Gun control fallacies

Syndicated columnist Blair Bess believes “Now is the time to politicize gun violence.” By all accounts, he’s quite late to the game.

In the many years past, when have guns and gun control not been political? The exception would be the gun violence in inner cities like Baltimore, Detroit and Chicago’s yearly shootings of about 7,850 with 1,430 deaths for 2016 and 2017. Those topics are selectively not for public forum discussions.

Mr. Bess’s article has a number of fallacies. Clearly it was authored before we knew of the school’s armed sheriff deputy remaining outside four of the six minutes during the murders, only to be joined by at least three more county sheriff deputies who joined the stand down as well.

Bess mentions the ease of access to guns by the psycho murderer but intentionally omits the lack of action in spite of the numerous and direct warnings to the Sheriff’s office over many years. Ditto for the FBI, which was also not mentioned in the commentary.

Bess does however take the default position of fully blaming the NRA and “Republican leaders.”

That’s merely jumping on the popular band wagon.

Most erroneous was Bess’ mention of the (radicalized terrorists) San Bernardino shooters. He only mentions them in the bubble of “easy access to assault weapons.” That is false. That husband-wife calculatedly stayed off of the radar and enlisted a brother-in-law to acquire weapons for them. That guy is a U.S. citizen with no prior criminal history to flag not selling him guns. Short of abolishing the Second Amendment, one would be hard-pressed to answer how that scenario could have been avoided.

There is no question on the application that asks if you have radical Islam terrorists in your family that have asked you to buy them guns; nor are there any questions or testing about having common sense.

Mr. Bess stated “It’s not about the Second Amendment. It’s about common sense”. The division comes when one group’s common sense is perceived as stepping on another group’s Second Amendment rights. Betty Arenson

Valencia