Subject: Why the Founding Fathers Would Have Been AGAINST an Assault Weapons Ban
…and keep in mind that what leftist call assault rifles are semi-automatic weapons not military grade weapons that fire continuously or in 2-3 burst with every trigger pull. Yes the bump stock converts to fully automatic; but, these are not the killer weapons used in our schools. In fact the main weapon used in US in homicides are hand guns and most of the homicides are gang related.
The Rand Corporation, a “research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier, and more prosperous,” released an ambitious review of existing firearms-related research earlier this month. This was the culmination of two years and a million dollars of effort.
The “Rand researchers evaluated thousands of studies to assess the available evidence for the effect of 13 common gun policies on a range of outcomes…”
Read that again: “Thousands of studies.” If you’ve read any of the major newspapers, you would have been led to believe that there has been no research on anything related to firearms since the Dickey amendment prohibited tax dollars being used to advocate for gun control, yet Rand managed to find thousands of studies that had been published since 2003 or had been cited at least 70 times. Well-known gun violence researchers Philip J. Cook and John J. Donohue published an article in Science last December that acknowledged that a lack of government funding research isn’t the obstacle to research some gun control proponents claim.
They noted, as did NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox, that the National Institutes of Health spent more than $11 million on “gun violence-related” projects between 2014 and 2017 – and that certainly did not fund even a fraction of the studies reviewed by Rand.
After excluding studies that were not designed to identify causation (a necessity when studying the effect of a specific policy), the researchers identified 62 studies that met their realistic criteria. Most of the studies were excluded on the basis of their design or for other methodological concerns. Let’s examine some of their key findings and recommendations.
Rand found moderate evidence that dealer background checks may decrease firearm-related homicides. Of course, federal law requires every firearms dealer to conduct a background check on everyone purchasing a firearm. Rand deemed evidence concerning the effects of private-seller background checks on firearms-related homicides to be inconclusive and found limited evidence that background checks reduce violent crime and total homicides.
Rand identified “moderate evidence that laws prohibiting the purchase or possession of guns by individuals with some forms of mental illness reduce violent crime, and there is limited evidence that such laws reduce homicides in particular.” As such, Rand recommends states should include prohibiting mental health histories in their background checks records and recognizes that the “The most robust procedures involve sharing data…with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.”
In other words, dealer background checks and an improved mental health records component of the background check system are two steps that can reduce violent crime and homicides. Rand notably found inconclusive results linking any of the most popular proposals from gun-control advocates with a reduction on violent crime.
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Hi Folks,
Throughout American history, there have been a number of black dates on the calendar—days that live in infamy, so to speak. Most of us well know several of these dates: September 11th, the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, andDecember 7th, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor are two of them. But there is another equally black and equally significant date that comes up later this month—April 19th.
Now in some ways, April 19th may actually be both a darker date, as well as, a more historically significant date than either of the other two.
In more recent history, April 19th 1993 was the day the FBI figured time had run out for the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX, resulting in the deaths of 76 people—including many women and children. Two years later, some militant nut-case decided the best way to punish the government for its “atrocity” in Waco was to kill more women and children—by bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City onApril 19th, 1995. While these two events certainly blacken the date of April 19th, nevertheless, they pale in significance when compared to either 9/11 or 12/7.
Still, in terms of historical significance, 4/19 more than holds its own.
You see it was on April 19th 1861 that southern sympathizers in Baltimore first attacked Union Soldiers on their way to defend Washington, D.C. As a result of this attack, four Union soldiers were killed and a dozen wounded—versus a dozen dead southern civilians with well over 100 wounded. This became known as the Pratt Street Riots or the Pratt Street Massacre. These were the first deaths by hostile action of a Civil War that was to eventually kill over half a million people—making it the bloodiest war in American history. While some other events are commonly credited with being the start of the Civil War—like the Southern bombardment of Ft Sumter on April 12th—others consider April 19th to be the start of the war because that’s when the bloodshed began.
However, none of the above “April 19ths” rises to the significance of April 19th, 1775.
You see on that date, some 700 British soldiers departed occupied Boston—their mission—to disarm colonial militias. Sound familiar? Now why would a benevolent government ever seek to disarm its people? Right! Remember, these were the same militias that only a dozen years earlier had fought side-by-side with similar King’s regiments in the French and Indian Wars.
What ensued were the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
The shooting—and the killing—began just after sunrise at Lexington. There, 77 colonists faced almost 400 soldiers of the British Army, the most respected army in the world, with predictable results. The second battle occurred later that same morning at the bridges of Concord—only the odds were reversed. It was there that a 100 man contingent of the British forces found themselves facing approximately 400 angry colonists—and the British were defeated and routed. By the end of the day, almost 90 colonists lay dead or wounded compared to almost 150 of the British forces.
So what’s all this have to do with the private ownership assault weapons? That’s easy.
Although circumstances are certainly different, in its day, the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19th 1775 (4/19) were as significant to the colonists as the dates of 9/11 and 12/7 are to Americans today.
To the colonists, 4/19 was their 9/11.
So, when the Declaration of Independence was written, just over a year later, 4/19 would have been fresh in Thomas Jefferson’s mind when he talked about...”the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and “certain unalienable Rights”...”endowed by their Creator...”. And in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted to implement the ideals of the Declaration of Independence by adding the Bill of Rights—including the Second Amendment—the founding fathers certainly had not forgotten 4/19, just as we have not forgotten 9/11 today.
So ask yourself—knowing how important it was that the colonists were armed basically equivalently to the British on 4/19—how likely is it that our founding fathers would ever give the technological advantage in individual firepower to a future government out to suppress the people?
Not likely, I’d say.
There’s simply no way in hell that our founding fathers would ever support the assault weapons ban as proposed by Leftists today.
Have a happy and uneventful April!
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