Anyone who has been involved with gun politics for a long time will have noticed that every few years or so the antis try inventing some new crisis as an excuse to push for more gun control. They do this not just to keep the issue fresh in peoples minds, but because inevitably whatever they got excited about in the past turns out to be a big pile of crapola.
Their latest bugaboo comes courtesy of Samuel Hover from the Legal Community Against Violence, an antigun lawyers group which drafts and distributes model gun control laws around the country.
Hover’s op-ed is titled, “Easy Access to Guns Fuels Hate Groups,” and it’s got lots of nuttery in it:
“These are dangerous days. In our uncertain political and economic times, the U.S. is experiencing a surge in right-wing violence and intimidation … the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report detailing the rise in anti-government militias and right-wing hate groups that have been resurrected, in part, with the support of right-of-center elected officials and certain mainstream media outlets …”
The SPLC is an extreme Left group which sees the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and other “hate groups” hiding behind every tree and bush. They may have started out with the best of intentions years ago, but all I’ve ever seen them do is fear mongering and promoting far-Left causes.
“… Firearms and ammunition are too easily accessible in this country, and flaccid federal and state gun laws are primarily to blame … private firearm transfers at gun shows and elsewhere, allowing [criminals] to evade background checks and recordkeeping requirements and obtain guns … Alarmingly, private gun transfers account for an estimated 40% of all firearm transfers each year. Such loopholes keep us awash in guns and allow the public to be easily victimized by a prohibited possessor carrying a firearm. In 2007 alone, FBI statistics show that 385,178 crimes were committed with guns …”
Prohibiting private firearms sales is something the antis have wanted for a long time and it took him a full paragraph to get to the point. Note the statistics he quotes too. They don’t actually back up his assertion that private sales are a problem.
“… States with strong laws designed to reduce gun deaths and injuries are undermined by traffickers who use the laws of weaker states to obtain guns and then pour these guns into the “strong law” states … A growing body of evidence indicates that stronger firearm regulations may be having a positive effect at deterring gun violence …”
If that’s the case, then why don’t those states with “weak” gun laws have higher crime rates than states like New York with “strong laws”?
“… Legal Community Against Violence (LCAV) recently completed its own review of gun laws, gun death rates and crime gun export data … LCAV’s analysis reveals that many states with the strongest gun laws have the lowest gun death rates, and vice-versa …”
Just skimming their report raises questions as to it’s validity. Right off the top they are labeling people 25 and under as children.
“… Our notoriously weak gun laws are not inevitable: extensive regulation of firearms and ammunition are the norm in most developed – and many developing – nations across the globe …”
Other norms around the world are societies broken down according to ethnic/religious lines, institutional corruption and discrimination, mass murder and genocide.
“… Look no further than the experiences of some of our closest allies to see that strong gun laws work …”
Like Switzerland and Israel?
“… Our lenient laws and under-funded, defanged law enforcement agencies charged with enforcing our weak laws actually help fuel the gun violence rampant across our borders with Mexico …”
Mexico’s corrupt and ineffectual government is the primary source of Mexico’s problems. Our useless drug laws are a prime cause of criminal violence in this country. A “Government is God” philosophy has never worked anyplace.
“… The confluence of armed violence as a perceived solution to our political, social and economic woes, and lax gun laws that make firearms readily available to anyone in our society, produce a recipe for disaster … It also provides an easy opportunity for a home-grown terrorist eager to target government, ideological opponents, immigrants, members of certain religions, or any entity or individual that person perceives as a real or imagined threat …”
Except that it hasn’t happened and you don’t see gun groups calling for applying gun rights to anyone less than the whole population. It’s really hard to victimize your opposition when they have the ability to defend themselves.
“… home-grown terrorists aren’t naturally grown, rather they are nurtured into existence by right-wing politicos and pundits … Incitement to violence as perpetrated by these pundits is not a virtue of civil society or the individual, and hardly indicative of “reclaiming the civil rights movement” or promoting civil liberties – values these pundits claim to represent …”
The NRA and other gun groups are hardly inciting violence when advocating that the specifically enumerated civil right enshrined in the 2nd Amendment be treated with the same respect as the others outlined in the Bill of Rights.