It is far past time for many in our country to take a stand on those things that are important, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
There are many, many folks out there who seem to love to exercise their freedom of speech and freedom of religion, even though their religion may be “none”. It is still their belief and they have the right to exercise it just as you and I do–whatever their “religion” may be or not be.
It has long been said that all that is required for evil to happen is for good people to do nothing. Perhaps too many of us have not been doing enough. There is huge pressure by “progressive” politicians in many cities and states for our country to go in a direction where almost all the people I know will not like where we end up .
We dearly value our freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but too many people, even those who are speaking contrary to what I think is right, do not understand that these two rights are hinged upon the presence of the Second Amendment–the right to keep and bear arms.
It is hard for me to understand people who do not seem to have ever heard about what plagued the world throughout most of the 20th century. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others like them, were responsible for slaughtering scores of millions of people. In every situation of which I am aware, disarmament of civilians preceded all such tyrannical governments, making them unable to defend themselves against any aggressor.
It is especially challenging to my mind to try to understand why so many Jewish people are in favor of more restrictive firearm ownership and seem to have amnesia related to their ancestors, who were slaughtered by the millions in Europe less than one hundred years ago.
So now, even though we hear about “sensible laws for firearm safety”, the real goal of people like Bloomberg and the Gifford organizations are to make the entire country’s gun laws as restrictive as are the state of California’s. The majority of current legislators in California would like to make ownership of all firearms and ammunition illegal for essentially all people except those who are identified as “law enforcement”.
It is a fact of life that “Power corrupts. Absolute power absolutely corrupts.” So, when only law enforcement has access to firearms, who is left to prevent those with power and corrupt minds from becoming the “tyrannical government”? The answer is: “No one.”
A significant fact not mentioned by anyone of Leftist ideology and the Left-focused media, is that Mexico has among the highest violent crime, murder, homicide, and firearm death rates compared to any other country in the world. Mexico has gun controls in place that resemble those of California and New York. On the other hand, citizens of Switzerland have one firearm for every two people and they have virtually the lowest rates of violent death, murder, homicide, and deaths by firearms in the world.
Except for one event, all mass shootings since 1992 have occurred in areas, or zones, that were clearly identified as “gun free”. Texas has allowed school teachers to be armed for several years and there has not been one mass shooting in a school in which the school officials and or teachers were armed.
It is also very clear as more and more laws are passed, that the criminals and those who are insane and create mass homicides, do not have any concern about violating any of the massive number of current laws related to firearms purchase, possession or use. There are no mass shootings in which the shooter did not violate one or several of the laws currently in effect where he lived or where he killed people.
A statistic that is never promoted by anyone who leans even a little toward the left is that there are an estimated two million plus defensive gun uses per year in the United States. These events do not make the news, as few would be interested in a report saying “Four people were not injured today when the robber approaching them ran away on seeing that his intended victim was armed.” An event in which an armed citizen thwarts a criminal act is unlikely to make the news when there is generally no reason for a police report to be filed.
It is not rocket science to know this fact: “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
Many of those high positions and in power are protected by armed body guards, but are opposed to you and I being armed. Is this hypocrisy or is this duplicity?
Shouldn’t we prioritize instead reducing the 110+ deaths every day in the United States due to exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke, or the 1,400 deaths every day due to the direct effects of cigarette smoke?
Another great place to focus would be to reduce the 200,000 to 300,000 deaths every year in the United States that occur in hospitals due to accidents, poor judgement, erroneous medical care, or the wrong drugs being given to people.
We physicians do need to heal ourselves, and stay out of the lane of knowledgeable Americans exercising their right to keep and bear arms.
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—Cris McBride, M.D. is retired from a busy practice in rural Arizona. He purchased his first firearm at age 11 from a Sears catalog for $12. Dr. McBride is adamant about shooting for fun and self defense, and to prevent a tyrannical government from taking away our God-given rights.
All DRGO articles by Cris McBride, MD
