Posted on 09/28/2003 9:47:53 AM PDT by Ed Straker
Should there be stricter gun control?
Diane Glass, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
DIANE GLASS
AJC columnist
On Sundays in Georgia, you can't buy a bottle of wine, but you can buy a gun at Wal-Mart. Just pass the background check and you're ready to lock and load. But don't be too quick to shoot the liberal; at least, not this one. Your head may need some work, but I have no desire to control your arms.
Stricter gun control is like Nancy Reagan's "just say no" campaign. Those who were never inclined to indulge are validated, those who already abuse continue to abuse. Do you really think stricter gun control is going to decrease homicides? The only people who won't be able to get guns will be law-abiding citizens who have no knowledge of underground networks. Those aren't the people committing crimes.
Rosie O'Donnell and a host of other vocal liberals fight for stricter gun control. I know you've heard this a time or two, but people kill people. Guns are inanimate objects. For anyone who watched "Bowling for Columbine," the award winning documentary by the uber-liberal Michael Moore, in between the chuckles, one message stood out loud and clear: gun homicides in the U.S. aren't a gun control problem; they're a citizen problem. Plenty of Canadians own guns, yet their homicide rate is significantly lower. Further proof is in the crime rate. It's going down, not up. So I ask -- where's the correlation of crime and gun ownership? Gun ownership continues to increase.
Gun control advocates must live in a city condo. Or, maybe they live in the suburban dream where gated communities and postage stamp lawns cloister them from the rest of civilization. Because they're forgetting about the rest of us who live in more rural, less restricted and secure communities where a guard isn't there as a watchful eye, where there is no neighborhood crime watch, where Bob and Jane aren't just down the street. For the rest of us, a gun is not a right, it's a necessity. It's true that a weapon can be used against you. So here's some good advice: if you're not willing to use it in self-defense, don't buy one!
There are far more automobile fatalities in the U.S. but we don't stop driving cars. Some drivers drink and drive, but we don't punish them by restricting the driving privileges of everyone else. We simply punish the violators. When we hear tragic stories about children getting hold of handguns, I understand the impulse to ban guns. But don't we also hear about children falling out of windows, out of cars, being beaten to death? That doesn't mean the problem is guns. The problem is us.
Don't kill the messenger.
Related:
http://www.wagc.com/index.html
SHAUNTI FELDHAHN
for ajc.com
Don't look now, Toto, but we're not in Kansas anymore. A liberal just made a conservative argument on gun control.
And now a conservative is about to make an argument that - ahem - may not quite sound like the NRA.
I agree that the problem is us. (Diane, you've got conservative potential yet!) But that does not excuse 'us' from doing something about that problem. In fact, the very knowledge of the dark side of human nature should make us watchful, careful and willing to both enact and enforce reasonable controls on deadly weapons -- although always with a careful eye to the Second Amendment.
I personally think that the drinking and driving analogy is a good one -- we punish the violators, not the good drivers. But we do place reasonable restrictions on the good drivers, out of caution. We institute an entire system to not only catch violators, but to prevent incidents. We insist that bars restrict alcohol service to drunk people at closing time. We institute roadblocks and mandatory license checks on notorious roadways on party-hearty Saturday nights. And, of course, we punish the violators. And even with all these precautions, too many people still die under the wheels of drunk drivers -- so it is clear that we need to do more.
Just as I believe those results have demonstrated the need for stricter measures to prevent drunk-driving incidents, I also believe we have seen the need for stricter measures to prevent gun violence. Not all states exercise the gun-control precautions that Georgia does.
We should never prohibit the right to bear arms, but it is a reasonable tradeoff to ask everyone to wait a few days and go through a criminal background check before exercising that right. It is a reasonable tradeoff to ask anyone who wants to bear AK-47 or Uzi sub-machine guns to go through a much more stringent system. It is not only reasonable but essential that we do a better job of policing the areas that criminals now slip through the cracks -- gun shows being a notorious example. And, of course, as the uber-conservatives say, we also have to do a better job of enforcing the laws we have.
Liberals (other than Diane) may wish the right to bear arms wasn't in the Bill of Rights, but it is -- right up there with freedom of speech and all those other rights that the liberal set vociferously defends. Our Founding Fathers knew that the problem is indeed us. There is a dark side to the hearts of men, and banning gun ownership will not solve that. As a gun-owner friend of mine says, "even if we took all the guns away, men would still find a way to form gangs and kill each other with sticks." The only true answer is to change the hearts of men. And no law, regulation or enforcement action is able to do that.
GUN CONTROL
Do you favor stricter gun control laws?
Yes.2%41
No. 98%2215
Undecided0%0
Total Votes 2256
Seconded.
(Socialism is slavery)
Pretty good tag-line too!
Exactly. Those in favor of gun control have rarely ever held, or much less shot a firearm in the safety of a shooting range. What they know and what they think is from the TV, TV news and the movies.
...but we actually do, in fact. Infringement having been accomplished a long time ago.
Another "Red Herring". Firearms used in crimes that can be traced back to gun shows is nearly zero. The real "Sin" of the gun show is not related to the 2nd Amendment, but to the 1st. Amendment. When a Jewish, L.A. County Supervisor attended a gun show held on county property, he was more outraged at the Nazi paraphernalia that was present, rather than the firearm displays or procedures.
Since the Nazi junk was protected by the 1st. Amendment, the supervisor could hardly ban the Nazi displays only. So instead, he just banned the whole darn gun show.
In the East, maybe, but not in the West. California just got a huge dose of gun control from the Democrats in the legislature and the governor.
free dixie,too. sw
"The Law Enforcement Alliance of America is blasting California Gov. Gray Davis for signing a gun control bill that effectively bans the sale of many new handguns commonly used by law enforcement officers and citizens for self-defense.
The bill Davis signed this week requires all semiautomatic handguns sold in California to be equipped with magazine disconnects and chamber indicators by 2007."
It is however heartening to read a piece in which a liberal is not repeating the same old mantra, at least not verbatim.
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