Don's Tuesday Column

            THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   7/17/2018

Numbers: gun self-defense, Trump hate

A couple of statistics came out that speak to prominent issues before Americans. The first, which you can find by searching “More People Use a Gun in Self-Defense Each Year Than Die in Car Accidents,” by Mark W. Smith, asks the reader to put into perspective the anathema displayed whenever the “right” people become gun-violence victims. The second, “Rap Sheet: ***305*** Acts of Media-Approved Violence and Harassment Against Trump Supporters,” by John Nolte of Brietbart.com, is a running tally with names, dates and descriptions of despicable acts of violent politically-motivated incivility. It includes the attempted murder of Republican congressmen by a “Bernie Sanders supporter” at a baseball practice.

An aside for consideration: The progressive left uses the term “intersectionality” to try to tie every issue, complaint and cause together into a supposed narrative. Racism (all white people are guilty), sexism (all men likewise), injustice (economic because white men run everything and keep women and minorities “down”; environmental because white men cause harm to “Mother Earth”), and sexual (only heterosexuality and traditional male/female relations—enforced by, again, white men—are condemnable).

Perhaps our side can likewise tie numerous issues together as a means of identifying the single motivating drive separating us, the normal side of America, and them, the seemingly unified progressive left (no longer “liberal” in any traditional sense of respect for personal liberty). For us, freedom (to live our lives and conduct our economic and social affairs while causing no harm to fellow citizens); civil discourse (again, the freedom to express ourselves personally, socially and politically without fear or retribution); and respect (for those freedoms and for our own and America’s traditions and values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution)—are all paramount.

The modern left simply refuses to respect and ultimately allow our freedoms to exist above the requirements by the left for subservience and obeisance to the values and policies flowing from the above-listed progressive agenda. Hence, whenever their preferred victim groups suffer from gun violence, the media and political arms of the leftist movement jump at the chance to force us to focus only on their perspective: The guns are at fault and all who own and use them legally must surrender, and denigrate, our rights to peaceably support our ownership and use of firearms.

We can see, from California to New York, the irrational and hysterical response that manifests in poorly-crafted, ill-informed and absolutely counterproductive laws designed only to infringe on gun owners, gun sellers, ammunition acquisition and firearms manufacturing. They say that they accept our right to own and use guns (only because the Supreme Court so ruled, which can be changed with the addition of leftist justices), but it’s those socially irresponsible sellers and manufacturers that need to be reined in. Even that supposedly-accepted personal right is infringed on by attempts to force us to carry exorbitant liability insurance, impose storage methods that render our self-defense moot, and assess taxes that put the common hand gun, as a means of self-defense for those of modest income, out of reach.

How else but as part of diabolical plot to disarm us should we look at a city like Los Angeles making it illegal to possess a (fill-in-the-name) kind of gun, an overreach so ludicrous as to make vast numbers of citizens into criminals for simply driving through L.A. I reminded myself of that fact when I consulted a once-indispensable street map showing how it is physically impossible to go anywhere, particularly on freeways transiting the many individual incorporated areas not called Los Angeles, without being subject to its laws.

Courts may have put the law on hold but it shows how gun laws are disconnected from reality. I know a court put on hold a silly-but-horrible law requiring a background check for the purchase of ammunition. Just consider the pointlessness of enacting yet another law to ostensibly keep criminals from buying bullets, which will simply force them to use girlfriends, etc. to acquire bullets for their illegally-acquired firearms. Would law-abiding California gun owners have become criminals when buying bullets in other states?

Mr. Smith’s column is an excerpt from “Duped: How the Anti-gun Lobby Exploits the Parkland School Shooting—and How Gun Owners Can fight Back.” He begins, “Millions of people protect themselves and their families with guns every day in the United States.” With over 300 million legally-owned guns, that seems reasonable. On the low end of defensive gun use, just take the Justice Department’s own statistics, which say that almost 70,000 times a year (67,740) someone protects themselves or someone with a gun. A 2013 CDC study put that number between 500,000 and 3 million; a National Crime Victimization Survey cited 108,000. “The most comprehensive study ever conducted was a 1995 survey” by Gary Kleck that “reported between 2.1 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year. Do anti-gunners care?

Lastly, put the number, “305 acts of violence and harassment against Trump supporters,” in context. Have there been hundreds of acts of violence and harassment directed at racial or religious minorities? There probably have been and they would all be condemnable: If some anti-Semite grabbed a yarmulke off the head of an observant Jew, it would be outrageous; if a Jewish man felt personally unsafe to wear a yarmulke due to threats from Muslims, likewise. If a “gay pride” advocate had his or her “rainbow” cap or sign ripped from them by a hateful person, we would all condemn it.

And yet “MAGA (Make America Great Again)” hats, shirts, stickers, and signs have been physically taken from Trump supporters with hardly a peep of protest from the left. The list starts with “Nov. 19, 2015: ‘Black Lives Matter’ Activist Calls for Donald Trump’s Assassination” and “Jan. 5, 2016: Jewish Trump supporter’s Trump sign vandalized with Nazi images.” The list goes on for 8 sickening, single-spaced pages.