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Repeat after me: gun control isn’t the answer

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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 full list of the deceased were released by the police.

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 tighter gun regulations are followed religiously by criminals and those who are mentally disturbed. 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 were 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 that:

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 curbing gun 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 more strict. Recently, the U.S. Court for Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that “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!

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Matt Vespa

I'm a staunch Republican and a politics junkie who was recently the Executive Director for the Dauphin County Republican Committee in Harrisburg. Before that, I interned with the Republican Party of Pennsylvania in the summer of 2011 and Mary Pat Christie, First Lady of NJ, within the Office of the Governor of NJ in 2010. I was responsible for updating his personal contact list. My first political internship was with Tom Kean Jr's. U.S. Senate campaign in 2006.

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8 Comments

  1. No matter what the facts are, the media is the controlling factor on this issue especially since we have the Constitution destroyer in place.
    No matter what our second amendment says, I am quite sure that the POTUS will find a way to tighten controls or even confiscate what we already have.
    There is no way this side of hell that you can control everyone. If this moron did not have guns to carry out his damned acts, he would have done it with a car, with a bomb(s), with poison or any number of ways to do his dastardly deed.
    It is easy for the assholes in Hollywood who have entire private armies at their beck and call to shout for the elimination of guns as their butts are protected by the ones they hire but for the average Joe who has to deal with animals there is only one way to prevent and protect your self and families and that is with deadly force.
    The media has turned it’s back on what was once an honorable profession and have turned it into a propaganda machine for the Marxist cloud that we are being enveloped in. You will NEVER see the facts that this article presents in the MSM as this would dilute their agenda and weaken the force of their argument.

    So what can we do?
    Aside form writing everyone in Congress and flooding the MSM with threats to not buy their garbage any more, nothing. Just hang on to your butts because if the POTUS has his way, that will be the only thing you will have left anyway.

    Frankly, I am seriously considering a move to another country to watch the slow but sure deterioration of what was once a great and mighty nation.

    1. “There is no way this side of hell that you can control everyone. If this moron did not have guns to carry out his damned acts, he would have done it with a car, with a bomb(s), with poison or any number of ways to do his dastardly deed.”

      Well, he did it with guns, and the police officers on the scene said that hundreds of bullets were fired. You know, if we didn’t think that relatively easy access to lethal weapons was a bad idea, why are we so afraid of Iran getting a nuclear weapon? Oh yeah, because while “guns don’t kill people people kill people” is a great slogan for a bumper sticker the reality is that guns make it a whole lot easier to kill people. In suggesting that gun control laws should at least be discussed in the wake of this tragedy someone thought they had a real zinger and tried to throw the attack in China on my face saying that over twenty people had been murdered with a knife. Well, it must have been horrific for those people, but actually none of them (to the best of my knowledge) died. And I don’t think it was from lack of trying. You can say it is craziness all you want, and I won’t disagree with you. But a crazy person in China went on a rampage and it looks like everyone is going to walk away from it. Someone went on a rampage here and because he had guns no one did.

  2. I’m sorry, but on this site alone there are countless examples of the right politicizing a tragedy (the Benghazi attack…in some instances even showing images of his corpse) and that was for the sole purpose of stopping a political appointment. This is not the first mass shooting in this country, and it won’t be the last, and your reaction to people making the suggestion that we have run our heads into a brick wall enough times and maybe should reexamine our gun laws after, you know, a major gun related crime is somehow out of bounds. Last week it was Bob Costas, but the bodycount is a little higher, and a little more alarming. I would rather that if there be a discussion of how this happened it not be limited to the fact that Adam Lanza saw a few R-rated movies. I don’t think that would honor the victims of the tragedy or the founding fathers of this country. By the way, when you put the president of the United States in with murderers, you suggest he is one by association, and since I assume you are not brain damaged and you know he is not, I have to wonder what point you are trying to make.

    1. John, Benghazi is a cover-up of murders which were perpetrated upon U.S. citizens by our government. If you don’t see the difference here you’re a lost case. Won’t even waste the bandwidth to address your other ramblings.
      Why are you here? Did you not see the site says: Conservativedaily? We appreciate the ‘Hollaa’ but you can move on back to Huff-po or the daily kos.

      1. A whole lot of sentence construction issues there. A reader unfamiliar with the incident could come away that sentence with the idea that the government killed U.S. citizens. First, my point was not to bring up the Benghazi attacks, but to suggest that the right only has a problem with a tragedy being politicized when it makes them look bad (also, and this is something I find fascinating, the right seemed to be far angrier at the Obama administration over the attacks than they were at the attackers). Telling me you aren’t going to address what I have to say, just means you don’t have anything to say, which is good since I don’t want to hear another “it’s because there’s no more god in blah blah blah.” Also, I did see it was Conservativedaily, but I am exercising my constitutional right to express myself, and the first amendment trumps the second.

  3. I’m sorry, but it’s nonsense to suggest guns are a huge problem here in the UK. We have one of the lowest death rates in the world. We suffered a school massacre years ago, banned guns and it never happened again.
    The argument for keeping guns has been lost. Move on.

    1. Typical, some UK’er shows up to refute the facts and tells us here in America it’s not true that banning guns does not increase violence when all statistics prove otherwise. Classic and predictable. Us “move on”?
      Buzz off lefty.

  4. Excellent column Matt! You nailed the left’s hypocrisy and it true about Great Britain the no-gun country and its high crime rate: Britain had a low gun crime rate in the 50-70’s when Brits could own guns, after bans, crime escalated. in America, gun crimes have decreased every decade. Great read!

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