Lauren Boebert of Rifle, Colorado has been a media sensation since she took former US Congressman and Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke to task for what she calls a “gun grab.” Boebert’s restaurant — the Shooters Grill — is very pro-guns and wears its convictions with pride.
Boebert reportedly told the candidate “I have four children, I am 5-foot-0, 100 pounds, I cannot really defend myself with a fist,” she said. “I want to know how you’re going to legislate that because a criminal breaks the law, so all you’re going to do is restrict law-abiding citizens, like myself.” She went on to point out that “criminals, by definition, break the law.” This last statement is both incredibly obvious and yet, profound. When spree killers shoot people, they break dozens of laws both before and during those events. There is a futility about increasing more laws on people who have absolutely no problem with breaking the law.
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The reality is, guns have been around for centuries — and for many generations the type that can be used in spree killings; but this phenomenon of mass killings were virtually non-existent before the late 1990s. What is the logic at looking at the means used for the killings (a “symptom”) rather than what has changed since the 1990s that have made these killings so common (the cause)? Of all the things that governments can look at to address this problem, additional gun laws is the least logical for several reasons. Here are just a few reasons that is the case:
- If anything, it was easier to get guns and to do mass killings before the late 1990s than it is now (because gun laws have changed since Columbine). Why is it treated as a factor at all?
- Approximately 30 to 50 percent of Americans treat additional prohibitions on guns as a “non-starter.” With a majority required for serious reform, and a history of a Second Amendment used by the courts to treat gun ownership as a sacred right, we end up expending huge amounts of time and money on something that is not likely to change, while there is limited evidence that restricting guns would do any good anyway. Furthermore, we have the most-pro-gun Supreme Court in recent history. This has “Don Quixote” chancing windmills all over it, yet the need for solving the problem of spree killings is greater now than ever.
- Spree killers want more gun laws. Sure, they have enough sense to not make such statements directly, but their history makes it clear and we find evidence of this in their manifestos. Virtually all of these killings happen at places with gun restrictions. The El Paso killer said that it only made sense to pursue locations with “low hanging fruit”. Those are areas defined as “gun-free zones”.
Instead of working on more restrictions on the symptoms, we should focus on the cause. We should take a systemic approach to the gun violence problem.
USA Daily Chronicles reached out to Boebert after taking O’Rourke to task and she told us that “No amount of legislation will change evil in a man’s heart, murder is already illegal, yet is happening daily in our country; no matter the weapon used. Laws do not stop evil!
“We the people will no longer be silent and allow our government to strip away our right to self preservation. We will defend the 2nd amendment of the constitution, and with it defend all other rights, as it is written “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”
She captures the issue well. As we continue to pursue new laws that the criminals will not abide by, we make our citizens more vulnerable. We need the focus on the cause, not the symptoms.
So, why do progressives focus on guns? It is because they are all about control. However, since it is obvious spree killers are going to continue disregarding the law, progressives are not trying to control the murderers, but one of the best lines of defense against them — armed law abiding citizens.
