JPFO ALERT: Why We Cannot Just Be Quiet and Mourn
Date: Apr 18, 2007 11:41 AM
ALERT FROM JEWS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF FIREARMS OWNERSHIP
America’s Aggressive Civil Rights Organization

April 18, 2007

JPFO ALERT: Why We Cannot Just Be Quiet and Mourn

In the hours and days just after the mass murder-suicide at
Virginia Tech last Monday, many people felt it would be
more sensitive and polite if the advocates for gun rights
would sit quietly and allow the personal and national
mourning to take place without a lot gun policy arguments.

We at JPFO considered the sensitive and polite approach.
We certainly feel terrible for the victims and for the
families and friends whose lives are shattered by the
horrendous crime. The deep evil of the murders makes it
all the harder to come to terms with that sickening event.
We agree that it would be best if we, as a nation, could
gather together with the survivors in national mourning.

But we could not just be sensitive, polite and quiet, for
two key reasons. First, we know that the enemies of
defense rights always capitalize on strong emotions of the
moment to drive their policies.

The Brady Campaign, for example, released a message almost
immediately that called for more national “gun control” and
said:

“We are building a crescendo of public outcry to ensure
that action is taken. We are aggressively rallying support
among allies for our solutions.”

Those benighted people, who think that making everybody
defenseless is a good plan, have already swung into
action. Their policy goals ride on strong emotions, not on
reason and practicality.

If we stay quiet while the anti-self defense crowd defines
the issues and whips up emtions, then we lose. We lose by
being absent and by giving the appearance of conceding we
are wrong about self-defense. We lose by letting emotional
appeals go unchallenged by careful rational thought.

We know also that a bad law driven by high-emotions in
Congress and the media will be extremely hard to eliminate
later.

A second reason we could not just stay quiet: gun owners
have been made to feel guilty for having guns, just because
one suicide-murderer misuses a firearm in such an horrific
way. In this moment of national focus, many gun owners
don’t remember some of the key reasons that we have the
right to keep and bear arms. Under pressure, many gun
owners cannot respond to challenges, and that makes us all
look shallow or unprincipled.

Talk host Bill O’Reilly, for example, took to the airwaves
the following day to claim that Virginia’s gun laws are not
strict enough. O’Reilly urged that a 7-day waiting period
is necessary, that the instant background check is not
enough. A caller to his radio show pointed out the several
procedures in Virginia that a buyer must pass through, and
said that the 7-day waiting period was not needed.

O’Reilly replied by challenging the man to explain why he
couldn’t wait 7 days to get a Glock? Why did the man need
to take immediate possession?

The caller was unable to answer the question — because he
was feeling defensive and cornered and somehow guilty.

The answers to O’Reilly’s challenges are:

(1) a woman who is being stalked should not have to wait
7 days to obtain the means to protect herself from a
potentially armed madman,

(2) the police owe no duty to protect individual citizens
from criminal attack. Blocking a person from getting
defense tools is to cripple the endangered citizen’s
ability to protect himself or herself,

(3) the suicide-murderer in this case had planned his crime
carefully, such that a 7 day waiting period would have
had zero effect upon him.

We cannot let the anti-defense people and the ignorant
media personalities command the policy discussion while we
are sensitively and politely silent. We wish it were
otherwise. Innocent lives depend upon the right to keep and
bear arms, so we must protect it, even in times of tragedy
and grief.

– The Liberty Crew

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !