Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Even though the apparent high ratio of deaths to rounds fired at the El Paso Wal-Mart shooting this weekend is curious (especially if the rounds fired were the smaller-caliber 5.45s of the AK-74, as I suspect)—indicating someone should at least take a closer look at multiple eyewitness accounts of additional shooters—let’s leave that aside for the moment to focus on the immediate important points:

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear any prominent American politician break ranks this week and say something other than “Let’s think up some ways to infringe the peasants’ right to keep and bear arms even MORE! … in ways that wouldn’t have done any good this time, either!’

Why, that would be so refreshing, it might even create for one of these hapless, indistinguishable Democrat losers an effect similar to Bill Clinton’s famed “Sister Souljah Moment’:
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Souljah_moment.)

Such a bold politician could say something as common-sense as:

America has been an armed nation for four hundred years, and will remain one thanks to the God-given right to self-defense guaranteed by the Second Amendment. This is a good thing, since numerous nations were subjected to tyranny (resulting in millions of deaths of the innocent, not merely scores) in the Twentieth Century, which was possible only because their people were first disarmed. Tyrants and would-be tyrants ALWAYS disarm the masses of the people first, restricting gun ownership to their own armies and police forces.

(Please see the excellent summary at: http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/deathgc.htm.)

Since there’s no national gun registry—much as today’s finally-self-declared communist Democrats would like one—we’re reliant on estimates. It’s widely reported 43 percent of American households—55 million households—own firearms. (Presuming they’ll all tell you about it if you ask, of course, which they won’t.) Some say about 100 million American gun owners average one firearm apiece (which makes no sense, since plenty of gun owners have 20 guns in the safe, and it’s not possible for other gun owners to “bring the average down’ by owning fewer than one firearm, is it?) Others estimate 130 million Americans own, among them, 400 million firearms.

But gun owners don’t own guns the way they own electric can-openers—things they might be willing to give up if you could convince them they pose some kind of health risk. They’ve paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars apiece for those finely engineered pieces of modern technology, which they devoutly believe are necessary to the safety of their families. So do you. If you doubt this, please assemble and post online a number of legitimate 9-1-1 calls in which the panicked callers plead “They’re in the garage; they’re on the porch; they’re breaking in and they say they’re going to kill me and rape my daughter. Please hurry! But whatever you do, please don’t send any police who carry GUNS, because in this household we don’t believe guns ever solve anything.’

There are no such calls, because when we’re in trouble, we want someone there with a gun. The only difference is that non-gun-owners are willing to rely on someone ELSE to solve their gun-requiring problem FOR them—generally a government employee who is statistically unlikely to show up for at least 10 minutes (longer in rural areas, longer in Denver or Detroit), at which point that officer frequently has to make a split-second, life-or-death decision about who’s who, IN THE DARK.

(Don’t get me wrong; our police solve that very problem, correctly, an amazingly high percentage of the time. Still, the next morning, how many crime victims who were lucky enough to survive wish Sam Colt had made THEM equal?)

Bill Clinton has long insisted the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in 1994 FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FORTY YEARS because of their absurd “ban on gas-operated, one-shot-per-trigger-pull rifles which Dianne Feinstein’s staff found ugly but which function just like every other gas-operated, one-shot-per-trigger-pull rifle.’

When “taking away our guns’ is on the ballot. gun owners quickly become single-issue voters. Outside New York, New Jersey, Southern New England, Coastal California, and a few corrupt urban hellholes in between, no one’s going to get elected in this country on a platform of taking away our guns.

So let’s get serious.

FAR WORSE IN HEAVILY ‘GUN-CONTROLLED’ COUNTRIES

Isn’t it curious how the news media pay virtually no attention to the handful of young, primarily black men killed with guns in EACH of our our inner cities (including Chicago and Baltimore, and each leaving a bereaved family) almost every weekend—despite the fact all these violent enclaves have JUST THE KIND OF STRICT “GUN CONTROL’ THE SHRIEKERS WANT TO IMPOSE ON THE REST OF US—thanks in large part to the ongoing “War On Some Drugs’ (seven in Chicago alone, this weekend: https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/chicago-weekend-shootings/)—while any act by a depraved young white man (or killers initially presumed to be white—see the 2002 “D.C. snipers’ John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo) killing a handful of people draws ululations of rage and demands for ever more cumbersome and utterly ineffective “gun control,’ …

… without bothering to point out that America’s death rate by guns, particularly in “mass shootings,’ is lower than those of Norway or Serbia, not to mention “Third World’ countries including Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, France, etc.?

https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2017/2/23/john-lott-qa-antigun-lies-about-mass-shootings/

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/sorry-despite-gun-control-advocates-claims-u-s-isnt-the-worst-country-for-mass-shootings/

https://crimeresearch.org/2016/04/venezuela-homicide-rate-rose-after-2012-ban-on-private-ownership-of-guns/

We’re told (once again, as ever) the recent multiple-victim shootings mean it’s time to ask some “serious questions.’

OK: Here are a few that don’t seem to be getting asked, especially on “All-Leftist TV’:

1) How many of these “multiple-victim shooters’ of the past 30 years were on—or were in proximate withdrawal from (that being potentially the most dangerous time)—prescribed psychiatric drugs, especially including Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs, including Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft)?

2) If more than 50 percent (and in fact, it’s way more than 50 percent), isn’t it time to ban these drugs from the legal pharmacopia, or at least severely restrict their prescription to young males between the ages of 12 and 30 (where they seem to be causing the most problems), holding any prescriber who violates that restriction responsible for any fatal outcomes?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/07/25/antidepressants-linked-murders-murderous-thoughts/

https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/28307-from-prozac-to-parkland-are-psychiatric-drugs-causing-mass-shootings

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/another-mass-shooting-potentially-linked-to-psychiatric-drugs-1002085657

3) How many of these shootings take place in locations marked “No Firearms Allowed,’ thus banning self-defense by the law-abiding and virtually guaranteeing the shooter a free-fire zone of disarmed victims? (We know that was the case with the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, “Batman’ movie shooter—
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/did-colorado-shooter-single-out-cinemark-theater-because-it-banned-guns.)

If there were really 3,000 customers in the El Paso Wal-Mart this weekend, in TEXAS of all places (The ATF ranks Texas 18th in the nation with 20 guns owned per capita, but highest in REGISTERED guns per capita—https://www.thoughtco.com/gun-owners-percentage-of-state-populations-3325153), isn’t it curious that no armed customers interfered with or even stopped the slaughter by returning fire?

4) Short of banning such signs on private property, can’t we promulgate laws facilitating and encouraging lawsuits from victims and their families, holding liable for such deaths any management which posts such signs?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/gun-free-zones-dont-save-lives-right-to-carry-laws-do/

5) In fact, couldn’t we additionally require that the open-to-the-public premises of companies (and governments agencies) employing more than 100 people—in addition to removing any such signs—maintain a trained, armed guard on patrol within 60 yards of their public entrances, at all times when they’re open to the public? Even if taxpayers had to SUBSIDIZE such guards, wouldn’t that cost far less than the current onerous “gun control’ regime which did nothing to stop the shooters in question—most of whom passed their “background checks’ with flying colors?

6) Since we’ve now had “background checks’ for 50 years, and they haven’t stopped any of these shootings, (as even far-Left The New York Times agrees: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html), can’t we now get rid of them? How long does it take to declare them a failure? Mafia hit men don’t “forget’ and try to buy their guns at Bob’s Sporting Goods.

After all, the “background check’ bureaucracy is cumbersome and expensive, and the Leftists ASSURE us they’re not advancing a step-by-step, incremental agenda designed to end in universal registration and confiscation … right? What a great way to prove it! Give up background checks; they don’t work.

7) Why not enact “National Constitutional Carry’—blocking the states from restricting otherwise law-abiding citizens from carrying concealed firearms for self-defense (by requiring “permits’ and the like), thus getting rid of these “disarmed victims’ zones, in keeping with the Second Amendment? Why aren’t members of the White House Press corps asking this question, reminding President Trump “You always tell the crowds at your rallies that the Republican Party is the party that defends the Second Amendment, right? It says the right to bear arms ‘shall not be infringed,’ right?’

(Ten cases where an armed citizen took down an active shooter: …
https://www.personaldefenseworld.com/2015/03/10-cases-where-an-armed-citizen-took-down-an-active-shooter/.)

https://www.dailywire.com/news/27439/6-facts-show-gun-control-not-answer-amanda-prestigiacomo

https://crimeresearch.org/2018/06/more-misleading-information-from-bloombergs-everytown-for-gun-safety-on-guns-analysis-of-recent-mass-shootings/

https://www.twincities.com/2018/11/26/john-lott-gun-free-zones-invite-mass-shootings/

FATHERS BARRED FROM RAISING OR DISCIPLINING TEEN-AGE SONS: HOW’S THAT WORKING OUT?

8) Did these young men live their teen-age years in homes with fathers present? If not, why not? Do fathers these days fail to discipline and otherwise bring up their sons the way their grandfathers did - – in the ways they believe they should -– out of fear they’ll be punished or penalized—even separated from those sons—by a “child welfare’ bureaucracy dominated by female “social workers’ and female judges who by definition are unlikely to understand how fathers bond with and train their sons to be strong and responsible guardians of civilization, via discipline?

9) If statistics suggest that’s contributing to the problem, isn’t it time to “dial back’ such government-funded, threat- and coercion-based female interference in the way fathers raise their sons, insisting that fathers be restored to a major role (free of tax-funded female interference) in raising teen-age sons, even in cases of divorce … and soon?

I believe that adds up to at least six or eight “serious questions’ … which I bet you won’t hear mentioned on the hand-wringing television news or “talk’ shows, all promulgating their pre-fabricated agenda of further Victim Disarmament, this week.

— V.S.