Posted by a Facebook friend:
The Second Amendment protects law-abiding Americans. To undermine the Second Amendment is to allow criminals with guns to terrorize law-abiding citizens without guns. Hillary will appoint judges who will not support the Second Amendment. Donald Trump will appoint judges that will uphold the Second Amendment. The choice is yours.
Yesterday Breitbart.com posted an article about the shooting in the movie theater in Louisiana. Unfortunately, even though it is well-intentioned, declaring a place a gun-free zone does not protect people, it simply means that potential victims of an attack will be unable to defend themselves.
The article states:
One thing we know even now, just hours after the tragic shooting took place, is that the gunman did not adhere to the Conduct Policy. He ignored the gun ban, he ignored the bans on violence, intimidation, and physically threatening behavior, and he ignored the rules against “unlawful conduct.”
Just like so many attacks before–from Nidal Hasan’s 2009 Fort Hood attack to James Holmes’ 2012 Aurora theater to the 2013 attack on the DC Navy Yard–gun free zones put law-abiding citizens at a disadvantage because law-abiding citizens are the only ones who obey them. People with criminal intent are not phased by “No Guns Allowed” signs or a Conduct Policy that says no firearms can be brought into the theater.
Even if you are someone who chooses not to own a gun (which I am), at some point you have to realize that until you can find a way to take guns from criminals and people who do not respect life and leave guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, gun control is a really bad idea. One person who was practicing his right to concealed carry could have ended this tragedy almost as quickly as it began. Gun-free zones are an invitation to violence.
Yesterday’s shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. was a tragedy. It was an incident of a mentally ill person who had anger issues who went berserk. So what happens next? Democrats in Washington start calling for gun control. Somehow they seem to have forgotten that this shooting occurred in Washington, D. C., a gun-free zone, inside the Navy Yard, also a gun-free zone. The problem was not the laws–the problem was that the laws were broken. Based on the background of the killer released by the press, this man should never had been allowed to own a gun. Two stories illustrate the fact that politicians are overlooking the fact that these murders happened in a gun-free zone.
Politico posted an article yesterday quoting Senator Dianne Feinstein:
She (Dianne Feinstein) added: “Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country. We must do more to stop this endless loss of life.”
Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have spoken about trying to revive the background checks measure from Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), but that effort has yet to come to fruition.
Feinstein was the first prominent politician to draw a bright line from the shooting to the congressional gun debate on Monday, though Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) also made a less direct reference to the subject that afternoon.
CBS DC reported:
In the wake of the shooting at the Navy Yard, Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the president is implementing executive actions and reiterated his commitment to strengthening gun laws, including expanding background checks to sales online and at gun shows.
“The president supports, as do an overwhelming majority of Americans, common-sense measures to reduce gun violence,” Carney said.
Even as it was unfolding, the Washington shooting was reigniting talk about guns. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a leading advocate of gun control legislation, mourned “the litany of massacres” the country has suffered in the form of mass shootings.
There is no point in talking about changing the gun laws until we know how this killer obtained his weapons. A background check should have prevented him from obtaining guns, but the fact remains that these killings took place in a gun-free zone. If he ignored the gun-free zone, do we really believe that the killer would have had a problem obtaining the guns illegally?
