The Truth About Guns

I have never owned or shot a real gun. My forefathers enjoyed fishing, not hunting. Though I have no skin in this game, I’m tired of the untruths being told about guns, safety, compassion, abortion, and school massacres.

So, before another school shooting prompts a hysterical call to confiscate guns in America let’s set the record straight.

Here is the truth about guns in America.

The Truth About Guns

Three things remain constantly under assault by secularists in the United States:

• Religious liberty, though we’re beginning to turn the tide.
• Freedom of speech – especially on high school and college campuses.
• The right to bear arms – which was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution (2nd Amendment) to allow the Americans to defend themselves against a corrupt or tyrannical government.

Yet, secular/progressive/statist politicians want to take them away. The most recent purveyor of anti-gun hysteria is Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke.

The Western Journal–one of my favorite web-sites for honest news– describes the madness:

“Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke is not talking about confiscating Americans’ guns — except for when he is talking about it, a fact-checking site reported on Oct. 21.”

“At the center of PolitiFact’s fact-check was O’Rourke’s grossly misleading statement to Morning Joe host and anti-Trump pundit Joe Scarborough.”

“’Tell us about your plan on the confiscation of guns which, obviously, many believe is unconstitutional, also very concerned that it plays right into the hands of Republican candidates,’ Scarborough asked.”

“That’s when O’Rourke spat out this doozy of a lie: ‘To be clear, I’m not talking about confiscating anybody’s guns.’”

“Just a few sentences later, he contradicted himself. ‘[AR-15s and AK-47s] must be bought back or else each of them are an instrument potentially of terror in this country,’ he said.”

“That’s a pretty bad blunder, but as PolitiFact rightly noted, the Democratic candidate lied through his teeth when he claimed not to be talking about confiscating anybody’s guns. Mandatory confiscation is exactly what he’s been talking about almost nonstop.”

“During an appearance on CNN last month, O’Rourke was directly asked to explain his gun control stance. ‘Are you, in fact, in favor of gun confiscation?’ CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked him on Sept. 18.”

“’Yes, when it comes to AR-15s and AK-47s,’ O’Rourke answered.

“If there was any doubt, he made a similar statement during the Sept. 12 Democratic debate. ‘Are you proposing taking away their guns?’ moderator David Muir asked the former congressman.

“’I am, if it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield,’ O’Rourke replied. Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.’”

“The Texas Democrat has tried to weasel away from admitting that he’s pushing for confiscation, despite the fact that his proposed ‘buyback’ would be mandatory and involve ‘a visit by law enforcement to recover that firearm,’ as he said on Morning Joe.”

“Thankfully, PolitiFact isn’t letting him get away with this staggering lie. ‘It is unreasonable to call what Mr. O’Rourke is proposing anything other than confiscation,’ University of Wyoming law professor George Mocsary told PolitiFact.”

And he’s not alone. Some progressive leaders today sound a little like the Nazi “brown-shirts” of two generations ago whose methods of gun confiscation and intimidation played a key role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

Do these secular politicians really to want to see less innocent deaths in America, or is there a more sinister reason for getting rid of guns?

Professor John Lott at the University of Chicago is a noted expert on gun laws and statistics. He has laboriously chronicled the following facts about guns.

There are roughly 30,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S, per year by firearms and this number is not disputed. The U.S. population is 329,064,917 as of October 28, 2016 (the last year of complete statistics). This means that just 0.009% of the U.S. population dies from gun related actions each year.

Statistically speaking, this is insignificant. What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective, as compared to other causes of death:

• 65% of those deaths are by suicide, which would never be prevented by gun laws.
• 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified.
• 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – better known as gun violence.
• 3% are accidental discharge deaths.

Technically, “gun violence” is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100. This is still a lot of people, but here’s the revealing breakdown  (2016):

• 480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago
• 344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore
• 333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit
• 119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)

So, basically a quarter of all gun crime happens in just four cities. All of them are controlled by progressive politicians and have strict gun laws. (What does that tell you?)

This basically leaves 3,825 gun deaths for the rest of the nation–75 deaths per state. That is an average because some states have much higher rates than others due to size and other factors. For example, California (a one-party progressive state) had 1,169 gun deaths and Alabama (a red state) had 1.

Who has the strictest gun laws by far? California, who crime rate is  spawned by the number of criminal persons residing there.

Back to the nation: are 5,100 deaths per year concerning? Yes, but it’s a matter of perspective. All death is sad, especially in the commission of a crime. Robbery, death, rape, assaults are all done by criminals–people committed to breaking laws for their own selfish  gain.

If the issue is people dying, in other words, real compassion for people, then why aren’t progressive politicians concerned about these folks?

• 40,000+ people die from a drug overdoses each year.
• 36,000 people die per year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths.
• 34,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities (exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide).
• And the elephant in the room–862,000 dying by abortion (2017).

Two other areas of death might surprise you. 200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical errors. You are safer walking in the worst areas of Chicago than you are when you are in a hospital.

710,000 people also die each year from heart disease. If the anti-gun movement focused their attention on heart disease, even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save twice the number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.).

A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total number of gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides. So, you must ask yourself, in the grand scheme of things, why the focus on guns?

It’s simple and ominous.

The drumbeat to curtail the 2nd Amendment was never about compassion or caring for people. Just like in Nazi Germany, taking away guns gives power to government. Today’s secular politicians are all about force and control–of your religious beliefs, your speech, and your ability to defend yourself against them.

It is not difficult to understand that a disarmed populace is a controlled populace. Thus, the second amendment was proudly and boldly included in the U.S. Constitution–to prevent that very evil.

If Beto O’Rourke and his kind really care about people, then Pastor Mark Dickson near Shreveport, Louisiana provides the answer for true compassion:

“‘The abortion clinic in Shreveport performs around 20 abortions on Tuesdays, 30 on Wednesdays, and 50 on Saturdays,’ Dickson recently said in an interview.”

“’If 50 people died in a school shooting, it would be on the news constantly,’ the pastor said. ‘There’s 20 innocent children dying every Tuesday at that abortion clinic. Why aren’t they doing that with the lives of unborn children?’”

Want to save innocent lives? Overturn Roe v. Wade.

And starting telling the truth about guns–and other things.