Newspaper Opinion Piece by Tom Reynolds
The Opinion Page in Sunday’s Elmira Star-Gazette (Gannett Newspaper) had three “opinions” about gun laws; two were for gun control while the one pro 2nd Amendment opinion was from SCOPE President Tom Reynolds, which is printed below.
Bad decisions get made when emotional. NY just passed new gun laws to prove this.
We all want tragedies to stop but these new laws are ineffective, feel-good laws that will not stop these tragedies. They are aimed at law abiding gun owners and not the criminals who commit these crimes.
You will now need a license to use a constitutional right; to buy or take possession of America’s most popular semi-automatic rifle, the Modern Sporting Rifle.
What’s next? A license to use 1st Amendment rights to comment publicly about licensing laws? The answer is yes. Also passed was a law to monitor what you say. It created a task force on “Social Media and Violent Extremism”, which is a poorly disguised step to censor the Right, since NY doesn’t even consider ANTIFA and BLM riots to be violent extremism.
21 will become the minimum age to purchase or possess any semi-automatic rifle. Do 18 years old lack sufficient judgement and maturity? If so, why should they vote at 18 or be able to get an abortion without their parent’s’ consent before 18 or be able to identify as a different gender before 18?
One law hopes to implement microstamping. The fact is that microstamping doesn’t work and is easily defeated.
Another reason for these laws is to drive retailers out of New York.
NY State had passed a law that guns are a “Public Nuisance”, to get around the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). PLCAA is the law that Biden constantly lies about, saying gun manufacturers can’t be sued. NY is intentionally exposing gun stores and manufacturers to frivolous lawsuits, in order to bankrupt them with legal fees.
Acting in tandem with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, NY is increasing record keeping requirements to put gun stores in danger of losing their licenses over minor paperwork infractions.
If they wanted real change, the legislature would have done away with Bail Reform, Gun Free Zones and made District Attorneys, like Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg, enforce the laws.
Per the FBI’s 5 years statistics on homicides, which are available on line, all rifles, not just semi-automatics, are used less in homicides than: knives or blunt instruments (hammers) or hands & feet. Semi-automatic rifles are not the problem.
One minister asked how one could oppose abortion and still be for guns. Abortions kill a defenseless human being. Gun owners want to protect themselves and others so they do not become defenseless murder victims.
Our core problem is that the leftist culture is a culture without morals and ethics. A culture that denigrates American values and a culture without God. Murder is a sin but when is that aspect discussed? Change the culture not the laws.
One anti-gun opinion tried to say that being pro-gun was incompatible with being anti-abortion. That issue was addressed in Reynolds’ article.
That anti-gun article contained numerous erroneous assumptions about AR15’s and absolved “Hollywood, wokeism, videogames and other mythical scapegoats” of any blame in murders. Of course, it also threw in one of the left’s favorite boogey men, it blamed white domestic terrorists for targeting non-white Americans, which ignores that non-whites are the overwhelmingly the killers of other non-whites. But hey, never let a leftist talking point go to waste, no matter how incorrect.
One of the pro-gun control opinions centered around raising the age to own 21, the hypocrisy of which was also addressed in Reynolds’ opinion. The anti-gun author used Gary Cooper in the movie “High Noon” as the rationale why a rifle is not needed for self-defense. And there you have an example of the intellectual depth of the left, when they quote a fictional movie to defend their position.
Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge about guns, gun control and the Constitution fills the pages of the leftist media. How many people read these erroneous statements and accepted them as truth. Pro gun defenders need to speak out with the facts.
