Control: Exposing the Truth About Guns

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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 be 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 details 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.

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.

[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.

[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.

Besides, guns may be the most lethal weapon around that’s easily accessible, but if we’re just talking about overall ability to kill a lot of people, it’s hard not to include explosives, which are used by the military and mass killers alike. The first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993, was a bombing. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 killed 168 people and was caused by bombs created from such easily available items as fertilizer (ammonium nitrate), a common cleaning solvent (liquid nitromethane), and diesel fuel. And the worst school massacre in U.S. history, in which thirty-eight people were killed, occurred in 1927 and was carried out with a bomb.

No one is saying that people’s guns should be taken away, or that taking the Second Amendment rights away. No one is saying that [is the answer] . . . 

—DON LEMON (CNN anchor), July 22, 2012

Nobody questions the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

—MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (New York City), December 16, 2012

Guys, gals, now hear this: No one wants to take away your hunting rifles. No one wants to take away your shotguns. No one wants to take away your revolvers, and no one wants to take away your automatic pistols, as long as said pistols hold no more than ten rounds.

—STEPHEN KING, Guns

I don’t want to change the Second Amendment. I don’t want to change an American’s right to bear an arm in their home to defend people. I want to get rid of these killing machine assault weapons off the street.

—PIERS MORGAN, January 7, 2013

 ‘Gun grabber’ is a mythical boogeyman. No serious person, including Obama, is even proposing taking away owned guns. #StopFearmongering.

—TOURÉ, February 16, 2013 (via Twitter)

Anyone who’s closely watching the bullying from the controllist crowd, and knows their history, has good reason to be concerned. The environment that’s been created is eerily similar to what nations like the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada experienced just before introducing severe private gun ownership restrictions or banning them altogether.

Here in the United States, the Second Amendment has seemingly gone from being a God-given natural right to a privilege that must be defended. Yet the moment anyone dares voice those concerns they are usually met with mockery and dismissed as a bloodthirsty, paranoid freak who is bitterly clinging to their guns even as the mainstream of society passes them by.

Gun rights advocates are thought by the elite controllists to be creatures with the intelligence of a Neanderthal, stubbornly unwilling to accept commonsense gun control measures that would allegedly save the lives of countless American children. The mere mention of a slippery slope, with the Second Amendment itself being the real target, is brushed off as laughably preposterous conspiracy theory.

The truth—which, as you’ll soon see, is not a conspiracy or a theory—is that there are many controllists who want nothing more than to ban guns. They admire Australia and the United Kingdom and Japan and believe that the civilized nations of the world have evolved and left America behind. Those countries are the grown-ups while we Americans are the toddlers throwing temper tantrums in a corner.

But controllists have a major problem: the Bill of Rights. Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms—and lots of people want to keep it that way.

According to a December 2012 Gallup poll, 74 percent of Americans oppose a ban on the possession of handguns. So that leaves controllists in a bind: They believe that guns have no place among civilians, but they can’t really say that. So they carefully parse their language. Instead of talking about handgun bans they focus on military-style assault weapons or high-capacity magazines or laws that make it more difficult to purchase a weapon or ammunition.

But what do you think happens once they get these initial laws passed—do they just stop? Do they pat themselves on the back for getting clips limited to ten bullets, or do they start a new push for eight or five? Do they celebrate getting the sale of new semi-automatics banned, or do they now start to go after all of the ones currently in circulation? That question can easily be answered for anyone willing to listen to what the controllists actually say.

Last we left Senator Dianne Feinstein—the author of the 1994