According to John Lott, a well-respected researcher in the effectiveness of Gun laws, and author of More Guns, Less Crime, the gun grabbers have gotten their hats handed to them. Gun control is a losing issue. The fat lady is warming up.
From his Fox News Article
This month, the Million Mom March in Washington drew an anemic showing of only 2,000 people, while this year, all of the Democratic presidential candidates— however unenthusiastically— spoke of Americans’ Second Amendment right to own guns. These are just a few of the signs that the facts finally seem to be catching up to the movement. The future for the movement looks even worse.
Whether the subject is concealed handgun laws or bans on semi-automatic so-called “assault weapons,” gun control debates have been filled with apocalyptic claims about what will happen if gun control is not adopted. One common prediction is that laws allowing the carrying of a concealed weapon will result in crime waves, or permit holders shooting others. However, with 37 states now having right-to-carry laws, and another nine states letting some citizens carry, permit holders have continually shown themselves to be extremely law-abiding. It is becoming more and more difficult to attack those laws.
Gun control does not work. Proponents of banning guns says that it will reduce crime. In England, where handguns were banned in 1997, crime has rose an average of 29% in the period of 1997-2002.
In Australia where guns were also banned, violent crime rates averaged 32% higher in the six years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than they did the year before the law in 1996. The same comparisons for armed robbery rates showed increases of 45%.
All gun control laws do is remove guns from the hands of law abiding citizens who merely wish to defend themselves. Criminals will continue to break the law and carry guns.
Gun control supporters say we should rely on the police for protection. For the majority of Americans though who don't live 5 minutes from police, waiting for police to arrive could mean the difference between being killed, injured, or assaulted by people entering their homes, or bothering them on the street.
Many gun grabbers who tend to be liberal call themselves pro-choice. They are for the woman's right to choose, and believe that the government should keep it's hands out of a woman's womb. But when it comes to the choice of carrying a weapon to protect themselves, they are all for taking that right away. And it is a right.
Just read the Second Amendment.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The "Right of the People". People you and me. Just like the right of the people peaceably to assemble. People like you and me.
This entry and more can be found at The Nap Room
Throughout history the natural order of States seemed to be that governments ruled the People. Tyrants crowned themselves as if convinced of their right to rule with Divine blessing (or even that they themselves were Gods). The divine right of kings was that they'd earned their station (and their responsibility) by being born into it. Order was bestowed to the great unwashed in society by their wise and literate betters. All authority was in the hands of the State, and the People were at it's mercy, always dependent on the kindness of the strangers who ruled them.
When the Law is taken into the hands of a powerful few with no accountability to the People, then Liberty is in peril. There are, of course, many countries in the world today where the People's liberties are granted and lost at the whim of irrepressible tyrants.
The Declaration of Independence established that Americans had ceased to recognize the subordination of the People to a Crown. It stated that in order to secure to the People their inalienable Rights: "governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The Revolution introduced a new natural order of States:
The divine right of the People is that they've earned their Rights by virtue of having been born into them.
People have Rights, governments have powers; and only those powers specifically granted to them by the People. Practicing a rule of Law, not of the whim of men in office, is essential if we are to protect the existence of "government of the People." The principle that a legislature, executive or court shall not presume to have any authority that it has not been granted must be religeously re-enforced. If we stand by silently while they who are, for a term, entrusted with the stewardship of the Republic -- be they legislators, executives or judges -- assume for themselves permission and authority that they have not been granted, then we, in America and in the free world, will simply be allowing tyrants to rule the People once again.
Congress may pass a law abridging the freedom of speech; a President may sign it; a Court may even uphold it (finding that the State has a "compelling interest" in abridging your Liberty), all without respect for the Constitution's proscribed amendment process, or the understanding that the State has no interest, compelling or otherwise, that the People haven't instructed it to have.
It has happened, and it will happen again.
We here at Consent of the Governed want to preserve the rule of Law -- the rule of the People -- by exposing instances, great and small, where governments at all levels and at all branches excercize authority that the People have not granted to them in their Constitutions and Charters. Hopefully we'll even spread the word to those who haven't heard -- or haven't fully understood -- that if we allow one Right to be lost then that becomes a precedent in Law that can only mean that all Rights can be taken away at any time and without Our consent.
Tyrants will take power from the People until they are stopped, and so we must forever be vigilant in our proposition that "government of the People, by the People and for the People shall not perish from the earth."