The Truth About Warren’s Gun Control Plan From The President Of The CPRC

One of the Left’s most powerful and oft-used weapons is deception. They will take something that is fairly true, misconstrue it and use it to tell a bold-faced lie. Anything from “Trump had Russians in Trump Tower” to “Trump assails against hate but not guns” are things that are basically true but heavily misconstrued to drive a narrative. The Russians that were in the Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr. were not from the Russian government and Trump’s assailing against hate but not guns is due to not blaming an inanimate object for mass shootings and instead attacks the ideologies the shooters had and their reason for killing people.
 
But the point remains that the Left often uses deception and lies to drive their fictitious narratives and advance their agendas. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is no different and used this tactic when unveiling her gun control plan should she be elected President of the United States.
 
The funny thing is that, even before talking about gun control, Elizabeth Warren lied about something else: automobile deaths going down supposedly after government issued regulations to car manufacturers.
 
The senator wrote: “Over fifty years, we reduced per-mile driving deaths by almost 80% and prevented 3.5 million automobile deaths. And we’re still at it.”
 
However, Dr. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), explains the logical deceitfulness of Warren’s claim:
 
“It is pretty deceptive to claim that government regulations reduced motor vehicle deaths by 80%. Those deaths were falling much faster before the federal [government] started regulating auto safety.”
 
He continued:
 
“As indicated by the figures from my book, ‘The War on Guns’: 1) it is easy to see that cars were getting safer from the time the very first data was released in 1921, long before there were mandated federal safety regulations, and 2) when you look over the entire period, the rate at which car safety improved actually slowed down after the federal government started regulating car safety. The first seatbelts were introduced in 1950 by car companies that were figuring out on their own how to make cars safer. But the New York Times’ graph doesn’t show the even faster drop in vehicle deaths per-mile-traveled that occurred before 1946.”
 
“It is important to note that accidental deaths from all sources are falling over time. Companies are competing against each other to provide customers with safer products, and items such as seat belts, shatter proof glass, padded dashboards, and safety cages were just some of the many safety features adopted by car makers long before the federal government got involved in regulating auto safety.”
 
Dr. Lott also figures that “government regulations slowed down safety regulations for a simple reason: the government micromanaged how companies would meet those safety improvements. It isn’t just that the government mandated that car companies had to use airbags in their cars, it is that the government would tell the companies exactly how to make those bags and how to install them. That forced car companies to wait on installing these safety features until the federal government told the companies exactly how they wanted the product made and installed. If the companies didn’t wait, they may find themselves spending hundreds of millions of dollars, or even billions of dollars, only to find that they had to redesign everything and start all over.”
 
In sum, Dr. Lott points out that Sen. Warren’s claim is purposefully misleading. Yes, automobile deaths were going down over time, but definitely not because of the government. If anything, those numbers would’ve gone down QUICKER without government involvement and regulation. The free market would’ve demanded car manufacturers to make their cars safer, installing more and more safety features. From seatbelts to airbags and even the fairly recent back-up cameras that are being installed more and more, the free market makes it so that companies compete with one another to make their products good and safe for the public. The government only gets in the way of progress.
 
Of course, the reason this is even being talked about is that Warren is trying to insist that government regulation “helped” lower vehicle deaths (it was actually a detriment to that) and as such, government regulation can “help” lower gun deaths (it would also be a massive detriment to that too). The problem that Warren faces is that reality speaks of a different story. The government DIDN’T help cars get safer and it certainly wouldn’t help lower gun deaths.
 
Now, that isn’t the only dumb claim Warren makes in her plan. Far from it, as much of it basically regurgitates the ridiculous gun control ideas other Democrats have put forth with some changes to make them her own. One of Warren’s ideas was to make private gun sales require background checks. Of this, Dr. Lott said:
 
“A lot of academic research by criminologists and economists on background checks on the private transfer of guns has found no effect on crime rates. There is a simple reason for this. A major source of illegal guns are drug dealers, who have weapons to protect their valuable property. You will have about as much success stopping drug dealers from selling guns as you have in stopping them from selling drugs, and if you think that you have stopped criminals from being able to buy illegal drugs, good luck thinking that you will stop them from being able to obtain guns.”
 
What Dr. Lott is essentially saying is that private gun sales, and particularly background checks, have no noticeable impact on crime rates largely because illegally-acquired guns are far more prevalently used. Whether it be through stealing it from someone or purchasing it from a black market, there is no legislation that has ever been thought up or could ever be thought up that would actually be able to completely stop the use of illegal weapons. Certainly, coming up with regulations that ban or make illegal guns that are currently legal don’t help either. Restricting the law-abiding citizens in their abilities to protect themselves and/or their families doesn’t keep gangsters or mass shooters from killing other people.
 
According to Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck, at minimum, there are 760,000 defensive gun uses (DGUs) per year. Meaning that there are at least 760,000 times and scenarios in which someone uses a gun in self-defense every single year (and the actual number is likely higher due to underreporting that tends to occur. People don’t tend to want to admit they used a gun to harm or kill someone else, even if it was in self-defense and they wouldn’t be held criminally liable). This dwarfs even the most ridiculous claims by Leftists about how many mass shootings there are in a year (they often claim in the hundreds, but they include shootings in which two or less people were killed and/or wounded, or even when there were no killed or wounded, but a firearm happened to have been discharged). So defensive use of guns far outweighs offensive use of guns such as in premeditated killings and mass shootings.
 
To restrict We the People’s ability to defend ourselves would only exacerbate the problem of mass shootings and killings. It’s no surprise, really, that Chicago often has very bloody weekends with all of its gun control regulations that are in place.
 
The last thing I will talk about regarding Warren’s gun control plan (there is a lot more, but I don’t want this article to be too long) is that she intends to allow for gun manufacturers and companies to be “strictly liable” for damages caused with a firearm. Of course, this leaves manufacturers in great financial peril given that it would allow for citizens to sue them to bankruptcy and that they would have to pay every single time a firearm causes someone some sort of damage.
 
Alongside that, she intends to increase taxes on firearms and ammunition purchases (30% and 50% respectively). It goes without saying that Warren’s plan would help bankrupt gun manufacturers and keep poor people from being able to protect themselves. The government can’t outright take our guns (there are far too many for that to be plausible and they would, at most, only be able to confiscate legally-purchased weapons, not illegal ones) but they certainly can make it a nightmare for people to make a living. Taxes and regulation are the enemy of businesses and they always restrict how much capital they are able to make.
 
There are certain times when I think regulation is a good idea, such as in the case of social media companies when they try to ban people for expressing differing opinions. If the end is to protect Constitutional rights, I think regulation can be a force for good (but, as with many things, can also be a force for evil when taken to the extreme). But in general, regulation is a detriment. You saw it in car manufacturing, with vehicle death numbers going down significantly until the government came in and told car manufacturers how to make their cars safer, and you see it whenever more gun control legislation is passed.
 
Joe Biden is somehow proud of the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, despite it not having stopped any mass shootings (Columbine happened when this ban was in effect). Similarly, any gun control measure would be equally as ineffective to combating gun violence in America. If you want to know what it would take for this country to be alleviated from this problem, read my previous article about our country turning its back to God. I believe that can provide some answers.
 
Luke 22:36
“He said to them, ‘But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.’”
 
And please make sure to check out our free weekly newsletter. As the name suggests, it is a newsletter that comes completely free of charge. What you get is a compilation of the week’s articles sent right into your inbox. So make sure to check it out today!