Book Review: Hands Off My Gun, by Dana Loesch

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,[a] against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."
Ephesians 6:12-13

Did you know that Martin Luther King Jr. was denied a permit to own a handgun "as a result of gun control laws put into effect by white male Democrats" (146)?!?  Neither did we.  Then we read Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the plot to disarm America, Dana Loesch's cogent, succinct defense of the second amendment.

Loesch's 2014 release is one stop shopping for those who support the Second Amendment but don't have all the facts memorized.  While the entire book is worth reading, the most riveting chapters detail the degree to which anti-Second Amendment advocates hire private security, the ability of women to use firearms to protect themselves from rape, and the origins of gun control in the Jim Crow south.  Historically, disarming the target population has been a pre-condition for other attacks on civil liberties.

Loesch's zeal for the Second Amendment gained a sense of urgency in 2009 (7), when her family still lived in St. Louis.  That summer, during the first round of Tea Party protests, a man named Kenneth Gladney was beaten by Union Thugs outside of a Missouri congressman's town hall (8).  While the story made national headlines, for those of us outside St. Louis it faded into the background.  Loesch, however, was living it.  After the national media moved on, as she continued to cover the story locally, Loesch received threats and was followed around town (9).  Then, they threatened her children (10).  To understand's Dana Loesch's commitment to the Second Amendment, you have to understand that story.

Women's self-defense is one of the strongest motifs in the book.  As Loesch explains, firearms are "the ultimate equalizer for women" (140).  She details several examples where women have used firearms to prevent assault and, sadly, others where disarmed women were left to the mercy of their rapists.  Unfortunately, women's safety is unimportant to anti-Second Amendment politicans.  Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo's recent comments are a representative example:



Hands Off My Gun lists more facts than we can include in a seven-paragraph review.  Many of them were new to this author.  Examples include:

• The mother of the Sandy Hook shooter, Nancy Lanza, "had failed to properly and safely store her guns."  (29)

• "Three Sandy Hooks take place every month in Chicago, the progressive model for gun control." (39)

• All of the victims of the Columbine shooting "were killed within the first 15 minutes of the shooting." (109)

• That "anti-gun extremists don't even want our troops to carry on base, which has resulted in several massacres over the past few years on our military bases, twice at Fort Hood." (144)

• The anti-Second Amendment reasoning behind the Dred Scott decision. (152)

• The goal of taxing firearms ownership in the Jim Crow south "was a set of laws that made guns too expensive for black Southerners to afford." (157)

• During the revolution, "the patriots were armed from the start of the war with the British Brown Bess, which was the firearm of choice for the British Army." (168)

Our only beef with the book is that it fails to discuss abortion.  It's not a secret that some of the loudest anti-Second Amendment advocates, who hide behind "protecting children," are also some of the most rabidly pro-abortion.  Michael Bloomberg is a case in point.  Personally, we've always found this reprehensible.  That being said, we understand why it would not be considered germane to a discussion of the second amendment.

Citizens are responsible for their self-defense.  While law enforcement and the corrections system aid public safety (most of the time), they are inherently reactive.  Protection, by contrast, is proactive.  This is even more true for women.    Unfortunately, anti-Second Amendment Extremists have targeted our civil liberties.  Defending them requires us to be armed with truth.  Hands off My Gun, by Dana Loesch, is a fantastic place to start.