Guns Are Not The Problem

After every gun tragedy, especially school shootings, the anti-gun folks come out of the woodwork - wanting to take away guns as if that would solve the problem.

Now let's be clear - no child should ever be shot while at school. The thought of this is horrible. The reality is it takes pure evil or a mentally ill person to do this.

I am 60 - and while I grew up in New York and I did not experience this, in the Midwest, high school parking lots when I went to school had rifle racks in the back of many pickup trucks. A 12 gauge during dove, duck, and goose season and a rifle during deer season. Loaded guns in the trucks, in the school parking lot.  What did we not have? School shootings. 

Heck a co-worker even told me of a time when he brought a new pistol, and his teacher overheard him telling a friend. The teacher made him bring it in so he could see it over lunch. Again, none of these guns killed anyone.

So we understand - let's review something that gets overlooked:

"A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT be infringed."

The 2nd Amendment. This pesky little amendment is why we are not going to give up guns. And we need to stop trying to demonize the tool that is being used for criminal activity or by the mentally ill. There is a big reason why it is critical that we do not give up our guns. I think it's imperative to have a history lesson here, so people truly understand what happens when you disarm a society. 

1938 to 1939 the German government disarmed Jews and political enemies through decrees/administration (while loosening restrictions for regime-loyal groups). Jewish gun possession became a criminal offense punishable by concentration camp imprisonment. It wasn't long after 6 million unarmed Jews were killed by the Holocaust. 6 million people who had no ability to fight back. 

1950s to present The People's Republic of China established one of the world's strictest civilian gun bans. Before the great China famine ( 1959 - 61) millions of unarmed Chinese were killed by Mao. 

Now let's look at more recent history from 1996 to 1997 .

1997 the United Kingdom (Great Britain) passed the 1997 firearm amendment Acts effectively banning private handguns with limited exception. I can hear it now "Dennis there has been no mass killings in the UK." No, they use different tools, murders by knife are extremely high in the UK, and we often see vehicles driven into crowds as a way to create mass murder. But you are correct but numerous people are now being arrested for tweets! Some three or four years old, social media posts if they hurt other people's feelings, one individual for praying silently a few blocks away from an abortion clinic and my favorite for saying "we love bacon". Sadly the UK does not have a second amendment, or a first amendment protecting free speech.  

Again you can abuse a population when they are disarmed.

1996 to 1997 Australia firearms agreement banned most semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. Yes again, nobody died. In 2021 Australia forced citizens arriving back from overseas to undergo 14 days of supervised quarantine regardless of if they were positive for COVID or not. There was no option for home quarantine. The best part, while this was initially free, they then started charging people thousands of dollars for forcing them to stay somewhere they didn't want to be when they could have self-quarantined at home. 

Again, no way to fight back when you have no weapons. 

So, thanks but we will be keeping our guns. 

Thankfully we have the second amendment. 

Shall not be infringed is clear. Another mentally ill trans person attacked a Christian school in Minnesota a few weeks ago and President Trump mentioned limiting the gun rights of trans people. While this would be protective of Christians and Christian schools I must disagree with him, as shall not be infringed applies to all. 

We have two issues that make a horrific situation even worse. First sensationalism and irresponsible media making it seem like school shootings are happening every day. Let's be clear, school shootings are heinous, but people mistakenly believe that hundreds of children are being killed each year in school shootings - that's just not true.

In fact, four times as many children die in accidents from riding their bicycles than in school shootings each year. Yes, those numbers are correct.

Simply being a kid puts a child at great risk of death then being shot and killed at school. The risk of a school shooting is greatly exaggerated. 

Now I want to be clear, no child should be shot in school, or at any time. But what are the odds of a child being shot and killed while at school? So let's look at children's average deaths and I'm going to use the years 2020 through 2023 for children under 19 years of age.

Automobile accidents:   3,806 deaths.

School Shooting:            22 deaths.

Bicycle accidents:         92 deaths. 

So, if it is just about saving children, we need to focus on getting rid of the automobiles to have the biggest impact, saving 3806 children. However, if we just took away bicycles for children we would save four times as many, 92 children. 

Let's look at it another way. 

What are your lifetime odds of dying for various scenarios: 

Die in a car accident - 1 in 93 

Die due to a lightning strike - 1 in 1,200,000 

Die in a school shooting - 1 in 5,000,000 

Die in an airplane crash - 1 in 11,000,000 

Again, you are four times more likely to die in your lifetime due to being struck by lightning than in a school shooting. 

Why are we not rioting in the streets to ban cars? 3806 children are dying in car accidents every year. Why? Because the car is not the problem. The person driving it caused the fatal accident, not the car. Guns are no different. Guns are not the problem, criminals and mentally ill people using guns illegally are the problem. 

We don't try to take cars away from all the good legal drivers because of the behavior of unsafe dangerous drivers. And we shouldn't try to take guns from legal gun owners due to the behavior of criminals and mentally ill people. Doing so reduces our ability to protect ourselves. 

Let's hold the criminals accountable, especially the violent ones, and not release them back into society with no consequences for them to assault, rob, attack, and kill innocent people. 

Stop blaming guns. Guns are not the problem.

Dennis Collins

https://www.manoflegacy.com/contact