OPINION – The headline in a Salt Lake newspaper said it best: “Calls For Gun Control Stir Little Support.” Thank goodness.

Though it’s certainly fashionable to wave the bloody shirt following an atrocity like last week’s shootings at a Denver area theater, it does not follow that stricter gun laws are the answer. If anything, the movie massacre points to the futility of anti-gun laws that would disarm the law-abiding; leaving them at the mercy of criminals who, by definition, don’t obey the law.

The fact that the murder of 12 individuals and wounding of nearly sixty others took place in a supposed “gun free zone,” should be a wake up call to the folly of victim disarmament. The alleged shooter violated numerous laws in his quest to inflict maximum damage, yet gun control advocates still maintain that more laws could have prevented such calculated malice.

Tragedy spells opportunity for professional attention-seekers and the gun control crowd is no exception. Sadly, there is a tried-and-true formula for exploiting tragedies like the Aurora shootings for political gain. Blogger Milo Nickles sums it up like this:

• Step 1 Wait for tragedy to occur, or actually create the tragedy.
• Step 2 Spread propaganda through the media, so everyone believes your story about the tragedy.
• Step 3 Pass laws or institute policies that take away people’s freedoms.
• Step 4 Justify the increased tyranny by citing the propaganda in step 2.

The current narrative of gun control advocates is that if the so-called assault weapons ban of 1994 had been in place, it would have prevented the carnage of last week. But this is false for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, the 1994 ban only sought to eliminate certain features like regular capacity magazines, pistol grips, flash suppressors, and collapsible stocks from certain firearms. It didn’t take a single magazine-fed self-loading rifle off the streets.

Truth be told, record numbers of these rifles were sold to millions of Americans who weren’t about to allow an overreaching federal government dictate what they could or couldn’t have in their gun safes. It may have been an unintended consequence, but the Clinton administration single-handedly gave one of the greatest boosts to the firearms industry within recent memory.

Another talking point of the gun control crowd is that no one needs a large capacity ammunition magazine for their hunting rifle. Those who do this are deliberately trying to misrepresent the meaning of the Second Amendment by framing the debate in terms that assert that the only legitimate use for personal firearms is hunting or sporting purposes.

They conveniently forget that the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights did not create the right to keep and bear arms. It simply recognized and guaranteed an already existing right by placing it out of the reach of the federal government with the words “shall not be infringed.”

Nothing alarms those with a controlling nature more than the widespread recognition that the Second Amendment guarantees the common man a right to resist tyranny with force of arms if necessary.

In this respect, a rugged, self-loading, military pattern rifle is precisely the tool to create a degree of parity of force with those who would be tempted to oppress or terrorize. Whether the aggressor is a criminal sociopath or wears the garb of an oppressive regime, an armed populace is notoriously difficult to subjugate. To put it plainly, some people, by their aggressive, life-threatening behavior, deserve to be shot.

The Founders recognized this fact in July of 1775 in the Declaration of the Continental Congress, which stated: “Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest.”

The State, in all its glory, was entirely unable to protect the patrons of the movie theater when a gunman set in motion his plan to murder and maim. Yet gun control advocates implore us to put our faith in the State by further impairing the ability of the law abiding to protect themselves and their loved ones.

Americans have been successfully indoctrinated, over the course of generations, into giving up their personal responsibility to protect what is most precious to them. Even those who choose to exercise their right to self-defense tend to wait for someone to give them permission to act instead of cultivating the necessary mindset and skills to take decisive action when necessary.

Just remember, government tends to seek its own interests first. Counting on the State to save us in our moment of need is a sure way to lose our remaining freedoms.

 

Bryan Hyde is a news commentator and co-host of the Perspectives morning show on Fox News 1450 AM 93.1 FM. The opinions stated in this article are his and not representative of St. George News.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @youcancallmebry

Copyright 2012 St. George News.