Gun Control as a weapon
I know I’m late to the Virginia Tech “massacre” debate, but not so late that I don’t get to see ass clowns use it for a reason to undermine our rights, apparently.
In today’s DC Examiner, Harry Jaffe complains that not enough DC residents are protesting for “states rights” for DC. As an excuse that DC needs states rights (which as I’ve explained before is like giving car keys to a 10-year-old) jaffe presents the fact that courts have sided with Americans’ right to protect themselves in their homes with firearms. Jaffe begins by butressing his argument with the Virginia Tech shootings;
I tend to be a practical protester, with an eye toward results. Here’s my take on three worthy reasons to take to the streets in Washington: voting rights, righting judicial wrongs, and gun control — in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings.
And ends with an idiot mish-mash of garbled reasoning;
For years, we had a strong gun–control ban as a bulwark against the tide of handguns that come our way from Virginia. It gave teeth to our laws and power to our cops to grab guns.
Now courts have overturned that law, and we could lose one of our best defenses against mayhem. But the best way to keep guns off our streets would be to encourage Virginia to make it harder to buy deadly weapons, such as the semiautomatic guns that killed 33 at Virginia Tech, and the ones that migrate to our streets.
That’s pretty convoluted thinking, for one thing. The best way DC residents have to protect themselves from criminals is giving up their weapons? DC has the highest violent crime rate in the country and yet Jaffe trumpets the 31-year-old liberal draconian gun laws as the District’s best chance to beat crime.
All the appeals court said was that DC residents could own guns and keep them in their homes for self-defense. Does Jaffe think that the DC cops have time to do a house-to-house search to “grab guns”? I doubt you could pry a sizable number of DC cops away from the Popeye Chicken joints long enough to check even one home. When DC had a gun buy-back program in 1999 and 2000 (25 years after the gun law was enacted) they took in 6253 guns – there were still that many guns in the District. Doesn’t sound like the laws are working – so why write more?
Luckily, I have Charles Krauthammer on my side;
Unfortunately, in today’s supercharged political atmosphere, there is the inevitable rush to get ideological mileage out of the carnage.
It did not take long for the perennial debate about gun control to break out, preceded by the inevitable scolding and clucking abroad about America’s lax gun laws.
Yeah, I caught bits and pieces of that clucking this week. Euro-weinies scolding us for our “gun culture” yet unable to protect themselves from gun and knife-wielding lunatics and asundry “youth” criminals destroying half of Europe everytime the weather gets warm.
But that doesn’t stop perpetual handwringer EJ Dionne from complaining that Europe is laughing at us;
Our country is a laughingstock on the rest of the planet because of our devotion to unlimited gun rights. On Thursday, an Australian newspaper carried this headline: “America, the gun club.”
Dionne proves he doesn’t understand the debate;
Any reasonable measures are blocked because most Republicans are opportunists on the gun issue and Democrats have become wimps. Republicans have exploited support from the NRA for years, and Democrats, eyeing rural congressional seats, are petrified of doing anything that offends the gun lobby.
Republicans have this weird thing where we think the Constitution protects the rights of citizens, not it’s a list of suggestions for privileges that politicians can use to reward their constitituents. Democrats are the ones exploiting the fear of more gun violence instead of accepting the fact that guns protect us more than they kill us.
But, honestly, I hope Democrats take Dionne’s “Democrats are wimps” line to heart. Nothing would wipe out Liberalism in one fell swoop like a national campaign against gun owners.
Actually, I figure it’s this lunatic liberalism that thinks judges can predict human behavior – especially if they’re allowed to ignore other liberal “experts”. And, Lord knows we can’t violate the rights of lunatics to own guns, even though we think it’s fine and dandy to restrict mostly sane and rational people from owning guns. Which is exactly what Jaffe is supporting.
I’ll bet cash money that neither Jaffe nor Dionne would have supported putting a note on Cho’s NAC file that hinted he might be a little nuts and shouldn’t be sold a gun. They’d just rather broadbrush paint the entie nation’s residents as potential lunatics instead of just restricting the dangerous guys.
It’s comforting to know Mr. Krathammer thinks as I think;
In a previous age, such a troubled soul might have found himself at the state mental hospital rather than a state university. But in a trade-off that a decent and tolerant society makes with open eyes, we allow freedom from straitjackets to those on the psychic edge, knowing that such tolerance runs a very rare but very terrible risk.
It is inevitable, I suppose, that advocates of one social policy or another will try to use the Virginia Tech massacre to their advantage. But it is simply dismaying that a serious presidential candidate should use it as the ideological frame for his set-piece issues.
Yeah, Democrats are good at standing on dead bodies for their political advantage. Look how tall they stand on our dead troops. I expected it when I first heard of the shooting.  But Clinton’s gun policies is what ultimately doomed the Gore presidency – too many hunters in Florida. Any Democrat who thinks that gun control is good way to get the White House is deluding themselves, but the Democrats’ field of candidates isn’t short of deluded people, is it?
In fact, I think we need to ban Spring. Every Spring these youthful gunmen come out – it usually happens in mid-April – and start blasting away at their fellow classmembers. It must be the Spring weather. Maybe we should lock up all males after the first week of April.
Or maybe as Diana West of the Washington Times says today, we should scrap liberalism;
Since for a long time. Since we, as a society, decided to abolish “normal,” effectively eliminating the parameters of, well, normal behavior. Since we, as a society, decided to rid ourselves of taboos, effectively disarming basic self-defense mechanisms, including good judgment. It is unlikely Cho realized any of this as he maniacally exploited society’s weaknesses. But it is crucial we understand our inaction on Cho’s warning signs as a consequence of political correctness and begin to reverse it. Otherwise, we won’t have even a hope of warding off such evil next time.
But, then how many Democrat Presidential candidates would there be if we reinstituted “normal” – or even “rational” for that matter.
