Anti-gun — and anti-rights as well How many times and how many ways does this have to
be said before it sinks in?
Criminals don’t care about laws. That’s what makes
them criminals.
If they ignore the thousands of state and federal gun laws already
on the books, what makes anyone think they’ll pay
attention to a handful more?
Yes, the shooting death of Kayla Rolland was an
unspeakable tragedy. And the 6-year-old boy who took a loaded handgun to his
Michigan school and used it on his classmate is as much a victim as little Kayla.
The boy was living with an uncle and various
strangers in a drug- and gun-infested flophouse because his dad was in jail and his mom had been evicted from their home. A 19-year-old
living in the house (who broke a law that limits possession of handguns to people 21 and older) reportedly flaunted the .32-caliber
pistol in the boy’s face. The adults who were responsible for allowing
that child access to a gun should spend many long years locked in
very small rooms.
Does anyone truly believe that a trigger-lock law
would have saved Kayla’s life? Even Josh Sugarmann, executive
director of the Violence Policy Center, says trigger locks are not the answer. Of
course, his logic veers to the left from there, deducing that if gun manufacturers actually produce “smart guns” that
can only be fired by the owners, then more non-gun owners might buy
them.
That, in Sugarmann’s mind, would be a terrible,
terrible thing because everyone `knows’ that guns are the
problem, not the minuscule number of people who misuse them.
Heavens above, we don’t want more law-abiding Americans practicing self-reliance and exercising their rights — no, we don’t. Banish the thought that if a person is of legal
age to own a handgun and isn’t a criminal, it’s absolutely
legal to buy a gun — “smart” or otherwise. Sugarmann wants to make
ownership of handguns illegal for everyone.
“A `common-sense’ approach to gun violence in
America would be
to ban handguns,” Sugarmann wrote this week in a
piece for `The
How does forbidding me to possess a handgun — a
person
who qualifies under the law and has jumped through all
the government-imposed hoops necessary to receive a
carry permit in this state — cut down on gun violence? It
doesn’t. But you’d never
know that by what Sugarmann and his ilk say.
Speaking of ilks, President Clinton has
predictably used the Rolland tragedy to renew his call for tougher gun control measures. He, along with Vice President Al Gore and former Sen.
Bill Bradley, have repeatedly cited the statistic that 13 children
are killed daily in this country by gunfire.
Except that it’s not true unless one considers 18-
and 19-year-olds to be children. Some of the reports used by
Handgun Control Inc. — where the Dems get many of their figures — to
calculate the
number of “youths” involved in gun violence
include people as old as 24.
In which case Clinton was messing around with a “juvenile” when he and 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky were trysting in
the Oval Office.
Aren’t there laws against that sort of thing?
The people railing for additional “gun control” measures aren’t perfectly happy for law
enforcement to have every conceivable firearm available because they
live with the false belief that the cops will be around to protect
them from harm in their time of need. What they don’t want is for
you or me to be able to own them.
That’s not anti-gun; that’s anti-rights. Mine and yours.

And the call for banning “cheap” handguns is about
as racist a proclamation as one can make. The calls for
eliminating “Saturday
night specials” are nothing short of telling an
entire spectrum of folks in this country that their lives aren’t
worth the same as those of the people who can afford more expensive guns.
Alan Korwin, author and publisher of `Gun Laws in
America,’ put it well last month during his appearance at the Texas State Rifle Association’s annual meeting. “Just because a woman lives in a cheap apartment, drives a cheap car and eats cheap food, does that mean she can’t
have access to a cheap gun with which to protect her children?” Reasonable question. Unfortunately, the answer
from politicians attempting to cater to anti-rights advocates is,
“No,she can’t.”
Jill “J.R.” Labbe is senior editorial writer and
columnist for the
`Star-Telegram.’