What about the voice of Darth Vader, Mufasa, and CNN – James
Earl Jones?
“The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we
decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they
will win and the decent people will lose.”
Maybe you prefer the literary type. If so, read the following warning
from William S. Burroughs, Beat Generation author of eighteen
novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four
collections of essays.
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from
the people who didn't do it.”– William S. Burroughs.
As Rahm Emanuel who once said – “You never let a serious crisis
go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things
you think you could not do before.” For those who’ve forgotten,
Emanuel served as White House Chief of Staff under President
Barack Obama.
Let’s add another name to the pro-Second Amendment side, one
unexpected and perhaps forgotten – she was an investigative
journalist, anti-lynching crusader, civil rights leader, and one of
the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. Her name: Ida B. Wells. Here’s what she said:
“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black
home, and it should be used for that protection which the law
refuses to give.”
In an article for National Review, David Harsanyi, author of First
Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History with the Gun,
argues that no American right (not speech, press, or religion) has a
longer and more defined history than the right to self-defense.
Harsanyi also wrote that: “The animating ideas of the Second
Amendment – both as personal and communal protection are
predicated on natural rights and English common law. And while
nearly every intellectual, political, and military leader of the
Founding generation stressed the importance of the right to bear
arms as a means of preserving liberty, some of its most vociferous
champions were against slavery.”
Alan Dershowitz, scholar of constitutional law, had this to say:
“Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out
of the constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it’s
too much of a safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture.
They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use this same
means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.”
There’s another, even more practical point, that has to do with
common sense. It was made by President Ronald Reagan: “We must
reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather
than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that
each individual is accountable for his actions.”
To put it another way, the vast majority of gun owners are lawabiding
citizens who don’t get in trouble with law enforcement,
according to Gary Kleck, criminologist and the David J. Bordua
Professor Emeritus of Criminology at Florida State University.
“Probably fewer than two percent of handguns and well under one
percent of all guns will ever be involved in a violent crime. Thus, the
problem of criminal gun violence is concentrated within a very small
subset of gun owners, indicating that gun control aimed at the general
population faces a serious needle-in-the-haystack problem,” Kleck said.
Economist, political commentator, and gun rights advocate
John R. Lott, Jr., concurs. Lott is the author of More Guns Less Crime:
Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, now in its third edition.
“Our most conservative estimates show that by adopting shall-issue
laws (concealed carry laws), states reduced murders by 8.5 percent,
rapes by five percent, aggravated assaults by seven percent and
robbery by three percent... While support for strict gun-control laws
usually has been strongest in large cities, where crime rates are
highest, that's precisely where right-to-carry laws have produced the
largest drops in violent crimes.”
It doesn’t take much digging to find scholars, lawyers, writers, and
actors, who agree with the Founding Fathers about the Second
Amendment. Let’s wrap things up with the opening words of “A
Few More Rednecks” by Charlie Daniels on his album “Freedom and
Justice for All.”
“Now they’re tryin’ to take my
guns away
And that would be just fine
If you take ’em away from
the criminals first
I’d gladly give you mine”
That won’t happen anytime soon. Why? Because President Donald J.
Trump said so:
“Gun and magazine bans are a total failure... Opponents of gun
rights try to come up with scary sounding phrases like ‘assault
weapons,’ ‘military-style weapons’ and ‘high capacity magazines’ to
confuse people. What they’re really talking about are popular semiautomatic
rifles and standard magazines that are owned by tens
of millions of Americans. Law-abiding people should be allowed to
own the firearm of their choice. The government has no business
dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to
own.” – President Donald J. Trump
Jim Lamb is a retired journalist who went to college on the GI Bill. He served in the
United States Navy and was stationed in Vietnam where he kept a loaded M-16 at
his workspace.
54 The TRUMP RALLY Publication