By Doug Newman – email me here.
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Ladies and Gentlemen of the Colorado General Assembly,

I would like to tell you about 2 friends who died all too young as a result of gun violence.

In 2012, a friend of several years was killed in the Aurora theater shooting. And in early 2010, a lifelong friend committed suicide by shooting himself.

While my friends were killed with guns, they were not killed by guns. Someone could have detonated a bomb outside the Century 16 Theater that horrible evening while hundreds of people stood outside waiting to enter, killing 12 just as dead and injuring 60 just as severely.

My other friend could have committed suicide with a knife, a rope or a bottle full of pills.

Stricter gun laws would not have prevented either tragedy.

I will not pretend to speak for anyone else affected by these tragedies. However, I will not yield one inch to the demands of those who wish to infringe on my God-given constitutionally-guaranteed right to defend myself. In a world where bad people with guns are undeterred by laws, good people must not be limited in their right to self-defense.

And we cannot rely on the police, as they can only show up after a crime has been committed. This could take minutes or hours. It has been said many times before, that “when seconds count, the cops are just minutes away.”

Hence, I strongly urge a “NO” vote on House Bill 19-1177.

I could go on very extensively about the futility and counterproductive nature of gun control. However, I will just leave a few points for you to ponder as well as research:

• House Bill 19-1177 not only violates the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms”, but also the Fifth and Sixth Amendment guarantees of Due Process.
• Even though America has more guns than ever, violent crime rates have declined by almost half in the last 25 years.
• Even though America leads the world in gun ownership, 90 countries have higher homicide rates.
• There is simply no correlation between stringency of gun laws, rates of gun ownership and rates of violent crime. This holds true both domestically as well as internationally. Mexico, for instance, has several times the homicide rate of Australia, despite having an identical rate of gun ownership.
• As the 9/11 attacks and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing demonstrate, you can kill lots of people without using a gun.
• Every genocidal madman in history has first disarmed his subjects.

There is a world of difference between what sounds good and what is good. It is never good to deny people their rights to self-defense and due process. Furthermore, history demonstrates again and again and again that stricter gun laws do not prevent crime.

Vote “NO” on House Bill 19-1177.

Thank you for reading this.

To support and defend,

Douglas F. Newman
Aurora

Credit: USA Today