I really think we should try to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable teens who have been behind most of these high-profile school shootings. But we must remember that the 2nd Amendment is there because armed citizenship serves as a bulwark against tyrannical government. The dozens of people murdered in school massacres must be weighed against the millions murdered by their own governments in the 20th century because they had no way to defend themselves against government thugs. New Hampshire has, I believe, the lax gun laws in the Northeast. Yet we have less violence per capita than states with strict gun control laws like New York. So I don`t see New Hampshire`s gun laws as a problem that needs to be addressed. Contrary to what you may have heard from CNN, the president, or other unreliable sources, this is how the U.S. Senate should work. Senators debated bills, considered competing amendments and voted on. The process won`t be interrupted just because you didn`t like the result.
That hasn`t stopped gun control advocates from declaring the end of Republican democracy after the Senate failed to pass the recent attempt to remove a few more snippets from the Second Amendment. The Manchin-Toomey amendment, which was at the center of last week`s gun control debate, was so watered down that it contained few of the strict restrictions desired by gun control groups, and almost none of the reforms long awaited by gun owners. It was rather weak to spark such passion on both sides of the gun debate. It was not a good week for the National Rifle Association, which even resisted sending the bill to the Senate. It was a major tactical mistake that would have given President Obama and gun control groups a political and fundraising advantage. The opening of the issue to debate and alternative amendments revealed the weak foundations of gun control. An amendment to renew the 1994 assault weapons ban failed 40-60 this week, with New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen among those who voted to overturn a bill that didn`t work the first time. On a wave of emotion, a full White House judicial press and a Democratic majority, the Senate received only 40 votes for the centerpiece of the gun control program. It was an even worse week for the professional underdogs. These political parasites survive by stoking conservative disillusionment within the Republican Party. A Colorado contender named Dudley Brown attacked senators like Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire for voting to put the bill on the table.
My friends in Colorado already knew he was misinformed and counterproductive. Now we all do. But no one suffered more from the Senate vote than Obama, as his angry Rosengarten speech shows. Obama lamented that the NRA lied about Manchin-Toomey, even though he used patently false statistics during his campaign for greater gun control. He called Senate votes shameful while shamelessly using parents of children killed at Sandy Hook. But this law would not have prevented another Newtown, nor would it have prevented the Boston Marathon bombing or the explosion of a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. Obama and other gun control advocates are furious. They assume that Second Amendment advocates know that restrictive gun laws would save lives, and they don`t care.
They assume that limiting gun ownership would reduce crime by preventing criminals and lunatics from getting their hands on deadly weapons. But their premise is false. Gun control does not prevent criminals from obtaining firearms, it does not reduce crime or save lives. This week`s gun debate was just a spectacle. The president`s best-case scenario was to get a watered-down gun control bill through the Senate, giving him the ability to attack House Republicans if they put it in a drawer. His recourse was to attack the Senate GOP for obstructing gun control. Instead, we had a national debate on gun control, and gun control was lost. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid needed 60 votes to pass an amendment. Otherwise, the Senate could have passed Manchin-Toomey, along with popular Republican alternatives, to protect gun owners traveling to anti-gun states to enforce existing federal laws and begin reforming a mental health system that has been broken since the Carter administration. The last thing the president wanted was a true bipartisan compromise in which Republican and Democratic amendments passed in the Senate.
How could he raise money with it? Grant Bosse is the editor of New Hampshire Watchdog, an independent news site dedicated to New Hampshire`s public policy. The organization is not affiliated with Live Free or Die Alliance. The horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is accompanied by another push for a group of citizens to hurry to “do something.” It`s easy to get caught up in all the emotional pleas, unsubstantiated claims, and outright lies shouted at lightning speed on the internet, but shouldn`t we really take a moment to reflect on the truth of the tragedies and the myriad of gun laws currently in place before rushing to solve the wrong problem? But gun safety advocates and Democrats have railed against the law, saying it would impede necessary federal investigations. And they said Sununu`s promise to focus on state gun laws contradicted his position in 2018, when the federal bump stock ban was proposed by the ATF. The governor said at the time that a bump stock ban would be better enacted at the federal level. They talk about how we can prevent crazy jobs from getting guns. First, most, if not all, of the recent bloodbaths have been committed with weapons by known mentally ill people. The Virginia Tech shooter, the Gifford shooter, the Colorado movie shooter and the Newtown shooter had all left very clear signs of mental illness, including those involved in their treatment.