The shooting at Sandy Hook mere days before Christmas in 2012
shocked and horrified the entire nation. But not everyone in the country saw
the tragedy as an excuse to enact major legislation. Leave that to Sen. Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.) and her congressional buddies, who are pushing to ban
certain guns they deem "assault" or "military-style"
weapons.
Now pro-lifers have a new charge of hypocrisy to dodge. Luckily,
it's not a difficult argument to shoot down. (Pun intended.) You can be
pro-life and pro-Second Amendment. It's fun and easy, like bumper bowling!
In all seriousness, being cool with guns does not mean you
under-value human life, or that you don't care about children. To the contrary!
I am as pro-life as they come. I'm even one of those nutso, out-of-touch
extremists who is pro-life in cases of rape and incest.
I am also as pro-gun as they come. We own many guns. My husband
and I are both NRA members and licensed to carry concealed. My stepson has been
shooting since he was six years old. Guns are an important part of our lives,
not just because they are fun to shoot - they are! - but because we believe we
have a responsibility as Americans to defend ourselves.
A few weeks ago a United States Marine, a veteran of the war in
Afghanistan, wrote
a letter to Sen. Feinstein declaring that he refused to be disarmed. He
also said this:
I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.
America is unique among nations in many ways, and almost all
those ways stem from this singular fact: we are the first nation to be founded
on an idea. That all men are created equal. That we were endowed by our Creator
with certain inalienable rights. That
we will not be governed without our consent.
The Second Amendment has exactly nothing to do with hunting or
sport shooting. It has everything to do with Americans being able to defend
themselves from threats to their lives, and that includes the threat of a
tyrannical government. Consent of the governed, remember?
Besides, concealed carry saves lives. Don't believe me? Do some
research. John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard of the University of Chicago
completed an exhaustive study of crime
and gun laws and "concluded that, had the states which outlaw 'concealed
carry' allowed their citizens to carry concealed weapons, over 1,500 murders,
4,000 rapes, and 60,000 aggravated assaults could have been prevented yearly
since 1992."
Writer and firearms expert Larry Correia states in his
exhaustive viral blog post, "An
opinion on gun control":
Over the last fifty years, with only one single exception (Gabby Giffords), every single mass shooting event with more than four casualties has taken place in a location where guns were supposedly not allowed.
He also lays out a pretty good argument just by observing one
week's worth of crime - the week of the Sandy Hook massacre:
There were four mass killing attempts this week. Only one made the news because it helped the agreed upon media narrative.
1. Oregon.
NOT a gun free zone. Shooter confronted by permit holder. Shooter commits
suicide. Only a few casualties.
2. Texas. NOT
a gun free zone. Shooter killed immediately by off duty cop. Only a few casualties.
3. Connecticut.
GUN FREE ZONE. Shooters kills until the police arrive. Suicide. 26 dead.
4. China. GUN
FREE COUNTRY. A guy with a KNIFE stabs 22 children.
Being pro-life means believing in the value of human life.
Common sense and empirical evidence prove that responsible citizens carrying
guns save human lives from the criminals and madmen who would end them.
Unfortunately, just like with the issue of abortion, emotion
sometimes rules over reason. We see a woman enduring a crisis pregnancy and we
want to "help," so we encourage to her to do something that does not
help: have an abortion. Similarly, we see a tragedy like Sandy Hook, and in our
grief we want to do something to "help," so we do something that does
not help: blame guns and enact restrictive laws.
Sen. Feinstein seems to believe in Rahm Emanuel's adage that one
should "never let a good crisis go to waste." Hence her push for gun
bans in the wake of the Newtown shootings. (By the way, Rahm Emanuel is mayor
of Chicago, a "gun-free" city with a skyrocketing murder rate: over
500 last year.)
The truth is, crazy people who want to kill a lot of other
people choose "gun-free" zones for the same reason Planned Parenthood
places its clinics in poor neighborhoods: easy targets.
The simple fact is that there is no such thing as a
"gun-free" zone for criminals. If you're ever targeted by one, I
think deep down, no matter how scared you are of guns or how much you hate
them, you hope you're in a state like Texas or Mississippi or Oregon, and that
someone like me, or better yet my husband, is nearby.
I believe in the sanctity of life, and I believe in our sacred
right to defend innocent life, whether its our own or a stranger's. The push to
disarm responsible Americans and place us at the mercy of madmen is as
anti-life as the campaign to place the unborn at the mercy of the abortionist's
tools. That legal victory took place forty years ago with the Roe decision, and it has led
to the loss of millions of innocent lives.
I pray that forty years from now we do not have to lament a
similar tragedy.
