In her August 13 2007 Sun Times Op-Ed column, Laura Washington commented on the need for protection from “guns ubiquitous” combined with ‘sizzling temps’, “preachers, politicians and some cops and a whole lot of guns” that would create a “toxic and combustible mixture.” Then she said “don’t throw in a match”. (slander alert to the Chicago preachers, politicians, and cops who constitute Washington’s version of civic napalm)

She lauded Mayor Daley, Jesse Jackson, and Fr. Michael Fleger for “doing more than just about anyone to get guns off the streets”. She approvingly noted Daley’s vain efforts to “get anti gun legislation through the intractable and juvenile Illinois General Assembly.”

I absolutely agree with Mayor Daley’s and Washington’s desire to get guns off of the streets. As a former soldier and police firearm instructor, I am aware that a gun left on the street is contrary to the principle of good maintenance and is singularly vulnerable to the ravages of weather, heavy vehicles, and crumbling asphalt from our oft potholed streets. Should you need the gun to defend yourself against an imminent attack by a criminal, whom the courts say no level of government is legally obligated to protect you against as an individual; it might be difficult to find it quickly out there on the byways and highways.

I am not making light of a serious subject. I take seriously inchoate calls for “gun control” by gun grabbing columnists who extol renegade crypto Marxist liberation theology priests like Father Fleger harangue angry crowds to “snuff” law abiding gun shop owners. I take very seriously a gun grabbing mayor who I personally heard say in a gun control hearing at the Thompson center that “If I had my way no one would have a gun.”

Washington cited the Brady Center’s depiction of a “Culture of Death.” This is a term that conservatives have long applied to left wing liberals and their infatuation with euthanasia, homosexuality as a normative condition and abortion on demand, which has caused the deaths of 45,000, 000 unborn human beings since Roe vs. Wade, of which 15,000,000 or one third were black children.

You have to admire the self sustaining nature of liberal solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Washington decries the murder of blacks aged 17–29 as she notes that they constitute nearly 50% of murder victims. Much of the reason for this chaos stems from the legacy of the welfare state created by liberals who are often in league with gun grabbers. That “Great Society” of the 1960’s substituted a welfare check for a father and made a norm of fatherless homes, with a concomitant increase in civillizational breakdown. Thus they posit a “solution” for a problem that they themselves largely created that will make more of us more dependent upon government for the inalienable right of self defense by disarming the law abiding.

Despite the atrocities of the Blair Holt and too many similar incidents by the criminally evil amongst us, the number of guns lawfully in private hands is up markedly and violent crime is down commensurately. Defying the anti-gunners’ claim that more guns means more crime, from 1991–2005 the number of privately owned guns increased by more than 70 million. Data released by the FBI showed that in 2005, the nation’s total violent crime rate was 38% lower than in 1991, when violent crime hit an all-time high. Rates of the individual categories of violent crime were also much lower in 2005 than in 1991. Murder was 43% lower, rape 25% lower, robbery 48% lower, and aggravated assault 33% lower. The FBI‘s report came on the heels of a Bureau of Justice Statistics crime survey that found that violent crime was lower in 2005 than anytime in the survey’s 32-year history. Much of this decrease is due to the incarceration of many of the black men that Washington decries as “disproportionate.” (Even as she notes the disproportionate numbers of black homicides, and that 94% of them are killed by other blacks.)
If you could free yourself from the distortions and half truths of the anti-gunners, you might shake your head in disapproval. Admittedly that is difficult to do with a head in the sand filled with cognitive dissonance.

How many more anti gun laws do we need, Ms. Washington? We have more than 22,000 guns laws on the books in the US. Criminals disregard them like gun grabbers disregard facts and the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution.