Jeff Crouere
Gun control is not about crime control
With Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, Americans can expect a series of progressive bills to be introduced. In a budget reconciliation process, the bills can be passed in the U.S. Senate with a simple majority. This is what happened with the $1.9 trillion monstrosity known as the COVID-19 relief bill.
Fortunately, most legislation does not qualify for this designation and will require a 60-vote threshold in the U.S. Senate to pass. With such a requirement, it would seem the future looks bleak for the newly introduced Background Checks Expansion Act (BCEA). This gun control legislation will be subject to a Senate filibuster unless U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) changes his mind.
When reporters asked Manchin about whether he would change his position about supporting the filibuster, he was extremely clear in his response. Manchin shouted, “Never, Jesus Christ! What don’t you understand about ‘never’?” As long as Manchin defends the Senate filibuster, Second Amendment supporting Americans can rest assured about new gun control legislation passing Congress.
Regrettably, politicians constantly change their minds and Manchin is no exception. Recently, he promised only to support the COVID-19 relief bill if it included input from Republicans. He vowed, “I want it to be bipartisan. If they think we are going to throw all caution to the wind and just shove it down people's throats, that's not going to happen.”
Well, that is exactly what happened in both houses of Congress as the legislation was passed without the votes of any Republican members. Among the Democrats who voted for the legislation was none other than Senator Manchin.
With only Manchin preventing gun control legislation from passing Congress, Americans who support the Second Amendment should be quite worried. With the possibility of new gun control legislation being enacted; Americans need to thoroughly examine the issue.
Gun control advocates often talk about “gun violence,” which is the imprecise phase they cleverly use to imply that they are concerned about crime. Sadly, they are not primarily interested in reducing violent crime. If they were primarily concerned about crime their “solutions” would address criminals, not the possession of firearms by law abiding citizens.
Democrats never offer solutions, such as lengthy prison sentences, that would make it more difficult for criminals to obtain and use guns. They never advocate, for example, sentences of life in prison for criminals who continually use guns to commit violence. In addition, gun control advocates do not seek incarceration with hard labor when a convicted felon is found to be illegally in possession of a gun.
All these policies would reduce the number of criminals with guns terrorizing innocent people on the streets of our country. Tough penalties for criminals who illegally use guns would clearly make our violent cities safer. Unfortunately, these goals are not shared by gun control advocates.
Why not? All Americans should share these goals, but many liberals who constantly push gun control initiatives have other motives. These advocates prefer to focus on the so-called “root causes” of crime instead of the painful reality of criminals using guns to steal, kill, or rape innocent victims.
Gun control proponents focus on issues such as poor schools, extreme poverty, or lack of economic opportunity. Surely, there are long standing problems in many of our cities, but there is also another important factor. The criminal is individually responsible for both illegally obtaining a weapon and using it to commit a felony.
In today’s political environment, liberals hate discussing issues such as individual responsibility. Instead, criminals are victims of “society.” Thus, criminals using guns are not really lawbreakers, in reality, they are the true victims. Criminals are victims of such evils as systemic racism, corporate greed, climate change, and improper allocation of resources among other societal ills.
Since gun control advocates are not primarily concerned with crime, what truly motivates them to push for this legislation? They will never admit it, probably even to themselves, but it is utter contempt. They hold a deep, abiding contempt for traditional American values and a true hatred for the people who hold these beliefs.
Many of our country’s gun owners, who love the Second Amendment, are the “smelly Walmart people.” These are the Americans who Barack Obama identified as those who “cling to guns or religion.” These are the “irredeemable” people that Hillary Clinton mocked. These are the God-fearing Americans who actually question policies that allow transgender boys to compete with girls in wrestling and track events.
These patriotic Americans, in the eyes of liberals, are deeply contemptible, and they must be made to conform. They need to be re-educated and shown the errors of their ways. However, it is difficult to re-educate people who are resistant to such attempts and actually fight back by protesting and engaging in political activity. This is why the political left wants to disarm these Americans. It is one of the terrifying and unspoken goals of the gun control movement.
We should not be fooled into thinking that gun control measures are being introduced to reduce crime. There is almost no correlation. The motives are much more sinister.
The real goals are to force change on Americans who are not part of the totalitarian left. If these bills were truly about crime, gun control advocates would focus on criminals, but they never do, and that should tell Americans everything they need to know about the issue.
Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and is a political columnist, the author of America's Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on Crouere.net. For more information, email him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com
