Gun Facts and Quotes

The takeover of any country has to be preceded by disarming the general public. In order to do that, the location of all legally acquired and legally owned guns have to be known. That requires total registration of all firearms.

After the location and number of legally acquired and legally owned guns is known, they can be confiscated. With a disarmed citizenry, the only ones with guns will be the police, the government, the military and the criminals who can do what they wish with the population. Ask the citizens of the former Soviet Union, the citizens of China, the citizens of the Cambodians under Pol-Pot, the Kosovars under the Serbs if being disarmed saved them from tyranny.

People say, "It can't happen in this day and age." "We don't need guns." "Our government would never resort to tyranny against the people." I submit it can happen in this day and age. How do you think Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot, Mao and other dictators took control of their countries? They were leaders without character and without morals who disarmed the citizenry guaranteeing practically no opposition. The rest is history.

I submit we need guns among other things to protect ourselves from rampant crime and criminals without consciences. The police are not in your home when a criminal breaks in determined to steal your property or commit violence against you personally. It takes them time to respond, if indeed they do. Ask the people in the LA riots how the police responded to their cries for help. How many crimes were prevented because the would-be victim was armed? How many victims wished they had been armed? Criminals will attack the unarmed before attacking the armed.

I submit that resorting to tyranny is easy for a government without morals and without character. I wouldn't be so concerned if we had a leadership with moral character. Sadly, we don't.

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones due to gun violence -- but the guns did not shoot themselves. Guns are inanimate objects. The guns as well as manufacturers who make guns and dealers who sell guns did not kill. The people holding and firing the guns are the ones who are guilty of the murders of those innocent people. They are responsible. It is the same if someone has a knife and kills another person, or an axe, or even a car. The object used is not guilty of the crime -- the person using it is. It is ludicrous to look at it in any other way.

We have so many laws on the books that control the purchase, ownership, and use of guns that are not being enforced. We do not need more gun control laws. More laws will not prevent the massacres at Paducah, Littleton, Conley or other places. Those people committing crimes are not interested in laws or in keeping existing laws. They ignore them as if they do not exist. If we do not enforce existing laws we give them "permission" to break the laws because there are no bad consequences for them when they do. We have more laws restricting guns on the books now than at any other time in history. We also have more crime and more mass shootings. More laws don't stop the violence. We need to enforce the existing ones. We need to start accepting responsibility for our actions and not blame them on inanimate objects. We need to see that our ability to protect ourselves, to "keep and bear arms" is no longer infringed with more and more restrictive laws.

Allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns reduces violent crime. The reduction corresponds very closely to the number of concealed-handgun licenses issued. On average, murder rates in states banning concealed-carry are 127% higher than in states having the most liberal carry laws. A 1% increase in firearm ownership reduces violent crime by 4.1%. Large, densely populated urban areas benefit the most from concealed-carry laws.

The lessons of history are numerous, clear, and bloody. A disarmed population inevitably becomes an enslaved population. A disarmed population is without power, reduced to childlike obedience to - and dependence upon - the organs of a parental state.

Will we be deceived by shameless liars who say that disarmament equals safety, helplessness equals strength?

School Shootings

As far as the school shootings are concerned, the killers could count on one thing: their victims, and the teachers and staff, would be unarmed. The killers knew they would face no resistance -- because of "gun control" laws. What should be obvious is that if peaceful citizens are armed, then criminals will be deterred. Schools attract killers because the government has posted a big legal notice that says in effect: "Attention: this is a gun-free zone. We guarantee that all adults and children in this school are unarmed." Attempts to outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning, have backfired. Instead of making schools safe for children, we have made them safe for those intent on harming our children.

As anyone with an ounce of sense could have predicted, the debate following the Columbine High School shootings centered on gun control.

Those of you who listened might have caught a short interview with John Lott Jr, author of "More Guns, Less Crime." He brought up two very interesting facts concerning the affect of making it easier for law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons.

First --- some additional research Lott has done shows that there is an 81 percent decrease in shootings with multiple victims when people are allowed to carry concealed weapons.

Another interesting fact. Two of the school shootings that happened in recent years were stopped by civilians with guns - not by the police. In one of these cases an Assistant Principal of the school had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. He kept that weapon in his car while at school and parked his car off school property so that he would not violate laws concerning guns on school grounds. When the shooting started he ran a quarter-mile to his car to get the gun, ran back to the school and held the shooter for the cops. In another case a passer-by heard the gunshots in the school. He grabbed the gun he kept in his car, ran into the school, and stopped the gun kid before he could shoot anyone else.

Study after study after study has shown that crime rates go down, murders go down, aggravated assaults go down ....when law abiding citizens are allowed to carry guns for protection. In spite of the facts we still have the left screaming for more gun control.

Remember --- when these liberals start talking about gun control, they're only talking about keeping guns out of the hands of people who obey the law. Ask them what their plan is to get the guns away from the criminals and they'll return a blank stare.

Gun bans don't work. Where has gun control worked? Washington, D.C.? Chicago? New York City? In the public schools of this country? Congress has enacted a nation-wide gun ban in every school and yet young thugs still violate that ban.

Gun control actually endangers the lives of innocent people. If teachers and school principles were allowed to possess firearms in their briefcases or in their purses-- or to conceal them under their jackets-- it would strike fear into the hearts of these juvenile Rambo's. Unfortunately, the nationwide gun ban ensures that these would-be-Rambo's are the only ones with guns at school. Decent teachers are forced to break the law to defend their students.

Guns save lives-- even in schools. Just look at the nation of Israel. Editorialist Vin Suprynowicz of the Las Vegas Review Journal stated this week that, "In Israel, teachers and parents who serve as school aides go armed at all times on school grounds, with semi-automatic weapons. Since this policy was put into effect, terrorist attacks in Israeli schools have dropped to zero. The only recent exception was the tragic case of a group of schoolchildren who were murdered by an Arab gunman as they visited the 'Zone of Peace' on the Jordanian border. The Jordanians specifically requested that the Israeli teachers and chaperones leave their weapons behind ... which they did. American schools are, on the other hand, 'gun free zones.'"

Military-Type Firearms: Your Life Preserver

Some argue that criminals' abuse of firearms justifies gun control, especially control of military-type firearms. While hard data prove that criminals rarely abuse military-type rifles, it is nevertheless unclear why criminal activity should define the rights of the law-abiding.

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) has backed gun control for at least 30 years. CPD published data documents 21,204 known murders in Chicago from 1965 to 1992. No more than nine of these murders (four- hundredth of one percent) involved rifles that, by bullet size, could have been military-type rifles (Chicago Police Department, Murder Analysis Report, 1965-1992).

Some of these nine were likely not military-type rifles. It is clear that military-type rifles are not criminals' favorite firearms. This proof has long been known to those who make public policies (See "Control Criminals, Not Guns," J.E. Simkin, _Wall Street Journal_, March 25, 1991, p. A10).

Even if criminals abused military-type firearms, this should not justify robbing the law-abiding of the only defense against genocide.

Armed Afghan Citizens Prevent Genocide

An armed citizenry is close to being genocide-proof, and there is hard evidence at hand. In December 1979, the ex-Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan. Most of the 16 million Afghans are devout Muslims. They rejected the atheism of their Soviet-backed government. Afghanistan has never been "governed" by whomever held power in the capitol, Kabul. Afghans look after themselves. Most adult males are armed. Armed Afghan citizens attacked the Afghan and Soviet armies. Afghanistan, a country about the size of Texas, is mountainous and has vast deserts. Of 13,000 miles of roads, only main ones are paved. Afghanistan had no gun control before the Soviet invasion. Thus, armed Afghan civilians put the Afghan and Soviet armies on the defensive. These civilians' grit moved other countries, including America, to supply heavier arms (anti-aircraft missiles). In 1989, the war-weary Soviets withdrew their 115,000 troops. The Afghans offer a shining example of how armed civilians without heavy weapons can wreck armies. The Afghans undoubtedly saved themselves from genocide.

Quotes

"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference. They deserve a place of honor with all that is good. When firearms go, all goes. We need them every hour." - George Washington in address to the 2nd session of united States Congress.

"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.” Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 “Commentaries on the Laws of England.", Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court & U.S. Dist. Court of Virginia

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria

"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J.Boyd, Ed., 1950)

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

"For the first time in history does a nation have complete gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient. The world will follow our lead in the future." - Adolph Hitler, 15 April 1935, in address to the Reichstag

Final Thoughts

Our modern laws treat the right to self defense as a privilege. For example, in Tennessee, there is a requirement for fingerprinting, a background check, $100 for the permit, mandatory training, all restrictions that prevent the law abiding from protecting himself legally. The total cost approaches $200 and is a de facto tax on a God given duty.