PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION

In the forth chapter of Genesis, we’re given the story of two brothers. One was a good and God fearing man, and the other evil and jealous. You know the story. One brother rose up against the other and struck him down, and so went the first homicide.

As the Bible attests, murder is nothing new to mankind. People have been finding ways to kill one another with increasing frequency and in some very creative ways.

· On the 4th of July in Des Moines IA, a 19 year old man killed two women while he was trying to escape from a fight[i].

· July 7, 2009, a NY woman was murdered as part of an extortion attempt[ii].

· A Pittsburgh man was convicted of third degree murder on July 8th for killing a woman with whom he was a house guest[iii].

While the circumstances of each differ, all three examples do have one thing in common. In each case, none of the weapons of choice were firearms!

While the left is working diligently to restrict gun ownership, the murder rate continues to rise. And while guns are implicated in the majority of homicides, the act of murder is not nearly related with gun ownership, registration, and/or restriction as the left would have you believe. The heart of the issue is a problem with morality, not guns.

Law abiding citizens generally don’t shoot one another. Primarily, the folks doin’ the shootin’ are criminals! So the more usable corollary is to relate the murder rate with criminals, and not just their weapons. Of course that would lead to profiling which is even more heinous to the left than the crimes criminals commit. So the upstanding go unarmed, and the murderous still get guns; which they don’t bother to register, by the way.

There are also crimes of passion, where gun registration and a waiting period may actually have some beneficial effect. It may not stop the murder, but at least having a waiting period may incite the perpetrator to use a knife, club, or piano wire in place of a firearm.

My point is, you can ban firearms altogether and criminals will still get them, and those who can’t will use alternative methods.

Thus, the problem isn’t one of abundant supply, but is rather an issue of morality. Where gun bans have been implemented, crime rates rise. This is because criminals really don’t want to faceoff with armed victims, and when firearms are removed from the general population, the law abiding are then unable to defend themselves.

One of the primary examples of this principle exists in Kennesaw Georgia. This community has a requirement for gun ownership[iv]. With a few exceptions, every head of household is required to own and maintain a firearm. What’s the effect? Their crime rate continues to hover around zero, and the last gun-related homicide was in 1986.

And the population of their city is growing steadily because of how safe it is to live in Kennesaw.

You see, a criminal with or without a gun is still a criminal and still dangerous. A gun without a criminal, if kept and maintained properly, is perfectly safe. But the left loves to find excuses for bad behavior, and they never seem to come to the basic conclusion that the problems mankind encounters generally stem from the actions of individuals.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that in every capital murder case, a human being is on trial, and not the gun, knife, lead pipe, SUV, or other inanimate object used to commit the crime. The problem is murderers, not firearms.

Do guns become more dangerous when times grow harder? Apparently so when you consider that as the economy has tightened, more murders are being committed[v]. So maybe we should register the stock market and have twenty four hour waiting periods before firing employees.

Why does that seem ridiculous, when that’s exactly the way we deal with guns? We don’t require a background check to purchase kitchen knives from a local WalMart. Yet in Santa Cruz California last Thursday, a 37 year old man was convicted of stabbing his girlfriend to death[vi]. Aren’t knives a lethal tool?

As the old NRA saw says, “Guns don’t kill people, people do!”

And let’s not forget that it’s not only criminals that love the unarmed. So do politicians! With the police powers of the state, an unarmed public is much easier to control than folks who can swarm to uprising and have the means to carry out an overthrow. It’s the very reason those who aspire to dictatorship do everything in their power to remove the public’s ability to resist, and that beings with banning guns.

Now I’m not going to say that all liberals want to take our guns because they fear armed conflict. I really do believe that some are sincerely working to reduce crime. But banning guns is the emotional response to the problem and not a cognitive one. They’re trying to treat the symptom and not the problem. They believe that if you take away firearms, human nature suddenly becomes peaceful.

Cain used neither a gun nor a knife on his brother, proving that human nature is dangerously selfish, regardless of the instrument of his demise.

I will say that most gun bans are purposely aimed at disarming the public to quell any possibility of revolt. If you look carefully at the news, we’re seeing an unbelievably strong hand of federal control descending on the American way of life. It’s more than just the takeover of private industries and the financial community. Just Thursday morning, it was announced that the House just passed a bill that allows the FDA to reach into your child’s school lunchroom to determine if they will be allowed to eat junk food or not.

I thought it was the parent’s responsibility to determine what was best for their children? How is it now that the state is involved?

Using the concept of safety and security, the present administration will make the argument that if there was no gun ownership, nobody would have to worry about being shot. Of course, they won’t even begin to touch immigration, except to pave the way for more criminals to enter the U.S. borders, probably bringing their guns with them. This was evidenced Monday, July 6th, by an arrest made in Murfeesboro California. There, an “undocumented immigrant” killed a police officer who was answering a domestic assault complaint[vii]. And the best part is that the perpetrator didn’t even use a gun. He used a SUV, another dangerous weapon that commits high crimes against the environment.

Maybe if we had tighter immigration policies, let alone actually enforcing the present laws, we would have one more police officer alive and able to give us real security. Instead, we’re working hard to protect the “rights” of illegal aliens. And so we become the great nation of compassion, without an ounce of empathy for our own citizens. We bless the criminals and damn those who dare to fight back.

Of course, there’s always another way to look at things. They say that the best gun control is to use both hands. Personally, I couldn’t agree more!

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Footnotes:
[i] http://wcco.com/wireapnewsia/Chicago.man.charged.2.1072614.html
[ii] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/07/08/2009-07-08_extort_plot_eyed_in_bklyn_immigs_slaying.html
[iii] http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09189/982439-53.stm
[iv] http://wcco.com/wireapnewsia/Chicago.man.charged.2.1072614.html
[v] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aJp2H_Axtn68
[vi] http://www.mercurynews.com/centralcoast/ci_12787965
[vii] http://www.murfreesboropost.com/news.php?viewStory=17710