Council of Great City Schools: Anti-Second Amendment Resolution

The Council of Great City Schools has published a resolution calling for severe infringements on the Second Amendment. It is something all gun owners and parents should be concerned with. The resolution is full of truisms, falsehoods, and logical fallacies that the masses (sheeple), if they took the time to read the resolution may gloss right over without an understanding or challenge.

The Council of Great City Schools (CGCS) is an organization of 70 urban public school systems, first formed in 1956.  It started with 10 large, urban schools and has grown with federal funding. As such, it is not surprising that it pushes causes dear to those pushing for more and bigger government, more taxes, more spending, more federal funding. It’s member are nearly funded by tax dollars.  Most of its teachers would be members of the far left National Education Association. When the CGCS says they wish to improve education, they are essentially saying: Give us more money. From cgcs.org:

The Council of the Great City Schools brings together 70 of the nation’s largest urban public school systems in a coalition dedicated to the improvement of education for children in the inner cities. The Council and its member school districts work to help our school children meet the highest standards and become successful and productive members of society.

The Council keeps the nation’s lawmakers, the media, and the public informed about the progress and problems in big-city schools. The organization does this through legislation, communications, research, and technical assistance.

As with much propaganda, the resolution from the CGCS contains a mixture of truisms, falsehoods, and logical fallacies. My hope was that an educational organization would check facts. It is not hard to do with easy access to the Internet. But the CGCS resolution is not about truth, facts, or logic. It is about pushing a Progressive policy agenda. Here are a few of the gems from the Resolution and a critique. Quotes from the resolution are indented. From cgcs.org:

WHEREAS, too many of our young people are shot and killed on the streets of our major cities almost every day;

Many would consider this a truism, but it is not. It has underlying assumptions that are far from being universally accepted. How many is too many? Is one too many? If one of the young people is shot to prevent them from murdering a younger child, a senior citizen, or from raping a child, is that one too many?  The assumption does nothing to differentiate useful and justified shootings from those that are illegitimate.

WHEREAS, Americans are 25 times more likely to be killed with a gun than people in other developed countries;

This assumption is crafted with a careful caveat. It only includes a few countries in the world, undefined as “developed countries.” No reason is given for that differentiation. You could as easily consider “New World Countries” or “English speaking Countries.” A VOX definition includes Qatar, Barbados, and Cyprus as “developed countries,” while excluding Brazil, Jamaica, and Panama. The deception is completed by using the logical fallacy of irrelevance. Only people killed with guns are counted. But guns can protect as well as kill; someone who is murdered because they do not have a gun for to defend themself is just as dead as someone killed with a gun. Any statistic that relies on gun deaths or gun violence is relying on the logical fallacy of irrelevance. It is the total unjustified homicides that matter, not just gun homicides.

WHEREAS, Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the world’s population but own some 42 percent of the world’s guns;

Another example of the irrelevance argument. Americans are some of the richest people on the planet. Rich people have guns, unless prevented from having them by their rulers. The richest people in nearly every country have guns and/or armed security.

WHEREAS, assault weapons have no place in society and other types of guns are too easily obtained;

Simply an assumption, an opinion that some people have and others do not. Guns were more easily obtained 50 years ago, and “assault weapons” (an ill-defined term of legalese, varying from state to state) have been available for 100 years or more. During that period, the crime rate fell and rose. The primary reason for more mass murder today seems to be the desire of national media to create celebrities out of mass murderers that use guns, and the communication age we live in.

WHEREAS, teachers are not trained law enforcement officers, and should not be asked or incentivized to keep weapons accessible in their classrooms;

More irrelevancy. About 20% of teachers are willing and able to safely carry defensive firearms to protect the children in their care. They should be allowed to do so.

WHEREAS, there is no reason based on any viable research to suggest that adding guns into a school setting or arming teachers would prevent these acts of violence;

There are only hundreds of years of practical experience, several real world examples, and the failure of the Federal Gun Free School Zone laws to contradict this assumption. Mass shootings deaths in schools increased by about 440 percent since the federal laws were passed.

There are several more questionable WHEARAS statements, and then a large number of resolution statements that are just as irrational, based on false assumptions, irrelevancy, and simple error.  I will include one of the resolution statement to show how ignorant these urban educators are about guns, and crimes either committed with or prevented by the ownership of guns. From the CGCS.org resolution:

NOW, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Council of the Great City Schools calls on the Congress of the United States to ban the sale, purchase, possession, and use of assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition cartridges, except those needed by the military and law
enforcement;

What are a large-capacity ammunition cartridges? Might I assume they are cartridges of calibers greater than 20 mm? The authors clearly do not understand the minimal facts about guns.  Such things are easily available with only a little effort. How can we trust such ignorant people to craft legislation that has any relevancy to any issue dealing with firearms? The answer is, of course, that we cannot. It would be like asking a person who knows nothing of mathematics or engineering to design a jet airplane. Not only would it be silly, it would be irresponsible.

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© 2018 by Dean Weingarten