It seems that every time we have a mass shooting in this country, the first response from the Democrats is that we must institute some additional gun control laws. It is almost a Pavlovian response, not based on facts or reason, but simply on programed emotions. Let’s examine a few basic facts.
One: Laws are only effective if the penalty for breaking them is severe enough to guarantee compliance, and they are universally applied. In the case of existing gun laws, they obviously aren’t, because cities with the strongest gun control laws, such as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, are also among the most dangerous places in the nation. It appears that criminals don’t obey laws. What a concept!
Two: “Gun Free Zones” aren’t. Period. Virtually all mass shootings in the past half century have occurred in these supposedly “Safe” places. In reality, only the shooter is safe, until law enforcement arrives, that is. Even then, as we saw in the case of Parkland High School in Florida, and the recent Uvalde, TX massacre, the killings continued while the police pondered what to do after they got there. Shocking!
Three: A disarmed population is a vulnerable population. This is why every time a violent despot or despotic group takes power, the first thing they do is disarm the people. Chairman Mao once observed “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” So, a disarmed population is at the mercy not only of criminals, crazies and terrorists, but of a tyrannical government as well. The Founding Fathers knew that, and that is one of the reasons they gave us the Second Amendment.
Four: Another feature of despotic governments is their desire to maintain power by turning the citizens of the country against each other. It is a classic example of “Divide and Conquer”. If the people are divided into special interest groups, they won’t come together to overcome a government that is oppressing them.
Even worse is allowing people to take revenge on others for imagined offenses by accusing them of supposed misdeeds anonymously. The Nazis and Chinese Communists encouraged indoctrinated youth to spy on their families and neighbors, reporting real or imagined transgressions. This is a road we might be going down if so-called “Red Flag Laws” are enacted.
What is to prevent innocent people from being falsely accused of being dangerous or unstable and a threat to the community? An overzealous judge could then issue an order allowing police to forcibly seize the individual’s legally owned guns, thereby denying them the right to self defense for weeks, months or even years. This isn’t fantasy, it has already occurred. If an individual doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to hire a lawyer to defend them against such actions, it becomes a fait-accompli, a back door to legal gun confiscation.
Five: In the frenzy to do “SOMETHING” after the Uvalde school shooting, ten Republican Senators, including one of my own, Lindsey Graham, have signed onto supporting a Democrat proposed gun control measure which includes some form of federal “Red Flag” provisions. Because of the issues I have listed above, this is extremely inadvisable in my opinion. First and foremost, we should see to it that all provisions of existing federal and Texas state gun control laws were correctly applied to the Uvalde shooter. For instance, where did this teenager get the reported $4000 in cash to purchase the weapons? Why wasn’t there a School Safety Officer at the school? Why did it take so long for effective police presence to arrive, and why did they wait so long before breaching the room door and subduing the shooter? From what I have been able to determine, there were many windows which could have been used to determine what was happening in the classroom, particularly since shots continued to be heard.
Considering all the above facts, do we really need more gun laws? Especially if mandatory confiscation of AR-15 style rifles, and magazines which carry more than ten rounds, are also banned and subject to confiscation? This will undoubtably be resisted by possibly hundreds of thousands of legal gun owners, which will turn them into immediate felons. An act this foolish won’t make Americans safer. It will just fan the fires of resentment and resistance, and possibly bring on the armed rebellion the left seem so ardently seeking by their actions.