The Real Reason Liberals Want Gun Control

The Real Reason Liberals Want Gun Control

By Frank Camp

Ends are always preceded by means, though it can be difficult to understand the origin of something just by seeing its results. The paths taken to achieve political goals are often obscured by lies, and murky motives. What motivates a political ideology? What causes someone to do one thing, and not another? Behind every action, there is a motivating factor, and an internal reasoning. If you wish to know the “why,” you must seek out context, clues which point you in the right direction.

Liberal ideology is riddled with contradictions, and muddy motives. From the outside, liberal policy can seem confusing, and seemingly impossible to understand. That’s because it operates using a set of motivations to which we are not privy. However, if you look closely enough, you can begin to see how the gears turn in the liberal mind.

With the recent shooting in Santa Barbara, the leftist media is in a frenzy. The air is thick with condemnation for those who don’t support gun control. Media hysteria happens every time there’s a shooting, but there is an additional factor in this particular case that is being deliberately overlooked. In addition to killing three people with a firearm, the Santa Barbara maniac killed three others with a knife. While the gun deaths are being used to fuel gun control hysteria, the media is oddly silent on the knife deaths.

In 2010, 1,704 people were murdered with knives in the United States. True, that is a fraction of those who were murdered with firearms, but the number is still staggering. There are so many weapons used to kill, but only guns are the target of restrictive legislation. It’s also interesting that guns are the only weapons mentioned in the constitution, in terms of what we have the right to bear.

Given the widespread violence, why aren’t liberals targeting all forms of weapons? It seems to me that in terms of consistency, anyone who supports restrictions on firearms should also support restrictions on knives, and other instrument that could be used to harm and kill other human beings. So, why just guns? I believe there are two factors at work here. First, gun control is a tool that is being used to undermine the second amendment for a larger purpose. If the second amendment can be undermined, then all other amendments are up for review. If one amendment loses its integrity, the others become weaker, and vulnerable. Second—and more directly—targeting guns makes conservatives look like monsters for supporting the second amendment.

Shooting after shooting, conservatives stand up for gun rights (and rightfully so). We are given the right to bear arms in our constitution. There are numerous ways gun ownership can be made safer, and only a fringe few are the ones causing the problems. Many recent shootings occurred in states in which gun control is the most strict, such as California, and Washington D.C., and almost every shooting in the last 50 years has occurred in “gun free zones.” There is ample evidence to suggest that concealed carry (in other words, more guns on the streets, in the hands of law-abiding citizens) would drastically reduce mass-shootings. We are given the right to bear arms in order to protect ourselves from potential, and likely inevitable, government tyranny. It’s a sacred right, and I believe there are options outside of radical gun control that could reduce the instances of mass-shootings—one of which I mentioned above. If we disarm the populace, there will be no defense against a government tyranny.

The left has concocted their opposition to guns in order to make conservative supporters of the second amendment look like heartless psychopaths. Similar to how they use the theory of man-made global warming to get votes, the left tells Americans that a vote for a Democrat is a vote for the safety of our children, and the safety of all of us. They then demonize Republicans by labeling them as the heartless Party that doesn’t give a crap about kids, and couldn’t care less if they died, so long as they can have their guns. It’s a strategy to gain the votes of stupid people, of which there are many.

The left also has a beef with the constitution as a whole. They hate the second amendment, and there are a few others they’d like to take a run at with a sharpie. The left despises free speech if it contradicts their own beliefs. They have tried many times to silence conservatives with things like the Fairness Doctrine. The definition of hate speech has come dangerously close to the edge of what is tyrannical. In essence, the left wants a society in which they have free reign to say, and do whatever they want, while conservatives are silenced, and eliminated. Unfortunately for them, it is difficult to undermine our constitution. By proposing, and enacting extreme gun restrictions, the left is trying their hardest to create an environment that would allow them to take a pen to other parts of the constitution at will. It’s a strategy of precedent. The reason the left isn’t targeting knives is because knife control does nothing to advance their extreme ideology, nor does it do anything to make conservatives look bad.