You’ve heard some or all of these arguments before: “Gun control works in other countries”, or “More guns mean more murder”, or “The Second Amendment is about muskets”, or “Mass shootings are becoming more common.”
The anti-gun crowd will say anything, ignore facts and stretch or totally disregard the truth in order to push their disarmament agenda. Unfortun
ately, the average American is ill-prepared to counter their rhetoric.
Beck comes out swinging against the anti-gun crowd by dedicating the book to Martin Luther King, Jr., “who preached nonviolence but knew that passive resistance could not be relied on for his own family’s protection. King owned several guns but was subjected to the worst kind of gun control — and deprived of his basic right to defend himself and his family — when police in Alabama denied him a concealed carry permit in 1956. When will we learn? The right to bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Beck divides his book into two parts.
In part one, The Truth about Guns, Beck shreds 36 popular “myths and lies that have been told about guns and the Second Amendment,” and he exposes the anti-gun agenda for what it is really about:
…Control. Not of guns, but of us. Controlling what we eat and drive, how we heat our homes, and how we educate our kids — that’s all small potatoes compared to controlling our overall relationship with government. If progressives can change the Second Amendment from “shall not be infringed” to “no guns except what we allow,” then they will have turned the entire Constitution on its head.
In part two, Winning Hearts and Minds, Beck addresses the societal conditions and social ills that are leading to violence, with a particular focus on the “undeniable and uncontestable cause-effect relationship between media violence and real life violence” (that’s a quote Beck uses from a 1995 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics).
Says Beck, “The people who blame guns for everything … usually believe that those who bring up other issues, like entertainment violence, are simply trying to find a scapegoat. But I think this argument is completely backward. It’s those who close their eyes as to why people pick up a gun in the first place who are scapegoating.”
Beck concludes Control with some suggestions for reducing violence in America, such as fixing huge deficiencies in the background check system, enforcing existing laws, prosecuting felons for gun-related violations, and educating parents about the insidious danger of children obsessively consuming violent media. In his concluding paragraphs Beck writes:
I truly believe that getting serious about our current laws, taking personal responsibility for our families, and thinking out of the box about ways we can further protect our kids will do more to change our course than a thousand new rules and regulations. We know from experience that our government very often creates many of the problems we face, and they almost always make these problems worse when they are “trying to solve” them. That’s why I know that the way forward cannot be found in the halls of Congress, it can only be found in the rooms of our homes and the streets of our neighborhoods.