March 27, 2013
Here's a great Forbes article written in October 2012, weeks before the last presidential election and almost two months before Sandy Hook, that accurately predicted President Obama's gun control push. It's lengthy but well worth reading.
Warning: There's more "inconvenient truth" here for gun control advocates.
Here are some excerpts:
"Obama said, “…I believe in the Second Amendment. We’ve got a long tradition of hunting and sportsmen and people who want to make sure they can protect themselves.” ... “…I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets.”
...
The muskets used in the American Revolution were designed for soldiers in war theaters. Lever-action rifles were used in Indian wars and in the American Civil War; meanwhile, lever-action rifles have always been hunting guns. ... The bolt-action Springfield 1903 rifle was used by the U.S. military through the first half of the 20th century. Many deer hunters today use bolt-action rifles and many have “sporterized” 1903s. The same can be said about every other type of long gun.
What about handguns? John Browning’s Model 1911 is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated handgun originally chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. The Model 1911 served as a standard-issue sidearm in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Many civilians today own Model 1911s; also, since 1911, many other versions of semi-automatic, magazine-fed handguns have been developed and are commonly used for self-defense, hunting, and target shooting.
Actually, most firearms used by American civilians today are related to firearms that were, or are still being used, on battlefields."
"Obama continued, “And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced.”
...
...FBI crime statistics prove gun bans don’t reduce crime—when the ban was in effect a person could still buy a firearm with the same semi-automatic action but without the cosmetic enhancements. So the so-called “assault-weapons” ban was a bit like trying to ban sports cars by banning tail fins.
Obama might not know that, but he seems aware that such a ban wouldn’t work. He went on to say, “…frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence and they’re not using AK-47s. They’re using cheap handguns.” "
"Obama attempts to explain his contradictions by saying, “And so what can we do to intervene, to make sure that young people have opportunity; that our schools are working; that if there’s violence on the streets, that working with faith groups and law enforcement, we can catch it before it gets out of control. And so what I want is a comprehensive strategy. Part of it is seeing if we can get automatic weapons that kill folks in amazing numbers out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. But part of it is also going deeper and seeing if we can get into these communities and making sure we catch violent impulses before they occur.”
First of all, he says we need to get “automatic weapons” out of the hands of criminals. The thing is, unless someone has a Class 3 Federal Firearms License (these are very difficult to get), they can’t own automatic weapons. Semi-automatic firearms—every time you pull the trigger the gun goes bang once—are legal. So again, Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about, which makes people wonder if he wants to ban all semi-automatic firearms."
Those excerpts are from the first page. The second page goes on to look at the situation in Chicago and the tyrannical attitudes of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy there, as well as author John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" findings.
"In the 2008 Heller decision, for example, the Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban and gun lock requirements. When the Heller case was decided, Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty warned, “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence.” Knowing that Chicago’s gun laws would soon face a similar legal challenge, Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley said he was “outraged.” He said people “are going to take a gun and they are going to end their lives in a family dispute.”
The bloodbath never arrived.
Murders in Washington plummeted by an astounding 25 percent in 2009, dropping from 186 murders in 2008 to 140—Washington’s lowest murder rate since 1967.
In 1982 Chicago’s murder rate also rose after the 7th Circuit Appeals court upheld its ban on new handguns. Over the proceeding 19 years there were only three years where the murder rate was as low as it was in 1982. As shown in Lott’s third-edition of More Guns, Less Crime, before the ban, Chicago’s murder rate was falling relative to the nine other largest cities, but after the ban Chicago’s murder rate rose relative to other cities.
Meanwhile, Lott’s findings that shall-issue laws (A “shall-issue” jurisdiction is one where a person must obtain a permit to carry a concealed handgun, but where the granting of such permits is subject only to meeting certain established criteria.) tend to reduce crime rates has been backed up by peer-reviewed studies."
"The fact that disarming citizens doesn’t reduce crime was also expressed in the Supreme Court’s majority opinion for McDonald: “[The] number of Chicago homicide victims during the current year equaled the number of American soldiers killed during that same period in Afghanistan and Iraq … 80 percent of the Chicago victims were black…. If, as petitioners believe, their safety and the safety of other law-abiding members of the community would be enhanced by the possession of handguns in the home for self-defense, then the Second Amendment right protects the rights of minorities and other residents of high-crime areas whose needs are not being met by elected public officials.” "
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2012/10/24/what-president-obama-says-hell-do-to-your-gun-rights/
