Make June ‘Self-Defense Awareness Month’

Currently, the anti-gunners are running around about how this is Gun Violence Prevention Month. In their minds, though, “gun violence prevention” only means gun control, though most of them don’t have the cajones to admit it. Still, they created a month for their euphemism–strange that they’d pick Pride Month, considering where most of them lean politically, but I digress.–and they’re pushing a narrative across the nation with it.

But what if we flipped the script on them?

That’s what the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is proposing, via a press release:

While the gun prohibition lobby is observing June as “Gun Violence Awareness Month,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says there should also be an “Armed Self-Defense Awareness Month” to recognize the thousands of people who defend themselves and others each year. 

“Not once have we heard a peep from the gun ban crowd when a legally-armed private citizen intervenes to save lives from mass killers, or protect themselves and their families from violent criminals,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Whether it was a would-be mass casualty incident at an Indiana mall, an attack at Price Chopper in Missouri, a retired Marine partnering with a Massachusetts state trooper to stop a Cambridge gunman, or a citizen stopping a fleeing attempted killer on a Seattle street, these incidents are universally ignored and swiftly swept under the nearest rug by anti-gunners and their cheerleaders in the media.” 

The Crime Prevention Research Center has monitored armed citizen intervention for several years, and has done research on defensive gun uses. The CPRC issues annual reports on licensed concealed carry. Gottlieb has co-authored several books discussing armed self-defense and intervention, and he maintains that legally armed citizens have made, and continue to make, a difference in today’s society. 

“This term ‘gun violence’ was invented by the gun prohibition lobby, and lapped up by the media,” he observed. “A gun doesn’t have a brain to hate with or a finger to pull its own trigger. We’ve recently seen high-profile stabbings on subways, yet nobody talks about ‘knife violence.’ When people driving under the influence cause fatal traffic crashes, we never hear about ‘car violence.’ Only the firearm is singled out for demonization, as if to transfer responsibility from the perpetrator to the gun he or she misused. 

“We should recognize the heroic acts of armed citizens,” Gottlieb said. “Instead of blaming guns for violent crime, let’s be honest and place the responsibility where it belongs, on the violent offenders. Likewise, anti-gunners need to stop equating suicide with violent crime, and combining the numbers for a more dramatic effect. Not only is it dishonest, it smears those with emotional problems by lumping them in with criminals. 

“Perhaps next year,” he concluded, “we can recognize the contributions armed citizens have made to public safety across the country. Gun owners can wear brightly-colored T-shirts to their state capitols, where governors will sign proclamations, make speeches about the Second Amendment, and the media will reject anti-gun rhetoric and report accurately about the right of self-defense.”

Frankly, I like it.

A while back, I floated the idea of turning July into “Gun Pride Month.” The reaction was…mixed. Some thought I was making light of Pride Month, others thought it was a psy op to get them to post their guns online so the ATF would know who had what, and others just didn’t seem to give a damn, while a few thought it was a pretty good idea.

This, however, is a better one.

Rather than focus on guns, which is what the anti-gun crowd does, let’s focus on how firearms allow us to meet the threats that exist in the world, how we can use those same firearms to protect ourselves and others, and how the rhetoric around “gun violence” is nothing more than a red herring to try to prevent those same acts of self-defense via legislation that would infringe on our civil liberties.

Unfortunately, I have a distinct feeling that we won’t see sports teams embrace Self-Defense Awareness Month quite the same way as they have the current thing, which is a shame. Why is the act of defending yourself from violence considered unworthy of attention? Why is it that using a gun to protect yourself or others is shunned while radical political stances like infringing on civil liberties are embraced?

It’s insane, but that’s the world we live in, unfortunately.

I say that next year, we start trying to make this a reality. I say that we do everything we can to drown out the claims that “gun violence” is not just a made-up, non-existent thing, but that guns save lives and do so at a rate far, far greater than they’re used to take them. We can do that. It might be an uphill fight, but can you honestly tell me it’s not a fight worth fighting?

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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