The editors of the Chicago Sun-Times are clutching their collective pearls over the fact that Illinois residents are daring to defend their right to keep and bear arms by taking on the state’s new gun and magazine ban in court; a legal fight the paper absurdly declares a “callous attack” on a “sensible law”.
Emotional appeals on the part of gun control activists are nothing new, but I have to say the Sun-Times op/ed is truly extraordinary in its attempt to demonize those Second Amendment supporters who believe their constitutionally-protected rights are being violated by the ban and are taking the legal steps afforded them as citizens to challenge the new prohibitions.
When a gunman with a weapon of war stormed into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and gunned down 20 small children and six adults, many people thought our nation might finally come to its senses about gun violence.But, no. Here we are, a decade later, and cold-blooded gunslingers continue to burst into cherished places of safety and kill and maim as many people as they can.No one can go to school, to church, to work, to a concert, to a celebration, to a park or to a movie without fearing they suddenly will be targeted by a slaughterer wielding deadly weapons.This unconscionable state of affairs was highlighted in by the Sun-Times’ Tina Sfondeles, who reported that the lawyers who helped strike down New York’s concealed carry law are now challenging Illinois’ new and sensible limits on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines in an National Rifle Association-linked lawsuit. The Illinois State Rifle Association has filed its own federal lawsuit and others have been filed in state courts.These callous attacks on the new Illinois law are occurring just as 18 people were killed this week in the California communities of Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay. Just as a South Shore mother and her daughter were killed Monday afternoon in a shooting in which three others were wounded. Just as 12 people were injured in a mass shooting Monday inside a Baton Rouge lounge.
It’s telling that the Sun-Times editorial board chose to throw in crimes in which so-called assault weapons weren’t used to try to justify the state’s ban. The simple truth is that rifles of any kind aren’t often used in crimes, whether we’re talking about bolt-action rifles or semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15. Handguns, by far, are more commonly used, but the Supreme Court has already taken a handgun ban off the table. Now anti-gunners are just trying to ban whatever they think they might be able to get away with, untroubled by the fact that they are targeting the lawful exercise of a fundamental civil right and completely unhinged in their arguments.
Why do we sit by as the law is twisted to give gunmen the right to kill us? Why must we, as Americans with revered ideals that are the envy of the world, allow the forces of gun violence to see us as nothing more than potential fodder for their weapons?Do our lives and health mean nothing more than that? Do some lawmakers, some high court justices and gun manufacturers not see how the under-regulated arsenal of firearms in the hands of those willing to use them grinds up lives?America now has more guns than people. Has that made us safe? Or are people dying every day?
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