The Moral Bankruptcy
of Gun Control
With Each Tragedy Comes The Same Old Solutions
The moral bankruptcy of gun control was never so graphic and exposed as it was last December when, in the aftermath of the tragic school shooting in Madison, Wis., former President Joe Biden’s immediate and reflexive reaction was to call on Congress to pass “universal background check” and “assault weapon ban” legislation.
The establishment media — whose own moral bankruptcy was pretty well-established at that point for having been complicit in covering up Biden’s diminished cognitive abilities for, well, the previous four years — lapped it up, as did the media’s declining audience of leftist lemmings.
No Thought Require
However, it took all of a nano-second for anyone with functioning gray matter to recognize Biden’s “solutions” had absolutely nothing to do with the crime he was addressing. Thanks to the November election, we’ll be spared any future such musings from the now-former president.
The teenage killer, a 15-year-old girl, didn’t use an “assault weapon” but instead a handgun she could not possibly have legally obtained under existing state and federal law. Banning a type of gun not used in the crime had no tangible connection to the facts at hand, and the administration knew it.
Likewise, because of her age and existing statutes, she would not have been thwarted by a background check because she could not possibly have even submitted a Form 4473 to start the process. Nowhere in this country could a young teenager walk into a gun store and legally purchase any kind of firearm, and the Biden crew knew that as well.
She further violated existing laws by carrying that pistol onto a public school campus — violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act — and opening fire. Murder has always been illegal, but when has that ever stopped the murderer?
And so? Go back over the past several years and the pattern of behavior reveals the stagnancy of the gun control game plan. For every high-profile tragedy involving an illegally used firearm, the gun control crowd trots out their stale wish list, topped by a ban on an entire class of firearms and the most popular rifle in the U.S. today. They also want backdoor gun registration under the guise of an “enhanced background check.”
The country has seen this maneuver over and over again. It’s an all-flash and no substance strategy designed to mislead “the folks” that something is being done about violent crime when nothing at all is accomplished, except for some headlines, photo-ops and lofty pronouncements. It may look impressive on the 5 o’clock news, but criminals don’t watch the news because they’re too busy stealing the television set.
Gun prohibitionists don’t get this because they don’t want to get it. They don’t really want to know they’ve failed because they do not want to admit it, since they can’t risk such a public acknowledgement. Instead, their reflex action has always been to double-down, declaring their efforts “just didn’t go far enough … this time.”
Their agenda belongs in the trash, and the opportunity is here, right now, to change course and reverse years of Second Amendment erosion.
Now, about four months into the second Trump presidency, would be a good time to make some significant changes. Gun owners helped put this administration in power and there is opportunity to accomplish some things. It’s up to the grassroots to start hounding their congressional representatives and their U.S. senators to make this happen. Here are some possible courses of action:
Item #1: Let’s hope Trump has by now, or will shortly, name someone to head ATF who is far friendlier to the Second Amendment than his or her predecessor. To prove it, let’s see an effort to restore funding to the ATF’s restoration-of-rights program. This program has been stripped of funds for far too many years, because of anti-gunners such as Chuck Schumer. If people who were convicted of non-violent felonies have done their time, paid their debt to society and become productive citizens again are worthy of having their voting rights restored, they should also have their gun rights restored. After all, a right is a right. They are all equal in importance.
Item #2: Instead of a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, perhaps the Trump administration could invite leaders from the firearms community to the West Wing on a regular basis to brainstorm common-sense approaches to reducing violent crime involving firearms. Rather than propose new laws, put existing statutes to work and lock up violent offenders, and keep them there. They can’t be shooting people when they’re behind bars. The country is tired of reading about recidivist criminals committing new crimes when they should be doing hard time in prison.
Item #3: President Trump should direct the Attorney General to unleash the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division, challenging state laws that violate the Second Amendment rights of millions of citizens in states such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Delaware and Maryland. Put 18 U.S.C. § 242 (Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law) to work wherever it may be applied. The time has come for the federal government to carry some of its own water, rather than leave the job of protecting the Second Amendment to privately funded organizations such as the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, Firearms Policy Coalition, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. All of these gun rights groups have been fighting for years to restore the Second Amendment to its proper stature within the Bill of Rights. Stop It!
Stop It!
Back in January when former ATF Director Steve Dettelbach announced his resignation right before Trump’s inauguration, Alan Gottlieb at CCRKBA had this observation: “The next ATF director must be someone who recognizes law-abiding gun owners as allies, not enemies in the fight against crime, which is a battle we all want to win.”
The decades-long gun control experiment has infringed upon the rights of honest citizens while leftist prosecutors and lenient judges have allowed too many repeat offenders off the hook so they can commit more crimes. It is time to bring a halt to catch-and-release justice and publicly show how the gun prohibition crusade is morally bankrupt.
Their goal has never really been about locking up criminals and keeping them away from the public, and they know it. It has always been more about getting rid of guns, one class/type at a time. When anti-gunners failed nearly 50 years ago to ban handguns, the focus shifted to “assault weapons,” which they were able to portray to a gullible public as machineguns and “weapons of war.” The gun ban crowd has gotten away with the charade far too long.
Now is a good time to take the fight to them.
