New Gun Ownership Study is ‘bunkum — pure fiction’
The NRA-ILA in an email writes, “Once again we owe thanks to reporter Lee Williams, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, for his willingness to expose the agenda of those who are the enemies of Freedom and the Second Amendment. On the day before Independence Day — July 4th, he released an article exposing the agenda of those who conspire against the Second Amendment.”
Below is the column by Williams which shows a recent study is “bunkum – pure fiction.”
Study: Gun control groups should undermine our ‘gun culture’ to reduce gun ownership
Posted on July 3, 2015 by Lee Williams Sarasota herald-Tribune
There’s a dangerous scientific study making the rounds, even some pro-gun websites have featured it, titled “Gun ownership and social gun culture.”
It’s bunkum — pure fiction.
It’s an insidious piece of work, written by four academics who used firearm policy information from the Brady Center and the CDC’s Injury Prevention and Control Center — two groups well known for their opposition to the Second Amendment.
The gist of the study appears to say that since gun control supporters’ long term goal is to reduce gun ownership, they ought to consider not only campaigning for gun control laws that make it more difficult to acquire or possess guns — background checks, gun registration, gun owners licensing, etc. — but focusing on policies that could undermine the social aspects of gun ownership.
To be clear, the authors say gun control groups need to undermine our “gun culture.”
The study does not describe these social aspects in much detail, but you can guarantee they mean everything from hunting, to target shooting competitions and clubs, to marksmanship training classes and gun shows.
This is not a new approach.
Since the 1980s, gun control groups have realized that once a person becomes part of the gun culture, they’re likely to become a single-issue voter focused on protecting the right to keep and bear arms.
This is why anti-gun activist groups are now pushing the lie that — even though Americans have been buying guns in unprecedented numbers — gun ownership is declining.
They hope other people will essentially say, “Well, if no one is owning guns, I guess I don’t need to own guns either, or fret about additional restrictions.”
This new tact coincides with an admission by gun control supporters that pushing for extreme restrictions — handgun bans of the 1970s, “Assault Weapon” bans of the 1980s, “cop killer” bullet legislation of the 1990s, and more recent magazine restrictions — has failed.
None of these tactics worked. In the 1970s, when they claimed more handguns would mean more crime, Americans tripled the number of handgunsthey owned in little more than a generation.
In the 1980s, gun control supporters started trying to stop states from adopting Right-to-Carry laws. But Florida ignored them, adopting its law in 1987, 32 states followed Florida’s lead, and now nearly every state has right-to-carry legislation, and the nation’s murder rate is
at an all-time low.
In 2012, the administration and its gun control supporters in Congress tried to convince Americans that support for gun control was overwhelming, and no further debate over the subject was necessary. But Americans responded by buying guns in unprecedented numbers, and
Congress rejected the President’s agenda.
The Pew Center reported in December 2014 that among nearly all demographic groups, support for gun ownership is rising and support for gun control is decreasing. Gallup showed that self-defense is the primary reason why American own guns.
The ultimate goal of the study is obvious given its use of the anti-gun Brady Campaign’s scorecard to assess the gun ownership culture in the states.
The Brady Campaign gives most states school grades of “F” or “D,” because they don’t have the myriad of gun control laws that Brady wants.
Finally, I should point out that in the 1990s, several anti-gun groups tried to funnel taxpayer money to their like-minded pals in academia — an effort thwarted by Congress.
Maybe now the four academics responsible for this little study are hoping to carve themselves a lucrative niche in the anti-gun research cottage industry.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ITSANOATHTODEFEND/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dzutlerofthepeople/
Why the Second Amendment is so important.
The Second Amendment of the Constitution is a very simple statement: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and well into the twenty-first, a portion of the population, usually the richest in the United States, have found it advantageous to disarm the public, in direct violation of the Second Amendment. From pretending the Second Amendment only applies to the National Guard, to pretending that only certain government-approved individuals may exercise that right for “safety reasons,” to any other number of arguments based in emotional fallacy, disarming portions of the population has become the goal of the elitists for their own political gain.
What is the point of disarming people? To make them victims. That’s the most insidious part about it — the government and its elitist cronies can keep their hands conspicuously clean of genocide simply by disarming the population and leaving them to be victims, while promising to “protect” them and conveniently and consistently breaking that promise.
The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting or about military service. It’s about the militia, which was, according to the Founding Fathers, “are they not ourselves?” The militia is the citizenry, armed and trained, (well-regulated — that’s what that means,) ready to respond instantly to defend the country, the state, or themselves.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t realize that the right to self-defense does not exist without the tools to perform it successfully. Yet being persuaded to give up those tools in exchange for an empty promise of protection, which can be revoked at the whim of the government, seems somehow acceptable. At what point did you approve of the government deciding when you get to be a victim?
At what point did we say, “Sure, let’s let the professionals, who must be called, must respond, and then engage a threat,” and believe that was a better idea than merely defending ourselves immediately? Were we talked into it by slick folks in the 1920s, who claimed “only gangsters needed machine guns” (leading to the National Firearms Act of 1934), or the slick folks in the 1960s who claimed that “mail order guns allow presidents to be shot” (leading to the Gun Control Act of 1968), or the slick folks in the 1990s who said, “assault weapons are for shooting children in schoolyards” (leading to the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994). In between those acts of gun control, Representative William J. Hughes of Rhode Island put the Hughes Amendment into the otherwise beneficial Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 in a failed bid to keep the law from passing. It passed, but at the cost of no new NFA firearms for civilians (while the government could continue to have all it wanted).
The Founding Fathers knew that genocides were perpetrated by governments, and that practically every genocide before, during, and since, have been technically legal because it was the governments themselves which perpetrated them.
That’s right. Technically, genocide is legal. Because they are usually perpetrated by the government and the government decides what’s legal.
The Founding Fathers came up with a way to prevent genocide—place the ultimate military power in the hands of the citizenry. Tench Coxe said it best:
“The power of the sword, say the minority…, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of Americans. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments but where, I trust in God, it will always remain, in the hands of the people.”
Tench Coxe knew that as long as arms are in the hands of the citizenry, they can never be tyrannized. Not by criminals. Not by terrorists. Not by each other. Not by a foreign power. And especially not by their own government.
We’re seeing now the abuses of power perpetrated by the government in real time. Things we said for generations “could never happen here,” are, in fact, happening. They have happened and will continue to happen. With one common thread: The victims are all legally disarmed by a well-meaning government under the false pretense of “safety.”
How safe are we when the government collects our arms for “safety” then withdraws to leave us defenseless to looters, as they did after Hurricane Katrina in 2005? How safe are people today in Baltimore when the police decide to no longer do their jobs effectively, leaving a legally disarmed public to fend for themselves? You see the news. You see the murder rates.
In every place in the United States where the Second Amendment is infringed, violent crime is higher and honest citizens are victimized, both by the criminal element and by the government itself. We see abuses by police as commonplace when the citizenry has no direct recourse. In contrast, when the citizenry is armed, governance is more consent-oriented than force-oriented. A sufficient force of armed citizens may effectively resist tyrannical law created by politicians who bear no consequence for being tyrants since the guardians of the public take the brunt of the public’s ire.
Disarming us isn’t the answer. It never was. It never will be. The Second Amendment exists for a reason — to require the government to retain the consent of the governed. When the government wants to do things that the public wouldn’t consent to, the government disarms the public so the tyranny may begin.
My friends, the tyranny has begun. Look at our cities in flames. Look at the riots and murder in locations controlled by elitist Democrats and their gun control policies, trying desperately to proffer any explanation other than their systematic abuse of the populace under the guise of ‘safety.’
We must end this selective victimization by the government. The Second Amendment is clear:
A well-regulated militia: A well trained, well-disciplined citizenry, be it one or all, armed and ready to defend against tyranny at any level.
Being necessary to the security of a free state: A standing army answers to the government, whereas a militia decides who to answer to. Therefore a Militia is the purest form of self-governance in existence. When the Militia stands behind the government and consents to be governed, there is liberty. When the government stands against the Militia, the Militia may express their dissent through force of arms and not merely organized begging, which can be safely ignored when the Militia is disarmed.
It is unsafe and unAmerican to disarm the Militia. The Militia is me and you, all of us, governed by consent, not coercion.
The Right of the People: That is a God-given, inalienable right, not something the government should ever be given the power to take away or selectively regulate for ANY reason.
Shall Not Be Infringed: Shall not be regulated or limited in any way. The moment a “reasonable” restriction is placed, the government can create further restrictions simply by redefining “reasonable.”
A complicit mainstream media bombards us with lies to the point where we become accustomed to them. What we thought was absolutely unacceptable and absurd thirty years ago has become commonplace,
and that is the true danger of the infringement upon the Second Amendment. We ourselves have accepted the infringements as “reasonable” when they are anything but.
The following Federal laws need to be repealed: The National Firearms Act of 1934, classifying certain kinds of firearms as “more dangerous” than others; the Gun Control Act of 1968, which required marking and documentation requirements ostensibly for “crime fighting” purposes but in reality have solved few, if any, crimes and have infringed upon the rights of the citizenry; the underhanded Hughes Amendment of the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, which, for the first time in history, made a specific kind of firearm illegal and created an artificial scarcity and price inflation as supply dwindled and demand continued to rise; and finally, the last shreds of the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which did not sunset in 2004 as planned, which outlawed a specific kind of firearm based upon a completely fabricated definition.
Further, the federal agency charged with enforcing those laws, along with creating administrative rulings they can then enforce as law, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives should be defunded and disbanded.
To lump firearms in with the vices of Alcohol and Tobacco is another insult to the Second Amendment in and of itself. To equate a right with a vice is an insidious way to begin the process of villianizing self-defense and attempting (nearly successfully) to present defense as the bailiwick of the government and no longer the people themselves.
The Second Amendment has been under attack for almost a hundred years. It’s time to halt that attack. It’s time to strip away the threats to liberty forced upon the citizenry in the form of Federal Law and lawless Federal Agencies which make their own enforceable rules.
Defund the BATFE. Repeal the NFA of 1934, the GCA of 1968, and the Hughes Amendment of the FOPA of 1986, as well as the final clauses of the 1994 AWB.
Because the Second Amendment is your heritage. It is my heritage. It is the final option for every citizen to say no to tyranny. I am your voice. I will stand up for our rights. Not just mine, or yours, but ours. Together. As Americans. Together will will reclaim our birthright and just say NO to tyranny.