1. "Martinez is not anti-gun -- “I have friends in the NRA to this day,” he said -- but he said he is disturbed by the failure of the U.S. to pass what he calls “common sense” gun safety legislation."
What common sense regulation would have prevented the tragedies that are covered? What common sense remedies are being proposed? Don't know - they don't say.
2. "Everytown's calculation is this: More than statistics, more than glossy reports, its power comes from the heartbreaking, personal stories of gun violence, told by the people who are living it."
Why is it that the left only wants to hear emotional appeals when they fit their agenda? How many tragic tales of the abortion of fetuses can one hear if they look, yet in that regard, rights trump tragedy.
3. "“It can be very isolating, to be a gun violence survivor,” said Kate Ranta, an Everytown fellow who was shot twice by her ex-husband in 2012 and is now an advocate for stronger gun laws for domestic abusers. “Having each other and not feeling alone is amazing.”
Did he have the gun legally? The story does not say, but it is clear she had had restraining orders against him - which he ignored. How would any "common sense" restrictions have made a difference in this event?
4. "Survivors put a face on this violence epidemic.”
There is no epidemic. Data (I know - as noted in #2 above, data and facts are meaningless in the face of emotion) from the FBI and DOJ show that violent crime is down. No epidemic.
5. "The gun lobby solution to the gun violence problem is more guns -- how can that make sense?" said Martinez, who testified against the Texas campus carry bill last month. "I heard arguments about how it will help women defend themselves against sexual assaults. Isn’t it more likely there will be more sexual assaults at gunpoint?"
Once more conscious conflation: Anyone who is intent on committing a rape on campus will not be deterred by campus regulations or even laws that prohibit concealed firearms on campus. Look - rape is illegal, murder is illegal and if all we needed were laws to prevent them, they would not exist. Data (I know - data) from states where campus carry is already authorized ably answer this notion - no - it is not more likely. We are talking about law-abiding citizens, 21 or over, who carry off-campus. Do these law-abiding citizens commit rapes off campus? Data show that concealed carriers are more law-abiding than the general public.
It can make sense fairly simply to a rational person: firearms are part of society. They are not going away and if you think you can create blanket prohibitions on them, then you can tell me how that drug war has gone for you. We are not an island nation, we share massive land borders with two other nations, one of which is a primary supplier of illegal drugs. If you outlaw firearms, do you think you will be able to secure that porous border to prevent a burgeoning black market. Do you really think you will not be handing over control of the streets of this nations, at least the southern half of it, to violent criminals who are willing to deal with and in such a black market?
Quite frankly, this illustrates the problem with having gun violence survivors tell the nation what to do about firearms. Their experience with firearms has been in the context of crime. Hence, they see all firearms as tools of crime, as embodying their own malevolent will. The many millions of us who own and carry firearms know that we are not criminals, not rapists, not domestic abusers. We are law-abiding citizens who want to be able to defend ourselves from those violent criminals should the need arise. It is our right.
