Some Thoughts On Gun Control

Some thoughts on Gun Control

14 Republican Senators recently voted for gun control legislation. While on the surface this is the betrayal grassroots Republicans have learned to expect from establishment politicians, if the legislation is being accurately portrayed by the media a more nuanced response is called for.  Perhaps this is a good time to look at the premise for gun control. 

What does the constitution say about gun control?  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.  What is the militia?  Every able bodied man in the US.  In fact the states were supposed to arm and train them.  The US is supposed to be like Switzerland where many homes have an automatic weapon.  Any gun control legislation in the US is flat-out unconstitutional.

The traditional response to a mass shooting is an “assault weapon” (rifle) ban.  What do people use rifles for?   Something more than 100,000,000 varmints are killed each year in America.  I know – I helped kill them.  A varmint is a nuisance animal smaller than a deer (although technically deer could be classified as varmints).  Given that 7.5 million deer are killed each year, 6 million by gun and 1.5 million by car, the number of varmints killed annually could be higher than the population of the US, since there is no legal restriction on varmint hunting.  Less than 1 out of every one million rifle rounds fired for hunting purposes is used on the wrong prey (people).  American civilians burn through about 9 billion rounds of ammunition each year (almost 30 rounds per American).

As a side note it is much cheaper to kill deer with a rifle than to kill them with a car, and much safer.  Only city dwellers and suburbanites exclusively kill deer with cars. People in rural areas have more brains than that, they use rifles.

There were 21,570 homicides in 2021, a 5% increase from 2020.  2020 was a 30% increase from 2019, fueled by BLM riots and COVID.   Further, the murder total was 14,249 in 2014 and has risen since then every year there was a major BLM riot, or Biden was president, and declined every year there wasn’t a major BLM riot and Joe Biden wasn’t president.  Letting Joe Biden steal the election has caused the murder of more than 1500 Americans.

About 360 people are killed with rifles each year (about 1.5%) so banning rifles is pointless.  And what about “assault weapons”?  In 2014 out of 11,961 murders only 39 used an “assault weapon” (AR-15, AK-47, or similar weapon).  Only 0.33% of murders are committed with an “assault weapon”.

Another side note:  Anti-gunners like to quote the number 45,222  for annual gun deaths in the US.  The CDC says that in 2020 there were 24,292 suicides, 19,384 murders, 535 “unintentional”, 611 law enforcement involved, and 400 “undetermined circumstances” gun deaths.  Given that there were only 21500 murders in 2020, and 34% of murders (FBI UCR) are committed with non-gun weapons this blurb from the CDC is highly suspect.  Further a number of these deaths were officially recorded as dying of COVID.

The largest share of gun deaths are suicides.  Only 52.83% of suicides, a little more than half,  in 2020 were committed with firearms. If the Anti-gunners think they will stop suicides by banning guns they are sadly mistaken.  Greenland achieves 6 times our suicide rate with far fewer guns.  8% of their population dies by suicide. South Korea exceeds our suicide rate relatively gun free.  And Japan had a higher gun-free suicide rate, but they are improving. And the progressive driven cultural disruption is responsible for many of the suicides, which have risen steadily in the US since 2000.

They missed on an assault weapons ban this year, but did decide to raise the age to buy a rifle, mandate storage requirements for gun owners and increase bump stock regulations.  There is a argument to be made that the new regulations don’t infringe on the right to keep and bear arms (unlike an “assault weapons” ban) but it is a weak argument.  Biden’s attempts to tax or limit ammunition are a more direct threat to 2nd amendment rights.  

Let’s see how effective these measures would be in Uvalde.  Raising the age limit would have delayed it for three years assuming the shooter had no friends and couldn’t borrow weapons. Storage requirements and bump stock regulations would have no effect. The legislation wouldn’t fix the unlocked door the shooter used to enter the school.  The legislation wouldn’t fix the 75 minutes that law enforcement dithered while children were shot.  The shooter could have killed more than 19 people in 75 minutes with a single semi-automatic handgun or a katana.

So what do we do about mass shootings?  What if there was a way to stop 20-30% of mass shooting deaths overnight with a single piece of legislation?  A solution used by other countries to combat mass shooting? This solution exists.

The solution is a complete blackout of news coverage of mass shootings.  Mass shootings tend to happen in clusters because of the copy-cat effect.  And the mercilessly milking of any mass shooting by the backers of gun control just makes it worse.  But we can stop the backers of gun control from needlessly killing Americans with a press ban.

Given that the current press is dishonest and hopelessly biased “freedom of the press” does more harm than good.  The press is no longer a “guardian of democracy” but one of the forces working to undermine it.  They are allied with the bureaucracy and support them rather than oppose them.  So it is impossible to understand why Republicans haven't proposed a press blackout to stop 20-30% of the carnage.

We need some solid research on why mass shootings have increased in the last 30 years.  What is causing this?  Is it the dissolution of the family?  Is it SSRIs (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors)? Is it corruption of the culture by godless communists aka secular progressives aka “Wokies”?  Is it modern progressive (“Woke”) psychology?  Is it “Gun free zones” and failures by law enforcement?  Is it all of these?

Uvalde, where 21 people died instead of 3 or less, occurred despite the lessons learned from the  Parkland shooting (17 dead).  This would indicate there are some low hanging fruit on the law enforcement side of the equation.  And we could just ban the “gun free zones” where these tragedies inevitably occur.

As far as the progressive side of things, if it would cut the number of mass shooting deaths by even 10%,  it is worth banning Wokeness (radical progressivism).

SSRIs have been tentatively linked to mass shootings.  There is no excuse that the health records of mass shooters have not been thoroughly mined to establish whether their mental health treatment is linked to their actions.

There has been a knee jerk reaction to ban guns in response to these incidents instead of exploring other ways to violate the constitution that would be far more effective.  A press ban and a progressive “woke” ban (a ban on corrosive philosophy that is destroying America), would be far more effective than a gun ban.  And the research to find out whether there is a link between shooters' drug history or progressive psychology, and mass shootings, should start immediately.

We need to ask why establishment Republicans side with the enemy instead of proposing innovative legislation.  Legislation that would aggressively target the root causes of mass shootings (the press, mental health care, cultural disruption, etc.)  Legislation with beneficial side effects that would improve society.

Let's go Brandon. God Bless America.

Paul Agle is a Member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee