Obama; "(Gun Violence) is something we should politicize."

Before we delve into the left politicizing gun violence, lets look at the facts behind violent crime itself. Over the last 20 years, the American people have certainly showed a great deal of responsibility as violent crime has been reduced by nearly 50% while ownership has and continues to explode.

Any poll, data, study or graph by the anti-gun zealots must be consistent with this fact, and pretty much always fail in this respect; polls can be rigged, studies depend on the data used and graph's are  dependent on the data used. The only independent and reliable data available for violent crimes and homicide rates comes from the FBI UCR totals and end result tells us the 1) Violent crimes and homicide rates have been falling for over 20 years  2)  The number of guns owned by the citizenry have no relationship to violent crime. Mythbusting Gun Ownership Decline in US

What is interesting about fact #2 is there does seem to be a disconnect between guns bought and guns owned. As you see below, gun manufacturers show guns sold have increased every year; the NCIC background checks for gun sales have increased every year, yet the gun ownership graph shows ownership decreasing (and it's not like guns are a commensurable product). The reason is the elephant in the room. While data for gun sales and NCIC are from verifiable sources, gun ownership data  come from telephone polls; these polls have become notoriously inaccurate, add to that the widely accepted fact most people are hesitant to talk about their gun ownership, any result would be guaranteed inaccurate; most likely exceedingly low. The stale claim that 40 percent of gun sales lack background checks

 The other facts are those cities with the most strict gun laws tend to have the highest rate of violent crime; especially gun crimes. The whole anti-gun movement is propaganda by liberals and Democrats that have created a strawman to use politically; in this case the Democrats want the citizenry to believe gun crime crimes are approaching an epidemic, when they actually maxed out on the 70's and have been steadily falling ever since. The truth is Democrats have a horrible record with crimes in the cities they run, a fact that is consistently ignored by the main street media; black on black crime in these Democrat run cities are the only instances where violent crime is on the rise.

 


po·lit·i·cize 1. to give a political character or bias to: to politicize a religious debate.

There was a time when to politicize a tragedy was considered almost a morale sin; the idea that one would take human pain and give it a political spin or bias in order to further a political agenda, without regard for the victim(s), was an anathema. Well no more, not since President Obama. The first indication that politicizing human tragedy was now blatantly acceptable to President Obama, started when his former White House Chief of Staff (and currently mayor of Chicago) Rahm Emanuel stated publicly the White House world view,"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."  Then President then confirmed that blatantly politicizing human tragedy would be his standard course, when he spoke on limiting gun ownership , “Of course, what’s also routine is that somebody, somewhere, will comment and say, ‘Obama politicized this issue.’ Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic.”  Obama; Gun Control Politicizing Not Politics


What the President is saying,  when he says mass murder should be politicized, is to infer that the victims are a faceless collective and the Democrats have the right to declare mass murder as a for and against issue; in other words one can declare ownership of the high ground saying we are the only party that is against mass shootings. One way this is done to is insinuate that their policies will stop mass shootings, while other parties either do nothing or make it worse.  Unfortunately the Democrats, and liberals are on the wrong side of the Gun Safety argument, considering violent crime has decreased near 50% in the last 20 years while gun possession has significantly increased; US Gun Homocide Study However the Democrats have pushed a lie on the American people that violent crime is an epidemic, so if you want this to stop, they need to votes for Democrats. However when one has only to look at cities they have their gun-control policies, and one sees rampant and out of control crime,  the same cities (Chicago being the most obvious) have the strictest gun laws in the country. Harvard Study; Gun Control is Counterproductive


Then you have Hillary Clinton harping on the less guns less crimes myth saying she is for Australian style gun confiscation;  leading the NRA to rightfully exclaim, "This validates what the NRA has said all along. The real goal of gun control supporters is gun confiscation," Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement Friday. "Hillary Clinton's extreme views are completely out of touch with the American people." Hillary Clinton Calls for Gun Confiscation ; The Democrats are so sure of themselves, that they have politisized this myth of a gun violence epidemic, that you have the likes of California  Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushing  a anti-gun initiative for background checks for ammunition, to try and up his popularity to win the upcoming Governors election. (As an prime example of the politicizing of gun violence, it's worth noting that a similar bill "SB-53" was co-sponsored by California State Senator Leland Yee; the bill died in the Assembly about the time Yee was indited for gun smuggling. You can't make this stuff up).  This  pushed by Newsom, would cost tens of millions of dollars and generate reams of useless data, as once in the hands of the purchaser there is no way to traceit, even if it was used for illegal purposes.. But more important, it politicizes recent mass shootings and continues to push the myth of a gun violence epidemic; when the real culprits are a handful of sociopathic terrorists, that plan these monstrous acts for months or even years.  These terrorists that came before all passed the background checks the Democrats are pushing and waited the appropriate waiting periods to buy guns and ammo.

"Those policies, from background checks to “assault weapon” bans, to magazine restrictions, are the abstract ideas and concepts...Where these ideas/concepts continually fail in the real world is when they are forced to go beyond fuzzy “feel good” concepts into actual language in legislation, and people get to see the details… and the concrete liberties that would be lost for vague promises of “safety” that have never materialized when a gun control bill passes." Gun Control Supporters Losing Culture War

In regards to large capacity their is no evidence that they are any deadlier simply changing a larger number of low capacity magazines (something that can be easily be done in less than 5 seconds). In a recent press conference the Washington DC Chief of Police Cathy Lanier, blamed high-capacity magazines for DC's high murder rate, “Multiple of our cases have high-capacity magazines and multiple rounds fired making the shots more lethal,” However, COP Lanier was stymied when it was revealed that the Washington DC Police Dept does not keep records on the capacity of the magazines with the firearms that are seized. Scapegoat Alert! D.C. Murders Increase, Police Chief Blames Large Capacity Magazines It's just more smoke coming from liberals trying to divert responsibility from their failed leadership.


So, as we look at the anti-gun zealots, we see a manufactured crisis, egged on by the left, politicizing the rise in  a very narrowly defined type of mass shootings, (ignoring the slaughter of black on black crime in many urban cities) that involved a sociopath usually targeting schools and churches. However these mass shootings were so limited in number, that even an increase does not rise to anything close to an epidemic. As I quoted in my last posting US Enjoying Lowest Crime Rate in Decades ; "There were, on average, 16.4 such shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, compared with an average of 6.4 shootings annually from 2000 to 2006. In the past 13 years, 486 people have been killed in such shootings, with 366 of the deaths in the past seven years. In all, the study looked at 160 shootings since 2000. (Shootings tied to domestic violence and gangs were not included.) F.B.I. Confirms a Sharp Rise in Mass Shootings Since 2000 So the so called sharp rise in Mass shootings is 10 more shootings a year than before 16.4 vs 6.4 previously; hardly enough to call for wholesale gun restrictions that regardless, would have no affect on these extremely limited type of shootings.

As a final caveat it would be dishonest to presume that all those calling out for more gun restrictions are politically motivated. While this may be the case with most politicians, the majority honestly feel that more guns equals more violent crimes, and this seems to be the totality of their world view.  Gun control advocates are utopians. Their perspective is that, if guns are no longer readily available, violence will evaporate. But there are so many guns in circulation that it would take decades to reduce their availability — unless legislators adopt the police-state policy of sending cops door-to-door to confiscate firearms. California Lawmakers Train Sights on Gun Ownership