Online Comments
In response to “UA student starts Second Amendment club to educate about firearm safety” (by Stephanie Casanova, Sept. 30):

The reason why gun control advocates are all over the place is because of fear. Fear is the government’s dance card. A little bit of fear, and the public will be for laws that don’t actually address the problem but only create superficial pleasures to the legislative bodies.

Law-abiding citizens look [at] guns from a practical perspective. They know they don’t want to use it on another person, but if that person is a threat, too bad for that person.

Guns are dangerous, and they’re not toys. But it’s not a question of the gun, but who has the gun. Criminals don’t care if they wave around guns and fire off a few rounds on people. Why? Because if his gun gets taken away from the police, he’ll get two if he wants to. Criminals know where they can get a gun and will get it if they want to.

People use either background checks or mental health checks to try to impose gun control. However, such measures alienate the mentally ill and law-abiding gun owners. How about we enforce the more than 2,000 gun laws that are already on the books and not waste our time making another stupid law to make us feel better? And you can’t stop insane people from stopping insane things with insane laws.

And what do the gun control advocates have to support their logic? Tragedies? Newtown? Columbine? That’s it? Though they’re sad, and we’re sympathetic, but in the issue itself, it isn’t exactly addressing gun violence. For one, assault weapons were used in [the] minority of gun crimes. So why should public policy itself waste its time to actually address the minority of gun crimes? In the grand scale of gun violence, it isn’t the biggest thing on their plate.

And don’t get me started on “assault weapons.” Assault weapons are actually a manipulation of the English language. It was a term created by John Sugarmann in the 1980s to create a phrase that people will conflate with “assault rifles” to promote more gun control measures. This ultimately led to Dianne Feinstein’s “assault weapons ban” that was highly ineffective the first time around and failed to be legislated. Why did it fail? Because it didn’t actually address the gun or the function of the gun, but just banned fixtures and semi-automatic weapons that “are scary.” They say it’s “military-grade,” but the military doesn’t utilize those weapons, and wouldn’t utilize their weapons.
Police [don’t] protect us, and laws don’t protect us. Protection is left to the individual and the American people, who should have the right to own a firearm, even if they don’t like the idea of owning a firearm.

— GoodGuyGreg

Need to start such a club for education about automobiles, which kill far more people per year than firearms. Oh wait — nobody’s trying to outlaw ownership of automobiles. How strange! How about a secks club? Millions of babies die each year due to irresponsible secks (abortion). Oh wait — progressive Democrats LOVE secks and are probably not going to outlaw it. Guns should not be in some sort of “special, really, really dangerous and deadly” class of their own. Alcohol and automobiles are FAR, FAR more deadly than guns, yet we treat handling firearms like defusing bombs for fun & recreation.

— ManOfTheLog