Senator Diane Feinstein was on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning (click the image above for the full interview). The primary topic, as you’d expect, was the Las Vegas massacre and the senior senator from California’s legislative proposal to ban bump fire stocks. During the interview, host Chuck Todd asked her a very reasonable question . . .
Let me ask you this. Give me the slate of laws that, if you could wave your wand and have enacted, that could have prevented Vegas.
As someone who has introduced fourteen gun control bills during her time in the world’s greatest deliberative body, you’d think Di would have had a well-rehearsed, pat answer to regurgitate in response. You’d be wrong.
After a fleeting blank stare and a pause, she said . . .
I don’t know. I would have to take a good look at that and really study it. I’m not sure there is any set of laws that could have prevented it.
No, Senator Feinstein hasn’t suddenly come over to the pro-gun side’s way of thinking where gun control legislation is concerned. She simply committed a Kinsley gaffe. The good senator inadvertently let the truth slip that nothing she or her hoplophobic compatriots in Congress can do will ever stop someone who’s determined to commit mass murder as Stephen Paddock was.
Is that fact an obvious contradiction given that she just introduced a new bill to ban bump fire stocks? Of course it is. Will it stop her from pushing forward with her latest gun control proposal? Please.
In fact she almost immediately went on to defend her bill. After alluding to her preference that all guns be registered as cars are, and being sure to point out to Mr. and Mrs. America watching at home that “this can happen to anyone,” she said this:
We can do one simple thing. Forget all your esoteric arguments (about Americans’ support for gun rights) for a moment. One simple thing to change it; to make these additive devices, whatever they are, illegal.
So to sum up, Senator Feinstein — perhaps the most dedicated gun controller in the history of the US Congress — doesn’t know of any laws that would have stopped the slaughter that happened last week in Las Vegas. But it doesn’t really matter.
Her bill is important and should be passed. The bump fire stock ban, she said, must be “codified by Congress,” not regulated through a change in policy by the ATF. Because we need to do one…simple…thing.
Same as it ever was.
Looks like someone is showing their age.
I just wish she’d start acting her age (e.g. dead from old age/natural causes…)
…or hanging…or blunt force trauma…or suffocation…or exsanguination. I’m not really picky.
Exactly
So essentially she is admitting that what they are trying to do will not work, but she believes they should do it anyway.
Now if that is not a good definition of insanity, then the word has no meaning.
Not insanity, evil. The laws won’t work to stop murderers, but they were never intended to. They’re designed to ensure that Americans are weak and unable to defend themselves.
You assume that her objective is to protect the American people. The Congress-creatures want control over the people. You can’t have control over the people if they are able to resist. That was the primary purpose of the 2nd Amendment. Not for hunting, not for sport, not even to protect yourself from common criminals. It was intended to protect you from an overbearing govt intent on controlling every aspect of your lives.
“Forget all your esoteric arguments”…..she must be referring to those that have actually read the Constitution.
I wish there was a physiological limit to illogical feelz and once reached the mindless fool immediately stroked out. Complete with twitching and blood spurting from the eye sockets so right after she and Pelosi and Bloomberg and any one of these clowns make such statements we’d get a neat little show.
“Same as it ever was.”
Yep, as usual it is not about guns but about control.
Well a Democrat accidentally tells the truth again. I guess Feinstein is getting a bit senile, being that she is literally the oldest person in congress. I guess she’s aiming to be this generations Strom Thurmond.
No kidding. She makes Ginsberg look spry.
She can’t be this generation’s Strom Thurmond: When Strom died they had to beat his pecker to death with a baseball bat.
GOP and NRA will help her out and get them banned, even if she’s too senile to lie anymore
Crime, including violent crime and murder are always more prevalent in places with increased poverty and poor education because these things among others lead to a lack of good options for supporting themselves. This is true regardless of gun laws.
Now, I’m not saying that being poor makes someone a criminal, but desperate people do desperate things, including theft and violence.
Don’t believe me? Check out murder rates in the US vs Mexico, or Chicago vs SLC, or any place vs any place. The common factor won’t be gun laws, it will be poverty. Guaranteed.
Even poverty isn’t a complete explanation. Consider Appalachia. Many people there are poor but they don’t behave like Chicago gang bangers.
My extended family is all from Eastern Kentucky, generally great people, but the violence is pretty extreme. The population density just isn’t high and there are no large population centers within a few hours. So even with a horrid drug problem, terrible violence, poverty, unemployment, you don’t see any news of it, because you have to have news folks. Internet access is limited, I have relatives that used dial up until a few years ago, until rural broadband DSL came, and that is only 1Mbps.
At least if your poor in Chicago, your physically near opportunity, you still have to drag yourself out of poverty. But if your in Appalachia, you have to collect enough money to move yourself to someplace with opportunity. Appalachia has little industry, coal is never coming back-ever, little agriculture, little education, so little opportunity. It’s the closest we have in America to 3rd world country conditions, 2nd world really.
Eastern KY and West Virginia here. I don’t know where this myth of no crime, no violence comes from from. People must be accepting of drug use, senseless violence and country mafias so long as it’s white folk doing it.
My parents left left in the late 50’s, both became teachers, when all you had to do was to get to Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, and you could get a good job on the car mfg floor, coal hadn’t been replaced by natural gas, so mining was still a thing, today, there’s none of that. I’m a firm believer that you don’t have to go to college to be a success today, but you need some training, and some opportunity, even to work at a call center or an unskilled trade. And with the centralization of work, even those jobs are in urban/suburban areas.
Trump administration to cancel Obama-era coal-fired power plant regulations on Tuesday, EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt announces.
Someone please make a meme or gif of her saying nothing would help so we can paint the internet with it!
“I don’t know. I would have to take a good look at that and really study it” – DiFi
For a supposed common sense advocate, someone who has been pushing firearms regulations for the good of her fellow man and to save children, you would have thought she would have studied it.
BINGO.
But of course we all know that anti-liberty arguments are emotional, not rational.
The founders were rational.
You would think so, but experience tells us otherwise.
Remember Hillary saying she didn’t quite know what Australia’s gun laws are, while she was talking about gun control options.
It shows that they really don’t understand that other countries have tried gun control and that it really doesn’t fit here (because we have a constitution that limits government, not the people), but think that they have the answer without really studying the question.
When pressed to actually think rather than give a prepared speech, the background research just isn’t there. They can’t expound, because they just don’t understand that they are saying.
I’ve tried to have the discussion the left says they want on guns, but they can’t do it, because they really don’t understand anything beyond the bumper-sticker slogans they are told to say. Educating themselves on the other side’s views is discouraged, so they are taken completely by surprise when, for example, they are told that you can buy everything needed to make a bump stock at Lowes, making a ban irrelevant to anyone committed to copy the Las Vegas sicko.
All they know is what they want to know, and be damned with everything else.
Alternate Headline: “Senile Old Woman Accidentally Invalidates Life’s Work”
snicker
I was thinking about this bump-fire ban last might and decided that I am unequivocally opposed! Banning an accessory to a firearm is not the same as banning a firearm, but it is an infringement and therefore violates the Second amendment.
On the other hand, Congress is fully within their rights to make the use of a specific tool (or accessory) illegal. The tool itself may be completely legal, as in a claw hammer, but it would be illegal to use it to physically attack someone.
The bump-fire devices may have limited realistic value, except that they do a fair job of approximating auto fire from a semi-auto firearm. Since the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment is “A well regulated militia being necessary…” it would seem that in the case of a militia a certain number of bump-fire equipped personnel would be an advantage where full-auto weapons were not available.
Congress wants to pass a law, here’s what they can do and IMO remain in compliance with the Second Amendment prohibition against infringement:
Possession of slide-fire, bump fire or any similar device intended for the enhancement of rapid-fire capability of common firearms shall not be prohibited, nor shall their manufacture, sale or transfer from person to person, however, affixing one of these devices to an actual functioning firearm shall be a felony with a mandatory sentence of 10 years in federal prison. Violation of this law shall not be eligible for dismissal under any system of plea bargaining.
My logic is that it should be perfectly legal to own one so long s it is not actually on a functioning rifle. In the event that it becomes necessary to establish a militia to defend against a government become tyrannical upgrading your rifle with this accessory is not an issue since you have no obligation to follow the laws of that tyranny in any case.
“Congress is fully within their rights to make the use of a specific tool (or accessory) illegal.”
Only for sale in interstate commerce or import/export, otherwise they have not been given the consent of the governed. The Supreme “Court” that passed Filburn was a shame that enabled show trials and slavery.
Congress doesn’t have ‘rights’ — only powers delegated to it by the people.
You going to bet your life on a piece of equipment that you have not vetted, Or are you asking someone else to bet their life on equipment they have not vetted!
So does a rubber band. And that’s free and probably offers more control over the rifle than the bump stock.
Oh. My. Gosh!
That needs to be spread far and wide. Never let this go.
She didn’t contradict herself. She means all guns must be made illegal. The baby steps to get there are what matters to her.
It’s not weird to be attracted to her is it? What about Ginsberg? I really like Bud Cort movies.
Great. Now I have to call ServePro to detox my office. Image was just so gross….
I propose that when the gun grabbers admit that no law or regulation would have stopped the massacre, we are in very dangerous territory.
As the aged senator from California said some years ago on camera, she wood like nothing better then a complete ban and confiscation.
when forced to admit that no laws could prevent massacres, you can bet your sweet bippy their next step will be to push for a full ban and confiscation.
That is her way of saying private ownership of all guns should be banned.
Do you mean to tell me that DIFI hasn’t really studied it?? REALLY???? The lady who said if she could have gotten the vote, it would have been “Mr and Mrs America, turn them in” and she hasn’t really studied it???
Listen up DiFi, we don’t need an 84 year old dried up female prune who hasn’t “Studied it” attempting to infringe on our inalienable rights along with those guaranteed by the Bill Of Rights and Constitutional law.
Uh, you know, guys, she’s actually a benefit for POTG. “Never interrupt an enemy who’s making a mistake.”
If she goes, the progs may actually get someone who is effective in anti-gun legislation. I mean, she has to be thought of as an out-of-touch elderly folk, even by some Democrats. Yes, let her continue to demonstrate her senility as she does here.
@Jawjuh
Uh, you know, 99.9% of us gun folk hope she dries up and blows away like a fall leaf.
Res ipsa loquitur: http://theweek.com/speedreads/729638/feinstein-says-no-law-could-have-stopped-vegas-shooter–promoting-new-law
I wonder just how many guns protect her every day
When someone spends their entire political career lying to themselves and their constituents the truth will sometimes slip out. It usually happens because after telling so many lies they forget which one they told the last time and their conscience momentarily takes over. Many times the don’t even realize they have done it. Age plays no part in these cases. It’s more a matter of the brain returning to a point where it knows the truth and the actor flubs the line. Politicians are all actors to a point Playing a role to a purpose. Keep Your Powder Dry…
Gee, I thought murder was against the law.
Of course, it doesn’t stop some people from murdering. Pretty much stops me.
When I was a first responder there was a law that at a certain age we had mandatory retirement. Obviously we could not do the job effectively anymore. Here we have people like Feinstein that prove that theory but they are allowed to continue.
…Whatever…Deep State…Is in motion….