I get it, I do. Gun control activists don't want to see people die from senseless gun violence, well neither do gun enthusiasts. Neither side wants to see some guy walk into a crowded movie theater or school and open fire on innocent civilians. We both see the problem, but we see two very different solutions. The pro-gun control crowd believes banning guns will solve the problem, the anti-gun control crowd knows this won't work.
For one the bad guys don't care about laws. This might surprise some, but some people just don't care if something is illegal or not. Laws have never prevented murders or robberies, if it did the prisons would be virtually empty. The truth is gun control has never worked. Strict gun control laws in Chicago, for instance, have never made it safer to walk down the street at night.
Second if a person want's to do harm they don't need a gun to do it. In March of 2014 eight terrorists wielding knives at a Chinese train station killed 29 civilians and wounded 140 others. China is no stranger to knife attacks where guns are illegal. There's also been a series of knife attacks on innocent Chinese school children. In Cologne Germany in 1964 Walter Seifert killed 10 and injured 22 others with a homemade flamethrower and a lance. In 1927 Andrew Philip Kehoe set off a bomb in a school that killed 43 people. In Bavaria, Germany in 2009 a man with Molotov cocktails and an axe injured 15 people at a school. On 9/11 a couple of terrorists with box-cutters killed 3000 people at the World Trade Center. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a fertilizer bomb. The Boston bombers killed 3 and wounded dozens more with a pressure cooker. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. In many of these incidents a person with a concealed weapon could have ended the attacks before they began. Incidentally it was this same reason that dissuaded the Japanese from attacking the West Coast of the United States during World War 2. The Japanese military was afraid of an armed civilian force with a gun behind every blade of grass.
Let's pose a hypothetical scenario. Let's pretend the Second Amendment is struck down and owning any kind of gun is illegal. This still would not prevent gun violence. Currently in the United States there are enough firearms for every man, woman, and child. These guns would remain in circulation for decades to come. The demand for guns would fuel a black market and some enterprising criminal would figure out a way to run guns into the U.S. Then there is the other side of the coin. Frankly I would be uncomfortable with a government that spies on it's own people and target's political dissidents to be the only ones with the guns. In fact this is one of the reasons for the Second Amendment, to ensure the government behaves themselves. The Founding Fathers knew power corrupts and the only way to ensure freedom is a government that fears the people.
Here in America guns have been a part of the culture since it's inception. The Second Amendment has given everyone the right to bear arms. It used to be buying a Thompson Sub-machine gun was as easy as ordering it through the mail. And some schools had shooting ranges and actually let their students bring their guns to school. Such a thing would be unfathomable today. Senseless mass killings were almost non existent a generation ago. Sure they happened but they were much more rare, not like today. What happened to society between then and now? What changed to the point that we now need metal detectors in schools now? Society has changed and not for the better. There are probably many factors, including a less virtuous society. But it's clear gun violence is merely a symptom, not the problem. The only thing gun control does it put a ban-aide on a gushing wound. Gun owners know in an ever increasing violent world the best protection is a firearm.
For one the bad guys don't care about laws. This might surprise some, but some people just don't care if something is illegal or not. Laws have never prevented murders or robberies, if it did the prisons would be virtually empty. The truth is gun control has never worked. Strict gun control laws in Chicago, for instance, have never made it safer to walk down the street at night.
Second if a person want's to do harm they don't need a gun to do it. In March of 2014 eight terrorists wielding knives at a Chinese train station killed 29 civilians and wounded 140 others. China is no stranger to knife attacks where guns are illegal. There's also been a series of knife attacks on innocent Chinese school children. In Cologne Germany in 1964 Walter Seifert killed 10 and injured 22 others with a homemade flamethrower and a lance. In 1927 Andrew Philip Kehoe set off a bomb in a school that killed 43 people. In Bavaria, Germany in 2009 a man with Molotov cocktails and an axe injured 15 people at a school. On 9/11 a couple of terrorists with box-cutters killed 3000 people at the World Trade Center. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a fertilizer bomb. The Boston bombers killed 3 and wounded dozens more with a pressure cooker. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. In many of these incidents a person with a concealed weapon could have ended the attacks before they began. Incidentally it was this same reason that dissuaded the Japanese from attacking the West Coast of the United States during World War 2. The Japanese military was afraid of an armed civilian force with a gun behind every blade of grass.
Let's pose a hypothetical scenario. Let's pretend the Second Amendment is struck down and owning any kind of gun is illegal. This still would not prevent gun violence. Currently in the United States there are enough firearms for every man, woman, and child. These guns would remain in circulation for decades to come. The demand for guns would fuel a black market and some enterprising criminal would figure out a way to run guns into the U.S. Then there is the other side of the coin. Frankly I would be uncomfortable with a government that spies on it's own people and target's political dissidents to be the only ones with the guns. In fact this is one of the reasons for the Second Amendment, to ensure the government behaves themselves. The Founding Fathers knew power corrupts and the only way to ensure freedom is a government that fears the people.
Here in America guns have been a part of the culture since it's inception. The Second Amendment has given everyone the right to bear arms. It used to be buying a Thompson Sub-machine gun was as easy as ordering it through the mail. And some schools had shooting ranges and actually let their students bring their guns to school. Such a thing would be unfathomable today. Senseless mass killings were almost non existent a generation ago. Sure they happened but they were much more rare, not like today. What happened to society between then and now? What changed to the point that we now need metal detectors in schools now? Society has changed and not for the better. There are probably many factors, including a less virtuous society. But it's clear gun violence is merely a symptom, not the problem. The only thing gun control does it put a ban-aide on a gushing wound. Gun owners know in an ever increasing violent world the best protection is a firearm.
