Presidential Firearms

I’ll begin by admitting that like many Americans I own a few firearms. I’m not a hunter, but I enjoy target shooting thanks to a summer spent at Camp Adahi in Union, ME, back in 1954. It was there, as a 10-year-old, I first fired a gun. Several times a week we’d go to the outdoor firing range and shoot at targets with .22 rifles. I really enjoyed it, and also learned how to use firearms safely and responsibly. 

The lessons learned at Camp Adahi have served me well over the years. I realize, too, the vast majority of those who own firearms have learned these same lessons. They are law-abiding citizens who simply exercise their rights as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights. It’s also important to realize the 2nd Amendment wasn’t written to serve hunters and target shooters. The Founders had just fought and won a war of independence against the most powerful nation on earth. And they won because the people were armed and could fight against the army of a despotic ruler who chose tyranny over freedom. If we can learn one thing from history, it’s that tyrants always try first to disarm the people…something to remember.

Anyway, our current President speaks often of firearms, but sadly too much of what he says about them is not true. Some of these statements might result from simple ignorance since he seems to know little about guns. But other comments address information readily available, often from his own administration, and leads us to question his motives. Here are a few examples:

• In a recent speech in Wilkes-Barre, PA, the president claimed, “Back in 1994, I took on the NRA and passed the ‘assault weapons’ ban. For ten years, mass shootings we’re down.” He then added, “Republicans let that ban expire, and what happened? Mass shootings tripled.” But both statements are incorrect. In 2004 the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) of the Department of Justice concluded that no reduction in crime could be attributed to the assault weapons ban. Indeed, the NIJ report stated, “The ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” As for the tripling of mass shootings, here's the data. There were 31 mass shootings during the decade before the ban and 31 during the decade the ban was active. During the 10 years after it expired there were 47. Yes, there was in increase, but nowhere near a tripling. The increase has been attributed not only to population growth but, sadly, also to a growing lack of respect for both the law and traditional moral standards. 
• In the same speech President Biden also stated that “There is a mass shooting every single day in this country.” Given that the definition of a mass shooting comes from his own Department of Justice, this claim was very strange and very wrong. In truth, we experienced a total of 129 mass shootings during the 40 years between 1982 and 2022. So far this year we've had 7, and there certainly haven't been 365 during the past 12 months.  
• Speaking in Wilkes-Barre must have an odd effect on our president. He also claimed that “The bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet out of any other gun.” Oh, boy, I simply can’t imagine where he got this little gem that is so wrong it’s laughable. Depending on the ammunition and the particular A-15, the muzzle velocity might be as high as 3,000 feet per second, about the same as a rifle firing .30-06 ammunition. But, believe me, there are commercial rifles with muzzle velocities well above this, even above 4,000 fps. To claim an AR-15's muzzle velocity is five times that of any other gun is just absurd.
• The president also said, “The AR-15 just rips the body apart.” This, too, is absurd. The ammo used determines its effects and most AR ammo penetrates rather than expands, and even expandable hollow points don't “rip the body apart.”
• He said something similar when discussing 9mm ammunition, stating that a 9mm bullet will “blow the lung out of a body” — another absurdity. No 9mm bullet will blow the lung or any other major organ out of a body. But perhaps his confusion stems from another comment he made when he labeled 9mm firearms among “high-caliber weapons.” This also is hard to understand. A 9mm round is generally a pistol round and is certainly not among the largest pistol calibers. Yes, it's larger than a .22 but smaller than a .38, or a 10mm, or a .45. And virtually every rifle round would be considered more powerful than a 9mm.

I think that’s enough, but I find myself wondering why he would say these things. The only answer I can come up with is that he’s likely speaking to true believers, those on his side anyway. And like most of those who actively support “gun control” rather than “crime control,” they know very little about firearms. The president, then, can say whatever he likes and still be believed. The mainstream media, also avid gun-control supporters, could fact-check the president, but exposing his errors would work against their narrative, so why bother? 

Them Killer Guns

"Civil wars happen when the victimized are armed. Genocide happens when they are not." -- A. E. Samaan

OK, in the spirit of full transparency, I'm a deacon and I also own a few firearms. Nothing weird about that. I know many other brother deacons who enjoy shooting. As for me, I used to engage in occasional target shooting, but really don't have the time now. So, in truth, I clean my firearms every so often, just to keep them operable, but really haven't used them very much in recent years. And like virtually all legal firearm owners, I obey the laws, even unjust, un-Constitutional laws. This, of course, separates law-abiding owners of firearms from gun-toting criminals who, as you might expect, don't really pay attention to laws. 

A while ago, a parishioner, having heard that I owned some firearms, suggested that, "as a man of God, it's immoral for you to own guns." When I suggested that automobiles, knives, baseball bats, and fists also killed a bunch of people every year, some more than guns, he said, "That's different." When I asked why it was different, he had no answer. "It's just not the same," he said. (By the way, every year knives kill far more people than rifles.)

Of course, it's not different. Cars and knives and firearms are simply tools, and there's certainly nothing immoral about owning any or all of them. Sadly, though, this man was the victim of an intentional misinformation campaign that has apparently achieved some of its hoped-for goals. When Americans were polled recently and asked to guess the leading cause of gun-related deaths, the results were interesting. Check it out:

I'll spell out the results since the captions on the graph are rather small. Their guesses:

• 4% - Don't know
• 25% - Mass Shooting
• 33% - Non-Mass Homicide
• 23% - Suicide
• 14% - Unintentional

As you can see from the above, most Americans seem to believe homicides and mass shootings are the leading causes of gun-related deaths, with suicides and unintentional (presumably accidental) coming in third and fourth. 

Now let's look at the actual data from the Center for Disease Control:

•  0.3% - Mass Shooting
• 36.8% - Non-Mass Homicide
• 60.8% - Suicide
• 0.9% - Undetermined
• 1.2% - Unintentional

The CDC, a government agency, keeps track of all causes of death, and their latest data on gun-related deaths (from 2017)  show how misinformed most folks are. I can only assume their ignorance results from a media and uninformed politicians that feed them grossly inaccurate information on firearms. 

Note that the actual leading cause of gun-related deaths -- over 60% -- is suicide. But more striking is the figure for mass shootings: less than 1% as opposed to the 25% result from the poll. 

To read more on the results of this poll, including a demographic breakdown of those participating, click here: Washington Free Beacon.

I've also embedded the following video of Amy Swearer, a legal analyst at the Heritage Foundation. By the way, her statistics are absolutely correct...I checked.

Read what Teddy Roosevelt said over 100 years ago:

"The great body of our citizens shoot less as time goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world...The first step -- in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come -- is to teach men to shoot."

Teddy Roosevelt understood that the 2nd Amendment wasn't designed to protect hunters or target shooters, but to protect the people from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Interestiingly, in 1962 I graduated from a Catholic high school in New York's Westchester County. Our school had a rifle team and a indoor rifle range. I suspect that school no longer has either. Perhaps the range has been replaced with a safe room where students can escape from those ever present microaggressions.

Living Among the Breakage

There is no end, but addition: the trailing

consequence of further days and hours,

While emotion takes to itself the emotionless

years of living among the breakage

Of what was believed in as the most reliable--

And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

 -- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: The Dry Salvages

We certainly seem to be "living among the breakage" these days as our "most reliable" values, all that we the people have held dear for centuries, are considered by many "fittest for renunciation." 

Is there anything about this country the score of presidential wannabes believes to be worthwhile? Anything that does not merit condemnation? Do they truly despise this nation, its founders, and its Constitution? Do they believe our flag is a symbol of oppression? Listening to them one would think so.

They all openly despised the July Fourth celebration of the birth of our nation as a militaristic, Trump-centered fiasco that would draw no one. Of course they were wrong, completely wrong. Huge crowds joined the celebration despite the weather. The president spoke eloquently not about himself but about the greatness of our nation. And the presence of our military, from tanks to Blue Angels, thrilled the crowd. It was a wonderful day, a fitting birthday party for the USA.

Some among the 20 yearn for a socialist America. They call themselves "democratic socialists," an obvious oxymoronic title. Yes, they all scream, "Power to the people," but really mean, "Power to the state." That's what it's all about. It's all about power. Just count the ways...

Abortion. The 20 hopefuls all support abortion on demand up to, and even after, the moment of birth. They like to call abortion "reproductive health" or "women's health" but it really has little to do with reproduction or women. It has everything to do with a total lack of respect for human life. Despite their public religiosity, politicians and others who support abortion are essentially atheists, for how can anyone who believes in a loving God approve of the premeditated murder of the most innocent of human beings? Once again, it's all about power. So focused on the attainment of worldly power, they overlook the omnipotence of God.

In the Nicene Creed we praise the Holy Spirit as "the Lord and giver of life." Is abortion, then, anything less than a sin against the Holy Spirit? And so many sins...In our country alone we have murdered more than 50 million unborn babies since the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Abortion is surely the work of Satan, but his love of death has blinded him to one beautiful thing. The unborn innocents are now with God interceding for our broken, sinful world and for those who choose and perform abortions. Prayer will always defeat Satan.

Gun Control. Regardless of your feelings about firearms, all Americans should support the 2nd Amendment which has nothing to do with hunting or target shooting, and everything to do with maintaining our sovereignty as a free people. The 20 hopefuls support for radical gun control is movitated less by concern over firearm deaths than by power.

An unarmed people are a controlled people (e.g. Venezuela and Tiananmen Square), and can be handled fairly easily by an armed military and police force. But a people with arms? That's a civil war, and wars can be lost. People control, therefore, demands gun control. And gun control really means gun elimination.

Healthcare. The hopefuls want "single payer" healthcare -- that is, healthcare run completely by the government -- because it gives the state ultimate power, the power over life and death. The selective wielding of that power can go a long way toward limiting any real opposition. Remember the "psychiatric hospitals" of the old Soviet Union? Such convenient places to provide "healthcare" to those pesky dissidents.

Open Borders. The hopefuls want open borders because, ultimately, they dream of a world government led by "smart people" like themselves. This borderless world would be free of all those national, cultural, religious, and racial "artificialities" that separate us. It would be the kind of world dreamed of by the unelected eurocrats in Brussels who by uniting Europe are destroying it. Open borders destroy national sovereignty, alter the culture of a society dramatically and permanently, impoverish the people, and solidify the long-term political power of the elitists.

Taxes. The hopefuls need higher and higher taxes because socialism costs; it costs a lot. Medicare for all requires trillions in new taxes. Providing free healthcare to all illegals will cost additional trillions. Paying for everybody's college education means more trillions. And giving every adult $1,000 per month...yep, trillions. This all demands that the state confiscate the people's earnings, then disburse it in ways that best preserve the state's power. 

There's a subtle gnostic side of socialism. Those in power are convinced they are the elect, the ones who know what the rest of us don't. "We can spend your money far better than you," they tell us. "Trust us." Uh-huh. Margaret Thatcher famously defined socialism's long-term economic failure when she remarked: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." By then. of course, everyone is already enslaved by the state and it's often too late to change without outside help.

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If our presidential hopefuls are driven by a socialist, far-left ideology, I suppose their hatred for all things American makes sense. We can only assume, then, that this is what motivates them. The only other possible explanations are ignorance, gross stupidity, or political expedience. But whatever the cause, whether they have knowingly wrapped themselves in the mantle of Marxist ideology, are merely burdened by ignorance or stupidity, or are unable to speak the truth, I can't see how one of them can win the presidency in 2020. I can't believe American voters will abdicate their sovereignty and turn it over to these elitists and their bureaucratic toadies. I can't believe they would discard the political system that gives them the opportunity to make such a choice.

I could, of course, be wrong. The ignorance of too many Americans, especially younger Americans, could lead them to reject freedom and unthinkingly blunder into the Marxist slavery that has destroyed so many during the past century. I could be wrong since most of today's recent college graduates have never taken a course in either American or world history. Most have never opened a copy of our Constitution. Most have no understanding of how the government of our republic is constituted and meant to function. Most know little or nothing of the foundation and greatness of Western Civilization. Most consider our nation's Judeo-Christian roots to be the cause of all they believe to be evil. Yes, indeed, most have been brainwashed but not educated.  

I could certainly be wrong, and if so, the American experiment of a constitutional republic, one founded on the principles of limited government and the protection of its citizens' God-given rights, is likely finished.

I believe the 2020 election will determine whether we plunge deeper into the breakage or enter a period of renewal.

Pray for our nation and for those we have elected to represent us. God hears our prayers. He always answers them in ways that accomplish His will for the world. God always has the final say.