Any crisis, whether it be an airplane crash from terrorists, automobile accident by a drunk driver or a mass shooting of innocent lives, often causes a public outcry to do something. Unfortunately, government action to do something often results in a loss of freedom to law-abiding citizens and no impact whatsoever on the problem being addressed.

Rahm Emanual, White House Chief of Staff from 2009 to 2010 and now the Mayor of Chicago, said “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Now the Obama Administration wants to pass stricter gun-control laws on law-abiding citizens that will not affect these types of tragedies. Criminals that want to get a gun will get one regardless of the law.

The Obama Administration tries to pass their agenda based on emotion. Because we are a conscientious, caring society it is very easy for us to just act out of emotion and ignore the facts. In essence, we feel good that we have done something, in spite of the lack of evidence that what we did has any impact. So lets try to remove the emotional part of this issue and concentrate on the facts.

Australia and England have some of the strictest gun-control laws in the world. What they have learned is that law-abiding citizens that gave up their guns have fallen prey to criminals. Criminals know that law-abiding citizens do not have any way to protect themselves. So crime has gone up.

The article titled “The Failure of British Gun Control Law” states: In the period 1981-96, as American crime rates fell, British crime rates rose. Britain now has higher rates of robbery, assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft than the United States. They also state, “Of course, most readers of this column are already aware that gun control largely keeps guns out of the hands of the people that aren’t a problem. What about the people that gun control should disarm? Recent newspaper coverage from Britain suggests that after completely banning semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in the 1980s after the Hungerford Massacre, as well as all handguns after the Dunblane Massacre, they still have a big problem with guns in the wrong hands.

Thomas Sowell wrote an article titled “The Great Gun Control Fallacy.” He writes the following, “The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens; while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

If gun control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive.”

Remember that guns do not kill people. People kill people using many tools to accomplish it such as guns, knives, poison, etc. In stead of dealing with the facts, Vice President Joe Biden and Harry Reid, senate majority leader, are right now trying to pass stricter gun laws before the Newtown tragedy wears off. Remember their motto, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” I don’t know what is good about a crisis. I guess they see it as an opportunity to increase the size of government through ineffectual legislation. Too bad they did not move that fast during the fiscal-cliff crisis.

Shari Newton, Redmond