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.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Freedom--the Founding Fathers' greatest 'mistake'

Well whaddya know--the day I finally decide to end my sudden disappearance from the blogosphere, but am kind of hard pressed to find material, I stumble (pretty much by accident) on this little gem, by Robert Smith, Jr. (titled, simply enough, "Ban All Guns"):

The Founding Fathers of our country made a mistake when they said we had the right to bear arms. They did not know we would be allies with the British and no longer have to worry about them coming over to oppress and colonize us. The British found greater spoils in Africa and India and never looked back on the United States after the Revolutionary War.
Never heard of the War of 1812, eh Robert (and why should he have heard of it--it's not as if it inspired our national anthem or anything)? There's also the little issue of the fact that the Constitutional guarantee of the fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms exists not only for fighting off British imperialistic ambitions--actually, that was never even the primary reason for the Second Amendment.
The right to bear arms is killing all of us.
Setting aside for the moment the fact that rights don't kill, I'm a little puzzled about how, with a national population that grows every year, anything can be said to be "killing all of us."
In 2005 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 3,006 children and teens killed by gunfire, most of them young, black men in inner-city neighborhoods.
Most of these "children and teens" are men? Apparently, Robert defines either "children" or "men" (perhaps both) in a rather . . . unusual manner (unusual, at least, outside forcible citizen disarmament circles).

Robert then lays some numbers on us.
The Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois gun killings took 32 lives, and the world was upset and every day 128 young people are shot to death in hard-pressed, poor communities across America and there is no outcry to change it, just report it on the local news.
Punctuation, evidently, is no more a strong suit of Robert's than history is. Looking at those numbers, I'm afraid I can't vouch for his mathematics skills either. I refer to his claim that "every day 128 young people are shot to death in hard-pressed, poor communities across America." That would come out to over forty-six thousand shooting deaths per year. The number of shooting deaths in the U.S. (all U.S. shooting deaths--more than half of which are suicides--with no filtering for age or economic status) has hovered around or a bit above thirty thousand per year for the last several years, but Robert somehow finds over one and a half times that number of deaths, just among young people in poor communities.

And this is the guy who would lecture the Founding Fathers about their "mistake."

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year, sir!!

Glad you're back up and goin' strong.

Know wha'cha mean 'bout burnout!

'nuff said!

Ol'Coach

the pistolero said...

No doubt the deacons for Defense and Justice would be SO proud...
Welcome back.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

Thanks, Coach--Happy New Year to you, as well.

I don't really have much excuse for burnout--even at my most active, I'm a fairly lazy blogger.

Ah well--I'm back now.

Thanks again.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

Hi Pistolero--I was replying to Coach's post when you posted.

Yeah--the Deacons wouldn't have had much patience for that genius.

Thanks for the welcome.

pops1911 said...

His numbers are the lies from the anti's - kids include up to 24 year old druggies shooting each other. Total gun related deaths of kids (& all are bad!) are less then 9 (a month in 2006 best I remember - less now)!!!! (That's under 18 years old, not drug-related, gangs etc.) The Founding Fathers did get it wrong - they forgot to include a 'stupid' clause in the basic constitution to cover today's idiots!

Jay21 said...

Wonder if he has even considered uttering this phrase?

I, [name], do solemnly swear, (or affirm,) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.

Welcome back.
Jason
III

Anonymous said...

Excellent!

the pistolero said...

Hey Kurt, here's something else you might be interested in.