Today I read A Sleeping Giant by Anthony Wells on the DC Clothesline. This is an excellent article, and I recommend that everyone take a few minutes and read it. Thank you, Anthony.
There is one thing that I have been noticing. Everyone is pointing out that most murders are done with handguns, not assault rifles. Even your average gun rights supporters, and the NRA. All statistics point to that. Assault weapons are responsible for only a small percentage of all gun deaths. They are a subset of all rifle deaths.
I see a lot of graphics showing that there were 323 assault weapons deaths in the U.S. in 2011. This chart shows that to be incorrect. Not all rifles used in the U.S. to commit homicides in 2011 involved assault rifles. The data on that is sketchy, so the FBI lumps all rifles, no matter how they look, into one rifle category in most of their data.
You cannot quote me on this, as I cannot find this statistic again, but I recall reading somewhere that of the 323 rifle homicides perpetrated in the U.S. in 2012, it is known that about 85 of them were committed with assault weapons. A similar number were committed with non-assault rifles.
Even Congress and Biden admit that banning assault weapons would pretty much do nothing to reduce the homicide rate in the U.S.
So, exactly what are they up to? Why all the focus on this one particular showy type of weapon?
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Well, here is the plan as I see it:
1.) Since only a minority of gun owners actually own assault rifles, there will be less resistance from the public at large when there is a call to ban them, or otherwise restrict their ownership. John Q. Public does not own an assault weapon.
I for one think that they look ridiculous and unwieldy. Give me a well-machined deer rifle with a caliber based on a necked down .30-06 casing, four rounds are enough, with high mounts and a fixed 6X scope (try finding one of THOSE outside of eBay!), and I am in my red, white and blue glory.
However, if you personally want to own an autoloader with a rotary magazine clip, or even two of them, one for each hand, by all means, go buy them now. Buy two more for spares, in case you run out of ammo, and there is no time to shove another clip in.
Since John Q. Public does not own an assault rifle, he could care less if you ban them. It would be like saying that the private ownership of Bentleys was being banned. Who cares, out here in Working-class-hero-land?
But if they proposed banning, say, shotguns, you could expect JQP to get pretty upset. He keeps grandpa’s rusty old single-shot 16 gauge hidden in the bedroom closet for home defense. And those three old shells with corroded brass are there in the top drawer, under his socks. He knows right where they are, can find them in the dark.
Your proposing to ban the shotguns could get him to vote against your sorry ass in 2014.
2.) So-called “assault rifles” look “scary” to those who are not familiar with firearms, so the general public will more support banning them than they would, say, hunting rifles. The general public’s feeling on them is that there is a little misplaced machismo and some definite penis envy issues going on here. Whether this is correct or not is inconsequential. You do not ban oversized tires, Big Gulps, or even breast implants. That would be un-American. So, you have to first whip up a fear of something, and then ban that thing. Like the walking of well-trained adult tigers on poodle leashes in shopping malls, things like that.
The Liberal Agendanista media has whipped up a real frenzy about assault weapons being used in mass shootings, even in cases where they were not the weapon used. They later correct such misstatements in small text boxes hidden where no one looks, if they correct their omissions at all.
This is pure opportunism. Using public opinion to achieve your agenda, even when it is the least worrisome part of what you are trying to accomplish, is typical for politics. Any politician who is honest (how’s that for an oxymoron!) will tell you that all good crises are to be immediately taken advantage of.
3.) The idea here is to set a precedent. Get rid of that which is the least worrisome to the most people. And work from there.
Hell, it worked for Hitler. Take a page out of his book. And in the end, when they come for your rusty old single-shot, there will be no one left to protest.
This is the danger that no one sees. These Communist rat-bastards did not get as far as they already have without a little smarts and some planning. No one seems to see this very real danger.
You play it like this. Get rid of the scary looking assault weapons that few people own. Tell everyone that the rest of the weapons are not going to be touched. We just want the “perceived” murder weapons off of the streets.
Do you think that a gang member wants one of these monstrosities, when he can be hiding three autoloaders under his jacket? Where is he going to hide his assault weapon while dealing on the local corner?
Anyone with half a brain can see that owning one of these is counterproductive for most criminals and mass shooter wannabes.
Once you have succeeded in getting rid of or severely limiting the ownership of and access to assault weapons without encountering any real opposition even from the NRA, you are ready to take the next big step.
The REAL purpose of your agenda.
4.) You will then tell John Q. Public and Jane Q. Citizen, “Look, we got rid of all of those scary mass-murdering weapons. BOO!!”
“But that has not helped much. People are still being killed at the same rate. We have much more work to do. There is much more that has to be done. So, we want to get rid of all of the pistols, too, as most murders are committed with them. So, what do you say, Mr. and Mrs. America?”
You see, going up against pistols in the first place is a very hard sell. Most Americans believe in a right of self-defense. And the preferred weapon for self-defense is a pistol. It is concealable, maneuverable, and is good for action in close quarters.
Sure, you can find a lot of misleading anti-gun articles out there that quote statistics from polls. But they never link you to the polls, so that you can see the data for yourself. And sure, there are a lot of pollsters who give you a synopsis of their data. But they never let you see what the questions were, what the possible responses were, and the percentages of respondents per possible response. You are not paying for this poll. They are prostituting themselves out to a special interest group.
I have seen major polling players contradict themselves, depending on who they are being paid by. In 2012, one of the biggest pollsters out there said that most Americans believed in private gun ownership for self-defense. In 2013, they said that most Americans believed that guns should be confiscated. It all depends on the questions asked, how you ask them, and how you interpret the results.
In essence, polling agencies are disingenuous at best. And, are outright lying, in many cases.
In other words, the whole earth is spinning.
The politicians know that they can show you all the polls in the world that favor the banning of all types of guns. They are out there, spinning like a table full of tops. But come 2014, they know that the real poll will tabulate real responses.
And all the spin in the world will not save you from the fucking you will receive then. And it will be totally self-inflicted.
They really think that people pay attention to what their peers think. That is true to an extent, but only for the brain-dead. It is not true for thinking people.
Perhaps that is why public education is set up the way it is. To dull all the senses. To kill the brain, not to pick it for ideas.
They are hoping that the various pollsters’ spin will make the zombies all think exactly alike. Just the way they want them too.
But even the zombies kill to eat, now and then.
And sometimes, they eat their own.
5.) After assault weapons, the pistols are next. Then all rifles, then all shotguns. But you have to set a precedent. Assault weapons break the ice, so to speak. You get all the gun owners and the NRA saying, “Look, it is pistols that are the problem, you should not have banned assault weapons. Nobody kills anyone with assault weapons, they all use pistols.”
SNAP!
You fell right in their trap.
“Right,” says the Congress. “Pistols are next. Can we quote you?”
How can gun rights groups backtrack from this, without looking like hypocrites? How can they say, “Look, we were just using that as an example. We really do not want pistols taken either,” when they used it time and time again as a part of their argument? Where is your credibility the next time, when they go for your pistols?
You never looked at how it was done in the British Commonwealth System?
1.) Assault weapons;
2.) Automatics and semiautomatics;
3.) Remaining pistols;
4.) Many rifles and shotguns.
All that is left is a lot of old antiques, annual permitting fees, and locked gun safes for what they left you keep.
So even though I think that the owners of assault weapons have an overload of machismo myself, I still fully support their right to own one of these weapons. Who knows? Maybe I will be picking one out of the hands of a dead comrade in a shelled out building someday, and getting a crash course in how to use it under “field conditions”.
My advice to all lawmakers who value their positions and longevity in them is to punish the crime and the criminal, not the inanimate instrument. Banning guns does not solve anything concerning crime. You have to either change the world view of criminals, or incarcerate or outright eliminate them. Being a member of a street gang in itself should be a criminal activity that doubles your time for any offense, if that gang is linked to violent criminal activity. I see no freedom of assembly right as far as violent street gang membership is concerned.
Statistics do not lie. Statisticians do. Ever hear the one where areas of the highest gun ownership rates have the highest homicide rates? Who is on top of the list?
It’s L.A. At over 50 percent gun ownership.
Are you shittin’ me? L.A.?
You need to give me the statistics on how many of those guns are LEGALLY owned, how many of those homicides were gang-related, what is the overall crime rate, what is the mean income of a family there, how much it costs to live there, what percentage of the people there are gainfully employed, and how the homicide rate breaks down into neighborhood demographics.
Just to say that more gun owners there means more deaths there is almost reasonable. Especially if you count in suicides. If you want to kill someone and have a gun, it is easier to do it with the gun than with a brick, or a knitting needle, or a chopstick. But that does not MEAN that no bricks were used.
The conclusions being drawn from these statistics are far too simplistic.
The conclusions drawn do not meet the basic requirements of the Scientific Method. You need to have a significantly large sampling, a control group, and an experimental group, with all of the variables of the two groups being exactly the same, except for only one variable. You then can POSSIBLY draw conclusions from the differences between the two groups. IF there is a high degree of correlation shown between the different subjects within each of the two groups, for the one tested-for variable. AND after you have passed peer review.
Politics is based on bad science. Both parties ignore science, to what degree depends on their particular agendas. Legislators are lawyers, not scientists. Their job consists of convincing a crowd of twelve that what they say actually has merit. Whether it truly does or not. When it comes to science, attorneys bring the expert witness in to testify, because they themselves do not know what they are talking about when it comes to science. And statistical analysis.
Both parties really suck. Much worse than Dracula does.
Policies drawn from faulty science, statistical analysis, or methodology are doomed to failure. Policies that run on emotion only look good for the short term. But they do not stand up to critical scrutiny, and are unsustainable in the long run.
“But hey, we only have to fool them voters just long enough to win the next election, right?”
Keep it tight, America.
Gary W. Harper
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