We only recently “emerged” from the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, it was just in April that airlines dropped their mask mandates after a federal judge in Florida ruled against them. While this marked the last remnant of our government’s unprecedented assault on our liberty for many Americans, the repercussions of those ill-conceived and ill-intended COVID-19 policies continue to reverberate throughout our society.
The American economy continues to reel from the consequences of lockdowns and government spending during the pandemic. The federal reserve bank of San Francisco has identified COVID-19 spending as the cause of a sudden three percent rise in inflation. Since then, inflation has only continued to worsen and climb, reaching a 40 year high.
But the economy isn’t the only victim of the authoritarian COVID mandates and lockdowns.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 37 percent of high school students reported they suffered from poor mental health as a result of the lockdowns. Nearly half reported feeling persistently sad and hopeless.
Even the family of the Buffalo supermarket shooter claimed that the lockdowns and ensuing isolation contributed to the radicalization of the killer; a claim supported by the killer’s own manifesto. “My current beliefs started when I first started to use 4chan a few months after covid [sic] started,” he wrote.
Hindsight and dozens of studies have not only proven that lockdowns and mandates had “little to no effect” on saving lives during the pandemic, but have even shown that the harsh measures were counterproductive and even deadly. That was always the point.
The COVID authoritarians exploited the pandemic to enrich and empower themselves at the expense of American citizens, all done under the guise of “saving lives.”
While the COVID pandemic may be in the rearview mirror—at least for now—the authoritarians have found a new “pandemic” to exploit in an effort to further empower themselves and subjugate the American citizen: the gun violence, or mass shooting pandemic.
Certainly, the recent slew of horrific mass shootings in America are as real as the COVID virus that swept across our nation. But Joe Biden’s Democratic Party “cure” for mass shootings is as ill-conceived and malevolent as was their cure for COVID.
The proposed “assault weapon” and “high-capacity magazine” bans are in the same vein as the infamous “15 days to slow the spread”—dishonest, seemingly reasonable demands, intended to coax the American citizenry into giving up a portion of their liberty. Meanwhile authoritarians intend to extend their reach until they achieve their sinister ends: the complete disarmament of the law-abiding American citizen.
“Just do something. For God’s sake, do something,” Biden recently demanded of Congress and the American people in the wake of the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, and Tulsa. These aren’t the words of a rational leader intent upon solving a problem; rather, they are the words of an irrational and hysterical dictator intent upon using fear to convince the American people to give in to the dangerous, irrational, and counterproductive demands of “gun control.”
While COVID was unprecedented and a lack of data helped persuade Americans to adopt authoritarian lockdowns and mandates, we have ample data regarding the effectiveness of gun control. That data completely undermines the authoritarian demands to relinquish our Second Amendment right for the dubious purpose of “saving lives.”
The same “red flag laws” being proposed nationally to prevent mass shootings were in place in Buffalo but failed to stop the Buffalo shooter from carrying out his heinous mass murder at a supermarket.
According to the FBI, knives account for far more murders in the United States each year than rifles. In 2019, rifles—the so-called “weapons of war” the Democrats are demanding we ban—were used to kill 364 Americans. Knives, however, were used to kill 1,476 Americans. There are no calls for knife bans. (Yet.)
Handguns, rather than rifles, were used to kill 6,368 Americans in 2019. And in Chicago alone, where gun owners must be 21 years old to purchase a firearm, 490 Americans were murdered. Still, the Democrats are proposing raising the legal age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21.
Law abiding American citizens are being treated as dangerous and violent criminals intent upon committing murder just as healthy Americans were treated as dangerous and lethal transmitters of the deadly COVID virus.
Seizing the rifles of law-abiding American citizens won’t stop criminals intent upon murdering others anymore than locking healthy Americans in their homes and other draconian measures slowed the spread of COVID.
Just as the COVID authoritarians blocked and condemned life saving therapeutics and treatments proven to save lives, the gun authoritarians reject and block measures such as “hardening” our schools and concealed carry permits proven to keep our children and other innocent civilians safe.
Don’t fall for it. The Democrats’ prescription of gun control is worse than the problem itself. It will leave the law-abiding American citizen vulnerable and defenseless—against criminals and authoritarians alike.