Opinion By Larry Keane
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- We don’t talk a lot here about the group “March for Our Lives.” Certainly, everyone loves to see young people passionately arguing for their ideas, and this is no exception.
The problems come about when the ideas are reheated leftovers from other gun control groups. For example, the group recently released their “Peace Plan for a Safer America.” Great title, but unfortunately these ideas aren’t new and aren’t effective. In fact, they will only serve to irrationally punish law-abiding citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights, without creating “Peace” in any community.
Name-calling and Unfounded Charges
The plan starts off by erroneously labeling the criminal misuse of firearms as a “national public health emergency.” That’s wrong. And as we have said many times before, without an accurate description of the root causes of violence in our communities, we can’t identify real solutions that will help.
Even before the plan dives into the action items the youthful authors would like to see enacted, they argue that the next president, “must commit to holding an unpatriotic gun lobby and gun industry accountable not just for weakening our nation’s gun laws, but also for illegal behavior in self-dealing that offends and contradicts America’s vast majority of responsible gun owners.”
As the trade association for the firearms and ammunition industry, we find this statement both outlandish and offensive. Far from being the “unpatriotic” boogeyman, we are an industry that proactively funds and develops programs to create real solutions for safer communities. There is no more patriotic industry in America.
But putting aside the snarky insults for a moment, the real problem with the plan is the actual policies proposed. Let’s look at just a few of the highlights here, and why we would encourage these young adults to do some serious research on these issues.
- “a national licensing and registry system that promotes responsible gun ownership”
- The research the youth use to back this up is extremely biased and discredited.
- “a ban on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and other weapons of war”
- Just because a semi-automatic rifle is designed to cosmetically look similar to military firearms doesn’t change the fact that they are not. Modern sporting rifles fire one bullet with each pull of the trigger, same as more traditional-looking rifles. They are also rarely misused by criminals. And arbitrarily banning common magazine capacities will not reduce crime.
- and a national gun buy-back program to reduce the estimated 265-393 million firearms in circulation by at least 30%.
- Gun buybacks are ineffective wastes of tax dollars. Even the Obama Administration agreed in its National Institute of Justice memo.
Industry Doing the Hard Work
There’s far more in the plan that we could tackle in a single blog post. Suffice it to say, they need to do their homework. Particularly when they call for holding “the gun lobby and industry accountable for decades of illegal behavior and misguided policies intended to shield only themselves…” As a heavily regulated industry, the firearms and ammunition industry prides itself on high rates of compliance and on our voluntary programs, often in partnership with state and federal government agencies, to help curtail the actual problems of guns illegally getting into the wrong hands. We – not gun control advocates – work successfully to make sure states are submitting all prohibiting records to NICS. We provide tens of millions of free gun locks and educational materials in all states. In partnership with ATF, we train our members to spot straw purchasers, to comply with all laws, and to use discretion when making transactions and keeping their inventory secure. We work with the Dept. of Veterans Affairs and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to help address the crisis of suicides in our country.
Sorry kids, we give this plan an F and suggest doing your own work, rather than copying straight from the ineffective gun control playbook.
About National Shooting Sports Foundation
The National Shooting Sports Foundation is the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of more than 10,000 manufacturers, distributors, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations and publishers. www.nssf.org
The America-hating communist democrats have been indoctrinating the students of American into good little Bundists. Students today have no idea that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and ALL ‘gun control laws’ are unConstitutional regardless what some anti-America activist democrat ‘judge’ says. WHY are we here? Here some reasons: 1. Self-absorbed Americans are too busy sending dik pics and tapping on their phone instead of supporting the Constitution and teaching their offspring what it means to be an American. 2. In 2016, ONLY 43% of conservatives voted. So, 57% of conservatives stayed home. No one to blame… Read more »
USA, except tj’s lame stereotypes of firearm owners do not fit any posters here, unless he is attempting to project his weaknesses onto us. He sounds more like an anti-rights shill trying to make firearm owners look bad under the guise of him being a firearm owner. We have seen that all too often here.
A look into a possible future,… The second civil war has begun, USA and tetejaun long time supporters of each other, find each other as they blunder through the woods looking for the Pro-gun front lines. They come across a clearing and find a mass of volunteers being mustered in to the FAF – Freedom Alliance Forces. and they fall in line. Local FAF Commander Bundy is reviewing the volunteers.. Scanning up and down each volunteer he comes to our heroes and asks their names. USA snaps to attention and shouts ” USA, Sir! ” The entire mass of men… Read more »
Ur an ass! If you aren’t able to get in line with the supreme law of the land, and the 2nd amendment that holds this together, u really need to find someplace else to spew ur rhetoric ace!
Here’s MY peace plan!! “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”
IF YOU WANT PEACE, PREPARE FOR WAR!
Prepare all you want. Too many Americans today are screaming yellow cowards and will GLADLY give up their arms to insure a non-interrupted supply of beer & Cheetos at home.
Yes, but it doesn’t matter a whit. Screaming yellow cowards have never won a fight, and they never will. They can make life difficult, but only until they become too annoying (almost like now??). Sooner or later, when pests become intolerable, the productive cease tolerating them.
Cowards never DO much of anything, other than make lots of noise. When the chips are down, cowards are irrelevant. When pressure comes on, they just fold up like a house of cards.
tj, maybe in your anti-rights dream that is true.
Speak for yourself. As a VN veteran and father of three young men, I will not see the Constitution I swore to defend against ALL ENEMIES destroyed without a fight, and I have the weapons to do so thanks to that same Constitution.
You must have started having kids very late in life.
Most of those cowards are the ones demanding that the police take away your guns. Question is, will you fight when the time comes, or are you too a yellow coward?? Better choose soon, time is short.
Ok,slowly put the john wick 3 dvd back in the box and go to sleep 😀
It was a wild movie but it aint real
You do realize that this motto has ben around for hundreds of years before the 1st John Wick movie came out, right?? Just like ‘ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!’ was around for 2000 years before “300” hit the silver screen!
Virtually EVERY mass shooter/mass murderer has been a democrat.
Democrat/socialist/communist. Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the USSR, married a Russian, then was allowed to return to the US. JFK was the last democrat that had any sense of being an American. LBJ, the Peanut Farmer, Ted the Murderer Kennedy, Bill Sleezeball Clinton, and wife Hill Bitch, John Kerry, Obummer, et al., have hated this country.
Sounds like the work of Twerp David Hogg and Emily “Uncle Fester” Gonzales. I’m sure she will be sporting her Cuban flag when she appears. Snowflakes in Florida. Since the left, John Dewey, began taking over the educational establishment American History and Civics have not been taught at all or incorrectly.
Sounds like BOSS HOGG and his Bi-ch EMMA and NEVER AGAIN
The worst enemy of the American people is the owners of the news media who broadcast the blah, blah, blah of the anti-rights, and do not broadcast the words of the pro-rights.
March for our lies=puppets
NSSF is more interested in finding ways of compliance and compromise than opposing unconstitutional gun laws. For them and their members, it’s all about making money and profits and they’ll comply (kiss ass) and compromise and support the the Feds every time if they think it’ll keep the dollars rolling in. No thanks, we can live without this kind of ally.