This is a short article containing some facts on the issue of gun control that everyone should know!!

REGARDING GUN CONTROL:

We do not need any more gun-control laws! There are currently 20,000 gun-control laws on the books (state & federal). The statistics being used to push for more gun-control laws are being twisted & misrepresented. For example: The statistic that "12 children die a day from guns" when examined closely reveals that most of the "children" in that statistic are 17, 18, and 19-year olds killed in gang or drug wars in high-crime urban areas. It is unrealistic to think that trigger locks or waiting periods would have any effect in stopping those homicides. (This quote taken from the book, More Guns, Less Crime, written by John Lott Jr., senior research scholar at the Yale University Law School.) The Center for Disease Control could identify only 21 children under age 15 dying from accidental handgun deaths in 1996.

Guns are used to save lives almost five times as often as to commit crimes. Guns are used 430,000 times a year to commit crimes, but 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 times a year in self-defense to prevent deaths, rapes, assaults & other serious injuries. Most the time (98%), the victim just brandished a gun, and in only 2% of the cases was the gun actually fired, usually just as a warning. When was the last time you saw a news story about someone successfully using a gun in self-defense?

A closer look at history will prove that gun confiscation leads to a loss of freedom, increased crime, and government moving to the liberal left. This has happened in England and Australia. Great Britain banned most guns in 1997, making armed self-defense punishable as murder. Violence skyrocketed, with the armed crime rate rising by 10% in 1998. In 1996 Australia banned 60% of all firearms and required registration of all guns and the licensing of gun owners. Police confiscated 640,381 firearms, going door to door without search warrants. Two years later, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that all crime had risen and armed robberies were up 44%! Before the Cuban revolution, all citizens were required to register their firearms. After the revolution, Castro had his thugs go door to door, using the registration lists, and confiscate all firearms. As soon as the Cubans were disarmed, that was the end of their freedom. The Nazis conducted a massive search-and-seizure operation in 1933 to disarm their political opponents, then in 1938 to disarm the Jews, and when they occupied Europe in 1939-41, they proclaimed the death penalty for anyone who failed to surrender all guns within 24 hours.

History teaches that registration leads to the confiscation of guns and that is the goal of many gun control advocates. We must stand up for the right to bear arms as provided by the Second Amendment of our Constitution. Our own nation has remained free largely because of the widespread private ownership of firearms. One of the principal purposes of that amendment was to maintain our freedom from government. How else could our nation rise up against the British to fight the American Revolution if the citizens had not owned guns? Individual gun ownership is part of our American heritage. Let's not let it be stolen from us.



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