Tag Archives: freedom

Progressive Gun Control Agenda

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Here are some of their thoughts.  A more complete listing of their proposals is at The Dailey Caller:

Reinstate and strengthen a prospective federal ban on assault weapons: These weapons are designed to fire a large number of rounds in a short period of time.  They constitute a lethal threat to law enforcement and other first responders.

This is…foolish.  There is no such thing as an “assault” weapon, other than a carefully manufactured-by-legislation definition.  Not even the military has “assault weapons.”

Moreover, the threat to law enforcement and first responders from this sort of mythical weapon, or the semiautomatic rifles on which this mythology is purported to be modeled, is far less than is the threat of pistols, knives, clubs, fire (especially when responding to arson fires), drunk drivers, and so on.  This excuse fixes a nonexistent problem.

Reinstate a prospective federal ban on assault magazines: These magazines hold more than ten rounds and allow a shooter to inflict mass damage in a short period of time without reloading. Banning them will save lives.

This, too, is nonsense.  There is no such thing as an “assault magazine,” other than a carefully manufactured-by-legislation definition.  Here, too, even the military has no such things.

Moreover, the threat to lives from these artifices pales compared to the real causes of killings, some of which were enumerated just above.

Both of these, also are useful—critically so—in allowing private citizens to defend themselves.

There are these, too:

Require a background check for every gun sale, while respecting reasonable exceptions for cases such as gifts between family members and temporary loans for sporting purposes: It is estimated that four out of ten gun buyers do not go through a background check when purchasing a firearm because federal law only requires these checks when someone buys a gun from a federally licensed dealer.

The rest of this item is a red herring; I’ll ignore it here.  Four out of ten sales don’t go through a background check because they’re private sales from one citizen to another.  With the cost of a background check running to hundreds of dollars, this serves only to suppress those private sales.  On top of this, requiring a background check for a private sale represents an atrocious invasion of privacy for the purchaser by the seller—even if the seller has no intention of the invasion other than an arbitrary, superfluous law requires it.

Strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database: Immediate action is needed to ensure the information in the NICS database is up to date.  Many federal and state agencies remain deficient in transferring important records to the database.

No.  This is simply Progressives demanding government compile dossiers on honest American citizens on the off chance that a small number might prove unsavory.  This is nothing more than a presumption of guilt without due process—without even probable cause.  The United States isn’t France.

Some of their thoughts are on the right track, though.

Pass legislation aimed specifically at cracking down on illegal gun trafficking and straw-purchasing: Straw-purchasing is when a prohibited buyer has someone with no criminal history walk into a gun store, pass a background check and purchase a gun with the purpose of giving it to the prohibited buyer.

Nice idea, but it’s not necessary, and we already have too many mostly redundant laws on the books.  And the areas of non-overlap are nothing more than sources of confusion and litigation.  Moreover, this is a law honored in the breach, as DoJ’s Fast and Furious illustrates.

Prosecute those prohibited buyers who attempt to purchase firearms and others who violate federal firearm laws: Federal law bars nine categories of people—including felons and those prohibited because of mental illness—from buying guns.

Absolutely, enforce the laws on the books, including applying the sanctions the laws supply.

Close the holes in our mental-health system and make sure that care is available for those who need it: Congress must improve prevention, early intervention, and treatment of mental illness while working to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness.

This is on the right track, but government involvement must be absolutely minimal.  In the Soviet Union, the government defined disagreeing with the government as a form of mental illness.  We don’t need the USSR’s gulag reborn here.

Support responsible gun ownership: Congress should support safety training, research aimed at developing new gun safety technologies and the safe storage of firearms.

Certainly. As soon as Congress has reformed our tax code to simplify it and lower rates in parallel with greatly reduced Federal spending, so our economy can finally recover and we as a nation can afford this sort of expenditure.  At that point, Congress should begin jawboning with the States to do this sort of thing.

Given the active interference with individual freedom and responsibility represented by those first few items, though, I have to ask: what problem are the Progressives actually trying to solve—disarming the population they wish to govern, or reducing violence?

Friends, Americans, Countrymen

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With apologies to William Shakespeare, who knew more about politics and economics than generally is appreciated, here is a possible eulogy if we’re not very careful.

Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury liberty, not to praise it.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with individual liberty. The noble Obama
Hath told you it was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath it answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Obama and the rest—
For Obama is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men—
Come I to speak in liberty’s funeral.
It was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Obama says liberty is ambitious;
And Obama is an honourable man.
It hath brought morality home to America
Whose prosperity did the general coffers fill:
Did this in liberty seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, liberty wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Obama says it was ambitious;
And Obama is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the taxing
Men thrice reduced them,
Whence men did thrice prosper: was this ambition?
Yet Obama says “investment” is less ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Obama spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love liberty once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for it?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with liberty,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

…

But yesterday the word of liberty might
Have stood against the world; now lies it there.
And none so poor to do it reverence.
O masters, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Obama wrong, and Reid wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.
But here’s a parchment with the seal of liberty;
I found it in its closet, ’tis its will:
Let but the commons hear this testament—
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read—
And they would go and kiss dead liberty’s wounds
And dip their napkins in its sacred blood,
Yea, beg a hair of it for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.

Perfection

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It can be costly, especially for those not directly involved.

The perfection here is in the attitude of President Barack Obama and his acolytes as demonstrated by their responses to criticism.  Obama is above reproach—perfect—and so dissent must be suppressed and inconvenient law ignored.

Some examples, indicating Obama’s straightforward belief that the only reason people don’t agree with him is because they’re easily manipulated:

Obama’s bellyache, “One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates.  If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it[.]”

(This is especially rich given the way the media have coddled Obama.)

Obama’s whine that House Speaker John Boehner wanted to reach a deal on recent fiscal issues but couldn’t in part because he was vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with the president.

(Notice that: compromising principles is an ethical thing to do….)

There are others:

Juan Williams, on a recent Fox News Sunday episode, saying in all seriousness that Obama had to make the unconstitutional appointments because he couldn’t get his appointments into office any other way.

Because when the law is inconvenient, it’s OK to disregard it.  If you’re the President.  How very Nixonian of both Williams and Obama.

And there’s

Obama’s claim that the only reason folks disagree with his gun control attack on the 2nd Amendment is because they want TV ratings and to sell more guns and ammo.

He left out the bitter clingers.

And the Progressives’ race card:

Jimmy Carter said, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

And [emphasis added]

It is wrong to believe Barack Obama shouldn’t be president because he’s black.  That you have other reasons along with those–even ones that rank higher–doesn’t make it excusable.  Likely those other reasons are themselves tied to Obama being black.

Yet for all his perfection, Obama’s failures make a long list:

  • Obamacare and skyrocketing premiums and other costs
  • Dodd-Frank and its suppression of business effort with regulatory costs
  • EPA attempt to regulate water as a pollutant
  • Obama’s unconstitutional appointments to NLRB, CFPB
  • NLRB’s statement that they’ll ignore the court’s ruling, because they consider it wrong
  • failure to produce a budget
  • refusal to curb spending, debt build-up

Obama may eventually suffer the consequences of the failure of his perfection.  But he’s not the only one who will suffer: he’s inflicting those consequences on the entire nation, on all of us.

Paper Tiger

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We’re in the middle of a war far more damaging, far more threatening to our survival as a free nation, than wars President Barack Obama is so proudly walking away from.  This is a cyberwar that the People’s Republic of China is waging against us, and we’re losing it.  Badly.

One set of incidents includes this:

[Wall Street] Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. said Thursday that the paper’s computer systems had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers, apparently to monitor its China coverage.  New York Times Co disclosed Wednesday night that its flagship newspaper also had been the victim of cyberspying.

Every computer in the NYT was hacked, and every password of every journalist (among other things) was taken.  The reason was the two newspapers’ articles critical of PRC leadership.  And they did this with ease and with impunity.  The hacking went on for months and only recently was stopped, maybe.  And that’s just a couple of newspapers.

There are no consequences for the PRC or for individual hackers, because the US is utterly powerless to do anything.

President Barack Obama is talking and shaking his finger very firmly at the Chinese, however.

The Obama administration is considering more assertive action against Beijing to combat a persistent cyber-espionage campaign it believes Chinese hackers are waging against U.S. companies and government agencies.

And

…the administration is preparing a new National Intelligence Estimate that, when complete, is expected to detail the cyberthreat, particularly from China, as a growing economic problem.  One official said it also will cite more directly a role by the Chinese government in such espionage.

Yeah, that’ll show them.

Erstwhile Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview on her way out the door,

We have to begin making it clear to the Chinese—they’re not the only people hacking us or attempting to hack us—that the United States is going to have to take action to protect not only our government’s, but our private sector, from this kind of illegal intrusions.  There’s a lot that we are working on that will be deployed in the event that we don’t get some kind of international effort under way[.]

This war has been underway for a number of years, our vulnerability is uncorrected, and we’re “going to have to take action?”  We’re not already?  Clinton let the cat out of the bag on our capacity to protect ourselves later in that same interview:

Obviously this can become a very unwelcome and even dangerous tit-for-tat that could be a crescendo of consequences, here at home and around the world, that no one wants to see happen[.]

This administration is afraid to respond, because striking back might angrify those who are hurting us.

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, exposes with his commentary another aspect of the problem:

In the next year there will be an effort to figure out a way to engage the Chinese more energetically.  The issue now is how do we get the Chinese to take this more seriously as a potentially major disruption to the relationship.

This flows, though, from a false premise: the Chinese don’t care about our relationship as much as we do, and they see the relationship materially differently from us.  We’re also too desperate to have a relationship with them.  Indeed, in an aptly titled editorial (“Barbarians at the Digital Gate”), the WSJ notes

…hacking—both for purposes of monitoring and to steal commercial intellectual property or government secrets—has become the Chinese way.

You can see from all the idle chit-chat—we’re still trying to talk to the PRC and still avoiding concrete action—that our government is too timid, too powerless, and too ignorant actually to do anything to protect our country.