Brady Bunch Shot Themselves in Foot

[Cal]

Gun Banners Shooting Themselves in the Foot
by Erich Pratt
25 March 2005

Even if the Brady Bunch was successful in disarming the entire nation and turning us into a larger version of Washington, DC, bad guys would continue to get guns.



For the second time in two weeks, a criminal thug steals weapons from a cop and then goes on a shooting rampage.

First there was Brian Nichols, who, after stealing a gun from a deputy in an Atlanta court house, killed four people.

Then, a 16-year-old teenager in Minnesota stole guns from his grandfather -- who was a cop -- and used one of the weapons to kill several students and adults at a Minnesota high school.

Although the guns in question were stolen from the police in both cases, the gun control lobby still insists upon punishing law-abiding Americans -- even though gun control would have done nothing to keep guns out of the bad guys' hands.

The gun control lobby (or the Brady Bunch as they're affectionately referred to) has been blinded by their own dogma and is guilty of "shooting themselves" in the foot.

The simple fact is: even if the Brady Bunch was successful in disarming the entire nation and turning us into a larger version of Washington, DC, bad guys would continue to get guns. They could buy them on the black market or steal them -- amazingly enough -- even from the police!

Nevertheless, the Brady Center's website states that the Minnesota shooting demonstrates the problems with the "ready availability of ever-deadlier weapons" in our society. Does the Brady Center realize that guns will ALWAYS be available as long as police continue to arm themselves? Or are they now advocating that we disarm the police?

The Violence Policy Center also used the Minnesota tragedy to berate the nation for its "love affair with guns." Again, does this "love affair" apply to the police?

The Brady Bunch might want to consider the common denominator in most public slayings -- a common factor which shows that, while thugs like the Minnesota teenager may be criminal, they're not stupid.

After all, they usually seek out disarmed victims to perpetrate their crimes. They don't go shoot up a police station. No, they go to where victims are defenseless -- like to a school, where teachers and principals are disarmed by law.

The majority of the American public has the right solution to this thorny dilemma. In a Research 2000 poll, 85% of Americans indicated that a principal or teacher should be able to use "a gun at school to defend the lives of students" to stop a school massacre.

This is the solution that works in the real world, where at least two massacres have been prevented by law-abiding gun owners. First there was Joel Myrick, an assistant principal, who defied the law and used his own gun to stop Luke Woodham's shooting spree at a Mississippi high school in 1997.

Then there were two law school students at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia, who similarly used their own personal guns to stop Peter Odighizuwa's rampage in 2002.

The Brady Bunch has long been accused of using tragedies and walking over dead bodies to help advance their agenda. Unfortunately for them, it gets embarrassing when they try to make an argument for gun control in a situation where the crook got his guns from the police.

Oops! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Erich Pratt is the Director of Communications for Gun Owners of
America, a national gun lobby with over 300,000 members.

 

[Steve]

The Anti gun fanatics often find countries and states with strict anti gun laws to show low death rates by guns, most are selective and incorrect, and then completly overlook the overall crime and violance that invades such states and countries,

just as the absence of guns allows crime a free rien on sociaty, so does the possibility that a gun is present surpresses that same crime.


"Canada a dramatic increase in the percentage of handguns used in all homicides was reported during a period in which handguns were most strictly regulated"

"From 1978 to 1988, Canada`s burglary rate increased 25%, surpassing the U.S. rate. Half of burglaries in Canada are of occupied homes, compared to only 10% in the U.S."

" Swiss citizens are issued fully-automatic rifles to keep at home for national defense purposes, yet "abuse of military weapons is rare." The Swiss own two million firearms, including handguns and semi-automatic rifles, they shoot about 60 million rounds of ammunition per year, and "the rate of violent gun abuse is low."

"A Gun Lesson From Britain"

All too often, government officials believe the cure for a failing policy is more of the same. That's the case with a near-total ban in firearms in Great Britain. Gun control activists and politicians in the United States often point to Britain and Australia as models of "reasonable" gun control. We'll follow their lead and use England as an example.

Since a ban on all handguns, most rifles and many shotguns went into effect in 1997, violent crime has risen 69 percent, with murders going up 54 percent. That bucks the trend of previous years, when the rate of violent crime was falling, according to economist John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute.

Is it a coincidence that the sudden increase in violent crime followed the ban? Perhaps; there's no hard data yet to be able to make a causal connection. But is it also a coincidence that the same phenomenon has been noticed in Australia and New Zealand after those countries enacted strict gun control laws that left law-abiding citizens unarmed and at the mercy of armed criminals? That's a major drawback to gun-control laws — only law-abiding citizens follow them. Criminals aren't going to turn in their firearms just because the government says to.

And Briton with a near zero tolerance of "lawful gun ownership" has,

"Apart from Australia, [Britons] were also at greater risk of being assaulted, robbed, sexually attacked and having their homes burgled than people in any other major industrialised country."

""Britain-- where good people are disarmed and evil people are armed to the teeth-- is today the most dangerous nation in the developed world, declared so by the United Nations. Britian's permanent, violent criminal underclass has grown into the single most powerful force in British society. According to a UN study reported in the Independent, over half of the citizens in Great Britain have become victims of crime and violence." Wayne LaPierre, American Rifleman, October 2002. Note that the UN, which is strongly for gun control, as opposed to a pro-Second Amendment entity, has provided this information."

"The UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute reveals that people in England and Wales experience more crime per head than people in the 17 other developed countries analysed in the survey.

...And "contact crime", defined as robbery, sexual assault and assault with force, was second highest in England and Wales – 3.6 per cent of those surveyed. This compares with 1.9 per cent in the US."

But handgun crime has not gone down since the ban came into force in 1997. In fact, it has gone up - and very dramatically so. Figures released yesterday, which detail increases in offences ranging from burglary to mugging and sexual attacks, showed that the number of offences in which handguns were used increased by 46 per cent last year alone. Since the ban was introduced, the annual figure has more than doubled, "

"Violent crime has been climbing ever since. London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent."

"Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people."

I could add examples of thier failed GUN control laws for years with out even touching the surface of the misconception that the anti gun idiots have tried to portray,

One fact continues since the first day I was informed of the fight to out law and control gun ownership, if you out law guns only out laws will have guns.

By focusing on the gun and not the criminal the anti gun wackos have failed miserbly, Violant criminals should not be released from prison until they can prove they are not a danger to society.

 

[Steve]

The Anti gun fanatics often find countries and states with strict anti gun laws to show low death rates by guns, most are selective and incorrect, and then completly overlook the overall crime and violance that invades such states and countries,

just as the absence of guns allows crime a free rien on sociaty, so does the possibility that a gun is present surpresses that same crime.


"Canada a dramatic increase in the percentage of handguns used in all homicides was reported during a period in which handguns were most strictly regulated"

"From 1978 to 1988, Canada`s burglary rate increased 25%, surpassing the U.S. rate. Half of burglaries in Canada are of occupied homes, compared to only 10% in the U.S."

" Swiss citizens are issued fully-automatic rifles to keep at home for national defense purposes, yet "abuse of military weapons is rare." The Swiss own two million firearms, including handguns and semi-automatic rifles, they shoot about 60 million rounds of ammunition per year, and "the rate of violent gun abuse is low."

"A Gun Lesson From Britain"

All too often, government officials believe the cure for a failing policy is more of the same. That's the case with a near-total ban in firearms in Great Britain. Gun control activists and politicians in the United States often point to Britain and Australia as models of "reasonable" gun control. We'll follow their lead and use England as an example.

Since a ban on all handguns, most rifles and many shotguns went into effect in 1997, violent crime has risen 69 percent, with murders going up 54 percent. That bucks the trend of previous years, when the rate of violent crime was falling, according to economist John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute.

Is it a coincidence that the sudden increase in violent crime followed the ban? Perhaps; there's no hard data yet to be able to make a causal connection. But is it also a coincidence that the same phenomenon has been noticed in Australia and New Zealand after those countries enacted strict gun control laws that left law-abiding citizens unarmed and at the mercy of armed criminals? That's a major drawback to gun-control laws — only law-abiding citizens follow them. Criminals aren't going to turn in their firearms just because the government says to.

And Briton with a near zero tolerance of "lawful gun ownership" has,

"Apart from Australia, [Britons] were also at greater risk of being assaulted, robbed, sexually attacked and having their homes burgled than people in any other major industrialised country."

""Britain-- where good people are disarmed and evil people are armed to the teeth-- is today the most dangerous nation in the developed world, declared so by the United Nations. Britian's permanent, violent criminal underclass has grown into the single most powerful force in British society. According to a UN study reported in the Independent, over half of the citizens in Great Britain have become victims of crime and violence." Wayne LaPierre, American Rifleman, October 2002. Note that the UN, which is strongly for gun control, as opposed to a pro-Second Amendment entity, has provided this information."

"The UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute reveals that people in England and Wales experience more crime per head than people in the 17 other developed countries analysed in the survey.

...And "contact crime", defined as robbery, sexual assault and assault with force, was second highest in England and Wales – 3.6 per cent of those surveyed. This compares with 1.9 per cent in the US."

But handgun crime has not gone down since the ban came into force in 1997. In fact, it has gone up - and very dramatically so. Figures released yesterday, which detail increases in offences ranging from burglary to mugging and sexual attacks, showed that the number of offences in which handguns were used increased by 46 per cent last year alone. Since the ban was introduced, the annual figure has more than doubled, "

"Violent crime has been climbing ever since. London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent."

"Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people."

I could add examples of thier failed GUN control laws for years with out even touching the surface of the misconception that the anti gun idiots have tried to portray,

One fact continues since the first day I was informed of the fight to out law and control gun ownership, if you out law guns only out laws will have guns.

By focusing on the gun and not the criminal the anti gun wackos have failed miserbly, Violant criminals should not be released from prison until they can prove they are not a danger to society.