Say you are living in a house on several acres of property many miles out a dirt road. You and your family are at home in the middle of the night. Suddenly you hear a window break and the sound of strange feet on your hardwood floors.
Say you are a single mother with a few kids. Some creepy guy has followed you home the last couple of nights. Now it is three AM and you hear your locked door being pried open.
Another single mother just got the courage to break up with her abusive boyfriend. He swears she will never live without him. Again in the middle of the night comes the sound of an intruder.
Americans find themselves in situations such as these every single day. Sounds of breaking and entering strike like lightning into the hearts of homeowners. People have the right to be secure in their homes. In recent times country after country has turned its back on the right of people to bear arms. Anti-gun activists claim that hunting is immoral and unfit for modern times. Although hunting is an ancient right as well as an effective tactic to manage wildlife, this is not the issue. Individuals have the right to defend their homes and their families with weapons that can neutralize any intruder.
It is the most vulnerable that need the guns and the knowledge of their use the most. Home invaders select the elderly and the single woman. Should these people trust to the mercies of people breaking into their homes? Absolutely not. If a person breaks into a home who does not belong there, they need to understand that they take their life in their hands. This is part of what the Second Amendment is all about. People have a natural right to defend their homes and their families.
The nonpartisan West Virginia Citizens' Defense League supports this ideal. It recently endorsed Gary Howell in the race for the 14th Senatorial District.
The 2nd amendment is written in such an unclear manner that it's hard to determine whether the right to bear arms is granted to the individual or to state militias.
ReplyDeleteMost "anti-gun activists" are realistic and take issue more with handgun ownership (which carries an inherently assault-orientated purpose). Let's treat the cause of high crime rates (a lack of education and socio-economic disparity between classes) and not the symptoms (armed robbery).
The narrative account given in this post is not based on statistics of gun ownership as a reasonable means of self-defense but rather "common sense". Any time information is just given to be true (common sense) it loses overt justification. We don't question certain beliefs because they are common sense. However, when we have such given beliefs, it becomes even more important that their justification becomes questioned.
At one point, it was "common sense" that black people are not people but rather a commodity. That was only overturned by questioning the given assumptions. Let's not become complacent, passive recipients of knowledge, but rather creative and intelligent problem solvers.
The right to bear arms is an individual right. Simply reading the papers of the founding fathers clarifies their intent as to the 2nd Amendment.
ReplyDeleteAnti-gun activist do not take a realistic approach, they take an emotional approach far removed from reality. Take the DC Gun ban case currently before the US Supreme Court, since its passage in the 1970's, gun related deaths have increased in all but one year.
Also, it's painfully obvious that banning guns in a district (not even the size of a state) is a meaningless action as there exists no means of enforcing the rather easy process of importing guns. If guns, in particular handguns, are treated as they are nationally in places such as Australia and England, you would see a plummet in gun deaths.
ReplyDeleteThe reason criminals have guns now is because we've held on to this archaic tradition and have no qualms with the easy process by which one purchases a gun. Gun crime hardly exists in the aforementioned countries. America's shoot now and ask later approach, domestically and internationally, has led to a horrible situation in which either A) everyone must own a gun to feel safe and run the risk of a HUGE number of accidental death and injury, not to mention the occasional psychopath or B) we begin the slow, but inevitably better for mankind, process of getting rid of all of our handguns.
And to the unavoidable, "Guns don't kill people; people do" quip, I respond "Statistics don't lie; fundamentalists do."
Your assertion that if we treated our guns as Australia, that gun deaths would plummet is incorrect.
ReplyDeleteIn 1997 Australia passed a gun ban, within 1 year the following happened:
Homicides were up 3.2%.
Assaults were up 8.6%.
Armed-robberies were up 44%.
In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms were up 300% alone.
These are not manipulated statistics. They are cold hard facts comparing apples to apples and a good indicator of what would happen in the US if the 2nd Amendment was overturned.
Within ONE year. Long term analysis would paint a quite different picture. Naturally, when you take the guns away it will only leave criminals with guns. The transition isn't easy, but it's crucial. Care to look at statistics from sometime this decade? My father is Australian and I have Australian citizenship. I live there 2 months of the year and I don't carry the same fear of everyone having as I do here and for good reason. Gun crime barely exists due to good LONG term planning.
ReplyDeleteIt took the opportunity to look at more recent statistics (2005) from the Australian Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. The numbers still support higher gun related crime since the gun ban went into effect, the worse statistic being a 23% rise in attempted murder with the use of a firearm.
ReplyDeleteIronically the number of registered guns in NSW has jumped from 516,468 to 648,369 since 2002, and there has been a drop in gun related crimes in the same time frame. This shows that there is a direct correlation between private gun ownership and crime rate. If criminals know that private citizens are armed, then criminals are less likely to commit a crime.
And for the record, I own an export business. I have many friends in Australia, Perth & Southern Cross, WA, Blakehurst, NSW, and Bundeburg, QLD. Over the years we have spoken about gun owner rights because it is something that is near and dear to my heart. From conversations that I have had with them over the years I can assure they would disagree with you, and the most recent statistics I could find also prove gun ownership reduces crime.
May God bless the founding fathers of the US for the 2nd Amendment.