The Gun Control Debate, Mrs. LFM-Style
Posted By Diana on January 17, 2013
I have been (mostly) staying out of the gun debate that is so rampant in the US these days, partly because I live in Canada and it doesn’t directly affect me (yet), partly because there is so much misinformation out there that wading in and attempting to clear things up will most likely be an exercise in futility.
However, I am in the mood to give it a go.
Banning “assault weapons” is a completely useless, money-wasting attempt at making the public feel good. There is no “assault weapon”. There ARE assault rifles and they are not available for private ownership. Assault rifles are used by the military, and are usually selectable to be fully-automatic or semi-automatic, depending on what the circumstances warrant. Civilians are able to purchase versions of these rifles that LOOK identical, but they are only semi-automatic.
Automatic weapons fire multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger. Machine guns do this, and they are what most people, including the media, have in mind when there is a reference to an “assault weapon”. That is false. You can’t just stroll into a store and buy an automatic weapon. There are multiple steps involved including getting a signature from a sheriff or police chief, and having a specific class of license. They are also extremely expensive and, comparatively speaking, rare outside military supply lines. For all intents and purposes, they already have been banned, and they were not the type of guns used in mass shootings anyway.
Semi-automatic weapons fire a single round per trigger pull. This is where we get to the controversy. Functionally speaking, a scary looking AR-15 is no different than the popular Remington Model 750 used for hunting. Both are semi-automatic. Both fire only one bullet per trigger pull. But one looks like its selective fire military counterpart, is therefore scarier, and so it should be banned?!?
There are so many parallels here to breed bans against Dogs, I could scream.
Banning one weapon that functions the same as another one, but looks different, is the only thing the “assault weapon” ban targets. Then how is anyone safer?
They aren’t. It gives people a false sense of security. It is a completely useless waste of time, money, and resources. We ALREADY have laws against murder! More laws will not stop it.
So now we get into the talk of banning ALL semi-automatic weapons. This will never happen. Semi-automatics are popular for self-defense, sporting, hunting. They have many, many valid uses. They are not inherently dangerous. They are simply a modern version of guns. All technologies evolve. You aren’t still calculating on an abacus, or driving a Model T Ford, or flying in a biplane. Calling for a ban on all semi-automatic guns is comparable to calling for a ban on cars that can drive faster than 50 km/h. When cars were first invented they certainly couldn’t go that fast, and most fatalities occur at higher speeds, so we should just be happy to go back to driving a maximum of 50 km/h. Why would we NEED to go faster than that?
It simply won’t happen.
There are more guns in the US than anywhere else. Are there more murders? No. The US doesn’t even come CLOSE to having the highest murder rate. Let’s not waste our breath with debating how many firearm related murders there are compared to other countries, because that doesn’t matter. If someone you love is murdered, what effing difference does it make HOW they were murdered?
“Oh, my husband was only murdered by being beaten to death with a baseball bat, he’s far better off than your husband being murdered with a gunshot to the head.” – said no one ever.
It has been suggested to me that I would feel differently if my child was killed in a mass shooting. I beg to differ. I am an intelligent, educated, practical woman. I would no more blame the gun than I would the car or the car manufacturer, or the bar, liquor store, or distillery that either manufactured or sold its products to a drunk driver that killed my child.
The other major issue that needs to be taken into account is the Second Amendment. Many people are arguing that when it was written, they were only talking muskets. What gets forgotten is that the Second Amendment was not written to allow hunting, sporting, nor even defending yourself from an assault. Rather, it was to ensure freedom from tyranny, freedom from an oppressive government. At the time the Bill of Rights was written, the government ALSO only had muskets. Such is not the case any more!! Citizens cannot fight against a government armed with modern firearms if they only have access to muskets! Let’s not roll our eyes, this is a very serious issue. I am no conspiracy theorist. I AM Polish, however, and my family defected to Canada while Poland was still under the communist regime. Far too many people growing up in North America take this pesky “freedom” point for granted. They have NO concept of what it’s like to be living in a country where everything is heavily regulated, where you are followed by military with guns pointing at you when you buy groceries, where your house gets raided on a regular basis to ensure you don’t have something you shouldn’t. The United States was founded with measures in place to ensure this will never happen to them!! To argue that the Bill of Rights should be strictly applied as written at the time it was written is an extremely foolish and dangerous premise. It would put the First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, in serious jeopardy, not to mention a host of other rights. Since there was no internet or any form of digital communication, it could be argued that Freedom of Speech doesn’t apply to that. The Bill of Rights excluded races other than Caucasian; it excluded women. To attempt to freeze the constitution to the time it was written is not in any way practical, nor would it be right.
In conclusion, I leave you with this scene from The Last Samurai.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FQd5n16Qug
It makes me cry every single time. This is what happens when war is fought and one side is armed with modern weapons, while the other isn’t. THIS is what Americans who are fighting so vehemently for their right to bear arms are trying to prevent. It’s not about going out skeet-shooting, or bagging a deer, or being able to own a gun just because you want one. It’s about freedom.
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” – Thomas Jefferson
I would marry you a thousand times more. Not just because of this. Because of you.
I'm sorry but I feel I need to correct your error, As I think this is the first one I've seen you make.
Having rwo young boys I can assure you there are assault guns, they assault me with them often.
So using the technical use of the word, there are guns that are assault type, but you can't really tell until after they have been used to attack someone.
So If they ban Assault rifles, I hope they ban assault knifes, sticks, rocks, chains, cars, gloves, beer bottles, apples, lemons, mase, people, cats, ankle-bitter dogs, forks, food, snow, yes, they need to ban assault snow!
The list goes on and on, but I'm getting lazy.
Wait their is one more. Words. Maybe words are used to assault people. I Think we must ban them as well. Let's ban Assault words! Besides they hurt more people then guns do, And have the positional to kill more.