The 'gun culture' is not the problem

I continue to cheer on my birth state from the sidelines as the Republicans dismantle liberalism brick by brick.  North Carolina has a Republican governor and a Republican state legislature and state senate.  So far they have taken aim at the state income tax, implementing a flat tax rather than a tiered tax that punished people the more they earned.  They ended teacher tenure in public schools that had historically protected teachers just because they had been on the job longer.  They instituted voter ID which will make elections more honest, despite the insane contention from the left that it will keep minorities from voting.

But a little-noticed law goes into effect this week.  It prohibits law enforcement from destroying unclaimed firearms and guns acquired through one of those silly gun buy-back programs.  Now they’re required to either donate the guns, keep them or sell them to licensed firearms dealers unless the guns are damaged or missing serial numbers.  Heretofore, law enforcement agencies would destroy millions of dollars worth of guns under the guise of keeping the streets safer.  Of course, anyone who has studied the issue knows that it’s not the guns.

Even a new Harvard University study concluded that more guns do not mean more violence.  The study looked at gun ownership worldwide and found that America’s relatively high murder rate along with its relatively high gun ownership rate was an anomaly.  For example, Luxembourg bans handguns but their murder rate is nine times higher than Germany’s where gun ownership is 30,000 times higher.  The Soviet Union managed to strip its citizenry of their guns which continued after the Iron Curtain fell.  By the 1990s their murder rate was three times that of the United States despite their ban on guns.

In fact, the Harvard study found more guns equated to less crime.  Here’s the money quote from the study: “Where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest.”

Of course, that’s common sense for those of us who understand why the founding fathers included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. 

What’s ironic is President Obama signed 23 Executive Actions in the wake of the Newtown, CT shooting and one was a study from the CDC to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.  In the process they blew out of the water many of the preconceived notions of the gun grabbers.

One thing the CDC study found was “unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century.”  They concluded that less than one percent of all unintentional fatalities today are due to firearms.  So much for the old “having a gun in the house is dangerous” argument.

The president’s own commissioned study also found that guns are used far more for defensive purposes than for murder.  “Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence,” they concluded.   “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”  How much press did the study get?  Virtually none.

In North Carolina they understand that simply destroying guns does not solve anything.  Guns turned into a buy-back program are guns that would never have been used in a crime.  The so-called “gun culture” is not the problem.  It’s the “thug culture” that’s the problem.  Until we address that, senseless killings will continue.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Compassion for illegal aliens? Really?

I am dismayed by the sudden about-face by some so-called evangelicals.  They're now supporting amnesty for illegal aliens under the guise of compassion.  Compassion?  

Where's their compassion for the family of little Dimitri Smith?  Little Dimitri lived just one minute after an emergency C-section in an attempt to save his life after his mother was hit by an illegal alien drunk driver.

Where's their compassion for the family of 25-year-old Drew Rosenberg who was hit head-on by an illegal alien, thrown from his motorcycle, then run over by the illegal alien who fled the scene?

Where's their compassion for the family of Vanessa Pham, age 19, who was brutally stabbed to death by an illegal alien in Falls Church, VA?

Where's their compassion for the family of Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne who was killed when drug smuggling illegal aliens rammed his Coast Guard vessel off the coast of California?

Where's their compassion for the family of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw who was murdered in what appears to be a ritualistic gang killing in Los Angeles?

According to a study conducted by the office of Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) on average 12 Americans are killed by illegal aliens every day.  That's the equivalent of a 767 jet going down every month!  To illustrate it another way, there are about as many Americans killed by illegal aliens each year as there were combat deaths in the entire 9 years of the Iraq War.

Where's their compassion for millions of lives destroyed by illegal drugs coming from south of the border?  Where's their compassion for the millions who are out of work, their jobs occupied by criminal invaders from Mexico and beyond?  Where's their compassion for overburdened taxpayers whose family budgets are strained by the added taxes imposed on them to pay for extra services for those who chose to break into the country?  Where's their compassion for the skyrocketing cost of medical services driven, in part, by illegal aliens who clog our emergency rooms and never pay?

Compassion, indeed.

Some evangelicals and even some talk show hosts say their position on illegal immigration has 'evolved.'  In reality, they have simply caved.