This past week a federal judge in California struck down the state’s 30-year ban on high-capacity semi-automatic rifles which leftists call “assault weapons,” calling it unconstitutional (which it is). In response, the progressive media has lost their collective minds, screeching in horror at the idea of AR-15 rifles being legal within the borders of their carefully manicured socialist Utopia state. Their most commonly expressed reaction seems to be fear.
Fear is rarely a rational thing. When someone operates based on fears, they tend to make terrible decisions and support oppressive causes and laws. Fearful people also tend to look for large mobs of other terrified people so they can feel safe and secure and anonymous. They want to be able to act on their fear without having to face consequences for it later.
Leftists are driven primarily by two factors: Fear and narcissism. I’ve discussed their narcissism at great length in past articles; now we should delve into their fear.
The most common leftist retort to the question “Why are you so afraid of the AR-15?” will usually be a snort of indignant disbelief followed by the words: “Because it’s a military weapon designed to kill a lot of people quickly…idiot!”
But this is not an argument, it is an expression of irrational fear. Why are they, as individuals, afraid of the AR-15? What are the chances that they will ever be faced with a person intent on killing them with an AR-15? And why do they believe that disarming innocent law-abiding Americans will somehow save them from their irrational fears?
Let’s examine the first issue of statistical probability; how many people are actually killed by AR-15s each year? Not many, according to the FBI, which does not track the stats on specific rifles, but does track the stats on all rifles and shotguns. And, as it turns out, only around 6 percent of all gun deaths involve rifles in the U.S. each year.
How much of that 6 percent is caused by the use of military-grade rifles like the AR-15? It’s impossible to say, but even if it was half, or 3 percent of all gun-related crimes, that would still mean you have far more of a chance of being murdered by a knife or blunt object than the AR. Rifles overall are dwarfed by handgun murders, so, again, why are leftists so afraid of the AR-15?
What about mass shootings? It seems like the AR-15 is a favorite among mass shooters because of its “efficiency,” so is this reason enough to be fearful? According to The New York Times own analysis, the AR-15 was used to kill 173 people in mass shootings in the U.S. from 2007 to 2017. Meaning around 17 homicides per year over a decade can be attributed to the rifle. Again, the AR is dwarfed by almost all other weapons in homicide including knives, even when accounting for mass shootings.
With the sheer number of military-grade weapons in the hands of civilians in the U.S., there should be mass homicides everywhere you look, if you take the common position of the typical progressive gun grabber. But this is not the case. In fact, if you want to increase your chances of being killed by a gun, move to a major Democrat-run city like Chicago, New York or Philadelphia. In Chicago, there were 4,033 shootings and 784 homicides, predominantly in black neighborhoods.
So, statistically, AR-15s do not increase gun homicides, but living in a black neighborhood in leftist-run Chicago under some of the strictest gun laws in the country? Yes, your chances of being shot are much higher, just not by an AR-15.
Since the math does not add up in favor of the leftists, perhaps we should examine other factors that might be driving them to focus on the AR in particular. Let’s talk about “precedence” …
Look at it this way — states like California are a petri dish, a testing ground for the future that leftists want for the entire country. There is an old saying that “As goes California, so goes the U.S.,” and this is because California is where most experimental legislation pushing the boundaries of what the Constitution allows is passed first. Sometimes, it’s New York or New Jersey or some other blue state, but most of the time California is where unconstitutional precedents are set. Its massive population and large number of electoral votes make it a perfect target for conditioning the wider public to further restrictions on their freedoms.
This explains some of the fear the media is showing regarding the latest federal court decision on military-grade weapons like the AR. Political elites see California as their own little kingdom with their own special laws, and they plan to eventually spread those laws across the U.S. using California as the model. But, if such laws are overturned as unconstitutional, then the precedent actually works in reverse. Now, the leftists are concerned that an overturned gun ban in California means more blue states will follow and their entire gun-grabbing scheme will go out the window.
We also cannot ignore the fact that leftists have an insatiable appetite for totalitarianism, usually in the name of the “greater good.” It’s basically totalitarianism disguised as humanitarianism. They know what’s best for you, and they are going to make sure you follow their plan for your life.
The AR-15 rifle is indeed a weapon in military use, and maybe this is what frightens leftists the most. Not because they are personally more likely to be shot by one, we’ve already proven that notion false; but because leftists are obsessed with control, and with military-grade weapons in the hands of the public, control becomes much more difficult. All totalitarian governments seek to first disarm the people they intend to enslave or destroy. This is a fact.
When a group of people in power are working hard to remove military-grade weapons from your hands, it’s best to assume that their intentions are malevolent. They are not trying to help you; they are trying to help themselves.
They will deny this motive to the grave, but look at how the political left has been acting lately! They are the only people that have supported mass censorship of opposing viewpoints. They are the only people that are supported by international conglomerates and Big Tech companies. They are the only people who supported the pandemic lockdowns, which proved to be completely useless in stopping the spread of COVID, but they were very useful in killing hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the U.S. They are also the only people in favor of vaccine passports which would destroy the very fabric of our society and erase what is left of our freedoms.
It’s not really surprising that they want to disarm us as well.
Of course, they will claim that this argument is “silly.” After all, what can an AR-15 do against an Apache helicopter or an Abrams battle tank? Well, these rifles in the right hands can do a hell of a lot to stop a technologically advanced force, as we have seen for the past two decades in Afghanistan. Let us not play games; there is a reason why leftists and elites are obsessed with our disarmament. If military-grade rifles were not a threat, then they would not be going after them so aggressively.
Finally, the mainstream media has rolled out all the typical propaganda tools when it comes to spinning the federal decision in California, including attacking the judge and his character. Almost every single article on this issue focuses on the fact that the judge compared the AR-15 to a “Swiss Army knife.”
The left will continue to use this line as a means to distract from the real issue at hand because this is what they do. Clearly, the judge was not trying to say that an AR-15 and a Swiss Army knife are exactly the same, or that they are equally capable of killing people. The logical interpretation is that the AR-15 is a tool like any other tool, and it has multiple uses. It is a utilitarian object, not a death machine as leftists would have us believe.
Gun grabbers love to make the argument that guns are only a “tool for killing.” This is a lie. They are also a tool for self-defense. They are a means to defuse a violent situation before it even happens. There are thousands of videos on the web showing people with criminal intent running away from a Good Samaritan with a gun. There is no way of telling how many potential victims have been saved by the mere presence of a firearm.
This is on top of all the other uses for guns, including hunting and sporting uses. So, yes, the judge is absolutely correct; an AR-15 is much like a Swiss Army knife.
In my view, the gun control lobby in America is in the midst of a considerable decline, and maybe it is even about to die. Gun control is the big line in the sand for most law-abiding Americans, and we have grown tired of the debate, because it’s no longer a debate, it’s an imposition of ideology. All the facts are on the side of gun owners. All the legal protections are on the side of gun owners. All the moral dynamics are on the side of gun owners. As long as we stand our ground, there is nothing that leftsists can do about it.
They can continue to lie, they can continue to threaten and they can continue exploiting emotional arguments, but they’ll never get the guns. And, as we have seen recently, we might even start returning some of those gun rights and AR-15s to states like California, where fear was used to cloud the public mind and people were conned into compliance.
Written By Brandon Smith
