It’s all my fault, apparently. (Just ask my ex – she boarded that train when it was parked at the station years ago, before it’s initial run.) Yep. Back in February of this year, I wrote a satirical piece on a mass murderer’s attack at a men’s mall with a hammer. I used humor to point out the ridiculousness of the far Left’s strategies, tactics, and positions on gun rights, showing how, if guns were ever banned, murders wouldn’t be. One of the comments we received on the story pointed out that, as a prison guard, he’d observed that about one-third of the inmates imprisoned for murder had used a hammer – not a firearm – in the commission of their crime. I thought that was an odd but interesting factoid. But today comes word that a judge in the Land of Oz is actually proposing a ban on hammers.
I’m not making this up. Last year, an Australian citizen, Richard Saunders, was in a city park, enjoying a couple of adult beverages with his mates. A group of some eight Samoan yoots (as My Cousin Vinny might say), armed with fence palings, a hammer, concrete blocks, stones and bottles took umbrage with the older group, and decided to confront them. The discussion turned violent, and Saunders was killed by the group.
Bad luck for the roving band of gang-bangers – Saunders was the uncle of Rugby League star Jonathan Thurston. (In the Land Down Under, as here in the Colonies, there’s nothing like a star connection to bump your tragic tale of woe to the front page and keep it there.) The murdering hooligans were tried, and convicted. But that, apparently, was not enough for the judge.
In Brisbane, Supreme Court Justice Ros Atkinson suggested that the Queensland Government should look at introducing laws to restrict carrying hammers which might be used as weapons.
During submissions for a juvenile offender, Justice Atkinson noted that while he was not the one to use the hammer in the attack the juvenile had been carrying a hammer before the events of the night. “It is such a dangerous thing to do and it is almost inevitable that somebody would be hurt,” she said. Justice Atkinson asked the prosecutor, Todd Fuller, SC, if there should be legislative reform to make carrying a hammer in such circumstances an offence.
Mr. Fuller said there had been legislation introduced in other areas of concern such as spray cans which were used for substance-sniffing and graffiti. There’s no word yet from the judge on if she believes that fence palings, concrete blocks, stones and bottles should also be banned.
Pause with me, whilst we ponder the implications of a world where anything that might be used to harm someone else would be banned to prevent an assault or murder.
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Okay. Think that one through? If you’ve taken this to it’s logical conclusion, you see a world with no cars, guns, bats, hammers, trees (branches could be used to hurt someone), clothing (risk of strangulation), solid food (risk of choking), bodies of water (drowning) and no possessions at all. (Fosters envy, and really when you think about it, anything could be used as a weapon.)
So imagine our planet, devoid of any surface detail, just one big, smooth marble. Imagine all the people, standing around naked, starving. And the animals standing around, licking their chops. In short, you have the world as envisioned by PeTA, Greenpeace, the Earth Liberation Front, Earth First, the Sierra Club, and just about every other extremist, environmental group out there.
Do you see a pattern here?
I’m not saying that this is some kind of coordinated plot to take us all back to the Stone Age. (Come to think of it, I’m not NOT saying it either.) But there’s a common leitmotif that runs through the (lack of) logic and (irrational) reasoning of the Far Left. The idea of banning hammers to prevent assaults is soooo Nanny State, I have a hard time believing that anybody would buy off on this. Except that, due to the Slippery Slope we’re on, it could bloody well happen.
Set the WABAC machine for just after the Civil War, say. If you tried to pass ANY kind of “gun control” measures, you’d have been issued a new kind of uniform, one that included a canvas blazer with wrap-around arms. And a clubhouse with rubber walls. Over time, even the craziest of ideas can start sounding reasonable, as long as you’re A) willing to wage a war of attrition to get there, and B) you’re willing to take the long view, and be patient.
Is banning hammers as dumb an idea as it sounds? Of course it is. But in a Nanny State, it can happen. Wouldn’t it be smarter to ban the Nanny State instead?