| |
When it comes to preventing crime and keeping communities safe, a new gun bill passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives is
shooting blanks. The totally meaningless new law bill expands a list of banned firearms, adding most popular AR-15 styles to a list of “assault style weapons.”
It also requires licensed concealed carry holders to secure permission before entering another’s home with a firearm and it requires additional training for gun
license holders.
For law-abiding gun owners, it adds layers of compliance on top of the state’s already-strict firearms regulations. For criminals,
the new Massachusetts “gun control” law means absolutely nothing!. The new law is simply another “feel good” law meant to placate gun control advocates
and not offend gun owners, the National Rifle Association (NRA), gun crazies.
After a pair of fatal shootings in Boston, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden pointed out that the arrests of two repeat offenders on
firearm charges are a “prime example” of how a core group of people drive the “illegal gun possession menace” in Boston.
Those repeat offenders were arrested after traffic stops just days before two more men lost their lives to gun violence in Boston.
That’s the problem – those who follow pre-existing gun laws will follow new ones. Those who don’t follow the law at all won’t obey any
new laws. Additionally, these meaningless new laws will not stop the epidemic of mass shootings and gun violence. As I have repeatedly written
(Reference 1 and other articles) - The only way to stop gun violence is to get rid of the guns!
Criminals who carry unlicensed guns are highly unlikely to secure permission before entering another’s home with a firearm.
Firearms training for criminals happens on the street, when members of that “core group” discharge weapons during the commission of a crime.
Anyone who obtains illegal guns, hides guns and fashions ghost guns to commit crimes doesn’t
care about gun laws in the slightest. And they are the ones racking up many of the deadly numbers of shooting
deaths.
The new Massachusetts gun bill won’t stop criminals from using guns. That’s the key reason why the
Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association don’t support it. As the organization’s executive director noted, the bill simply
won’t reduce crime.
While we need to get illegal guns off the streets to make our communities safe, it would be much
more beneficial to get all guns off the streets. Having law-abiding gun owners jump through more meaningless hoops
doesn’t help the cause.[2]
On the other side of the continent from Massachusetts, we have one more example of gun laws that do nothing to reduce gun crime and gun
violence. California Gov. Gavin Newsom loves to claim that the dozens of gun control laws enacted over the past 30 years has made the state a far safer place,
pointing to large drops in violent crime since the early 1990s. Never mind that most states that haven’t followed California’s lead have also seen major
reductions in violent crime over the same period. According to Newsom, if violent crime is trending down, it must be because of California’s crackdown on
legal gun owners.
So what do you think the governor will say about a new report from CalDOJ’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center that shows violent crime
has actually been increasing across the state for almost a decade? And not just violent crime, but crimes involving guns as well?
In 2020, homicides using firearms increased by 40.6% and assaults with firearms went up by 29% from the previous year. The trend
continued in 2021, with each category of crimes increasing 8% before dropping off by about as much in 2022, the most recent year for which data were available.
But the rate for 2022 remains noticeably higher than pre-pandemic figures. Guns were used in 71.2% of homicides and 21.8% of assaults in 2022, compared with 68%
and 16.9%, respectively, in 2019.
Interestingly, the Criminal Justice Statistics Center’s new report shows that some of the California counties with the highest prevalence
of guns used in crime are also some of the most restrictive places in the Golden State when it comes to legal gun owners.
If California’s gun control laws were as really effective at combatting violent crime as the gun
control proponents claim, then there wouldn’t have been the increase in gun-involved homicides, carjackings, armed robberies,
and other violent offenses that have taken place over the past ten years. The laws have had a much bigger impact on reducing
legal gun ownership than quelling violence. Just more evidence that gun laws are all show and no substance. To get
rid of gun crime and gun violence, we must get rid of the
guns![3]
There are enough guns in this country so that every man, woman and child could have one. Add to that a couple of Supreme Court decisions
that enshrine gun ownership alongside freedom of speech and freedom of assembly as constitutionally hallowed rights. On top of that is the fact that even such
modest efforts at the state level to limiting access to guns to people deemed dangerous to themselves have proved ineffective. Gun control advocacy stands high
in the ranks of lost causes and futile campaigns alongside legitimating polygamy and scrapping the national anthem for something more singable.
What kills such efforts in Congress, even in the wake of the unspeakable slaughter of the innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School in
2012, is the recognition in the minds of politicians that there are voters in their states and districts who are Second Amendment absolutists, whether they be
the kind of people who shoot at targets for practice or those who might shoot at people because of malice or derangement.
The once plausible argument that gun ownership was somehow connected to membership in state militias
was cast aside by a Supreme Court dominated by “originalists” who developed historical amnesia about the Founding Fathers'
dread of standing armies and preference for “a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” and
declared that the only operative phrase in the Second Amendment was “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not
be infringed”.[4]
America, deaths and injuries caused with firearms will continue to plague this nation unless
and until we come to our senses and get rid of the tools at the root of all the misery!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References:
- More proof that We Need to Ban Guns – All Guns!, David Burton, sonofeliyahu.com: Article 541,
18 August 2022.
- Legal Notices, Boston Herald; Pge 12, 19 October 2023.
- California's gun control laws aren't stopping a rise in violent crime, Cam Edwards,
BEARING ARMS, 8 October 2023.
- Gun control is a lost cause. Come despair with me., Ross K. Baker, USA TODAY,
23 April 2021.
|
|
