For John, BLUF: The Progs are bending over backward to push the "Gun Control" meme. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From The New Yorker, today, is an item by Mr Adam Gopnik, which tries to steer the recent shootings out in San Bernardino back upon the American People, due to their love of guns.
"Our Shared Blame for the Shooting in San Bernardino"
The collective responsibility that all Americans share is the responsibility of allowing too many people to have too many guns; guns of a kind that no civilian ever needs can be bought in this country by almost anyone who wants one.That is an interesting sentence. How many is too many guns? Can I get a number?
My Middle Brother, living in California, with fairly strict gun laws (Senator Barbara Boxer was bragging about them the other day), claims there are no gun control laws, since bad things happen. What I don't yet know is if he would still feel that way if we confiscated all the guns of legal gun owners and only criminals, with illegally obtained guns, were using them? Maybe he will leave us a comment.
A side note on this is the question of if gun regulation should be a Federal or a State issue. I was in a discussion this AM in which I was looked at with incredulity for suggesting that the Tenth Amendment limits what Congress might be able to do.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.I suggested that maybe the Federal Government was given no role in this issue by the Constitution. That Congress may have thought that way at one time is the way the Federal Government death with machine guns, the "assault rifles of the 1930s. The National Firearms Act of 1934 (“NFA”) imposes a tax on the making and transfer of machine guns and certain other weapons. It was enacted by Congress as an exercise of its authority to tax, suggesting Congress thought it lacked direct authority.
Today, of course, the ignorance of the US Constitution, or the rejection of it, may cause some to argue that Congress may act anyway, or the President should act on his own, since there is a "need".
But, then the writer goes on to say:
(And those who encourage hate speech directed at health clinics share responsibility for what happens when people take them seriously.) They are responsible in the same way that we are all responsible for the bad consequences of our beliefs, in exactly the same way that Wahhabi imams who preach intolerance are responsible for the consequences of their words. Sometimes you can avoid such horrible consequences with a minimal effort at thinking and acting responsibly. And when you can, you should.Is that a slap at me because I believe that the fetus after 20 or so weeks should not be aborted for the convenience of the Mother? Is holding that view "hate speech"? Does holding that view make me the same as some Saudi Wahhabist Imam? We need to be clear on this. Is hold any degree of pro-life views something that should not be allowed under the First Amendment?
Or is it a kind of "Doonesbury" slap at Charlie Hebdo, who our Secretary of State suggested brought their attack upon themselves.
In the penultimate paragraph the author suggests that the recent Paris Terrorist Event was different because Daesh had to smuggle guns into France. Here, in the United States, the terrorists can buy the guns they need at their local gun store. Passed over in this paragraph is the fact that these two terrorists also had pipe bombs, which they did not purchase at their local gun store. So, if they had used only the pipe bombs (IEDs, so to speak) would Mr Gopnik have dropped his snark against the NRA?
Then there is the last paragraph:
If the gun lobby ever spoke honestly, what they would say is that of course we are broadly responsible for these killings, but regular mass killings of innocent people is the price we pay for the liberty to own whatever guns we want, in order to be protected from a phantom threat we cannot name. That is their actual belief, although one sees, on examining it, why they never want to state it quite so clearly. So there will be ever more mass gun murders, some to be accepted blankly as the cost of liberty, others to become the occasion for surrendering liberty to a militarized state. Like the song says, only in America.Why does Mr Gopnik think that the United States is immune from dictatorship? Early in the article he talks to the collective responsibility of the German People for the horrors of World War II. Would Mr Gopnik condone the use of revolution by Germans to replace the National Socialist regime?
Maybe Mr Gopnik believes in American Exceptionalism, his idea of it being that we could never go off the tracks and become a dictatorship that could do awful things.
His mouth to God's Ear.
Regards — Cliff
