Gun control organizations have a long history of pandering to advance their objectives. This is only necessary because the American people have an even longer history of rejecting gun control. We’ve seen professional gun control activists try to tie their agenda to everything from COVID-19 to racism, and now they’ve pulled “police reform” under their ever-widening umbrella of “gun violence.”
Shannon Wattstold Fortune magazine last summer that “police violence is gun violence.” Protests calling for police reform last summer dominated headlines for months; it was only natural for Watts and other professional gun controllers to tie themselves to the George Floyd tragedy, though it had literally nothing to do with firearms.
The roots of gun control are found in disingenuity. The anti-gun movement has called for the disarmament of law-abiding civilians for decades. The original goal was to ban handguns, but the American public rejected the notion of demonizing and banning handguns so gun grabbers pivoted to semi-automatic rifles.
Gun controllers created a false narrative around semi-automatic rifles, concocted a scary name, and hoped they could scare the American public into submission. They, of course, hoped to use a ban on rifles to condition Americans to later accept a ban on handguns. Most anti-gun organizations have abandoned public calls for banning handguns from law-abiding civilians, although that likely remains their ultimate goal.
Bans on so-called assault weapons are often written as broadly as possible to outlaw as many firearms as possible. Perhaps this is why President Biden’s nominee for ATF Director – and Giffords Center lobbyist – David Chipman refused to define “assault weapon” during his nomination hearing before ultimately offering a definition that goes beyond even European Union-style gun control.
Often, both in the past with handguns and currently with so-called “assault weapons,” these extremists have argued that the firearms they wish to ban should not be in the hands of civilians. They either state that the guns are only suitable for agents of the government, such as military and law enforcement, or imply as much. Most gun control measures – even in states like California and Massachusetts that receive high gun control grades from Senator Mark Kelly’s gun control organization – exempt law enforcement and military personnel from the restrictions.
Now, professional gun control is willing to sell out even the police to bolster their anti-American agenda. The real question, though, is what do efforts to reform police procedures have to do with promoting gun control?
Nothing, really, but that doesn’t stop groups like Giffords and Everytown from trying to pander to groups that do support such measures, hoping that the support that is rapidly fading for gun control will be bolstered by support from the anti-law enforcement community.
Everytown, for example, just published a “fact sheet” on Alternative Dispatch Programs. Their fact sheet begins with statistics on the number of people killed by law enforcement officers each year and links to an incident tracker. Among the cases in 2021 include a suspected armed robber who tried to draw a firearm on a police officer as his suspected accomplices fled and a man who allegedly hunted down his girlfriend before shooting her and killing her three-year-old son. The suspect fired on police and was killed by return fire. These deceased suspects were two names presented at random by the tracker.
That is not to say that these are representative of all cases in which a person is killed during an encounter with law enforcement. But, as usual, Everytown and their allies cannot resist the urge to use inflated numbers. Remember when another Bloomberg gun control entity listed the Boston Marathon bomber as a victim of “gun violence?”
Everytown also cites the purportedly small number of 911 calls that are related to violent crime as evidence that social workers and – who else – public health professionals should respond to 911 calls instead of uniformed officers. There may be some merit to this idea, but the reality is that not all cases that end with violence start with violence. People struggling with substance abuse or involved in some sort of dispute may not be violent at the time of the initial 911 call, but they may turn violent at any moment. That is why police officers respond to 911 calls.
Reality provides clear evidence for why Shannon Watts and other professional gun controllers seek to tie themselves to every unrelated issue and crisis. It’s because their gun control agenda just isn’t popular. Poll after poll finds support for gun control has dropped. Everytown campaigned on other issues in 2020, a major newspaper buried a damaging interview with then-candidate Joe Biden, wealthy elitists staged deceitful campaigns, and individual candidates hid their true position on gun control.
Oh, and in the midst of all of that – an unimaginable streak of record NICS background checks and undeniable diversity within the gun-owning community. Surveys show that self-defense is the driving motivation for acquiring a firearm. Americans want to be secure, and they want to be able to rely on themselves to ensure their safety.
Everytown just doesn’t get it. No amount of focus groups, talking points, or double-speak will ever trick the American people into giving up their Constitutionally-affirmed right to keep and bear arms.
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