Gun Control—Do Something?
“The suspect [18-year-old Payton Gendron] who allegedly shot and killed 10 people and injured three more at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket on May 14 may have planned the attack for months, officials said on May 15, while a manifesto that was apparently written by the man stated that he chose Buffalo because of the state’s stringent gun laws and that he used an illegally modified rifle to carry out the attack … In the alleged manifesto, the author appears to claim that he chose Buffalo because of the strict gun control laws, because it has a high “black population percentage,” and because it “isn’t that far away” from where he had lived.” Read more from The Epoch Times: Supermarket Shooting Suspect’s Alleged Manifesto Says He Chose Buffalo Because of Strict Gun Control Laws
History
“Federal gun control legislation like the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (1993) created nationwide requirements that make it more difficult to obtain a firearm.
Criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. Gun control laws only affect law-abiding people who go through legal avenues to obtain firearms.
Criminals overwhelmingly obtain their firearms through illegal channels and will never be deterred by state and federal laws. That’s why background checks have virtually no impact on criminals.
A 2016 Obama administration study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics examined how prison inmates obtained the firearms they used during crimes — and the results weren’t surprising. The study found that only about 10.1% obtained their firearms through a retail source. The vast majority of criminals obtained their firearms through other means, including:
- Illegal underground sales
- Bought, borrowed, traded, or rented from friends or family
- Gifts
- Purchased by another individual for them
- Theft
- From their victims
- From the scene of a crime
Criminals who go through illegal avenues to obtain firearms aren’t going to submit to background checks while doing so. Ultimately, only law-abiding citizens would be impacted by expanded background checks.” Read more from the NRA-ILA: Why Gun Control Doesn’t Work
Mental Illness
Here in the smallest of 254 Texas counties, around 90% of our jail inmates receive treatment for mental illness. In fact, the county jail is the largest mental health services provider in the county.
“7.74% of adults in America reported having a substance use disorder in the past year. 2.97% of adults in America reported having an illicit drug use disorder in the past year. 5.71% of adults in America reported having an alcohol use disorder in the past year. The state prevalence of adults with substance use disorder ranges from 5.98% in Florida to 12.30% in the District of Columbia.” Learn more from Mental Health America: Adult with Substance Use Disorder 2022
Texas ranks third in adult substance abuse disorder. Coincidentally, the majority of illegal aliens enter the United States through the Texas-Mexico international border. Border Patrol agents in El Paso, Laredo, Del Rio, Rio Grande Valley and Big Bend sectors apprehended 118,036 of the 172,011 (68.6 percent) illegal migrants in May, according to the May [2022] Southwest Land Border Encounters report released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Source
Gun Control Distraction
Joe Biden is actively inviting illegal aliens to come to America. The intended purpose of his unconstitutional abuse of executive powers is to flood the country with aliens who may be authorized to vote in the 2023 general elections. Democrats push to recognize illegal aliens in the census to increase representation in the House of Representatives.
At this point in time, Joe Biden and Democrat lawmakers hoist the gun control pennant to distract us from the push to populate our country with Democrat voters.
If the Democrats succeed in their goals of (1) federalizing all elections and (2) enlarging Democrat voter rolls with illegal aliens, our nation will become a one-party country, a true democracy of mob rule. As with earlier democracies that became one-party states, all opposition—Republican opposition—will be outlawed.
Mental illnesses follow drug and alcohol abuse and diagnoses of mental illness are certainly disqualifiers for gun ownership.
Disarming law-abiding Americans is a major step toward losing our republic.
May God have mercy on America.
John White
Rockwall, Texas
John N. White 