For the Children: The Emotional Marketing of Gun Control

In his fascist masterwork Mein Kamph Adolph Hitler wrote “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”  In the wake of every mass shooting egregious curtailment of personal liberty is proposed in the name of public safety and for the children.  Thus, the left leverages the emotional rhetoric of fascism while simultaneously trying to paint all who oppose their collectivist world view as fascist.  Oh, the irony.

There are two fallacies inherent in the argument for gun control to save children: First, as is clearly obvious, “gun violence” is at its peak in the locales with the most stringent gun control.  Look no further than Chicago or Baltimore.  Criminalizing guns ensures that criminals alone have guns and law abiding citizens are left defenseless.  If you think that any law passed can possibly disarm the criminal element, in a nation awash with over 300 million firearms, then I have a bridge to sell you.  Gun control only inhibits the ability of citizens to defend themselves and each year there are many thousands of defensive gun uses.  How many children are saved annually because a parent or guardian is armed when facing violence?  Obviously, the left has no intention of researching that as part of their studies on “gun violence.”

The second outrage in this argument, and regarding gun control in general, is that an emotional argument does not usurp a constitutional right.  It is questionable how so much passion is poured into this subject by factions on the left, in the name of public safety and for the children.  Such passion, one will find, is well funded by Michael Bloomberg and other statist elites who go everywhere with extensive armed security yet want to deny the abilities of self-defense to the commoner.  We hear arguments that propose mandatory home security measures insisting that firearms be locked up and unloaded.  How many people would die each year because they would not be able to access their defensive firearm quickly enough if such legislation was implemented nationwide?  I am sure such a consideration does not factor into the narrative.

According to Hillary Clinton, during one of the Presidential debates in October 2016, the District v. Heller Supreme Court decision “got it wrong.”  Why?  Because according to her “what the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns.”  I see.  The Heller decision re-affirmed what the Constitution already makes clear: the freedom to keep and bear arms is an individual right.  Only leftists argue that among the Bill of Rights, all of which enumerate individual rights, only the Second Amendment refers to the right of the state to have a national guard.  But what do we expect from that corner?

According to PBS a child dies every other day when accessing and accidently firing a gun, which is about 183 deaths a year.  PBS plays it for all it is worth.  All preventable deaths are tragic, but do we trade a constitutional liberty for that?  According to the CDC  roughly 700 children drown each year.  Over 700 children also die from accidental poisoning annually. Yet, have you heard any on the left call for regulation and in-home safety standards for storing cleaning products?  It would save more lives while not infringing on the Bill of Rights.  No, this emotional outcry is leveraged not to save lives, but to curtail liberty, just as suggested by the Führer himself.