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Mike Huckabee on Gun ControlFormer Republican AR Governor; possible draft candidate |
HUCKABEE: (LAUGHING) Yes, I did.
Q: You even told gun store owners to ignore the President's orders. Yet, innocent people are dying from gun violence in cities every day. How to prevent guns from falling into the hands of criminals?
HUCKABEE: Well, why don't we start by making sure the Justice Department never does an idiotic program like Fast and Furious where the US Government put guns in the hands of Mexican drug lords? You know, they want to talk about law abiding citizens, I just find it amazing the President keeps saying the gun show loophole. There is no gun show loophole. I promise you I've been to more gun shows than Pres. Obama. I've bought more weapons [there], and you fill out forms. The President also says that it's easier to get a gun now than it is to grow trees. I purchase guns, and I can assure you that it is much more difficult to purchase a firearm than to grow trees.
HUCKABEE: You better believe I will. . I'd want to know do you believe in the First Amendment? And do you believe in the Fifth and the 14th Amendment? And I'd want to know do you really believe in the Second Amendment, do you believe that we have an individual right to bear arms to protect ourselves and our family and to protect our country? I'd make darn sure that we absolutely believe the 10th Amendment. Every governor on this stage would share this much with you. Our biggest fight wasn't always with the legislature or even with the Democrats. My gosh, half the time, it was with the federal government who apparently never understood that if it's not reserved in the Constitution, then the 10th Amendment says it's left to the states. But somebody forgot to send a memo to Washington.
A gun owner, Huckabee supports expansions of concealed carry laws and has written in the past that he believes they have saved lives. In 2006, Huckabee told a radio show that he supports the "Castle Doctrine" which states that people have the right to stand their ground and use deadly force when under threat.
A: Voters want someone whose views on the Second Amendment understand that the basic issue is one of freedom and it’s not hunting.
There are 700,000 physicians in the US and the number of accidental deaths caused by them per year is 120,000, making the accidental death rate per physician 17%. Using the same logic, there are about 80 million gun owners, and the number of accidental gun deaths per year among all age groups is 1,500. The same calculation reveals the number of accidental deaths per gun owner to be 0.00188%. In other words, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 more times more dangerous than gun owners. Yet, I hear no one suggesting we ban doctors.
During the show, a caller asked the governor what he thought of Florida’s so-called “Castle Doctrine.” Passed last year, the law states that any person has the right to “stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm.” The name of the law is drawn from the adage that a man’s home is his castle. “Personally, I think it’s the way it ought to be,” Huckabee said. “We ought to have the right to protect ourselves.”
While we need to find ways to keep firearms out of the hands of unsupervised youngsters, merely playing fast and free with the Second Amendment is not only likely to be ineffective in stemming the rising tide of violence, it may actually be counterproductive. And so it goes with many of our assumptions about how to cure that which ails our culture.