Year after year, America’s most prominent gun control lobbying group, the Brady Campaign, tells Americans that as more guns are purchased, made, used, or even imitated (i.e., by toy guns), America will experience higher crime rates. And year after year, the statistics prove the Brady Campaign wrong. (Ironically these statistics are only collected because of Brady Campaign supported legislation).
Here’s a chart I made using FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) statistics and FBI violent crime statistics. The blue bars represent the growth in background checks for gun sales, and the red bars are the change in the violent crime rate. As you can see, gun sales are soaring, and crime is down.
Click to Enlarge Image
The traditional logic says that during times of economic downturn like today, crime goes up. Add to that the Brady Campaign’s false logic that “guns = crime,” and the U.S. ought to look like a Mexican border town filled with al Qaeda on one side and the Israeli Defense Forces on the other.
But that simply hasn’t happened. On Monday (December 20, 2010) the FBI announced that violent crime rates are still declining. As more Americans exercise their Second Amendment rights, criminals must think twice about pursuing their trade.
Two initiatives that need conservative support are the extension of Castle Doctrine law to Wisconsin and Iowa. The NRA has announced its plans to use new conservative majorities in the states to lobby for recognition by states of citizens’ rights to defend themselves. I say “recognition” because citizens already have those rights; it’s just that states don’t recognize them, making self-defense a crime. (For a full acounting of states’ Castle Doctrine laws see Dick Young’s Liberty & Freedom Map)
The FBI has announced that crime is down again in 2010. For its part, the Brady Campaign has announced its call to disarm Americans during times of emergency or national crisis. What are these people thinking? On top of that, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) has come out with a call to start tracking sales of firearms.
Buried in the Federal Register on Friday (December 17, 2010), the BATFE asked the Office of Management and Budget, “to require Federal Firearms Licensees to report multiple sales or other dispositions whenever the licensee sells or otherwise disposes of two or more rifles within any five consecutive business days with the following characteristics: (a) Semi automatic; (b) a caliber greater than .22; and (c) the ability to accept a detachable magazine.” If granted, the request will give BATFE the right to infringe upon Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights for 180 days, without congressional approval. That’s something you don’t see often—the government using one abridgment of your constitutional rights to perpetrate another (using a perversion of the Fourth Amendment to infringe on your Second Amendment rights).
If you’d like to register your outrage, please contact the Office of Information and Regulation Affairs, Attention: Department of Justice Desk Officer, (202) 395-6466. Alternatively, during the first 60 days of this same review period, e-mail Barbara A. Terrell, Barbara.Terrell@atf.gov, at the Firearms Industry Programs Branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or fax Barbara at (202) 648-9640, or send her a letter at 99 New York Avenue, NE, Washington DC 20226. (Be nice. There is nothing worse for Second Amendment rights than angry, frothing activists with no manners, and Barbara is just a contact person, not the stooge who runs the show; if you want to call him, dial (202) 456-1111.)
Americans’ Second Amendment rights are under assault. It is obvious that liberals in the country feel you shouldn’t have the right to own a firearm; for instance, watch Justice Stephen Breyer explain that the Second Amendment doesn’t mean what it says:
The Supreme Court is one liberal vote away from having a majority that thinks as Justice Breyer does. Every conservative American must work to remove that threat at the ballot box in 2012.
