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Hello, Tonight I�m going to speak to you about gun control legislation, I hope to accomplish two things. One, to help you realize that gun control legislation is a violation of one of your constitutional rights, and hope to make you aware of how important that is. And two, to allow you to realize that gun control laws are ineffective and in fact contradict their intended purpose of controlling crime.
Let me start by reciting the 2nd amendment to the constitution, �A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.�
Allow me to repeat the second half of that for clarity, �The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.�
The wisdom of our forefathers to include the 2nd amendment in our Bill of Rights is as valid today as it was during our country�s inception. The 2nd amendments intended purpose is to allow common citizens the right to protect themselves from an overbearing, tyrannical government. It also allows us as Americans the ability to protect ourselves individually from those that would do us harm.
Let me illustrate this point with quotes from two prominent figures in modern history, first, Adolf Hitler, �The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms.� In fact one of Hitler�s first measures after gaining power was to strip the citizens of Germany of the ability to overthrow his fascist dictatorship by outlawing firearms.
And second, Mahatma Gandhi, �Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.�
Not only are gun control laws in direct conflict with our constitutional rights as Americans, they also fail miserably in their intended purpose of controlling crime. The logic, or rather the illogic of gun control legislation is that by making laws that control the sales and distribution of firearms, criminals won�t have access to them, This is ridiculous, criminals don�t by their very nature follow the laws. Gun laws only strip law abiding citizens of the right to protect themselves, their families, and their property.
A lengthy research study done by Professor John Lott of the University of Chicago, using FBI statistics, shows that in states where gun control legislation does not impede private citizens the right to carry firearms your chances of being involved in a violent crime are ninety percent less than in those states that restrict the sale of firearms to law abiding citizens. In another statistic from this same study, when asked what is a criminal�s greatest fear, sixty seven percent chose �an armed victim�.
Gun control legislation completely misses the boat in terms of controlling crime because it removes from responsibility the actual individual that commits the crime and places the blame on an inanimate object. To follow the argument of advocates for gun control laws, must we now also make steel pipe and ball bearings illegal because they were used to make pipe bombs that killed several students recently in a suburban, Denver high school?
Even Alan Dershowitz a Harvard Law professor and self described �liberal� acknowledges the importance of the right to bear arms as essential to the freedoms we share as Americans. �Foolish liberals who are trying to read the 2nd amendment out of the constitution by claiming it�s not an individual right or that it�s too much of a safety hazard don�t see the big picture. They�re courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don�t like.�
In closing I would just like to say, that as Americans, if we continue to trade freedom and liberty for government control we will have only ourselves to blame when the last of our freedoms are taken away and liberty is but a distant memory. Thank you.
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