GUN RIGHTS

Journalism Professor Calls For Firing Squad, Missile Attacks On The NRA…

. . . Here it is. The NRA advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America. That's treason, and it's worthy of the firing squad. The B.S. needs a serious gut check. We are not a tin pot banana republic where machine gun toting rebel groups storm the palace and depose the dictator.

We put the president in the White House. To support the new NRA president's agenda of arming the populace for confrontation with the government is bloody treason. And many invite it gladly as if the African-American president we voted for is somehow infringing on their Constitutional rights.

Normally, I am a peaceable man, but in this case, I am willing to answer the call to defend the country. From them.

To turn the song lyric they so love to quote back on them, "We'll put a boot in your —, it's the American way."

Except it won’t be a boot. It'll be an M1A Abrams tank, supported by an F22 Raptor squadron with Hellfire missiles. Try treason on for size. See how that suits. And their assault arsenal and RPGs won't do them any good.

Keep in mind that this violent rant was written by a man who describes himself as being "hardly out of the mainstream."  If this kind of attitude represents the mainstream of gun control advocates then here is a good example of why gun control advocates cannot be trusted.

Let's say that the Toomey-Manchin legislation had passed into law.  When the next mass shooting occurs (and it will, because insane people, like criminals, don't respect or obey the law) what will be the response of anti-gun fanatics?  Will they admit that their idiotic strategies have failed?  Of course not.  They will simply use the failure as an excuse to agitate for even more restrictions on gun rights.  

Keep in mind that Toomey-Manchin was merely a pathetic last ditch effort to get some form of anti-gun legislation on the books because the "assault weapons" ban the progs really wanted was not supported by a sufficient number of Democrats, let alone Republicans. As it turns out, universal background checks aren't supported, either.  But that hardly matters to the fanatics who insist that the government have a monopoly on force.

As Jeffrey Miron wrote shortly after the 2011 Tucson shooting, "mild controls don't always stay mild."

Gun controls like those being proposed may, on occasion, prevent horrific events like the Tucson shooting or at least reduce their harm, but in all likelihood only rarely. Avoiding a few such incidents is surely better than avoiding none, so these controls would make sense if they had no negatives of their own.

But gun controls, even mild ones, do have adverse consequences.

At a minimum, these laws impose costs on people who own and use guns without harming others, whether for hunting, collecting, target practice, self-defense, or just peace of mind. The inconvenience imposed by bans on extended-ammunition clips or waiting periods to buy a gun might seem trivial compared with the deaths and injuries that occur when someone like Loughner goes on a rampage. And if the only negative from these controls were such inconveniences, society might reasonably accept that cost, assuming these controls prevent some acts of violence.

But mild controls don’t always stay mild; more often, they evolve into strict limits on guns, bordering on outright prohibition. And this isn't just slippery-slope speculation; a century ago most countries had few gun controls, yet today many have virtual bans on private ownership. Some of these countries (the U.K. and Japan) have low violence rates that might seem to justify strict controls, yet others experience substantial or extreme violence (Brazil and Mexico).

More broadly, comparisons between states and countries  - as well as social-science research - provide no consistent support for the claim that gun controls lower violence.

Strict controls and prohibition, moreover, don't eliminate guns any more than drug prohibition stops drug trafficking and use. Prohibition might deter some potential gun owners, but mainly those who would own and use guns responsibly.

Triumph of the Slippery Slope Argument on Gun Control?

The answer is, the argument Obama lost was not over limited background checks but on the role of the federal government when it comes to regulating guns. There's a good reason for this: Obama originally and publicly pushed for a so-called assault weapons ban, but the votes for it weren't there - not even close. The White House's response to the failure of the gun ban was not to accept public opinion on it but rather to promise (threaten?) they would be back later for the gun ban, and would not back down. Thus Obama communicated quite clearly to the public that the background checks were, if the president got his way, only the beginning of the administration’s renewed efforts to chip away at gun ownership.

The Post report concludes:

To their credit, the president and his White House tried like hell to emphasize that the proposals in the bill were ones that drew support across party lines. But, their failure to make that case effectively speaks to the entrenched views much of the country holds on guns. The conclusion? Most people simply weren’t really listening to the argument President Obama was trying to make.

That's only partly true. They were listening to the argument Obama was trying to make in the context of the wider argument he has been making all along. The public and their representatives didn’t ignore the president. On the contrary, they listened carefully, and voted accordingly.