Gun Owners Face Daily Illogical Assaults on Liberty

Egregiously evil shootings of children and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which left 21 dead and another murderous rampage at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that senselessly killed 10 others have once again aroused deep disgust, anger and sadness shared by all sane and moral individuals everywhere irrespective of partisan or other ideological leanings.

We all want to fix blame somewhere. We all want to understand what went so terribly wrong with the individuals — the society — that made this possible. We all want to seek and implement ways to preempt similar actions in the future.

But first, let’s try to step back from not-so-simple single causes and solutions before surrendering precious constitutional liberties and responsible self-protection means that will consequentially make the vast majority of us far less safe.

Lawlessly Liberal Politics

We might begin this contemplation exercise by noting that a conspicuously disproportionate number of violent crimes are occurring in progressive Democrat-controlled cities.

Of six notable examples for rising homicide rates, including Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Indianapolis, victims in each were disproportionately Black, and all but two had cut police budgets through defund movements in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests and riots following the May 2020 death of George Floyd.

Among these metro murder centers, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot proposed an $80 million Police Department funding cut; the Milwaukee Common Council approved a police budget cut that reduced the department by 120 officers; the Pittsburgh City Council approved a police department hiring freeze; and the Los Angeles City Council approved a $150 million cut to their city’s police department.

Derelict DA’s Under Fire

There’s no coincidence that soft on crime policies are hard on victims, a growing realization that finally portends a blow to a liberal movement toward lenient treatment of revolving-door offenders.

San Francisco voters recently recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin, one of the leading figures in a national network of prosecutors from California to Chicago — to Philadelphia, bent on light sentencing and reduced incarceration.

Opponents of Los Angeles DA George Gascón, Boudin’s ally and predecessor, are collecting signatures for a recall as well.

Gascón is under fire for giving a 16-year-old hoodlum a mere five-to-seven-month penalty in a “juvenile probation camp” after ramming a vehicle while under the influence of drugs into a mother and her 8-month-old infant in a stroller — a horrific Aug. 6, 2021, Venice, Calif. incident caught on video.

Seemingly miraculously, the mother and child survived.

Delusionally Defenseless Policies

The same “defund the police” progressives who are undermining the ability of law enforcement to protect communities are similarly determined to disarm capabilities of law- abiding citizens to defend themselves.

Although you likely haven’t read about this in the “mainstream” media, it might be of interest to know that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost every major study on defensive gun use has found that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year.

It’s also worth noting that liberal cities where shootings are most prevalent — Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Las Vegas, San Francisco, for example — typically have some of the strictest gun laws.

Moreover, cities controlled by progressives have done a particularly poor job of protecting their most crime-impacted populations, predominately low-income Black neighborhood victims.

Perhaps there’s a lesson here why Black customers have represented the highest recent increase in legal gun purchases of any ethnic group. According to an online survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Black firearm sales increased 58% in the first half of 2020 over the previous year.

Besides, it might be interesting to know that one of the plaintiffs in the 2008 landmark District of Columbia v. Heller court case affirming the right to bear arms was a Black computer-software designer, Shelly Parker, who was accosted by a 7-foot-tall neighborhood drug dealer who tried to break into her home and threatened to kill her.

Two years later, another Black plaintiff named Otis McDonald prevailed in McDonald v. Chicago, a second high court landmark case that expanded the Heller ruling that the Second Amendment applies with equal force to federal, state and local governments alike.

McDonald successfully pleaded that he should be granted the right to own a handgun for protection from the gangs that terrorized his low-income neighborhood.

Dangerous Progressive Proposals and Precedents

President Joe Biden was correct in his June 2, prime-time statement that “The issue we face is one of conscience and common sense,” but not in most ways he presumably imagined.

Joe’s first priority is to ban “assault weapons,” although that made-up term has no real definition other than what his far-left progressive base who detest the idea of any private gun ownership whatsoever ultimately determine the slippery slope category to mean over time.

Joe Biden also wants to raise the purchase age for firearms from 18 to 21, while 17-year-olds can enlist in the military with parental consent, 16-year-olds can drive in many states, and in 2018, a majority of House Democrats seeking a political advantage wanted to lower the legal voting age from 18 to 16.

Biden proposes to expand gun purchase background checks. Fine, but that wouldn’t have helped much when his son, Hunter, lied on an ATF Form 4473 in violation of federal law concealing his illegal drug use when he bought a .38-caliber handgun in 2018 … and he also likely violated Section 922(g)(3) of the criminal code which prohibits drug users from possessing firearms with ammunition.

Hunter’s gun was later found tossed in a trash can across from a high school by his then girlfriend and widowed sister-in-law Hallie Biden.

This was obviously a different gun than the semi-automatic pistol which appears being waved around and even pointed at a camera with finger-on-trigger on a personal 2018 video as a nude Hunter cavorts with a hooker in a hotel room.

So maybe more gun restrictions on law-abiding people isn’t really the best solution to reducing crime after all.

Instead, why not perhaps criminalize criminal behavior instead?