The following letter to the editor is in The Newport Daily News:
Gun law proposals are restrictive
You may not think the upcoming debate in the Rhode Island Statehouse over more restrictive firearms laws affects you. But it does.
Gun control zealots are introducing a long list of bills that will severely limit your ability to protect yourself and your family in these unsettled times.
This past year has seen a huge increase in violent crimes committed by individuals and extremist organizations, both left and right. The newly empowered progressive left wants to cut the size of police forces, resulting in less emergency assistance for the public. Left-wing federal and local politicians are pushing plans to make it virtually impossible for a private citizen to own a firearm.
As a result, a record number of people bought firearms in 2020 – many for the first time- undoubtedly for protection in what they see is an increasingly dangerous society.
Nearly all of the bills that the gun control lobby and the politicians who pander to them to stay in office want are based on deliberate misinformation.
Take the “assault weapons” ban bill, for example. Gun control extremists try to frighten the public by falsely labeling these rifles “weapons of war.” They are not. Our military does not use them in battle. Rifles used by our armed forces can fire multiple times with each squeeze of the trigger. Civilian rifles – generally AR-15 variants – fire only a single round with each trigger squeeze.
The gun control crowd also calls these purely civilian firearms “military style.” That is an unintentional admission that they are not military weapons. “Military style” means they look like military rifles, but are not.
Gun control zealots claim we need to get ARs off our streets. This, too, is a scare-tactic lie. These rifles are not used in street crime. If an AR-style rifle has ever been used in a violent crime in Rhode Island, I can’t find any report of it.
Rifles of any kind are used in less than 2.5% of all violent crime, so how will their elimination make us much safer? The obsession with ARs is nothing but a giant red herring.
There was a nationwide assault weapon ban from 1994 to 2004. No credible study found any relationship between the ban and the violent crime rate.
Criminals commit the vast amount of violent crime, not people who own firearms legally. It is absurd to expect more restrictive laws on the law-abiding, laws that criminals ignore, will make us safer.
If you want to keep your right to protect yourself and your family, contact Lt. Gov. McKee, House Speaker Shekarchi, Senate President Ruggerio and your state legislators right away. Their contact information is available at sos.ri.gov.
Bob King, Middletown
Action Line: If you have already waited this long, you may be running out of time to get your gun and your training. Do it now, if you still can.
