From the NRA Institute for Legislative Action:
"This week, in a typically misleading move designed to bolster their political agenda rather than reduce violent crime, the Brady Campaign released a report calling for background checks on "all gun sales in America, including at gun shows." The Brady report was intentionally designed to correspond with, and bolster, a "gun show loophole" bill (S. 843) introduced this week by fanatical anti-gun Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). In fact, the Brady report was released at the press conference Lautenberg held earlier this week.
Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign, said in the group's press release, "We can do this. It will have no impact on any law-abiding gun owner in the country." Of course, that is absolutely false-the proposal will ONLY impact law-abiding gun owners, including any law-abiding person selling a firearm to a law-abiding buyer. Does Helmke really think that criminals, drug cartel members, and violent gang thugs are going to start legally purchasing firearms and submitting to a background check? Law-breakers, by definition, break the law. They are criminals; they are predatory, they operate outside of the law. You know that, we know that, Lautenberg knows that, even Helmke knows that."
I can't even begin to imagine the mindset behind getting rid of guns. Oh wait, yes I can. They somehow think they can eventually make enough laws to where they can get rid of guns altogether or make it so hard to own one, you won't bother and the criminals' supply will magically dry up.
This is a misguided attempt to control the tools criminals misuse. They only problem is that the tools in questions have legitimate uses, including protecting you from the bad guy who didn't turn in his gun when the law was made to tell us all to do so. Oops.
Firearms will gradually be taken away or regulated to such a degree that only criminals will have them, and guess what, formerly law-abiding owners will be legislated to criminal status if they don't turn them in.
This has happened to other countries, and it will happen here
IF WE LET IT. Don't fool yourself into thinking it can't.
Let's look at some death rates. These are from the Center for Disease control. I found them at
this link.
This is the death rate per 100,000 people. Both sexes, all races.
Transport accidents 16.3
Nontransport accidents 23.4
Accidental discharge of firearms 0.3
Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms 4.2
Assault (homicide) by other and unspecified
means and their sequelae 1.9
Events of undetermined intent 1.6
Discharge of firearms, undetermined intent 0.1
Complications of medical and surgical care 0.9
Intentional self-harm (suicide) by other and
unspecified means and their sequelae 5.3
Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of
firearms 5.7
All causes 825.9
You're roughly 4 times as likely to die in some sort of accident as you are to by firearms. And that's INCLUDING suicide by firearm. Again, this also ignores the fact that firearms can be used like any other tool, and in the absence of that tool, people will use something else for suicide or homicide. For suicide it's roughly 50/50 for firearm or not, and 1/3 of homicides do not involve a firearm.
So, that firearm death rate is starting to look figuratively small.
So what do most people die of? Heart disease or cancer.
Major cardiovascular diseases 288.8
Malignant neoplasms 188.7
By my math, that's 470+ which is roughly
47 TIMES greater than the firearm related death rate (figured at 10.3 for all firearm deaths, even accidental). Where's the big push to spend money on preventing those? Not as exciting as 'guns are bad, mmm-?' I guess.
You really wanna save lives? Outlaw McDonald's and tobacco products.
