OpsLens

Focus on the Few Criminals with Guns, Not on the Masses of Legal Gun Owners

How can you tell gun control advocates are disingenuous—aside from their lips moving and the unintelligible sounds slithering out of their mouths? By their dogmatic devotion to ineffective “solutions.”

For example, even though studies have found “universal background checks” have made no difference in states such as Delaware, Washington, and Colorado where they’ve tried it, gun controllers continue to advocate for them as if they’re a panacea for all gun crime.

NRA TV’s Cam Edwards provided another clue about the anti-gunners’ warped intentions on his show, Cam & Co. Edwards said, “When we’re talking about keeping guns out of the hands of the violently mentally ill or violent criminals, perhaps we should try focusing on the smaller number of individuals who are prohibited from carrying firearms rather than the larger body of law-abiding citizens who are able to exercise their rights.” In other words, laws should be aimed at the relatively few law-breakers who use guns illegally rather than at the many millions of law-abiders who use guns legally.

Doesn’t this make sense? I mean…when you’re weeding a garden, you don’t remove the good, desirable plants. They’re fine; they’re not the problem. The problem is with the “outlaw” weeds not the larger body of “law-abiding” plants that belong in the garden.

Okay, no metaphor is perfect, but you get my point—or rather, Edwards’ point—our point. The anti-gun left placing all its focus on restricting gun rights for the larger body of law-abiding gun owners betrays its true unconstitutional agenda: Gun restrictions, gun registration, and eventually gun confiscation.

Not all that long ago, most leftist politicians hid their true gun-grabbing agenda—lied about their true desires. Today, Democrats like smarmy U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) are very open about it. Hell, Swalwell even threatened to nuke America’s gun owners who refuse to give up their firearms.

Do I think Swalwell was serious? Of course not. But his comment does imply his comfort with an all-powerful government over a defenseless people.

But we won’t see the left focus on laws that impact the comparatively few people who commit crimes with guns. No, they will continue to focus on the reportedly 30 to 40 percent of Americans who own guns. Some 100 million gun owners—give or take.

Since keeping a database of gun owners is illegal in America, which is a good thing, no one knows the precise amount of U.S. gun owners. As far as the number of guns, some estimates indicate there is more than one firearm for every one of our 330 million people.

This makes the U.S.A. the nation with the best-armed civilians on earth. And that is also a very good thing. And, as Jenn Jacques of bearingarms.com quotes from a popular meme, “Legal gun owners have over 200 million guns… and 12 trillion rounds of ammo. Seriously, people… if we were a problem, you’d know it!”

Let’s focus on the real solution—arrest, charge, convict, incarcerate, and then toss away the key for criminals who use guns—and not what makes the anti-Second Amendment left feel better about itself—harassing law-abiding gun owners.