Here we go into the political cauldron of 2016 and make no mistake nothing will be more hotly debated than the Democrats setting their sights on your right to own guns.

The debate is already framed and ready for the next nut job that shoots up a random school or shopping center. The Democrats won’t even wait- no they will roll out their pre-positioned talking points and decry the evils of gun ownership and declare that those that actually want to own guns are mental misfits. President Barack Obama won’t even wait that long. The President will be announcing any day new overhauls to gun laws that he will be implementing by way of Executive Order. This is just the latest way Congress will be ignored by the President and the GOP will likely display it’s ever more omnipresent political impotence.

So while we are gearing up for a fire fight over my Constitutional right to own guns, and yours lets get some things straight for the record.

In America there are about 32,000 fatalities involving firearms each year. In addition there are about 85,000 non-fatal injuries involving guns each year in this country. So all told about 117,000 people are killed or injured with guns in America each year. So that sounds like a significant problem that needs to be addressed. However if you look closer you will quickly learn that you being a victim of any sort of gun violence is just about zero.

How is that you may ask. So let me break down some critical numbers.

First lets start with the people killed each year with guns. Of those more than 21,000 are suicides. Tragic, yes, but hardly reason to suspend the Constitution. I mean how does it make any sense whatsoever for me to forfeit my rights because people choose to take their own lives. I mean in many states the move is on to legalize suicide in many cases anyway. So I certainly don’t think you can have it both ways.

Anyway- after you subtract the voluntary deaths, you have about 11,000 people that died from gun violence. Again a serious concern but lets dig deeper still. According to different sources murders in America however don’t really happen in “everytown’. In fact they seem to happen in very specific areas and most with specific similarities. The two most common elements involved with a gun homicide in America is illegal drugs and gang related activities.  The most compelling data comes from the Centers for Disease Control that says an astonishing 80% of the 11,000 gun deaths classified as homicides each year are in fact gang related! I mean that is incredible, 80%!

That means that in a nation of 320 million people, there are about 2,200 gun murders each year. I am not saying those two thousand people shouldn’t be considered in the conversation but it is not exactly the epidemic Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would lead you to believe in an effort to surrender your liberty.

Let’s compare that rate of violence to other things that kill and injure people in this country each year. About the same number of people killed by guns, 32,000 are also killed in car wrecks. Another two and a half million are injured in motor vehicle crashes. 300,000 of those victims are killed or injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.

And if we are truly going to understand the nature of what we are talking about lets get to the real numbers of preventable deaths in America. 39,000 of our fellow countrymen are poisoned and die as a result each year. 25,000 people die in accidental falls, like my father a decade ago. Fires and choking claim a few thousand more.

But I don’t hear Democrats scrambling to sue General Motors, Ford or Toyota for those killed by drunk drivers. I don’t hear them telling us we should outlaw drain cleaner and anti-freeze to ‘save the children.’

Meanwhile obesity and tobacco will claim well over a million people this year. Maybe we should ban the first amendment so that we can’t advertise for Marlboros and McDonalds- oh wait, they already made it halfway down that road. I mean advertising for cigarettes and chew have been banned for a long time and if DeBlasio had his way we be carding kids for Cokes and Twinkies.

The truth is- the clamoring for gun control to ‘save just one life’ has nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with controlling me, which so far isn’t working out all that well.

They are coming for your guns- it’s just a matter of time. The only question is what are you willing to do about it.

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