We’ll be talking about gun control for a while. There is no question that guns hold devastating power. It’s their purpose, and that purpose will sometimes be fulfilled in the form of tragedy. Still, we can’t let the heightened emotions of these tragedies pull us away from rational thought. The left wants harsh gun control, and they love to spout untrue claims in their effort to get it. Let’s debunk their favorites.
Guns Are Unregulated
A lot of liberals seem to honestly believe that you can buy military-grade weapons whenever you want with no consequence. Let’s break this down. For starters, the First Amendment was written with military-grade weaponry in mind. The founding fathers didn’t want to have a standing army because standing armies can easily overthrow governments. If there was no standing army, then they needed regular citizens to possess enough firepower to form a militia that could meet and repel foreign invasion. This didn’t just include military grade weapons; it favored them.
The second problem with this claim is that military-grade weapons have been regulated since 1934. Several updates have been added over the decades, but the premise is that anything made and sold to the military can’t be sold to civilians. This is why AR-15s are fundamentally different from M16s, even though they have similar design philosophies.
There are loopholes that allow civilians to own family heirlooms that might otherwise be banned, and a civilian can go through a stringent process to be approved to own or sell an otherwise banned firearm, but for most of us, military weapons are illegal and out of reach. Leaving individual states out of it, there are thousands of federal gun regulations already in place. We’ll talk more about their impact in a minute.
Buying Guns Is Too Easy
Next on the greatest hits list is what liberals have dubbed the “gun show loophole.” The premise is that gun shows have their own, unique set of laws that supersede all state and federal regulations. This is as bogus as it sounds. An arms dealer, whether at a gun show or not, has to follow the same set of rules that always govern them. At a store front or gun show, they won’t sell you anything they can’t, and you can expect that sale to come with a background check and the need for appropriate identification. The liberals made up the gun show loophole by deliberately misinterpreting a gun law that does exist.
A private gun sale does not require a background check or federal documentation. The reason for this is that guns are still private property. You have the same rights to sell a gun as you do to sell a car or a couch. This has nothing to do with gun shows or arms dealers, and changing that law is a can of worms that could invade further into privacy and regulation than educated liberals would admit.
Gun Control Saves Lives
Here’s the crux of it all. The liberals firmly believe that extending waiting periods, restricting the number of weapons you can own, limiting magazine sizes or banning suppressors can save lives. You could construe an argument to support any of these beliefs, but the numbers say something else.
In America, gun crime declined massively after a number of regulations were removed, most notably the assault weapon ban of the 90s. In other countries, there is a hodgepodge of results, none of which can conclusively tie gun regulation to an increase or decrease in crime. The only convincing evidence is that an outright gun confiscation and ban can often lead to a decrease in gun crime. This only works when fewer than 20 percent of citizens own firearms, and even then the only statistic that is significantly affected is suicide.
At the same time, decrease in gun ownership correlates with an increase in other crime in every case studied except Japan. To summarize, fewer guns means fewer suicides, more crime in general and an overall no change in life expectancy.
It’s obvious why the left really wants incremental gun control. Every appeasement brings them one step closer to completely disarming their political opponents. We already accept it as fact that we shouldn’t own machine guns or military weapons that the founding fathers believed were essential to defending a free nation.
If we keep conceding, eventually we will be weak enough that they can abandon their democratic principles and start the socialist revolution they truly want. Don’t be deceived; these two issues are closely intertwined. It is only your cache of weapons that keeps them contained to the political arena and off the streets. Even that effect is waning.
~ American Liberty Report
