It’s no secret if you’ve followed what I’ve written over the last four years that while I personally was not a Bernie support in 2016, it is my belief that the Democrats selling the election nomination to Hilary was a travesty. I didn’t want him to win but more than that, I didn’t want him to lose through cheating which is precisely how I see the actions of the leadership selecting the candidate the party puts forth. In fact, their choice in 2016 is what inspired my #WalkAway from the party and realizing they don’t represent the people. Thus, in response I wrote:
In the exchange that followed, I further clarified that while the left is not a monolith, the left chooses, allegedly, the best candidate for the job. Except they didn’t in 2016 when they let Hilary buy her nomination and it looks like they again didn’t choose the best candidate to represent people who are in their camp, evidenced by both the comments in that thread and those I see all over social media. Personally, I have yet to encounter a single person who wants Biden. Now maybe I don’t know the right people which is why I haven’t encountered anyone who wanted him from the get go, but it’s difficult to see why people are rallying behind him when I continue to see posts that say things about how he’s not people’s first choice but they need to vote for him because anything but Trump .
The author later chimed in and, among other things, stated:
Which brings us to the point of this post: the so called assault weapon ban. Although how I communicated it apparently offended my friend, it occurred to me they are undereducated on the topic and I said as much.
First, consider the concept of an assault weapon and how an assault weapon ban could be applied not just to long guns but to a myriad of other things. It could be an “assault knife” or an “assault pencil” or an “assault boulder” or an “assault spoon” or an “assault rock” or an “assault belt” or an “assault pen” or an “assault magazine” or an “assault book” which is to say we can use anything at our disposal to “assault” another. Maybe you’re thinking, “but you can’t kill a lot of people with those things!” I implore you at the very least to look at the article about the 29 dead in the China knife attack that also left another 130 people wounded with a knife … a tool I can’t imagine humanity wanting to give up.
Ultimately, assault weapon is not a meaningful label, especially when it’s applied to long guns and not handguns when both can be used to harm large quantities of people in short increments of time. Looking at the links for each example, it’s easy to consider the most important aspect in the equation: it’s not about the tool, it’s about the person wielding it. The object — be it a gun, knife, pencil, boulder, rock, spoon, belt, pen, magazine, book or something else — doesn’t inflict harm on it’s own. If it did, we’d have a lot more problems than we do with all manner of things.
Apart from the silliness of the label, most people I’ve met who get sucked into this narrative and support this so called assault weapon ban fall into one of two camps: either they don’t know that long guns cause fewer deaths than handguns or, after explaining that to them, they claim they want to ban guns altogether.
Handguns Kill More People Than Rifles
For those who haven’t looked at the numbers, it may be surprising to learn that not only do handguns account for more murder than rifles by more than an order of magnitude and then approximately doubled, personal weapons like hands, fists, feet, pushing and the like are also responsible for more murders than rifles in this country.
This is an important concept to consider if you’re advocating for the so called assault weapon ban. We certainly can’t ban human bodies and yet, as “assault weapons” go in this country, they are statistically speaking more deadly than the rifle counterparts some would propose we ban. If the efforts to ban these so called “assault weapons” are aimed at reducing murder, the focus, from where I’m sitting, looks like using a thimble to drain an ocean.
Further, the reality is most guns that most people use these days are semi automatics. Thus, claiming that it is a so-called assault weapon because it is a semi automatic isn’t a particularly meaningful piece of data.
And, I have to repeat: most gun deaths in his country come from handguns… Dramatically more so than long guns. Which begs the question: what is the real intent behind these bans? If they don’t address the most offensive statistics, why would we expend effort with these restrictions? It’s not logical.
Perhaps I’m paranoid and yet, from where I sit the so called assault weapon ban paves the way for government to prohibit other weapons responsible for more deaths than the long guns. It seems to me banning something that isn’t causing the majority of the problem is easily setting the precedent for them to ban all semi automatics if not the other tools listed above that can be used for injuring and killing others. Consider for a moment how they use the emotional aspects of the limited incidents of horror enacted by these weapons to manipulate the public into joining them in demonizing long guns, and then propose legislation they claim will “fix” the problem. The public then supports the legislation because of their misperception that it will solve the problem when it won’t. Then, sometime later, after another incident happens, they can easily use the precedent set with the initial assault weapon ban to invoke more tyrannical laws that violate the spirit of our constitution.
This is one reason why Pro 2A supporters like myself are against the so-called assault weapon ban. It’s easy to perceive it as a precursor to taking guns away in general and philosophically, it’s a foolish direction to following for a country that believes in the Second Amendment. Of course what’s more striking to me is the paradox of people not trusting our government and wanting to self police who then turn around wanting to ban the very weapons that would make this possible and simultaneously help keep our government in check. It’s mind boggling to me.
Taking a deeper cut, I also wonder how in an era where we are consumed with countless discussion about #DefundThePolice people’s first thought would be to take away long guns from citizens rather than taking them away from the police. It makes no sense if you don’t trust the police and perceived they use too much lethal force to allow them to use the weapons that you want to take away from citizens which occurs to me as another logical inconsistency.
“No One Needs a Gun”
I have had conversations with many people who have said to me they think guns have no value and they are simply weapons of murder. While it is true that guns are effective at murder, they also affect at self-defense. Consider living in Alaska where you might encounter animals and need to defend yourself from them. Consider being in a city like Chicago where murder is a regular feature: wouldn’t having guns help citizens feel more capable of self defense? I have no idea how gun advocacy and feminism aren’t intrinsically linked. As the smaller, slower, weaker sex on average, guns afford women an opportunity to protect themselves from aggressors and as such, to my mind, should be lauded as a reasonable way to help confer equal opportunity upon women.
Even if you’re not a fan of using guns for self-defense, or warding off animals, guns are an amazing tool and also offer a fun sport for people. Marksmanship is its own skill and requires focus, concentration, and control as well as discipline and practice to achieve consistent, successful results. I was a fan of the reality TV show produced by the History Channel called Top Shot which pits marksman against each other in some incredible scenarios and for my part, it changed my relationship to weapons significantly.
Ultimately though, the biggest reason to object to complaints that people don’t need them is our essential freedom. In a country that is founded on the concept of liberty, the idea that someone shouldn’t “need” something is more or less irrelevant. Liberty isn’t about need. It’s about choice . People who would limit other people’s choice for no legitimate reason that is clearly lacking in reason is a sad direction for our country to choose.
Citizens Shouldn’t Be Able to Kill Many People at Once
This topic arises again and again on social media and no matter how much education and information is out there, people seem determined to support the ban. I asked my friend why they supported the assault weapon ban to which they responded:
While it’s true long guns can do a lot of damage to a lot of people quickly, it’s also true looking at the knife attack in China long guns are not necessary to achieve that same result. My friend previously indicated the founding fathers probably never fathomed such weapons, compared to muskets, which may well be true though it’s hard for me to imagine men who stood in battle couldn’t imagine more horrific weapons considering the brutality of killing during the Revolutionary War and considering guns more powerful than muskets had already been invented. Even if they couldn’t imagine the power of semi-automatic long guns, they didn’t prohibit citizens from having their own cannons which certainly were some of the deadliest weapons of their era.
I think it’s interesting when people say they aren’t comfortable with citizens having these weapons yet apparently don’t feel the need to put an assault weapon ban on police, especially in an era like we are experiencing right now with unprecedented calls for defunding the police. It occurs to me that an assault weapon ban applied to citizens and not applied to police leaves our overlords with far more power than they should have to use the same deadly force against we, the people the author objects to when citizen use it against each other. This seems like a hypocritical double standard.
Perhaps I’m mistaken and they do advocate for this so called assault weapon ban on police equipment as well (although I’ve discussed this with many who don’t) which then begs the question: how do police defend the public from criminals who do not choose to honor such an assault weapon ban? It’s a reasonable question because the nature of criminal behavior is disregard of the law and we all know laws don’t prohibit criminal behavior; if they did our prisons would be empty and no murder, rape, theft, arson, or other violations of people’s person and property would be happening.