[Ed: This article originally appeared in a mailing from SCOPE-NY. Grassroots opinion pieces and letters to the editor are powerful ammunition in promoting the importance of the Second Amendment and private gun ownership.]
Based on the number of articles appearing everywhere, gun grabbing season must be open. It only opens once a year but the season lasts 365 days.
Unlike deer season, we can shoot back (figuratively.)
Newspapers such as my local Gannett Chain paper tend to love everything left so they print anything leftist: true, false or in between. And if you don’t know any of the real facts about guns, you will believe guns are worse than a plague of locusts. (With apologies to Moses.)
We can sit and take it or fight back.
Many SCOPE members are hesitant to do op-eds so we are giving you a couple samples to copy and send and hopefully send to your local media. Feel free to say they are from SCOPE or yourself if they reflect your feelings.
And even better if they inspire you to do one.
Below are two potential letters to the editors. The first is under the 200 words limit and the second is an expanded version of the first of under 400 words.
Even 400 words are not enough to set the record straight but let’s start!
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Suppose you were shot at by a Colt pistol from inside a Ford in a drive-by shooting. Would you expect to sue Ford? But many radicals believe you should sue Colt. Is Colt any more at fault than Ford?
Is the manufacturer responsible if the purchaser uses a Ford for illegal purposes such as a getaway car or to run over pedestrians?
Joe Biden lies (not misrepresents – lies) when he says gun manufacturers can’t be sued. They can be sued like any other manufacturer for defects, false advertising, etc. but not for criminal misuse of their product.
Gun manufacturers do not aim advertisements at criminals. Who romanticizes and misrepresents guns more, manufacturers or Hollywood?
More mass shootings happen in ‘gun free zones’ than any other place. Isn’t that false advertising as well as an invitation to a criminal?
Criminals overwhelmingly get their guns illegally and yet the answer to ‘gun violence’ is more laws for criminals to ignore.
Gun owners are one of the most laws abiding groups in America; we must pass a background check in order to buy a gun.
Guns are for self-defense and used defensively between 700,000 and 3 million times a year.
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Suppose you were shot at by a Colt pistol from inside a Ford in a drive-by shooting. Would you expect to sue Ford? But many radicals believe you should sue Colt. Is Colt any more at fault than Ford?
Gun manufacturers do not aim advertisements at criminals. (The gun preferred by more convenience store robbers than any other!)
Is Ford responsible if the purchaser uses a Ford for illegal purposes such as a getaway car or to run over pedestrians? Guns are manufactured for self-defense, hunting and target shooting. If someone uses them illegally, that is not the manufacturers’ fault.
Joe Biden lies (not misrepresents – lies) when he says gun manufacturers can’t be sued. They can be sued like any other manufacturer for defects, false advertising, etc. but not for criminal misuse of their product.
Who romanticizes and misrepresents guns more, gun manufacturers or Hollywood?
John Wick, a movie criminal assassin, shoots people by the dozens without a bit of remorse from him – or the audience. After all, they killed his dog. He’s the good guy. Lesson for the young: view yourself as the good guy and murder is okay.
Movie goers will be surprised that a ‘silencer’ is really a suppressor and it doesn’t go poof. The ‘silencer’ lowers a guns’ bang down to the level of a jackhammer. Not exactly a poof.
More mass shootings happen in ‘gun free zones’ than any other place. Isn’t that false advertising as well as an invitation to a criminal?
Gun owners are one of the most laws abiding groups in America; we must pass a background check in order to buy a gun.
Criminals overwhelmingly get their guns illegally and yet the answer to ‘gun violence’ is more laws for criminals to ignore.
And what is often the reason that background checks fail? Government entities do not follow procedures and fail to report on disqualified people. That’s right, the government that wants more laws doesn’t follow its own existing procedures.
Numerous studies, including some using CDC research, say guns are used defensively between 700,000 and 3 million times a year. You don’t have to shoot someone, just show you are armed and criminals think twice. These don’t ‘lead’ because they don’t ‘bleed’.
Using 1 million defensive gun uses, if 1% of them saved someone’s life, that is 10,000 homicides prevented. The FBI reports there are about 14,000 non-suicide homicides every year.
Guns save lives!
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–Tom Reynolds is the president of SCOPE-NY.