Guns Protect Citizens

The key to success in life is often what lessons you learn from failure, tragedy, and challenge. Back in 1996, I wrote a book about it called, “The Joy of Failure.” Unfortunately, I’ve found in life that many (if not most) people learn the wrong lessons.

The Gabrielle Giffords tragedy is Exhibit A.

Let me get this straight. A mentally ill madman goes on a shooting spree and the lesson learned by liberals is that guns must be taken away from law-abiding citizens?

What’s the connection between a mentally ill nutcase and perfectly sane, responsible people? There is none.

Why would we be punished for something a bad (or mentally unstable) kid chose to do? We did nothing wrong. What kind of message does it send when you punish good, responsible people for the acts of someone else?

There are so many reasons to keep guns legal for law abiding citizens, I can’t fit them all in this one commentary. But here are just a few:

First, banning or drastically limiting access to guns never stops criminals from obtaining guns. Drugs are banned in this country, yet they are everywhere. We can’t even keep drugs out of prison.

It only prevents law-abiding citizens from defending themselves. Honest law-abiding Americans will be disarmed and at the mercy of thieves, home invaders, rapists, murderers, and madmen just like Congressman Giffords’ assassin.

Second, gun control makes totalitarian regimes possible. I am a Jew. I will never forget that the first thing Adolf Hitler did to imprison, enslave, and murder 6 million of my people was to pass a law that banned Jews from owning guns.

The lesson of Hitler is that when you lose the right to bear arms and defend yourself, your family and your property, you are at the mercy of tyrants and madmen. Our Founding Fathers understood that clearly. That is precisely why they built the right to own guns into the Constitution.

It had far less to do with citizen militias, than it did to allow citizens to defend themselves against a brutal government intent to violate their rights, or steal their property.

Third, here in America the urban areas populated by the highest percentage of minorities also happen to all have the strictest gun control laws. Has it worked?

Detroit, Chicago, Washington D.C., Newark, and Baltimore have strict gun control laws yet have the highest murder and violent crime rates. Why? Citizens of those cities defenseless.

When you ban guns, or make them difficult for law-abiding citizens to own them, it is open season on the good people in society.

Now let’s look at the polar opposite. Look at suburbs and rural towns across the heartland (Midwest), South and West, where hunting is prevalent, and guns are legal and plentiful.

What do you see in places where law-abiding citizens have easy access to guns? Low or no crime rates. The number of police is no higher, yet crime is far lower.

Criminals want no part of confronting armed homeowners or business owners.

Liberals often point to Europe’s strict gun laws as the model for America. I have no interest in becoming like the law-abiding homeowner in UK who defended his family and property by shooting a home invader, and was rewarded with a sentence of life in prison. If liberals like Europe so much, I have a simple answer: Move there.

I still remember when the Los Angeles riots hit in 1992. I was hosting several national TV shows on CNBC and living in the Hollywood Hills. My phone never stopped ringing. On the other end was every bleeding-heart liberal Hollywood actor and producer I knew all desperately begging to bring their families to my home because they knew I was armed.

The Constitution gives all law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms. God Bless America.

Wayne Allyn Root is a former libertarian vice presidential nominee and now serves as chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee. He is the best-selling author of "The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts." His website is ROOTforAmerica.com