So I was working this morning when my iPhone came to live with the news that yet another government facility (this time NASA) is under lockdown due to shots being fired. And I’m convinced that when all the details are out, we’ll learn that it was some wingnut who’s got some ties to Al Qaeda or one of the other radical Islamic groups, trying to make a “statement.” Here’s a clue: the only statement this ass-clowns are making is that they are insane and wanna watch the world burn, just to prove a point. What point they are trying to prove is kind of murky, I think, even to them . . .
When you get right down to it, there’s not a whole lotta logic behind jihad. But plenty of violence. And there’s the rub. You see, it’s all too easy for Bloomberg and the other foaming-at-the-mouth, anti-gun crusaders to use the news about these ido-zealots to further their arguments that private ownership of guns should be banned.
But in the spirit of Jonathan Swift, I present a nouveau Modest Proposal for bringing common sense to the gun rights/gun control discourse, namely:
Ban gun ownership by radical Islamic terrorists.
There it is. Simple. Short. Easy to wrap your mind around. When Islamic terrorists can’t buy guns, only ‘good Muslims’ (and the rest of us infidels) will have guns. Now I know that, on the surface, this plan might seem to have some .50 Caliber-sized holes in it, but stay with me, and I think you’ll see the wisdom of this proposal.
First of all, logically, if we ban radical Islamists from owning guns, it will stop them from shooting up military installations, right? Seems like a noble goal to me. But of course, in order to accomplish this, we must find a way to get around the politically-incorrect problem with singling out any kind of Muslim, for the Progressives and far-Left PC police hold that any follower of Islam falls into a protected class.
But I have a way around this. We simply petition the Environmental Protection Agency to put WASPs, Catholics, and Jews into the Endangered Species program.
Now before you decry the absurdity of this idea, remember, we’re all mammals, right? And the EPA has no problem with classifying species that are in large supply as “endangered,” for political ends, right? And God (or Allah or Gaia, or your Deity-of-choice) help the ones that kill an endangered species – Uncle Sam will go all Al Gore on your ass.
So the way to get Radical Islamists off the PC list and onto a “fair target” list is to put their targets on the Endangered Species list.
Second – logistics. How do we target radical Islamists? Simple. Rewrite the forms the Feds use when purchasing a handgun. Yup. We simply ask the terrorists, Are you now or have you ever been a believer in jihad or radical fundamentalist Islamist theology? If they check the “Yes” box, they don’t get to buy a gun. And we can have the FBI, ATFE, or even better, Sheriff Joe Arpaio there to arrest them.
Think that won’t work? Ask a gun store employee how many people check boxes on their forms that volunteer info (“have you ever been convicted of a felony,” “are you under a restraining order,” “have you ever been judged mentally ill by a court of law”) that gets them disqualified from a gun purchase. Go ahead. Ask ’em. I’ll wait.
Are you back? Good. So once we’ve banned guns from the hands of Islamic Terrorists, and used it to pick off the ones stupid enough to accurately fill out forms, why not extend the program to bombs and bomb-making materials? We could institute the same kind of forms for purchases of ammonium nitrate, fertilizer, used copies of Ishtar, Waterworld and Heaven’s Gate, and C-4/plastique. (Frankly, anybody that actually wants to watch Ishtar has gotta be clinically insane, so we’ve got ’em on that count twice over.)
As long as we’re at it, I’m thinking there might be other ways to thin the herd, and separate the radicals from the rest of the Muslim world. Since they seem to be rather thin-skinned, perhaps the government should simply find a number of patriots willing to be agents provocateurs and fund them to open a nationwide chain of stores offensive to radical fundamentalists. Perhaps we open a chain of anti-fundamentalist art stores that would exclusively handle cartoons featuring Mohammed in an unflattering light.
Now you might argue that this might offend rank and file Muslims. And you’d be right. But I don’t see anybody protesting when Robert Maplethorpe took pictures of crucifixes in a glass of urine, Hollywood makes fun of Christians, or when the Mainstream Media portrays Christians as simple-minded, in-bred, superstitious yokels, bent on setting back the cause of science and have us all party like its 1799. Or when cartoonists portray Jews as evil, greedy, and sub-human.
So what’s sauce for the goose, people. If there’s a little collateral damage on the sensitivity front, I suppose to be fair and equitable, we have to expect that.
Such stores would act like a Shell No-Pest Strip to radicals. They’d all be so busy planning full-scale assaults on them, it would make it a piece o’ cake for the cops to single them out. I mean, if you already know where the terrorists will strike, it does kind of narrow your focus, right?
It would also enable us to out the “fellow travelers” in the media, who care more for the ‘rights’ of the terrorists than the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we enjoy in this country. And those sob sisters who cry for the terrorists don’t seem to give one whit about their victims. So, I’m thinkin’ that they would be no great loss either, and could stand a little va-cay at Club Gitmo.
Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it? Of course, if the LEFT came up with something like this against, oh, say, fundamentalist Christians, few in the media would work up a sweat. Which is the problem. It’s all well and good to joke about gun control. But the real issue is that political correctness is a far bigger danger to the world than the ability to buy a gun.
Terrorists have shown a willingness to use just about anything for a weapon, from guns and knives to cars and airplanes. But when we live in a world where the government is unwilling to preemptively stop someone they know to be a threat, simply because it’s politically incorrect to do so, we are all at risk. And that’s no joke.