This is an understatement, but kudos to Ben Shapiro for publicly exposing the Left's morbid opportunism over the Sandy Hook tragedy, and using these deaths to characterize their political opponents as uncaring, heartless creeps that are so in love with their guns (gently oiling and cleaning them at night) that they are willing to sacrifice little children to this awful 2nd Amendment idol (a baffling irony in light of the Left's conception of "reproductive rights").
MORGAN: That's what I call bullying.
SHAPIRO: This is astonishing.
MORGAN: What's astonishing?
SHAPIRO: What's astonishing about it is for weeks now, you have been saying that anybody who disagrees with your position is absurd, idiotic, and doesn't care about the dead kids in Sandy Hook. And then when I say that it's a bullying tactic, you turn around and say I'm bullying you for saying that. It's absurd. It's ridiculous.
Of course, it's easier than pointing out that Obama made a nice soapbox out of little caskets. You could expect TIME and Newsweek to call that blatant racism. But this guy... With the combination of the accent with the snootiness, this guy is a lieutenant on the Death Star. The irony of a British citizen criticizing, not a mere American policy, but a fundamental right of a free people to keep the means of securing their freedoms, the recognition of which right was borne out of a British imperialism that the American Left nominally loathes!
SHAPIRO: Well, we can talk about Britain in a second. I think that the reason it's about left and right here is because fundamentally the right believes the basis for the second amendment, and they believe in the second amendment. The basis of the second amendment is not really about self defense and it's not about hunting. It's about resistance to government tyranny. That's what the founders said and that's what the right believe in this country.
MORGAN: Which tyranny are you fearing, yourself?
SHAPIRO: I fear the possibility of a tyranny rising in the country in the next 50 to 100 years. Let me tell you something, Piers. The fact that my grandparents and great-grandparents in Europe didn't fear that is why they're now ashes in Europe. This kind of leftist revisionist history where there's no fear of democracy going userpatious or tyrannical, is just that. It's fictitious.
Shapiro is making a reference to the gun registration and confiscation measures imposed by collectivist governments in Europe in order to effect totalitarian control. Trust us. We're your government and we're only here to keep you safe.
Now, Thomas Sowell in his book Intellectuals and Society writes of the many absurdities of the gun control mania of English socialism (or Ingsoc, as George Orwell called it). A man who lives our in the countryside (where police weren't likely to arrive quickly) arrested for stopping two burglars with a gun. A man arrested for running off street thug assailants with a fake gun. As well as the rise in gun crime since the disarmament of the British citizenry. Piers Morgan might be right that neither political party in Britain appreciates the right to own a gun, but that doesn't say much for the sensibility of the country.
From Farewell to the King (quoted at imdb.com):
Capt. Fairbourne: What do you want? Learoyd: Freedom, to be like we are. Capt. Fairbourne: Anything else? Learoyd: Guns. So they can't take the freedom away. Capt. Fairbourne: Well, I'll see what I can do. Learoyd: And grenades, mortars and mines, so they can't take the guns away
“Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”
~ Obama at Newtown vigil
Do you suppose that thousands of people's lives might be spared if we had less traffic? Exactly how many people couldn't do work from home at least once or twice a week? Maybe you haven't thought about it much because you just don't care who gets killed. We could have a lot fewer youths dying (and others dying in the accidents to which they are prone) if we restricted their driving and made it harder for them to get licenses. Are you going to make their deaths the price of the freedom to put-put-put around as one pleases?
Baseball bats are a weapon of choice for physical assaults. some say the weapon of choice. True, you are much more likely to die if your assailant uses a gun, but Americans have a guaranteed right to a gun, not to a baseball bat. Think of all the people that would have not been assaulted (especially those who did not survive the attack) if the assailant had not had that bat handy. He might have had to resort to his fists instead. Or maybe he would not have attacked at all. Are you going to make those deaths the price of playing America's favorite pastime? Well, then you're sick my friend. Bitterly clinging to your weird baseball religion.
Remember the so-called gun rights truce earlier in 2012? When I read about that I thought, I'm sure Obama will evolve and have "more flexibility" on that issue after November. He got up at the vigil for the dead children, and after expressing sympathy for the parents there, turned it into a simple choice between essential liberty and children's lives. Talk about stacking little coffins into a soapbox. Give me more money, of grandma might not get her social security check. Give up your gun rights, or the blood of innocent children will be on your hands.
How much Fort Hood blood is on Bill Clinton's hands for turning Fort Hood into a gun-free zone? A military base, and no one was adequately armed to stop the crazed fanatic that brought his gun into the gun-free zone. Honestly, it's as though criminals just don't obey the law any more.
Maybe fewer children would have been burned to death in Waco if little boys at the ATF weren't given tanks to play with. Just a thought.
Speaking of blood on an administration's hands, one commentator recently put Eric Holder's little gunwalking stunt to churn up support for gun control into perspective:
It would be as if the Bush administration had implemented a covert operation to dump a dangerous abortifacient in Planned Parenthood clinics, resulting in hundreds of women dying — just to give pro-lifers an argument about how dangerous abortion clinics are.
Well, it would be except that CNN would still be covering that now until there was a federal amendment guaranteeing the right to 4th-trimester abortions. (Sorry, folks, but CNN made quite an impression on me this last October.)
You gun control enthusiasts really want to make America safe? Maybe Eric Holder can locate likely troublemakers (there are enough provisions in the revise Patriot Act--and there is plenty of information from the FBI) that take prescription meds and have a history of trouble (as the Columbine killers did), in states where all school employees are likely to be unarmed, so that no annoying Pearl High School interventions occur. He can equip the crazies, via a man in a trenchcoat pretending to be someone from the NRA. Several massacres of schoolchildren could occur within a very short time frame. Instant public outrage.
Sure, innocent lives will be lost, but any liberal who beamed as Chris Matthews rejoiced in the calamity of Hurricane Sandy can appreciate that it is all outweighed by all the good it would do! And Holder has already demonstrated that if it all blows up and somehow leads back to him, he will simply deny Congress access to the documents through executive privilege. (I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason for the Fast & Furious inquiry lockout is to hide the fact that the documentation for Fast and Furious is lost, disappeared in a late night shredding party.) And we know that the major news outlets will downplay the story as some conspiratorial obsession.
And now for some more pics (too many to choose from) . . .
And just in case Michael Moore thinks I've forgotten his darling animation where he completely rewrites history by saying that the NRA was sympathetic to the KKK... Here is one he'll dearly hate. Please don't let Michael Moore pump you full of his ignorance. This picture is much more historically... on target. :-)
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." (Benjamin Franklin)
Eight years ago, you would have thought that liberals worshiped Patrick Henry. I wrote back in October about how left-leaning citizens seemed to love the above quote by Franklin back then. You know, even if I was skeptical of the various Bush-is-evil conspiracy theories, I at least agreed on this point: It's not unpatriotic to question the motives of your President and your Congressmen. In America, it's unpatriotic to try to stifle (instead of merely controvert) dissent and questioning. (Now, it may be unpatriotic to undermine national interests over certain concerns, but that is an argument for another time).
I heard left-leaning friends and acquaintances railing back then against the Patriot Act: Why, the European nations live with terrorism in their borders; why can't we? Oh, because we're afraaaaaid, that's why! We'll give up our freedoms for a little security in a heartbeat, us scaredy-cats. I can't believe Americans would give up their liberty out of fear.
Better to live with a terrorist attack now and then in our borders than grant the federal government power that they might be tempted to abuse. That's what many, many liberals were loudly voicing. But that was before 2008. Now we have a liberal President, and there is the tendency of most left-leaning citizens to not believe that the 2nd Amendment does anything to help preserve our rights from despots (let alone be useful in preventing more mundane crimes).
Before 2008, it might have had a more sobering effect on right-leaning citizens if they had thought "How might a liberal President use this power;" whereas left-leaning citizens should similarly fear Executive power if only because a Republican might eventually have those powers at his disposal. Both would do well to realize that it's not simply a man gaining power, but an Office.
And now that very little time has been wasted since the deaths of many Connecticut children for President Obama to advocate for policy change with regard to the Bill of Rights, I ask, "Where did all the liberal patriots go?"
Here's one liberal who isn't caught in the "Only Federal-Level Gun Ban Can Save Us" haze:
I was not, and am not, under the illusion that a handgun would have necessarily provided a definitive solution to the problem posed by Colin Ferguson. But my instinct was that if someone is shooting at you, it is generally better to shoot back than to cower and pray. Would a civilian firing back at Ferguson have wounded or killed innocent people? Quite possibly yes. Is that a risk potential victims quaking under train seats or classroom desks might accept? Quite possibly yes. Especially when you consider the massacres that have been prevented or interrupted by armed civilians before the police arrived. ~ Jeffrey Goldberg, article in The Atlantic
Here's another:
In no other country, at no other time, has such a right existed. It is not the right to hunt. It is not the right to shoot at soda cans in an empty field. It is not even the right to shoot at a home invader in the middle of the night. It is the right of revolution. Let me say that again: It is the right of revolution. ~ Kaili Joy Gray, article in The Daily Kos
Gray gets it. The 2nd Amendment was meant to guarantee a balance of power with "the people," to give them a fighting chance to "alter or abolish" (in the words of The Declaration) a government that no longer protected their freedoms and had its own standing army to resist being "altered." A disarmed public can't even be a militia (oh, how feared is that word!). They would be sitting ducks for despotism.
Well, those are two. Where are all the other liberal patriots?
If the liberal patriots were still around, some might receive Obama's "give up your rights for the children's" speech with a measure of suspicion and skepticism. Even though, unlike Alan Gopnik, Obama alludes to the actual purpose of the Second Amendment (rather than the "satisfaction gun owners take from their guns"): "Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children, year after year after year, is somehow the price of our freedom?" Here is the antiquated (or so it seems to liberals) worry about despotism (so 18th century) weighed against the very real danger to our children. Are you willing to sacrifice your children for some outdated concept? Is this old trope of Progressivism what is meant by "the politics are too hard"?
If the liberal patriots were still around, some might be suspicious when the President says that "keeping our children safe . . . is something we can only do together, with . . . the help of a nation." It requires national (read: federal) gun policy to prevent/lessen massacres? Why? ("What does God need with a starship?")
If the liberal patriots were still around, they might be getting suspicious when religion is invoked to bring about radical policy change: "That is how as a society we will be judged." While the New Testament records some harsh words about those who harm children, the New Testament doesn't specifically link it to judgments on societies. If Obama is going to wax Biblical, he could make a better argument that a society will be judged by repentance and its acceptance of Jesus' message of salvation. I wonder why he's making a theological argument at all. Weren't our liberal patriots super-skeptical of theological arguments once upon a time?
Like the freedom to never go hungry or sick or jobless as long as the federal government has the key to your neighbor's pantry (and bank vault), the freedom from attacks by maniacs awaits you. All it takes is giving up essential liberty even when "the politics are too hard." Then you will be "free" to be safe.
(*Note: I have since been informed that Jeffrey Goldberg may not be an example of a leftist, even though the article citing this quote described him as such. So, my count actually falls from two to one liberal patriot.)
Like the recent Connecticut school massacre, Kehoe's mass murder started with a home killing. This is also similar to the Pearl High School spree, in which Luke Woodman stabbed and bludgeoned his mother (in contrast to the apparent irony being advertised for Nancy Lanza as a "gun enthusiast and the first victim"--not-so-subtly implying that if only she hadn't kept guns around...) before starting his spree at the local high school.
Uncharacteristic of these other sprees, Woodman was apprehended by the assistant principal Joel Myrick who, contrary to law, armed himself and held Woodman at gunpoint. Woodman was on his way to continue his lesson to society at the nearby junior high school when he was intercepted. (The police hadn't had time to respond--they might not have even been called yet.)
According to Wikipedia, before the police arrived Principal Myrick demanded that Woodman explain why he had killed the kids. Woodman replied that the world had wronged him. Before the school shootings, Woodman reportedly sent a message to a fellow student explaining: "I did this to show society, push us and we will push back. ... All throughout my life, I was ridiculed, always beaten, always hated. Can you, society, truly blame me for what I do?"
What I would like Americans to ask themselves is why in the history of America, a history filled with adolescents and social outcasts who had access to household firearms and knew how to use them, we have had relatively few incidents (compared to the last half century) of killing sprees targeting the public, bystanders, co-workers that did nothing wrong, people at restaurants... until after the 1960s.
Is the fascination with removing a convenient means of killing (which is also a necessary means of keeping democracy for all and a necessary means of self-defense for many) a canard to keep society from self-reflecting on what has changed to predispose people to blame "society" and take?
We have, for one, a culture that has more and more entertained the idea (and encouraged youth to entertain it) that people that lash out in violence need special understanding, that one man's terrorist is another's freedom-fighter and people that blow up buses of schoolchildren are obviously just reacting to great injustice that has been served to them. It is a culture that increasingly rejects personal responsibility and diffuses blame around. We also have more and more children not being raised according to their parents values but rather being raised by television, movies, video games, and the philosophical tidbits of their educators. We've had repeated attempts to redefine the way society and family work. We have people simultaneously laughing at those who try to protect abortion survivors from neglect and protect prenatal infants from brain evacuation and curettage, calling it liberty, while acting outraged at teenagers that kill their newborns and demanding life sentences for them. Why are our teenagers so confused about the sanctity of life? It boggles the mind.
After a number of killing sprees in China accomplished with knives (there is serious gun control in collectivist states), "[s]ome analysts have suggested that an increase in psychiatric illnesses brought about by rapid social change is behind the attacks." Well, China has gone through several generations now of the government experimenting with the family structure and promoting social loyalties over family loyalties and otherwise redefining things according to the whims of "central planners." Why would that affect kids' minds?
You know, bullying is nothing new. In general, it has possibly gotten worse in the last several decades with the decline of public schools, but insecure children have long targeted other children for anything: being overweight, wearing funny clothes, being effeminate, shy, etc. For many, many, many decades, bullied children didn't take their dad's guns to school and start shooting. If there were any fantasies like those in The Basketball Diaries, they stayed as fantasies. Taking Andrew Kehoe's claim at face value, why is society making more terrible criminals out of teenagers? Gun availability isn't the variable that has changed.
There was a time, for that matter, when Lizzy Borden's rampage and the events in In Cold Blood were relative anomalies and much more shocking than they are now. What has changed since then?
What you will probably hear in answer to this question (in the rare event it is entertained publicly), that societal changes are too sweeping and complex to analyze and there's no way to roll back the clock to the 1950s (and that would mean bringing back the bad things of that time), we really have no choice but to "just get rid of the guns." It is The Answer.
"For years they spent a lot of money saying, 'There's no other way! There's no other way!' They said it so many times, people actually started believing it."
You would think from this article in the online Irish Voice that when the Irish Gardai show up to protect a civilian from an armed assailant they use harsh language and possibly throw their batons if the thug doesn't turn himself in good faith. John Spain writes, "It’s one thing when the drug gangs shoot each other[,] . . . [b]ut it is a different matter when one of these young thugs
so casually tries to murder a Garda simply because he does not want to be
followed. If that is what it has come to here, then should the Gardai be armed?"
Will you tell me what kind of a world we live in, where an armed thug would rather shoot a cop than be caught and sent to prison? Has it really come to that? Spain further points out that in spite of the Irish Republic's strict gun control laws (the anti-colonial Irish ironically have no guarantee like our Second Amendment) "[l]ow level young thugs here frequently carry guns." It would seem that, unless young thugs don't mind going to prison, that the only thing keeping Gardai from getting shot more often is not getting into many confrontations with thugs. (Or there are somehow enough armed citizens that there aren't many sutuations being called in--the thugs have truly heretofore been content to kill each other, which I doubt.)
Spain even conjectures a case-and-effect that "in most countries where police routinely carry arms, gun crime is much higher than it is in Ireland because criminals feel they have to carry weapons," such that in spite of their gun control laws criminals will somehow get their hands on better weapons. Yes, somehow, criminals do get their hands on them in spite of gun control, but they don't have to wait for cops to be better armed, just as these young thugs routinely carry guns when officers of the law do not. With Spain's logic though, cops should be walking around in nothing but swimming trunks and Nerf swords, since that will induce thugs to not have to carry around anything better than knives. This is the sort of cause-and-effect that people decide on having been "informed" solely by Michael Moore statistics.
He further writes, "I see from the American nightly news that in some parts of the U.S., for
example, officers who are unhappy that all they have is handguns have now
started to buy heavy duty machine guns out of their own pockets to give them
firepower to match that of the bad guys." Well, all we had to do to prevent that was to shut down those machine gun drive-thrus where any ex-con or gang member could pick one up!
Of course, criminals don't always have to import them if they can be stolen from civilians or non-civilians. But just as criminals seem to always get their hands on illegal substance, they always seem to get their hands on illegal arms.
One point that Spain raises that I can sympathize with is that of the sense that police are just deputized citizens: "In Ireland there is still a huge level of support, appreciation, and even
affection for the Gardai from 98% of the population. The fact that the Gardai
are unarmed is part of that relationship . . ."
From my own experience, I'll make this observation: If an officer of the law pulls me over for an alleged misdemeanor and approaches me with his hand resting on the butt of his gun, he should not talk to me like I'm the scum of society unless he truly has reason that I've committed some felony. Policemen who obviously had no reason to fear me have chosen to intimidate me, and this attitude isn't simply a result of carrying a gun.
Shapiro is making a reference to the gun registration and confiscation measures imposed by collectivist governments in Europe in order to effect totalitarian control. Trust us. We're your government and we're only here to keep you safe. 
