Gun Rights and Safety Aren't Incompatible Concepts

AP Photo/Brittainy Newman, File

The right to keep and bear arms is preserved by the Second Amendment. It was written as something of an insurance policy for a fledgling nation. Anything people are involved in can be corrupted and our Founding Fathers knew that guns presented us with the opportunity to defend ourselves from both foreign invaders and homegrown tyranny.

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There's a reason why we talk about our gun rights.

Yet when the media talks about the gun debate, it's usual about a conflict between those who wants safety versus those who value their rights.

The folks over at the Buckeye Firearms Association opted to address that a bit.

Far too often when a media outlet reports on "gun violence," the undertone in the article favors the viewpoint of gun grabbers, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

It's the same basic premise in most news stories: A shooting somewhere prompts anti-gun legislators to pass "commonsense gun control," but pro-gun lawmakers are simply not interested in passing "gun safety" reform because, well, rights are more important than safety.

The authors often even cite the misleading statistics promulgated by Everytown for Gun Safety or Brady United — both staunch gun-grabbing organizations.

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What's getting in the way? According to the typical narrative, it's extremism. What they're saying, of course, is that we gun-rights advocates are installing too many pro-gun extremist Ohio legislators who put rights above safety and cater to the evil gun lobby.

Real story: Gun-rights advocates promote true safety

Let's set the record straight. Yes, Buckeye Firearms Association as a gun-rights organization cares about Ohioans' Second Amendment rights, which also are spelled out in the Ohio Constitution, by the way.

But we're not only about rights. In addition to being a source of education, we also sincerely believe that law-abiding citizens' access to firearms is essential to safety — for the individual, for the family, and for children.

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There's a lot more there but I'm not going to copy and paste the whole thing because it's their IP and that's wrong. I invite you to go and click the link above, though, and read it for yourself because it's right.

See, we don't oppose safety. We just don't agree that gun control offers any.

While many try to argue that more guns mean more crime, reality doesn't really bear that out.

According to the CDC, seven of the 10 states with the lowest homicide mortality rates are or were pro-gun states. If more guns meant more homicides, why aren't all of them anti-gun states?

For the record, the highest homicide mortality rate can be found in the very anti-gun District of Columbia. Again, that's a data point suggesting that gun control isn't really good for making safe environments.

The truth of the matter is that violent crime is a lot more complex than anti-gunners want to pretend. For example, while they often compare our gun homicide rate to that of Europe, they generally ignore that our non-gun homicide rates are higher than many European nations' total homicide rates. That's an important point because it undermines the entire gun control argument.

What's more, can a 98-pound woman successfully defend herself from a 280-pound male, knife-wielding attacker without a firearm? In most cases, not really.

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See, gun rights are safety aren't incompatible. In fact, guns contribute greatly to safety. 

The problem with safety involves people. We have too many people in this country who do not see a problem with harming others to settle grievances. You're never going to change a thing until you come to recognize that fact.

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