Taking a break from inciting "occupy protests" around the country, professional huckster Jesse Jackson recently returned to one of his longtime battle-cries: “Limit guns now.”
Writing in The Chicago Sun-Times, Jackson says, “It is time to revive the ban on assault weapons,” and he laments the fact that “more Americans now own a gun on their property than any time since 1993, and for the first time, a majority of Americans are against a ban on assault rifles and semiautomatics.”
Ever since Attorney General Eric Holder stated in 2009 that the Obama administration would work to reinstate Bill Clinton’s so-called “assault weapons ban,” Jesse Jackson and the gun-control lobby have grown increasingly impatient. It isn’t enough that President Obama promised the Brady Campaign that he would work “under the radar” to enact their gun-control agenda. Jackson and his allies want the president to begin his war on the Second Amendment right now.
This hasn’t happened yet, as Jackson acknowledges in his column, because millions of NRA members and gun owners are standing in the way. We refuse to be intimidated. We are continuing to educate Congress and the American people about the facts surrounding this gun ban, because we know the truth is more powerful than any demagoguery the gun-ban lobby can spin from its phony pulpit.
But if Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama and the Brady Campaign are truly concerned about public safety, they too should consider the facts. At a time when semi-automatic firearms (which they misleadingly call “assault weapons”) are more prevalent than ever before, our nation’s murder rate is at a 47-year low, having decreased 52 percent since 1991.
This is because the firearms that Jackson and Obama want to ban are highly effective tools that millions of law-abiding Americans use every day to protect their homes, their property and their loved ones. Semi-automatic firearms account for roughly 15 percent of the 300 million privately owned firearms in the United States today. They are used for the same purposes for which other firearms are used, including self-defense, hunting and recreational and competitive target shooting.
Contrary to the misrepresentations of the mainstream media, semi-automatics can’t “spray fire,” they aren’t “easy to convert” into machine guns and they aren’t “high-powered” compared to other firearms. Semi-automatics fire only one shot when the trigger is pulled — just like revolvers, bolt-actions, lever-actions, pump-actions, double-barrels and many other types of firearms.
Gun-control radicals like Jesse Jackson are quick to omit these facts because the truth and public safety take a back seat to their agenda of completely banning gun ownership in America. The so-called “assault weapons” issue is their attempt to demonize a broad class of commonly owned firearms and condition the public for more sweeping gun bans.
In his recent screed, Jackson even holds up Great Britain as a shining example of how wonderful a disarmed society can be. But the world witnessed the harsh reality of England’s gun ban this summer, when innocent shopkeepers and homeowners were forced to cower in fear, unable to protect their property and their loved ones from thousands of rioting thugs.
Banning so-called “assault” weapons isn’t an end game for Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama and the gun-control lobby. Rather, it’s just one incremental step in their overall strategy to ban all firearms and destroy our Second Amendment freedom. Much to their frustration, an increasing majority of Americans aren’t fooled.
Chris W. Cox is the executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) and serves as the organization’s chief lobbyist.
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