The Incessant Academic Argument For Tyranny and The Refutation of Freedom – Part 2

Part 1 here, mostly about food and people who want the government to dictate to them how they should eat.

And today, part 2, as we look at a Time Magazine piece titled “Tread on Me“.

America was born from resistance to tyranny, and our skepticism of authority is a healthy tradition. But we’re pretty free.

That’s good enough, right?  We’re “pretty free”.  It’s about time we move on in the Tytler Cycle and get back to bondage!  Woo-hoo!  Bondage!  The state will make us free from responsibility and dangers of the world!  They know what’s best for me!

the Don’t Tread on Me slippery-slopers on both ends of the political spectrum tend to forget that Big Government helps protect other important rights

Doesn’t work that way.  This is a question of whether people believe in more or less government control.  Americans believe in less government control, have traditionally always believed in less government control, and only ever believe in having government control them when they’ve been brainwashed and programmed.

But standby for incoming collectivist BS…

Like the right of a child to watch a marathon or attend first grade without getting massacred—or, for that matter, the right to live near a fertilizer factory without it blowing up your house.

There are no such rights.  To be free from danger is not only impossible, but even reduction of danger is not a right – it something paid for by someone’s work – whether it be the soldier, policeman, or factory manager and safety staff.

I guess you could call me a statist.

How about one who will lick the hand that feeds with his chains resting upon him, and someone who I would wish posterity would forget was my countryman?

Go ahead, quote the Ben Franklin line about those who would sacrifice some liberty for security deserving neither.

You forgot the last part – they deserve neither – and will lose both.

But what about the rights of 8-year-old Martin Richard, blown away after watching his dad finish the marathon? Who safeguarded the liberty of 6-year-old Charlotte Bacon, gunned down in her classroom in her new pink dress? What about Perry Calvin and Morris Bridges and the other victims of the West Texas explosion? Nobody read them their rights.

There are no such rights as to be free from danger – and there can be none.

This kind of high-minded utopian fantasy was cranked out back in the 1930s and 1940s by the FDR administration.  There were even oaths made to defend the freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Photo by ShortTimer

It is, by itself, nonsense.

Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

- Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

You cannot legislate industrial accidents out of existence (unless you obliterate industry entirely – which is a goal of the left as a tool to fight Manbearpig).

You cannot legislate madmen out of existence.  You can forcibly disarm the populace, and leave them at the mercy of governmental ruler madmen like maniac cop Chris Dorner.  You can leave them at the mercy of government to make them “safe”.

You do all of those by destroying liberty, something that high-minded collectivist utopians have done in the past to construct human nature into what they want it to be – to “mold the world closer to their hearts’ desire”.

And it almost always looks the same in the end.

In contrast to those statist desires, you can safeguard the liberty of 6 year-old Charlotte Bacon.  You need a rough man ready to do violence on her behalf to safeguard that liberty – that liberty needs to be bought, but the left is terrified of the tools of violence to the point where they irrationally declare that to make the gazelle safe from the lion, you must strip the gazelle’s horns.

By the left’s logic, to make the child safe, you must leave her unguarded; and target those who would do her no harm but instead do seek to protect her.  There are people who are actively willing to put their own lives in harm’s way, but they are called monsters for demanding real security.  They are demonized for understanding the tools and nature of violence as defense and deterrent.

You can begin to defend the life of 8 year-old Martin Richard more by identifying the threat and dealing with the threat when it rears its head.  What killed him was islamic terrorism.  We know this.  We all know this, but our government denies it on the basis that their ideology rejects making that judgement.  By the response of the authorities in the Boston bombing case, there will be no more fatalities from those particular two terrorists.  The hundreds of lives saved, like the baker’s new suit in the Broken Window Fallacy, are easily forgotten because they never materialized.  There were no more terrorist attacks from those two because the terrorists were pursued (at a cost of life and harm) and stopped.

Yet there are still high-minded utopians who believe that if they just apologize enough, that if they are sensitive enough, they can stop people who chant for their deaths in the street through just well wishes.

And here’s where the Time writer gets worse:

Our rights are not inviolate. Just as the First Amendment doesn’t let us shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, the Second Amendment shouldn’t let us have assault weapons designed for mass slaughter.

This is, as Jonah Goldberg would say, bonesnappingly stupid.

The First Amendment totally and completely does let us shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

If the government could mandate a white-noise generator that would specifically tune into the sound of a human voice shouting the word “Fire!” so that it could never again be said in a theater and the First Amendment were restricted, what would happen when there is a fire and no one can shout the word?  What happens when no one can give the alarm?  What happens when that lifesaving tool is denied?  It would result in people burned to death.

The Second Amendment totally and completely does let us have modern firearms.  I have yet to take or instruct a firearms class wherein I have taught or been taught to use an “assault weapon” for “mass slaughter”.  Sorry, just doesn’t work that way.

The Second Amendment protects the natural right of self defense.  It codifies it in the Constitution and ensures that the tools of self defense will not be denied.  It does the same in that sense as the First Amendment protecting the word “Fire!”.  It exists as the last full response against oppression, large and small, whether it be a lone criminal or the force of a dictatorial government.

If used improperly or abused, it’s a crime, just like yelling fire when there’s no fire.  If used properly, it’s a wholly necessary lifesaving right; and it protects tools that allow for lives to be saved.  And just like the loss of yelling “Fire!”, if it is taken away, it ends up the same – the result is people burned to death.

–

To revisit this quote from the “Tread on Me” masochist:

Those of us who support aggressive government action to protect the public ought to acknowledge that it does, at the margins, limit individual rights—the rights of gun owners, the rights of business owners, the rights of the accused. Go ahead, quote the Ben Franklin line about those who would sacrifice some liberty for security deserving neither. But what about the rights of 8-year-old Martin Richard, blown away after watching his dad finish the marathon? Who safeguarded the liberty of 6-year-old Charlotte Bacon, gunned down in her classroom in her new pink dress? What about Perry Calvin and Morris Bridges and the other victims of the West Texas explosion? Nobody read them their rights.

The Bill of Rights is there to limit government.  Governments create oppression.  In a state of nature, there may be terror, but there is no all-encompassing institution that can deny you your natural rights.  The Constitution is there as a contract of free men that created a limited government with the intention of protecting all of our natural rights possible while providing us tools to ensure greater protection for all as well.

I’ve been told that invoking the death of innocents is an emotional appeal rather than a logical argument. And I do admit these tragedies make me angry. But I think it would be logical for our government to try to limit these tragedies in the future.

The author thinks wrong.  There have been a million individual tragedies that are easily forgotten by their magnitude that were undertaken by free men (and sometimes conscripts) to preserve liberty, not to have it thrown away because some statist submissive grovels to beg for tyrants to enslave us all because he is a sniveling coward.

You want to protect people, do it yourself.  You want to prevent tragedies, do it yourself.  You want to tread on me because you’re a coward?  Then you become an oppressor, Mr. Grunwald, and you are trading bought-and-paid-for liberty for security that is not only fleeting, but wholly nonexistent.

We already sacrifice liberty all the time—our right to automatic weapons, our right to walk through airport security with our shoes on, our right to run our businesses however we please.

The writer is an amoebic poltroon who kneels before the might of the state.  We shouldn’t sacrafice our right to automatic weapons, our right to walk through airport security with shoes on, or our right to run our businesses however we please.  Excluding abuse of our rights, which infringes on someone else’s natural rights, it’s not the place of the government to do anything.  Just because the government has abused rights in the past, doesn’t mean we should tolerate it any further.

The rights of the next Martin Richard and the next Charlotte Bacon matter, too.

Yes, and the next Martin and the next Charlotte may be killed by leftists with utopian wishes who demand schools be gun-free zones, ensuring that only criminals and madmen intent on mayhem will be armed.  The next Martin and Charlotte, if they survived being left in a defenseless free-fire zone for 12 years of mandated government schooling, may not like being x-rayed by government lackeys who see them nude any time they get on a plane.  They may not like that when they go to start a business, that their government demands so much from them that it’s easier just to not start the business, that their freedom has been curtailed so much that they don’t have options for a business.

But they may grow up thinking they’re “pretty free”, because there’s always something worse.

The next Martin and the next Charlotte are not one or two children, they are millions of children who will grow into adults in a nation where they are less free.  The next boy may be bashed for being gay because he’s left disarmed against a mob, the next girl may be another Amanda Collins, who was raped because she was disarmed by government.  The next boy may have developed the motor that runs on static electricity, but will never make it because the government has regulated him into oblivion.  The next girl may not want to have her privacy violated by government every time she enters a private contract with an aircraft company to fly her somewhere.

-

There are no shortages of people demanding destruction of liberty.  From Cass “We Must Dominate You For Your Own Good” Sunstein, to any of the intellectuals Thomas Sowell criticizes as dominating sheperds who demand you be their sheep, there is never a shortage of men who wish to dominate and control their fellow man.

There is always a question of how many people believe that becoming sheep is noble, and how many reject that destructive notion of bondage.

Media Forms “Human Shield” To Protect An Advocate Of Disarming You

From Real Clear Politics:

Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post, explains to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell how he and other “journalists” prevented Capitol Hill police from removing an anti-gun advocate from the Senate gallery after she yelled at Senators who voted down an amendment to expand background checks.

And so says the leftist reporter:

GRIM: I interviewed her along with a number of other journalists right afterwards. They were trying to escort her out of the building, but journalists kind of formed a human shield around her because they all had their microphone in front of her. The Capitol Police realized perhaps arresting a hero of Tucson, right after the Senate knocked down this sensible gun bill, wasn’t the best move, so they let her continue to talk.

There is nothing sensible about the bill.  It criminalizes citizens who have done nothing wrong, it would’ve subjected you to additional regulation while doing nothing to stop crime.

They claim a “hero of Tuscon” suddenly has moral authority over those who fought to defend rights, which disregards completely the heroes who fought to preserve those rights and why they fought.

But these are just, you know, 90%, 90% of people support this.

Lie lie lie, lie lie lie, lie lie lie lie.

And a 90% oppressor of a 10% minority is an oppressor.

There’s no Second Amendment right to 50 bullets, and yet here we are.

The Second Amendment covers arms.  There is no limit to one or 10 or 50 or 100 or 1000 bullets.

Obama On Boston: Do Not Form An Opinion Until We Decide What Your Opinion Should Be

Via Jawa Report, from the Daily Caller:

Americans should not decide their opinions about the Boston terror attacks until the government decides its own opinion, President Barack Obama told the nation late Friday night.

Really.

…when a tragedy like this happens … it’s important that we do this right,” he claimed.  “That’s why we have investigations … That’s why we have courts.  And that’s why…”

This is justification for the next line.

“…we take care not to rush to judgment — not about the motivations of these individuals; certainly not about entire groups of people,” Obama insisted.

That wasn’t the case a few days ago when NPR said it was domestic right wing extremists.  That wasn’t the case for most of the mainstream media.

The left is more than willing to use terrorist acts to score political points against those they oppose (consider how they supported maniac cop Chris Dorner’s manifesto when it came to gun control, how they accused the communist-quoting leftist who flew into the Austin IRS building of being on the right, and how Palin and the Tea Party was blamed for the schizo in Tuscon, etc.).

There’s never any judgement when it comes to islamic terrorism and jihad – even when there’s overwhelming evidence, and that’s the problem.  Jihad on Fort Hood was called “workplace violence”.  When a guy yells “Allahu akbar!” and says he’s a Soldier of Allah on his business card, and gives presentations on jihad as a good thing, that might all be what’s known as “clues”.

The issue here isn’t to rush to judgement (like the mainstream media claims that the bombers were white male conservative Tea Partiers), nor to wait for the facts (which today are apparent by the jihadis own statements and online presences), the issue here from the president’s point of view is that Islamic terrorism can’t be called what it is.  There are no shortage of islamic terrorist attacks to document it, but there is an ideological component to modern liberal/leftist tolerance that refuses to acknowledge reality.  Never judging and never acknowledging good or evil is a key component to how modern liberals think.

The fact is, the Boston marathon bombers were islamic terrorists.  There’s no denying reality, but there are people who still try.  The White House, in order to deflect blame, has decided to tell the truth slowly to mitigate the damage.

–

Of course, not all muslims are terrorists, obviously, but they are disproportionately represented because the two things do often go hand-in-hand.  When muslim populations around the world are surveyed, they also support terrorism to a disturbingly large degree.  And the same is true inside the US.

Within the US, about one of twelve to one in six muslims (depending on subgroup, as seen above) believe suicide bombing is often/sometimes justified.  In some other polls, there was a “never” option and a “rarely” option to differentiate between those who do support terrorism, but just so fervently as to say “often” or “sometimes”.

The number of pro-suicide bombing muslims jumps to around 13%.  So more than one in eight muslims are ultimately pro-suicide bombing within the US.

The problem is that government for the last few years (or even decades) has chosen never to make a judgement, based on two flawed ideologies.  The Bush administration, run by squishy neocons, went to great pains to call Islam the “religion of peace” and not offend the easily offended.  The Obama government, run by leftist ideologues, has focused on what they think is the enemy – the domestic right that opposes their leftist changes in government, and their destruction of the Constitution.  To the left, which is in power, people like you and me are the enemy because our focus on the American virtues of liberty represents opposition to their fundamentally anti-American worldview.  By contrast, islamic ideology to them, as an enemy of traditional US virtues and the West that they view as an “oppressor” in the world, is an ally.

And as you’re reading this on your own time (if you’re not, tell the Major I’d like four cups of tea sent up, please), you’re being introduced to data that goes against the media and party line – so even if you are on the left, you’ll probably find yourself considered a “right-wing extremist” soon enough.  Consider what happened to Eric Allen Bell – a leftist filmmaker who used to write for fanatically leftist DailyKos and Michael Moore but ended up doing his own research and had his open-minded sensibilities challenged by reality.  He found it’s very hard to be a universal hippy believer in human rights on the left and simultaneously maintain blind lefty support of an ideology that actively oppresses gays and women.

–

If you take all this into account, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, swims like a duck and flies like a duck, then Obama tells you not to rush to judgement, it could be a giraffe.

Leftist Huffpo Is A Joke

First I saw this screencap of a Huffington Post story on Jawa Report:

And I thought, naw, no way they’re that stupid.  There’s no possible way they can be so politically correct as to willingly ignore the mountains of evidence – mostly the Chechen brothers’ own words online and the self-professed ideology they chose to follow.  The media is already crying that Muslims will be victimized, and yet the media really did claim that the brothers muslim terrorist worldview never made a difference.

I looked for the story, but Huffpo, in the face of mocking reality, had finally started to change it – but “no clues” is visible in the Google cache version.

Now it provides “few clues”, as though it still perplexes them.

Senate Stalls Gun Control

Good roundup at HotAir to start.

The Manchin-Toomey “wrote it on our yacht” background check-prelude to registration bill went down 54-46, failing to get the 60 votes to pass.

The AWB goes down 40/60. Remember a few weeks ago when Reid claimed they didn’t have even 40 votes for it? He wasn’t kidding. They barely ended up with that much. It’ll be a few minutes before the roll is up, but assuming Republicans voted against it unanimously, that means no fewer than 15 Democrats joined them.

It’s a good start to stalling the tyrannical aspirations of government.

Bloomberg as quoted by HotAir:

Today’s vote is a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington. More than 40 U.S. senators would rather turn their backs on the 90 percent of Americans who support comprehensive background checks than buck the increasingly extremist wing of the gun lobby.

Why is it that anti-gun tyrants love using the number 90% so much?  They make up numbers saying guns are going to Mexico at a rate of 90%, and they claim 90% of people support draconian checks as a step towards registration, confiscation, and obliteration of gun rights.  Do they just love targeting minorities of 10%?  Oh, that’s right, they do.

Incidentally, only 4% care about gun control as opposed to every other issue.

Gun-ban propagandist, hypocrite who said he’d shoot his rivals, and fraudulent journalist who was kicked out of England Piers Morgan whined on:

Soon he’ll fade back into obscurity once the schtick of having a lying Brit who threatened violence and lectures down to Americans wears off.  Oh, and it has.

They showed they care about America’s dead and the liberties we fought for, and won’t be swayed by political propagandists dragging grieving families around as political props.

Meanwhile, from the Washington Times, Obama plays the blame game, and says those who oppose him are filthy liars who need to be sent to the gulag:

President Obama angrily blamed the defeat Wednesday of his centerpiece gun-control proposal on lies spread by the National Rifle Association, calling it “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill,” Mr. Obama said in the White House rose garden about 90 minutes after the vote. “It came down to politics.”

No, they didn’t.  Obama has been quite open about his loathing of the Second Amendment and the Constitution in general, and he views it as an obstacle to his grand utopian dream that would be so much easier.  See, the left knows what’s best for you, and they’re going to give it to you by force if they can.

There’s also a certain type of projection on the left.  They accuse others of lying while they do.  The NRA warned of true objectives.

“They claimed that it would create some sort of big-brother gun registry, even though it did the  opposite,” Mr. Obama said. “This pattern of spreading untruths … served a purpose. A minority in the U.S. Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms, even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery. It’s not going to happen because 90 percent of Republicans just voted against that idea.”

Of necessity, to work, it had to create a big brother gun registry – which would be either an amendment or a future bill when this one was found.  There was no secret that Democrats were pushing for a big-brother gun registry.  But, as Levar Burton would say, don’t take my word for it – take NY Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer’s:

There’s that 90% statistic again, too.  They just love it.

And again, the “families” are being led by Democrat propagandists.  I say “families” because Mark Mattioli isn’t represented, nor are many other Newtown families who don’t hold the same opinions as those who are politically aligned and campaigning for the Democrats’ rights-control schemes.

“You’ve got to send the right people to Washington,” he told voters. “That requires strength and it requires persistence. I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it.”

The American people and those who’ve fought for liberty don’t want their tyranny.

We did send the right people to Washington.  We sent Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.

But do note what Obama said in there.  The meaning is clear.

…requires strength and it requires persistence. I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this…

He uses some of the Newtown families as props, and it seems many of them are willing props – but he doesn’t care about them any more than he cared about the hundreds of dead children in Mexico murdered by his Fast and Furious program.

Also remember what Joe Biden said:

And lastly, but not least, the Assault Weapons ban and the limitation on the size of magazines, let me say this as clearly as I can: this is just the beginning.

And Joe Biden today:

“We’re going to get this eventually,” Biden said. “If we don’t get it today, we’ll get it eventually.”

The gun ban anti-rights movement is not out for safety, they’re out for your disarmament, which has horrific long-run consequences.

I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this…

…let me state this as clearly as I can: this is just the beginning.

We’re going to get this eventually…if we don’t get it today, we’ll get it eventually.

And the anti-gun anti-rights movement will never stop.

The Gun Control Sellout Begins

There’s too much to cover, so this is just going to be another news roundup.

Pat Toomey, was riding on Joe Manchin’s yacht, the “Black Tie” and getting all boozed up with his fellow Ruling Class goon to come up with a way to screw you out of your rights…

Senator Mark Kirk said the following to reporters about gun control and background checks and in particular the so called bi partisan deal reached by Senators Toomey and Manchin, “You guys really ought to go out to National Harbor and see the Black Tie, which has been much of the reason for much of the bipartisan cooperation around here. Sometimes alcoholic beverages might be served and ties might … get loosened.”

So there you go. Your elected officials getting liquored up on a a mega yacht conspiring to infringe on your inherent rights.

…is now being praised by Bloomberg’s Mayors For Citizen Disarmament.

The filibuster to prevent any gun bill from getting to the Senate floor ended because 16 Quislings RINOs agreed to go ahead and vote for “discussion”… which will be the same vote that comes along later when a “reasonable” “common sense” bill that’s wholly unconstitutional and is a compromise between you and the government that wants to strip you of your rights.  In other words, just the tip, baby.

The Second Amendment is not up for discussion unless they want to repeal it.  Which they do, but they know they’ll never get the states and the public to agree on it.

Text of the Orwellian-titled bill here.

And if you think the House is going to stop anyone from disarming you for the good of the state’s power, today crying carrot Speaker of the House John Boehner said he doesn’t need Republicans to pass bills in the House.  For those of you who’ve had a long day and miss this – the point is he’ll just pass Democrat bills.

Of course the media’s been doing their part, from citing Al Qaeda as a source saying we need more gun control (Yeah, why didn’t AQ try using guns against US citizens?  But why did they do it against unarmed people in Mumbai?  Rifle behind every blade of grass, get off my lawn, etc., perhaps?) and then CNN was profusely thanked by Democrat anti-gun Senator Joe Manchin for their neverending propaganda during the Sandy Hook massacre:

Berman: Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, you’ve been working around the clock for a compromise deal. I think you have a very busy few weeks ahead of you still.

Manchin: We appreciate your support, too, this is very, very important.

And just to throw in the last of this garbage in with the pile, Joe Biden doesn’t think you should own guns, because you think it’s like owning a Ferrari… which begs the question, what’s wrong with driving a Ferrari?

“It used to be we were dealing almost exclusively with hunters,” Biden said on MSNBC. “There’s a whole new sort of group of individuals now who, I don’t know what the numbers are, that never hunt at all but they own guns for one of two reasons: self protection or they just like the feel of that AR-15 at the range.”

“They like the way it feels. You know, it’s like driving a Ferrari,” he said, raising his arms as if shooting a gun.

To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know.

That rifle is a tool of freedom, and without it, freedom dies.

“That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

- George Orwell

Freedom is mighty nice, but it’s sad that freedom can only be maintained with tools.  Yes, clown, you’re not dealing with hunters.  You’re dealing with free men.  You’re dealing with people who own guns for self protection from government because reason doesn’t work against a ruling class that thinks they know what’s best for us and decides to dominate us.

Biden is a buffoon, but because he has no filter on anything that he says and speaks as though he has a political version of Tourette’s, he is actually identifying a big section of the Second Amendment crowd.  They (we) own AR-15s for self-defense because that is the critical function of the Second Amendment – to protect against oppressors large and small.  High-speed low-drag gear is cool, but that’s a far second place compared to what it defends.

Rand Paul is right.  And his final sentiment in that piece is one echoed here:

Our rights are not subjected to polls. Whether it is popular or not popular, I took an oath to the Constitution, and I am prepared to stand with other senators or alone to protect the freedoms that our Founding Fathers fought to preserve.

Melissa Harris-Perry: To Each According to Your Ability, To Each According to Your Need

First she said that children are property of the community.

Now she says you have the right to have all your needs fulfilled at all times.

You can feel like you earn more, to pretend to have meritocracy, but really, everyone needs all of their needs cared for at all times.  The doctor has no right to his labor – he has to labor for the community good.  The farmer has no right to his crops – he is there to provide for the eaters.  The builder has no right to the house he builds – he is there to provide for those who want houses.  The woman has no right to herself – she is there to provide for men who need her body.  The healthy man has no right to his parts – he is there to be disassembled and harvested by those who need his organs.

To each according to your ability, to each according to your need!  Eat the rich!

Via the People’s Cube:

Gun Laws and Media Spin and A Reminder of Anti-Gun Statism by Krauthammer

I read this article over at Yahoo, lamenting that there are so many states pushing against gun control, and saw some odd states lumped in with Imperial New York:

Despite a major push from the White House, more states have cut back on gun regulations rather than pass gun-control reforms in the wake of the mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Five states—New York, Colorado, Mississippi, Utah and Wyoming—have enacted seven new laws tightening restrictions on guns since Dec. 14, when a gunman shot 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School before turning the weapon on himself. A sixth state, Connecticut, passed the toughest gun laws in the nation this week, banning some types of semi-automatic weapons and requiring all gun buyers to undergo background checks before purchases. (Gov. Dan Malloy is expected to sign the bill into law on Thursday.)

New York passed the NY FU2A Act, Colorado passed the FU Magpul Act, Misssissippi… passed what exactly?  Utah passed what?  And Wyoming, which is pushing bills that would make enforcing unconstitutional gun laws a felony passed an anti-gun law?  WTF?

The reporter just went to this WSJ graphic and looked at the “strengthened vs weakened” and put those states in the anti-gun category without reading them:

Wyoming – WY H 216 – Would allow a judge to carry a weapon in his courtroom and prohibit someone else from carrying a weapon in his or her courtroom.

New York is going after gun owners, banning magazines, banning everything that exists, cranking out propaganda and pushing for total confiscation, screaming that anyone who opposes them is paranoid – all the while going out to utterly eliminate the Second Amendment.

By contrast, Wyoming said “yeah, a judge can carry a gun and can tell others they don’t need a gun in court”.

One of these things is not like the others.

Mississippi’s new law S2647  allows for petitioning by those deemed mentally unfit to restore their gun rights, and allows for some mental health reporting to NICS.  Utah’s H 50 allows for restraining orders against people dating to include the same restrictions on arms as a married restraining order; and H 121 allows a gun owner to give their guns to the state for 60 days for actual safe-keeping if they feel someone they live with is a threat.  It’s the state actually supporting gun rights by giving gun owners another option.  And Arkansas’ H1503 mirrors federal law with regards to the 4473 and the actual purchaser/unlawful procurement.

HotAir has a few notes on this story (but doesn’t dissect the “anti-gun” bills that arent), and includes a little political analyzing by Charles Krauthammer.  For those who’ve forgotten Charles Krauthammer’s opinion on guns, I suggest you read his column “Disarm the Citizenry, But Not Yet“:

It is simply crazy for a country as modern, industrial, advanced and now crowded as the United States to carry on its frontier infatuation with guns. Yes, we are a young country, but the frontier has been closed for 100 years. In 1992, there were 13,220 handgun murders in the United States. Canada (an equally young country, one might note) had 128; Britain, 33.

Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquillity of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today.

…

What needs to happen before this change in mentality can occur? What must occur first — and this is where liberals are fighting the gun control issue from the wrong end — is a decrease in crime. So long as crime is ubiquitous, so long as Americans cannot entrust their personal safety to the authorities, they will never agree to disarm. There will be no gun control before there is real crime control.

…

Yes, Sarah Brady is doing God’s work. Yes, in the end America must follow the way of other democracies and disarm. But there is not the slightest chance that it will occur until liberals join in the other fights to reduce the incidence of and increase the penalties for crime. Only then will there be a public receptive to the idea of real gun control. The passionate resistance to even the phony gun control of the assault weapons ban shows how far we have to go.

It’s important to remember that Krauthammer thinks “it is simply crazy” that you don’t trust your personal safety to the authorities, and that you don’t “follow the way of other democracies and disarm”.  It’s best for you.  He’s part of the DC Ruling Class, and he knows what’s best for you.

No More Using the Term Illegal Immigrant? Fine, Then My AR-15 Will Simply Be An Undocumented Sporting Good

Via HotAir:

Yes, really. Remember, even a notorious immigration squish like McCain refuses to bow to Orwellian demands to stop using the term “illegal immigrant.” With good reason: Isn’t “illegal immigrant” itself a politically correct alternative to the statutory term “alien”? “Illegal alien” was too harsh and Other-y, so “illegal immigrant” came into vogue.

In truth, part of it is that the government never really defined alien and immigrant and all that very well.  You basically have non-immigrants, and immigrants.  Immigration law is a hodgepodge of people trying to bring in their pet constituents, and has been for generations.  It led to the definitions being rather screwy, and unnecessarily so.  But that’s beside the point, as this is about newspeak, not about the quirkiness of legal terms.

Illegal aliens are “undocumented persons” like a drug dealer is an “unlicensed pharmacist” or a murderer is an “unauthorized preemptive euthanasia specialist”.

But that’s fine, if we’re playing word games, when the Second Amendment is ignored further and guns are banned, then…

A Quick Note On Media Gun Cluelessness

From the BBC:

10mm Glock

Semi-automatic pistol

Rapid fire capability Relatively light and easy to shoot Magazine capacity of 10 to 15 rounds, depending on model

One of the most popular weapons with US law-enforcement agencies A Glock handgun was also used in the Aurora shootings

Really?

If written by disarmed British subjects (and they are subjects if they’re disarmed), maybe they don’t understand the 10mm.  Of course, they could’ve just looked up the Wikipedia page for the 10mm and read the first few lines:

Although it was selected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for use in the field following the 1986 F.B.I. Miami Shootout, their Firearms Training Unit “concluded that its recoil was excessive in terms of training for average agent/police officer competency of use and qualification“,^[6] and the pistols that chambered it were too large for some small-handed individuals. These issues led to the creation and eventual adoption of a shorter version of the 10mm that would evolve into what is today the .40 S&W.

The FBI wanted a new gun after the Miami Shootout, which showed them that 9mm had not performed well.  There were other lessons to learn from the Miami Shootout, but they did reason that more power was needed and the 9mm of the day wasn’t cutting it.

The solution of the 10mm ended up going too far, too fast.  There is no “relatively light and easy to shoot” to a 10mm, unless it’s ported and vented and comped and tweaked.  The 10mm is a stout round, and a good round, but it’s not “light and easy to shoot”.  Considering the other two guns on their list were a Sig 9mm and an AR-15, both of which are actually light and easy to shoot, it makes even less sense.

But the media, after all, are clueless.