I read the cute little Joseph Cotton editorial on guns in the April 27 Griffin Daily News with bemusement. In it he tried to convince gun owners that those wanting to ban guns are really patriots, just with different views. He even goes so far as to say the 2nd Amendment must be preserved and he wants us to compromise with gun banners.

All he and the other “patriots” on his side want to do is ban a bunch of guns because they don’t like them. He sees no reason he and his fellow “reasonable” gun banners can’t use the power of the government to ban all guns they can classify as “assault weapons” because of the way they look. That’s like banning big soft drinks because you think others should not have them.

I might be more willing to listen to folks like him if they would just pay attention to facts. According to a Congressional Research Service report less than two percent of all crimes were committed by rifles, of which only a small subcategory could be classified as “assault weapons” by anyone’s definition. In 1994 there were an estimated 1.5 million “assault weapons” in civilian hands based on liberal Slate magazine. In the past seven years sales of semiautomatic rifles what the gun banners usually call “assault weapons” have increased dramatically.

In the first four years of the Obama administration there were an estimated 67 million gun sales. And almost every month for the past three years gun sales have set new records. Yet during that same time gun crime had fallen every year.

So if “assault weapons” are almost never used in crime and overall gun crime has decreased while gun sales, including “assault weapons” have increased dramatically, what sense does it make to ban any guns?

For the gun banners, compromise means do it my way. Their goal is incremental gun bans. Its like the old saying about once the camel gets its nose in the tent it won’t be long before you are sleeping with a camel. Banning guns will not affect crime in any way, so why let the camel in the tent?