Colorado is set to become a national test case for what kind of gun regulations - if any - can gather support from lawmakers, law-enforcement officials and a public who’s right to bear firearms goes back to the founding of this country.

Democratic representative Beth McCann was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “We’ve had it with mass shootings, people just don’t want to hear about another massacre. This is enough.”

While we can all agree with this statement, the implications of what Democratic lawmakers are proposing - more gun-control restrictions - are not the answer. This debate is more about emotion than commonsense or facts, and the facts are that more guns, equal less crime.

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Fact: Mass killings like the one in Columbine, Aurora and most recently at Sandy Hook in Connecticut, happened where guns were already banned. Schools and other ‘Gun-Free Zones’ are the sites for these murders choose because they want the least resistance to carry out their evil acts.

Fact: Banning guns will not keep criminals from getting their hands on them. There are over 200 million guns in the United States, a criminal will have no problem finding a weapon, but a ban would keep honest citizens from being able to protect themselves and their families.

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Fact: More people were killed by hammers than an AR-15 styled carbine last year in America. Banning what liberals call an “assault weapon” would do nothing but disarm law-abiding Americans who use those semi-automatic rifles for home defense and sporting purposes.

Fact: The correct definition of an “assault rifle”, is one where you can pull the trigger once and it will continue firing until the magazine is empty. These types of weapons have been highly regulated by the government since 1934. A person cannot just run down to the corner and buy one of these weapons as some in the government would have you believe. An AR-15 only fires every time the operator pulls the trigger.

Fact: Banning “high-capacity” magazines would not stop people for committing these types of murders. What some call “high-capacity” are actually “normal-capacity” magazines. What some lawmakers mistakenly believe is that by banning these magazines, killers would take longer to reload and therefore kill fewer people. The misinformation comes from having absolutely no experience with firearms. Even with a 10 round magazine, an accomplished rifleman can reload in less than 2 seconds, effectively nullifying that argument. What would be unfortunate is for someone protecting their home being limited to the number of rounds he would be able to defend his or her family with, while the criminal heeds no such restrictions.

Fact: The vast majority of these killers would have been stopped had the way we evaluate and deal with dangerous, mentally deranged individuals not have been hobbled by government regulations. Most of these and other killers were under the influence of psychotropic, mood altering drugs. Common sense in dealing with these disturbed individuals would have saved lives. Instead of trying to solve the problem by banning an inanimate object, government should stop cutting funding for mental health services. I have spoken with many mental health professionals, some gun owners, some not that recognize the real issue as how we as Americans refuse to deal with the taboo of mental health.

Spencer Bennett
Spencer Bennett
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Fact: The 2nd Amendment is not there to protect your hunting rights, or the right to protect yourself from muggers, though those do fall under it. The reason our Founding Fathers put the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution, was to protect you from a government that might become tyrannical. They understood that our only recourse from an out-of-control government, was an armed populace. Armed, I might add, with whatever it took to protect their freedom, whether that was a musket or whatever was “military issue” at the time or now.

I have many friends in law enforcement, Homeland Security, the FBI, and those involved in Military Special Operations who concur that having an armed civilian at the scene of one of these “active-murderer” events saves lives, because when seconds count, police are just minutes away. Someone who is a trained Concealed Carry License Holder can and has, engaged the killers way before the police showed up, and stopped the threat. Time means lives.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

- The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution

We as citizens should protect our rights, not just the 2nd Amendment with all fervor. Write your Congressman and Senator and tell them to stop chasing the myth of gun-control and instead deal with the real issues of mental health.

Let us remember the words of Benjamin Franklin who said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

What this video of Suzanna Huff, whose parents were murdered in a mass killing, explain how not having her firearm, doomed them and others.

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