Gun rights?
The NRA (National Republican Association?) was organized in the 1870s to improve the marksmanship and gun-handling capabilities of future Army recruits. But today the NRA has become the lackey of the American firearms and ammunition manufacturing industries.
They have convinced the NRA leadership and the gun-owning public that any attempt by the government to register firearms and do background checks on gun buyers will result in the wholesale disarming of America.
That’s preposterous.
The right of individual citizens to possess firearms traces back to the English Common Law on which our legal code is based, not the Second Constitutional Amendment. In fact, some American colonial statutes required that adult males own firearms and carry them on certain occasions. The Second Constitutional Amendment, as stated, authorizes state militias, the primary means of national defense in our nation’s early days, not individual gun ownership. That was unnecessary.
Today America has more guns than people, well over
300 million. And while comprising only 5% of the world’s population Americans own 50% of the world’s civilian firearms. Accordingly, we annually average over 11,000 gun homicides, 20,000 gun suicides and 2,000 accidental shooting deaths. Our murder-by-handgun rate is a shocking 70 times greater than England’s and 300 times more than Japan’s.
The most tragic statistics relate to the wholesale killing of innocent school children by uncontrolled firearms in the hands of people who never should have had them in the first place. Americans today are ten times more likely to be killed by firearms than citizens of any other developed country. Nations with lower homicide rates probably have as many mentally deranged people as we do, they just can’t obtain guns as easily.
Our shocking handgun homicide rate indicates these weapons, supposedly acquired to protect us, are killing us instead. These firearms deaths cannot be explained away by mental health statistics or suicidal tendencies as Trump attempts to do. While some other nations may also have high suicide rates, our suicide-by-gun rate is eight times higher than the world average. Some suicides are planned but others result from sudden urges which, if not acted on immediately,
Today America has more guns than people, well over 300 million. And while comprising only 5% of the world’s population Americans own 50% of the world’s civilian firearms. Accordingly, we annually average over 11,000 gun homicides, 20,000 gun suicides and 2,000 accidental shooting deaths. Our murder-by-handgun rate is a shocking 70 times greater than England’s and 300 times more than Japan’s.
might soon go away. In the real world relatively few guns are actually fired in defense against outside enemies. They are more often fired accidentally, in suicide attempts or in domestic quarrels.
As I’ve said, the firearms and ammunition manufacturers’ lobbies partnered with the NRA have apparently convinced American gun owners that any effort at firearms registration will result in the government entering their homes and confiscating their shotguns, hunting rifles and home protection handguns. Horse feathers! The fact that I must pass a test and obtain a driver’s license in no way threatens my right to own and operate an automobile so long as I obey the laws. This is nothing but irresponsible fearmongering by the gun lobby and the NRA.
Back in pre-gun lobby days the NRA advocated and assisted Congress in writing gun-control legislation. And most rank-andfile NRA members today still favor some type of gun registration. But, as usual, the people with the money dominate the dialog.
How much longer must this insane killing of our school children and other innocents continue before we do what every other civilized developed nation has done long ago — enact reasonable firearms registration and control laws. We could make a start in that direction this November.
George B. Reed Jr., who lives in Rossville, can be reached by email at reed1600@ bellsouth.net.