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When I talk with my liberal friends about gun control, they often tell me I’m overreacting, comparing me to Chicken Little in the old children’s story — accusing me of believing the sky is falling. They insist that no one is coming for my guns and that I’m imagining a threat that doesn’t exist.
But here’s the reality: I shoot in a weekly pistol league, I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and I own an AR-15. My friends are correct; no one is coming for my guns now, but if Democrats gain control of the White House and Congress, they will! I am not making this up; I am listening to what they say!
Let’s take a look back. Dec. 14, 2012, was a terrible day in Newtown, Connecticut, and the entire nation. On that day, a young man who lived with his mother and shall be, to quote Edgar Allan Poe, ‘nameless here for evermore,’ took some of her firearms and killed her. Next, he went to Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot and killed twenty students and six school staff.
The report from the State of Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate on the shooting listed developmental and psychological issues that the shooter had faced as early as three years old. The report called out a preoccupation with violence, anxiety, Autism, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The report also points out that he, “became increasingly preoccupied with mass murder, encouraged by a cyber-community — a micro society of mass murder enthusiasts with whom he was in email communication.”
So, the response to this horrific crime, committed by a troubled young man and abetted by a mother who did not take precautions to secure her firearms, was to attempt to restrict the Second Amendment rights of responsible, law-abiding gun owners. At the time, Barack Obama was president and Joe Biden was vice president. President Barack Obama said Vice President Biden had come up with some legislative priorities on gun control. Key among them was a call for a ban on so-called assault rifles and a 10-round magazine limit.
I understand why, in the wake of horrific tragedies like Sandy Hook, people want to find solutions. But restricting the rights of millions of responsible, law-abiding gun owners is not the solution.
I am not going to delve into the pedantic debate about what does or does not constitute an assault rifle. They were talking about the AR-15, the most popular rifle in America. Current estimates put the number of privately-owned AR-15s in America at about 24 million. The standard magazine for an AR-15 holds 30 rounds. The Sig Sauer P320 is the bestselling full-size pistol in the United States, and its standard magazine capacity is 17 rounds. These firearms, often targeted by proposed gun control measures, are not rare or exclusively owned by criminals. It’s likely that your neighbor or someone you know owns one for self-defense, sport shooting, or hunting.
Even when presented with these facts, my liberal friends will say, “They are not coming for your guns!” They tell me that these measures would only affect new gun sales.
Again, listen to what they say. In 2019, on Halloween, then-Sen. Kamala Harris was at PBS candidate forum in Ankeny. At the time, she failed to generate enough enthusiasm among Iowa Democrats to even survive until the Iowa caucuses! Speaking of a hypothetical assault weapons ban, she said that buybacks would be mandatory!
In 2007, then-San Francisco District Attorney Harris said, “We’re going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs,”
Apparently, it isn’t enough to just trample on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. Harris’s chilling declaration about the government violating the sanctity of our ‘locked homes’ reveals a terrifying willingness to violate our Fourth Amendment rights, protecting us from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
I wasn’t planning on writing about guns this week. But I changed my mind after last night’s debate. Norah O’Donnell asked Democrat VP candidate Tim Walz why he changed his position and now supports an assault weapons ban. Walz talked about Sandy Hook and in his response said:
“. we have an epidemic of children getting guns and shooting themselves. And so we have, and we should look at all of the issues, making sure folks have health care and all that. But I want to be very careful. This idea of stigmatizing mental health, just because you have a mental health issue doesn’t mean you’re violent. And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it just is the guns. It’s just the guns.”
Walz admitted that there were multiple issues, including mental health but he summed it up by saying:,
“Sometimes it just is the guns. It’s just the guns.”
I indicated in a previous column that even though I am a Republican, I am not on the “Trump Train!” I don’t even own a MAGA hat but I am voting for Trump-Vance next month. Because if Harris-Walz wins, they are coming for our guns and apparently they are willing to violate the Fourth Amendment to do it.
David Chung is a Gazette editorial fellow. [email protected]
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