More Gun Control Talk Just Before Elections

posted on October 30, 2012 by Dave Jolly

Gun control is a topic that Barack Obama seems to have purposely avoided during this year’s campaign. Besides most conservative Republicans being against gun control, there are a number of good ole boy Democrats who are also against gun control and with such a tight race, Obama can’t afford to lose any of their votes.

However, the topic of gun control is starting to surface right before the elections. The John’s Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health just issued a news release titled, Restricting High-Risk Individuals from Owning Guns Saves Lives. The report centers around the amount of gun related violence that occurs in the U.S. They claim that there are an average of 30 deaths a day in the U.S. due to guns and that there have been 3,035 gun deaths in the U.S. since the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado. In 2011, guns deaths reached 31,000, although only 11,000 were homicides. According to their study, they point to three key issues relating to gun deaths and violence:

Easy access to firearms with large-capacity magazines facilitates higher casualties in mass shootings.
“Right-to-carry” gun laws do not reduce violent crime.
Prohibiting high-risk groups from having guns–criminals, perpetrators of domestic violence, youths under age 21, substance abusers, and those with severe mental illnesses–and closing loopholes that enable them to have guns are integral and politically feasible steps to reduce gun violence.

Based on these findings, they recommend that high risk people not be given access to purchase or own firearms. If that is their reasoning, then perhaps we need to restrict access to motor vehicles for all high risk people who drink, do drugs, are impaired physically and mentally, and the elderly. After all, there were 32,788 vehicle related deaths in the U.S. in 2011. Depending on which study you look at, alcohol is involved in 40% to 70% of all vehicle related deaths. Should we restrict alcohol from people determined to be high-risk – alcoholics, teens, drug addicts, elderly, clinically depressed, etc.?

What about tobacco related deaths? According to the CDC, there are 443,000 tobacco related deaths each year in the U.S. and that includes second hand smoke. One of every 5 deaths in the U.S. each year is attributed to tobacco in some form. That’s 14 times more than die from guns. When is tobacco going to be outlawed as a dangerous addictive drug?

In 2009, there were 41,592 deaths attributed to poisoning in the U.S. Actually, poisoning, suicide and lack of health insurance all accounted for more deaths (individually) than those attributed to firearms.

Are we going to become a society that legislates everything we can own, eat or operate? There comes a point when you have to say enough is enough.

But the bottom line is that owning firearms is a constitutional right. Firearms in the hands of the colonists were one of the main features that led to our defeat of the British to gain our independence. As our country is on the verge of collapse, the right to bear arms could soon play an important role in self-preservation and the defense of our country from a hostile takeover.

I think the people behind the John’s Hopkins Bloomberg study need to get out of the inner cities where most of the gun violence is and start talking to the millions of Americans that live in real America. Ask them what owning a gun means to real Americans. Perhaps by talking to the rest of the country, they might realize that the problem isn’t guns, but a society that has been taught from their first day of school that there is no God and that the strong survive and weak perish. The strong also make the rules and determine what’s right and what’s wrong. There are no moral absolutes other than what they make them to be at that particular point in time.

No, we don’t need more gun control or laws. What we need is God and the Bible. Until our nation turns back to God, nothing is going to solve the problems faced by a lost people.

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Tuesday, October 30, 2012