When a disease breaks out, we analyze data to find a cure. When a natural disaster strikes, we analyze data to determine how to better prepare for such future disasters. But what do we do when a mass shooting happens? That’s when we disregard any meaningful data, propose baseless solutions simply because they fit our political agenda, and smear everyone with different solutions as evil bigots who want children to die.
We hear pleas for an open and honest discussion on gun violence in America: something the Republican Party, the NRA, and lawful gun owners sincerely desire. For an honest conversation on this topic, we must rely on facts and reason. Facts and reason indicate that gun control is a terrible idea. From the 141% increase in annual homicide in just sixteen years following a Washington, DC gun ban, to an 89% spike in gun crime in the ten years following the gun ban in Britain, the evidence is not on the side for gun control. Even in the case of Australia, which instituted a gun buyback so commonly praised by the left, a 2008 study from the University of Melbourne concluded that Australia's gun buyback had no effect on the gun homicide rate; the national homicide rate was already declining prior to this gun control measure. But this evidence is not shown, because instead of featuring highly qualified gun control experts and crime researchers, the mainstream media instead gives airtime to news anchors with absolutely no knowledge about guns, musicians and movie stars who have armed guards protecting them wherever they go, and traumatized seventeen-year-old high school students.
The Democratic Party and the mainstream media do not want a real conversation. Colion Noir, an NRA commentator and attorney with eleven years of gun advocacy experience, says, “on every issue in this country, we strive to find the most knowledgeable people we can find on the topic, but when it comes to guns, it’s like we pride ourselves on finding the ‘smartest’ dumbasses to talk about guns, and then have the audacity to call it common sense.” Common sense tells us to base our laws on factual data and logic. The data discovered by the Center for Disease Control under President Obama showed that guns are used defensively anywhere “from about 500,000 to more than 3 million” times per year in the US. In contrast to this, according to left-leaning research institute Everytown, there are an average of thirteen thousand gun homicides every year in America. Even if we take the statistics most favorable for gun control advocates, guns save at least thirty-eight times more lives than they spare each year. The passage of gun control legislation and gun-free zone laws only affect one group of people: the law-abiding. We base our gun control laws on the false premise that the same people willing to break the law to kill people will somehow follow laws telling them where and how to do so. Like sheep among wolves, we leave the law-abiding citizens defenseless against criminals who will go to any measures to cause harm.
These facts I’ve already presented clearly establish that gun control is in no way the clear answer to preventing gun violence. Yet, even if the data didn’t line up, and even if it wasn’t as clear that guns deter more crimes than they foster, that would not change the fact that you and I have an inherent right to defend ourselves and our families. There is no right more precious and fundamental than the right to life, and the best protection against a bad guy with a gun who threatens the lives of others is a good guy with an equally powerful gun in his hand. Guns serve as great equalizers. One’s size, strength, and weight are no longer of importance when armed with a firearm. How is a frail elderly man able to fend off a strong young burglar? With a gun. How is a young woman able to fend off a violent male rapist? With a gun. How is a citizenry able to fend off a tyrannical government? You guessed it: with guns.
Look no further than the twentieth century for why we need the right to bear arms. Too many times we have seen governments claim to be the only necessary protector of the people and take away their guns, only to then turn back around and use their monopoly of force against the people in horrible ways. In fact, gun control is nearly always the first measure governments enact before they begin to strip the citizenry of its natural rights. It’s why over 100 million people were killed under tyrannical communist regimes in the twentieth century, and it’s why six million Jews were exterminated under Hitler.
Despite all of this, it is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare gun advocates to Nazis. It is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare Second Amendment supporters to terrorists. It is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare gun owning Republicans to segregationists. In a recent panel about a new Disney movie, Oprah compared the gun control movement to the Civil Rights movement. She is right; there are extraordinary connections between gun rights and racial issues throughout American history. However, gun control advocates of yesteryear were not on the side she would have expected. The first US gun control measure in 1640 was not enacted to stop school shootings. Rather, it was a Virginia law that prohibited blacks from owning guns. Until the mid-twentieth century, gun control in the US was used almost exclusively to disarm African-Americans and other minorities. The right to keep and bear arms was actually a fundamental force behind the Dred Scott decision; the Chief Justice of the case said that acknowledging the citizenship of blacks “would give them the full liberty to keep and carry arms wherever they went,” and thus the court ruled that blacks were not citizens. After the Confederates surrendered in 1865, one of the very first things the southerners did was round up all the guns from freed blacks. As Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire said, “gun control has been the single most important tool of white supremacists for centuries.”
What was the NRA doing then? The organization was founded in 1871 by Union soldiers who fought to free the slaves. As blacks continued to be disarmed for the next century by the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist southerners, the NRA was fighting to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms did not exclude African-Americans. The NRA was possibly the most important organization in the fight for civil rights, as the Second Amendment is the only protection from infringement upon all other rights. As Chief Organizer of the NAACP’s Jackson Movement in the 1960s, John Salter, said, “no one knows what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against grassroots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure of firearms in it.”
Now, it is important to remind you that it was not the Republican Party that actively attempted to strip black Americans of their right to bear arms. It was not the Republican Party that fought for the “right” to own slaves. It was not the Republican Party that enacted the Jim Crow laws. Contrary to popular belief, it was not even the Republican Party that voted in a larger number against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. No; that was all the Democrats. Fortunately, these are no longer principles that the Democratic Party subscribes to, but as Delegate and 2018 Senate candidate, Nicholas J. Freitas said in a recent speech on the Virginia House floor, “[we] would really appreciate it if every time you want to make a powerful point, you don’t project the sins, the atrocities, and the injustices [of the Democratic Party] onto us.”
Support for the Second Amendment is not only on the right side of the political spectrum, but it is also on the right side of history. If we really want an open discussion about guns in America, the Democrats and the media better start giving us the respect that we deserve. But until then, Molon Labe.