AN EVIL PIECE OF STEEL

Robert Smith Jr. writes a regular column for the Detroit News Politics Blog. On December 30, he posted a commentary titled BAN ALL GUNS in which he shows a refreshing level of honesty for a liberal. Unfortunately, his honesty is accompanied by a boatload of ignorance.

Mr. Smith states: “The Founding Fathers made a mistake when they said we had a right to bear arms.” Unlike so many liberals, he is not trying to convince us that the 2nd Amendment says something it does not. In fact, his statement is a tacit acknowledgement that the 2nd Amendment does indeed secure our individual right to own guns. He just thinks that the Founders were wrong. I can appreciate that many liberals agree with him but his explanation as to why he feels this way is absurd. He is either grossly ignorant of American history or he is willfully exploiting the ignorance of his fellow liberals. Smith claims that “[The Founders] did not know we would be allies with the British and no longer have to worry about them coming over to oppress and colonize us. The British found greater spoils in Africa and India and never looked back on the United States after the Revolutionary War.” A couple of points; The Founders did not write the 2nd Amendment because they were worried about the British or any other foreign invaders. Thomas Jefferson explained the reasoning for the Amendment this way: “And what country can preserve it’s liberties, if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” It is clear these men were concerned about oppression by the very government they were establishing. They understood that all governments inherently drift towards tyranny. It is only the people that can keep them in check. Secondly, the British actually did look back on the United States after the Revolutionary War. Those hostilities are commonly referred to as the War of 1812. That would be the one where the British burned Washington, D.C. and the White House.

Smith goes on to site a 2005 study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention
that reported over 3000 children and teens were killed by gunfire, most of them black males in inner-city neighborhoods. (Shouldn’t the CDC be doing studies on AIDS or something?) So Mr. Smith wants to ban all guns to solve this problem. What’s next? Do we ban spoons and forks to solve the ongoing obesity crisis? This is how the liberal mind works – Poor black men are shooting each other in inner-city neighborhoods and their solution is to take the guns away from middle class, rural, white people. The plethora of gun restrictions already in place did nothing to prevent these murders. Does Mr. Smith really believe these crimes were committed by people who own guns legally?

Liberals don’t offer viable solutions because they either can’t or won’t recognize the actual problems. Black on black murder rates are rising and instead of advocating responsible behavior with societal consequences, Mr. Smith wants to ban a piece of steel.
Smith says that the person he most admires is Mahatma Gandhi. Perhaps he should consider what Gandhi said about gun control: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”