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| Average American Weapons Of Mass Destruction |
America is probably in for another debate over gun regulation after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 27 (mostly children) dead.
Below are five bullshit stories that we often hear from the bully pulpit [NRA] and the right to bear arm freaks!
MYTH #1: More guns don’t lead to more murders. A survey by researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health found strong statistical support for the idea that, even if you control for poverty levels, more people die from gun homicides in areas with higher rates of gun ownership. And despite what gun advocates say, countries like Israel and Switzerland don’t disprove the point.
MYTH #2: The Second Amendment prohibits strict gun control. While the Supreme Court ruled in D.C. v. Heller that bans on handgun ownership were unconstitutional, the ruling gives the state and federal governments a great deal of latitude to regulate that gun ownership as they choose. As the U.S. Second Court of Appeals put it in a recent ruling upholding a New York regulation, “The state’s ability to regulate firearms and, for that matter, conduct, is qualitatively different in public than in the home. Heller reinforces this view. In striking D.C.’s handgun ban, the Court stressed that banning usable handguns in the home is a ‘policy choice[]‘ that is ‘off the table,’ but that a variety of other regulatory options remain available, including categorical bans on firearm possession in certain public locations.”
MYTH #3: State-level gun controls haven’t worked. Scholars Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander recently studied state-to-state variation in gun homicide levels. They found that “[f]irearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation.” This is backed up by research on local gun control efforts and cross-border gun violence.
MYTH #4: We only need better enforcement of the laws we have, not new laws. In fact, Congress has passed several laws that cripple the ability for current gun regulations to be enforced the way that they’re supposed to. According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, a series of federal laws referred to as the Tiahrt amendments “limit public access to crime gun trace data, prohibit the use of gun trace data in hearings, pertaining to licensure of gun dealers and litigation against gun dealers, and restrict ATF’s authority to require gun dealers to conduct a physical inventory of their firearms.” Other federal laws “limited the ATF compliance inspections” and grant “broad protections from lawsuits against firearm manufacturers and retail sellers.”
MYTH #5: Sensible gun regulation is prohibitively unpopular. Not necessarily. As the New Republic’s Amy Sullivan reported after the series of mass shootings this summer, a majority of Americans would prefer both to enforce existing law more strictly and pass new regulations on guns when given the option to choose both rather than either/or. Specific gun regulations are also often more popular than the abstract idea.
The time for talk and debate is over, its time for the reduction on numbers of weapons American's can own. If we require food-stampers to urinate for their right to eat and feed their families, its time to require that all potential gun owners test and pass a psychological medical exam. This would be just the beginning for the "right to bear an arm" holy rollers!
Get ready second amendment enthusiasts, your rights as you know it is about to change, and rightly so! I just wish you gun toters where as gung-ho about serving your country as you are about being able to carry a weapon - and making sure you country has better healthcare, but as most sane American's know, you selfish "patriots" are all about you!
In case your folks lost your spine, your compassion, your Christianity, your mind, 20 kids under the age of 7 died because a mental patient got access to Weapons of Mass Destruction, weapons purchased legally might I add. If this is not a problem to you, and doesn't make you question your countries gun laws, then you are just as f*&cked up as Adam Lanza!
NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West
