Alright, we’re gearing up for an election year. You’re likely to hear alot of things about guns. If you’re not a shooter and/or a politician, you’re going to hear a great deal of heated rhetoric, and it’ll present a very contradictory picture.
You’ll hear that guns cause ordinary people to turn into raving savages, you’ll be told that hundreds of children die every day, and most of all, you’ll be told that it’s for your own good to have them taken away from you.
Question what you hear.
The folks who would “protect” us from gun violence use alot of clever terminology to cast ambiguity on the issue. They’ll speak as if they’re experts. And most of what they say is a pack of lies. Here’s a primer to help you cut through the semantic underbrush.
Let’s start with “assault weapons.” That means machine guns, right? Wrong. The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban did not ban them–the 1934 National Firearms Act did. Americans were duped into swallowing the ban by being misled into thinking just that, however.
The myth they sold was that police officers were being mowed down every day on our streets with fully-automatic machine guns, just like the ones in Miami Vice. The plain fact is, less than 0.20% of all shootings in this country occur with such weapons. Getting one under the law requires strict licensing (from the Department of the Treasury: it’s a tax stamp), and since the demand is stifled by such hurdles, the supply is meager. As a result, even if you jump through the bureaucratic hoops involved, expect to spend thousands of dollars for a machine gun.
Needless to say, people who do acquire them take great pains not to use them. Selling one is out of the question. The plain fact is, they just aren’t out there, gang. Criminals want their guns cheap, concealable and easily obtainable.
Now, the folks who approved of the AWB will point out the fact that there are weapons JUST LIKE the ones used by third-world militias on the shelves at your local gun store. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? Too bad it’s a bald-faced lie. Sure, we have AK-47’s and AR-15’s where I work, but these are semi-automatics. The difference between semi-automatic and full-auto is that you have to pull the trigger for each bullet that’s fired out of a semi-auto. “Spraying” an area, as they depict in the movies, cannot be done with a semi-automatic.
So why do they say this? Because they think you’re stupid. They think you won’t actually check the facts, and that you’ll blindly accept what you’re told. Far too many voters swallow what they’re told. It comes down to the difference between acquired knowledge and revealed knowledge.
So why are these rifles popular? Lots of reasons. First off, they’re effective against two-legged predators. The idea of a “fair fight” is a myth. When confronted with a knife, I plan to have a gun. When confronted with a gun, it’s a good idea to have a bigger gun. It may sound like macho chest-pounding, but when someone is placing your life in danger, it suddenly becomes very rational.
“Assault rifles” have a distinct advantage in that they’re more powerful, more accurate and hold more ammunition than the pistols favored by criminals.
So why is the government so afraid of them? Because “assault rifles” level the playing field. We live in a country where the government is subordinate to the people, not the other way around. The Second Amendment explicitly guarantees the right of the citizenry to own and maintain military arms, independent of the government. Why? Because an armed citizenry can organize to resist a tyrannical government with force if all other forms of recourse have failed.
It’d be nearly impossible to do so if we were restricted such meager firepower as the politicians see fit to allow us. No, you fight force with force, and to do so, you need the proper tools. You need the same guns as the bad guys, preferably better. Last time I checked, the military and the police had AR-15’s. Therefore, regular folks should have equivalent arms.
Some say, “well, the Founding Fathers didn’t forsee machine guns and assault rifles, so they have no relevance today.” My response? The Founding Fathers didn’t forsee the typewriter, the internet, radio or television, either. Yet, we all accept that those things are Constitutionally-protected venues for our First Amendment rights.
They knew what they were doing. If they’d meant for the Second Amendment to be limited to flintlocks and cannons, they’d have been more specific. The intent was that people be able to defend themselves from crime, invasion and the possibility of a government gone horribly wrong.