Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

I can be reached at 45superman@gmail.com.You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/45superman.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

That sounds familiar

The Tyler Morning Telegraph (Tyler, Texas) has been seeking reader reactions to the spike in firearms sales spurred by the the impending HopeandChange™. One respondent didn't seem to think it was a good idea.

"I think people are completely overreacting," Chad King wrote in a reader comment he submitted. "It's funny to me that people are buying guns that they fear are going to be taken away from them. That makes absolutely no sense. ... Republican or Democrat, we all have to agree somewhere in the middle that certain guns only belong on the battlefield and serve no purpose in the hands of children and criminals."
"Only belong on the battlefield," eh? That sounds an awful lot like the (now vanished) urban policy we've been promised:
They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
Ignoring for the moment the fact that there's no guarantee that the only battlefields over the next few years will be "foreign battlefields," and that the "Only Ones" are presumably not being equipped with "patrol rifles" for use on foreign battlefields, the assumption here seems to be that making something illegal will make it go away. By such "logic," that "War on Drugs" must be just about won by now, eh? I suppose it might bother some if I point out that a ban on militia-capable firearms is rather difficult to reconcile with shall not be infringed--I guess they'll just have to deal with being bothered.

Another aspect of what Chad King says (in reference to so-called "assault weapons") comes at the end of the sentence. To repeat:
. . . serve no purpose in the hands of children and criminals.
That also sounds quite a lot like something straight from the mouth of the Obamessiah (this time his Democratic Convention speech).
. . . but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.
And that takes me to what I see as the main point of this post (yeah, I know--it takes me a while to get there). I'm assuming that by "AK-47s," he refers not to real AK-47s, which are already extremely tightly controlled, but to the semi-automatic copies commonly available to private citizens in most states.

I have a problem with the ambiguity of that position. Presumably, the "Lightworker" is well aware of the fact that criminals are already barred by law from possessing any firearms. That would seem to mean that by "keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals," he means keeping them out of our hands--the hands of peaceable armed citizens.

Obviously, keeping such firearms out of the hands of such citizens will do nothing, in and of itself, to prevent violence--the idea is that to keep them out of the hands of criminals, you have to keep them out of everyone's hands (never mind that that is impossible, also). Once you acknowledge that, it seems to me that you acknowledge that the laws against criminals possessing firearms don't work--if they did, you wouldn't need another law, keeping AK-47s out of their hands.

In other words, the response to the ineffectiveness of gun laws is . . . to pass more gun laws. That oughta work.

5 comments:

Bob S. said...

I have been debating various anti-gun folks for a while now, it seems they all share a common misconception. That is removing all the guns will prevent criminals from getting guns.

It takes repeated efforts linking prohibition, the war on some drugs, etc to show that no ban will work, even then it only partially successful.

I have not had one real answer to how new gun laws will prevent criminals from getting firearms but still allow law abiding citizens to purchase and possess firearms. That is a clear indication of their eventual goal.

Anonymous said...

Excellent Post! Lots of valid points.

I'm not a Child nor a Criminal unless they want to pass new restrictions.

We could also go back to the term "Homeland Defense rifle"

I'm all in favor for more laws against Gangs, Drugs, and Murder. Why is it those areas of Vices seem to have more civil rights than a law abiding gun owner?

the pistolero said...

In this case, I'd much rather be overreacting than underreacting.

me said...

the comments....

My God! The level of ignorance and hatred the people on the left have.

The ONLY "healing" that will ever happen in this country is when sanity is eliminated and the inmates run the asylum. It's like trying to reason with a sea cucumber.

B Smith said...

I love it when the article implies that there's inherently "no sense in buying guns that are just going to be taken away from you, anyway."
The reason I'm buying that gun is so you CAN'T take it away, nor anything else I don't want you stealing from me, without having the dread article pointed in your direction. (Yes, it's stealing. Or are there still those out there who think the government is going to reimburse me for 'confiscating' my rifle?)
Further attempts at theft when I am thus armed is to invite...unpleasantness.