A Utah gun-rights advocate said that recent efforts to enact gun control in the Beehive State is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
“In Utah, we have one of the highest rates of firearm ownership, very, very little restrictions on firearms, we’re a very permissive state,” Utah Shooting Sports Council Chairman Clark Aposhian told “Fox & Friends First” Monday. “Yet we have one of the lowest homicide and violent crime rates, even with a firearm, in the country, so what we’re asking for is to fix a problem that isn’t there.”
Aposhian was voicing his opposition to a variety of bills, including red flag legislation, universal background check legislation, gun storage legislation, among others.
The sportsman was asked by the “Fox & Friends First” anchors whether those bills would keep prohibited persons, like felons, from accessing firearms.
“Convicted felons can’t use weapons, we’ve already got existing laws,” Aposhian explained. “Felons can’t have firearms, people that make threats with firearms can’t own firearms and you can have them arrested [in Utah], so they’re talking about people that haven’t committed a crime and, you know, haven’t threatened anyone … yet they’re so apparently dangerous that they have to remove their rights to own a firearm without ever seeing a judge.”
When one digs into the data it becomes increasingly evident that most of the country is relatively murder free. The vast majority of homicides, as it turns out, happen in only a handful of counties, oftentimes concentrated in very small urban areas.
The Crime Prevention Research Center did the math. What it found in 2014 was 5 percent of counties nationwide (containing 47 percent of the population) account for 68 percent of murders! Another interesting finding, 54 percent of counties (with 11 percent of the population) have zero murders!
Check out the chart below for a more complete breakdown:
Back to Utah, it is as Aposhian says a state with very permissive gun laws and a relatively low homicide rate, roughly 2.2 homicides per 100,000 people or roughly 68 total homicides per year. That is roughly half the national average (5.3 per 100,000), and much lower than troubled cities like St. Louis (60.9 homicides per 100,000) or Baltimore (51 homicides per 100,000) or Detroit (38.9 homicides per 100,000).
And per the info discussed above, most of Utah’s violent crime happens in a few localized areas. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that gun control is effective, why then would lawmakers take an ax to a fundamental right, the 2A, when it makes much more sense to use a scalpel?
Policies specifically targeting those troubled areas where the vast majority of homicides occur makes the most sense. But anti-gun lawmakers aren’t limiting their gun-grabbing agenda to certain locales.
And we know why that is, of course. Because (a) gun control doesn’t work. Cities with high-crime rates typically have very restrictive gun laws that are wholly ineffective at curbing violence. And (b) because, fundamentally, gun control isn’t about reducing carnage or saving lives — it’s about disarming law-abiding citizens.
Residents of Utah hopefully understand this game that’s being played on them right now. None of those bills being proposed will do anything but set the table for incremental infringement on one’s right to keep and bear arms.
I have lived in 9 different states, visited a total of 23 states, where I live now is my home. I have lived in this state longer than any other place, including being a resident in other states at many different times. Is it by choice that I live here, it was not my choice to move here in the first place. I was a teenager when we moved here and my first few years here were not pleasant for me, but when I finally realized to make the best of what you have and be grateful for the opportunities that come your way, this place has grown on me. The whole basest of this state is hunting and fishing and it is rooted very deeply, almost every household has firearms and fishing poles in them and as a way of life that is passed down through the generations. So many have their Grandfather’s firearms, whether it’s a shotgun or deer rifle or a pistol. And these people talk about how they train their children on the safe and proper use of when and where to use a firearm.
Myself, we do not have toy guns in our house, firearms are not a toy and should not be perceived as something you can play around with and just point at anybody anytime you want. I’ve taken the kids out to target shoot and let them see the results of shooting firearms.
As far as the proposed bills, back ground check for private sales, well, to a life long friend is a different matter then selling to someone in a parking lot from a posting on the net.
Loaning your firearm to a hunting buddy out in the hills on a hunt is something different then loaning to someone who is going to take your firearm from your presents and hang on to it for a while.
Storage, teach your children that the firearm is not their toy, not to be used for you to play your games with, storage until they are old enough or reach an age in their thinking that they know the difference between right and wrong.
Red flag, I’m sorry but this thing has got to be squashed right away and forever, where is the due process.
By the way, try moving to La Verkin, UT without owning a firearm and see what happens to you.
Red Flag law s are Unconstitutional! We need a Supreme Court Statement verifying this fact. Per FBI report of 2018 released 9-3-2019 knife murders are 5x greater than rifles. In the year 2018 1525 murders USA by knifes vs 297 by rifle. Another consideration annual drug overdose deaths in USA approach 10,000 annually. Now you tell me where the focuse should be at!
There is a problem, but gun violence is a symptom, not the cause. The cause, IMHO, is general despair over the future, relationships, social development, and society in general. When some people get depressed enough, they lash out – usually using firearms – at a world that they don’t understand or are able to deal with.
It’s easy enough to find these people, they present the same general symptoms, and today’s increasingly Tribal society only makes things worse.
Guns aren’t the cause. People being stupid ass—– are one of the causative agents. Arrogant politicians who deliberately play their people like puppets are another cause. Basically, society, in general, is the causative agent.
Are we any better with our blanket refusal to work with the Gun control crowd to find a way to both reduce the actual causes of this violence? “Pulling up our skirts” and denying any credibility to the people who are honestly and mistakenly blaming firearms for society’s problems is no way to remedy the situation.
We need to work with these people, educate them, share our views with them and get them to share with us. That’s how we can start on the problem, and that’s how we can get a real remedy going. We need to work together, not be at each other’s throats to deal with the situation or it will only get worse – for all of us.
***Are we any better with our blanket refusal to work with the Gun control crowd
The “gun control” crowd have one aim, and that is to totally disarm American citizens and render them helpless against the dictates of a socialist government. Their leadership has stated as much. ANY “negotiation” is incremental surrender.
We have the technology to geo-locate all the high crimes areas in the United States down to the actual city blocks. This doesn’t just include murder, but all crime, major and minor that is reported or results in arrests. Its not rocket science here.
What seems to be “Rocket Science” is getting all law enforcement to actually ACT to proactively police these areas with Stop and frisk, informants, temporary police stations, 100% enforcement of all laws which results in clearing outstanding warrants, seizing drugs and solving crime with DNA tests, etc. Part of this has to be community involvement, but also a breaking of the tolerance and acceptance of these criminals as part of the community and it may require targeted funds to take care of those who lose the support of the law breakers, with welfare payments, housing assistance, relocation to better neighborhoods, etc.
Nobody wants to live in a dangerous “S-hole” place.
It doesn’t matter white black Hispanic these red flag laws. And these laws these Democrats are coming up with are unconstitutional. We have the right And god-given, right? to bear arms. That’s the law of the land. That’s the Constitution. And you law enforcement remembered you swore to obey the Constitution Of the United States, which is the law
Of the land
It is common knowledge that the gun violence problem in this country is narrowly concentrated in the black and to a lesser extent Hispanic communities. Most of the black and Hispanic men committing gun crime are in gangs and using illegally obtained firearms, generally handguns rather than the popular target of gun-grabbers like the AR-15. Utah is around 86% white and 1% black, and that explains why Utah is relatively murder-free.