Nicholas Kristof: Our Blind Spot About Guns

In the pages of the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes an opinion piece titled Our Blind Spot About Guns. Kristof isn’t the brightest bulb, we’ve talked about some of his idiot pieces before. Like the time he thought that we should cut our military, back in 2010 and again the following year when he advocating for a tax hike using the Clinton model. So what’s the little fellow want now? Well, gun control of course.

If we had the same auto fatality rate today that we had in 1921, by my calculations we would have 715,000 Americans dying annually in vehicle accidents.

Instead, we’ve reduced the fatality rate by more than 95 percent — not by confiscating cars, but by regulating them and their drivers sensibly.

We could have said, “Cars don’t kill people. People kill people,” and there would have been an element of truth to that. Many accidents are a result of alcohol consumption, speeding, road rage or driver distraction. Or we could have said, “It’s pointless because even if you regulate cars, then people will just run each other down with bicycles,” and that, too, would have been partly true.

Well, you can see where he’s going with his mud puddle deep intellect – if we regulate cars, why don’t we regulate guns the same way? Um, we already do regulate guns. Of course, before he gets there, it’s a lot of blather about how courts overturned attempts to regulate drivers and automobiles. How horses were frightened and noisy mechanical beasts roamed unchecked through the dusty streets at a high rate of speed. Finally, we accepted regulation of automobiles – so would we finally accept increased regulation of our firearms.

Kristof recognizes that that pesky 2d Amendment gets in the way of his theme, but that doesn’t stop him from plunge headlong into the morass. He writes;

There are similar technological and behavioral fixes that can ease the toll of gun violence, from expanded background checks to trigger locks to smart guns that recognize a thumbprint, just like my iPhone does.”

Some of these should be doable. A Quinnipiac poll this month found 92 percent support for background checks for all gun buyers.

He overlooks the questions in that poll where interviewees respond almost evenly on whether we need stricter gun control. The question that the poll people asked folks in regards to background checks was “59. Do you support or oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers?” and it got 92% supporters and most gun buyers already submit to background checks.

The next question in the poll is “60. Do you support or oppose laws to prevent people with mental illness from purchasing guns?” an almost equal percentage, 89%, support that proposal. So any rational person would come away from that series of questions with the belief that Americans support backgrounds checks if they caught people with mental illness in that net. But not Kristof;

These steps won’t eliminate gun deaths any more than seatbelts eliminate auto deaths. But if a combination of measures could reduce the toll by one-third, that would be 10,000 lives saved every year.

Less than 1% of guns that were bought at gun shows that would be subject to the gun control laws that Democrats tried to pass last year are used in crimes according to the Center for Disease Control. How that would reduce the toll of gun deaths by a third is beyond me.

Gun manufacturers have been including trigger locks with new firearms for years – does Kristof suggest that the police check my guns in my home to see if I’m using trigger locks on my guns? As long as we’re trashing the 2d Amendment here, we might as well toss aside the 4th as well.

Like I said, Kristof is a dim bulb, but in several cases, folks feel better about themselves when they advocate for some of his proposals, so I’m just getting out in front of the stank ass hippies in regards to this smelly garbage.

Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists