XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.liberalism, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: or.politics   
   From: liberal-cowardice@latimes.com   
      
   In article    
    wrote:   
   >   
   > Democrats want to control your lives.   
   >   
      
   The two Democratic presidential debates last week in Miami were   
   marked by calls to remember Florida’s Parkland High School   
   shooting, which occurred only 50 miles away from where the   
   debate took place. The Democrats agreed on two solutions to stop   
   these attacks: impose background checks on private transfers of   
   guns, and ban “military-style” “weapons of war.”   
      
   Even when the questions weren’t about gun control, candidates   
   still found ways to bring up the topic.   
      
   Many Democrats have a hard time believing that their opponents   
   want to save lives. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., claimed   
   during the debate, “It’s the greed of the NRA and the gun   
   manufacturers that make any progress impossible.” Congressman   
   Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued, “The NRA is taking orders from   
   the gun manufacturers, that’s the problem.”   
      
   But it isn’t a question of who is getting paid off by gun   
   makers. Some people think that banning guns makes people safer,   
   just as others sincerely believe that such bans will disarm and   
   endanger law-abiding citizens.   
      
   Many terrorist types want to kill as many people as possible,   
   and are drawn to gun-free zones where regular citizens are   
   prohibited from being able to protect themselves.   
      
   One of the authors here, Andrew Pollack, experienced first-hand   
   the disastrous consequences of gun-free zones. His daughter died   
   in the Parkland massacre.   
      
   While all the candidates endorsed full health care coverage for   
   illegal immigrants, none talked about providing funds to help   
   cover mental illness for Americans. Gun control was their only   
   solution.   
      
   Despite focusing on Parkland, none of the candidates addressed   
   the issue of school safety, aside from pushing gun control. No   
   one mentioned the unsafe environment created by leniency, given   
   by both liberal educators and the police, to troubled youth.   
   While all the candidates endorsed full health care coverage for   
   illegal immigrants, none talked about providing funds to help   
   cover mental illness for Americans. Gun control was their only   
   solution.   
      
   It would have been great if one of the debate moderators had   
   asked a tough question on guns. For example, could background   
   checks on private gun transfers have stopped Parkland or any   
   other mass public shooting? The answer, unfortunately, is that   
   such a law wouldn’t have prevented a single attack in this   
   century.   
      
   As to assault weapon bans, banning “military-style” guns won’t   
   come close to stopping these attacks. Apparently, all of the   
   Democrats in Thursday’s debate want to buy back and destroy   
   every gun that they consider to be an assault weapon.   
      
   Killers fired handguns in 80 percent of the mass public   
   shootings since 1998. In 54 percent of attacks, handguns were   
   the only weapons used. By contrast, semi-automatic rifles were   
   used exclusively in just 13 percent of cases. And given the   
   various definitions of what constitutes an assault weapon, not   
   all of these rifles would qualify.   
      
   Here was Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., definition on Thursday night:   
   “Assault weapons are weapons from the military.” But many rifles   
   bear only a superficial resemblance to military weapons. The oft-   
   maligned AR-15 looks like the M-16, which began being used by   
   the U.S. military in the Vietnam War, but as a semi-automatic,   
   it only fires one bullet per pull of the trigger. It isn’t a   
   machine gun.   
      
   No self-respecting military in the world uses semi-automatic   
   weapons. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg knows that,   
   but he’d rather give people the impression that military weapons   
   are pervasive. “As someone who trained on weapons of war, I can   
   tell you that there are weapons that have absolutely no place in   
   American cities or neighborhoods ever,” he said on Thursday   
   night.   
      
   The vast majority of firearms in the United States are semi-   
   automatics, and are very useful for protecting people and saving   
   lives. Single-shot rifles that require reloading may not do   
   people much good when they are facing multiple criminals. Or,   
   for that matter, if the first shot misses or fails to stop an   
      
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