A chant applied to the Las Vegas massacre, almost anything bad involving guns, almost anything bad involving kids, and almost anything that’ll agitate the news cycle for more than a day.
Lately, we’ve developed a nervous tic nearly every time an incident of mayhem invades our tranquility. It won’t be long before a grandstanding politico trots out in front of a mike and cameras to announce, “We have to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” The fact is, it will. So what is up with the nonsense declaration? It’s the intro to the politicization of tragedy.
It begins with the unquestioning belief in the magical healing powers of legislation. Someone demands that we “do something”, and “do something” means “write a law”. Encapsulate the cure in a 20,000-word statute. What’s up with that?
Has anyone ever taken a look at the “geniuses” who’ll craft the cure? Sorry, high-wattage thinkers don’t heavily populate the upper rungs of those who play the game of politics (i.e. acquiring power, or getting elected), especially on the lefty side of the political spectrum. They may know the art of gaining power, but once in power we quickly learn that they really don’t know or understand much. They’re fumbling, and sometimes dangerous, empty suits.
They normally trot out their ready-made, off-the-shelf nostrums. They don’t even have to be relevant to the issue at hand. Just plug ’em in anyway. In a recent CNN townhall after the Las Vegas shooting, Nancy Pelosi (D, San Francisco) quickly pivoted to her current favorite: background checks. The question directed to her was about actions to prevent the Las Vegas shooting. Her answer was nonsense. Do we have background checks? Yes. Would of any of their proposed changes to them make any difference? No.
Simply put, she didn’t answer the question. Besides, her response wasn’t pertinent. The killer, Stephen Paddock, passed background checks as he went about building his arsenal. It’s not that he didn’t go through any. The guy simply flew way under everyone’s radar, including his family’s.
On those “background checks”, all relevant records to a gun purchase are digitized with instant access for any government agent sitting time zones away from the site of the purchase. It doesn’t take long to do a check. States don’t vary that much in doing the look-see, only in the amount of arbitrary inconvenience for the buyer with their waiting periods. Nothing much is accomplished with waiting periods; much is accomplished in irritation.
Still, even with the Democrats’ background enhancements, Paddock would fly under those too.
And with Pelosi and her gang’s proposals, she’d effectively put “dead” to due process in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments for gun buyers. The Constitution is quite inconvenient for those in a hurry to win the political brass ring.
So, what’s she up to? She’s up to politics, gaining the majority in Congress, and impatient in imposing blue America’s values on the rest of the country.
I could bore you to tears with examples of politicos and their love affair with silliness. Here’s congresswomen Carolyn McCarthy, (D) New York, back in 2013 unable to describe a gun item (barrel shroud) mentioned in a bill that she supported.
You think that she’s the only one? Here’s 2 New York state politicos intent on their own bans.
Incendiary bullets are “heat-seeking”?
The confusion among the left about semi-automatic and automatic guns is rampant. The mixup extends to the progressive punditry. CNN’s Don Lemmon steps into it.
The ignorance is pervasive. The bulk of these people don’t own guns, haven’t really lived among them, and have SNL skits running around in their heads about rednecks and working stiffs. Their’s is the world of gentrified neighborhoods, bistros, smartphone-saturation, and the college bubble. Yet, they want to legislate for the rest of us. When they get their hands on the levers of power, the result is absurdity.
From where do we get get this tic to legislate our way to nirvana? It’s built into the progressive worldview. Progressives are intoxicated with the idea of using state power to manufacture a new world, and new human beings to go in it. That means legislation, laws, rules, decrees, and other such commands. Out goes anything not familiar to them in their cloistered existence.
Maybe something can be done about “bump stocks”, but don’t expect it to change the dynamic of fevered imaginations intent on killing large numbers of people. If the desire is there, a means will be found. In other words, it will happen again.
Evil resides in the souls of some men and women … but, first, you have to recognize the existence of evil. Now that’s something to scoff for your average run-of-the-mill urban sophisticate.
RogerG