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Millions of law-abiding Americans own firearms. |
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But in the last few years, you’ve been asked to believe some very dangerous things about your fellow Americans, just because they own guns for protection and recreation. You’ve been told they’re "bad," and "different;" that they’re not like you, and that they are responsible for all sorts of things from crime to accidents to the insane behavior of a few individuals. Because you’ve been told to believe those things, millions of Americans like you have had their rights denied or delayed, with the excuse that you are being "protected" from other Americans just like you. In the last few years, most of the action has come in the form of government regulation or interpretation of laws. These regulations have been enacted against Americans not in the sunshine of democracy, but in the shadow of bureaucracy. There is little or no recourse for your fellow Americans. Gunowners are denied one of the most basic rights: the right to state their case, not just to legislators, but to other Americans. A dangerous new front has now been opened against all Americans with the intention of several big city mayors to abandon their duties to their citizens to find reasonable and just solutions to crime. Instead, these mayors prefer to rely on contingency-fee crazed lawyers uninterested in rights, justice or common sense.
Time after time, statistics by independent researchers have shown that American gunowners are not the problem. They do not break the law when they seek the legal means to own a gun. They are not, and have never been, the problem. The research shows just the opposite: in states where citizens are accorded the right to own and carry a firearm for personal protection, crime rates are lower – much lower – than in places that enact strict control of law-abiding Americans – places like Washington, DC, and Chicago. Common sense tells you that if crime flourishes, if rapes, assaults, robberies and even murder, are higher in places that deny people just like you the means to self-protection and the protection of their homes and families, then, at the very least, American gunowners are not the problem. It is a dangerous experiment to remove freedoms, one by one, in exchange for the broken promise of safety. |
It’s always been easier to blame people, especially if you isolate them with labels and name-calling, for problems that are obviously larger, more complicated, and sometimes even insoluble, than it is to work together at the same time we respect each other and our differences. It can’t make sense to ignore existing laws, and instead pile on more and more, never bothering to use the laws for the benefit of society.
If you think gun control isn’t people control, think again. The history of gun control – beginning with the denial of firearms rights to newly freed African-Americans in the post-Civil War South, to those aimed at immigrants at the turn of the last century – is a dangerous, deceitful, un-American history of people control. If laws can be enacted, if regulations can be implemented, without review or recourse against Americans just like you, what and who comes next? Your friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers who own guns just want what you want: the safe and secure lives that Americans declared their right over 200 years ago; lives that are not judged by others merely because they "seem different;" the renewed promise of a government that works for the people and respects their judgement, and a fair and open hearing in the court of public opinion.
The Bill of Rights guarantees your rights and trusts the people. All the rights we enjoy today are dependent on one another. Your rights and liberties, including your privacy and your personal decisions about yourself and family are guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, which includes the Second Amendment. That’s why, for over 25 years, the Second Amendment Foundation has been dedicated to educating
and informing all Americans about our precious Second Amendment rights, through books, monographs, periodicals,
scholars conferences, grassroots seminars, court cases and public information ads like this. |
