Gun Control Or Public Safety?

To start, let me say that I am, for the most part at least, a strong Conservative. That is to say, I believe in small, limited government, a strong military, secure borders, and free enterprise with only the most necessary restrictions on business. I also believe in legal gun ownership.

Some people believe it should be everyone’s unrestricted RIGHT to own and even openly carry a handgun on their hip. Here in Texas, as in many other states, we have that right, but there are some commonsense restrictions such as having a clean criminal record and not having a diagnosed mental disorder that would make us a danger to others. There are very few responsible American citizens who object to those restrictions.

Yesterday, President Obama announced 10 steps he will take, through executive actions, to enforce those commonsense restrictions and help prevent guns from falling into the hands of people who ‘should not own guns.’

Immediately Republicans in general and Conservatives in particular began sounding alarms and the right-wing media began throwing around the term “gun control’ in the headlines. They are calling the president’s proposals illegal and un-Constitutional; Marco Rubio is quoted as saying  the President is “waging war” on the Constitution and Ted Cruz is promising that if he wins the presidency, these and other Obama executive actions will all be repealed.

All that is for the courts to decide and while the kinds of actions Obama proposed may fall under the very broadest definition of “gun control” they are, more importantly, clearly needed Public Safety measures.

The dirty little secret that the people who are screaming “gun control” are not being very vocal about is the fact that IF THEY had stopped playing politics long enough to create some clean, commonsense legislation that had eliminated some of the public safety threats caused by guns being in the wrong hands; what is about to happen via executive actions would not have been necessary.

A prime example is closing the gun show ‘loopholes’. What, I ask, is worse: causing some minor inconvenience for people who want guns for personal protection or sport, or selling a gun to someone who will have no second thoughts about using it to commit a crime or to someone who is incapable of distinguishing legal behavior from illegal behavior?

Conservative lawmakers are screaming about the 2nd Amendment being violated. Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says: “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.” In other words, it does not address the problems that are caused by ‘guns in the wrong hands’ so regulations about gun sales, which were proposed yesterday, can hardly be considered a violation of the amendment.

It’s true that nothing being proposed for executive actions would have likely stopped the vast majority of mass shootings we hear about so often but you can be sure that they will make it harder for people who should not have guns to legally own guns, and that will certainly save some lives.

On Monday night the President Tweeted the accusation that the “gun lobby” may be holding Congress hostage, not a comforting thought, but perhaps a very realistic one, considering that Washington is chock full of politicians who care more about funding their next campaign than they do about their constituents’ safety. 

All this is not to say that President Obama is not incompetent or that he does not have a deep dislike for what is traditionally American or that he has not proposed many dangerous, reckless and frankly stupid things in the past. He has always impressed me as someone with an Anti-American agenda, but on this one issue I personally can’t fault his actions.

I want everyone to own and even, if they want, carry a gun — everyone except, that is, the people who are a danger to me and you and our families.

Liberalism: Naive or Diabolical

This past week brought with it another lesson for voters: take what you read and hear in the media (even some of the “Conservative” media) with ‘a grain of salt.’ Cases in point are the insinuations against Dr. Ben Carson and the consistent editorializing and misinterpreting of what he says.

As an example, Dr. Carson made the simple, logical statement that he feels that “the likelihood of Hitler accomplishing his goals” (the goal of exterminating the Jewish people, from the face of Germany and then from the world) “would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.”

It’s very hard for me to rationalize opposition to that statement. Carson was NOT saying that the Holocaust would not have happened. Obviously the power and armament of the German Army would most likely have eventually overwhelmed even the most well armed and aggressive civilian opponents of Hitler’s plans, Carson was simply voicing the common sense dictum that you have a much greater chance of not being defeated if you are equipped to fight back. The problem is, Ben Carson is trying to express this common sense to people who stopped listening as soon as he said the name ‘Hitler.’

Hitler’s name is a sore spot with people who support Liberal causes, especially gun control which was the particular Liberal cause that Carson was attacking.

“I’m telling you there’s a reason these dictatorial people take guns first.” Carson told Wolf Blitzer in the CNN interview.

The immediate problem with suggesting to a Liberal that gun control does not prevent murder, but instead prevents self-defense is that that fact (and it IS a fact) is an indictment of a core Liberal belief that guns are more dangerous than people; and more than that, it is an indictment of their beloved President Obama.

What, predictably, is the first thing that will happen after some crazy shoots and kills a group of people? Obama will be on TV calling for “more gun control” and either ignoring or dismissing the growing number of voices that are asking: What If?

WHAT IF there were guns being carried by one or more people in a group being attacked by a shooter? It will save many lives if the shooter is put down as soon as he shows his gun or at least immediately after his first shot.

WHAT IF  there were no “gun free zones.” It would prevent a majority of mass shooting attempts (by all but the most suicidal shooters) if it is obvious to a perpetrator that he will not be able to walk away from the situation.

Obama is a well educated man and a clever manipulator of people and situations. Don’t you think that he realizes that gun control does nothing but disarm the people who would not consider using a gun for anything but self defense or hunting?

Isn’t it obvious that that is exactly the point Dr. Carson was making with his Hitler analogy?

Time and time again President Obama has clearly illustrated his contempt for the Constitution, his disregard for National as well as personal self-defense and his determination to change the face of America.

America does not need a facelift! Nor does it need a Liberal successor to Obama, who will continue guiding America on the destructive course Obama has set for it.

In my opinion, what America needs is a president with common sense, a dislike of politics as usual, a disregard for political correctness, great respect for the United States Constitution and an unbounded dedication to restoring America to its former greatness.

In my view, there are only a few contenders for the presidency who fit that description. Watch the Liberal media (CNN, MSNBC and most networks) and you will see those few contenders regularly denigrated, dismissed and/or misinterpreted.

South Caroline Church Bloodshed Could Have Ended Sooner

From the June 19th, New York Times Political News NOW section: “Martin O’Malley, a Democratic candidate for president, called for a new national assault weapons ban and other gun control measures in an email sent to supporters after the shooting deaths at a South Carolina church this week.

An assault weapons ban, which has nothing to do with the massacre at the South Carolina Church, is an idea that has seen plenty of ‘daylight’ in the past but, thanks to the NRA, it has virtually disappeared from the news. Banning assault weapons is not an altogether bad idea; except that it probably violates the Constitution, But before Mr. O’Malley begins to open his mouth and spew forth the phrase “other gun control measures” he needs to take his head out of the sand and understand the FACT that if one or two members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church had hand-guns on their persons and had the guts to use them, lives would have been saved.

Insanity seems to reign in the world of Liberals as it does in the world of Religion. When you consider the “forgiveness” that rained down on that wothless piece of crap who not only shot and killed 9 people but shot them repeatedly, reportedly having to reload several times, you have to wonder about the sanity of the survivors, I cannot forgive those who forgave Dylann Roof for their blatent disregard for the safety of their fellow parishioners. They apparently believe in heaven so much they are willing to allow a murderer to continue the bloodshed without raising a hand (or other weapon) against him. There were most likely worshipers on every side of Roof and apparently not one of them had the guts to “cold-cock’ him with a fist or hymnal or brass candlestick.

Mr O’Mally and others of his mindset refuse to understand the power for good of a gun in the hands of a good person. Killing someone is not a bad thing if it is done with the proper motive and saves the lives of future victims; even most “believers” will tell you that. But unfortunately, Liberals like O’Malley do not believe that the average citizen is intelligent enough to be trusted with that kind of decision.

Hate Crime?

Right now Obama’s lap-dog U.S. Attorney General is supposedly deciding whether or not to charge Roof with a hate crime. Just another publicity stunt! A man who is witnessed shooting 9 people to death must certainly qualify for the death penalty regardless of what is “in his heart” but under the Obama Administration “racial equality and justice” are far more important than common sense or even common law.

REFERENCES:

New York Times: “An Angry O’Malley Calls for an Assault Weapons Ban” 

New York Times: “In Charleston, Raw Emotion at Hearing for Suspect in Church Shooting“

Fareed Zakaria Suspended — “Gone, and a cloud in my heart”

Time Magazine suspended Fareed Zakaria today due to plagiarism that was uncovered by NewsBusters, a Conservative organization dedicated to finding and exposing Liberal Bias in the media.

Newsbuster’s discovery of a plagiarized paragraph in Zacharia’s Time Magazine article “The Case for Gun Control,” in truth, was a case of finding an exposing a Liberal journalist; it not had little to do with Liberal Media bias but we must admit that gun control and Liberalism are intrinsically linked.

That said, the evidence is clear and Zakaria freely admitted, that the paragraph in question was almost a direct take from Jill Lepore’s New Yorker Magazine article, “Battleground America.”

Not only has Time Magazine suspended Zakaria but CNN, where Zakaria hosted (note the past tense) his own show: Fareed Zakaria GPS, also set Zakaria adrift because he had written similar articles for the CNN Blog.

Fareed Rafiq Zakaria, born in India, is a recognized Left-leaning expert on America’s foreign policy, has been a foreign policy research director at Harvard and is highly-acclaimed as a contributor, journalist, editor and managing editor on a great many magazines. His knowledge of the subject of foreign affairs did not, however, make him an expert on gun control — with Zakaria, it was just a matter of using his writing credentials to sell his biased opinion.

Zakaria stated today: that this incident was caused by “a serious lapse (in judgment) and one that is entirely my fault.” He went on to say: “I apologize unreservedly to [Jill Lepore], to my editors at Time, and to my readers.”

In closing, he perhaps also should have plagiarized from Alfred Lord Tennyson:

“Gone – flitted away,

Taken the stars from the night and the sun

From the day!

Gone, and a cloud in my heart.

Reference:

Associated Press: Zakaria suspended for copying other writer’s work