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Follow Gun Control: Because banning things always works, right? (Art: AG Management)
Full disclosure: I am running against Elizabeth Warren for Senate and my platform specifically includes gun rights.
Before I add my two cents to the periodically-vociferous gun debate, let me say that most Democrats like Warren don't actually care about victims of gun violence. When it comes to the recent tragedy in Parkland, Florida, they are literally being political ambulance chasers. So it helps to bear that in mind while scrutinizing their rhetoric.
To illustrate, remember in January when the dreamers were the Dems' latest craze? Well, let's all go ask our closest respective DNC federal representatives how much their campaigns, super packs, etc. raised by shutting down the government without actually helping the dreamers. I'll start. Hey, Frauduhauntus, how much did you bring in by scaring your voters with the DNC’s last red herring? While I'm at it Senator, how much of the money which you publicly claim to hate but yet can't seem to stop privately hoarding have you given to all those poor people who you’re always talking about?
But I digress. On to why gun control could never work...
First, prohibiting popular things has never been a successful endeavor in America. Just look at our country's history with alcohol and cannabis. So, how can these same politicians, who are theoretically in favor of ending the war on drugs because, among other reasons, prohibition is a failed social policy, be simultaneously in favor of trying the exact same failed experiment by banning something else for the exact same stated reason, which is supposedly to protect the public and especially the children? You know that quote commonly attributed to Einstein about trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? He also said not to look for logical consistency among hypocrites, or rather he probably would have said that if he had ever laid eyes on the DNC's bunch of elected phony intellectuals.
And I understand that the average DNC voter does actually want to protect the children and that they've been duped into believing that gun control would do that even if some of their leaders happen to know better. It's clear to see that many of them want so badly for the gun control theory to work that they unfortunately lose objectivity.
Some of them think that they can combat the popularity of fire arms in our culture by banning yet more things like violent video games and movies, and that buy back programs can make a dent in the stockpile of over 300 million guns currently in circulation in America. I don't think either of those would work, especially layering prohibitions on top of other prohibitions. But even supposing just for the moment and for the sake of argument that those goals would be achievable, they still wouldn't keep guns out of the hands of the bad guys even if firearms literally became as rare in America as moon rocks.
How do I know? Well, although we did send some moon rocks abroad as state gifts, it's illegal for a private citizen to own one here in the U.S. That's because it seems that after the Apollo missions started returning home with them, the folks at NASA who were entrusted with custodianship of the rocks were not above some earthly temptations themselves and lunar samples started ending up in private collections here in the states. Then, due to the astronomical expense incurred in literally going to the moon to get the rocks, a well-intentioned Congress passed a law forbidding private individuals from having them and tasked NASA agents with tracking them down and returning them.
And the NASA agents have been at it ever since.
So, prohibition does not even work for moon rocks, which no one can just brew, distill, grow from seeds or manufacture with a 3-D printer. Nor are there more than 300 million of them lying all around the country.
And no one has a constitutional right to keep and bear moon rocks. Or alcohol, and yet when they banned booze they at least went through the formal process of amending the Constitution. Just reading the plain language of the Second Amendment and applying some common sense, as opposed to embarking on a judicial contortionist routine, reveals that modern gun control statutes are grossly unconstitutional. If the gun control lobby wants to change things, then they should need either 2/3 of both houses or a constitutional convention, followed by ¾ of the state legislatures to repeal the Second Amendment.
By the way, the chant during both the efforts to illegalize alcohol and then to later re-legalize and re-regulate it was “save the children!” Surprise, surprise, it turned out that making booze illegal actually made it easier for kids to obtain from the booming black market where sellers weren't very discriminant about who their buyers were and Prohibition also led to more children working for organized crime syndicates who weren't too picky about child labor either.
Further, if wealthy elites want to ban things that are dangerous to children, why aren't they talking about banning swimming pools? Far more young kids die in pools every year than from guns. There's no specifically enumerated Constitutional right to a swimming pool either and unlike guns nobody has ever used a swimming pool in order to save their family from a violent offender.
Well, maybe they won't move to ban pools because pools don't look as scary to them as firearms and they haven't been indoctrinated to blindly hate pools like they've been conditioned to belligerently despise guns. But maybe they also won't try to ban pools because that would actually inconvenience them and that's a higher price than they’re willing to pay in order to save somebody else's child.
Regardless though, even if they could snap their fingers (or wiggle their noses like Samantha from Bewitched) and make all the guns in America disappear, that would likely only make the problem worse. The last thing we need is to force the psychopaths who go on these shooting sprees to get more creative. After all, there wasn't a single shot fired during 9/11.
And meanwhile, with everyone distracted by talk about an unlikely, impractical, unconstitutional and likely ineffective gun control effort, no one is focused on reforming the FBI so that next time it won't ignore multiple warnings about a potential mass child murderer, who could do even more damage without a gun.
Just like the Democrats seem to have forgotten that James Comey had more of an illegitimate effect on the election than the entire Russian Federation. That's what gun control and the Mueller “investigation” both have in common – they’re both distractions and thanks to them the heat is off of the FBI, where it really belongs.
Marty Gottesfeld is an Obama-era political prisoner and Republican Senate candidate against incumbent Elizabeth Warren. You can donate to his legal defense fund at FreeMartyG.com or to his political campaign at VoteMartyG.com.
