Actress Julianne Moore called for the implementation of a gun registry and for limitations to be placed on the number of guns Americans can own during an appearance Thursday on ABC’s The View.
Host Whoopi Goldberg introduced Moore by talking about the actress’s affiliation with Michael Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety. Goldberg stressed the word “safety” and said, “It’s not about gun control, it’s about safety.”
Moore took her cue, smiled and said, “Yes, it’s about safety.” She continued:
People like to talk about, ‘It’s a Second Amendment issue,’ [but] it’s a safety issue. A gun is a machine. For instance, when cars were introduced we had any number of fatalities because we didn’t have safety regulations. We didn’t have seat belts and speed limits and air bags. So we’re asking for those same kinds of things with guns. Registration, licensing, background checks. I also think, personally, limitations on the amount of firearms you can own.
There are numerous problems with Moore’s statement. The first one is that the push for gun control is “a Second Amendment issue” because it is an attempt to restrict the exercise of God-given rights, period. The second problem with Moore’s statement is her failure to understand that vehicles are far deadlier than firearms in the American experience. In fact, on September 3, 2015, Breitbart News reported that Duke Researcher Chris Conover demonstrated that owning a car is “80 percent” riskier than owning a gun.
Gun control proponents like Moore look at the overall death figures–33,000 firearm-related deaths in 2013 and roughly the same number of deaths via automobiles. What gun control proponents fail to do is understand that there are tens of millions more guns than cars, thus indicating that the percentage of guns resulting in death is far less than the percentage of automobiles resulting in death.
The third problem with Moore’s statement is that nearly every gun control she mentioned is already in effect in California and the result has simply been more and more gun control coupled with high profile shootings that seize the public’s attention time and again. For example, California adopted universal background checks in the early 1990s. Thereafter they added a waiting period for gun purchases, a requirement for all guns to be registered with the state government, firearm confiscation laws, and a requirement that would-be gun purchasers obtain a certificate from the state that allows them to buy a gun. None of these laws prevented the shooting in downtown Fresno (April 18, 2017), the ambush killing of two Palm Springs police officers (October 8, 2016), the murder-suicide on UCLA’s gun-free campus (June 1, 2016), or the San Bernardino attack (December 2, 2015), among many other firearm-related incidents.
A fourth problem with Moore’s gun control push is that she said these things while her latest movie–a shoot ’em up titled Kingsman: Golden Circle–is awing audiences with scene after scene of fully-automatic weapons being fired. This hypocrisy epitomizes Hollywood’s habit of pushing gun control while promoting guns and “carnage.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.