Yesterday’s mass shooting in Highland Park, Il. overshadowed what should have been a joyous Fourth of July celebration. But in the aftermath of the event, Chicago White Sox relief pitcher Liam Hendricks took the shooting as an opportunity to lecture America about gun safety. 
Hendricks, who is from Australia, bashed America’s gun laws in an interview after the Sox's game against the Minnesota Twins.
'There are a lot of things that are good over here, but you look at the negatives ... I can walk into a store as a non-American and buy a handgun in certain states. That baffles me,” Hendricks said. “I had to take a driving test when I was over here. I won't have to take a test if I want to get a gun. That's stupid. Whoever thought that was a great idea is an idiot.”
Hendricks went on to say that Australia is a shining example of how restricting the freedom to access firearms is a good thing.
“We had a mass shooting, and when that mass shooting happened the government came in and was like, ‘Yeah we can’t do this we’re going to do a buy-back program,’” Hendricks said. “All of a sudden, suicide rates dropped drastically, our gun-related homicides dropped infinitely, and it’s something that has pretty much kept on.”
He also added that self-protection “isn’t a good enough reason to get a gun.”
“I had to take a driving test when I [came] over [to America]. I won’t have to take a test if I want to get a gun. That’s stupid. Whoever thought that was a great idea is an idiot.” – Liam Hendriks pic.twitter.com/iErEJWfPzg
— White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) July 4, 2022
To be fair, Australia has had only one mass shooting since the government implemented their mandatory buy-back program in 1996 (note the word “mandatory,” something Hendricks did not mention). But the low number of mass shootings has come at the expense of Australians being able to defend themselves from an overreaching, tyrannical government.
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Australia had some of the strictest lockdown restrictions in the world. They enforced an incredibly draconian stay at home order for several months, and police officers would go to people’s houses to make sure they were staying inside. The government could afford to oppress its citizens in large part because Australians would not be able to resist in any meaningful way since they had no access to firearms.
This is why the Second Amendment is such an important right for Americans. Men much smarter than Hendricks saw that tyrannical governments can easily oppress citizens who cannot defend themselves, which is why each American has a constitutionally protected right to own firearms. Of course, mass shootings happen and those are undeniably tragic, but to say that taking guns away to stop them from happening will leave its citizens at the mercy of its government to treat them fairly, which history shows is not a good course of action.
Hendricks really missed the strike zone on this assessment.
