When a good citizen grabbed his gun and rushed to prevent more carnage in the mass shooting two weeks ago at a small church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, he displayed to the country just how things should be in every state. Indeed, if all Americans were able to carry their own firearms, American communities would be much safer.

Despite the push for a widespread ban on certain firearms, modified or otherwise, guns in the hands of responsible owners would do much to protect lives. The logic of ‘less guns equals less crime’ makes sense only to those who don’t understand the nature of criminal activity. As authority on the subject John Lott points out, more guns equals less crime.

The argument should therefore be directed toward keeping guns out of the hands of felons, criminals, ex-convicts and mentally unstable people, not law abiding citizens. Although criminals will always be able to access guns on the black market, penalties should be stiffer when they’re caught.

In situations where a person with a gun, or several guns, enters a building or approaches a crowded space, more armed citizens would make it much less likely for the deranged person to carry out a mission of destruction. Those who are determined to cause crisis and chaos intentionally seek out densely populated areas that have strict gun laws. Knowing a community espouses common sense gun laws, the kind which allow citizens to carry their firearms, would-be mass murderers are likely to stay away and find a liberal-run city that is a gun-control haven.

Fortunately, some areas in Texas are safer because sensible people do sensible things like carry firearms in the public space and are able to keep the public protected. If only every city was modeled this way.

Tom Folden is a political strategist, conservative thinker, and Editor of RightWingWriter.com, a website for conservative viewpoints. A human rights activist, he is a firm believer in the Constitution and the rule of law. He is also a singer/songwriter and recording artist. For interviews and/or appearances, please contact him at spencergroup@hotmail.com.

What led a 64-year-old man to rent a corner suite on the 32^nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas overlooking the Route 91 Harvest Festival and open fire on a massive crowd of people is the question so many are asking about the senseless massacre that occurred there Sunday night.

It was an event where there was unity regardless of political affiliation, regardless of skin color, regardless of race as country music stars Big and Rich led the crowd in singing God Bless America. As headliner Jason Aldean was performing his last song and closing out the festival, shots from an automatic weapon rang out and chaos ensued, leaving thousands of festival-goers scrambling to run for cover not knowing where the shots were coming from.

Despite attendees, security and first responders coming together to help one another, many leftists couldn’t let this crisis go to waste and sought to further divide the nation. Toeing the liberal line, talk show hosts, celebrities and even politicians immediately jumped into action by politicizing the tragedy.

On Monday night, talk show hosts Seth Meyer, Jimmy Kimmel, James Cordon, Trevor Noah and Steven Colbert all used their bully pulpits to preach about gun control and to urge congress to take action. The action they’re talking about is legislating our 2^nd Amendment rights, aka gun control.

Idiot savant celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Alyssa Milano, Gigi Hadid, Lena Dunham and Sophia Bush showed their ignorance by tweeting asinine comments and endorsing gun control, proving they know nothing about the issue. Some took shots at President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Lady Gaga, for example, called out Trump and Ryan, insinuating they have “blood on their hands.” Others dropped F-bombs. Sophia Bush tweeted “Dear Donald. F*** you for this,” while Alyssa Milano tweeted “F*** you, @NRA.” Shame on all of them for their offensive comments.

Hillary Clinton even took the opportunity to try to stay relevant by stating, “This is nothing but pure, unadulterated greed motivated by people who want to sell as many guns as they can, to engage in a falsity of fear and rhetoric about, uh, why everybody has to have guns…you know, and, there’s just, the evidence is just so clear that more guns do not keep you safer.”

She’s wrong. More guns do keep us safer. More guns in the right hands will prevent innocent lives from being taken. Of course guns in the hands of criminals and mentally unstable people are dangerous and that should be the concern. But politicians want to circumvent the 2^nd Amendment and take away our rights to own firearms and protect ourselves, our families and our loved ones.

Imagine if law abiding citizens were permitted to conceal and carry their firearms in public. Now imagine a scenario where an armed gunman or gunwoman open fired into a crowd of people. Responsible, trained and law abiding citizens could draw their firearms and prevent that criminal from killing innocent lives.

Despite the evidence that more guns save lives, some members of congress are now exploiting the Las Vegas tragedy and urging gun control legislation. The problem with this is that many congressmen and congresswomen who endorse gun control legislation know little or nothing about guns and firearms. Some have no clue about the differences between a semi-automatic and an automatic weapon and thus have no business legislating guns.

Yes, we need to be concerned about guns in the wrong hands, but sometimes there will be tragedies such as the one that took place in Las Vegas Sunday night. No amount of gun control legislation would have prevented the massacre that occurred. It’s unfortunate that those who support gun control endorse taking away the rights our founding fathers sought to secure.

Tom Folden is a political strategist, conservative thinker, and Editor of RightWingWriter.com, a website for conservative viewpoints. A human rights activist, he is a firm believer in the Constitution and the rule of law. He is also a singer/songwriter and recording artist. For interviews and/or appearances, please contact him at spencergroup@hotmail.com.

Another horrible mass shooting has occurred, this time in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. In the early hours of Sunday morning, June 12, 2016, an apparent lone wolf terrorist armed with three different firearms let loose in a building filled with over 300 people as he reportedly shouted Allahu Akbar, which is standard protocol for radical Islamic terrorists as they carry out their mission to kill infidels.

As those affected by this tragedy sought to cope with their sadness and begin a mourning process, the left as usual started to exploit and propagandize the incident in a call for gun control. From pundits to the president, their ignorance was on full display.

The left has tried to manipulate the Second Amendment for years and see mass shootings as an opportunity to justify violating our rights by taking them away. While they seek to ban this or regulate that, Americans’ safety is at risk. Whether the left proposes a decrease in magazine capacity or requires prospective purchasers to submit to a background check, they totally miss the bigger point and have no understanding of why preserving the Second Amendment is so important. Certainly required background checks have been in place, at least in California, for decades. But where magazine capacity is concerned, the lives of law abiding citizens are at risk when their ability to defend themselves in their own homes is limited.

The bigger point is that criminals can still acquire firearms no matter how many laws are passed. In fact, the more laws on the books, the easier it is for a criminal to carry out a crime involving a firearm. Hardened criminals don’t need a gun store to purchase a gun. They likely buy them on the black market. What politicians really need to be focusing on is keeping guns out of the hands of felons and mentally unstable individuals, not law abiding citizens.

Laws limiting gun rights have the exact opposite effect as what they purport to do. The argument for banning certain weapons is to end senseless murders, but no law can eliminate senseless murders in and of itself. Laws can attempt to keep guns out of the hands of criminals or impose penalties on those who wish to own certain firearms but since any criminal can get around those laws it’s just absurd to think otherwise and asinine to insist such laws would be effective.

Taking firearms out of the hands of law abiding citizens emboldens criminals, that’s why owning one should be a duty. It’s kind of like potty-training. There comes a time in a child’s life that he/she needs to be potty-trained. Similarly, as citizens at some point in our lives we need to be responsible and know how to arm ourselves. It’s just a natural part of dutifully exercising our Second Amendment rights.

In the wake of this tragic event, President Obama took to the microphone to reiterate what he says after every mass shooting. He said we as Americans need to do some “soul searching” where gun violence is concerned. When Obama says we need to do some soul searching, it is he who needs to do some soul searching for he has been doing everything he can to destruct this country and the Constitution, putting our fundamental freedoms in jeopardy.

Tom Folden is a political strategist, conservative author, and Editor-at-Large of RightWingWriter.com, a website for conservative viewpoints. An original participant in the Tea Party, he takes part in pro-America rallies when his time permits. He is also a singer/songwriter and recording artist. For interviews and/or appearances, please contact him at spencergroup@hotmail.com.

Obama’s prescription for gun control is the exact opposite of what is needed. He can claim all day long that he is preserving our Second Amendment rights, but the plain and simple fact is that he would like nothing better than to disarm American citizens. It’s exactly what Nazi Germany did in order to carry out Hitler’s demented vision, thereby keeping people from being able to defend against the tyranny that he brought about. A lesson lived is a lesson learned. We hope, anyway.

Shamefully, this administration has used just about every mass shooting tragedy as an opportunity to promote gun control. As they parade the families of shooting victims on stage as a backdrop for an impassioned speech on the need for disarming citizens, most Americans aren’t fooled.

Most Americans know that taking guns away from law abiding citizens serves only to make it easier for criminals to carry out the atrocities Obama claims he wants to cease.

Most Americans know that guns save more lives than take them. As the National Rifle Association’s executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre says, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” The statistics don’t get reported by the mainstream media because the statistics don’t fit the leftist narrative, but according to a study conducted by Criminology Professor Gary Kleck, 2.5 million lives are saved each year because someone was able to ward off criminals using a gun, whether that gun was fired or not. When a criminal hears or sees a gun, that criminal is not likely to stick around.

Most Americans know that “gun-free zones” are the most unsafe areas to be because criminals count on the lack of resistance when they seek to carry out evil.

Most Americans know that hiring trained and skilled armed guards and properly stationing them at schools will prevent a lot of senseless school shootings.

Most Americans know that many, if not all, of the shooters who carried out mass shootings in the past several years are mentally unstable. The focus should be on keeping guns out of the hands of mentally unstable people, not law abiding citizens.

Most Americans know our Second Amendment rights supersede any law or executive action Obama tries to make.

But all this fails to stop Obama from his massive gun grab. He continually defies common sense when he proposes gun-control measures, measures that are going to make American citizens less safe.

Surely Obama knows that criminals are going to be able to access guns no matter what legislation is put forth.

Surely he knows that when law abiding citizens are able to arm themselves more lives are saved.

He must also know that designated “gun-free zones” attract criminals who actively look for these areas in planning their massacres.

Certainly he knows that putting trained and skilled armed guards (retired police officers and former military personnel, for example) in schools will go a long way toward saving innocent students’ lives.

Undoubtedly he realizes that most, if not all, of those who go on killing sprees are mentally deranged individuals who need help and need to be off the streets.

As a Constitutional lawyer and former editor of the Harvard Law Review, Obama knows that the Second Amendment protects Americans from impulsive gun grabs by over-zealous and narcissistic US Presidents as well as entitled partisan members of congress and activist judges.

There’s a reason the US Constitution is written the way it is. America’s founders warned against government tyranny and even anticipated it. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States explicitly states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Reads pretty clear to me.

Tom Folden is a political strategist, conservative author, and Editor-at-Large of RightWingWriter.com, a website for conservative viewpoints. An original participant in the Tea Party, he takes part in pro-America rallies when his time permits. He is also a singer/songwriter and recording artist. For interviews and/or appearances, please contact him at spencergroup@Hotmail.com.

While the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut was a terrible and tragic event, to put it most mildly, it has caused a national debate on gun control, not safety from mentally ill people and their propensity to perform extreme devastation. As is almost always the case with many politicians when something of this magnitude happens, they tend to politicize the tragedy and fail to take into consideration what the facts reveal.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who initiated an assault weapons ban in 1994, which lasted for ten years, has felt led to take the initiative once again to attempt a ban on assault weapons, even though there has been little or no debate on the advantages of assault weapons. Further, gun control proponents have ignored facts that prove that in areas where there are strict gun control laws, there is a high crime rate. This data is apparently of no use to anti-gun and gun control proponents. They fail to see the logic in the fact that when citizens are able to arm themselves and their families, they are indeed safer from criminals who would do them harm.

While Feinstein and others ignore concrete facts, the odds of more instances like Sandy Hook happening become more likely. If handguns and assault rifles are taken out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, as Feinstein would like, they will be doing the opposite of what really needs to be done right now. And her decisions will have the opposite effect of what she is trying to achieve.

In the case of Sandy Hook, it was a mentally disturbed person who had access to firearms who is primarily responsible for that massacre. With the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting, it was another mentally disturbed person who had access to firearms. The Gabby Giffords shooting in Tucson, Arizona was perpetrated by a mentally disturbed person who also had firearms. Can you see a pattern here? It is not firearms that are dangerous. It’s a mentally disturbed person with a weapon who is dangerous. It is a criminal with a gun who can be dangerous. And it is a tyrannical government that wishes to take away our arms and Second Amendment rights, that is very dangerous.

When Wayne La Pierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association (NRA), proposed having armed guards or officers in schools, the anti-gun crowd and mainstream media went mad. Before even considering the facts mentioned above, they were quick to dismiss the idea as something that would make kids feel unsafe. But the NRA offers a viable solution. There are plenty of trained personnel who could fit that position perfectly. Retired law enforcement officers, ex-military and other trained security guards would be well equipped to do the job of keeping kids safe at school. This would not make kids feel unsafe. Again, the opposite is true.

Jumping on the liberal bandwagon of gun control, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) proposed and passed a law in his state that prohibits a gun owner to carry more than seven rounds of ammunition in the magazine. This is simply ridiculous. How did he come up with the number seven? While in a hysterical speech he gave to his choir, he stated that no one needs ten bullets to kill a deer. Wrong, Governor. You do not know that to be a fact. It very well may take more than ten bullets to kill a deer and it very possibly may take more than ten bullets to stop one or more criminals who try to invade another’s home or property.

A shooting in Georgia made headlines when a woman encountered a man unlawfully entering her home while she was alone with her two small children. Fortunately, with coaching from her husband over the phone, she bravely fired five rounds into the invader, who was stopped but able to leave the house and drive down the street until crashing his car. So prohibiting a gun owner from carrying more than seven rounds in his/her gun is reckless on the part of Governor Cuomo and ignores logic and reality.

Those who want firearms out of the hands of all people, not just criminals and the mentally insane, may be well intentioned, but they are terrifyingly naïve. One cannot just disregard the lives saved when a gun is used on a criminal by a law-abiding, armed citizen. For some reason, though, the mainstream media does not want to report those incidents. That would go against the agenda they’re trying to push, and it would prove their whole narrative incorrect.

When one looks at the facts, one finds that 2.5 million guns each year are used for self-defense purposes. In a study done by criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck, of those 2.5 million gun owners, 400,000 of them stated that they would likely not be alive today were it not for the gun which was used successfully to save them, whether the gun was fired or not.

Still, the media, politicians on the left, including President Obama, choose to ignore the facts. Our founding fathers figured it would come to this. That’s why they wrote the Second Amendment. And there is nothing President Obama, Senator Feinstein, Governor Cuomo, the liberal media or anyone can do to disarm American citizens by taking away our Second Amendment rights. Not even by executive order.