Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting where 26
innocent people were massacred there has been a lot of emotion and debate about
what steps to take to prevent such a massacre from happening again. As I'm sure
you know: the biggest debate subject has been on regulating firearms sales, as
well as banning firearms with certain characteristics. Before you make your
final decision: know that myself and everyone who has put their name on this
petition will oppose any further regulation or ban on firearms, ammunition, and
all relevant parts to both. There are many sound reasons as to why we will
oppose any new bans or regulations:
You can ban any object, but not evil. No matter how
extensive, or strict, any weapons ban is you cannot ban evil, nor people intent
on committing acts of evil. Connecticut already has among the strictest gun
laws in this nation, but that didn't stop the assailant from doing what he did
at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Another school shooting, at Columbine High
School in 1999, happened five years after a nationwide assault weapons ban was
signed into law. Again you can't ban people who commit evil acts. Now yes, gun
crime itself may go down in wake of a ban, but many other forms of crime will
rise to the point of seeming to skyrocket. Great Britain and Australia both
have very strict regulations on weapons (not just firearms but knives; even
kitchen knives), yet I know I would not step foot in any of their major areas
of populace because of other forms of crime that currently happen there, and
have happened there. As an example much closer to our home: Chicago has been
recently ranked as a city with the most murders and one of the world's most
dangerous cities, yet the entire county in addition to the city has the
strictest gun laws in the nation. Guns clearly aren't the problem when they've
been put out of reach of the very citizens who wouldn't commit crimes with them
in the first place. Remember: millions of Americans own firearms and ammunition
for those firearms, yet they didn't commit any crimes with those guns. If
gun-owning Americans really were as violent as a number of you believe then
they would've killed each other, and the rest of us, to extinction a long time
ago. Areas where firearms aren't regulated or banned are all over the United
States, and in every one of those places the crime rate is low. This also holds
true internationally. Switzerland has the highest ratio of military-issue
firearms to people in the world (yes, not even the USA has as high a ratio) yet
their crime rate nationally is among the world's lowest. I can, and perhaps a
good number of those of us who signed this petition can attest to that fact
personally.
Another reason why we oppose any new bans and/or regulations
is that the number one way to stop acts of violence as seen in Sandy Hook,
Aurora, Columbine, Tucson, and other places where shootings have happened is to
react with immediate and equal force. If this wasn't the true then why is it
many of you politicians are escorted practically anywhere you go with armed
guards (Secret Service personnel, law enforcement personnel, etc.) who are
armed with loaded firearms that have select-fire capability (going from
semi-automatic to fully automatic) in addition to other features that are
over-regulated, as well as high-capacity magazines? Are you here to serve us,
or rule over us? If you are escorted by armed personnel by your own request,
and/or you carry a firearm (yet oppose people like me keeping and bearing
firearms) then I can guarantee you that myself and everyone else who has put
their name on this petition will see you as trying to rule over us, rather than
serving us. As I'm sure you know that concept is anything but constitutional.
We elect all of you to serve us, the people of the United States of America.
We oppose any further weapons bans and/or regulations
also because we are well-versed in history. Every single instance where and
when weapons have been banned from a nation's populace has led to genocide. In
the last century alone about 170 million innocent people were killed at the
hands of government workers. Such government workers did their dirty work in
Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, various countries in Africa,
and countless others around the world; all in one century. The government for
every one of those countries passed and enforced heavy regulations or outright
weapons bans on the people they targeted. Yet, their reasoning was the same as
everyone here calling for more firearms regulations and/or bans. With so many
examples of evil being committed due to firearms being banned from the general
populace we have every reason to believe a similar outcome will happen here.
Our 2nd Amendment in the US Constitution isn't about only
hunting, shooting competitively, protecting our freedoms from tyrannical
government officials/workers, or protecting ourselves from criminals who would
otherwise have done harm to us; our 2nd Amendment applies to all of the above, and
then some. James Madison and other Founding Fathers worded our Constitution and
Bill of Rights the way they did on purpose.
Some of you may argue that the 2nd Amendment only applies to
militia personnel. Our nation has many classes of militia, and all of those
classes, as George Washington has stated, "ought to be armed." There
is the National Guard; there is the Naval Militia. There is also the
unorganized militia, which applies to most gun owners as well as military
veterans and former law enforcement who currently keep and bear arms. Anyone
who owns a firearm or multiple firearms is part of the militia somehow and some
way. There are many forms of legislation that prove this.
I plead with you: any
more bans/regulations will be only more trouble than they're worth!