The ‘Father of our Country’ advised –
“A free people ought not only to be armed
and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to
maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them,
which would include their own government.” – George Washington
According to Infowars.com, a United Nations committee charged with enforcing the
International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights has come down hard on the United States for “gun violence.” Walter Kälin, a Swiss international human
rights lawyer who sits on the committee, criticized the “extreme domestic
habits” of Americans, including the upholding the U.S. Constitution’s Second
Amendment. Kälin cited a “staggering figure”
to argue in favor of eliminating the right to own guns – claiming there are
470,000 crimes committed with firearms each year, including about 11,000 homicides.
“We appreciate the position taken by
President Obama on these issues. Nevertheless,
much more needs to be done to curb gun violence,” he said.
Obama and the Democrats tried
unsuccessfully to outlaw entire classifications of firearms following Sandy
Hook. The 112th Congress considered an
inordinately large number of bills designed to chip away the right to own
firearms.
Kälin and critics of the Second
Amendment “right to bear arms” routinely ignore data showing how guns save
lives and prevent violence. A Gun Owners of America factsheet shows law-abiding
citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million
times every year — or about 6,850 times a day, according to research conducted
by Dr. Gary Kleck … who was awarded the prestigious American Society of
Criminology Michael J. Hindelang Award for his research into guns and violence.
“Most uses of guns for either criminal
or defensive purposes are less dramatic or consequential than one might think,”
Kleck writes. “Only 3% of criminal gun
assaults involve anyone actually being wounded, even non-fatally, and the same
is true of defensive gun uses. More
commonly, guns are merely pointed at another person, or perhaps only referred
to (‘I’ve got a gun’) or displayed, and this is sufficient to accomplish the
ends of the user, whether criminal or non- criminal.”
Even the government admits guns
deter crime and violence. “Studies that
directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents
in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or
threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among
gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective
strategies,” a report commissioned by the Obama Administration and issued by
the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) states.
Moreover, most deaths by guns
resulted from suicide, not homicide … a fact ignored by the United Nations. “Between the years 2000 and 2010,
firearm-related suicides significantly out-numbered homicides for all age
groups, annually accounting for 61% of the more than 335,600 people who died
from firearm-related violence in the United States,” the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council noted in
the CDC report.
The CDC report also doubts the effectiveness of gun control in reducing
violence. It questions “whether gun
restrictions reduce firearm-related violence” and characterizes the dubious
efficacy of such laws as “an unresolved issue.” The report expresses uncertainty “that passage
of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime” and admits that
“gun turn-in programs are ineffective.”
The United Nations call to disarm
and render Americans defenseless is contradicted by police. Earlier this month Detroit Police Chief James
Craig told residents to arm themselves and shoot to kill assailants and
robbers. “A lot of Detroiters are fed
up,” he told WDIV-TV. “They’re tired and
they’ve been dealing with this epidemic of violence. They’re afraid and they have a right to
protect themselves.”
The United Nations, on the other
hand, does not believe citizens should be empowered to protect themselves,
either from criminals or government.
Though
there is no reference to “guns” in the Word of God, the biblical worldview is
relevant to the question of self-defense.
It is right to defend ourselves (and others) from physical attacks. So, if self-defense is morally right, then gun
ownership is primarily a question of what kind of weapon(s) to use in defending
oneself and others from physical harm when able to do so.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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