by James Keeton
Contributing writer
Following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the gun control debate took center stage in America. President Barack Obama surrounded himself with children from Sandy Hook as he introduced new gun control measures.
Was this a bold move or a sick attempt to further an agenda?
As part of the president’s plan, the new gun control measures include re-instatement of a ban on so-called assault weapons and a ten round limit on high capacity magazines.
Obama may face more than just congressional opposition to these new measures. The Oklahoma Firearms Freedom Act, House bill 2021, is working its way through state legislature.
This act makes any new federal acts, laws, orders, rules, regulations, bans or registration requirements regarding firearms and ammunition void and invalid in the state.
Oklahoma is joined by 35 other states that have passed or are working on similar legislation.
If we compare states passing similar Firearm Freedom Laws, or FFAs, to the 2012 election results, we notice that a significant number of states working on these laws are also states that voted for Obama. Some of these include Oregon, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida.
This is important because it shows that preserving the Second Amendment isn’t just a partisan issue.
Those who value the right of the people to keep and bear arms know this isn’t about protecting hunting privileges. In 1776, if people did not hunt, fish or farm, they did not eat.
The founding fathers were concerned with protecting the people from foreign and domestic threats. They also knew the dangers of intrusive government all too well.
They created the Second Amendment because an armed society cannot be oppressed.
This right gives Americans the ability to protect family members from predators, both human and animal. It gives the people leverage to refuse oppressive government when its actions become intolerable.
It is a guarantee that no foreign army will ever invade American soil because they would be met with a rifle behind every tree and at every street corner.
The AR-15 is just one of hundreds of firearms that would be outlawed by Obama’s Assault Weapons Ban.
With the never-ending war on terrorism dispatching our brave men and women in uniform to the far corners of the globe, the U.S. is in no short supply of enemies who would love to see us disarmed.
We had an Assault Weapons Ban in effect before, from 1994 to 2004. It didn’t stop the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.
A ban on high capacity magazines wouldn’t have stopped Seung-Hui Cho from killing 32 people with two handguns which he was able to reload 17 times at Virginia Tech in 2007.
Banning guns wouldn’t have stopped Timothy McVeigh from murdering 168 people, including 19 children under the age of 6, using a bomb made of fertilizer.
Law enforcement statistics from the California Department of Justice and numerous reports throughout the nation show that so-called assault weapons are rarely used in crimes.
How can the Obama administration justify the $500 million that it will cost to enforce these gun control measures?
This is because Obama’s gun control agenda isn’t about saving lives; it’s about control.