The wife of one of our pastors had a term for people who needed a little extra grace–she called them EGRs (pronounced Eggars) and it stands for Extra Grace Required.
You may have some EGRs in your family who go off on the insanity of gun owners this weekend.
And I want to give you some ammo that will hopefully educate and enlighten them without crushing their fragile snowflake spirit and making them get all defensive…although sometimes that’s a good option too.
With that in mind, I want to share 4 “Gun Control” myths and responses you can use when you hear them.
Myth #1. People who don’t like guns are “peaceful.” No. Peace comes from having the capacity, skill, and willingness for violence…and then choosing not to (peace through strength).
If someone physically can’t protect themselves—age, injury, illness—that’s life…and it’s one group of people that others (like myself) continually have in mind as we train.
But if someone could learn to protect themselves and those around them and just refuses to learn, that’s not “peaceful.” That’s leaving the responsibility to everyone else and history has shown us that that mindset oftentimes ushers in heavy-handed authoritarian rule.
Myth #2. Gun Free Zones make us safer and reduce crime. It should be obvious by now that gun free zones don’t make us safer. Any time you hear this argument, ask the person who makes it if they have “gun free zone” stickers on their cars to stop carjackings, “gun free zone” signs in their yards to stop home invasions, and wear “gun free zone” shirts and hats to stop muggings, robberies, rapes, etc.
If they balk, remind them that “Change starts with me” and that they should “Be the change you want to see.”
If “gun free” zones make us safer, suggest that they tell that to the Secret Service and the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. I’m sure they’ll change how they protect people right away.
The fact that “gun free zone” signs don’t exist in large numbers is a tacit admission that gun haters and people who are ignorant about guns KNOW, at some level, that gun free zones don’t work.
Equally silly is the thought that gun free zones reduce crime…at best, they simply change the location.
Someone who intends on murdering large numbers of people will commit 5 or more misdemeanors and/or felonies in the process of firing their first shot. Do you really think that someone intent on murdering innocent people cares about breaking 1 additional law? Do you really think that someone who intends on killing themselves or committing suicide by cop cares about additional penalties from a judge? Of course not.
Myth #3. Common sense laws will stop mass shootings. We have more than 20,000 gun laws on the books in the US. What’s the magic next law that will make all of the bad people stop doing bad things?
What kind of narcissist could possibly think that their 1 amazing piece of legislation will be more effective than the 20,000 ineffective ones that came before it. That’s like eating 20,000 calories and thinking that having a Tic-Tac will make a difference.
The only thing that would take care of gun crime would be to eliminate guns. By definition, a country with zero (not even 1 gun) guns would have zero gun crime.
We’ve got more than 300 million guns in the US. They’re not going away. If they’re outlawed, then the law would disproportionately affect law abiding citizens. (remember, murderers don’t care about laws or the consequences of breaking them.)
But if we look at how this has worked out in DC, Chicago, Australia, the UK, and other places with strict gun laws, we see that it doesn’t work out well for law enforcement or the general public.
It DOES work out great for criminals. There have been 620! or so homicides in Chicago–a model city for gun control–so far this year despite the fact that there is a 90%+ chance of surviving a gunshot wound if you’re still conscious when the ambulance arrives.
Gun laws didn’t work out well for Jews in Germany in the 30s, or minorities in ANY country throughout history that has been disarmed. Gun laws always hurt the weakest and poorest segments of society the quickest and hardest.
Look at Austria, France, and London Bridge in Great Brittan where recent Muslim extremist mass murderers ran vehicles into crowds until the cars couldn’t move any more and then got out and started stabbing the survivors.
Look at China…in the last few years, they’ve seen almost a dozen mass school stabbings and hammer attacks, including one where the attacker beat preschoolers in the head with a hammer and then lit himself on fire. Within 24 hours of the Sandy Hook attacks, one murderer stabbed 22 children in an attack in China. In another attack, 4 Muslim extremists used knives to kill 29 civilians and injure 140 others at the Kunming railway station.
If you want to protect innocent people from murdering criminal who are comfortable breaking laws, you need to look to another solution than more laws. A solution like the most effective way to STOP the attacker.
Myth #4. Locking doors, hiding, and pleading/begging are effective strategies for stopping threats.
We live in a time where we can find out an amazing amount of detail about EVERY active shooter situation that has happened in the US in recent history. We can see where these strategies were all tried and the outcome. None of them STOP the threat. They may occasionally delay death, reduce the number of innocent deaths, change who dies, or change the location of deaths, but they don’t stop the threat.
Myth #5. Civilians With Guns Make Everyone Unsafe.
I get the rational for this line of thinking. If a gunman enters a church and 20 people open fire on him, there’s a really good chance that innocent people will get hurt.
You know what? The history of relatively untrained civilians taking out mass murderers in crowded venues has played out very differently over the years.
MOST armed people have a lag (freeze) that lasts several seconds in an active shooter situation as they cycle through disbelief, acceptance, deciding what action to take, and taking that action.
In the West Freeway Church of Christ shooting, several draw strokes didn’t even start until after Jack Wilson had already solved the problem.
Life’s not simple, clean, or neat. It’s messy and complicated. But historically we can see that good guys with guns shoot more bad guys than they shoot innocents.
And in a mass shooting situation a good guy with a gun MIGHT accidentally shoot in innocent bystander in the process of stopping the bad guy. Law enforcement MIGHT accidentally shoot an innocent bystander in the process of stopping the bad guy. But we know, without a doubt, that if the bad guy isn’t stopped, he’ll keep shooting innocent people until he’s stopped.
The reality of a chaotic life and death shooting situation is that misses happen.
As a responsible gun owner, what you need to do is do everything in your power to minimize your misses through training…training your mind to handle stress, training your eyes to see more and see quicker, and training your technique so that your reflexive performance level is as high as possible.
You see, when you’ve got time to think through the process, it’s easy to make accurate shots at close range with a pistol.
But when you’re shooting at a speed where you can’t think through all of the details, you’re going to rely on neural pathways (muscle memory) and your performance is going to depend on the quality of your practice up to that point.
That’s why it’s SO important to do a few minutes of dry fire practice, at least a few days a week.
And one of the most powerful training systems available for high speed, chaotic self-defense shooting is this.
It’s easier than going to the range, cheaper than going to the range, and it’s actually more effective than doing the majority of your training with live fire. And if you’re willing to spend about the same amount of time practicing at home that most people spend standing in line for coffee, you can develop top 1% gun handling skills at a fraction of the cost as what it would take with live fire. Learn more now, and see the new bonuses by clicking >HERE<
Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Please share by commenting below
I just came in from doing some dry fire drills with my SIRT in the backyard. They are a lot of fun and have certainly improved my shooting. I saw a story the other day to indicate that civilian gun ownership in the US now exceeds 500 million firearms. I’m thankful for that on that this beautiful Thanksgiving Day, and for Ox and the others who have helped me become a better armed citizen.
You left out the most important part.
Who enforces gun laws?
“Just following orders” is a voluntary decision based on choice and free will.
I think the one thing really missing in this conversation, anti-second amendment people and their ilk, NEVER allow logic to interfere in their decision making process. Logic rarely changes their mind. I still try, but it is very discouraging talking to these people.
Cops specially don’t understand that enforcing CCW laws is a violation of the Second Amendment
An argument ender is simply the cases of Chicago, New York, New Jersey, and Los Angeles among others. These states have the most draconian gun laws in the country. They also have the highest violent crime rates in the country. Half of all murders occur in 2% of all US counties.
The first thing an anti-gunner will say is that criminals bought guns in other states and brought them into these cities. That in itself is a crime as a gun must be legally purchased in the buyer’s state of residence.
Go after the violent offenders early in their career and fund anti-gang units. That does not mean we jail 13 year olds in a gang initiation. It means developing social systems that encourage family and security. Public school improvement. Training social workers. Enhancing law enforcement. Prevention is often easier and cheaper than the cure. Make the streets safe and the problem will fix itself.
then they change the subject
In general, the anti-gun people refuse to enforce true “common sense” gun laws. For example there are laws against recent felons owning and using guns. Research and notice that these laws are very rarely enforced against a criminal. They are generally the first crimes bargained away so they may convict criminals of crimes with lower penalties.
But if an innocent defends themselves with an illegal gun – THEN they work hard to enforce the law.
So it shows a very ugly and deceiving agenda.
Regarding Myth #4: What happens when an armed individual confronts a mass shooter is that the shooter’s attention becomes riveted on the person confronting him and bullets will travel in two predictable directions (on the line between the two people with guns). Potential victims who are on either side of that line will not be under fire and will have a opportunity to take cover or escape by moving laterally away from the predictable line of fire.
Also, armed confrontation is the only way that has proven to be effective to end a mass shooting. When confronted, the experience has been that mass shooters do one of three things: kill themselves, surrender or take cover/flee.
Chuck Michel, a gun rights lawyer in Long Beach, CA, has produced a book listing all the gun laws in the PDRK. It contains over 100 pages. While it also contains his commentary on how that particular law is applied, it contains far more than 13 or 15 or even 115 separate individual laws. When I get home I am going to have to sit down and count them. I will report that number here.
Great article and great replies. It’s all food for thought this holiday season. I hope that I can change, even one, anti-gunner to accept common sense. Kind of lends a new slant to “hope” and “change”!
Okay, let’s simplify the “problem” to an absurd point. If we want to address the true issue of “morality”, I believe it can be stated as the famous Golden Rule (I’m not talking about the one that says ‘he who has the gold, rules’), Do to others what you want them to do to you. That pretty much covers virtually all types of human conduct. Don’t do anything that you know, or are substantially certain, will cause harm to another person. You can pretty much reduce all human conduct to that rule and you will have a “moral” society. Now, as far as people killing other people goes, this has been happening, and will undoubtedly continue happening for the next few thousand years…or as long as people are around. There is no question, even in the minds of the most ardent gun-control advocate that if all guns [in private hands] were eliminated that all murders would automatically cease. Note, incidentally, that more people are killed (in the USA) by knives and clubs than by rifles. Handguns are something else again. But the bottom line is simply this…it is the mindset of an individual that “controls” whether that individual will commit a criminal act. If the mindset is there, no law is going to stop such a person. Passing more laws isn’t the answer. And, interestingly enough, nobody seems to be willing to address the issue of the mental reasoning that suggests to a person that mass killing is somehow acceptable. Note, incidentally, that so far most all of the “mass shooters” either commit suicide or are killed at the end of their spree. What is it that allows them to consider this an acceptable way to end their lives? That is the great unanswered question!
As always I would like to know what the impetus was for the Brookings study. The popular phrase today is “follow the money”. Is Brookings like the Underwriters Lab, taking no advertising or other support from outside itself? Doubtful. And whether there are 20,000 laws or 600 or 3 they infringe upon the Second Amendment right and protection.
Illinois legislators are pushing a bill that would increase the regulatory and financial burdens on legitimate FFLs to the point of running them out of business. Do the criminals who commit gun violence avail themselves of the ranges, ammo, courses? Some probably do, but on the whole criminals can’t get FOID cards so they can’t go to the legitimate ranges. Does the lack of the ability to legally obtain firearms deter them? Not likely.
So let’s just open our eyes and see what is going on around us. I’ve often wondered how a law or regulation, or the whims of a property owner, can bar the bearing of arms which is A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT! Apparently the right isn’t available if someone doesn’t like it.
Let’s go back about 6000 years, give or take a few centuries and we have the story of Moses receiving, directly from the hand of God, 10 Commandments, one of which quite simply said “thou shalt not kill”, Such a commandment, written by God, has been copied throughout the centuries even unto the present. The law is simple and direct. Now if someone wants to break this God-given law, how is it, under what system of logic does it make any sense that writing 300 or 3000 other laws will make any difference? Let’s go back even further than Moses let’s go back to the original parents and their children, Cain and Abel. One killed the other. Not using a gun, either. So we can say that killing, one way or another, has been around since the very beginning of the human race…whenever that might have been. And we have been struggling with bad guys ever since we all began. Guns are not the problem, it’s people who don’t respect the rights of others that are the problem.
Hey Bill, great points, and I agree that guns are not the problem, but there’s something I want to point out…
It’s important to realize that there is no commandment regarding killing. This would conflict with the entire rest of the old and new testament and in an extreme could be extrapolated as far as making brushing your teeth and taking antibiotics a sin. Killing is ending a life. Killing is not a sin, regardless of whether it is killing a man or animal in self-defense or killing an animal for food. If killing were a sin, then God would be asking his people to sin when he sent them to war and he’d be “blessing” their sin when he blessed them in battle.
Throughout the Torah, when the 10 commandments are stated, the language more appropriately translates to “murder.”
Why’s this important?
Because the misinterpretation of this commandment separates warriors from their Christian and Jewish family and friends after they kill someone at war, on duty, or in self-defense. Killing is not consequence free, but all killing is not murder.
This difference between killing and murder carries through to our court system today in the form of involuntary manslaughter vs. premeditated murder. They’re different…very different.
Please let me know if you have any questions on this. I’m not an expert, but I am passionate about it because of how many of my friends have justifiably killed and who incorrectly thought or were told that they were breaking a commandment by doing so.
Thanks Ox, for pointing out, that King Jimmy, got it wrong. I have had so many people, ask me, how I can be a professing Christian, yet own guns, carry a gun, and am ready to use it, in the event, of protecting, the life, of myself, my family, or an innocent stranger.
Some people have the mindset of wolves, some as sheep, and some, as sheepdogs. Woof woof.
The Fifth Commandment actually states, as translated from Hebrew, “You shall not murder.” The difference is murder is a malicious act motivated by greed, envy, jealousy, covetousness, and so forth. Killing is simply the act of taking a life without malice. If the Commandment meant all killing, self defense itself would be wrong as that often requires violence whether the target dies or not. That is the distinction between murder, which is evil, and killing which may be necessary to survive an attack. I learned all of this after an anti-gunner brought it up and left me at a loss for words. I am very comfortable carrying a side arm and prepared to use it if necessary and feel justified if I do.
The Bible stories are a bizarre mix of common sense/wisdom and outright prejudice and misogyny. Women having to marry their rapist? Not my kind of ‘loving’ god.
It would be more accurate to say that mis-translation of the Bible and taking small sequences of words out of context from the Bible are oftentimes used manipulatively and incorrectly as a basis for prejudice and misogyny. I’m not sure how people can have an understanding of the Bible and think that it says women should marry their rapist…I would encourage you to look at the original Hebrew and think about whether the version of the Bible you’re using was translated correctly as well as looking at the context of the passage.
I believe, what you’ll find is that God was loving the Hebrews where they were at rather than where He wanted them to be and that he was not condoning rape or saying that women who were raped had to marry their rapist.
So, the corollary of the Brookings argument is as follows:
States have no need of DUI, Rape, Homicide, traffic, commerce, transportation, hazardous materials, theft, robbery, banking, or for that matter; ANY laws, regulations, or guidance as FEDGOV already has a similar or better law on the books?
Uh, guys, that’s called totalitarian government.
A study from the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy counts only 300 “relevant federal and state laws regarding the manufacture, design, sale, purchase, or possession of guns.” The key word is “relevant.”
The study does not include a tally of local gun laws. In fact, the authors note that since more than 40 states preempt all or most local gun control laws, there’s no reason to include local laws in a gun-law tally. It is “irrelevant” to count local laws that are superceded by state laws, the authors said in a press release heralding their study.
In that same press release, the Brookings Institution said the study disputes the 20,000-gun-laws claim, based on a “thorough examination of the number and type” of state and federal gun laws.
“The number of laws per state range from one to 13,” the press release said, adding that the most common laws concern mandatory minimum sentencing; dealer background checks; “shall issue” laws for carrying a concealed weapon; dealer licensing; and child protection.
Hey Michael, you’ve been a great customer and I thank you for sharing that, because it’s an oft-quoted report. My father-in-law worked for Brookings for over a decade and I had this exact discussion with him several times.
I would take anything that Brookings says about firearms with a healthy bit of skepticism. They openly suggest that we should repeal the 2nd Amendment instead of trying to clarify it or enforce the laws we have. They don’t believe in the individual ownership of firearms and only push “common sense” measures as a strategy to get to their end goal of criminalizing private ownership. This report of theirs is just another gambit in their long game to erode our freedoms.
Let me ask you something…is 300 a realistic number? That’s only 6 laws per state. As you said, it regards the manufacture, design, sale, purchase, or possession of guns, as well as minimum sentencing, dealer checks, shall issue laws, dealer licensing, and “child protection.”
I would argue that you would QUICKLY come up with more than 6 laws per state restricting the use of firearms for hunting, not to mention concealed carry, open carry, use in a home, use on public lands, possession, purchasing, transporting, storage, brandishing, discharge within city limits, discharge with intent to injure, ammunition production, storage, and transportation laws, laws regarding firing rate, capacity, length, caliber, overall size, accessories, appearance, etc. Most of those laws exist in each state, so multiply them by 50. Some have Federal laws, so add another layer. Some have local laws, so add more layers.
In short, 20,000 is the number that’s been quoted since 1965, even though THOUSANDS of additional laws have been put on the books since then.
I call BS on that. Michigan alone has laws regarding concealed carry. That’s plural, right there. Laws regarding possession of handguns while hunting. (again, that plural). Laws regarding long guns used in hunting. Laws regarding “gun free zones”, and who that does and does not apply to. So, before starting to talk about purchasing, child protection, mandatory minimum sentencing (felon in possession, felony with a firearm, various flavors of brandishing, illegal use, threatening, several flavors of prohibited persons, and more laws regarding how those persons became prohibited), before any of that multiplication of firearms statutes, I can count not less than 12 statutes in Michigan, a relatively gun friendly state. Wanna bet that, say New Jersey, of Mass has fewer? How much can you afford to lose, cause I’ll take that bet.