When things go bad for Democrats – as seems to be happening more often – they end up at the same old watering hole seeking relief in the same old way.
The Donkey Party slouches into Whiny McFailure’s Corner Bar, slumps down on a stool and says, “Barkeep, gimme the usual.” What gets slammed down on the bar is a full tumbler of 80-proof Gun Control Select Reserve, followed by a chaser of Old-Time Climate Change, with (of course) no ice.
(Regarding the chaser, suffice it here to note that anything a president does by executive order can be easily reversed by a subsequent president. And President Obama’s term in office is getting shorter by the minute.)
Anyway, after a few gulps of the above combination, the donkey feels better, but he’s just living in a substance-induced haze.
Sort of like the haze Obama apparently lives in, as evidenced by his speech last Sunday, which combined trite assertions that we are winning the war against terror (a hard message to sell with 14 Americans freshly slain at the hands of ISIS-inspired terrorists in California) with blatantly false claims that Americans who value their civil liberties under the Second Amendment are the ones really responsible for it.
Remember, this is the man who said ISIS was “contained.” Recall, too, that California already has all the gun control laws Obama wants to make universal.
There are so many false assertions that it’s difficult to sort them out, but here’s a sample:
n The president referred to the “no-fly list” of persons kept from boarding passenger planes, claiming it’s a “no-brainer” to keep them from also buying guns.
That led even the Los Angeles Times to object. The newspaper, no hotbed of conservative thought, said in an editorial Tuesday that “the people on the no-fly list (as well as the broader terror watch list from which it is drawn) have not been convicted of doing anything wrong. They are merely suspected of having terror connections.”
And the paper correctly noted the civil liberties violation inherent in Obama’s authoritarian proposal: “The United States doesn’t generally punish or penalize people unless and until they have been charged and convicted of a crime. In this case, the government would be infringing on a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution – and yes, like it or not, the right to buy a gun is a constitutional right according to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
n Are gun crimes getting worse? No, they’re declining steeply, according to the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank that got its figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and the Congressional Research Service.
During the period 1993-2014, the number of firearms in private possession rose 56 percent, while gun homicides fell by 49 percent.
In per capita terms, during the same period, the number of guns per American rose from 0.94 to 1.45, while gun homicides per 100,000 persons fell by almost half, from 7.0 to 3.6.
According to Mark J. Perry, professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan and the study’s author, factors influencing the decrease could include “more police officers on the beat making greater use of computers, a decline in alcohol consumption … and an improving economy.”
But he added that, while correlation is not causation, it is “logical” to think that more guns available for self-defense have discouraged criminals from using them.
n Then there’s The New York Times’ front-page editorial last Friday calling for mandatory confiscation of some firearms (like that’s going to happen).
As columnist Jonah Goldberg noted, this was the first Page One opinion piece the paper has run since an anti-Warren Harding screed in 1920. The Times didn’t use the space for the stock market crash of 1929, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent by President Franklin Roosevelt, or the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001.
Yet, gun control moved it to break a 95-year precedent. Could a clearer sign of desperation on the part of progressivism’s chief media advocate be found?
The Times even freely admitted that every restriction it proposed could be overcome by committed criminals or terrorists. But that didn’t matter, because what counted was “trying.”
You want trying? Try this: If you have a handgun, carry it. You don’t need a permit in Maine, but you would be wise to conceal it so you don’t get targeted.
If you don’t have a pistol, buy one. Get some expert advice at a gun shop or local range, pick one you’re comfortable carrying and practice with it.
And join the National Rifle Association. The ACLU boasts about its “defense” of civil rights, but it doesn’t care in the slightest about the Second Amendment, and we need our freedoms protected now more than ever.
M.D. Harmon, a retired journalist and military officer, is a freelance writer and speaker. He can be contacted at:
mdharmoncol@yahoo.com
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