have such a problem with this distinction is that moral or ethical relativism has warped their simple liberal minds to the point where they are no longer capable of making a rational distinction between that which is good, that which is evil, and that which is neither. It is far easier to pat yourself on the back for being “non-judgmental” when you refuse to label malicious actions or predatory people as “evil”, and instead, apply the label of evil to an inanimate hunk of metal and wood.
Gun control is not about controlling crime. In the first place, only the most patently naïve could ever be so foolish as to sincerely believe that a sociopath who will disregard a prohibition on murder (which carries the most severe penalty of any crime in our society) will inexplicably obey a prohibition on the possession or criminal use of a firearm. People who talk about enacting prohibitions in order to ‘get firearms off the streets and out of the hands of criminals’ are either cynically dishonest or criminally insane. We see evidence of the real-world effects of gun prohibition on a regular basis. While the vast majority of the 50 states permit some form of concealed-carry by their citizens, unopposed mass public shootings still take place. If you look at the details of such mass shootings, you will note that they most often take place where lawful gun possession is prohibited. And when mass shootings do occur in “gun-free” zones, the victim count is invariably higher. The state of Virginia allows concealed carry, except on college campuses like Virginia Tech. And the state of Illinois’ complete prohibition of any type of carry (concealed or open) anywhere in the state obviously did not deter the shooter at the NIU campus. And soldiers are prohibited from carrying loaded guns on military posts for self-defense. That did not, however, prevent a soldier-turned-terrorist from committing mass-murder with a handgun he was prohibited from having. This pattern of attacks in victim-disarmament zones will never change because the criminal will always have the advantage in being able to choose the time and place of the crime. The victim does not get a say in when, where, and how he or she will be murdered.
In the second place, to ban guns because some people (most notably, a very small minority) misuse them is patently absurd. Why not ban sports cars because some people speed? Or why not ban all automobiles because some people drive while intoxicated? Because some people are thieves, maybe we should lock up everybody. The logic of the preceding suggestions is no different than the rationale for gun control.
"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding." ---Jeff Snyder
If progressives were sincere in their desire to reduce the number of violent crimes that involve the use of guns, they would support any approach that has been proven to achieve that result. Incarceration is logically supportable, simply from the fact that if a criminal is locked up, he is incapable of preying upon civilized society. (Of course, it goes without saying that he can still victimize his fellow inmates, but it is highly unlikely he will be able to obtain a firearm to further his goals.) However, with their endemic inability to objectively differentiate between good and evil, liberals find that locking up predatory felons for long periods of time is excessively cruel and unjust.
Gun control is about controlling the citizenry. Logically, this can be its only rational purpose. By definition, only the law-abiding actually abide by the law. Therefore, the legislators passed a law restricting the possession or use of a firearm under one of the three following premises: either 1) they passed it assuming it will be disobeyed by everyone, or 2) they passed it expecting it to be obeyed by everyone, or 3) they passed it knowing it would be obeyed only by the law-abiding and ignored by the criminals. The first assumption would be an exercise in folly, since to pass a law that no one obeys undermines respect for the law and the legitimacy of government. For the government to willingly and knowingly engage in such blatantly self-destructive behavior is very unlikely. The second expectation would also be equally foolish since it would require nothing short of inspired wisdom and divine intervention to compose a law so perfect in its from and function as to immediately inspire even the most incorrigible miscreants with the necessity of unwavering compliance. It is only the third assumption which is even remotely realistic in its expectations. In fact, original gun-control laws were enacted in order to keep blacks and other minorities in check.
The prohibition on practical self-defense accomplishes several progressive goals. First, it serves to make the average citizen fully dependent upon the state for protection, particularly when the criminal is faster, stronger, or numerically superior. This is particularly true for potential victims that are elderly, infirm, or weaker than their attacker. Second, it makes leftists feel good about themselves for sticking up for the downtrodden and misunderstood criminal element which they view as merely victims of an unjust society. If you think this is not true, ask yourself why leftists (particularly so-called ‘feminists’) express less outrage at the idea of a woman being violently raped and murdered than they do at the idea that that female might actually use a handgun to kill her rapist. And, last, but not least, it allows the agents of an ever larger, less representative, and more oppressive government advance their agenda without fear of reprisal or armed resistance. If you think this last statement sounds paranoid, please review some of the actions of the thugs in blue in post-Katrina New Orleans.
The words of those who founded this nation illustrate a true understanding of the place of the citizen in the political spectrum. “A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.” By modern progressive standards, these are the words of a dangerous radical. The man who spoke those words is obviously the kind of right-wing lunatic who would go to war against his own long-established government and even kill the agents of that government. That radical was George Washington, and those words were delivered in a speech he gave on January 7, 1790, as reported a week later in the “Boston Independent Chronicle”. Note that when he gave the speech, he was the government, serving as the President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Had he uttered such words today, Mr. Washington would find himself on one or more DHS lists.
Washington’s words hit at the heart of the matter. The real reason for the right to keep and bear arms is defense of the person and liberty of the individual against all who would pose a threat, particularly the government. The history of the last 100 years is a history of people being killed by their own governments. The greatest threat to your life and your liberty comes from your own government. In nearly every single case (as the chart in the previous link illustrates) before being exterminated, the population was disarmed by being forced to register their guns. It is endemic of the leftist tendency to talk out of both sides of their mouths that liberals refer to such statements as "right-wing paranoia". Progressives do not believe in American exceptionalism (labeling such a belief as xenophobic or jingoistic), and they even denounce America as "evil," "racist," and "oppressive," yet they also claim (when the right to bear arms is mentioned as a measure to stop a genocidal government) that "it could never happen here."
That defense against the government is a primary reason for the right to bear arms is further proven by the endless clamoring to ban so-called “assault-weapons”. Semiautomatic rifles (i.e. “assault weapons”) have been around and available to the general public for over a century. In fact, prior to the 1934 National Firearms Act, even full-automatic weapons (i.e. machineguns) were completely unregulated by the government. Today, most states still allow private citizens to own and shoot machineguns, so long as all Federal NFA rules are obeyed. So why doesn’t the government see privately owned machineguns as a threat? It is because private machineguns are very rare due to being extremely heavily regulated and almost prohibitively expensive, with prices running into the tens of thousands of dollars or more. Semiautomatic firearms, by contrast, are far more affordable and are very popular with collectors, hunters, and shooters, yet they can still be highly effective in a paramilitary application, even against more advanced weaponry.
Regardless of whether it manifests itself as a registration scheme or as an outright ban on certain types of guns, the fact remains that "gun-control" = "citizen-control". So, if you want “reasonable” gun control, the question you have to ask yourself is “how much arbitrary government control over your life is ‘reasonable’?”
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