This week, local affiliates of the national gun-control group Moms Demand Action successfully lobbied to pass proclamations in at least two Kansas cities recognizing National Gun Violence Awareness Day as part of their work to limit the rights of Kansans while doing nothing effective to reduce violence or even teach firearm safety to a single Kansan.
It’s infuriating that Roeland Park (Facebook Page) and Parsons (Facebook Page) both chose to give more momentum to the extreme gun-control lobby this week in its fight to restrict the Second Amendment, with Roeland Park passing two proclamations and Parsons passing one. The Parsons Police Department additionally put out a press release last month with Police Chief Robert Spinks thanking local gun control activists for seeking a meeting and announcing his desire to partner with the organization on future campaigns.
No Kansan should be comfortable with the fact that these local governments are going out of their way to place the blame for violence on inanimate objects, responsible firearm owners, and other law-abiding Kansans rather than putting all their time and resources behind actually fighting crime and stopping the violent criminals that are the real problem.
Gun-confiscation activists have been hard at work trumpeting these successes on social media while simultaneously congratulating their gun-confiscation allies in other states for passing unconstitutional red flag gun confiscation orders and other outrageous limits on the Second Amendment.
This move to pass local proclamations is simply part of a nationwide public relations strategy of setting up a straw man while Moms Demand Action and other members of their coalition work to pass unconstitutional gun-confiscation laws, ban common firearms owned by millions of Americans, kick school resources officers out of schools leaving our kids without protection, and mandate restrictions on the ability of other potential victims to have access to a firearm when they are attacked. None of these efforts will prevent deranged, violent aggressors from breaking the law – they only limit the ability of reasonable people to react.
Over 24 million semiautomatic rifles based on the AR-15 and similar platforms are owned by Americans today. They remain the most-popular selling centerfire semiautomatic rifles in the United States today and there are more in circulation today than there are Ford F-Series trucks on the road. Despite these facts, under the pretense of ‘safety’ Moms Demand Action has actively promoted banning these and many other common firearms used lawfully hundreds of millions of times a year for competition, hunting, and self-defense.
While the gun-control lobby frequently uses questionable data and statistics that lump criminal activity against innocent people, gang violence between rival gangs, shootings that are justified as defensive, and sometimes even justified shootings by law enforcement in bigger totals to prove their point in an emotional way, their numbers do not tell the whole story.
In 2013, there were nineteen surveys on the frequency of defensive gun uses. The vast majority of these surveys indicated that there are at least a million annual defensive gun uses. According to a piece appearing The Washington Times, the most reliable of these surveys found at least 2.1 million defensive uses of guns each year. One study of CDC data collected through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System concluded that CDC-based estimates averaged 1.1 million defensive firearm uses for the years surveyed. More recent academic studies confirm these results and estimate that the current number is around 1.67 million defensive uses a year. Additionally, researchers have found that no shots are even fired in more than 80% of defensive firearm uses.
It’s very easy to get swept up in the emotional appeals made by advocates in support of the gun-control agenda, but the fact remains that literally millions of Americans have personal stories they can tell of using a firearm to defend themselves or another innocent person.
Violence of any kind against the innocent should never be tolerated. No parent should have to get the news that their child has been hurt or killed. It’s an unfortunate truth that we live in a world where violence will always exist. We must be ready for it when it happens.
Rather than seeking to protect the vulnerable by hardening our schools through the use of widely accepted security tools and protocols, Moms Demand Action celebrates each time a school district eliminates their school resources officers. This kind of extreme agenda of leaving our children defenseless in the face of attacks is not something most Kansans support.
As a society, we must hold violent criminals accountable for their actions, discourage the commission of crimes, and empower law enforcement. But making it more difficult for the innocent to protect themselves is legally and ethically wrong and we will not stand by silently while local governments choose to side with those advocating for preventing parents, teachers, and other responsible adults from protecting innocent kids in our communities.
Make no mistake, local activists may claim that proclamations like the ones passed in Roeland Park and Parsons are simply about ending gun violence, but the radical gun-control lobby is making a concerted effort to use local units of government in Kansas and across the country as pawns in their effort to restrict the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.
The Kansas State Rifle Association urges Roeland Park, Parsons, and any other cities, counties, and law enforcement agencies to immediately disassociate with Moms Demand Action and any other organization with a stated purpose of restricting the civil rights of law-abiding American citizens.
Should any local unit of government choose to go beyond allowing national gun-control groups to use government resources to promote their extreme agenda and additionally take action to limit the rights of law-abiding firearm owners to defend themselves from violent crime, you can rest assured that the Kansas State Rifle Association will not stand idly by. Rest assured; we will defend the rights of potential victims to defend themselves with every fiber of our being.
Contact information for the Roeland Park City Commission is available here.
Contact information for the Parsons City Commission is available here.
1 Comment