Five myths of gun control

OPINION:

President Biden was in New York last week for a photo-op with the new mayor and to push the left’s favorite anti-crime panacea — more gun control. 

After the crime wave of the past year, the president finally made it to the frontlines. What he said was so predictable that it could only inspire a collective yawn.

He could have talked about lenient prosecutors, the war on police (ambush attacks on officers were up 115% nationwide in 2021) or gang members crossing our southern border — all of which bear the hallmark of his party.

Instead, the president said we have to “get guns off the street” and “stop the flow of guns.” How? Throw a few million in unspent COVID funds at Democrat-controlled cities and make it harder for honest Americans to own a gun for self-defense

Democrats have built up a wall of myths around the gun debate to prevent reason from penetrating the fog of their rhetoric.

Myth #1. Guns are to blame for soaring crime rates: Saying guns cause crime is like saying matches cause arson. The 1990s saw a historic rise of gun ownership and crime went down. Cities with the most restrictive gun laws — like New York, Washington and Chicago — are drowning in crime. Pushing to “get guns off the streets” puts the emphasis on the instrumentalities of crime, instead of the criminals themselves. The left finds it impossible to assign individual responsibility. It’s so much easier to blame inanimate objects.

Myth #2. The Second Amendment doesn’t prevent government regulation of firearms: In D.C. v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court said the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right. The left claims a right specifically mentioned in the Constitution — “the right to keep and bear arms” — is conditional. However, the so-called right to abortion (a word mentioned nowhere in the Constitution), is absolute.

Mr. Biden insists that just as the Second Amendment didn’t allow you to own a cannon when it was enacted, it doesn’t allow you to own an “assault weapon” today. A cannon is a militia weapon — not that the amendment is limited to the militia, as the court noted. An assault weapon is a scary term created by the media for a semi-automatic rifle. If a ban on semi-automatics ever goes before the Supreme Court, based on Heller, it would almost certainly be struck down.

Myth #3. You don’t need a gun for self-defense. That’s why we have police: During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden said law enforcement is “systematically racist.” On April 12, 2021, he tweeted about the need to address the “trauma that Black America experiences every day” from police shootings. Due to the demonization of men and women in blue, and a revolving-door justice system, police recruitment and retention is bleak. While this is going on, the anti-gun party says: “Don’t worry. If someone is trying to break into your home, just wait for the police (who are seriously undermanned) not to get there.

Myth #4. We don’t want to take all of your guns away — just the bad ones: During the 2020 primary campaign, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said: “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.” Mr. O’Rourke later endorsed Mr. Biden. How will the president vaccinate us against what he calls the “pandemic of gun violence” in America — by banning assault weapons, extending the waiting period for background checks, banning certain types of ammunition, and allowing gun manufacturers to be sued for the criminal misuse of their products? Most mass shootings are committed not with semi-automatics, but prosaic handguns — which will be targeted next. As far as Democrats are concerned, if it has a trigger and fires bullets, it’s too dangerous to be in civilian hands.

Myth #5. Gun owners are white males who drive pickup trucks with confederate flag decals: In 2020, the number of women buying guns more than doubled. And 40% of first-time buyers were Black Americans, who saw their neighborhoods go up in flames. Doesn’t sound much like a guy named Bubba.

After the January hostage-taking at a Texas synagogue (by a terrorist with an illegal handgun), the president served up one of his famous word salads: “The guns are — we should be — the idea of background checks are critical. But you can’t stop something like this if someone is on the street buying something from somebody else on the street. Except that there’s too — there’s too many guns that have been sold of late; it’s ridiculous.”
 
Ridiculous? The very word for the Democrats’ case for more gun control.

• Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist.