USA – -(Ammoland.com)- While admitting there is “no middle ground” on “gun control policy,” a RAND Corporation survey did find “four broad areas of agreement” among “100 experts,” military news website Task & Purpose reported recently. Those areas are:
- Expanded mental health prohibitions against gun ownership
- Required reporting of lost or stolen firearms
- A media campaign to prevent child access to firearms
- Surrender of firearms by prohibited possessors.
The RAND “study” is not without agenda, as the way they introduce their survey makes clear. Bemoaning “there is very little scientific evidence available to support the decisions that policymakers and the public must make about whether to implement or change various gun policies” is a thinly-veiled swipe at restrictions on the Centers for Disease Control using its funding to promote a political agenda.
“To be clear, Congress did not restrict the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from studying firearms and violence. Instead, it restricted government funding from being used to advocate or promote gun control.”
Besides, CDC brought it on itself with a clear agenda to treat gun ownership as a public health threat along the lines of seeing them treated “like what we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly, and banned.”
Among the respondents surveyed, “legislative analysts working for gun policy advocacy organizations” might be better described as “apparatchiks” than “experts.” While it appears NRA and NSSF were included, most organizations represented are a rogue’s gallery of gun-grabbers motivated to parrot talking points, not advance “science.”
About those “points of agreement,” here’s what survey responses won’t tell us:
On mental health, we can all agree that crazy, dangerous people shouldn’t have access to guns – or to scissors or matches, for that matter. The truth is, anyone who can‘t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian. And we need to make sure “adjudication” doesn’t mean politically-connected anti-gun judges, politically-appointed boards, and “expert” adherents of the American Psychiatric Association’s anti-gun policies aren’t the ones deciding what needs to be done to whom without full due process protections.
As for requiring lost or stolen property to be reported, the ones who won’t (and can’ be forced to due to Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination) are the violent criminals who possessed their guns illegally anyway. The otherwise “law-abiding” who might not be aware of that might end up incriminating themselves anyway if it turns out changes in the ”law” mean what they once owned is now foirbidden, if they didn’t realize it wasn’t “legal” to buy a gun from a friend in a “no private sales” state, or for a myriad of reasons. And let’s not forget gun owners of principle who refuse to comply with registration edicts, such as untold numbers of gutsy Americans in places like Connecticut, California, New York…
In re the “agreement” on media campaigns, have at it—what’s stopping anyone? Or do they expect us tax cows to foot the bill for propaganda that will be used to undermine our rights? The Astroturf groups put plenty of ad agency illusions out there already – the only problem is they get a lot more publicity than rebuttals exposing them for being fraudulent manipulators ofpublic opinion.
“Child access” is another issue with no one-size-fits-all solution, which is what “laws” passed mandating so-called “safe storage” generally try to impose. There may be times when a responsible and trained minor having access to a firearm results in lives being saved. Case in point is the 14-year-old who successfully defended his home against four intruders. That’s certainly a preferable outcome to the bloody horror of the Merced pitchfork murders.
Finally, whatever “agreement” was reached on “Surrender of firearms by prohibited possessors,” such “laws” not only ignore the “custodian” truism, they often include Americans who have not even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one. Guilty until proven innocent may be popular with so-called “progressives,” but some of us properly consider that flat-out un-American.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.