The staggering myths about gun control

When I'm feeling a little down, or bored, I know I can always get a quick "Pick Me Up" by reading SALON!

I'm coming down from the Independence Day Frenzy, so I'm grateful for this innervating article from Salon:  I'm ready to wrestle grizzly bears!
But I'll have to settle for the pathetic liars who appear on my computer screen.

“A uniquely American tragedy“: The staggering myths about gun control - Salon.com:
(July 02, 2016)

The issue of guns in America causes people in other parts of the developed world to look at our country and shake their heads. They just don’t get it. They don’t understand why so many Americans have such passion for their guns. They don’t understand why gun control is such a contentious issue. Most of all, they don’t understand how America can tolerate its chronic carnage of deaths and injuries from gunfire, particularly among our children and particularly after the horror of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 in which 20 first graders and six adults lost their lives. American children ages five to fourteen are eighteen times more likely to die of a gun homicide and eleven times more likely to die of a gun suicide than children in twenty-two other high-income countries.

May I say this:

"They don’t understand why gun control is such a contentious issue."

Because IT DOESN'T WORK!

In 1994 Congress imposed a Draconian Federal Assault Weapons Ban which only passed because the Republicans insisted that it would be given a ten-year trial, and if it was not found to reduce firearms crime it would be deleted.   It imposed every restrictions the Anti-Gun people could think of, and in 2004 it was deleted by the "Sunset Clause" because it only imposed upon honest gun owners and had little (sometimes a 'negative') effect on firearms crime.

The Task Force on Community Preventive Services, an independent, non-federal task force, examined an assortment of firearms laws, including the AWB, and found "insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence."^[25] A 2004 critical review of firearms research by a National Research Council committee said that an academic study of the assault weapon ban "did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence outcomes." The committee noted that the study's authors said the guns were used criminally with relative rarity before the ban and that its maximum potential effect on gun violence outcomes would be very small

In other words, it was a stupid idea then and it's still a stupid idea today ... even though a new generation of politicians have chosen to ignore history in favor of political rhetoric.

But you won't read that in the Salon article.

Instead, you'll read that the NRA STOMPED ALL OVER CONGRESS AND FORCED THEM TO BACK DOWN:

What is truly astounding is that the NRA is able to block the enactment of legislation that is spectacularly popular with the American people. Reinstating the ten-year ban on AK-47s, UZIs, and other military-style assault weapons, enacted in 1994, enjoyed the support of 78 percent of the American people, with only 16 percent opposed, when Congress, under NRA pressure, allowed it to lapse.

No, I'm not going to fisk the entire article, but may I point out that the author devotes the opening paragraph to an entirely emotional approach to "(t)he issue of guns in America"?



As if we really care what the "people in other parts of the developed world think".   You know, like Germany where they have 'immigrants' from 'developing countries' raping their wives and daughters in public swimming pools.

You see, the reason why "so many Americans have such passion for their guns" is that we think that allowing foreign freeloaders to come into our country, drink our beer and rape our women is not "The American Way".

We also don't like the part about madmen shooting up our school kids and killing our cops.

Unfortunately, as long as we (or our "we will say anything to get elected" politicians) tolerate our own "immigrants from developing countries" problems, the only thing we Americans can do is to protect our own, and those around us.

Personally, I AM a 'Single Issue Voter'.

My single issue is Civil Rights.

Mine, and yours.

I don't hold the Founding Fathers in such contempt as the writers at SALON do;  I think they were pretty smart guys.  They didn't (for example) set out a list of guns which were protected from governmental confiscation.  They just said "shall not be infringed".

After 200 years, that four-word definition has outlisted all of the thousand-page laws which Congress has tried to force upon us.  Most of those thousands of words from Congress defined what 'we the people' couldn't do, as they try to write around the original Constitutional limitations on what the GOVERNMENT can't do.

See ... that's "Civil Rights".  We have them; Government doesn't.

So when you read crap like this SALON article, that's what the intellectual prostitutes (who think we should let the Government tell us what to do) are trying to convince us; that we should let some sleazy politicians make us kowtow to their arbitrary pronouncements.

We 'cleave to our guns and our God' because we know who to trust.

And it damn sure isn't some Suits in Washington who come  'home' on holidays to 'connect with the constituents' who elected them, and spend  the rest of the year trying to campaign for the next term.

Here's the Truth About Politicians: they are in office to Enact Laws.  They don't know how to free people by passing laws.   So they pass laws to limit the Freedoms enumerated by the Constitution.

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for people who have accept that onerous duty.

But then they (or their minions) tell me I have a "bumper sticker mentality" while with the other hand they take their salary out of my Social Security check.

Someday, 'somebody' should write an article about "The Staggering Myths About Professional Politicians'.

(But nobody would read it.)