"I said, Jill, if there's ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out and put that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house ..." The realization that the actual person giving this advice is only a bad hair-cut away from the Presidency should be enough to give every American pause.
If the constant gun control talk is just plain wearing you out, you are not alone. There are blatant lies presented and redundantly repeated to the extent that should really embarrass Congress, various state legislatures, governors, and mayors. As far as the “gun violence epidemic” that people can't stop screaming lies about, the FBI hides the facts in plain sight: violent crime in the United States is in decline: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/violent-crime . There is no violent crime epidemic at all, for even a look at the last five years reveals the steep decline.
Despite the increase in firearm ownership, despite more guns, despite expansion of Concealed Carry, there is no explosion of improper gun use. Guns are used properly in the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by private citizens, about 200 times a year. This is also no secret: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-15 . Dialing 911 in these cases is way too late, the police aren't everywhere, and felons committing felonies paid with their lives, correctly. Most don't die, of course, far from it. “The National Self-Defense Survey indicated that there were 2.5 million incidents of defensive gun use per year in the U.S. during the 1988-1993 period. This is probably a conservative estimate, for two reasons. First, cases of respondents intentionally withholding reports of genuine defensive-gun uses were probably more common than cases of respondents reporting incidents that did not occur or that were not genuinely defensive. Second, the survey covered only adults age 18 and older, thereby excluding all defensive gun uses involving adolescents, the age group most likely to suffer a violent victimization. The authors concluded that defensive uses of guns are about three to four times as common as criminal uses of guns.” See Guns and Self-Defense by Gary Kleck, Ph.D.: http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/kleck2.html .
Violence in the United States has been in a huge decline. The FBI yet again makes the data clear: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1 . Violent crime rates have plummeted as have murder rates. No one can miss it. In 1992, with a population of just over 255 million, the United States had 23,760 murders and non-negligent manslaughters. Flash forward to 2011, with a larger U.S. population of over 311 million: yet, a huge reduction to 14,612. From a 1992 murder / manslaughter rate of 9.3, by 2011 it has plummeted to a rate of 4.7. Violent crime in 1992 was at a rate of 757.7. By 2011, the picture improved to 386.3.
What about murders committed with firearms, the “epidemic” you've heard about? Take a look: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8 . In 2007, firearms were used to commit murder 10,129 times. In 2011, murders used firearms to kill 8,583 times. It dropped in 2008, in 2009, in 2010, and in 2011. More guns in the hands of the typical American, more Concealed Carry Weapons laws, yet year after year after year: crime and murder goes down, dramatically, and firearms are used to commit less murders every year. You can't make this up, I'm sure not, this is straight from the FBI. Note that gun murders have dropped and that ALL RIFLES (including the idea of an assault rifle that Washington and the media is obsessed with) accounted for 323 of the 8,583 murders. Rifles were used for less than 3.8% of the murders, with the about half of them rifles that could be branded with the mythical term of “assault rifles.” Somebody is lying about gun crime, and lying about “assault rifles” and the FBI reveals it to anyone that wants to know.
Before some really crazy person tells you to go out on your balcony with a double-barrel shotgun and just empty it, blasting away with a couple of shots at no known target (itself a crime in most places) thereby revealing yourself as a target and rendering your firearm empty and unusable, we really are better off with a large capacity handgun, rifle, or shotgun for personal defense. A whole lot better off. And, you don't display or otherwise use your firearm until forced to do so, just as is demonstrated some 2.5 million times a year by the regular citizen. Yes, over 2 million times a year typical American men and women refrain from going out on the balcony with a double-barrel shotgun and blast away recklessly all the time. Is it really just too much to ask for the Vice-President to get some training, some rudimentary education, before he throws out advice that instructs people to commit a crime, and could get them killed? That's just what we don't need, courts in the United States jam-packed with thousands of Americans that were arrested for illegal discharge of a weapon with the only defense is that, “The Vice-President of the United States told me to.” Further, former Delaware deputy attorney general John Garey has said that Jill Biden could be charged with aggravated menacing, a felony, and reckless endangering in the first degree by taking her husband's advice.
While gun violence continually drops, according to the FBI, the only thing on the rise is political rhetoric and media sensationalism of what is a diminishing problem. Of course any violence is a problem, there is always room for improvement. Unless the problems of gangs, the illegal drug trade, schools, and community awareness are tackled aggressively at the local level, the source of the core problems, no great improvement should be inspected. The government can of course do something, that being a focus on more vigorous prosecution of violent crimes and higher conviction rate. It takes far more than a piece of meaningless legislation or doing skeet all the time to achieve this.
For forty to forty-five percent of Americans, guns offer very little mystery or intrigue. They are inanimate objects; simple tools. Yet, for the majority of Americans, unfamiliarity leaves them easily persuaded by a bewildering political barrage of redundant malarkey. Hot on the heels of the Heller Supreme Court decision, former co-anchor of ABC's 20/20, honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club, nineteen-time Emmy Award winner John Stossel, dispels the deceptive, pervasive gun control myths that he once held himself. All in less than five minutes.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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