Doubt me? Well, let’s take a look at Exhibit A, a little ditty over on PoliticusUSA.com, entitled The NRA Says the Right to Not Be Murdered by Lunatics is Bizarre.
The author, one Hrafnkell Haraldsson, (seriously, dude…that’s your real name?) begins by relating that he’d received a solicitation from NRA, entreating her to join up, or as she puts it, “Yes, an invite to liberal Heathen ole me.” Now I won’t bore you with the text of the solicitation. (God knows, we can all paper a good size room with the volume of mail the NRA cranks out on a yearly basis.) But his analysis of the current state of gun laws and what is to come is revealing – about his own, Liberal bias.
His first point is that nobody’s lost their guns in some Federal gun grab, ipso facto, Obama must not want to take our guns. A five-year-old could drive an 18-wheeler through the hole in that logic. Just because the Obama administration has not gotten laws passed curbing private citizens rights to own guns has no bearing over what Obama wants to have happen, what he plans, or what will happen. Based on his track record and his public speeches, I think a pretty clear-cut case can be made that if he is not out in front on the “let’s curtail 2nd Amendment Rights” thing, he’s certainly on board the train.
He goes on to cite the NRA’s rejection of the ObamaNation’s plan to reinstate the so-called “assault weapons gun ban” as hysterical and bizarre. Of course, he tries to pair the gun ban with the Obama Administrations plans to stem the flow of weapons from America into Mexico. (Nope, Hraf…may I call you Hraf? That would be operations Gunwalker and Fast ‘n Furious. Get your facts straight, sir.) The “assault weapons” ban is an all-purpose meme, that the Left loves to trot out when- and wherever they want to try the slippery slope approach of “well, if we can’t ban everything, how ’bout just the scary-looking guns?” Only problem with the first time they tried this – it didn’t work. Epic fail. You see, most criminals don’t have the scratch for an AR15, M16, M4, or whatever melts their butter. Cheap revolvers and semi-autos are their thing. Banning semi-automatic weapons (full-autos have been banned since the days of J. Edgar) and extended-cap magazines did exactly NOTHING to reduce gun violence. Not with criminals. Not with domestic violence. Not nowhere, nohow. And while the Brady Bunch and Bloomie and his Buddys won’t come right out and say it publicly, they know it. The data is there for anyone who cares to look. And the data shows the gun ban did nothing to reduce crime. Period.
He goes on to cite a passage in USA Today (the newspaper for those who find People Magazine a challenging read) that 383 of 400 weapons sized “in the largest weapons seizure in Mexican history” were from the USA. Nice. But what about the 3,000 weapons that the ATF purposefully let slip through so they could ‘track’ them back to the big fish? You know, the guns that the dealers didn’t want to sell to the suspicious-looking buyers, but the ATF said “go for it!” THOSE weapons. Of course, researching facts past a quick look-see in USA Today is apparently not on the Liberal agenda over at PoliticusUSA.com. But I digress.
Then he engages in a bit of rhetorical acrobatics, when he claims Obama “just wants to keep the guns out of the hands of dangerous people.” Um…so does the NRA, Hans. Href. Whatever. The NRA (much to the displeasure of some of their rank and file) came out in favor of legislation that would forbid people that have a history of mental illness from owning or keeping guns. So your entire premise? Down the tubes, Sven.
What bemuses me is how this guy can take a statement by Obama and claim that it settles anything. This from the guy who just ignores the Constitution when he feels like it (Libya, ObamaCare, etc.), and one who is adept at saying one thing and doing another. And let’s not forget the immortal words of His Barackness on the campaign trail, when he opined about flyover country and our tendencies to “cling to our guns and our religion.” Yeah. THAT Obama.
Of course, all this begs the very real and valid concern: how do you protect the public from nutjobs like Jared Lee Loughner before they actually commit a crime, without trampling the rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense? I dunno. You figure that one out, call me. Far as I can see, having to deal with the tragedy of an occasional rampage by some deranged idiot is the price we all pay for being able to protect ourselves and our families in our own homes. Frankly, I like my odds.
Haraldsson closes with yet another non sequitur, this time, insisting that all Obama wants to do is to enforce existing laws, and that the NRA is somehow against that. Dude…perhaps you might want to spend an hour or so reading up on the NRA, their positions, their legislative initiatives. Maybe give Chris Cox a call and see what’s up. You know – get a legit quote or two. Ask the source, instead of regurgitating pablum you read in OTHER Liberal publications. (In computer science, we call what you do a “closed-loop system.” In sociology, however, it’s called a “circle jerk.”)
So, what we’ve got here are the ravings of a Liberal writer, who doesn’t bother to get his facts straight or let those facts get in the way of a pet theory. Oh, and did I tell you the best part? Wait for it…the photo they used at PoliticusUSA.com for the story? It came from TheTruthAboutGuns.com. Priceless.