 THE DISHONESTY OF THE GUN-CONTROL MOBBy MICHAEL REAGANJuly 10, 2022
Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” it happens again and again after a mass shooting, like the one at a July 4th parade near Chicago that killed seven people and wounded two dozen. The professional anti-gun mob – i.e., liberal Democrats and the major media outlets – immediately spring into action and exploit the tragedy as much as they can. As they did this week, they automatically blame guns, renew their calls for stricter gun reforms or dream about completely outlawing the private ownership of guns. It doesn’t matter if the mass shooter was crazy, a terrorist or just plain evil, the gun-control nuts are as unrealistic and dishonest as they are predictable. If we’d only outlaw handguns and “weapons of war” like the semi-automatic AR-15, they cry again and again, these bloody mass killings and street shootouts would virtually disappear. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But in the real world, the one we 330 million Americans live in, there are nearly 400 million guns in the hands of private citizens. Guns of all kinds are virtually in every corner of America, thank the Lord. About 44 percent of U.S. households contain at least one, according to the 2021 National Firearms Survey. About 32 percent of those over age 18 own a firearm – that’s 81 million people. About 42 percent are female, 58 percent male. About 25 percent of blacks, 28 percent of Latinos and 34 percent of whites own guns. The average gun owner owns five firearms. Handguns are the most common type, but 30 percent of gun owners – 24.6 million individuals – have owned an AR-15 or similarly styled rifle that looks like an assault weapon. About 20.7 million gun owners have a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public and that number is growing, notably among black women. The gun-controllers like to mock conservatives who say guns don’t kill people, people do. But last time I checked, Glocks and AR-15s don’t pull their own triggers. Fewer than .005 percent of America’s 400 million guns were used to commit a murder in 2021. Only about half of the year’s 20,000 homicides involved handguns – and far more people were killed by knives, fists and rocks than rifles of all kinds. We know who – not what – is responsible for most of America’s gun violence. It’s not law-ading gun owners. It’s criminals, gang members and other lawbreakers who laugh at the idea of abiding by any tougher gun law. The liberal media are generally quiet about the gang-related gun violence that kills dozens of young black men each weekend in cities across the country. They don’t give us Monday morning body counts from deadly places like Chicago – where 70-plus people were shot on the July 4th weekend and eight died. In case you haven’t heard, over the holiday weekend at least 220 Americans were shot to death and about 570 were wounded, according to the GunViolenceArchive.com, which documents each incident. It’d be nice if the country’s top journalists would do their jobs and challenge the gun-control mob when they say they want to rid America of guns. “Whose guns will you take away exactly?” the media might ask. “Everyone’s?” “And how do you plan to do it? Are you going to go to the south side of Chicago or South-Central LA, knock on doors and take people’s guns away?” “Who will actually take the guns? The National Guard? The Marines?” “Realistically, how many of America’s 400 million guns do you think you’ll collect?” It’s a certainty that a whole bunch of good Americans will refuse to cooperate with the totalitarian dream of the gun-control mob, but my son Cameron has a deal he wants to make with them. “As soon as they disarm the inner city neighborhoods of Chicago, St. Louis and East LA, the rest of us will all turn in our guns. Let us all know when you’re done with that.”
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