The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton last weekend have
elicited more howls for gun control.
These are terrible occurrences and provide a convenient and emotional
appeal to put constraints around our Constitutional rights. The “solutions” posed by Democratic
contenders range from enhanced background checks, banning “assault weapons,”
government buybacks, and “red flag” laws.
The more authoritarian and frightening liberals like Kamala Harris
announced that if Congress won’t act within 100 days (of her inauguration), she
will act by executive order. Beto
O’Rourke announced that he would be receptive to “mandatory” buybacks.
The more the Left talks openly about flouting your
Constitutional rights, and using government force to deprive you of them, the
more tightly you should hold on to your weapons.
As they spew these “solutions” to mass casualty events,
protesters in Venezuela, Hong Kong, and Moscow are at this very time wishing
they had the same rights as you do to counter government thuggery.
Ironically, liberals, who are fond of attacking “root
causes” when discussing other social maladies dismiss “root causes” when a mass
shooting occurs and go straight for your Constitutional rights.
Here are my four biggest reasons for being very skeptical
about the Left’s push for gun control:
·
Learn from the experience with abortion. For years, the Left has been repeating the
mantra of “common sense gun control,” arguing that they just want to have
protections against people that should not have access to firearms, such as
those with sever mental illness or a long criminal history. And that’s how they get you on board. Who could be against a denying a deadly
weapon to someone with severe paranoid schizophrenia?
The Left has learned that with
sacred things, you have to go slow. Life
is sacred, so the Left argued for years that abortion was to be “safe, legal
and rare” and limited to the first trimester.
Who would countenance going back to the days of unsanitary back alley
abortions? Visions of some scared 16
year old girl ending up in a garage with some fat, hairy pseudo-doctor with a
cigarette dangling from his mouth and unsterilized utensils is a powerful
persuader. But then, all of a sudden you
wake up an New York and Illinois legislatures are cheering and smiling as they
approve of abortions up to the moment of birth and the governor of Virginia is
talking about a live baby placed in a tray and the mother has “a decision to
make.”
How do you get a piano off the
third floor? You disassemble it first, silly. And that’s what they will do. Chip, chip, chip. They will persuade you that each of these
little measures they have in mind don’t materially infringe on your
rights. Until one day you wake up and
the 2nd Amendment isn’t there anymore. They’ve disassembled it in pieces. Denying social security recipients that get
help with their finances. Denying
people that end up on no fly lists (notoriously error prone). Squeezing gun manufacturers by denying them
financing. Limiting magazine size. And now red flag laws (who gets to decide,
that’s the rub—the American Psychological Association that just decided toxic
masculinity needs to be treated?)
Drip. Drip. Drip.
·
They Left has explicitly told us where they are
going. The New York Times is a must read
for all conservatives and libertarians because, through its choice of editorial
content will tell you in no uncertain terms where the Left is headed. Last year, the Times published an op-ed by
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens entitled: Repeal the 2nd
Amendment (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens-repeal-second-amendment.html?searchResultPosition=19). It doesn’t get more explicit than that. The Left wants the 2nd Amendment
gone.
·
Despite the fact that the El Paso shooter was
from the extreme right, most of the political violence and countenance of
political violence is from the Left.
Rand Paul is having part of his lung removed. Castro doxxed Trump donors. Antifa prowls the streets of Portland. AOC has urged social unrest. Maxine Waters encouraged physical
confrontation with Trump supporters.
Reporter Andy Ngo was severely injured by an Antifa mob. In an era in which bitterness and rancor has
become pervasive and the threat of mob violence is growing, the last thing you
want to do is to leave yourself exposed and vulnerable without protection.
·
Finally, they are solving the wrong problem. The Leftist narrative is that there is a
growing white supremacist movement. I
see little evidence that it is a
burgeoning movement and that it represents a greater threat to social
cohesion than Islamist supremacism, Leftist supremacism (Antifa) or BLM. There always have been fringe kooks around
and the white supremacists couldn’t get their act together to gather up more
than a couple of dozen people to do a second rally at Charlottesville.
I do think these mass shootings are symptomatic
of a society that is not healthy right now.
And it is only one of the symptoms.
Dozens of our children are dying every day from opioid overdoses across
the country. Every weekend in Chicago is
a bloodbath on the South and West sides, so much so that last weekend a
hospital had to stop taking in gunshot victims.
Our birthrates are at the lowest level in over 30 years. Taken together, these pathologies suggest
that something is going on that merely taking away a chunk of 2nd
Amendment rights won’t fix. (Hint: I will be reading Raghuram Rajan’s new book
about the crisis in community, The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State
Leave the Community Behind for his insights
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