Repeat After Me: Gun Control is NOT the Answer

by: Matt Vespa

The tragedy in Newton, CT should shake us all to our very core.  Of the 26 who were killed yesterday, 20 of them were children. It's evil.  It's grotesque.  And I'm sure many mothers and fathers were holding their children a little tighter last night.  Sadly, for twenty families, that will no longer be possible.  Our thoughts and prayers should go out to everyone, especially to the brave teachers who sacrificed their lives to save their students. One teacher, Vicki Soto, shielded her students from the gunfire – and made the ultimate sacrifice. Recently, the police released the full list of the deceased:

Charlotte Bacon, 6

Daniel Barden, 7

Rachel Davino, 29

Olivia Engel, 6

Josephine Gay, 7

Ana Marquez-Greene, 6

Dylan Hockley, 6

Dawn Hocksprung, 47

Madeline Hsu, 6

Catherine Hubbard, 6

Chase Kowalski, 7

Jesse Lewis, 6

James Mattioli, 6

Grace McDonnell, 7

Anne Marie Murphy, 52

Emilie Parker, 6

Jack Pinto, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Avielle Richman, 6

Lauren Russeau, 30

Mary Sherlach, 56

Victoria Soto, 27

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Allison Wyatt, 6

Details are still being released about the shooter, Adam Lanza, but you have to be one mentally disturbed individual to kill your own mother, take her guns, and proceed to murder twenty children. These kids were no older than ten.  What would possess someone to commit such an egregious act of depravity?  We shall find out soon enough.  However, while decent Americans mourn the loss that has devastated an entire community, the liberals in this country have seized on another tragedy to further their agenda.

Yes, the Hollywood Left, to show that they aren't a bunch of detached narcissists, called for more gun control over Twitter – with Cher eloquently telling the NRA to F**k Off.  Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Co), and Mark Kelly, husband of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, have all called for tighter gun regulations.  After all, we know that criminals and those who are mentally disturbed follow tighter gun regulations religiously.  Welcome to liberal logic 101.  If you find it abjectly stupid, you're not the only one.

I'm starting to see liberals as core-less and depraved beings.  Sustained and guided solely by emotion – and not fact – they’re right behind their Hollywood allies in the call for more gun control.  Are liberals happy that this atrocious act occurred?  I don't know. But if the narrative changes in this country in favor of more gun control, then this could be a turning point.  Hence, a good thing for American liberalism – and the media is making it all the more easier for progressives to make their point. Some are already seeing this event as a 'tipping point.' As Breitbart contributor Warner Todd Huston wrote on December 15, the media has been consistently flawed in their coverage.

...from the beginning, the murderer was reported as having strode through the school with a .223-caliber rifle, often referred to by the media here as an "assault weapon." This also turned out to be untrue. In fact, he only had handguns with him in the school, not any "assault rifle." He did have a rifle but it was reportedly left in his car and not carried into the school.

Many media outlets reported that the school principal, and a victim of the murderer, was the one that let the shooter into the building. But it turned out that the killer broke glassto gain access to the school. He wasn't buzzed-in by the principal as was reported and there is no evidence he was recognized by anyone working at the school and allowed in as a result.

Lanza is also being said to have been wearing "combat gear." What does this even mean? Some reports say it was a black shirt, or maybe some sort of vest and "possibly a mask." Is a black shirt somehow automatically "combat gear," now? This "combat gear" claim, though universally picked up by the Old Media as a description of Lanza's appearance, is meaningless without any actual listing of that "gear." What does "combat gear" even mean, here? We have no idea. But it sure sounds menacing, eh? Quite emotional. Whatever he was actually wearing, this descriptive term was used before any hard facts were known.

The killer's mother was also reported to have been a teacher at the school and found dead on the premises. That also turned out to be untrue. The killer's mother was found dead in her home and it appears she was not connected to the school. Her name does not appear on the school's list of teachers. She may have been a substitute teacher, but even that isn't clear. But the Old Media definitively reported that she was a teacher and was killed inside the school.

Some reporters are calling the killer's mother an "avid gun collector." There is no basis for this label. It is an emotional phrase meant to make the deceased mother into some "gun nut." In truth there is no public knowledge about how many guns she owned and whether or not she considered herself a "collector." She may have been, of course, but we just don't have any knowledge to say so.

On the blogosphere, it wasn't much better.

As conservatives on Twitter and Facebook urged all of us to come together and pray for the victims, liberals were already launching salvos.  The Huffington Post was dominated with pro-gun control posts.  Jezebel was much more tasteful with their featured 'F**k You, Guns' column.

Whether it's done in a sarcastic tone or not – I tend to disregard 99% of the material on these abysmal sites anyway – Katie J.M. Baker, who wrote the 'F**k you Guns post, closed by saying:

F**k you, NRA. You guys are f**king murderers.

Today, we don't need prayers. We don't need thoughts. We need action. We need to politicize this, and we need to politicize this now. Fuck everyone who isn't ready to talk about gun control. You're the reason 27 people (and counting) died today. Don't forget it.

Well, liberals are the ones who booed 'God' during the Democratic National Convention last summer.  So, no surprise to their aversion to prayer.  The key sentence is 'we need to politicize this.'  I don't remember the twenty-six who were killed ever signing up to be part of the left's campaign to curb liberty and stomp all over the Constitution.  In addition, to slander/libel people who are proud members of the NRA, such as myself, and those who aren't pro-gun control, as complicit in mass murder is the reason why your argument fails.

People don't like to be yelled at, but that's what liberals have been relegated to do since the facts aren't on their side.  More amusingly, the most recent comments on that post were from pro-Second Amendment individuals, or people who saw this tragedy as part of a larger problem. Lastly, since Jezebel is a women's site, it doesn't help them dispel the sexist attitudes towards female's monthly cycles by writing 'f**k you' posts, but I digress. Still, some liberals are convinced that gun control works.

CNN host Piers Morgan, a British citizen, had the temerity to give his opinion about guns in America saying, "there are nearly 12,000 murders a year from guns in this country... when are you guys going to focus on that, and stop telling me the answer is more guns? It is not the answer! How many more kids have to die, before you guys say, 'we want less guns, not more?"

However, the UK has strict gun control laws – and they're drowning in their own blood.  Back in 2009, The Daily Mail reported:

the latest Government figures show [at the time] that the total number of firearm offenses in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year  -  a rise of 89 per cent. In some parts of the country, the number of offenses has increased more than five-fold.

In eighteen police areas, gun crime at least doubled.  The statistic will fuel fears that the police are struggling to contain gang-related violence, in which the carrying of a firearm has become increasingly common place.  Last week, police in London revealed they had begun carrying out armed patrols on some streets.  The move means officers armed with sub-machine guns are engaged in routine policing for the first time.

The UK has abjectly failed to curb gun violence.  As in the U.S., crime is perpetrated by felons, who don't live by the rule of law, and it's the law-abiding citizens who are the ones impacted by silly legislation aimed at stopping violent crime.

Townhall's Katie Pavlich also noted the UK's abysmal gun control laws – but also pointed out that since the landmark D.C. v. Heller case, which struck down the District's handgun ban, "the murder rate fell below triple digits for the first time since 1963." On the other hand, Chicago, a bastion of corruption, liberalism, and anti-gun sentiment, had 436 homicides this year, which exceeded last year's total of 435.  Let's open some champagne!

Dana Loesch, conservative activist and Breitbart editor, wrote on her blog – and gave a litany of reasons why gun control isn't the issue.

Between 2008 and 2009, the FBI’s preliminary numbers indicate that murders fell nationally by 10 percent and by about 8 percent in cities that have between 500,000 and 999,999 people. Washington’s population is about 590,000. During that same period of time, murders in the District fell by an astounding 25 percent, dropping from 186 to 140. The city only started allowing its citizens to own handguns for defense again in late 2008.

A three-year prison term for violating a gun-free zone represents a real penalty for a law-abiding citizen. Adding three years to a criminal’s sentence when he is probably already going to face multiple death penalties or life sentences for a murderous rampage is probably not going to be the penalty that stops the criminal from committing his crime.

[...]

Examining all the multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 shows that on average, states that adopt right-to-carry laws experience a 60% drop in the rates at which the attacks occur, and a 78% drop in the rates at which people are killed or injured from such attacks.

Many have argued that it is the increased availability of firearms that has led to increased gun homicides, that the use of guns in the commission of violent crimes increases the likelihood of injury and lethality, or that decreased availability reduces homicide.

Although many of these positions seem intuitively obvious and have shaped arguments for increased control and restrictions on firearm availability and access, theoverall prevalence of handgun use in the commission of all violent crimes is relatively low. A handgun was used in approximately 9 percent of all violent offenses.

Furthermore, concerning Adam Lanza, Loesch wrote that this wasn't a case of not enough gun regulation.  Conservative blogger for The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin, put it aptly on ABC's This Week in the wake of the tragic shooting in Aurora – that our nation suffers a deficit when it comes to detecting and treating people with mental illness in this country.  It's not about guns. It's about those who are mentally unstable, and the people ignoring their signs of disturbed behavior.  As Loesch noted:

what did recent shooters like Adam Lanza, Jared Lee Loughner, and James Holmes have in common? They were disturbed young men that no law could deter from their intended destruction. Why were the warning signs ignored? All of these men were clearly troubled all three were on medication. Loughner’s warning signs went ignored. We don’t yet know if Lanza’s family knew he was experiencing problems or if they witnessedwarning signs. Holmes was severely medicated and apparently abused his regimen.

Lanza could not have legally obtained the firearms he used because it is illegal in Connecticut to purchase or possess a firearm under the age of twenty-one.Lanza was twenty. You must have a permit to purchase and carry a handgun in CT and pass a background check to merit a handgun eligibility certificate. He stole his mother’s firearms. That is not a failure of gun laws, it is a failure of personal responsibility. What will more, redundant laws do when the laws already in effect fail to stop a criminal — who, by the very definition of the word, has no intention of following the law anyway? More laws for criminals to not follow?

We're a nation where guns are an integral part of our socioeconomic fabric. We're suspicious of government, which has grown exponentially over the past four years – so don't expect any significant moves towards more legislation aimed at curtailing law-abiding citizens ability to defend themselves  curbinggun violence.

It doesn't negate the fact that only 26% of Americans approve of a handgun ban, 47% of Americans own a firearm, and only 44% think guns laws should be stricter.  Recently, the U.S. Court for Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled "Illinois' total ban on carrying firearms for self-defense outside the home or business is unconstitutional." So, if the liberals – and their allies in the media – want a war, I think we should give it to them.  We'll easily retake Congress.  How's that for politicizing the issue!?

Lastly, Gun Owners of America astutely pointed out that the "CDC admits there is no evidence that gun control reduces crime. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has long been criticized for propagating questionable studies, which gun control organizations have used in defense of their cause. But after analyzing 51 studies in 2003, the CDC concluded that the 'evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of these [firearms] laws.'(9)"

So, repeat after me: gun control isn't the answer.