A video of a 15-year-old Maryland girl delivering a passionate defense of the Second Amendment during a hearing at the Maryland State Legislature last month has gone viral. While TheBlaze first covered the story last week, the story has gained traction elsewhere. Glenn discussed the testimony, which now his nearly 2.7 million views on You Tube, on radio this morning.
“Let me go to the 15-year-old girl in Maryland who had some testimony on gun control,” Glenn said. “She is a wee bit anti-gun control.”
The teenager has been identified as Sarah Merkle, a high school sophomore and member of the Maryland Rifle Club and Maryland State Rifle Team. During her testimony, Merkle explained that she has been shooting “for almost eight years” and “because of this I have become eligible for various shooting scholarships around the country to a wide array of even the most prestigious colleges that have shooting teams.”
It is her eloquent defense of gun rights, however, that has gotten the most attention:
MERKLE: Ever since I first learned how to shoot, the issue with gun violence around the nation became clear: Guns are not the problem, people are. Purging our society of violence and murder cannot be done through gun control legislation. By signing this legislation, you are not signing away gun violence, but instead liberating American citizens of our constitutional rights. You are not eliminating guns from society, but eliminating our ability to protect our lives, liberty, and pursuits of happiness. Chicago, Illinois has had some of the strictest gun laws in American enacted for the last few years, and it is currently more than twice as likely for you to be killed in Chicago as in the Afghani war. Is that really something we want to model our state laws after?
“No,” Glenn said matter-of-factly. “And that is a fact. That is true. It is more dangerous to be in the streets of Chicago than it is to be in Afghanistan. That is phenomenal.”
“Despite their gun control laws,” Pat added, “despite the fact that you can’t own a gun, virtually, in Chicago.”
Chicago has proven time and time again that gun control laws are simply not the answer, but Glenn explained why the left doesn’t see it that way. “But see, here’s the problem. You make this argument,” Glenn said in response to Pat. “The problem is they’re going to say, ‘Well the only reason that's happening is because people can get guns from someplace else in the United States. They can bring them in from another state. They can just bring them in. That’s why.’”
“Well, you're going to eliminate and meltdown every gun in the world,” Glenn asked. “I mean, really. Do these progressives not learn from things like prohibition?”
When you look at the black market that emerged during the prohibition-era in the United States or the fact that people are able to obtain drugs like heroin, cocaine, marijuana, etc. fairly easily despite their ‘illegal’ status, it becomes clear that the act of banning or criminalizing does not ensure the problem disappears.
Furthermore, when you look at murder and crime rates in relation to gun laws in other major U.S. cities, the situation in Chicago becomes even more startling. “How does that argument work when in places like Houston and Dallas, where we go by the Second Amendment, we don’t have the problem that they do in Chicago,” Pat asked. “People can get them here, locally, and we don’t have that problem. So that doesn’t make any sense either.”
“It’s the Detroit story,” Glenn concluded. “Wherever progressives have ruled for a very long time and broken the family in half, and made everyone reliant on the government, and regulated their lives, and taught their children all this garbage.”
Watch Merkle’s entire testimony below:
