GRANGEVILLE - Citing surveys showing gun bans don't work and asserting that even refrigerators can be used to kill, the Idaho County commissioners Tuesday passed a resolution in support of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Idaho County Commission Chairman James Rockwell said the commissioners felt the need to voice their support of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms "because there's a national conversation going on. There's also a statewide conversation going on."

Rockwell said much of the conversation about gun control gets sidelined to issues having to do with hunting and the recreational use of guns.

But the Second Amendment has to do with assuring the rights of citizens to own guns to protect themselves against tyranny and foreign invasion, he said.

"Clearly the national discourse has lost its way," Rockwell said. The commissioners' resolution underscores the county's support of the Bill of Rights' original intent and numerous subsequent U.S. Supreme Court affirmations of the law.

The resolution lists a number of statistics in support of guns, including "a 1994 survey found that Americans use firearms to frighten away intruders approximately 498,000 times per year."

It also mentions a gun ban in Washington, D.C., from 1976-2008 in which the "murder rate averaged 83 percent higher than it was at the outset of the law," and notes Chicago, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, has more homicide victims in a month than died in the school shooting late last year in Newtown, Conn.

"...The president and some members of Congress, apparently lacking common sense, seem to be afraid of guns, seem to confuse guns with evil, call Chicago home so have little real knowledge of guns," according to the resolution.

The resolution makes reference to cars, refrigerators, rocks, guns and knives as instruments that have the potential to kill, "but each on its own is an inanimate object not able to kill and is not evil."

The commissioners said they hope that through the resolution they can "educate those who are afraid of any inanimate object, especially guns."

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