Commonsense gun laws should be based on commonsense. Simple commonsense calls to question the universal background checks, red flag laws, and other unconstitutional infringements that score well on carefully-worded polls. Because the Left’s “commonsense” gun laws, in Virginia, aren’t based on the government knowledge open to the public (See: Virginia Department of Health).
“Commonsense” gun laws are just politics. Look at what should become common knowledge across Virginia.
First fact, put “gun violence” in perspective. In a state with 8.47 million people there are about 2.48 million gun owners (29.3%). In 2018 there were 1,486 drug overdose deaths, 1,036 gun deaths, and 960 motor vehicle deaths. If unnecessary death is a public policy issue, then there should be new bills to curb car and drug deaths. But there aren’t. Those deaths don’t count. There is no political payoff in reducing other sources of sudden death for Virginians.
Suicide counted for 674 of the “gun deaths” while suicide by other means was 536. Yet, there are no commonsense anti-suicide bills, only anti-gun rights bills. It doesn’t matter if you kill yourself as long as you don’t use a gun.
Homicide by gun killed 347 Virginians in 2018. Other means were used to murder 82 Virginians. All the guns bills restricting “assault rifles” are aimed at the 4% of murders committed with rifles – or about 14 rifle deaths. What commonsense restricts, registers, criminalizes, and, ultimately, confiscates rifles among two and half million gun owners when only 14 rifles were used to kill others?
Commonsense indicates Virginia doesn’t have an assault rifle problem. There is a 14 person problem.
Shouldn’t we seek to identify a dozen or so dangerous persons instead of spending millions of dollars to try prevent millions of people from doing what they never would do – ever? If assault rifles cause gun violence, why did only 14 of them go bad?
Handguns account for 79.5% of all homicides and 79.8% of all suicides. The government statistics indicate aging white males kill themselves more than anyone else and young black males commit most murders. The variables used in the charts are the easy ones to count – handguns, race, gender, and age – only.
Commonsense questions what other variables aren’t counted? Like, prescribed and illegal drugs by type, alcohol abuse, job and marital status, mental and physical health, religion, economic standing, education, sexual abuse or crimes of “passion”, family cohesion, etc. There are no commonsense bills for any other possible factor in homicides and suicides. Just guns. And, the restrictions on hand guns don’t stop them from shooting the single shot needed for to kill oneself or another person.
There were no statistics on how many times handguns were used to stop an assault, break in, robbery, or rape.
It’s commonsense for Virginia to determine what government can and should do, if anything, to reduce the 347 homicides and 674 suicides among its eight and a half million people. In other words, the problem in our Commonwealth isn’t two and half million gun owners or their guns. The problem is the 14 people who will kill others with a rifle and the rest of the 347 murderers along with the 674 people who will kill themselves with guns.
“Commonsense” gun laws aren’t commonsense. The gun laws just focus on guns, not homicide and suicide. The problem isn’t the gun. The problem is the person who commits murder or suicide. The legislation in the General Assembly will not stop a single death or injury.
Virginians, please ask the confused, or cowardly as the case may be, Republicans throughout Virginia’s governments to connect the dots from their personal favorite infringing restriction to show how it stops a single homicide or suicide. Ask them to give the empirical evidence. Ask them what other bills they propose to prevent homicides and suicides.
If elected R officials don’t return to real commonsense and recant all support for virtue signaling anti-gun rights legislation, then replace them in the primaries. Replace the minions of the Left, the anti-intellectual and anti-commonsense Democrats, in every election wherever you can.
Don’t let truly stupid and political pass for “commonsense” in the Commonwealth of Virginia
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The only common sense gun law is the one enshrined in the Bill of Rights. All the rest have no basis in reality, just utterances for all those people who react with emotions, rather than reason.
Politicians love to play to emotions. It gives them what they want.