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Sitting at 32,000 feet headed for Washington, D.C. where tens of thousands of America’s teenagers and their leftist handlers have gathered to expose the ignorance of youth, a deep and profound sadness sinks in. The “March for our Lives” was the main attraction in the nation’s capital, and its purpose was to demand more gun control and petition for ways to gut the Second Amendment. This event stands as a testimony to the profound ignorance of our youth for our Constitutional Republic, its history, and its protections.
Perhaps those who have taken to the streets across this great nation are too deep into their own false understanding of the right to bear arms, but that should not stop us from attempting to explain why an armed citizenry is vital to a free and civil society.
Would it be too much to say that tyranny reigns in gun free societies? Perhaps a few of the myriad examples will help our young people understand:
Exhibit A
November of 1938 Mao Zedong said:
“All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way; no guns can ever be used to command the party.”
Exhibit B
Gun Control in the Third Reich by Stephen P. Halbrook unearthed documents from German archives, diaries and newspapers that show a systematic plan to consolidate power by disarming its enemies. There are many citations across the internet that try to debunk this, but it’s hard to miss the clear message from the Fuhrer’s own mouth in Table Talk, 1941-1944: Secret Conversations:
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjugated races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjugated races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So, let’s not have any native militia or native police.”
Halbrook’s scholarly study of the issue points out that, “By 1938, the Nazis had deprived Jews of the rights of citizenship and were ratcheting up measures to strip them of their assets—including the means to defend themselves. The horrific consequences have names etched in our consciousness: “The Night of Broken Glass” (Kristallnacht) and the Holocaust.”
Exhibit C
Hitler and Mao are not the exceptions but rather the rule in understanding the power of disarming the people. In 1931 in his address to the Italian Senate Dictator Benito Mussolini said:
“I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.”
We could go on throughout history, but hopefully, the point is made.
The Number of Firearms Does Not Mean More Murder
It is a fallacy for our young people to believe that fewer guns will make them safer. Statistics just do not prove this to be true. More guns do not mean more murders. The graph below shows the number of firearms per capita between 1950 and 2014. The number of firearms per every ten people in the U.S. (shown in red) has risen in the U.S. and precipitously so since 1997. But as is evident by the green lines in the graph, the number of murders per 100,000 people has dropped dramatically– especially since the year 2000.
And so, one can see that the number of firearms in the country does not correlate to the number of murders per capita. Thus, the thesis of John Lott’s book “More Guns, Less Crime” isn’t an NRA slogan – it is an undeniable, defensible fact.
Something is Wrong with Our Youth, And it’s not Guns
Instead of looking at the weapons, why aren’t our young people willing to see the abject evil and anger that lies within so many of their peers? The call for helping these lost, maniacal mentally ill teens should be loud and clear. Instead, they focus on the weapon, not the perpetrator. The gun, the bomb, the vehicle, the knife doesn’t cause harm all by itself. Someone with criminal intent must wield each weapon.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spells it out for us. It is not a riddle but rather a clear line that demonstrates the many lost, hopeless souls found among our young people in America today:
“Researchers found a substantial increase in suicides among teen girls and boys in the U.S. from 1975 to 2015, with the rate among girls hitting a record high. From 2007 to 2015 alone, suicide rates doubled among teen girls and by more than 30 percent among teen boys.”
This my friends is the root of the problem.
From 32,000 Feet to the Streets of DC
As we pull away from Ronald Reagan National Airport, dozens of tour buses are on display — lined up along the other side of the Potomac River. The deep pockets of George Soros and Oprah Winfrey provide us this spectacle as our children take to the streets by the thousands to protest their right to bear arms. And in doing so, they ignore the words of a man most of them admire. It was Martin Luther King, Jr, who said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” But perhaps the best wisdom of all came from our cab driver. “I’m Ethiopian,” he says, “In my country first they took away the guns, and then they put us all in jail.”
