Is Buying Guns a Sickness?

Political commentator Cynthia Tucker is sad. As she’s noticed, National Gun Fever Shows No Sign Of Breaking. Even worse, “Apparently, there will be no ban on assault weapons.” She apparently thinks that the way to attack these problems by encouraging future mass murderers; listing various mass casualty shootings including the names of the shooters in her articles. But, like so many wanna-be gun grabbers, she confuses reality with liberal fantasy land . . .

Tucker notes that the Sandy Hook shooter:

used a Bushmaster AR-15 assault-type rifle to rip apart the bodies of children

Actually darlin’, he used bullets from an AR-15 “type” rifle to do his despicable deed (nice non-inflammatory rhetoric, by the way). But according to an un-named “law enforcement veteran” cited in a New York Daily News piece, this wasn’t just a case of some kid snapping, grabbing the nearest rifle and opening up on the most convenient targets. The “LEV” stated that the shooter had a massive spreadsheet with the

names, body counts and weapons from previous mass murders and even attempted killings. ‘It sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research,’

But it was more than a spreadsheet:

“They don’t believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet,” he continued. “This was the work of a video gamer, and that it was his intent to put his own name at the very top of that list. They believe that he picked an elementary school because he felt it was a point of least resistance, where he could rack up the greatest number of kills. That’s what (the Connecticut police) believe.”

So this shooter laid his plans for years. And to maximize his body count (and his score) he chose a gun-free zone. The type of weapon he used was really immaterial, as was the magazine size because (again, according to the law enforcement veteran quoted in the Daily News piece):

They believe he learned the principles of this — the tactical reload — from his game. Reload before you’re completely out. Keep going. When the strap broke on his first weapon (the AR-15), he went to his handgun at the end. Classic police training. Or something you learn playing kill games.

And so what if the shooter’s magazine capacity had been limited to 10 rounds? He had a rifle and 2 pistols; as hickok45 demonstrates and Sheriff Ken Campbell substantiates, limiting magazine capacity is meaningless. Hell, the Cumbria (UK) shooter used a double-barreled shotgun and a bolt action .22 to get his 12 dead and 11 wounded. And given that the Newtown school shooter had over 15 uninterrupted minutes from the first 911 call (at 9:30) until he was believed to have killed himself at 9:46 (9:49 “‘Shots were fired about three minutes ago,’ the officer said. ‘Quiet at the time.'”)

Cynthia continues with the specter of the Aurora shooting:

Forget the fact that…the alleged Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooter fired, among other weapons, an AR-15.

And the reason he fired an AR-15 “among other weapons”? Because his real “high-capacity” snail mag failed (as they so often do) and he couldn’t clear the jam, offering some of his would-be victims precious seconds to tackle him and take away his weapons.

Oops, sorry. That’s another civilian disarmer fantasy; if only the shooter had been forced to reload someone could have tackled him. Actually, it offered some of his would-be victims precious seconds to get the hell out of Dodge. And it seems, once again, that the Aurora theater shooter may have picked that particular theater because it was gun free.

Cynthia continues with her reality-deficient rant:

Nor does it seem to make any difference that… — the man who shot Gabby Giffords and killed six others, including a 9-year-old girl — used a high-capacity magazine that the Clinton-era assault-weapons ban rendered illegal.

That’s right sweetie, it doesn’t make a difference. I direct your attention once again to Sheriff Ken Campbell’s video in which he demonstrates that an accomplished shooter can fire 30 aimed shots in 21.45 seconds from a Glock loaded with 6-round magazines while a less experienced shooter can do it in 26.93 seconds.

At that rate even the slower shooter could get off the 33 rounds that the Tucson shooter used in less than the 30 seconds he took. Using 10-round mags (you know, the low capacity ones that were legal under the Clinton ban) the slower shooter from the video could have shaved another second or two off that time.

Finally, Cynthia talks about how a

high-capacity magazine also enabled the massacre committed

at VA Tech, but unfortunately for her, this is where political correctness steps on its ideological crank. Because the VA Tech shooter used standard capacity magazines. Yes, each one held 15 rounds, but those are what the Glock 19 is designed for. Sorry Cynthia.

Having dragged the bloody victims out of storage again, Cynthia finally makes her case.

The political climate has changed since the 1994 ban: Democrats have cowered before the gun lobby;

Actually Cynthia, one of the things that changed the current political climate was the Clinton ugly-gun ban itself. In a speech given on Jan. 19^th of this year (2013), Politico quotes Clinton himself cautioning lawmakers on pushing gun control:

And Clinton said that passing the 1994 federal assault weapons ban “devastated” more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers in the 1994 midterms — and cost then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-Wash.) his job and his seat in Congress.

Gun control was obviously not the sole issue in that election, but as salon.com pointed out in a post-VA Tech article:

Democrats have been turning away from gun control ever since Al Gore‘s run for the presidency. The then-vice president and his advisors had tried to out-gun-control liberal challenger Bill Bradley during the Democratic primaries. Campaigning against George W. Bush in the general election, Gore decided to quiet his criticism of the NRA and mute his support for gun control … In the wake of Gore’s loss, many Democrats blamed the defeat on previous pro-gun control positions Gore had taken, and pulled the party further back from where it had been on the issue.

So it isn’t so much that Democrats are cowering before the Eee-vil Gun Lobby® as they are listening to the voters; you know, their bosses? The people whose interests they are supposed to represent?

the National Rifle Association has grown even more extreme;

Hmm, legislation gets passed to ban some of the most popular weapons available; manufacturers who change their weapon design to comply with the ban are accused of “exploiting loopholes” or “sidestepping” the ban, and everyday folks who just want to shoot cool rifles (and not have to reload every 10 rounds) have their weapons demonized as:

dangerous weapons [which] have no sporting or civilian use and their only purpose it to kill many people in a short amount of time. We support legislation to ban all assault weapons.

Gee, why would anyone become even a wee bit radicalized in the face of all that?

the U.S. Supreme Court has moved much further to the right. 

Let’s see about that right-shifting SCOTUS, shall we? Between 1994 and today we have:

Holy Quantum ideological shift, Batman! We went from 4 libs, 3 ½ cons and 1 ½ swings to … 4 libs, 4 cons and 1 swing. But Maybe Cynthia’s talking about the Heller court of 2008 when libs Souter and Stevens had not yet been replaced by libs Sotomayor and Kagan. Oh, wait, I guess not.

And, in the 20 years since Congress banned assault-type weapons and high-capacity magazines, Americans have heard a steady drumbeat of pro-firearms rhetoric that fetishizes the Second Amendment.

How blithely Cynthia says that: Pro-firearms rhetoric. Another way of putting it would be:

And, in the 20 years since Congress banned assault-type weapons and high-capacity magazines, Americans have heard a steady drumbeat as of study after study after study after study after study, most of which show that more guns lead to less crime.

Fetishize is such an interesting word in this context. According to the Collins English Dictionary, cited at thefreedictionary.com it means “to be excessively or irrationally devoted to (an object, activity, etc.)” Okay, I’ll cop to that; I am excessively (some have even said irrationally) devoted to peoples’ natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional rights.

Freedom of speech, association, assembly, the press, freedom from excessive bail, unreasonable searches, cruel and unusual punishments, freedom to face my accuser in court and be tried by a jury of my peers and, oh yes, let us not forget: the freedom to own and carry the weapon of my choice — subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility.

In other words, the climate around firearms has gotten crazier.

As for “the climate getting crazier” I will also grant you that. Many of us are tired of being the whipping boys for all of your failed social experiments and actually have been paying attention to things like this:

 And this:

(FYI Cynthia, according to the FBI’s 2011 Uniform Crime Report we are at 386.3 violent crimes per 100,000).

Tucker is either ignorant or a statist who doesn’t care what the facts are, she just wants to slowly but surely make gun ownership more onerous and more dangerous until we just give up. Here’s a tip: We aren’t going to give up and we’ve seen enough of her agenda to know that gun grabbers aren’t interested in “reasonable restrictions” that “won’t affect the law-abiding”. So, yeah, as antis have gotten more strident, we gunnies have gotten “crazier”.

And here it is; gun ownership as insanity:

Still, I find myself once again wondering just how bad things have to get before the fever breaks — before the country comes to its senses on firearms. We’re in the throes of a kind of madness, a mass delusion that assigns to firearms the significance of religious totems.

See above and answer me this, Cynthia: just exactly what qualifies as “gun madness”; the willingness to look at the facts and determine that guns in the hands of the average citizen are not only not a threat but are a benefit to society? Or the kind of “gun madness” that insists, every time some nut-job goes looking for glory and a massive body-count, that the answer is to make more safe-spree-shooter zones and trying to take guns from those of us who had nothing to do with the shooting?

Remember that more than twice as many lives are saved annually in DGUs as are lost in CGUs. That 98.39% of mass casualty shootings have taken place in nominally “gun-free” zones. And, Cynthia, please remember that the freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional right — subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility. Also that there are some of us who are just “gun mad” enough to fight in order to prevent further infringements upon that right which shall not be infringed.