As sure as the sun rises, gun grabbers use a deranged shooter to elevate their need to gut the Second Amendment.
Following the recent shooting in New York City, one could barely count to five before gun control advocates started spewing their predictable calls to outlaw so-called “assault weapons.” This time, it was a race between New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Jessica Tarlov, Fox News’ token leftist on the wildly popular program The Five, to see who could beat the anti-gun drum first. However, President Donald Trump wasn’t having any of it and called Tarlov on the carpet when she issued an appeal for another assault weapons ban.
Assault Weapons Ban – If at First You Don’t Succeed …
Hochul was a featured guest on the July 29 edition of CNN’s Inside Politics when she aired her predictable gun control screed. “We had an assault weapon ban in our country for 10 years. It worked successfully. It lapsed under President Bush, and I say bring that back.” This was enough for Tarlov to rinse and repeat during The Five: “When we did have an assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004, we saw a decrease in mass shootings in this country, 70 percent less likely to happen. And then when the ban sunsetted, it spiked back up.”
Hold it right there. If anything, studies show that the effectiveness of the Assault Weapons Ban is mixed at best. In a 2022 article, the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEE) noted:
“Nearly two decades ago the Department of Justice funded a study to analyze this very topic … ‘[W]e cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence’ and any future reduction in gun violence as a result of the ban was likely ‘to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.’”
FEE also cited a RAND report of gun control studies and found “inconclusive evidence for the effect of assault weapon bans on mass shootings.” And just to put a nail in the coffin, the article cited research in Criminology & Public Policy that concluded bans on assault weapons “do not seem to be associated with the incidence of fatal mass shootings.”
It’s imperative to note that little was heard from the gun grabbers in two other random acts of violence, perhaps because both involved armed citizens (one was an off-duty federal agent) who were able to use their weapons to stop the carnage. But these incidents are worth mentioning.
Good Guys With Guns Get It Done, Once Again
On July 26, shoppers were just minding their business at Walmart in Traverse City, MI, when 42-year-old Bradford James Gille opened his folding knife and began stabbing innocent bystanders. Within minutes, 11 people had been assaulted.
Michigan News Source caught up with eyewitness Julia Martell, who described the horrific scene:
“I heard some commotion and some screaming. So I went down to the end of the aisle to see what was going on. By the time I got to the end of the aisle, the guy was shoving somebody in the pharmacy section of Walmart, and he started to head towards me. And I still hadn’t registered what was going on until I saw the guy had a knife. Then I turned and ran down the aisle that I was in.”
An alert Walmart employee had the presence of mind to grab an intercom mic and yell, “There’s a man with a knife!” Gille made it out of the store but quickly encountered five Walmart shoppers who surrounded him and – lo and behold – one of them was carrying a firearm, which he quickly pulled on the slasher and ordered him to put down the knife. Grand Rapids television station WZZM aired a video showing the tense standoff.
By the time law enforcement arrived, Gille had given up his weapon and was being held at gunpoint by the Good Samaritan. Grand Traverse County Sheriff Michael Shea lauded the man for stopping the carnage and holding him until the authorities arrived.
The second incident involved an armed individual who was the intended victim but was still able to save the day. An off-duty Customs and Border Patrol officer and a friend were sitting in Riverside Park in Upper Manhattan, NY, when two illegal aliens pulled a gun and attempted to rob them.
What happened next must have come as a surprise to the perpetrators. The robber shot the officer, hitting him in the arm and face, but the injured man somehow managed to get a grip on his weapon and returned fire. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed the suspects who fled the scene were Miguel Mora Nunez and Christhian Aybar-Berroa – both illegals who have been arrested multiple times.
The fact that the citizen who was shot is a CPB officer and could carry legally in New York City is crucial to this real-life drama.
The Moral of the Story
Both tragedies demonstrate that innocent lives were likely saved by individuals who were carrying a weapon and knew how to use it. Michigan and New York are states that have passed stringent gun laws: New York ranks fourth overall and Michigan 17th in a statewide ranking of the strictest gun control regulations, according to the World Population Review.
As for Hochul and Tarlov, it would be wise to take note that another assault weapons ban is unlikely to fix the problem of mentally unhinged individuals who are determined to commit murder because doing the same thing over and over rarely yields different results.
For decades, those who seek to gut the Second Amendment maintain that the problem is too many firearms on the streets, which should be highly regulated. However, these three recent violent and terrorizing altercations prove once again that firearms aren’t the problem. Rather, it’s who is wielding the weapon that matters – the good guy or the bad guy.
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