Guns, facts, and the Founding Fathers

Home Opinion Guns, facts, and the Founding Fathers

The war against guns is back. Predictably, gun control advocates are channeling the anger and frustration of Americans into an opportunity to promote their underlying agenda – get rid of all guns. Instead of focusing on the inadequate mental health laws that allow psychopaths like the perpetrator of the Newtown massacre to roam our streets freely, they strive to eviscerate the Second Amendment. Public officials in Washington such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who proposed a ban on all assault weapons recently, are trying to enact legislation that would effectively inhibit the constitutionally-protected right of Americans to defend themselves.

The war over guns is a war of feelings versus facts. And the gun control activists have made their emotional case. Let’s take a look at a few facts.

According to crime statistics released by the FBI, 496 people were murdered with hammers or other blunt object in 2011, while 323 murders carried out that year were committed with a rifle. Knives and other cutting instruments contributed to 1,694 murders, and personal weapons (hands, feet, etc.) caused 726 deaths. From 2005-2009, blunt objects helped murder more people than shotguns. These facts highlight a predominant theme: guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

So, if stricter gun laws are intended to prevent homicides, then logic dictates that there should be stricter legislation on knives, hammers, and even the use of one’s own hands and feet. Just imagine the lobbying campaigns that would follow.

Apply the left’s logic and we would need to see hammer control legislation put in place to limit the number of deaths caused by hammers. Those who wish to own knives would have to go through an extensive licensing process to limit the amount of knives we have on our streets. Movies and video games showing gratuitous usage of hands and feet would come under scrutiny for causing others to commit crimes with their appendages. The idea is completely absurd, and has no logical limit. We cannot ban human nature.

The gun controllers, however, are more than simply logic twisters; they consider themselves experts on the U. S. Constitution. Many of them are up in arms about the supposed Republican “re-interpretation” of the Second Amendment. Writer for The New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin in a recent article attacked the “conservative re-casting of the Second Amendment.” Toobin should read recent Supreme Court decisions upholding the right to bear arms.

Liberals and conservatives can play the “I know my Constitution better than you” game all they want, but why not look at what the Founding Fathers had to say about guns? The Founders, so frequently accused of being shortsighted and unable to fathom today’s problems, knew precisely what they intended.

James Madison, who was responsible for the wording of the Second Amendment, said that “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed … unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them.”

Think that getting guns off the street will deter violent criminals? Well, Thomas Jefferson would disagree with you. He said that “the laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…”

According to Samuel Adams, “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” Perhaps he sensed that such an infringement could come to the forefront of political life, and 200 years later, it has.

So while gun control activists rely on emotion to make their claims, those who defend the Second Amendment right to bear arms have facts, logic, and the Founding Fathers on their side.

Talk about bringing out the big guns.