Mom to child: "Why is there a hole in the middle of our yard?"
Child: "The shovel did it!"
Mom to Dad: "We must get rid of all the shovels!"
That sums up the left's argument on guns - actually not all guns (yet), but for any gun that looks like a "weapon of war" (even though the guns used in WWI, WWII and Korea look a lot like today's hunting rifles).
The AR-15 isn't selected by criminals because it is especially deadly as the left wants people to believe, it is because it is popular and plentiful. By a substantial percentage, more murders are committed using handguns than long guns of any type and even hands, fists, and feet outstrip long guns when it comes to killing tools.
That hole that didn't dig itself, the shovel didn't do it without a person on the sweaty end of the handle.
The same is true for all firearms. They didn't kill on their own, there was a human in control.
"Ban the weapons of war!" scream the ignorant, those comfortably smug and willfully blind to the reality that it isn't the firearm. That was proven in Biden's vaunted "Assault Weapons" ban of 1994-2004. The DOJ did a study and found out that while gun violence using the banned weapons did go down, overall gun crime did not.
Why?
People intent on using firearms to do violence just shifted to another type of weapon.
Same happened in the UK and Australia, countries often used to support the gun banners argument. Crime didn't go down in any of these countries, the criminals just shifted to knives, or other tools.
The UK has even instituted knife bans and regulates what types of knives the general public may buy and possess. Actually, the UK is experiencing an upswing in gun crime even though most guns are banned.
The homicide rate in Australia is going up. The most common cause of death for homicide victims was a stab wound: this accounted for 37% of deaths. This was followed by blunt force (19%) and gunshot wounds (13%). Other causes of death included strangulation, shaking, burns and poisoning.
The point is that it is the person, not the tool that is responsible for the killing.
I have never had the urge to kill someone. I've thankfully been in a relatively few hairy situations over my lifetime, only one when I was armed, and I never wanted to kill anyone then - I just wanted to protect my family and myself.
But the fact is that at any moment today, I could kill any number of people in any number of ways with any number of weapons - a gun, my truck, a hammer, a rock, a knife, any number of tools at my disposal. As I sit at my desk writing this, I can count a dozen implements in my office that could be used to kill.
What stops me?
I self-govern. Due to the values of my upbringing, largely based on Christian principles, I adopted and live by a moral code that prevents wanton killing. I can self-govern. I am slow to anger and am always in control of myself, cognizant of my responsibilities to my wife, my children, my friends and the public in general.
Whether it is a lack of respect for authority, reduced inhibition as a result of drink or drugs, a lack of self-restraint, anger, revenge, sending some sort of "message", some sort of psychopathy, or just a complete lack of morality, an individual or group can decide that human life has no worth (including their own) and will kill others, often innocents that have no relationship to the perpetrator.
The reasons are as varied as the murderers and the tools they choose. History proves when one tool is removed, those intent on killing shift to another one - and when that one is banned, they find yet another.
Setting aside firearms for a moment, we see this breakdown on airplanes, in airports, in restaurants, in schools and in public spaces where people just attack other people for any reason - or no reason at all. Banning an AR-15 will do nothing to a random person pushing someone in front of a bus or a train or preventing someone from crawling through a drive-thru window because they didn't get enough sauce for their Chicken McNuggets.
What is missing is morality - more specifically, the morality of Western Civilization (which is Judeo-Christian in nature) and the ability to self-govern based on that morality.
Our legal system is breaking down - mostly by design. Whether it is the judicial system pursuing some irrational notion of "equity", federal prosecutors out to get their political enemies, or an executive branch uninterested in laws inconvenient to their agenda, there is a broken window/turnstile effect going on. Refusal to prosecute the little broken laws eventually leads to a casual disrespect for more significant laws.
When the ability to self-govern breaks down, no law is effective and we are back to a reliance on individuals defending themselves and fortifying our vulnerable institutions, like schools, to compensate for those who can't control themselves.
That asymmetric, random risk of running into someone who does not respect my life is why I am armed every day now. What once was a response to potentially dangerous situations has now become a daily habit.
I wish that weren't true, but it was not my choice. That choice was made for me by people hell bent on destroying American society and its traditional respect for law and order in pursuit of a political agenda.
Michael - I have done research on death stats by guns, though it was a few years ago. At that time about 70-90 thousand deaths were occurring on a yearly basis in the US. Now let me break it down a bit further:
- 71% was from suicide
-18% was gang related
- remaining % included all others - homicides, accidental, others
BUT there was a surprise stat listed that absolutely no political party member had mentioned until last year, and that was how many crimes/deaths were prevented because of a good guy with a gun. I was surprised to learn this stat, a stat that had been known for many, many years and yet it was not mentioned. That stat, according to the FBI data was at that time 1.5 million crimes were prevented because of a good guy with a gun. Further the FBI stated that they believed that this stat could be as high as 3 million crimes prevented because the FBI believes that only about 1/2 of these incidences are reported.
You know darn well that the political agenda would not ever entertain mentioning this stat as it proves the need for the American people to be able to protect themselves.
This argument of gun control and the need for more laws, for which it has been determine there are already over 250 laws affecting everything from gun production, sales, use, and crimes, is nothing more than an agenda being pushed to take away all firearms and then we will be in a far worse situation as citizens.
My 2 cents.
I remember being amazed at FBI stats some years back that more people were murdered with a hammer than a long rifle. Clearly the AR-15 could be used as a hammer and should therefore be banned!