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While all agree AR-15s should be kept out of the hands of crazies like Cruz, the establishment insists that it is the gun that is the problem.
We hear demands that AR-15s be banned and confiscated.
Proponents should put that proposition to a vote. But a prediction: The moment it is brought up for a vote, sales of AR-15s will explode, as they have before. If the weapon is banned, as alcohol was banned in Prohibition, millions of law-abiding Americans will become law-breakers.
And who will barge into America’s homes to seize and collect the rifles?
Moreover, if people have decided to mass murder classmates or co-workers, inviting “suicide by cop,†are they going to be stopped from acquiring a semiautomatic by a congressional law?
Have our drug laws halted drug use?
Many of the guns confiscated by police are in the possession of thugs, criminals and ex-cons who have no legal right to own them. Yet, if we are going to prosecute the illegal sale or transfer of weapons severely, we will have hundreds of thousands more in prisons, at a time when we are instructed to empty them of nonviolent offenders.
As for mental illness, it seems more prevalent than it used to be, and the numbers of those on medication seems a greater share of the population.
Do doctors decide which of their patients are fit to own a gun, and which are not? Should doctors be held criminally liable if they fail to alert police and one of their patients uses a gun in a violent crime?
Who will maintain the federal registry of the mentally sick unfit to own a firearm?
The anger and anguish of those who lost family or friends in this atrocity is understandable. But passion is not a substitute for thought.
There are twice as many guns in America as there were just decades ago. And a primary reason people acquire them is because they believe they need them to protect themselves and their families, and they no longer trust the government to protect them.
They view the demand for banning and confiscating specific weapons as a first step down the inexorable road that ends in the disarmament of the people.
Most mass shootings take place in gun-free zones, where crazed men of murderous intent know their chances of maximizing the dead and wounded are far better than in attacking a police station.
Our embassies are defended by Marines with M16s. Security guards with guns defend banks and military bases, presidents and politicians.
The best way to protect kids in schools may be to protect schools, and run down and incarcerate the known criminals and crazies who are the primary threats.
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