Why Gun Rights Supporters Don't Trust Gun Control Advocates :: 11/20/2019

We in the gun rights crowd often decry gun control advocates as “gun grabbers.” We routinely argue that their purpose is to take away our firearms, to disarm us and make us unable to protect ourselves and our families from criminal hostilities.

They, of course, claim they want to do nothing of the kind. They’ll even claim they’re supporters of the Second Amendment, just following that up with a “but…” that goes on to prove they’re nothing of the sort.

Earlier today, though, I came across an op-ed writing by a freshman at Ohio University where she shows us exactly why we are right to distrust anti-gun activists.

The government enacting stronger gun control laws is an issue that divides the nation. Gun ownership is rooted in the Second Amendment, declaring the right to bear arms. There is a national understanding that it is unconstitutional to strip that right. With that understanding, gun control organizations are not asking to take away the right to bear arms but to make guns less accessible.

So far, it looks like the kind of thing that’s non-controversial. The right to keep and bear arms can’t be stripped by mere legislation, it would require a constitutional amendment to repeal the Second Amendment, something that simply is not going to happen in our lifetimes. (I’ll address that last sentence in more detail later in this post.)

However, she then follows up with this paragraph immediately after it.

Since the tragic mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, there have been over 230 school shootings. With that statistic in mind, it makes no sense that there are no federal laws banning semi-automatic assault weapons, military-style rifles or large-capacity magazines.

Of course, semi-automatic weapons include pretty much every model of handgun currently popular for self-defense, calling them “assault weapons” doesn’t change that since that’s a nebulous term that varies from one person to the next. “Military-style rifles” is a meaningless term that could be applied to bolt-action hunting weapons just as easily as the AR-15. My Mosin Nagant isn’t a military-style rifle but an actual military rifle. Would that make it forbidden? “Large-capacity magazines” is another nebulous term that that can mean anything. After all, what’s the limit? 10 rounds? 100 rounds? What’s “large-capacity?”

In one fell swoop, the author jumps on and begins to want to ban the majority of firearms being sold.

Yet this is the same woman who claimed she didn’t want to ban guns? Yet that’s precisely what she’s talking about.

In the mind of the gun control advocate, these two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. They think you can respect the right to keep and bear arms while still trying to ban the most popular means of exercising that right. It’s also possible she doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about when she mentions “semi-automatic” firearms or much of anything else.

Frankly, I don’t care.

I don’t trust anti-gun rhetoric because while claiming they respect the Second Amendment, they turn around and immediately try to take away the tools many rely on to defend their homes. What’s next? After all, there will be a next. I have yet to find a gun control fan who stopped after something passed, perfectly satisfied with what they’ve achieved.

They’ll eventually want them all.

Well, they can’t have them.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/11/19/gun-rights-supporters-dont-trust-gun-control-advocates/