Common sense is a wonderful thing.  The implication of “common” sense reforms implies that we’re discussing regulations so proper and so basic that people as a whole – the population – can easily see its virtues and support it.  In theory, these “common sense gun reforms” represent the most fundamental level of protection against another attack, and what American would oppose laws that are designed to prevent another attack?

The problem starts from ground zero – common sense is not pulled out of a hat.  Common sense is never the result of emotions.  Common sense results from experience and research, but unfortunately, neither of these two traits are present in these so-called common sense gun control laws floating around Congress.  How much confidence in these laws can the American people have when our elected leaders admit that their most recent failure – a bill requiring universal background checks - will not stop the next massacre, nor would it have prevented Sandy Hook, Columbine, or Virginia Tech?

To rely on background checks, one needs to assume two different things: First, we need to assume that criminals in our society would voluntarily submit to background checks.  Second, we need to necessarily assume that if a person were to fail a background check, they immediately stop trying to obtain a firearm.  Once they fail, that is it.  They go on about their lives as productive members of our society and simply forget about the cause of their aggression.  They instantly reform themselves, as if touched by an angel, and become law-abiding citizens of our great nation.

I do not know in what world that would be considered “common sense”, but it is not in this one.  Even our political class knows that universal background checks, while fed to the American people in an easily digestible “common sense” package, would do nothing to prevent the next attack.

It does not stop there.  Nobody wants to take away your guns, they say.  The problem?  They do.  Diane Feinstein, mother of the so-called assault weapons ban – a ban on the very type of weapons that are used in an extremely tiny fraction of crime in America – admitted in 1995 that if the votes were there, she would support a full and outright ban on weapons in this country, disarming the American people and keeping guns only in the hands of our trustworthy and sensible government.  What could go wrong?

So, let’s take a look at what one of the more prominent gun control activists in Congress supports.  At the very least, Feinstein wants a ban on weapons that are not used in the large majority of crime in America.  But truthfully, the goal is an outright ban on all weapons, essentially destroying the second amendment and leaving Americans, quite literally, as sitting ducks to those who would do us harm – including (and especially?) the government.

To believe in a gun ban, you must willingly forget the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 that kicked off the Revolutionary War, when British “Red Coat” soldiers attempted to seize a large collection of arms from the colonists.  The alarm was sounded and the colonial militiamen quickly formed their armed resistance and pushed the British army back into retreat.  The moral of this story?  Disarmament was tried before, and the second amendment does not only exist to protect skeet shooting and hunting, as many would have you believe.  This is about freedom from tyranny.

Even more nonsensical are limits to magazines – and New York (7-round max) currently leads the way in this truly reckless control mechanism.  10-rounds seem to be the most popular number to limit magazine capacities at, but only the most uninformed gun control proponent could possibly support such a limit given that the gunmen in one of the worst school tragedies in recent history, Columbine, used 10-round magazines.  Thirteen different 10-round magazines, in fact.  The Virginia Tech shooter used several 10-round magazines, along with some 15-round mags.  The point?  Magazine limits cannot prevent a crazy gunman from opening up a torrent of gun fire, and even the most rudimentary research effort would uncover this fact.

Tell me, ladies and gentlemen – what is common sense about any of this?  Is the destruction of the second amendment somehow “common”?  If so, we have a much larger problem on our hands.  Is passing a universal background check system, a proposition that our own government admits will not stop the next attack, common?  How can limiting magazine capacities to the precise number that gunmen in many of our school tragedies use be at all connected to “common” … or “sense”, for that matter?

The truth of the matter is violent crime in the United States of America is at an all time low according to recent statistics.  Why, then, do the majority of Americans believe that crime is on the rise?  The answer lies in our media’s attempt at creating a life-and-death situation out of thin air, exploiting tragedies like Sandy Hook and virtually every accidental shooting as grounds to prop up the fraud.  Sadly, our government could not be happier about it because it gives them an opportunity to further their own political agendas and strengthen our society of dependence on the federal government.  Worse, it reinforces in a largely uninformed population the notion that America has a “gun problem”, and that the government needs to fix it.

It is well known that in the immediate aftermath of well-publicized national tragedies, the American people tear down their defenses and let the government encroach into their lives in ways they probably never dreamed of (think TSA).  This time, our government narrowly missed the window of opportunity to cash in on the heightened emotional level of Americans and push through a piece of meaningless legislation that would treat every American as a potential criminal.

This media-concocted fraud plays an integral part in creating the illusion that gun control laws in Congress are “common sense”.  If Americans are scared for their lives, they are more likely to give up their freedom in order to obtain perceived safety.  Of course, it is only those who do not own guns, nor have much knowledge about them, that are most willing to give up their right to them.  You want an example of being selfish?  This is it.

There is nothing “common sense” about that.