I do so enjoy watching Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer hammer the Obama Administration for its perfidy, cowardice, duplicity, corruption, etc. Not to mention taking Bill O’Reilly to task for his demagoguery (with just enough kiss-*ss to placate the equally Second Amendment-squidgy bloviator.) But as Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post reminds us, the otherwise staunch conservative is not a friend of ours. Volokh dredged up a 1996 Krauhammer column – Disarm the Citizenry. But Not Yet – that laid out the good doctor’s views on gun control, an excerpt of which I’ll share with you . . .
The claim of the advocates that banning these 19 types of “assault weapons” will reduce the crime rate is laughable…. Dozens of other weapons, the functional equivalent of these “assault weapons,” were left off the list and are perfect substitutes for anyone bent on mayhem….
[T]he assault weapons ban will have no significant effect either on the crime rate or on personal security. Nonetheless, it is a good idea ….
Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic — purely symbolic — move in [the direction of disarming the citizenry]. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.
De-escalation begins with a change in mentality. And that change in mentality starts with the symbolic yielding of certain types of weapons. The real steps, like the banning of handguns, will never occur unless this one is taken first, and even then not for decades.
Freedom’s just another word for supporting Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Its opposite is its opposite.