Confessions of a recovering gun control addict

A "must read": "What Gun Controllers Don't Want You to Know" by Howard Nemerov.

...if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.

Confirming something we already knew

The majority of US firearms deaths are suicides. (~30,000 suicides per year versus ~10,000 homicides and accidents.) Thus one of the arguments given in favor of waiting periods and safe storage laws has been that these measures can help to prevent suicides. Our side has always countered that those bent upon self-destruction will find other means if firearms are denied to them. In economics, the technical term for this kind of seeking out an alternative means to an end is "substitution". A new study from the CDC shows substitution of other suicide methods for firearms among teens.

Suicide is the third leading killer of young people ages 10 to 19, with about 2,000 deaths in the United States each year. It ranks 11th in causes of death nationwide. The new report, which looked at trends in teen suicides from 1992 to 2001, shows the suicide rate among young people has fallen in the past decade. But the methods used by teens have changed dramatically.

In young teens and preteens - those ages 10 to 14 - the change is especially striking: From 1992 to 2001, the number of suicides by suffocation rose 70 percent, while the number of firearm deaths dropped by nearly half. Suicide by suffocation now outnumbers suicide by firearm nearly 2 to 1.

Changing the means by which you lose a loved one does not change the pain one iota. There have been plenty of people in the anti-gun movement who had a loved one use a gun to commit suicide. This choice of means is what animates these particular individuals to oppose the right of others to keep and bear arms. While some are simply being vindictive, others are genuine in their desire to spare others the grief they've experienced. However, they fail to see the overwhelming benefit of privately owned firearms. Firearms are used to prevent violent crime, and very often the loss of life, ~2,000,000 times each year in the US. Far more families benefit from firearms each year than suffer from them. In a simply cost/benefit analysis, firearms are a net benefit to the American People. Laws that attempt to curb suicide not only prevent the beneficial uses of firearms, they fail to save those who kill themselves.

The Armed Citizen, 1933

Ronald Reagan understood, first hand, how firearms can protect innocent life. In 1933, he used a .45 handgun to save a young nursing student from a mugger in Des Moines.

Thank God for Ronald Reagan

I have been thinking for the last three days about what to write on the passing of Ronald Reagan. He was the first President I had the priviledge of voting for in 1984. (I missed being able to vote for him in 1980 by a little over 1 year.) He set into motion a chain of events in this nation that has yet to play out. The "Reagan Revolution" continues to this day.

In thinking about what Reagan did during his Presidency, I began to think about how history would have changed without him. And when I began thinking about what the world would have been like, I realized that I had already seen this movie: Red Dawn. Red Dawn is an alternative history where the plot's "what if" is "what if Ronald Reagan had never been President".

Without Reagan, Jimmy Carter is re-elected in 1980. Abroad, Carter continues his anemic response to Soviet aggression. At home, the Malaise continues; there is no economic boom in the 80s and 90s. Where Reagan aided the Afghan people in their struggle against Soviet tyranny, Carter does nothing more than his boycott of the Olympic games. Nicaragua stays under Soviet control. Grenada becomes even more firmly entrenched as a Soviet satellite. Communist rebels in El Salvador succeed. Honduras falls. Costa Rica falls. Panama falls. Communist revolutions spread through South America like a cancer. Mexico begins to bend under the pressure of refugees fleeing north.

Without Reagan, there is no SDI. Without SDI, the Soviet Union is never pushed to the breaking point. Eastern Europe stays in Soviet hands. There is no Glastnost. Without Reagan's aid to the Afghans, the Soviets hang on and defeat the Mujahadeen. They are left in a position to threaten Pakistan. If they succeed, they can threaten the West's oil supplies in a way that Saddam could only dream of.

Without Reagan, there is no tax cut. The top tax rate stays ridiculously high and the boom of the 80s and 90s never happens. Economies all over the world depended on the Reagan boom to get started. From Asia to Europe, economies would have stagnated. There would be no Internet and thus no "eCommerce". Without Reaganomics, the economies of the West would have been weakend and thus more vulnerable to Soviet aggression.

In short, all of the set-up from the opening minute of Red Dawn would have had a chance to come true. America's allies would have dwindled, one by one, until we would have been left standing alone. And that weakness would have invited aggression from the USSR. Reagan's policies of strength detered aggression and lead to peace.

In 1980, freedom and democracy were on the decline. Today, those ideas are spreading. America is leading that advance rather than a retreat into darkness. The world is getting better; not worse.

Thank God for Ronald Reagan.