In light of the fact that the “progressive” left is constantly demanding more and more gun control laws, it is necessary to bring to light a few points that the anti-gun folks don’t want to hear.
First of all, when liberals claim that there is a need for “common sense gun control legislation” what they really mean is that they would like to repeal the Second Amendment; pass laws which prohibit the production, sale, possession, and ownership of all firearms; and confiscate firearms not only from criminals but from law-abiding citizens as well via a mandatory buyback/confiscation. Gun owners have known this for a very long time. Anti-gun liberals have known it too but only recently have they become bold enough to actually come out and admit it. Barrack Obama once stated that if the United States would pass gun control laws like Australia, we wouldn’t have these mass shootings. The gun law to which Obama was referring is a mandatory buy back of guns from law-abiding citizens. After Australia’s law went into effect, those who refused “sell” their guns to the government simply had their firearms confiscated. Hillary Clinton, when asked recently about Australia’s mandatory buy back, stated that it would be worth looking into. A letter published by the Knoxville News-Sentinel last week claimed the Second Amendment was no longer necessary and that it should be repealed. Confiscation – this is what the “progressive” left really wants.
Secondly, anti-gun folks justify their opposition to firearms by lamenting the unnecessary loss of life caused by mass shootings as if somehow liberals have some sort of special respect for the sanctity of human life that the rest of us don’t have. Hillary Clinton, during a Democratic presidential debate expressed her outrage over the unnecessary loss of life by telling us how ninety people each day die due to gun violence.
Here are the facts: According to the Center for Disease Control, cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including nearly 42,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. That comes to 1,315 deaths per day. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that nearly 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making it the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. In 2013, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities accounted for 10,076 deaths (30.8 percent of overall driving fatalities). Alcohol causes 241 deaths per day. Firearm-related deaths account for approximately 34,000 deaths per year. About sixty percent of those deaths are suicides. Hillary was right: gun deaths do run about 90 per day (93 actually).
Since cigarettes and alcohol are totally unnecessary and since these two substances cause way more loss of life than do firearms, one would think the anti-gun left, which is supposedly so concerned about safety and the pointless, unjustified loss of life from gun violence would be even more outraged over all these alcohol and tobacco deaths. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
So where are the demands for background checks for alcohol and tobacco? Why do we not hear demands for common sense alcohol and tobacco legislation? They might argue that users of tobacco and alcohol cause their own suffering when they choose to use these poisons, and that this is the reason why there hasn’t been a major push to outlaw them. Tell that to the families of the 42,000 annual victims of second-hand smoke and the families of the 10,000 people who are killed each year because of alcohol-impaired driving
Also, if liberals are so concerned about preserving human life, why have they not joined the fight to outlaw the practice of third-trimester, late term abortion which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, accounts for about 11,000 lost lives each year and is nothing short of baby murder? The reality is that they have fought tooth and nail to make sure that this barbaric slaughter of babies remains legal.
In the October 29 Oped section of the News-Sentinel columnist Jonathan Zimmerman stated that liberal opposition to firearms is not about safety and preserving life at all. Zimmerman believes their opposition is more about defending and promoting an ideology. He is correct on both points. Progressive selective outrage on this issue compared to other life-threatening issues proves his point. Zimmerman, however, does not elaborate on what he means by the word “ideology.” So, if saving lives is not the motivation behind the left’s attempts to rid this nation of guns, then what exactly is their motivation? What is their ideology to which Zimmerman referred?
Liberals believe the world is supposed to be like John Lennon described it in his song “Imagine.” It offends them greatly that it is not. They want a religion-free, national-borders-free, Socialist utopia in which no one is allowed to own anything (presumably the collective “state” would have control of all possessions) and we all submit to the philosophy of a peaceful brotherhood of man which requires a sharing of all resources.
There are three obstacles to this liberal dream: the existence of the human ego which will always be with us, the refusal on the part of individuals to simply exist as a pawn of the state for the betterment of the collective, and the existence of uncivilized, Middle-Eastern savages who are intent on killing those who refuse to accept their way of life – the infidels. The world has never been, is not now, and will never be the way John Lennon imagined it should be. That is simply reality whether the self-described “progressives” want to hear it or not. The Lennonian utopia is a silly myth concocted by a naive dreamer who incorrectly believed that humans are essentially good.
The existence of firearms, police forces, and militaries is a slap in the face to those who subscribe to this nonsense and refuse to accept reality. So on they fight, trying their best to remove any reminders that the conservative view of the world is reality – despite their wishes and best efforts to make it otherwise.
Removing firearms from a society will not change human nature and make people essentially good.
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