PA Bill Number: HB335

Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.

Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...

Last Action: Removed from table

Last Action Date: May 1, 2024

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Questions anti-gunners won't answer in war of words against 2A :: 09/01/2015

The war of words over the right to keep and bear arms is heating up today, in the pages of the Seattle Times with anti-gun columnist Jerry Large on one side and Kurt Schlicter at Townhall.com on the other, while over the weekend came allusions to Australia-type gun confiscation and a swipe at media and politicians who stir up trouble.

Interesting sign that showed up in Olympia last year. It ignores the fact that the Second Amendment is "common sense."

As Schlicter puts it this morning, “Sure, liberals never met a civil right that actually exists in the Constitution that they didn’t want to violate, but they have a special hatred for the Second Amendment.” And just why do they hate the Second Amendment? Because it protects the right of people to resist.

On the other hand, Large disdains the so-called “gun lobby” for its “protection of the right of every American to wrap his hand around a deadly weapon.” Since when shouldn’t a constitutionally-delineated fundamental civil right really be for every American to exercise?

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UPDATE: The Kansas City Star is running a poll on gun control. To see that poll, click here.

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Over the weekend, New York Times writer Josh Barro suggested that massive gun confiscation, as happened in Australia, would reduce the number of guns and – at least in theory – thereby reduce the number of violent crimes. That was, perhaps, a bit too candid for the gun control crowd, laying it all on the line, so to speak.

But isn’t that really what the left-leaning “mainstream press” and those clamoring for more gun control really want? Confiscation?

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It reflects the inability of the gun control crowd to discern between public safety and public disarmament. To anti-gunners, one is the same as the other, and that is hardly the case. The dispute reminds us of the sign carried by a gun control supporter in Olympia two years ago that declared "The Second Amendment and common sense can co-exist." Well, the Second Amendment is the epitome of common sense, say rights activists.

All this comes in the wake of last Wednesday’s brutal murder of reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward. That set off the usual demands for stricter gun laws, but this column already noted that anti-gunners have admitted that gun laws didn’t protect the two, and Scott Greer writing for the Daily Caller posited that, “We need to stop blaming the tools these mass shooters use and look to what drove them to murder.”

The Seattle Times’ Large laments, “If you want one, you can get one. That’s the major reason why the U.S. stands in a category of its own when it comes to mass shootings, why we see so many gun deaths of all kinds, in the commission of other crimes, in suicides, in domestic violence…It’s too easy to buy guns, and just about as easy to steal them from the homes and cars of people who think they’ve purchased protection. Millions of dollars worth of guns are stolen in Washington state every year.”

Gun thefts are a problem. But if Large or his contemporaries believe that the thieves who take them turn around and require a background check from the criminals who subsequently buy them, they’re mistaken.

Does all this mean that keeping guns out of the wrong hands is a hopeless problem? No, but the solution is not to violate the rights of law-abiding citizens who didn’t commit any crimes. The solution must involve both sides, rather than one side telling the other they have to surrender a civil right.

It’s time for the gun control crowd to admit right up front that they want the landscape to be rid of firearms. They dance around saying so by instead demanding more controls to keep guns away from criminals and crazy people, when they realize that such efforts penalize the law-abiding, and haven’t prevented the crimes they want to prevent.

While anti-gunners insist they believe in the Second Amendment, their actions demonstrate that they don’t want anyone to actually exercise their right to keep and bear arms. When they talk about tighter controls, they’re really arguing for a system so wrapped in red tape that it will ultimately discourage anyone from trying to wade through it.

Second Amendment advocates aren’t shy about a serious discussion about public safety. But nobody is giving up their guns under the false presumption that public disarmament is going to discourage predatory criminals.

So here’s the challenge. If anti-gunners want to talk about public safety, the conversation will be awfully short if it begins with a demand for gun bans or more restrictions, and unfortunately, so far that seems to be the only thing they bring to the table.

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