Yet again...

...Liberals respond to a tragedy by suggesting, nay, demanding, a new law that not only would not have prevented the tragedy, but may well lead to more.

Let me tell you something, people. I hate politicizing a tragedy. I HATE it. It strikes me as sub-human. When I look at the pictures of those students and teachers who were gunned down by a maniac in Connecticut, my reaction was tears. Liberals, apparently, loved it, and immediately thought about how to use this to further their ends.

It happens all the time. It happened after the Jared Loughner shooting. It happened after the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman shooting. It happened after the Utah shooting. It happened after the shooting of people waiting in line on the day The Dark Knight Rises opened. It happened after the Jovan Belcher murder suicide. And this time, after I wiped the tears from my face, I wondered how long it would be before some idiot liberals started demanding stricter gun laws.

Now, here's the odd thing; argued emotionally, it makes sense to want to take guns off the street because of a tragedy. Hell, it makes sense to want to see all guns in the world destroyed. I confess; I don't like guns. I've never owned one, and I've certainly never shot one other than once as a teen shooting my grandpa's hunting rifle under tightly controlled circumstances, including the fact that I never pointed said gun at anything that moved. Even in those circumstances, I was a little afraid. I had pure respect and terror for the raw power of the object in my hands to end a life.

I can understand how someone who feels that way might want to take all guns off the street. But their thinking never goes beyond that. Those who mean well literally stop with "remove guns", believing that this will prevent gun violence. Being against gun violence is something anyone with a conscience simply must be, and it's easy to fall into the fallacy of believing that being against gun violence must also mean that you're against gun ownership.

The problem is that meaning well isn't the same as producing good results. The simple, practical, bare fact is that removing guns from the street will not reduce gun violence, and in fact will make things worse.

It's become an oft-repeated phrase that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Because the phrase is repeated so often, it's easy for liberals to dismiss it as an out-dated "old wives' tale" or something like that. But it's true. Gun violence is ALWAYS caused by people who have no regard for the law (any many had mental issues as well). And until the day comes when there's an outbreak of gun violence at a police convention, NRA meeting or gun show, you simply cannot say that gun violence is caused by people who love guns. In fact, some of the most gun-responsible people, some of those who know gun safety inside and out, are the very people I just named.

In the imagination of liberals, the more people who are allowed to own guns, the more there will be accidental shootings, or people who have always been gun-happy will simply get more so, and turn into full-fledged maniacs. They imagine a world where EVERYBODY has a gun, and therefore EVERYBODY IS SHOOTING EVERYBODY ELSE!! And these are just the ones that mean well!

The problem? Reality shows different. The areas of the United States where gun control is loosest, where nearly any citizen can be armed anywhere they choose to be, are without fail the areas where gun violence is lowest. Imagine that; a large number of gun owners does not equal a large number of trigger-happy freaks shooting each other.

For that matter, I'm not an old man but within my lifetime, gun ownership has fallen per capita, gun laws have gotten more and more strict, and yet gun violence has risen. How could that be possible, if the liberal take on this had even a grain of truth?

The fact is, gun violence has risen because criminals who would use guns for crime or violence feel more free to do so knowing that there is a very tiny chance the person they're attacking will be able to defend themselves. Hanging up a sign that says "This is a Gun Free Zone" is tantamount to telling criminals "Come here and shoot us all you like!" A person who would use a gun to hurt someone else is NOT a person who's going to care that there's a sign up.

Of course, this doesn't stop liberals from having their fantasies. I recall an episode of Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman (has there ever been a more liberal show) wherein Dr. Quinn's adopted son is elected sheriff of their town, and in the same episode an outlaw ends up shooting the town's bartender. Because of this ONE SHOOTING (I should remind everyone that this show takes place in the old west), the town votes to outlaw guns. Yup. In this case, they don't even let the sheriff himself have one. Realistic writing, there.

But it gets worse. This outlaw comes back, and is met by the sheriff in the town square. The sheriff says guns aren't allowed in their town, and that he has to turn his over, or leave. The criminal threatens to shoot him dead, and the sheriff tells him he can try, if he likes, but then he'll have to go through the entire town to do so. Seeing the angry looks of the townsfolk, who are each and every one of them inside houses, looking out of windows, the criminal mutters something like "You win this round" and then turns around and leaves!

WTF?! In real life, this criminal would mow down the sheriff and then pick off anyone who left those houses, one by one. It would be fish in a barrel. But to the liberals who run that show, that's how they envision a world where no one is allowed to have a gun; that their "moral high ground" will win. No, unfortunately it won't.

The fact is that if a criminal has a gun, and knows you don't, he won't hesitate to use it on you should he feel he needs to. Conversely, the more he believes you might have a gun, the less likely he is to risk attacking you, knowing you could shoot him just as easily.

Now, I know people are going to bring up the Trayvon Martin case, specifically that Trayvon Martin was unarmed. They see this as another case of a trigger-happy gun-owner murdering a defenseless boy. The problem is that according to EVERYONE who witnessed the event, Martin WAS the attacker, and likely attacked because he was a cocky young thug who was sure that Zimmerman either didn't have a gun or didn't have the guts to use it if he did. And he likely thought that due to the anti-gun messages he likely heard everywhere. Martin, again, according to witnesses, rushed Zimmerman, threw him to the ground, straddled him, and started banging his head against the pavement, and punching him in the face, all while yelling "You're going to die today". Zimmerman managed to reach his gun and fired in self-defense. If he had not been armed, Zimmerman would be dead, and Trayvon Martin would be a murderer (likely never caught or convicted).

But what do liberals advocate in the wake of such a thing? Make it harder for responsible, law-abiding citizens to get guns. NOT make it easier to defend themselves against people who would break the law; make it harder to do so. Why? Why do they never understand that this is where it simply must lead?

They can't even answer the question on the most basic level; how do you expect to enforce gun laws on people who don't follow the law? What makes you expect that laws against guns would actually take guns off the street? Do they also feel that laws prohibiting cocaine and heroin have successfully made those drugs impossible to get hold of?

But they don't ask those questions. All they want to talk about is how best to get rid of guns. All they can do is spit questions back at us: "Why do you NEED a gun?" "What types of firearms do you think SHOULD be banned? Automatic? Semi-automatic?" They don't want to dialogue about it; they just can't get off the train of thought that guns simply MUST be banned, and that will reduce gun violence.

Now, I've said a lot about people like this who mean well. Many of them probably do just want to end gun violence. They've latched onto a completely wrong-headed method of doing so, but at least their hearts are in the right place. But there's another level to this. When politicians start talking about banning guns, everyone should be very, very worried.

There are politicians out there who are seriously proposing anti-gun legislation. They don't want stricter gun laws; they want to outlaw guns. Oh, not for the police or military, obviously. Just private citizens. Which means, not only will criminals still have guns, but the government will now be the only ones who have fire-power to back up their stance.

Do you know what you call it when the only people who can carry guns are those directly authorized by the government to do so?

A dictatorship.