“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” So said Plato, some 400 years before the birth of Christ. It is wisdom we should pay close attention to, for it seems that the latest mass shooting in Connecticut will lead to a major federal gun grab.
A new proposal initiated by Senator Dianne Feinstein will be the most wide-ranging gun ban in American history. It will outlaw 120 types of weapons, including some handguns, and will require gun owners to be fingerprinted and their guns registered with the ATF. The feds will also be able to determine who can have guns and who can’t, a “no buy” list similar to the TSA’s “no fly” list. Private gun sales between individuals and a ban on gun shows are also in the works.
Aside from the sheer unconstitutionality of any gun control legislation, numerous studies indicate that the previous federal gun ban did not reduce violence, mainly because “assault” weapons are very rarely used in a crime.
But facts do not stop the wacko left from its typical knee-jerk reaction to tragedies involving firearms. And that reaction should not stop us from defending our God-given right, protected by the Constitution, to own and carry guns. That absolute right, enshrined in the Second Amendment, is not a collective right to organize a militia but a personal right for self-defense and the defense of every FREE STATE.
The original language of the Second Amendment read “free country” but was changed to “free state” because the Founders believed the national government could become tyrannical and might oppress the individual states, or worse, make war on them, much like Lincoln did in 1861. The intent of the amendment is very obvious if one will only look at historical facts and not the ridiculous opinions of those on the left.
But the Founders would not have included an assault rifle, the left argues, which is another truly absurd argument. For one, Americans of that era could not have conceived of any future weapons and certainly did not waste their time thinking about what might be. Also, the musket rifles they had were the best, and most lethal, individual weapons of the day, equal to what the British army had, as well as the American army. The idea behind the Second Amendment was to allow the people to have the same weapons that the government has. Period.
Can you imagine our society without guns? Totalitarian regimes, which disarm their citizenry, were responsible for mass “democide,” the killing of citizens by their own government, throughout the 20th century. According to R. J. Rummel in his book “Death By Government,” there were more than 262 million victims of this type of genocide within the last century. And all of them were powerless to fight back.
Gun rights will keep our nation from becoming a total dictatorship. As Noah Webster once said, “The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed.”
But that does not keep the government from enacting anti-gun legislation for our supposed benefit. Believing that the control of guns will control crime, our benevolent representatives are willing to scrap the Constitution and grab our guns to keep us safe, as well as create more “gun free zones” that only give a would-be murderer free reign against the defenseless masses.
This policy has never worked, not here or anywhere in the world. Guns are illegal in Mexico and, as a result, dangerous and violent drug gangs have murdered 50,000 people in the last few years. Britain has a gun ban and their violent crime soared after its enactment, no matter what Piers Morgan says.
Yet in the United States, violent crime has dropped by more than 15 percent since 2007, the lowest it has been in 40 years, as gun ownership and conceal-carry permits have skyrocketed. This is not a coincidence; it is a fact.
But our leaders do not play by the same rules. President Obama has armed guards surrounding him. On Inauguration Day, he will be protected by the Secret Service and more than 11,000 troops with assault rifles. His daughters attend a private school that has nearly a dozen armed guards.
Obama joked recently in an interview with Barbara Walters that “one of the main incentives for running again was continuing Secret Service protection to have men with guns around at all times” for his daughters. Well what about our daughters? Are we not allowed to protect them?
Obama crony Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, where strict gun control produces 500 murders a year, sends his kids to a private school that also has armed guards, yet he criticized the NRA’s plan calling for more armed guards in American schools.
Why is it that they don’t want us to be protected? Budget cuts are forcing the early release of violent offenders every day, making our streets much more dangerous. The problem with gun control is that it simply does not work. The answer is not more gun laws but more guns in the hands of good people.
This column appeared in the Laurel Leader Call (Laurel, MS) on Tuesday, January 8, 2013.
Ryan S. Walters 
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