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There were more than 88,000 deaths due to alcohol-related causes last year — including 9,967 traffic fatalities. Many women and children are among the victims. There is also a significant increase in alcohol-related deaths among women.
As the Journal of the American Medical Association reports, one in eight Americans is an alcoholic according to the clinical definition.
Alcohol, in fact, is the third leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. after tobacco and heart disease, and just ahead of the 70,000 deaths due to drug overdoses.
By comparison, according to the latest annual FBI crime statistics, 10,982 Americans were killed by assailants using firearms (and I note that many of those likely involved alcohol). Less than 2% of homicides involved rifles and shotguns of any type.
There are so few murders with “assault rifles” that the FBI data doesn’t distinguish that type of weapon in its records. Rifles and shotguns are the least likely weapon to be used in a violent crime.
To put that into perspective, there have already been more murders in Chicago alone this year, than by assailants using rifles nationwide last year.
As I’ve noted before, if you’re not associated with criminal enterprises, drugs, or gangs, your chances of becoming a murder victim are very low.
Despite the disproportionate number of those who die from alcohol versus those who die from firearms, I’m not opposed to the legal and responsible sale, possession, and use of alcohol, whether it be beer, wine, or the latest fashionable “hard stuff.”
The key words here are “legal and responsible,” and I fully support this columnist’s right to use the hard stuff if she chooses to do so — without an FBI background check.
What I do not support is prohibition. That didn’t work with alcohol, and it won’t work with firearms. Only law-abiding citizens abide by the law in its finest print, but alcohol prohibition made a nation of otherwise law-abiding citizens lawless. Gun prohibition would do the same
The columnist mentioned that her husband likes to hunt and has some rifles and shotguns, which she considers acceptable. But what she and many likeminded suburbanites refuse to accept is that the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is not about hunting.
The restriction against government usurpation of this right is about defending Liberty and the inalienable Rights of all people, as defined in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in our Constitution — defending Liberty from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
As James Madison, wrote, “The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. … The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any…”
The notion that there are tens of millions of gun-owning Americans devoted to the defense of Liberty is very discomforting to those who are not engaged in the animating contest to preserve that “barrier against the enterprises of [government] ambition.”
All Americans enjoy the protections of that invisible barrier, which generations of military and civilian American Patriots have provided since 1776, though many fail to appreciate it.
While the real purpose and necessity of the Second Amendment may cause some comfortable suburban dwellers heartburn, it absolutely terrifies most Beltway Democrats, who are building their political fortunes on “the enterprises of ambition.”
Fact is, those citizens who choose not to exercise their right to possess a firearm owe a great debt of gratitude – whether they are willing to acknowledge it or not – to the legions of today’s Patriot Minutemen who form that barrier wall.
Footnote 1: Just to be clear, what Democrats and the mainstream media call “assault weapons” are not that. An assault weapon is a select-fire weapon that can cycle rounds in fully automatic fashion.
As for “military style” weapons, Bill Clinton banned the sale of those in 1994, but that ban was not renewed 10 years later when it was determined the ban had no effect on crime reduction.
According to Rand Research, “We found no qualifying studies showing that bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines decreased any of the eight outcomes we investigated.”
Footnote 2: As for handguns and self-defense, the columnist also enjoys the protection of her neighbors who do own handguns — because criminals don’t know which homeowners have the ability to defend themselves.
Convicted violent felons indicate that the number-one deterrent when choosing a victim is that person’s ability to defend himself or herself.
However, if she wants criminals to make that distinction, I have offered, free of charge, our “Gun Free Household” sticker, which she can apply to her doors and windows!
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