Guns in America: Facts vs. Fiction

       Newtown, Columbine, Aurora, UC-Santa Barbara... There are some crazy people in this world.  It breaks my heart to see people lose their lives because of a deranged maniac who has somehow managed to get his or her hands on a gun.  With that being said, I sincerely believe that we as a society should do all that we can to make sure that murders such as these never take place again.

       How do we do that?  Is it really possible to pass laws that will protect us as a society?  What I do know is that increasing gun control has not been the answer, historically.  If you look at Washington D.C. and Chicago, the statistics show that gun crime has increased when strict gun laws have been put in place.

       On the other side of the spectrum, in some areas, such as Kennesaw, Georgia, more guns have drastically decreased gun crime.  In 1982, the Georgia city imposed a law that mandated households to have a gun inside the home.  Crime plummeted 72% during the time that law was in effect.

       If you have listened to President Obama, the Democrats, and a large portion of the media, you would think that a mass shooting is literally happening every week, that it is an all out war in the streets with big, scary, AR-15s that are powered solely by the tears of children.  That is the picture that they are painting, that guns are scary, that people should be limiting in their purchases of them, that guns and only guns are the problem with homicides in this country.

       That sure makes for a fine media narrative, doesn't it? They provide some shock value to viewers, entertain animated guests, sparking an extremely divisive culture between gun rights activists, the NRA, and gun control activists.  Shouldn't concrete, unbiased statistics be the standard on which we view this debate?  I think so, and if you disagree, then I would question your ability to use common logic. 
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Per Huffington Post:

"A study released Tuesday by the government's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that gun-related homicides dropped from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. That's a 39 percent reduction.

Another report by the private Pew Research Center found a similar decline by looking at the rate of gun homicides, which compares the number of killings to the size of the country's growing population. It found that the number of gun homicides per 100,000 people fell from 7 in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of 49 percent.

Both reports also found that non-fatal crimes involving guns were down by roughly 70 percent over that period. The Justice report said the number of such crimes diminished from 1.5 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011."

It is also worth noting that the Center for Disease Control conducted a study related to gun control and gun crime, finding that there was no empirical evidence that shows that stricter laws on guns produced lesser crime/homicides.

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       I'm not a scientist.  I'm not a journalist.  I'm just an aspiring lawyer who feels the need to educate people on important issues with concrete facts.  Each of those studies done are by unbiased institutions, finding empirical data.  That data shows that gun crime/death in America is dropping, while increased gun control does NOT help curb gun crime.  So why is this such a prevailing narrative within the Democratic Party and the media?  I can't say for sure, but I'm sure it has something to do with emotional, knee-jerk reaction responses to chaotic events like Newtown.  Something bad happens and everyone wants to introduce strict proposals that, as the studies show, will in the end, do nothing for curbing gun crime!  They just want to be the party of "action" regardless of whether that so-called "action" does anything at all.  

       The conversation has turned to outlawing the semi-automatic "assault weapons" with high capacity magazines.  "Assault Weapon" has been the Democrats'/Liberals' favorite way of describing a rifle which fires every time you pull the trigger that can hold around 30 rounds of bullets.  They would have you believe that the guns they are wanting to ban are military 50-caliber automatic weapons that can spray round after round after round with one pull of the trigger. Semi-automatic rifles have been around a long time, available for sport shooting, hunting, and self-defense, but "assault weapon" just sounds scary, huh?  For the uneducated, maybe.

      Again, maybe the statistics will tell us that it's the "assault weapons" that is doing most of the killing. Via FBI Statistics, 6,009 people were killed in 2010 by handguns, but 358 with a rifle.  You could almost take their argument seriously if they wanted to ban handguns because they kill an extreme amount more than rifles, and yes that includes "assault rifles".  This interview with conservative journalist Ben Shapiro and gun control-pushing Piers Morgan is a fine example of how it looks when facts and logic collide with emotional pulls and smoke and mirrors. 

       The United States has a long traditional history of hunting, sport shooting, and gun ownership.  We would not have succeeded in the American Revolution without a well-armed citizenry.  Guns were an integral part of the founding of this nation, and our Founders took gun ownership seriously. 

"A free people ought to be armed."
- George Washington

"To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them."
- George Mason

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
- James Madison

"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
- Samuel Adams

"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
- Thomas Jefferson

       As you can see, your right to own a gun isn't mostly for hunting or sport.  The right of the people to own a gun is integral to the freedom of a society, a society where ultimate authority rests in the people, and not in a government that controls them.  For this administration to downplay our traditions, Constitution, and blatant facts when it comes to guns is offensive to our Founders and offensive to common logic.  Don't let emotional pulls and smoke and mirrors rhetoric distort truth.  Know the facts, understand our traditions, and then we can have a much more productive conversation in this country about guns.