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CONTENTS
Author’s Note
PART ONE: The Truth about Guns
“It’s Time for America to Have a Conversation about Guns.”
“We Should Start Drafting a Bill to Ensure Newtown Never Happens Again.”
“Guns Are Lethal.”
“No One Wants to Take Your Guns Away.”
“Well, Can’t We at Least Clarify the Second Amendment?”
“That May Be, but Even Thomas Jefferson Wanted the Second Amendment to Expire.”
“The United States Has the Highest Gun Murder Rate in the Developed World.”
“Okay, but the Overall U.S. Murder Rate Is Much Higher than Other Wealthy Countries’.”
“But Other Countries Have Strict Gun Control and Very Few Murders.”
“The United States Is Unique in Suffering from Gun Massacres.”
“Then Why Are Gun Massacres Now Happening More than Ever Here in the United States?”
“No Mass Killings Have Ever Been Stopped by Someone Else with a Gun.”
“Regardless, if We Really Want to Stop Gun Massacres We Need to Bring Back the Assault Weapons Ban.”
“You Are So Out of Touch. Even the Most Conservative Member of the Supreme Court Thinks We Should Ban Assault Weapons.”
“No Civilian Needs a Military-Style Weapon.”
“Yeah, but If You Modify One, It Becomes Fully Automatic.”
“I Still Don’t Understand Why Anyone Would Need a Semi-Automatic in Their Home.”
“I’ve Heard that You Plan on Defeating the Entire United States Military with Your Assault Rifle.”
“I’m Glad You Brought the Second Amendment Up Again. You Have to Admit that It’s Pretty Outdated.”
“Even if That’s True, Everyone Agreed that the Second Amendment Was Only About Militias.”
“Most Guns Kept in the Home Are Used for Something Other than Self-Defense.”
“Keeping a Gun at Home Is Pointless Anyway.”
“Okay, but that Doesn’t Apply to Women. They’re Still More Likely to Be Killed When There’s a Gun in the Home.”
“Forty Percent of All Guns Are Sold Without Background Checks.”
“Gun Shows Are Where Criminals Get All Their Weapons.”
“Even a Majority of National Rifle Association Members Support Universal Background Checks.”
“The NRA Is the Poster Child for Bad Research.”
“The 2004 Report Said We Need More Data and Research on Guns—and They’re Right, We Need to Know More.”
“More Guns Means More Crime. Any Data to the Contrary Is a Lie or NRA Propaganda.”
“The Reason Nothing Changes Is that the NRA Buys Off Politicians.”
“The NRA Is So Crazy that They Actually Want to Arm Our Kids!”
“Columbine Proves that Putting Armed Guards in Schools Just Doesn’t Work.”
“College Students Are Too Irresponsible to Carry Guns.”
“The Police Support More Gun Control Laws—You Should, Too.”
“We Should Restrict Magazines to a Maximum of Ten Rounds.”
“Don’t Believe the Gun Nuts: Hitler Didn’t Take Anyone’s Firearms Away.”
PART TWO: Winning Hearts and Minds
Denying the Science
Stimulus/Response
The Truth about (No) Consequences
Trained to Kill
Scapegoating and Excuses
The Way Forward
About Glenn Beck
Notes
To Martin Luther King, Jr.
who preached nonviolence but knew that passive resistance could not be relied on for his own family’s protection. King owned several guns but was subjected to the worst kind of gun control—and deprived of his basic right to defend himself and his family—when police in Alabama denied him a concealed carry permit in 1956. When will we learn? The right to bear arms shall not be infringed.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
We can do better. We must do something.
—SENATOR RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT), December 20, 2012
We must act, we must act, we must act.
—ARNE DUNCAN, U.S. secretary of education, January 26, 2013
Last December a man was pushed onto the subway tracks in midtown Manhattan. He was hit by a train as he struggled to pull himself back up onto the platform.
Fifty-five people were killed by New York City subway trains in 2012, but this incident stood out for one major reason: a freelance photographer who’d been standing on the platform snapped a photo of the man just seconds before he was struck. The next morning the photo appeared on the front page of the New York Post.
With the horrific image in hand, the media had a story. This was now an epidemic. Every time someone got hit, the incident was treated as though it were another example of just how lethal the New York City subway had become. And, of course, politicians demanded action. “We cannot have incident after incident take place like this without saying we are going to act,” said Councilman James Vacca as he called for an emergency hearing. “We have to have a plan.”
And so a plan was crafted: glass walls could be built from floor to ceiling along the tracks of all 468 stations in the system. Accidents would be stopped and suicidal people would have to find another way to kill themselves. It would big, audacious, and expensive—and it would send a signal to everyone that this epidemic of violence would not be tolerated.
There was only one small problem with all of this: there was no epidemic. In fact, fewer people had been struck by trains that year than the year before, and the number of fatalities was right around the five-year average. The front-page photos and increased media attention had clouded public perception, but the statistics did not lie.
It’s human nature to want to do something when confronted with a tragedy. It makes us feel good. It makes us sleep better. It makes people vote for us.
But it often doesn’t make a real difference.
There have been several unthinkable tragedies involving guns recently. The media and many politicians tell us that these massacres are happening more frequently than ever before; that America is the most violent country on earth; that our schools are unsafe; that semi-automatic assault rifles are to blame; and that we must do something.
As you’ll discover in this book, the basic premise of every single one of those claims is wrong. Worse, when we allow these myths to be accepted as fact, we end up focusing so much on the how of these crimes—the weapon itself—that we stop ourselves from asking the far more appropriate question: why?
Last year in New York City a nanny stabbed to death the two young children she was caring for. It was a gruesome, traumatic incident that shocked the entire city. In the aftermath of this tragedy, the media focused on the nanny’s background, trying desperately to figure out her motive. Everyone wanted to know if there was something that should have tipped people off or some way to prevent this from ever happening again.
But no one talked about the knife. People intuitively understood that this woman could have used a knife, a gun, or her bare hands—the weapon didn’t really matter; it was just a tool. What mattered was not the how—horrific as it was—but the why.
Unfortunately, when it comes to guns, this kind of sober analysis is usually turned upside down. After someone is shot, the story starts with deta
ils about the kind of gun used, the capacity of its magazine, and a rundown of how it was acquired. The why comes later and, even then, we usually hear only what we want to hear. It’s easy when the motive fits our preconceived notions—revenge, greed, money, sex, or drugs—but what about when it doesn’t? What happens when we uncover that some of the worst juvenile killers in our history were influenced—and in some cases, trained, by entertainment violence, like video games? Do we continue to ask questions and pursue the truth, or do we stop listening because it hits so close to home?
On a Sunday night in December, two days after the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre (a massacre perpetrated by a boy who reportedly had an obsession with violent video games), David Axelrod, the president’s former top political adviser, was watching a football game and posted an observation on Twitter: “In NFL post-game: an ad for shoot ’em up video game. All for curbing weapons of war. But shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game?”
I’m sure that David Axelrod and I don’t agree on much, but the answer to his question, as you’ll see in Part Two of this book, is an unequivocal yes. The evidence is indisputable that what is different in society now isn’t the guns; it’s the person, the culture, and the cavalier way we treat violence. Without morality and virtue most things in a free society fall apart. But with them, anything is possible.
Of course, that argument is not going to satisfy everyone—especially those who are predisposed to blaming guns for everything. So, in Part One, I go through all the myths and lies that have been told about guns and the Second Amendment over the last few months and dismantle them, point by point. For example, gun-related mass killings are, thankfully, still incredibly rare. As with the New York City subway incidents, there has been no increase in the frequency of these events, or the number of people who die in them. What has increased, however, is the number of people making the case that Americans should give back some of their liberty in an attempt to buy a little security.
I think I remember someone pretty smart once advising that those who do that deserve neither liberty nor security.
The Founders wrote in the Second Amendment that our right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” To infringe means “to limit or undermine”—so you’ll have to forgive me for being a little skeptical about those who use a tragedy to promote an agenda that culminates in limiting or undermining our right to keep and bear arms. Besides, the people who talk most about the need to regulate guns are also usually the same people who know the least about them. Ask these gun prohibitionists about the Second Amendment and they’ll usually mention hunting or sport shooting. I’ve searched and searched the Constitution and can’t find any mention of how our ability to shoot deer or quail is pertinent to securing the “blessings of liberty.”
In my view, the right to bear arms is in the Constitution for three main reasons: self-protection, community protection, and protection from tyranny. Because those are such large, overarching intentions, they’re virtually impossible to destroy all at once. So progressives start small. They introduce “commonsense” regulations and restrictions that will supposedly save lives. Then, each time the public’s attention is captured, they push further. Given enough time, guns and ammunition will eventually become so costly and time-consuming to purchase, maintain, and insure that a ban will no longer be necessary.
And that’s what this is really all about: control. Not of guns, but of us. Controlling what we eat and drive, how we heat our homes, and how we educate our kids—that’s all small potatoes compared to controlling our overall relationship with government. If progressives can change the Second Amendment from “shall not be infringed” to “no guns except what we allow,” then they will have turned the entire Constitution on its head.
This is the path we are on. The only way to change our course is to expose this agenda and wake as many people up as possible. That is one of the reasons I published this book in this format: I wanted it to be inexpensive and easily shareable. It’s my hope that you will read it and then pass it on to others, especially those who may be susceptible to trading away their liberty in a time of crisis.
I am a proud gun owner and lifetime member of the NRA. I believe firmly that our Bill of Rights is not merely a list of suggestions, but a road map to freedom. When we stray from that map even a little, and even for what seems to be a very good reason, we are certain to face the consequences.
So go ahead and arm yourself with a gun—learn how to use it safely and always respect what it represents—but I hope that you’ll also arm yourself and your family with the one thing that’s even more powerful: information. Know the facts. Live the truth. Information is power. Those without it have nothing. Those with it will always have CONTROL.
Glenn Beck
Dallas, Texas
March 2013
PART ONE
The Truth about Guns
After the Newtown massacre in December 2012 it quickly became obvious that gun control was again going to take over the national dialogue. The president, who had barely used the word gun over his first four years in office, was about to rearrange his second-term agenda. Gun control would now be right near the top of the priority list.
Sensing a once-in-a-generation opportunity, controllist politicians and groups began to pounce. News programs devoted full hours to the issue. Opinion hosts like Piers Morgan, sensing an issue to make their mark with, began virtual crusades, discussing the topic nightly. Hollywood celebrities, brought together by the progressive group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, “demanded a plan” to end gun violence via YouTube videos and television commercials. This, of course, despite that fact that many of those who appeared in the videos had made their careers—and their millions—depicting intense gun violence in movies.
It was during this time that I realized the need for this part of the book, something that would answer all the lies about guns that are repeated again and again and often go uncontested. But instead of making up arguments—which would inevitably result in critics saying that no one really makes those claims, or that I misrepresented them—I wanted to use actual quotes. So we started a little project. Each night my staff and I watched countless hours of cable news and read hundreds of newspaper columns and articles. We listened for the quotes about guns and the Second Amendment that seemed to come up most often, the stuff that is so pervasive that it’s barely even questioned anymore.
It wasn’t difficult. Before long we had enough for not only one book, but several of them. We whittled the quotes down to those that seemed to be repeated the most often—and then we sat down with a team of economists, criminologists, and other gun experts and answered each of them with the truth.
IT’S TIME FOR AMERICA TO HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT GUNS.
“Leaders in Washington from both parties and groups like the NRA all say that now is not the time to talk about how gun safety laws can save lives in America. I agree, now is not the time to talk about gun laws. The time for that conversation was long before all those kids in Connecticut died today.”
—REPRESENTATIVE CAROLYN MCCARTHY (D-NY), December 14, 2012
“If there’s one thing about the gun debate that everyone seems to agree on, it’s that we’re going to have a national conversation on the subject. Great news!”
—CINDY HANDLER (Huffington Post columnist), January 11, 2013
Actually, we’ve had a national conversation about guns for the last two centuries; you just don’t like the way it turned out. You may not have noticed, but the so-called gun debate was settled quite a while ago.
In 1791.
WE SHOULD START DRAFTING A BILL TO ENSURE NEWTOWN NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.
“[My bill] will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation, and the possession, not retroactively but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums, or strips of more than ten bullets. So there will be a bill. We’ve been working on it now for a year . . . . It’ll be ready on the first day.”
—SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA), December 16, 2012
Hang on, you’ve been “working” on this bill for a year? Was it just sitting in a desk drawer waiting for a terrible massacre that you could leverage for political expedience?
Wait—don’t answer that.
GUNS ARE LETHAL.
“[T]he point about guns is that they are so much more lethal than anything else you have around. I mean, that is why the American military arms its troops not with knives, but with automatic weapons.”
—NICHOLAS KRISTOF (New York Times columnist), January 8, 2013
“When [a .223-caliber round] hits a human body, the effects are devastating.”
—GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL, January 8, 2013
I know this might be breaking news to Nicholas Kristof, but guns being “more lethal than anything else you have around” is sort of the whole point. The issue should not really be the lethality of the gun, but the psychology of the person holding it. If we are teaching people how to respect their weapons and use them safely, then the times when they’re “lethal” are the times when we want them to be.
Outside of hunting and sport shooting, guns serve as “equalizers.” With a gun, even an elderly grandmother might well be able to fend off an attacker. Violent criminals are, after all, overwhelmingly young, strong males. To them, anything—from a knife to their bare hand—could easily serve as lethal weapons.
And it is not just Grandma. The equalizer argument applies to most women, to older men, and especially to the disabled—a group that is a particular target for robberies. Guns provide the only effective way for them to defend themselves.
The evidence—and there is plenty of it—points to the exact opposite of what Kristof claims: cutting access to guns mainly disarms law-abiding citizens, making criminals’ lives that much easier. Guns allow potential victims to defend themselves when the police aren’t there.