Po Murray lives in Newtown, Connecticut. She is the cofounder of the Newtown Action Alliance, one of the gun control groups formed in the aftermath of the heinous murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School. From what I could tell, Ms. Murray is cut from the same cloth as the rest: heavy on the emotions; light on the facts.
On April 14, Ms. Murray posted “Reclaiming ‘Gun Control’: Why We Need Safety, Prevention, and Control” on Substack.
“I embraced the language many in our movement adopted,” she wrote. I spoke about “gun safety” and “gun violence prevention” because we were told these terms would resonate more broadly, reduce polarization, and help us reach people who might otherwise shut down when they heard ‘gun control.’”
She has come to a new conclusion: Strip away the euphemisms; call it what it is.
Good idea! Now let’s apply the same thinking to assault weapons, large capacity magazines, and gun violence.
Ms. Murray continues: “I no longer believe this is a choice between one set of words or another. I believe we need all of them, and we need to use them more intentionally.
“At the same time, we need to be clear about what this work is ultimately about. It is about freedom. Not abstract freedom, but the freedom to live our daily lives without fear. The freedom to send our children to school, to gather in our communities, to worship, to work, and to simply exist without the constant threat of gun violence.”
There is no such thing as freedom to live our lives without fear. There is also no right to live “without the constant threat of ‘gun violence.’”
No government or society on earth could make such promises. Life is not sanitized for our protection.
It is, however, quite possible to live a long and productive life without the “constant threat of gun violence.” Simply ignore the blow-up bogeymen and papier-mâché tigers created by gun control fans.
Better, do some independent research. It’s like firing a howitzer into a house of cards.
Washington state got on the gun control bandwagon about 12 years ago and has been going gangbusters ever since.
In 2015, Seattle’s murder rate was 3.49 per 100,000 population. In 2020, it had risen to 7.16 per 100,000 population, more than twice the 2015 rate. After about 2021, homicide rates began falling. Seattle’s rate rose seven percent.
No fudging here: Population courts were verified with the U.S. Census Bureau; offense counts were sourced from state statistics and individual law enforcement agencies. Our data is spin-free.
By all the data, gun control does not work. At best, it’s irrelevant; at worst, it’s a joke.
Over the years, I have compared the gun-grabbers’ remedies to the snake oil nostrums hawked by fast-talking hucksters in the Old West traveling medicine shows. How else would you describe measures that ignore virtually every factor impacting this so-called ‘epidemic’ or can’t be enforced because critical information is missing, and it’s a violation of federal law to gather it?
A point to consider: In 2016, voters in Nevada barely passed a referendum in favor of universal background checks. Only one county in Nevada passed the referendum, but that one county was Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
Everytown for Gun Safety volunteered to assist Nevada legislators in drafting a bill. It eventually passed. But Everytown screwed up: they didn’t check to see who processed the background checks and specified running all inquiries through the FBI’s NICS system.
Unfortunately for the ban fans, the state of Nevada had set up its processing when the background check system was first being implemented. The state’s choice was the Nevada Department of Public Safety.
The FBI refused to take over processing, so the state had to wait two years for the next legislative session to set things right.
Did the gun control zealots take their lumps and retire to consider their error? Nope: they sued the governor and state attorney general because they refused to implement a law that could literally not be enforced.
As Po Murray said, this is all about freedom. Just not the freedom she envisions.
About Bill Cawthon
Bill Cawthon first became a gun owner 55 years ago. He has been an active advocate for Americans’ civil liberties for more than a decade. He is the information director for the Second Amendment Society of Texas.
