Great speech by Nick Freitas on gun discussion…worth the time! We had to find the transcript for this one! It’s below and is a gem!

Delegate from Culpeper, Delegate Freitas.

Thank you, Mister Speaker, I rise for a point of personal privilege.

Delegate has the floor.

So, over the last several days, Mr. Speaker, there’s been a lot of discussion about an open and honest debate with respect to school shootings, gun violence, gun control, etc…

and an open and honest debate as I understand it, is one that would rely on data, facts, evidence, analysis, reason, logic, etcetera, etcetera…

and I’m certainly willing to have that debate, I think if we were going to look seriously at school shootings and gun control, we would analyze things like: Why do all mass shootings seem to take place in gun free zones?

Wouldn’t it be reasonable to test whether or not the efficacy of gun-free zones have actually achieved what they’re intended intent is?

We would start to look at…most of the shooters come from broken homes. What sort of government policies have actually encouraged broken homes?

You can look at Left-leaning think tanks like the Brookings Institute, that will actually say that some of it can be attributed to various cultural change that happened in the 60’s to include the abortion industry.

You can look at a more conservative-leaning organizations that will say that the welfare state contributes significantly to dismantling the family as families became more and more dependent upon the government than they were mothers and fathers in the home raising children.

We can look at very status with those areas within the United States and around the world that have strict gun control measures, and what their crime rates look like, whether it’s Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., and others that have incredibly strict gun laws and yet, for some reason, it hasn’t seemed to stop the gun violence in those particular areas.

We can look at analysis out of FiveThirtyEight, which is considered more of a Left-of-center data analysis think tank, where you have several analysts now confirms that the data that they were looking at, not just the United States, but in Canada, Great Britain, and Australia, that they were shocked that the data did not support what they thought gun control measures would actually achieve.

We can look at the number of cases within the United States, where has been used for self-defense…Estimates range everywhere from a 100,000 uses to over close to 1 million uses within the United States. Now, some organizations and some reporters only want to report on the ones where the gun used actually resulted in the death or maiming of the perpetrator, but if you look at the ones where the gun was used, and the presence of the firearm actually dissuaded a criminal from committing an act of violence, an act of rape, an act of murder, the number shoots up—it sky rockets.

So when people on this side talk about the importance of the Second Amendment, please understand it’s not just some base philosophical conviction that we all have. It is rooted in the idea that while we might be a post-Enlightenment society, the vast majority of horrible atrocities that we’ve seen, have happened in those post-Enlightenment societies.

It’s happened as a result of government systematically disarming citizens, and claiming themselves to be the sole responsible party for their security, and turning on those same citizens and punishing them.

That’s the most egregious cases, but in the individual cases of self-defense, that’s why the people on this side of the aisle hold the Second Amendment in such high-esteem, because we honestly believe that you have an inherent right to defend yourself.

And your ability to defend yourself should not be excluded to your size. Firearms provide someone that is weaker and not as fast the ability to actually defend themselves from a stronger attacker.

Some of the other things that we look at, and some of the things I would hope we would have bipartisan support for—all of us agree that we need to make sure that our students are better protected when they go to school…

One of the things that we would look at is arming certain teachers, not every teacher, but a teachers that is comfortable with it, is former law enforcement, is former military, that is now in the classroom.

Delegate Plum yesterday said that was ridiculous to consider. Why?

Is it because the other side of the debate will only accept one “solution” to this problem, and that is: tearing apart or gutting the Second Amendment?

And I understand we’re going to mention a couple of bills we’ve done this year, right? Background checks, getting rid of bump stocks…

If you’re wanting the other reason why we can’t have an honest debate about this one is because, quite frankly, I don’t think any of us, on this side of the aisle, believe you when you say that’s all you want to do.

It will be bump stocks, it will be background checks, it will be a different kind of background checks that register the guns…

Then, after that, it will be “We need to ban assault weapons.”

“What’s an assault weapon?”

“Something that looks scary.”

Then after that it will be semi-automatic rifles, then it will be semi-automatic hand guns. Then it will be revolvers, shotguns…

Because when the policies fail to produce the results you were promising your constituents, you will be back with more reasons for why we’ve got to infringe on Second Amendment rights.

The other reason why it’s really difficult to have an honest and open debate about this is because of members of this body comparing members on this side of the aisle to Nazis…

Member on the other side of the aisle saying that when a 24-year-old teacher gets up and says that the whole debate is between the Second Amendment or her life.

That’s a false dilemma.

And quite frankly, one of the ones I found the most offensive, along with being compared to Nazis, was being compared to segregationists.

I just want to remind everyone of something really quickly: It was not our Party that supported slavery, that fought women’s suffrage, that rounded up tens of thousands of Asian-Americans and put them in concentration camps, that supported Jim Crow, that supported segregation, or supported mass resistance—that was the Democrat Party.

Now, I’m thrilled that Democrats no longer believe that, and I don’t believe that a single member of this body who is a Democrat ever believed those things, but I would really appreciate it every time you want to make a powerful point, you don’t project the sins, the atrocities, and the injustices that the Democratic Party perpetrated onto others onto us.

So if we want to have an open and honest debate, I am all for that, let’s do that.

But it does start with a certain degree of mutual respect.

It starts with a certain degree of not assuming that the only reason we believe in the Second Amendment is because the NRA paid us off.

Well if that’s the sort of logic you want to use, why don’t you go and take a look at how much money the NRA spends and how much money Planned Parenthood spends.

Because when I get up here and I take about abortion, I don’t assume that you’re all bought and paid for by Planned Parenthood. I don’t assume you’re horrible people, because I disagree with you on a policy position.

I assume you have deep convictions and that we can have an argument and a debate about it.

But if you’re not willing to reciprocate that level of respect, well then don’t be surprised when it becomes difficult to talk about these things.

Because there is a lot that we can do, and that we need to do to ensure the security of our children and of our citizens.

But yes, we are going to have a problem with these so-called solutions, which infringe on people’s liberty, under the promise that government will provide for their security.

Because, ultimately, in this last school shooting we had a perfect example of government being engaged over 30 times, and still failing to provide security for those students.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.