Throughout history, America
has been blessed with the patriotic
services and commitment of individuals
who, even though affected
adversely by a physical disability,
have rendered through determination
and dedication, great service to
our country.
This is the case in the ongoing
battle to protect and preserve the
individual Second Amendment
civil right of law-abiding American
citizens to keep and bear arms with
St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner Kurt
Hofmann, the CCRKBA Gun Rights
Defender of the Month.
In nominating Kurt Hoffman
for the CCRKBA Gun
Rights Defender of the Month
Award, John M. Snyder, CCRKBA
Public Affairs Director, pointed
out that, “For some time now, Kurt
has been writing a regular internet
examiner column. In his writings,
he shows the fallacies behind the
thinking of gun grabbers, often with
rapier-like sarcasm. He shows how
anti-gun advocates will use any
smidgen of false interpretation in
attempting to promote an anti-gun
owner agenda.
“A former paratrooper, Kurt was
paralyzed in a car accident in 2002.
He says that the helplessness inherent
to confinement to a wheelchair
prompted him to explore armed
self-defense. When he found out
that certain political entities in the
country deny the right of armed selfdefense,
he was inspired to become
involved in gun rights advocacy.
Now he writes a gun rights internet
blog, Armed and Safe. He surely
deserves recognition as CCRKBA Gun
Rights Defender of the Month.”
One of Hofmann’s anti-gun literary
targets is the Violence Policy Center
(VPC).
In a recent column, Hofmann
wrote he felt “compelled to point out
the utter absence of logic in” a VPC
statement. “The fact that nothing in
the District of Columbia’s homicide
stats provides much reason for faith
in the efficacy of gun bans in reducing
violence, thus forcing the VPC
to instead concentrate on suicides, is
rather telling.”
Kurt was criticizing VPC for supporting
anti-gun policies in the District
of Columbia as a means of reducing
rates of suicide when homicide data
show that draconian anti-gun policies
do not reduce rates of homicide.
“I utterly reject the contemptible
scare tactics used by citizen disarmament
advocates – ‘Only gun control
will save you from crackheads and
gangbangers,’ or, ‘Only gun control
will save you from angry, white gun
nuts,’ or, ‘Only gun control will save
you from terrorists,’ etc., but at least
such Chicken Little fear mongering
tacitly acknowledges that part of the
problem is evil people, who commit
evil acts, with guns,” he stated.
“But,” he continued, with the VPC
attempt to connect tough gun laws
with a reduction in suicide, “we are
apparently being told that only gun
control will save Washington, D.C.
residents from themselves. If I were
a D.C. resident, I would have trouble
not taking that as a rather harsh insult,
implying that only through the noble
efforts of the benign D.C. officials
am I being prevented from offing
myself. How blessed D.C. residents
must feel to have such paragons of
wisdom watching over them.
“While the VPC defends the District
of Columbia for supposedly protecting
residents from themselves, we
are apparently expected to ignore
the fact D.C.’s laws prevent citizens
from protecting themselves (despite
the well-known fact that police are
under no obligation to provide the
protection that citizens are denied
from providing themselves.)”
Hofmann takes literary aim at the
attack on firearms as a mental health
concern, stating that, “Support for
draconian gun policies has long been
prevalent in the health care profession…
“And with health care reform
moving in the direction of putting
the federal government in charge of
the purse strings involved in paying
for medical care, what’s to stop an
anti-gun administration (the kind
of administration, for example, that
would pick Eric Holder for Attorney
General, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena
Kagan for the Supreme Court, and
Andrew Taver as head of the BATFE)
from putting some rather effective
back-channel pressure on the mental
health care folks, to come up with a
diagnosis that calls for a prescription
for disarmament?”
“Efforts to frame the gun control
debate as a public health issue are
well underway, as are the gun ban
lobby’s efforts to recruit the medical
profession to their side,” Kurt stated.
“Expect those efforts to continue, and