NYC vs. London: Why Banning Guns Doesn’t Work

The liberal left loves to yell and scream about gun control, using every opportunity they can to try and push their agenda. The recent (February 2018) shooting in Parkland, Florida, is no exception, with gun control advocates gathering and pushing children to center stage in an effort to further their position. According to their narrative, all we have to do is eliminate guns and *poof* violence will disappear.

As I’ve said many times before, what leftists really want isn’t a repeal of our Second Amendment rights, but rather a repeal of the laws of physics which make it possible for firearms to work. They seem to think if they can pass enough laws they will actually manage to stop violence from happening. But in order to do this, they have to ignore many of the causes of violence and focus on one inanimate object as the cause of that violence… guns.

This, of course, fits with the liberal idea human beings are inherently good, one of the many fantasies they love to spout off. But anyone who has raised children should know better. Children are savages and must be taught how to behave. Left alone, their savage nature comes forth. They are selfish, mean-spirited, abusive to one another and there is nothing more self-centered in the world than a baby. It is the job of parents to teach those children how to behave, something modern society has largely forgotten how to do.

While guns are the tool of choice in many violent crimes, the crime isn’t perpetrated by the gun, but rather by a person; often one with serious psychological issues. Probably one whose parents didn’t raise them well. Eliminating guns, even if it were possible, wouldn’t eliminate this violence, but then, their real goal, regardless of what they say, is to eliminate guns, not eliminate violence.

These political hacks, following the Democrat philosophy of not letting any good crisis go to waste, are taking full advantage of the Parkland shooting. While they would want us to believe the March for Our Lives was a youth inspired and run series of events, the money trail proves otherwise. All the typical left-wing players are involved; not only in funding this movement, but in organizing it. The leftwing media is falling into line as well, giving an impressive amount of time to David Hogg and other youth who have been put forward as spokesmen for this movement.

If March for Our Lives was really about safety, then we would have seen all aspects of school shootings discussed in an open forum. But all that was talked about was gun control and how evil Republicans are. In case anyone missed it, this was a paid political event.

An honest and open conversation about school safety would have to include discussing what happened a few weeks later at the Maryland shooting, where an armed resource officer in the school stopped another active shooter after they had only been able to wound two students. In that case, only the shooter himself died in the confrontation. If we’re interested in school safety, we should be analyzing what went right in that situation, not demonizing the NRA for what went wrong in Parkland.

The same honest and open conversation would talk about the multiple failures of law enforcement which allowed the Parkland shooter to be so successful. If law enforcement can’t properly enforce the laws which are currently on the books, what makes anyone think that writing more laws will improve the situation?

Of course, David Hogg, like the other students who have spoken at these rallies and on television, have all been indoctrinated into leftist ideology in the leftist indoctrination center known as public schools. While there are actually some students in our school systems who are not anti-gun, the vast majority have bought the ideology pushed on them by their teachers.

Actually, a number of Parkland students who are pro-Second Amendment have come forth with some rather bold statements of how they and their families are being used as political props. One such student, Patrick Petty, is asking the left to quit using his sister’s name to push their agenda, stating, “She DID NOT and WOULD NOT support it.”

Of course, the ideological argument that eliminating guns will eliminate violence is based on a series of lies. The first lie says gun control is about eliminating violence. There have been enough statements made by politicians on the left, showing they don’t really believe that the gun-control measures they are pushing for will actually stop any crime. What they’re doing is trying to chip away at our Second Amendment rights, so they can eventually eliminate them altogether.

They won’t tell us this, but that doesn’t eliminate the reality of the situation. On those rare occasions when the gun-control crows let their guard down, they actually state they are after much more than what they are asking for; specifically, they are out to ban guns in the United States.

One such example actually happened at the March for Our Lives event. One of the speakers said, “When they give us that inch, the bump stock ban, we will take a mile.” That’s their general attitude, even though they are rarely honest enough to say so.

Does Gun Control Work? No.

But let’s just suppose the left is right for a moment. Would eliminating guns really work? The only way we could really know the answer to this question is to look at examples of where private gun ownership has been eliminated and see the effects those gun bans have had on crime rates and the ability to eliminate violence.

Mexico

I’d like to start with our neighbor to the south, Mexico. Compared to the countries which the gun-grabbers like to hold up as an example, Mexico has had a much longer history of strict gun laws. While the right to keep and bear arms is part of the Mexican Constitution of 1857, it was changed in the revised constitution of 1917. Since then, Mexican gun laws have only gotten stricter, to the point where today, it is extremely difficult to buy guns privately in Mexico, requiring several visits to the capital to gain a license, which allows you to buy guns in the one and only gun store in Mexico.

So, has this stopped gun violence in Mexico? By no means. The cartel wars of the last two decades have been the bloodiest of Mexico’s history, with over 160,000 people killed. Even private citizens who own illegal firearms have no right to protect themselves from these murderous criminals, putting them in the position of choosing between imprisonment (for at least 20 years) or allowing family members to be killed.

Australia

Clearly, Mexican citizens have not benefited from being disarmed. But how about in the countries which liberals like to hold up as an example, Australia and England? How are things working out there?

According to statistics from the Australian government, the sweeping legislation to eliminate all semi-automatic firearms and buy back guns from the public for destruction did not work. The Australian gun homicide rate had already been declining before those measures were put in place and the rate of decline hasn’t changed at all. The only real difference it made was in the rate of accidental deaths.

But Australia is a much more recent example, one might argue, perhaps there hasn’t been enough time for the results to fully be appreciated. Well then, I guess we need to look at England, which has worked to keep guns out of the hands of citizens since 1920.

England

This effort has happened in stages, with each stage being more and more restrictive. But none of them have stopped gun violence or any other type of violence for that matter. The Firearms Act of 1920 or its follow-up, the Firearms Act of 1937, didn’t stop Michael Ryan from killing 16 people in 1987. His rifles were lawfully owned, but he used them for criminal intent.

Leftists in the British Parliament reacted to this by increasing the legal limitations to owning firearms in the Firearms Act of 1988. This one “banned the possession of high-powered self-loading rifles and burst-firing weapons,” as well as increasing the requirements to receive a permit to own a shotgun.

If laws would have solved the problem, that should have done it for England. But in 1996, Thomas Hamilton walked into an elementary school and killed 16 small children and their teacher, before killing himself. He brought two rifles and four handguns with him in that attack, all of which he had obtained legally.

Once again, leftist knee-jerk reactions in Parliament caused a further restriction on gun ownership; this time making it essentially illegal to own a handgun, while turning the process of getting a permit to own a long gun for hunting into a nightmare.

Technically, you can still own a gun in England, much like you can in Mexico. Hunting and sport shooting are still carried out in England, even though that only accounts for a small percentage of the population. But you can’t use a gun for self-defense, without expecting to go to jail for it. Apparently the criminals rights are greater than those of law-abiding citizens.

So, what has been the result of all this? Twelve years after the passing of the latest firearms legislation in England, the Daily Mail Online reported in 2009 that Britain was “the most violent country in Europe.” Yes, gun-related violence had dropped, as the left loves to cite; but overall violence had increased. While their violent crime rate has dropped since then, that’s not a great testimony to the efficacy of firearm restrictions.

But it’s the latest news out of the UK which is the most surprising. For the first time in history, the murder rate in London has managed to overtake that in the city of New York!

This flies in contrast to the claims of leftists who support gun control. For both February and March of 2018, the city of London has been experiencing an increase in homicides. These killings have not been accomplished with guns, but rather with knives. If gun control were the solution to violent crime, then this could not have happened.

London and New York City make a good parallel for a number of reasons. To start with, they are nearly identical sized cities. On top of that, while New York City isn’t a capital, they are both major metropolitan areas which are important business centers, financial centers and ports for their nations. It would be hard to argue any comparison between the two cities as being invalid.

Conclusion

While it might be easier to kill someone with a gun than a knife, it is also easier to defend yourself from an attack with a gun. Using a knife as a defensive weapon is difficult and requires considerable training. While it takes training to use a gun effectively, the skills are easier to learn and don’t require the degree of strength that using a knife as an effective weapon does. That’s why guns are called “the great equalizer.”

The media has been quick to forget, if they ever bothered to learn, that the very same day that Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 students at Sandy Hook, a Chinese man entered a school in China and killed the exact same number of children with a knife. If guns were the problem, that Chinese man couldn’t have committed that crime.

But reality defies the gun-control narrative, over and over again. Guns are not the problem. The problem is in people’s hearts and minds. If we want to get rid of violent crime, that’s where we have to start. As many others have said before, all we will accomplish by taking guns away from law-abiding citizens is to ensure that criminals won’t have any opposition. We will turn the entire country into a gun-free zone.

When that happens, we can expect the same sort of violence that has been happening in Mexico. We won’t see a reduction in violent crime, or even a reduction in gun-related violent crime. Rather, what we’ll see is that honest law-abiding citizens will no longer be able to defend themselves. That seems to be the lesson that England needs to be learning from the killings going on over there right now.