http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/gerald_warner/blog/2009/03/11/barack_obama_will_face_huge_opposition_if_he_yields_to_gun_control_lobby

 

Barack Obama will face huge opposition if he yields to gun control lobby

Posted By: Gerald Warner at Mar 11, 2009 at 20:38:05 [General]

Posted in: Politics , Eagle Eye

Tags:

Barack Obama, firearms crime, gun control

 

The deranged shooting dead of 10 people in Alabama, followed closely by a further 16 murders in Germany, will almost certainly be seized upon by gun control campaigners in the United States to further their agenda. In this they will find a willing ally in Barack Obama who, despite his weasel words after the Supreme Court outlawed the handgun ban in Washington DC (which he previously supported), has a record as a board member, for eight years, of the Joyce Foundation, which funds gun control groups, and as a long-time supporter of anti-firearms legislation.

 

While cool logic suggests that a gun is only as good or bad as the character and purpose of its owner, the anti-firearms fanatics opportunistically seize upon public revulsion after serious gun crimes to press for blanket bans, without pausing to consider that, if a victim has his skull crushed with a golf club, we do not call for the outlawing of golf.

 

Any American citizens who are tempted to go down the road of prohibition might be advised to consider the experience of Britain. Our handgun ban in 1997 was enacted with a fervency that went beyond rationality: not only were our Olympic competitors in pistol shooting hopelessly disadvantaged, but the sport was banned even for paraplegics, depriving some of them of their sole recreational interest. Presumably the calculation was that the next likely massacre would be perpetrated by someone in a wheelchair armed with a weak calibre pistol the ammunition for which was stored under lock and key five miles away.

 

The success of this politically correct initiative can easily be measured. In 1997, the year of the ban, there were 2,636 handgun offences; in 2007 there were 4,175. In England and Wales there are now 28 firearms offences committed every day. Gun crime is now one of the most formidable challenges to law and order.

 

Or Americans might look at Australia where, a year ago, a Draconian ban enforced the destruction of 640,381 personal firearms, at a cost of more than $500 million. The results? After 25 years of steady decrease in robberies with firearms, this offence increased by 44 per cent in one year. Homicides with guns increased by 3.2 per cent, assaults by 8.6 per cent. In the state of Victoria homicides with firearms rose 300 per cent. Break-ins and assaults on the elderly hugely increased.

 

Criminals and lunatics will always find access to guns; but they will be less willing to use them if their victims are armed too. What doctrinaire liberal governments have done is make a Western movie in which the guys in the black hats all have guns, the guys in white hats do not. The Second Amendment to the American constitution and public opinion recognise that only a totalitarian government disarms its citizens. If Barack Obama tries to legislate on behalf of his supporters in the gun control lobby, he will have the mother of all fights on his hands.

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