Bob Livingston: They'll grab the guns for total control

万得福

A new and dangerous push to outlaw guns has begun with the ballot initiatives in Maine, Nevada and Washington. And none other than billionaire corporatist and elitist gun-grabber-in-chief Michael Bloomberg is pouring money into those states to start the process of taking away your guns.

Gun control advocates want to make sure you think of the names Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora and Virginia Tech as "scrolled in blood across the national consciousness."

The psychopaths in the cesspool of Washington, D.C., who want to grab your guns realize there is no better time to strike than while Americans are emotionally drained from the visions of grieving parents and the sweet smiles of the dead children.

Yet while such horrific tragedies generate big headlines and dominant the TV screens for a short time, rampage mass murders, for all the media attention they grab, are actually quite rare. A 2013 Congressional Research Service found that over the previous 30 years public mass shootings in America claimed 547 lives. That works out to about 18 deaths per year — too many, certainly, but amounting to less than two-tenths of 1 percent (0.0016 percent) of the total annual gun violence.

In fact, speaking of murders, in 2013, the latest year we have statistics for, the FBI reports that rifles — that includes those "scary" assault weapons that gun grabbers are constantly trying to ban — were used to commit 322 murders.

Hands and feet were used in 687 murders.

A ban on hands and feet would be far more effective in reducing murders than would banning assault weapons.

Why the gun hysteria?

Actual statistics on gun deaths in America are hard to pin down because there is no central source or common methodology for tracking them. Also, the numbers published by various sources sometimes tend to be skewed (or outright manipulated) to reflect the point of view of the source regarding guns.

Estimates of the number of guns in private hands (both legally and illegally) in the U.S. range from 270 million to 310 million, or a rate of about one firearm for every American. About one-third to one-half of American households report having at least one firearm on the premises. In a comparison of the rate of firearm ownership (number of firearms per 100 population) in 178 countries, the United States ranks No. 1.

There are roughly 32,000 gun deaths per year in the United States. Of these, about 60 percent are suicides and 3 percent are accidents. Just over 11,000 of the deaths are classified as homicides. About two-thirds (67 percent) of all homicides in the country are committed using guns.

The triggers for gun violence outside of the rampage incidents are varied. Aside from calculated cold-blooded murders, many homicides stem from verbal confrontations that escalate out of control — domestic violence, neighborhood feuds, road rage and the like. Not surprisingly, alcohol is often a factor.

One of the most common sources of gun violence is gang-related and/or drug-related disputes. Gun killings from turf wars between gangs and the familiar drug-deal-gone-bad incidents have become so commonplace in some cities that they rate little more than a passing mention on the nightly news.

There is no reliable national data on gang/drug-related gun deaths, but figures from a few metropolitan areas give a clue to the scope of the violence. In New Orleans, 35-55 percent of homicides (mostly gun deaths) are classified as gang-related. In Chicago, 80 percent of homicides are listed as gang-related. The Baltimore police commissioner states that 80 percent of homicides in that city are gang-related.

Gun grabbers love to make the specious claim that the U.S. has the highest murder rate in the "civilized" world. First, it is untrue. Second, if you compare the rate of murders committed by non-Hispanic whites in America (73 percent of the population), the murder rate is far lower than the European nations (which are 97 percent non-Hispanic white) that gun grabbers use for their comparison.

Yet, despite this evidence that criminals are using guns for violence and that many people are using them on themselves, the gun haters led by President Barack Obama continually fixate with tunnel vision on guns and legal gun owners as the source of the problem.

Make no mistake about it: the ultimate goal of the gun control gang is not to limit gun ownership to law-abiding citizens but to eliminate their presence entirely.

The elitist socialists fear a citizenry capable of rising in armed resistance to their Big Brother dream of dictating behavior for all Americans.

What can we do to stop the gun grabbers?

Neither candidate will protect your gun rights. Both want to deny gun rights to people in the notoriously inaccurate "no fly list." If they can strip gun rights from this group, who will be next?

We supporters of 2nd Amendment rights must not, under any circumstances, let our guard down. We must remain vigilant to repel the attempts by Obama and his horde to take away our guns or, barring that, to take away our ammunition to render our guns useless.

• You can become a member of a pro-gun organization like Gun Rights for America or the NRA.
• Learn about District of Columbia vs. Heller and your right to bear arms.
• Keep tabs on your state's gun laws with this state directory.
• Monitor lawmaker activities, not only in Congress but at your state and local levels as well. Attend the town hall meetings and speak up.
• Buy a gun, get trained in its use and practice, practice, practice. Have a spare magazine handy for situations like this one. Don't be a helpless victim.
• Support candidates who vow to stand up for gun rights.
• Participate in social media discussions on gun control in rational terms with proof from crime statistics databases like the FBI's (Read the reports and you'll see that gun violence is going down, not up).