BELLEVUE, WA – Following a weekend of tragedies both here and abroad which included a terrorist attack in Australia, a deadly shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island and the reported stabbing deaths of Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said guns aren’t the problem and restrictions aren’t the solution.
“If anything,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “this trio of tragedies underscores the fact that it is the evil in some people, not the instrument they use, which is ultimately to blame. Look at the facts. Rhode Island has very strong gun control laws already on the books, and murder has always been against the law, but that didn’t prevent Saturday’s violence. And let’s not overlook the fact that Brown University is a gun-free zone.
“Australia adopted some of the strictest gun control laws in the world following the 1996 Port Arthur mass shooting,” he continued, “but that did not prevent the father-son terrorist attack at Bondi Beach on Sunday. Yet the first thing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants to do is add further restrictions, including a limit on the number of firearms Australian citizens may own. Sadly, Australia does not allow its citizens to carry firearms for personal protection, and we saw the result of that foolishness on the Sunday evening news.
“And no California gun control law prevented what happened to Mr. Reiner and his wife,” Gottlieb observed, “because they were stabbed to death.
“The only common denominator in all three of these horrendous crimes is the evil intent of the perpetrators,” he said, “and that is not something which can be prevented by passing another law that only affects honest citizens. To suggest otherwise defies common sense, and only illustrates the flawed single-mindedness of the gun prohibition lobby.
“Those who advocate for more restrictions on personal freedom in response to criminal violence are admitting they don’t have any real solutions,” Gottlieb concluded. “They refuse to acknowledge their policies have accomplished nothing, while creating scapegoats to hide their own failures.
“With this wave of terrible crimes,” he said, “it is no surprise that so many more people are buying and carrying firearms for their own protection, and that of their loved ones.”