David Harsanyi:
The idea that gun-control advocates don’t want to confiscate your weapons is, of course, laughable. They can’t confiscate your weapons, so they support whatever feasible incremental steps inch further towards that goal. Some folks are more considerate and get right to the point.
“I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment,” writes The New York Times’ new-ish conservative columnist Bret Stephens today. Referring as a fetish to an inalienable right that has a longer and deeper history among English-speaking people than the right to free speech or the right to freedom of religion is an excellent indicator that someone probably hasn’t given the issue serious thought. Or maybe he’s just looking for hits. (Congrats.)
I mean, Stephens isn’t contending Americans shouldn’t own five AR-15s. He’s arguing that the state should be able to come to your house and take away your revolver or your shotgun or even your matchlock musket. Stephens might as well have written “Eww, guns take them away!” and left it that, but instead he offers debunked arguments and misleading statements that are likely borne out of the frustration of knowing his position is untenable.
“From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder,” writes Stephens, before pulling a narrowly catered statistic that ignores the vast evidence that the number of guns does not correlate with the murder or the crime rates. They are all over the place. What studies like this do, though, is purposely conflate gun homicides and suicides. If Stephens wants to argue that confiscation would lead to fewer suicides, he’s free to do so. But he’s also going to have to explain why countries with the highest suicide rates often have the strictest gun control laws. The fact is that despite a recent uptick in crime, since 1990, the murder rate has precipitously dropped — including in most big urban centers — while there was a big spike in gun ownership.
Then Stephens compares justifiable gun homicides — shooting a felon while protecting one’s home, etc. — with unintentional homicides with a gun. After some back-of-the-napkin calculation, Stephen concludes that guns are useless as a means of personal protection. Anyone who’s spent ten minutes thinking about gun control understands there is no way to quantify how many criminals are deterred by the presence of guns, or how many, for that matter, are turned away in the midst of crime. Has anyone calculated how many non-gun-owning families are safer because their neighbors own firearms?
Without getting into the practicality of confiscating more than 300 million guns, it seems odd that someone would let murderers and madmen decide what inalienable rights we should embrace. It is almost humorous reading someone advising you not to worry about domestic tyranny as he explains why the state should eradicate a constitutional right and confiscate your means of self-defense. But Stephens comes to the likely true conclusion that you can’t stop random men from killing.
I’m not the first pundit to point out that if a ‘Mohammad Paddock’ had purchased dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition and then checked himself into a suite at the Mandalay Bay with direct views to a nearby music festival, somebody at the local F.B.I. field office would have noticed.
No, he’s not the first pundit to make this confusing point. To his credit, Stephens refrains from comparing random madmen with those who kill in the name of a worldwide ideological movement that relies on terrorism as a political weapon. We can do something to detect the latter. It should be pointed out that the FBI might not have done anything about a “Mohammad Paddock,” in the same way they were unable to do anything about Syed Rizwan Farook or Tashfeen Malik or Nidal Hasan or Omar Mateen. Yet Second Amendment advocates certainly didn’t call for the confiscation of guns afterwards.
But my favorite part of Stephens’ column is when he asks: “I wonder what Madison would have to say about that today, when more than twice as many Americans perished last year at the hands of their fellows as died in battle during the entire Revolutionary War.”
Greg doesn’t like anyone to invoke the “C” word (Chicago), but it is the prime example (along with DC, LA, Baltimore, etc) that emphatically prove public safety is not why the left wants the 2nd Amendment executed. Until they honestly face and address the killing fields they have created and the preponderance of hateful rhetoric emanating from their lips, which has inspired NUMEROUS killings, there is no chance to take them seriously.
Historically, no matter what they have gotten in the way of gun control, they are always asking for more, and more that is not necessarily related to anything addressing a real need. They have exhausted their “reasonable gun control” demands and now have nothing but 2nd Amendment red flags to offer: registration, bans, restrictions, psychiatric guidelines, fees, etc.
The battle now is down to having the right to privately own guns for self defense or not. The left is no longer looking for compromise. THAT’S why they lie so much.
The bill they are trying to push to ban Bump-stocks, isnt the only thing in that bill, nothing is open and straight forward. But the NRA will lobby against the bill and that gives them the chance to demonize the organization.
Many sites are sold out of the slide or bump stocks.
Im sure the spying government knows where each one is.
We made some drugs illegal thats how we cleaned up that mess.
@kitt: Democrats will insert poison pills in the bill to make sure it dies. Then, they can demonize, sermonize, vilify and demagogue, just as they always do every issue.
Why not simply require a background check for a bump stock? Background checks are “reasonable”, aren’t they?
I read that that hypotcrtical NO MORE NAMES mentioned the name of a terrorists killed by police after the Boston Marathon bombing as a victims of guns and i suppose they mentioned the names of burglars and home invaders shot by armed citizens or police
@Deplorable Me: Making sure felons do not obtain a firearm , back ground checks are certainly an option. Add scopes gun cases, trigger locks ect….
Seems Nancy Sinatra just called for the death of 5 million Americans
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/nancy-sinatra-calls-nra-members-be-executed-firing-squad
Just membership is enough for a death sentence, there is a 4 letter word for her.
Well its been many years since she has-been anyone. hyphen intended
Wait a minute isnt that gun violence? Nancy use your one hit wonder boots and do some walkin’
Las Vegas shooting: Republicans open to ban on ‘bump-stocks’
Didn’t know what they were? Just how out of touch are these people, who make the laws of the land? Does he knows what tannerite is? I’ve known about both for several years now, and have been wondering how long it would be before they made national headlines. As that old post demonstrates, it didn’t take a crystal ball to see Las Vegas coming.
This news came out yesterday:
Las Vegas shooter had 50 pounds of Tannerite in car: Why that’s concerning
@kitt: Nancy “this mouth is made for lying” Sinatra definitely needs to execute whoever does her plastic surgery. Of course, her daddy never hung out with guys who depended on guns, did he?
@Greg:
Well, after all, Republicans BANNED them. It wasn’t until “never met a tragedy he didn’t love” Obama came along and and legalized them again that they became pertinent. NOW they are more popular than ever and are selling out everywhere. I’m sure only PEACEFUL Muslims and ANTIFA thugs are buying them, though.
If you knew about them, why didn’t you know Obama made them legal and what a “threat” they were? Why weren’t you lobbying, writing letters and protesting that they be banned (again)?
You never answered my question about Obama’s bloody hand prints being on the Las Vegas massacre in light of him making the bump stocks available again. After all, you are pretty harsh on the NRA when all they do is stand against pointless bans and restrictions AND had nothing to do with the re-legalization of bump stocks. You’re not going to AJ-out on me here, are you? Am I going to have to cut and past this question every time you post, as I have to do with the sniveling coward AJ? Please, Greg…. don’t.
@Deplorable Me, #7:
You’re parroting a deceptive propaganda meme quickly cranked out to counter criticism of a spineless Congress that has refused to address America’s firearm problems again and again. Obama didn’t make bump-fire accessories legal. The ATF rightly concluded during the time of his administration that there was no existing law that made it possible to restrict sale of the device.
That sales should have been banned in the absence of such a law is an interesting argument from people who spent so much time accusing Obama of executive overreach.
Bump-Stock Device Received ATF Green Light During Obama Administration
Conservative media is coming out against banning ‘bump stocks’ used in Las Vegas shooting
Utter stupidity. Do nothing, and you will see the same thing happen again—and possibly a far worse incident, with many more casualties. Any large crowd will be the potential target of a coordinated attack by trained teams of bump-fire equipped shooters. Anyone who thinks such people didn’t learn what’s possible and easy from Las Vegas has got to be far beyond simple cluelessness. Stephen Paddock has just painted potential mass murderers a picture. It takes very little imagination to realize how horrifically bad the results of building on his methodology could be.
@Greg: The explosives in his car were reported the first day. It was then pooed as a conspiracy theory. Like the lone wolf we are not swallowing, 64 year old accountant Rambo suuure whatever. There are reports of shots at 2 other casinos that night over a mile away from the concert.
http://yournewswire.com/second-gunman-las-vegas/amp/
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/10/05/shots-fired-at-the-vegas-bellagio-the-same-night-as-the-concert-attack-youtube-took-down-the-video/
The narrative is falling apart.
How do you administer a cure til all the diagnostics come back?
There was nothing complex about what Paddock did. Talk about special training and the like being needed is ridiculous. All it took was the will to kill and murderous methodology. The sheer simplicity of it all is terrifying. It reveals our level of vulnerability. Consequently, we want to believe in a more complex scenario. We understandably want to think it can’t happen so easily. And at the same time, we argue against obvious responses that could make it a bit more difficult.
@Greg:
Bush made them illegal in 2005. Now they are legal. If there was a President between Bush and Obama, I must have missed him/her.
Now that Obama made them legal and all the coverage of the supposed effectiveness of the attachment, along with the left wing constant clamor for more and more violence, most certainly we WILL see more. Now, is that the NRA’s fault or Obama’s?
No solutions or actions can be contemplated until facts are known. Did he use automatic weapons or modified semi-automatic? What motivated him? Who helped him? How did he get the weapons?
So, the question stands… Since liberals are quick to blame the NRA for every shooting, does Obama bear bloody responsibility for the Las Vegas Massacre for making bump stocks legal again (after Bush banned them)?
Have you got any documentation? Besides some stray comment found in a right-wing forum? Because I don’t buy the meme, which seems to have been cranked out for this occasion.
Here’s what your “Bush made it illegal” claim is actually based on:
‘Bump fire’ devices turn rifles into machine guns: How is that legal?
“Bush banned it” is a bit of a stretch. And a bit of a stretch is a bit of an understatement. Bush did no such thing. Nor did Obama reverse what Bush supposedly did. This meme of the moment is right down there with “striking union workers refuse to deliver emergency relief supplies.” It’s more horse sh-t on the manure wagon.
It’s amusing to imagine how the right would have reacted if Obama had banned this, or any firearm accessory not legislatively banned, by Executive Order.
The patent for the original device is 20 years old with 2 infringement suits filed on competitors.
Every law they put up some smart monkey will find a way around it.@Greg:
The sheriff isnt as confident of a lone wolf as you are.
Isis claims responsibility and the upper floors of Mandalay are called The 4 seasons majority owned by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and Gates , The CEO donates stock holders money to CAIR . The shooter was in Dubai with his GF?
nasty little facts that just may mean nothing tralala nothing to see here.
@Greg:
Well, one happened under Bush and the other happened under Obama. Again, based on how quickly, easily and without any actual reason, you blame the NRA for the bloodshed in Vegas yet you cannot assign a shred of responsibility to Obama for his part played in this, since you place such importance on these devices. There is no disguising that you will accept any left wing attack as gospel but will never consider the responsibility borne by the left for these tragedies… and we haven’t even discovered Paddock’s motivation yet.
Let us remember that Obama and Holder sold deadly weapons… weapons that killed a border patrol agent and hundreds of Mexican citizens… to drug cartels in an effort to discredit gun ownership and lawful sellers. The left has no problem turning a blind eye to tragedies that do not benefit them while exploiting others. You leftists don’t care about protecting citizens from gun violence; you seek disarmament and rendering citizens defenseless.
Does anyone remember the scene in the Texas legislature when reasonable abortion regulations were proposed? Clean clinics and none after 20 weeks… met with the shouting down of legislature and protests planning to throw wee-wee and dookie (described with the sophistication it deserves) on legislators.
Yeah, propose some regulations and restrictions on the liberal ABORTION CULTURE and see the reaction you get. Don’t preach to me about being open to “reasonable gun control” when you won’t consider reasonable restrictions on your industry of slaughter for the sake of convenience.
@Deplorable Me: The left is all about choice, as long as they get to choose whats good for you.