Gun Control: What is the Agenda?
Bret L
oversimplification. It's basically an effort to make the sheep fear
the wolves and so stay close to the 'shepherd'-who is really just the
King Wolf. Bret.))
Gun Control: What is the Agenda?
By Paul Craig Roberts
Some years or decades ago I researched and reported on the Sullivan
Act, one of America’s first gun control laws.
New York state senator Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall
politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial
travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their
valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their
property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and
reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents
demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed
carry of pistols, blackjacks, and daggers, thus reducing the risk to
robbers from armed victims.
The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no
intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business
activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was
precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime
easier.
As the first successful gun control advocates were criminals, I have
often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and
propagandistic gun control organizations and their donors and sponsors
in the US today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists
of transparent lies.
Consider the propagandistic term, "gun violence," popularized by gun
control advocates. This is a form of reification by which inanimate
objects are imbued with the ability to act and to commit violence.
Guns, of course, cannot be violent in themselves. Violence comes from
people who use guns and a variety of other weapons, including fists,
to commit violence.
Nevertheless, we hear incessantly the Orwellian Newspeak term, "gun
violence."
Very few children are killed by firearm accidents compared to other
causes of child deaths. Yet, gun control advocates have created the
false impression that there is a national epidemic in accidental
firearm deaths of children. In fact, the National MCH Center for Child
Death Review, an organization that monitors causes of child deaths,
reports that seven times more children die from drowning and five
times more from suffocation than from firearm accidents. Yet we don’t
hear of "drowning violence," "swimming pool violence," "bathtub
violence," or "suffocation violence."
The National MCH Center for Child Death Review reports that 174
children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in
2000. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports
that 125 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm
accidents in 2006. In 2006 there were 77,845,285 youths in that age
bracket.
In 2006 violence-related firearm deaths of eighteen year olds and
under totaled 2,191. A large percentage of these deaths appear to be
teenagers fighting over drug turf.
According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy,
drugs are "one of the main factors leading to the total number of all
homicides. . . . murders related to narcotics still rank as the fourth
most documented murder circumstance out of 24 possible categories."
According to the National Drug Control Policy, trafficking in illicit
drugs is associated with the commission of violent crimes for the
following reasons: "competition for drug markets and customers,
disputes and rip-offs among individuals involved in the illegal drug
market, [and] the tendency toward violence of individuals who
participate in drug trafficking." Another dimension of drug-related
crime is "committing an offense to obtain money (or goods to sell to
get money) to support drug use."
Obviously, decriminalizing drugs would be the greatest single factor
in reducing incarceration rates, the crime rate, and the homicide
rate. Yet, gun control advocates do not support this obvious solution
to "gun violence."
Those who want to outlaw guns have not explained why it would be any
more effective than outlawing drugs, alcohol, robbery, rape, and
murder. All the crimes for which guns are used are already illegal,
and they keep on occurring, just as they did before guns existed.
So what is the real agenda? Why do gun control advocates want to
override the Second Amendment. Why do they not acknowledge that if the
Second Amendment can be over-ridden, so can every other protection of
civil liberty?
There are careful studies that conclude that armed citizens prevent
one to two million crimes every year. Other studies show that in-home
robberies, rapes, and assaults occur more frequently in jurisdictions
that suffer from gun control ordinances. Other studies show that most
states with right-to-carry laws have experienced a drop in crimes
against persons.
Why do gun control advocates want to increase the crime rate in the
US?
Why is the gun control agenda a propagandistic one draped in lies?
The NRA is the largest and best known organization among the defenders
of the Second Amendment. Yet, a case might be made that manufacturers’
gun advertisements in the NRA’s magazines stoke the hysteria of gun
control advocates.
Full page ads offering civilian versions of weapons used by "America’s
elite warriors" in US Special Operations Command, SWAT, and by covert
agents "who work in a dark world most of us can’t even understand,"
are likely to scare the pants off people who are afraid of guns.
Many of the modern weapons are ugly as sin. Their appearance is
threatening, unlike the beautiful lines of a Winchester lever action
or single shot rifle, or a Colt single action revolver, or the WW II
45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, guns that do not have menacing
appearances. Everyone knows that they are guns, but they are also
works of art.
A little advertising discretion might go a long way in quieting fears
that are manipulated by gun control advocates.
The same goes for hunters. Recent news reports of "hunters"
slaughtering wolves from airplanes in Alaska and of a hunter, indeed,
a poacher, who shot a protected rare wolf in the US Southwest and left
the dead animal in the road, enrage people who have empathy with
animals and wildlife. Many Americans have had such bad experiences
with their fellow citizens that they regard their dogs and cats, and
wildlife, as more intelligent and noble life forms than humans. Wild
animals can be dangerous, but they are not evil.
Americans with empathy for animals are horrified by the television
program that depicts hunters killing beautiful animals and the joy
hunters experience in "harvesting" their prey. Many believe that a
person who enjoys killing a deer because he has a marvelous rack of
antlers might enjoy killing a person.
This is not a screed against hunters. There are many families with the
tradition of bringing in the venison once or twice a year. With the
near extermination by man of deer predators, deer are so abundant in
many localities as to have become a nuisance and a danger to
motorists. Nevertheless, the defense of gun rights has little to gain
from TV programs depicting the fun of killing Bambi’s mother.
In the US, shooting is a hand-eye coordination sport. It is likely
that 99% of all ammunition is fired at paper targets, metal
silhouettes, or clay and plastic discs. It is a sport for amateur
physicists who are interested in ballistics and who experiment with
different combinations of powder and bullet seeking the most accurate
for their rifle or pistol. Few of these shooters hunt as their
interest in shooting is unrelated to killing.
Shooting is a sport that offers comradeship and competition in which
even old people can participate, people who do not or cannot play golf
or tennis or bowl. There is a vast variety of events from black powder
muskets to antique military and frontier weapons to distance shooting.
Sports shooters punching holes in paper targets comprise the vast
majority of active gun owners. They are a threat to no one. Accidents
are extremely rare at gun clubs. A large network of small businesses
provide the parts and supplies necessary for shooting. There is no
reason to strip gun owners of their hobby and possessions and family
businesses of their livelihood, as has been done in Great Britain and
as the gun control lobby intends to do in the US.
The NRA is correct to insist that "when guns are outlawed, only
outlaws will have guns." We have known this since the Sullivan Act.