SurvivalBlog.com

“No amount of statistics or facts will sway either side in the gun control debate, because they are all looking for simple solutions to complex problems. The facts of those complex problems are uncomfortable and nobody really wants to come to grips with them.

For example, we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths. Instead, we have two Americas, one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western and northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries.

The tough questions are those like, why do we have these two Americas? But that’s an uncomfortable discussion to have. So instead those on the left favor simple minded restrictions that target first world America, with its high gun ownership but very low murder rate, but don’t address the root causes of third world America’s violence at all. Meanwhile those on the right correctly feel their civil rights are constantly threatened, so they are constantly in a state of ‘better stock up before they finally ban it’ and the guns and ammo fly off the shelves. The left’s constant gun control rhetoric is the greatest thing ever for arms manufacturers.

Meanwhile, over the past 40 years, while the number of guns in private hands has doubled, the murder rate has dropped by half. The left are constantly prattling about ‘assault weapons’ which are almost never used to commit murders (about 1% of gun murders; all rifles combined are around 3%). More murders are committed with baseball bats than ‘assault rifles’; the vast majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns, but it’s easier to sell restrictions that target ‘assault weapons’, even though such restrictions, even if 100% effective, would make no detectable change in the murder rate (especially because of substitution effects). They favor ridiculous measures such as bans on “high capacity magazines”, as if magazines weren’t cheap and easily swapped out in a fraction of a second.”  – Michael Owen

“When I was a lad it was required of all able bodied men to go kill Jerrys and Japs, at government expense, one at a time for the common folk, in batches if you showed an aptitude for heavy machinery. We stood shoulder to shoulder with the USSR fighting to free the world of tyranny. It was simple and majestically pure, like life itself at that age.

Then, in my first years at school there were air raid drills with Silent Hill-style sirens wailing because the Reds were going to attack us, and our brave allies too—Germany and Japan. We didn’t know what “world domination” might be, exactly, but the USSR was guilty and it was badder than bad.

Were these the same Russians as our former allies, those brave folks who fought the forces of evil to a standstill and harvested fields of grain in their off hours? What happened? They seemed so nice.

Meanwhile, Germany and Japan, having lost the war, had achieved victimhood, which meant … but no, that was unthinkable.

The unintended lesson was: Things change. A lot. And fast. How today, for instance, do you fully endorse Equal Opportunity, once a non-negotiable principle of racial justice, now outright hate speech. So here’s a thought: don’t get too attached to the normalcy of the day, in not much time you’ll be holding it by the stinky end.” – Ol’ Remus, in his Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report blog

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution.” – Barry Goldwater