Anyone remember that headline? The Boston Globe ran it inadvertently over an editorial criticizing Jimmy Carter’s economic policy. I’m running this one intentionally in relation to a northjersey.com editorial Herald News: Seeking common sense gun laws. The “mush” part refers to the editorial misstatements, mischaracterizations and misinformation. To wit: “Some of the [civilian disarmament measures heading down the pike in the Garden State] would limit ammunition magazines to 10 rounds, ban armor-piercing bullets, require that ammunition sales be conducted in person as opposed to over the Internet, seize guns from those deemed a threat by mental health professionals and deny gun permits to those on the terrorist watch list. None of the bills cleared by the committee are at all threatening to those who hunt, target shoot, or have a weapon at home for self-protection.” Well now . . .
Here I am thinking that ALL of those provision would threaten anyone who lives in the United States of America, in the sense that they ALL violate citizens’ Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. All of them put citizens in danger. Specifically . . .
1. Limiting ammunition magazines to ten rounds puts law-abiding citizens at a distinct disadvantage to criminals and government agents (feel free to stick with criminals if you wish to remain willfully ignorant).
2. Banning “armor piercing bullets” would ban most hunting ammunition. (What they really mean is hollow-point bullets which are not armor-piercing anyway and are safer than “normal” bullets for innocent life).
3. Banning Internet ammo sales means mandatory ammunition sales registration. Government agencies can use the information to launch criminal investigations based on the size of an ammunition purchase — despite the fact that there’s no correlation between ammo purchases and criminal intent.
4. Mental health checks are a means for the government to erect additional barriers to firearms ownership and open the door to civilian disarmament. Call it the Catch-22 conundrum (you must be crazy to want a gun).
5. Denying guns to people on the terrorist watch list would enable civilian disarmament by empowering the government to classify whomever it wanted as terrorists (i.e., gun rights advocates). Lest we forget, the current terrorist watch list has no formal process for appeal and hundreds of thousands of mistake entries.
OK, so, the “wimp” part. By pretending to support “common sense” gun control measures and sarcastically dismissing the concerns above as “irrational fears,” the editorial writer is hiding behind a veneer of civility.
There is nothing “civil” about civilian disarmament. It’s tyranny, plain and simple. If New Jersey’s left-leaning media mavens want to strip residents of their Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms and leave their citizens defenseless, they should say so, straight out.
Their attempts at “agreement” with gun rights advocates are equally sickening:
One example of that was the bill to allow municipalities to adopt “weapons-free zones” around a number of public facilities, including schools, day-care centers, libraries and museums. This strikes us as “feel good” legislation that would have little practical impact. Given the fact most private citizens cannot legally carry a gun anywhere in New Jersey, what’s to be gained by prohibiting them from doing so in a specific location?
You see what they’ve done there? The right to “keep” is gone so why belabor the point?
The funny (peculiar) thing is, northjersey.com kinda sorta know they’re about to witness a bad, bad thing. They can just about see that their residents’ rights are poised on the precipice of an enormous abyss. But they can’t bring themselves to learn from New York and pull back from the brink.
The full Assembly plans to vote on the 20-bill package this week and state Sen. Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex, who is a gubernatorial candidate, plans to introduce gun control legislation in the Senate.
It’s understandable that some lawmakers want to move quickly to bolster gun laws. But given how strong New Jersey laws already are there’s no reason to be too hasty. We should only pass new laws if they have a real chance of reducing gun violence.
As T.S. Eliot pointed out, this is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.