Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  1. #1
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    Default The Hypocrisy of Gun Control

    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

    This simple sentence, the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution, has been at the center of fierce debate and generated literally thousands of pages of argument as people on both sides of the debate try and determine the proper role of arms in our society. It is my belief that arms in the hands of a free people are of inherent and definable value to society. Based on this, I propose to debunk some of the more common arguments made by gun control proponents using common sense and applying some of their arguments to the 1st Amendment.

    A common claim of gun control advocates is that guns are dangerous. But if that’s the case, why is it that even such a fierce advocate of gun control as Rosie O’Donnell would sign off on a permit for her bodyguard to carry a gun? To take it even further, why is it that those who say guns are dangerous don’t advocate for the disarmament of the Secret Service? After all, if you really think about it, the President, the leader of and most powerful man in the Free World, is surrounded by guns every waking moment of his life. How is it, if guns are so dangerous, that every President hasn’t died a bullet-riddled corpse under the guns of his own protection?

    The answer is that some things are dangerous by their very nature and others only by intervention, as I’ll elaborate with a simple example. I have a permit and carry a firearm on my person most of the time but neither I nor anybody else has ever been harmed by it. Let’s suppose that I somehow got a piece of highly radioactive material and carried that in place of my gun. In short order, I would most likely come down with terminal cancer. Why, because radioactive material is dangerous by its very nature, it requires I do nothing but be in its vicinity. A gun requires human intervention in the form of aiming and pulling the trigger to have any possibility of doing actual harm to another human being.

    Somewhat related to the argument that guns are dangerous is the argument that people who own guns are just looking to use them to commit unlawful acts of violence. By that argument, I guess we can assume that anybody who gets life insurance for a spouse or child is scheming to murder their family or that people with health insurance can’t wait to get some exotic disease. You see, to most gunowners, myself included, a gun is insurance, something you realize you may need even as you hope never to be in that type of situation where such need would arise. I don’t doubt that were I in danger and able to call 911 that the police would respond as quickly as possible, but their quickest response may not be quick enough to save me from harm. In that case, I rely on myself and a gun is simply the most effective tool to protect oneself.

    Another common argument made by proponents of gun control is that when the 2nd Amendment was written, the only firearms widely available were single-shot muskets. While this is true, it is a spurious argument for 2 reasons. Firstly, it ignores the circumstances of the times. While primitive by today’s standards, a flintlock musket was state of the art at the time. In fact, the British Army against whom we fought were armed in the same fashion. In other words, the American colonist owned and fought with a weapon of exactly the same firepower as his military opponent. By contrast, the average American today has vastly less firepower than his military counterpart.

    The second flaw of this argument is that it cannot be reasonably extended to any other of the rights afforded American citizens. Does anybody believe that freedom of religion doesn’t cover faiths like Mormonism even though it originated after the writing of the Constitution? Do we question whether or not things like photography, radio, television, movies, the internet and other means of communication not invented prior to 1776 are protected under free speech? No, of course not and the reason for this is simple. These things are exactly what I just called them, means, not an end unto themselves. The ability to communicate one’s thoughts or express one’s beliefs is what is protected by the 1st Amendment, how we do this is simply incidental.

    The inability to stand against the rest of the Bill of Rights also dooms many other arguments made by proponents of gun control. One of these is the so-called collective theory of the 2nd Amendment, or the idea that this Amendment applies only to groups such as the military and law enforcement. How this one got started is beyond me, perhaps the gun control people were just too lazy to read the second part of the 2nd Amendment, the part that says the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. But what if we were to try and extend the idea of collective rights into the 1st Amendment. Does anybody believe that only established religions are due religious freedom? That only established newspapers or other news outlets enjoy freedom of the press? Of course not, such ideas are repugnant to the very ideals of American society. And yet there are some who would impose such a radical view on us.

    Gun registration also falls into this category. Would any of us accept the idea that we needed to go to the courthouse and register with the government before participating in Divine Worship? Would journalists be willing to submit every story they wrote to government for approval before it was published? Would they be content to wait for 3 days before publishing a story, as some states and municipalities impose on those who want to buy a firearm? Especially when considered in conjunction with the fact that people who have been barred from possessing a firearm cannot be prosecuted for failing to register such arms as it would violate their Constitutional rights against self-incrimination, the sheer folly of this idea becomes apparent.

    To me, the most blatantly hypocritical laws proposed by gun control advocates and actually on the books in some states and municipalities is a requirement that guns in be kept unloaded, locked or disassembled even in private homes. Since most home invasions occur under cover of darkness, when most people are asleep, most gun owners who keep a firearm loaded have it in their bedrooms. I make note of this because circumstances surrounding the right to privacy. While not specifically stated in the Constitution, it was nevertheless articulated by the Supreme Court by a 7-2 vote in the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut. In this case, Connecticut had banned the use of contraceptive devices. One of the arguments made by the Supreme Court was that to enforce such a law, the police would be forced to search the bedrooms of married couples. This right was later expanded upon in Eisenstadt v. Baird, a 1972 case that applied this same right to non-married couples, Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that determined abortion to be legal, and Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case that struck down anti-sodomy laws. Despite this, gun control advocates continue to support a law that would require the same invasions of privacy that the Griswold case struck down. Especially given how the left so vigorously defends the right to privacy, especially as it relates to abortion, the hypocrisy here goes beyond the norm even for the left in general.

    While the issues I’ve discussed thus far are valid, I think that they ultimately are secondary to the real flaw of gun control. You see, while these issues relate to gun control, they don’t cut to the very heart of the matter. The entire argument of gun control hinges on assumption, an inferred if-then relationship. That argument is if you reduce or eliminate the legal traffic of a good or service then you will see a reduction in the criminality associated with that good or service. But if this is the case, why does this nation have a drug problem? Why is it that Prohibition failed? Like it or not, history demonstrates that human nature and basic economics will continue even in defiance of the law.

    That point for the most part answers the earlier question regarding the failure of prohibitionary efforts against drugs and alcohol and why they will fail with regard to guns. Human nature is such that just because something is illegal, it does not follow that all people will avoid it. Basic economics states that where there is demand, suppliers will emerge. In any case of prohibition, a monopoly is ceded to criminals. These criminals will compete with each other, not through slick ad campaigns or improving their products, but through violence against each other. These same criminal organizations will use their ill-gotten gains to corrupt our law-enforcement and political systems, with no concern to the damage that they cause. And that damage is often worse than the alleged harm resulting from these banned substances being legal in the first place. When one considers that the simplest definition of a criminal is a person who does not obey the law, the inadequacy of gun control as a policy to prevent or combat gun violence comes starkly into focus.

  2. #2
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    Default Re: The Hypocrisy of Gun Control

    good points, but try and explain them to an anti.

  3. #3
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    bristol, Pennsylvania
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    Default Re: The Hypocrisy of Gun Control

    true stuff... welcome to the forums
    my goal: to get every good person in the philly region responsibly armed.

  4. #4
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    Default Re: The Hypocrisy of Gun Control

    Quote Originally Posted by ccphilly1984 View Post
    true stuff... welcome to the forums
    Lol! He's been a member longer then you.

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