By Chris Wagoner:
If you do not live under a rock and pay any attention to the news and media at all, you will have heard the terms “gun control” or “common sense gun control” and also “assault weapon ban.” The issue is that if you ask different people to define these terms, you get different answers. No one can explain for you exactly what these terms mean, and there is a reason for that—a very simple reason. These terms describe something that does not exist. There is no such thing.
What? I know, I know– you have been bombarded with these terms for a couple of years now. You think you know what they mean, but you really don’t. They simply do not exist: there is no way to have, make, or legislate anything called “gun control.”
Gun control is a fallacy that those who fear or do not like firearms use to try to describe something they think will stop the shootings and killings that happen around the country. Well, I hate to burst their bubble, but there is not one single law—not one single “gun-free zone” or anything like that—that has stopped a single shooting. I would love to see the confession of a gun-wielding psychopath who said they were going to shoot up a location but decided not to because they saw a sign that read “gun-free zone”. There are people who think this happens; they are so sure of this that they want to create more gun-free zones. I guess it will take some incident they are involved in to make them realize you cannot legislate safety by taking away the ability of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.
By trying to pass a law that makes the possession of firearms illegal, the only people who would listen to that law are those least likely of all to ever shoot up a populated area. People who listen to the law are not the ones who commit these awful crimes. Murder is against the law and has been since the start of our country and before, yet people still do it. Most drugs are illegal to possess and use—we even have a so-called “war on drugs”—yet you can still buy them anywhere and at any time. Making something illegal only pushes it to the black market. If these people who want to pass gun control laws would just do a little research, they would find that criminals do not follow laws—that’s why they are called criminals.
According to a study by the Department of Justice, when interviewing criminals who were behind bars for firearms-related violent crimes, they found that less than 4% got their guns by legally buying them. The rest got them some other way, including buying them on the black market (already a crime), stealing them (already a crime), or having someone buy the firearm for them (already a crime). So what fantasy world do these people live in thinking that more laws will make criminals not get guns or shoot places up?
In the recent Ft. Lauderdale International Airport shooting, one of the stories you rarely see is about the armed pilot who got the people in the boarding area onto his plane and stood guard at the gangway to protect them. That pilot got it! It takes an armed person to stop an armed person. I do not understand the thinking that you can legislate morality and safety. What you can do is allow people to be able to defend themselves and others if they can.
Airports are one of those places in Florida where you cannot carry a concealed firearm. I am not saying that a person who may have been picking someone up at the airport in the luggage claim area where the shooter killed his victims could have stopped it from happening, but there is at least a chance that an armed, law-abiding citizen could have lessened or stopped the carnage from being what it was.
But we will never know. It’s a gun-free zone.
It’s time for a reality check and a hard look at real legislation that may help to reduce the number of deaths and victims. We should legislate away those places called “gun-free zones” and make it illegal to disallow the lawful carrying of a firearm anywhere that doing so is not federally prohibited. We should also allow people to carry a firearm, either open or concealed. There are only five states that do not allow this now, and Florida is one of them. Time to get with it, Florida. We have the highest number of concealed carry licenses in the entire country. Florida also has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the States.
Oh, and let’s not forget the “assault weapon ban” crowd. They want to ban all of the scary guns. What they fail to realize is that it’s not those guns that are used most of the time in these shootings. Some of them, yes, but most of the time, like the Ft. Lauderdale shooter, it’s a pistol. And of course, there is the small problem of defining just what an “assault weapon” is. Many have tried, and it generally makes no sense.
A rifle is an assault weapon? I laugh when they say a firearm like an AR 15 is an assault weapon. Really? Little do they know, because they do not research firearms, that everyday rifles like a Ruger Mini 14 can shoot just as many rounds (bullets) just as fast, and is a normal rifle. Appearance is not a factor in the lethality of a weapon. Stop trying to legislate based on appearance, and stop trying to legislate safety by depriving someone of a guaranteed right.
So, what can be done to lessen the number of shootings, or at least reduce the number of people killed if there is one? What new laws can you make that will help? I will make it very simple for you folks in the halls of our state capitals and Washington. Outlaw “gun-free zones” and make it illegal to prohibit law-abiding citizens from being able to carry a firearm if they so choose, as doing so is a right granted in the Constitution of the United States. Don’t give me that line that the Second Amendment does not mean that; it is plain and simple, and even the US Supreme Court has said it does.
Let’s be realistic and pass realistic laws that will help stop these violent incidents. Allow people to exercise their God-given right to self-defense and the right to keep and bear arms, and maybe the next time some wacko pulls a gun out in a crowded place like a mall, we’ll see someone like Jeanne Assam—after hearing rifle fire in her church, she pulled out her legally concealed firearm and shot and killed a gunman who had killed several people and shot several others before she ended his rampage. Jeanne was a volunteer security person at the church.
What it all boils down to is this—our elected officials must cease trying to legislate safety by taking away the very item that is needed to stop these mass shootings. The only way to stop an armed attacker is an armed good guy. Yes, I know that not everyone is trained to respond to these types of things, but enough people are that it could make a difference.
I have a novel idea! Let people defend themselves. Criminals may find it hard to make an armed person a victim.
Chris Wagoner is a Senior OpsLens Contributor and U.S. Army Veteran. He has been in law enforcement the last 35+ years. He specializes in LE Firearms Instruction, and is in charge of a large Police Academy in North Florida. In his spare time Chris is a freelance Military Reporter and owner/founder of the Largest Military Videos Channel on YouTube “3rdID8487”.
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