A stabbing in Queens this past week. Check out the story via the New York Times. (Photo: NY Times)
(Editor’s note: This article was a submission from freelance writer S. Farver)
For all their talk of “common sense gun control,” the anti-gun community has had a mighty hard time with common sense.
Common sense, for example, might suggest that individuals are responsible for the crimes they commit with guns—not the gun manufacturer. We don’t hold Ford responsible for drunk driving deaths. It wouldn’t be fair or reasonable to hold gun manufacturers to a higher standard.
Common sense? Yes. Does the anti-2nd Amendment crowd get it? No.
Remington, they say, should be held responsible for the Newtown shooting.
Here’s another one: “Guns don’t commit crimes. People do.”
It’s hard to imagine anything more commonsensical. Since the inception of small arms some 400-plus years ago, no one has ever witnessed a gun walk out of its safe and commit a crime.
And yet, no matter how many times we try to explain this simple truth, whenever anti-gunners talk about reducing crime, they talk about restricting constitutional rights.
But here’s the thing about common sense—it has a way of proving itself to be true.
In the last several months, the NYPD has managed to confiscate an “unprecedented” number of illegal guns. According to anti-gunner common sense (fewer guns=less crime), crime should be at an all-time low… right?
Think again.
According to Fox 5 New York, the city was averaging over 10 stabbings a day in the first six weeks of the year. New Yorkers have been on edge, and the police have had trouble controlling the rash of stabbings and slashing.
In a valiant effort to put a positive spin on things, New York mayor Bill de Blasio tried to deflect attention away from the random subway stabbings.
“I’m not a criminologist,” de Blasio said, “but I can safely say that guns are being taken off the street in an unprecedented way. Some people, unfortunately, are turning to a different weapon.”
The mayor’s surprise that people are “turning to a different weapon” is sadly predictable. When politicians and pundits want to blame the tool rather than the criminal, not even the most obvious truths make a dent.
Common sense says that if someone wants to commit a crime, they’ll commit that crime whether or not they have a gun. The FBI says that more guns actually equal less crime, not more. Now, the stabbings in New York—that bastion of “common sense gun control”—prove what real common sense has been telling us all along.
It’s time for the anti-gun community to wake up and face the facts. Gun control legislation won’t reduce crime, but it will disarm responsible American citizens. No matter how much “common sense” our politicians legislate, criminals will get guns—or knives. The question is, will average Americans have the ability to defend themselves? This hasn’t been the case in New York City, and if we’re not vigilant, the entire country could follow their lead.
what many 2nd amendment advocates fail to state, along with defending the 2nd, is that once weapons are banned the remaining danger is brute force. the existing gangs of all types have that in spades. they are already organized and are ready to demand remittance from non gang public. not very many individuals could count on their neighbors to help if they were attacked by a gang. I read reports in the media of some gangs having in excess of 80,000 members. without any weapons you would be attacked with impunity if they wanted. so whenever you hear the words gun control or common sense gun control remember the 80,000 gang members and the 3 to 12 minute police response times if they’re not to busy giving parking tickets or getting donuts to even show up.
“These rights shall not be infringed upon!” When the F^%K will politicians understand what these words mean? Someday there will be an event like a war or an asteroid strike or tyranny or imagine this there is a margin call and our economy collapses completely stopping all services i.e. electricity, garbage , police & firefighters everything stops. Certainly this WILL HAPPEN someday. You can bet on it. What will you protect your family , your food , or anything of value to you with? A stick, your fists a knife? You can do that if you wish./
I will choose my AK47 with a HI CAP magazine & hollow point ammo to do that. Or if it does not happen in my lifetime then whoever I bequeath my arms to will be able to do so when this occurs./ To all the DEMS or COMMUNIST NAZI LIBERAL DOUCHEBAGS & I MEAN ALL of you , stay the FUCK away from my right to protect myself & my family you could get hurt in the process.
“New Yorkers have been on edge, and the police have had trouble controlling the rash of stabbings and slashing.”
I love it as intentional or unintentional as it may be!!!
After all this stabbings, what’re they going to do??? There’re going to introduce a bill to ban kitchen knifes from N.Y…..really!!??
It is my hope that someday, a respected journalist will make the connection(s) between gun ownership and things like women’s rights, the civil rights movement, etc and proceed to saturate their media with the message. Women owe their rights to the 2nd Amendment, so do blacks. Without private firearm ownership, none of that stuff would have had a chance. If a bully knows that you can kill them, they tend to back off. If a bully knows you are indefensible against their physical might and sheer political will, your rights are vaporized. This is demonstrated each and every time societies experience breakdown – consider the Balkands, Syria, Egypt, or Lybia as recent examples. And contrast that against Ukraine’s fight for independence. The power of small arms is the only path to the power of an individual’s defense of their god-given rights, regardless of which God gave them… gun rights = civil rights… gun rights = women’s rights… gun rights = all other rights. Without gun rights all other rights become privileges handed out by the government to the governed. You are no longer a citizen. You have become a subject to be bullied and managed into compliance by powers that be.
I buy into the whole common sense approach. It is time to give serious thought to banning pointy sticks, any hard object weighing more than 1 pound, or anything capable of causing damage to a human. Don’t forget the NY common sense idea to make sure the pointy stick cannot be operated by a 5 year old. We also need to ban pillows because I saw a movie once about a lady smothered by a pillow.
Not just predictable, it was completely foreseeable. The UK is already several steps ahead of NYC. They took guns away decades ago. Street gangs were using large knives. The UK has banned swords, axes, all fixed blade and locking blade knives, and all slipjoint knives with blades over 3″ in long. God forbid you should pull a Swiss Army Knife out of your pocket in public as it’s felonious “brandishing”. What are the UK street gangs are using now? Kitchen knives. Guess what ban is being proposed now: kitchen knives.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm
Ban those and they’ll be making home made maces and other WWI style blunt force trench weapons and they’ll have to ban baseball and cricket bats, and all 2×2 hardwood lumber.
Another “weapon” being used a lot in London is acid. The top cop there reported that its increasing in numbers of attacks because its readily available, you don’t have to show id or sign for it and its pretty damn cheap.Our legislators need to remember that criminals spend a lot of time thinking about ways to circumvent the laws to their benefit. Especially when spending time in prison with not too much else to do…and the company of lots of other criminals to barnstorm these ideas to perfection.
Let us see:
First the Guns,
Then the Bullets,
Then the Knife,
Then the Canes,
Then your LIFE!
People conveniently forget to mention that if each stabber/slasher had a gun instead of a knife the death toll would many times greater – before any armed citizen had a chance to intervene (which often goes badly due to a lack of training anyway). One-sided disingenuous arguments don’t help us to look intelligent or reasonable.
Pete maybe so the average citizen is not allowed to defend themselves with a legal carried handgun, stun guns or Tasers etc in New York City. and oh yes you can carry a firearm with a license but just try to obtain one it’s almost impossible. I live in the Philadelphia area, always carry a firearm, have been accosted and the firearm has done it’s job as always. Even if firearms are made illegal by circumventing the constitution I will always have and carry one.
You talk about disingenuous arguments – but you’re making disingenuous – outright false – statements yourself.
Armed citizen intervention “often goes badly”??? really? Proof? Or do you mean badly for the criminals?
Reality is, armed citizens do often intervene – and just as often stop crimes and prevent injury to intended victims… More often than not, without even firing a shot. (and that’s per FBI statistics)
A small minority of people will continually argue against a person’s right to self-defense, as you’re now doing, though conveniently forget to mention their personal disagreement with this God given right in addition to a Constitutional right to do so. It’s easy to see you’ve never been face to face with a thug with a gun, or a knife, threatening you and your family. You’re suggesting that deadly confrontations such as this, “[which] often goes badly due to a lack of training anyway,” makes no sense at all, is a ridiculous deflection of the realities of such dangerous happenstance, and cannot be backed up with anything other than personal quotes from notorious gun-grabbers such as Michael Bloomberg and others of his ilk. You’d do much better to keep your silly indefensible arguments to yourself because there’s nothing you can say here that we haven’t heard already and none of it makes good sense anyway!
Here’s some food for thought for all you misguided folks who believe that “gun-grabbing” is the “common sense” answer to some of our problems with violent crime in this country:
In 2009, twelve years after the Brit’s passed the Firearms Act of 1997, the Daily Mail Online reported that Britain was “the most violent country in Europe.” They also reported that Britain’s home figures showed “the UK [had] a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and South Africa.” By the way, Canada came in at number 6! So much for all you gun-grabbers out there. Try as they may the gun-grabbers here in our country, a misguided minority of ignorant folks who don’t have the faintest idea as to what they would do if they and their families were confronted with an armed thug[s] and no defensive weapons at hand.
And you conveniently fail to consider that SOMEONE did stop the knife OR firearm user or the slaughter would have continued until the killer plain wore themselves out (which, depending on the physical shape they were in would also alter the number of casualties.
Stick with the FACTS offered and forget the “what ifs” and “if only” and other inventions.
Please read More Guns, Less Crime by John R. Lott Jr. If you still feel,that way after reading it, we can talk.
Please read More Guns, Less Crime by John R. Lott Jr. Let me know if you still feel the same way after reading it. I agree, just buying a gun with zero training and no ongoing training makes you a liability. But everyday armed citizens stop crime and it doesn’t make the news. I have had a CCW permit since 2005. Moved to NY last August (2017). Still waiting for my petition to the State for the privilege of owning a handgun to be approved… My guns are in a safe in Oklahoma right now. How is disarming me right?
Pete you are a Douchebag.
I’m sure in their infinite wisdom, or the lack thereof, de blasio and cuomo will of course be registering and then banning fireplace “pokers,” baseball bats, knives, rocks, and other sorts of blunt objects that kill people. That would certainly be the “common sense approach,” wouldn’t it? Seems like I’ve heard dumBO mention those very words also. Another idiot! Where do we find these brain surgeons? You just can’t make this stuff up. Dr. Ben Carson, a real brain surgeon, doesn’t feel this way. I believe politicians suddenly forget who they are and why they were put in the lofty positions they hold. YUP! JUST CALL IT POWER AND MONEY, and then “Common Sense” leaves their bodies – never to return.
Don’t forget, ban automobiles. They kill 40 to 50,000 each year.
Taxis are already required to have a 1 million dollar “badge”… 1 step closer to a “tax-stamp” for each vehicle..
When they get to banning all Hammers, how do they expect homes to be built? Should we all then live in mud huts again and remove 100,000 years of human development? Australia did their Gun-Grab and what happened? The crimes against the elderly increased 600% in a six month period, because the criminals NEVER gave up their guns! Any Gun-Grab will always make the law-abiding citizens a target for criminals – ALWAYS!
Whenever legislators speak of “common sense” laws, they speak about their personal “feelings” and not reality. Any attempt to restrict our 2nd Amendment Rights to keep and bear arms is an act of treason against “We the People!”
An Armed Citizen is a Free Citizen. Disarm them and they become “Subjects of Governmental Authority,” slaves to be exact!
Since these politicians have protection details they have no idea of the threats around them, what we should outlaw is the right of the rich to secure armed protection. This way they’re exposed to the same level of threat as the rest of us, remove the Secret Service, Pinkerton, police protection (which by the way takes 20-30 minutes to arrive for normal citizens) and private security. Then watch how fast these liberals want or demand to own a gun. Liberalism is a mental disease
Taking guns away from the People, would be an advantage for criminals. Just off the top of my head, here are a few groups of People, that would suffer the most, if our Second Amendment was butchered. The Elderly, Women, the Handicapped, folks that aren’t physically strong, or that don’t practice knife fighting on a daily basis (duh) those that are up against numerous attackers, such as a (OH, I DON’T KNOW, PERHAPS A GANG, DUH, AGAIN!) They dubbed the firearm “The Great Equalizer” for a reason. Their purpose being, that the weakest among us would have a fighting chance, when it actually came down to defending one’s own life, their Family’s and maybe even an innocent Person in need of a helping hand, when and if their life’s in mortal danger. I also wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a vile individual that was in the act of sexually assaulting a child, woman and NOWADAYS, possibly even a man. Sick World we’Re living in and I’ll be dammed if the Feds are going to stand between myself and the safety of my Family, not to mention the other vaunerable possible VICTIMS I’ve listed. The People in States that have allowed the Federal Government to limit their Second Amendment in ANYWAY should be ashamed of themselves. Just because you may happen to be a young, strong, scraper and aren’t worried about being overtaken ( Which, you can easily be victimized, no matter how much of a bad ass you think you are, stop and think about the People that DESERVE the RIGHT, to defend themselves against opportunistic Prowlers, that live to bully and take advantage of others. I know this is long, so I’ll wrap it up. The two most likely Foreign invasion points, the Atlantic (East Coast) and the Pacific (West Coast) have some of the most stringent gun laws in the Nation. I’m thinking New York has 7-rnd, magazine limit and California a 15 rnd, limit. These ports are the most vaunerable by Sea invasion, yet the Citizens are the least we’ll armed. The Enemy could fill tankers and cargo ships up w/ 10’s of Thousands of Enemy Troops and walah, we’ve just become ripe for the picking. PLEASE WAKE UP AMERICA AND START USING THAT THING THAT IS LOCATED IN THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE BRAIN, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!
If you watched the, “mass stabbing” (there’s a phrase the liberal media hasn’t adopted) in Israel, yesterday, then ask these so called, “common sense” gun controllers how they would protect themselves/loved one against that.
Common Sense Quiz
Ask them to put their children in place of these stabbing victims, then ask, how would you protect them?
A. Pass laws to restrict people from purchasing or owning knives.
B. Call a police officer when I see the stabbings start.
C. Train myself and others in the defensive use of firearms, so I can protect myself and others.
Oh, I forgot, “D.”
D. Make people register their knives, and make a big list of knife owners.
Makes sense, don’t it? Wouldn’t that make you feel safer?
It’s not about safety. It’s about having a monopoly of force. First they registered our guns; then they confiscated or banned any rifle or shotgun that can hold more than 5 rounds – any action any caliber. Then Cuomo passes the SAFE Act: Even if you’re a retired cop, if you ever had a doctor prescribe you sleeping pills a SWAT team will get those medical records and take your guns away.
None of this of course disarms the criminals. They don’t register; they get guns off the blackmarket or stab you. Can’t wait to move from this shithole. It’s the armpit of the country.
Oh, and you forgot E. Make Suicide Bombers register their weapon of choice…C-4.
What would be remarkable if these stories made it to the lame-stream media, as then someone might see the truth, instead of what the NYT and Blloberg wants them to see.
Bloomboob and Cuomo won’t go anywhere without THEIR guns: They both have a security detail that will ventilate you if reach for a toothpick. That’s the only reason they can say they don’t carry one.
Yes, the hypocrisy stinks to the high Heavens. We, that have a brain, know that gun control is to be used for one thing and one thing only, CONTROL. I know it’s been said so much that it’s almost redundant, but I’m not really in the mood to become a Slave to the NWO. Everyone keeps saying …” Oh, but this is 2016.” In other words, our advanced civility has lifted us above any kind of World take over, by the World’s Elite. When in all actuality, the Elite think that we are ignorant Minion, now more than ever and rightly so, w/ Leftist Commies voting for the like of Obama, Billary and Sanders. I can GUARANTEE one thing…the desire for certain individuals to rule the World, w/ an iron fist, will NEVER change. It will ALWAYS be a dream of theirs and I say ‘theirs’ because they’ve finally figured out that not just one man, from one Nation can accomplish this one his/her own. They’ve figured out, if they’re going to be the Masters, they’re going to have to share in the Glory. This is where organizations like, United Nations, World Health Organization and the NWO, come into play. I just named a few. They have different names, but are still ONE and are working together, to see their dream, OUR NIGHTMARE come into fruition. DO EVERYTHING HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO FIGHT THESE BASTARDS! You can start by keeping your State in tact, as far as riding the local/State politicians to keep the law of the land (THE CONSTITUTION) in tact and to breath life back into it, making it stronger than ever. GOD HELP US!!!
Let’s make their security detail become Barney Fifes, only allowed 1 bullet each. (Gee, date myself much?) Their security details are not held to the restricted size of magazines either.