Read the text carefully, and try to sum up (in one sentence if possible) the two or three main points, which the writer is making.
Gun control
A student of the gun control issue will readily perceive the arena is
indeed a broad one, in which we must struggle to preserve the right to keep and
bear arms. It is a struggle which will test whatever there might be of genius
in any of us and it is one which will merit the devoted efforts of every
citizen who in the broadest sense can perceive the relationships which our Bill
of Rights liberties bear one to another.
I suggest we begin our affirmative
role immediately in the area of crime control. The truth is that gun control
does not equate with crime control. We have an advantage in this fact which we
have neither exploited nor advanced convincingly. It is demonstrable that in
those sections of the country where gun possession is most prevalent, crime is
least.
Encouragingly, many moderate and reasonable men among our opponents
are beginning to see that our problem is crime control and that gun control is
not going to have much, if any, effect upon it. Of course, for reasons of their
own, some of them still say gun control is desirable. For these people we can
only wonder, as would any good citizen, what it is they have in mind for us
that our possession of guns makes them so nervous.
As long as we concur that
any measure of gun control equates with some measure of crime control we are in
agreement with those who would eliminate our rights. We would then again be
backed into our defensive position, held for forty years, always losing a
little here and a little there until finally nothing would be left us.
No
group of good citizens has ever struggled more conscientiously along the narrow
pathway, between hope and moderation on one hand, and the cold facts of efforts
to abolish our rights on the other, than the leaders of the National Rifle
Association. Every gun owner in America should applaud the action taken by the
Executive Committee of the NRA in Washington, D.C. on July 12, 1974:
‘...the NRA opposes any proposed legislation, at any level of government,
which is directed against the inanimate firearm rather than against the
criminal misuse of firearms.’
A reasonable degree of order in society
must prevail first. Criminals must be controlled first. We are the decent
people. We try to be reasonable and we are not fools even though we have so
often made mistakes in the past 40 years.
Many people turn to England as an
example for crime control. The fact is that in England, for hundreds of years,
a man found guilty of any one of number of crimes was promptly hanged. Now that
a more humanistic generation of Englishmen has lately abolished these stern but
effective methods, crime - including armed crime - is sky-rocketing. Recently
armed Englishmen, amid a hail of their own bullets, attempted to kidnap the
eldest daughter of the reigning Queen of England! Unbelievable!
(From an article in Guns and Ammo by Harlan Carter)
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