Firearms Abusers? Motor Vehicle Abusers? Bombers?

Firearms Abusers? Motor Vehicle Abusers? Bombers?

Opinion about the source of violence among us, and the disproportionate governmental focus on firearms, rather than on evil.

By Craig M. Szwed 

I was a sophomore in high school when U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated (November 1963). I was shocked by the manner of his death. Since then, we have all heard many stories of assassinations (his brother Bobby, Martin Luther King, Jr, Eldridge Cleaver, and many other public shootings of famous and not so famous souls), as well as many other violent, firearms-related criminal activities. Public shootings, gun control, and the Constitution are all hotly debated topics in our nation, now. The irony is that
arguments surrounding this topic are vigorously debated to the virtual exclusion of even modest debates about the totality of other violent crimes, even though firearms-related violent crimes account for only about ¼ of all violent crimes in our nation. Why is there no proportional and equally energetic cry against all that other violent crime? It is bitterly ironic that the constitutionally guaranteed Rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms (according to the Constitutions of our States and Nation) are violently attacked and persecuted by the very people, institutions, or organizations that are sworn to uphold our Constitutions, and that those same officials or agencies also fail miserably at dealing with criminals who perpetrate violence upon our citizens and society.

Our political leaders and other objectors, who are against firearms, are exceedingly more zealous about firearms-related matters than they are about more deadly issues like motor vehicle abuses and violations that cause far more deaths and injuries than firearms do. For some reason, our state and national governments turn disproportionately blind eyes toward the deaths and violence perpetrated by abusive, neglectful, incompetent, or impaired drivers, as opposed to the attention that government pays to persecuting gun-owners or attempting to legislate or executively order firearms into oblivion.

There is a great discrepancy between the perceptions, legislation, and controls relating to firearms and motor vehicles, yet deaths and injuries relating to motor vehicles are far higher than those related to firearms. Don't believe it? Check the FBI and Center for Disease Control stats and almanacs for the past 20-30 years. Look up the top 10-20 causes of death in this country. Speaking of comparing statistics, also compare those numbers against how many babies are killed via abortions, every year. All violent crime in our nation pales compared to the number of children we allow to be killed by abortions. Strangely, our government is willing to let us kill our kids before our babies are born, but we can't have the guns we want or like. This author posits that any leaders or groups that undermine or violate our State and Federal Constitutions are the real radicals and ministers of death in this Nation. Test them by our Constitutions.

Returning to the motor vehicle example, is it possible that we all depend so much on our vehicles that the government is afraid that citizens would openly rebel if the government imposed firearms-like restrictions on our sales, ownership, or use of motor vehicles? Why are the anti-gun public, anti-gun media, and anti-gun government officials so willing to blame our firearms/tools for the abuses that are perpetrated by only a minute number of violent criminals, who live contrary to the constitutional ways chosen by millions of peaceful, legitimate, law-abiding, firearms-owning citizens in our States and Nation? Millions of firearms owners in our States and Nation are responsible citizens who have ZERO interest in perpetrating or imitating the vile anti-social actions of a scant few troubled or evil-minded individuals? But, officials, organizations, or governments that zealously attack the constitutional Rights of gun-owners seem unwilling to use their anti-gun tactics against motor vehicles and motor vehicle violators, despite the latter perpetrators generating a higher number of injuries and deaths. Why does that huge discrepancy exist in the way that anti-gun agents view and treat our constitutional gun related Rights vs. the way they treat motor vehicle abuses and abusers? Why do they not fear and blame motor vehicles in the same way that they fear and blame guns?

This author believes that part of the answer is rooted in the premise that our governments, and far too many citizens, have forsaken God and His ways, including the way that people assess responsibility for and consequences of personal actions. If a person makes bad choices about how to eat food, and then chokes to death, isn't it the fault of the eater, not the food? Or, if someone puts poison in food and serves it to another person (who then dies from eating that poisoned food), isn't that resulting death the fault of the perpetrator who made that evil decision to poison and kill someone, rather than the fault of the poison or the food? Whether a person wields poison, a motor vehicle, or a firearm to harm someone, it is NOT the fault of the instrument/tool/weapon, but the death or injury is the result of the choice and responsibility of the PERSON wielding what he/she chose as a means to do harm. To push the common sense of the argument to its extreme, if a millions or billions of people eat bananas, are nourished, and have no adverse reactions, yet one person in a million or a billion dies from overeating bananas, or force-feeds someone to death, using bananas, IS IT the fault of the bananas that someone died? Reason says, "No! Not the bananas.", but rather that the user-perpetrator is at fault.

Although firearms related injuries or deaths, including violent crimes, are neither pleasant nor desirable, it is important to remember that the proportion of improperly used arms and ammunitions are miniscule when compared to the millions of various types and quantities of arms and ammunitions bought, sold, and owned by law-abiding citizens. It is NOT a legitimate nor moral cause to persecute those who exercise personal discipline and control their arms and ammunition, as well as control their own thoughts and desires. Whereas, it IS a moral and constitutional imperative for citizens, society, and government to respectively control and execute righteous, constitutional judgment against all who seek to destroy society, our Constitutions, and our constitutional Rights.

When people blame tooling, guns, cars, or poison for injury and death, they are not using godly wisdom, nor even common sense, but rather foolishly following popular fears or ignorance. Following such fear and ignorance leads to a dark view, that holds no person ultimately responsible for her/his own actions, especially if they claim that the tool/s are at fault. Today, perpetrators are said to be sick, not guilty. Perpetrators are said to be victims of their history, not willing participants in their own choices and actions. Connecticut, now, officially decries capitol punishment, yet pampers violent criminals, so that the original victims of violent crimes are now doubly victimized by the criminals and by the State: the real victims have to pay taxes to support their violent attackers in prison. That is evil. The source and followers of darkness infest and prey upon our towns, our states, and our nation. Evil feeds on ignorance, fear, and doubt; feeds on the lack of good moral actions, and evil thrives where secularism rejects the notion that we are all equally accountable to God and His Law. Without Supreme accountability we all eventually wander off to do our own thing (to one degree or another), and then, when immorality, violence, greed, selfishness, or other sin erupts, we strangely wonder how, or why, we have run afoul of one another; wonder why our sense of moral unity has broken down. We threw away the Standard and the Standard Bearer. That's why.

The tragedies of the Newtown and other ghastly shootings is eclipsed by the fear and ignorance with which the anti-gun movement, anti-gun media, and anti-gun officials of government responded to those murders and woundings. All those vile and violent actions were perpetrated by people who should never have been using firearms. Period. This author holds that public ignorance and fear, the anti-gun movement, the media, and  unconstitutionally-minded government officials are all responsible for trying to dupe the survivors and public into thinking that morality and sanity can be legislated. By contrast, immoral and evil people, though paying lip-service to law, will NOT abide by good social principles or good laws. Assassinations, the Newtown murders, and other similar shootings, have taken place in spite of all the existing laws that have told people to act nicely toward each other AND to not murder each other, for millenia. Furthermore, such violent incidents continue to take place irrespective of increasing numbers of anti-violence laws in this and other nations. Period. THAT disdain for Law and lawful behavior shows us that evil choices, sin, lawlessness, or insanity are, by definition, the motivating factors for violent crime. Those vile things, and their perpetrators, have no respect for any law, for they are their own false gods, that worship self above all things. Evil knows what it wants, and it doesn't care how it gets it.

If the reader doubts the above premise, then the author suggests an in-depth study of news items from the past several years. Even after the Newtown shootings, after the great furor and flurry of public and governmental sentiment and legalistic actions, there have been other similar crimes that were motivated by evil. Guns and bombs did not jump up and go kill people. People got ideas, acted on them, picked up various instruments, weaponized them, and terrorized or killed people. Within a number of weeks after the Newtown shootings, students in schools here in Connecticut, and elsewhere, started calling in bomb threats against their own schools (just like during the 1960s). Furthermore, those terrorizing student actions were swiftly followed by the horrific Boston Marathon bombing perpetrated by two brothers. Our public mindset is all wrong, that it so quickly listens to media and governmental assurances and edicts that falsely promise to control evil by controlling a few chemicals, tools, or guns, when the real issue is "evil lurks in the heart and mind of man", to quote The Shadow; "the sin that so easily besets us", as the Bible says.

Many citizens may rightly distrust various officials or agencies of our government, but our citizens wrongly fear government IF government acts righteously. Good citizens should not need to fear government, unless the actions and officials of government become evil. The Bible says that evildoers are the ones who should fear government because God puts a sword into the hand of government to execute swift and capitol judgment against evildoers. It is sin, evil, and insanity, the weaknesses of mankind, with which people and government lead themselves and others astray. In the weeks following the Newtown massacre, despite all the anti-gun rhetoric and legal maneuvering, certain people still chose to do evil: students chose to call in bomb threats against their own communities; two brothers chose to perpetrate the evil of bombing the Boston Marathon. These latter events required NO firearms, and yet were effectively carried out. The evil choices of evil-minded souls found materials, means, and opportunity to fulfill their own evil intent. Evil is not afraid, today, because it is seldom, if ever, punished, as God says to punish it.

Plain language of the Constitution of the State of Connecticut and that of the United States of America both guarantee law-abiding citizens the Right to Keep and to Bear Arms in defense of Self and the State, with Connecticut's Constitution putting the Individual Citizen before the State.

Please support our Constitutions' language and Principles: admit, expose, confess, forsake, and work against the evils that God says are among us. Call government to task whenever it fails to uphold our Constitution's language and Principles. Promote domestic peace by upholding the Right of all citizens to arm themselves and to protect themselves, their families, their property, their State and Nation against all enemies foreign and domestic. To the degree that our citizens openly admit to God that there is evil to be battled among us, and to the degree that we are willing to let go our own evils, only then will our Nation and State be secure: one Nation, under God, indivisible in our fight against every evil that would deceive and destroy us, our States, and our Nation.