Unquestioning support of any political action ought to be questioned, including that of the “Million” Mom March.
This is the season in which we mourn the atrocities of the Holocaust and celebrate the birth of modern Israel.
Yet American Jewish support for the MMM appears strong.
To anyone with a knowledgeable sense of history, this mixture reflects massive ironies and pathetic, dangerous delusions that ignore the defenselessness of Jews in Nazi Germany and the justly proud survival of the Jewish state by force of arms.
The Weimar gun registration law of 1928 led directly to Kristallnacht in 1938, which occurred one day after the Nazis confiscated 40,000 Jewish guns in Berlin alone. The Nazis’ 1938 law gave them the power; the well-meaning Weimar registration law gave them the information.
There are many who try to manipulate us by publicizing false numbers to heighten our fears and our sense of crisis.
They are eager for the hysteria such figures engender and for the unquestioning support they build for bad laws.
They are freedom’s enemies, no matter how often they use the word “kids” to gain our trust.
The “facts” offered in support of the MMM lack any clear relevance to the proposals the march supports. Several such “facts” are flat-out wrong. And no opposing viewpoints or positive effects of guns are presented to balance the bandwagon effect.
Where is the voice of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership?
Or of women saved from rape, disfigurement or death by having a gun? (Thousands of women did join a counter-demonstration in D.C.)
Or of others who see Jewish lives saved daily by private ownership of guns?
Who reports the following good effects that private citizens’ guns have on American society?
*5,000 crimes per day — per day — are prevented or stopped by a citizen with a gun, usually simply by showing it.
*3,000 times each year citizens kill their attackers in emergency self-defense because police protection was not available.
Waiting periods have already cost lives. Trigger locks will, too.
The widely quoted false statistic of “12 children die each day from gunfire” should be laid to rest. FBI statistics for 1999 show that murders of children ages 12 and under totaled 121 in all of 1998 — and of youths 17 and under, it was 769.
In approximate numbers, that would be about two deaths per day for all kids 17 and under. Not 12. Tragic, but not 12.
Furthermore, only 110 kids age 14 and under died from firearms accidents in 1998, compared with 2,600 in car accidents and 850 in drownings. That’s according to the National Health Safety Council’s injury statistics for 1999.
That’s 110 kids, in more than 43 million households containing guns. For every such kid dying in a firearms accident, more than 23 such kids died in car accidents and nearly eight more in drownings. The presently minuscule rate of accidental gun deaths has plummeted to one-quarter of its rate 50 years ago even as the number of guns has quadrupled.
Most articles supporting the MMM cite a variety of gun-related tragedies. Yet careful analysis usually shows that in none of them would licensing, a waiting period, limiting gun purchases to one a month, or registration have saved a single life.
We need better enforcement against criminals — we certainly have enough laws.
In the Los Angeles-area JCC tragedy, Washington state police failed to remove guns from a man prohibited from having them.
In the Columbine High School tragedy, 30 existing laws were violated. Criminals don’t care about laws, even kid criminals.
Prosecuting violent criminals vigorously and enforcing “truth in sentencing” reduces violent crime dramatically, as proven by Project Exile in Richmond, Va., and elsewhere.
And the really huge questions remain:
How will victim disarmament — the admitted final goal of most MMM supporters — reduce violent criminal acts?
And most importantly, what will victim disarmament cost those who could have used guns in self-defense?