PrintGuns Don't Kill People, Liberalism Does
President Obama wants us to politicize gun deaths in America. I decided to take him up on his invitation.
I hope that no one is surprised that Obama took this opportunity again to attack guns, the gun industry, and those of us who are fans of the Second Amendment. This is what a community organizing career politician does. For liberals like Obama, virtually everything is political, or must be made so. Because political problems require political solutions, and thus, when something is politicized, those in favor of empowering and growing government get to do what they do best: give speeches, call for legislation, and attempt to stir up the electorate in their favor.
Prior to the murderous rampage by Chris Harper Mercer at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, liberals across America must have decided that after the next mass shooting in the U.S., “time to politicize” was going to be one of the themes of their talking points. Prior to Obama’s speech on the Umpqua massacre, where he declared “this is something we should politicize,” in the largest newspaper in my home state of Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, liberal columnist Jay Bookman (at about 3:30 in the afternoon on the day of the shooting) posted an online piece titled, Another mass shooting at college? Hell yes we should ‘politicize it.’
Liberals wouldn’t do this if it hadn’t worked for them in the past. In spite of being on the wrong side of virtually every moral issue of our time, Democrats have won many elections with their shrewd political skill. However, it’s not that liberals are that much better at politics than conservatives. It’s that the deck is stacked in their favor. As I’ve pointed out before, because under liberalism the moral demands are few, politics is much easier for liberals.
Again, when you operate in the realm of fantasy, it is much easier not only to ignore the truth, but also to manufacture crises and perpetuate false injustices so as to paint oneself as the savior for what needs (or will need) fixing. Thus, “never let a crisis go to waste” is a frequent means by which political power is obtained and kept. Far too many Americans are all too willing to cast their votes for those who promise to “protect” them -- from the climate, from the corporations, from the Christians, from guns, and from the consequences of their own bad decisions.
Speaking of fantasy and guns, (on this, there’s no shortage of material from liberals) in an attempt to defame the NRA and Republicans, I recently encountered the following:
“Last Year” in the poster is a reference is to 2013. However, what any good liberal will neglect to point out is that of those 33,636 deaths, nearly two-thirds were suicide, with an additional several hundred the result of legal intervention. (Even Wikipedia has the numbers.) The high ratio of gun deaths by suicide has been the case for years. Nevertheless, liberals regularly report (or even incorrectly report) the 30,000-plus gun deaths in the U.S. without mentioning the number of suicides.
And notice the blood on the hands in the poster above? With nearly 60 million of the most helpless and innocent Americans killed since 1973, when it comes to bloody hands, none are more red-stained than those of a modern liberal. As I noted on the day of the Oregon shootings, given their rabid support for slaughtering the unborn, when it comes to any form of violence -- or for that matter, any moral issue whatsoever -- no voter should ever trust any “solution” presented by a liberal.
It’s rather telling -- but not at all surprising -- that so few liberals have demonstrated any shock or remorse at the recent undercover Planned Parenthood videos. Remember how the liberal media had to be dragged kicking and screaming to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell? Whether the Gosnell trial, or the Planned Parenthood videos, the truth about the abortion industry has been known for decades now. What’s more, there’s no real shortage of photographic and video evidence of what really happens during an abortion. Again, much of this has been around for years.
Mother Theresa warned us years ago, “We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, of killings, of wars, of hatred. If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?” As she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Mother Theresa declared that abortion “is the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child -- what is left for me to kill you and you kill me -- there is nothing between.” In other words, if as a culture we’ve become comfortable killing in the womb, we shouldn’t be surprised at killings in the classroom.
In addition to making what should be one of the safest places for a human being into a killing zone, once outside the womb, the most dangerous places in America are run by liberals (i.e., Democrats). According to FBI data, and as Mark Alexander noted a few months ago, “the 10 most dangerous cities in America with populations above 200,000 are all managed, top to bottom, by Democrats. They are: Detroit, Oakland, Memphis, St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Birmingham, Newark and Kansas City.”
As Alexander also notes, along with being extremely impoverished (the top ten most impoverished American cities are all also run by Democrats), these liberal havens have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. And as Umpqua Community College again tragically demonstrated, strict gun laws -- such as “gun free zones”-- only work when people are willing to obey the laws.
In most cases, these dangerous and impoverished cities have been dominated by liberal politics for decades. Sadly, Democrats’ most reliable constituency, black Americans, have suffered most under liberalism. Though only 12.6% of the U.S. population, blacks make up over 35% of abortions in America. Nearly 80% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics are in minority neighborhoods.
Additionally, blacks (especially young black males) comprise well over half of the 11,000 annual gun homicides in America. Well over 90% of these murders are the result of black-on-black crime. Multiple times this year, urban America has seen the equivalent of the Umpqua massacre occur over a weekend. In Obama’s home state of Illinois, Chicago alone has had several weekends that were as violent or more violent than what we just witnessed in Oregon. Do you recall any impassioned presidential pressers as a result? Me either.
All this, and I’ve made no mention of the devastation that liberalism has wrought upon the family, nor the crippling and enslaving economic policies practiced and preached by modern liberals. If Americans want to be safe, the truth is clear: buy a gun, and don’t vote for liberals.
Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
