“As a nation, these tragedies have united us in shock and mourning,” John Kaish opines at cleveland.com, referencing the mass shooting at Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church, “yet the first talk of solutions tears us apart. No one among us is willing to put aside our rock-ribbed, preloaded position on guns in order to sit down and find the common ground for solutions.” Wait. What?
John Kasich is a Republican. The Governor of Ohio, no less. A public servant who swore an oath to uphold and defend the state’s constitution, which asserts that “The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security.”
Not to mention the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against government infringement of citizens’ gun rights. A protection that the Supreme Court’s McDonald decision incorporated; ruling that it trumps all local and state laws.
So what “common ground” does Governor Kasich seek between those who support the Second Amendment as writ and those who would degrade and destroy Americans’ firearms freedom?
Now that would be telling. If Governor Kasich — a once and future candidate for President — actually said what firearms-related “compromises” he had in mind, it would scupper his political aspirations. And he knows it. So instead he trumpets his ability to get Black Lives Matter and the police to sing kumbaya (after cops shot and killed Tamir Rice), and finishes with this:
Our present dilemma with guns calls for a similar approach. That means bringing together reasonable people on both sides of the issue – and those in between – to sit down and find that perhaps elusive common ground that will finally provide a pathway to solutions. It means retaining our respect for Second Amendment rights while finding reasonable, common-sense and constitutional ways to reduce the terrible toll of violence.
Governor Kasich uses the term “common sense” to virtue signal the gun control crowd who’ve adopted that term to hide their actual agenda of civilian disarmament. Kasich uses the term “constitutional” to virtue signal to gun rights advocates whose beliefs I’ve outlined above.
Bottom line: Kasich wants to get elected President as “the great compromiser.” A deal maker, if you will. Nothing more, nothing less.