Democrat Crocodile Tears and Gun Control

Congressman Louie Gohmert (R, TX) confronted Democrats during their gun control sit-in [Wednesday] night, shouting instead about the threat of radical Islam.

“Radical Islam killed these people!” he yelled during a speech by [Congressman (D, CA) Brad Sherman…referring to the Orlando terror attack.

A…Democrat…participating in the temper tantrum sit-in shouted back Don’t let terrorists have a gun! which only shows the disingenuousness of the House Democrats, if not their outright dishonesty.  That response is only a cynically offered straw man, and the Democrats should be encouraged to keep their dollies to themselves.

No one is arguing for letting terrorists—Islamic or otherwise—have guns.  The question, as Democrats know full well, is confronting and destroying terrorists like those that inflicted Orlando, San Bernardino, and on and on.  The first step in this is recognizing terrorism when it occurs and not pretending these are gun crimes so excuses for disarming Americans can be manufactured.  The second step in recognizing this is recognizing who the terrorists are and not pretending they’re isolated gun-toting criminals.  The third step in this is protecting the rights of honest Americans’ ability to defend themselves.

But as Gohmert put in a subsequent interview with Fox and Friends [emphasis added]

They were violating just a whole myriad of rules, and it didn’t matter at all.

Indeed, nor rule nor law matters to Democrats when they are inconvenient to Democrats out to make political points for personal political gain.

Keep it in mind this fall.

Wear It Proudly

The American Association of University Professors has decided to “place on its censure list” the University of Missouri-Columbia for the latter’s temerity in firing Melissa Click—of student journalist assault infamy—for her misbehavior.

The university should make this action by the AAUP a part of its marketing and fund-raising campaigns.  The censure of an organization that actively supports the misbehavior of one of its own is a thing about which the UoM-C can be proud and about which it should brag.

Tragedy Equals Excuse to Inflict Gun Controls

That’s the focus and modus operandi of the Democrats.

Congressional Democrats are renewing their push for gun control measures in the wake of the Orlando terror massacre, arguing the best way to prevent suspected terrorists from carrying out acts of violence is to legally limit their access to firearms.

They’re right this far—certainly such limits would be a large help.  The problem is how to do it without disarming American citizens.  And that leads to the real problem: Democrats don’t care about American citizens and our right—our obligation—to defend ourselves and each other.  Democrats just want us disarmed.

Here’s an example of Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) disingenuousness:

If the FBI believes there is a reasonable chance someone is going to use a gun in a terrorist attack, it should be able to make that determination and block the sale.  If it had that belief about the shooter in Orlando, it should have had the authority to act. But it couldn’t, so we will never know what could have been.

Never mind that if the victims in the Orlando bar or passersby on the street outside had been allowed to be armed, the casualty list would have been far smaller.  No, Schumer’s…foolishness…is here: he carefully elided any definition of “reasonable.”  He carefully omitted to define the parameters of “that belief.”  We’re just supposed to trust his Progressive government.  We’re just supposed to trust a DoJ that strenuously objects to its lawyers being disciplined for lying in open court.  We’re supposed to trust an FBI that demands a backdoor into private citizens’ private communications encryption algorithms and that studiously couldn’t find any criminal wrong-doing in the IRS’ targeting groups of Americans in disfavor with the Progressive government.  Sure.

It doesn’t get any more cynical than that.  Elections have consequences.

Democrats, Gun Control, and Cynical Uses of Tragedy

In Ohio on Tuesday, former Governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat running for the Senate, called on Republican Senator Rob Portman to reverse his position on the watch list legislation from Ms Feinstein [Democratic Senator from California].

“The constant has been that these crimes are committed with guns—and that our leaders in Washington like Senator Portman are not taking simple, common sense steps to keep weapons out of the hands of those who would do us harm,” Mr Strickland wrote in a Medium post.

This is disingenuous on its face.  The constant is that these crimes were committed in gun-free zones, where both the victims and others present were completely unarmed and had no way to protect themselves—which the killers knew.

Strickland knows this full well, but in the words (without too much deviation from the original) of an earlier Obama advisor, Strickland will never let a tragedy go to waste.

Obama’s High Dudgeon

A carefully manufactured one, too.  The Wall Street Journal has an accurate read on President Barack Obama’s (D) constructed ire.

“For a while now the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this Administration and me for not using the phrase ‘radical Islam,'” Mr Obama said Tuesday, using his preferred acronym for Islamic State.  “That’s the key, they tell us.  We cannot beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish?  What exactly would it change?”

Since the President asked, allow us to answer.  …  If the US is under attack, Americans deserve to hear their President say exactly who is attacking us and why.  You cannot effectively wage war, much less gauge an enemy’s strengths, without a clear idea of who you are fighting.

Mr Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” also betrays his failure to understand the sources of Islamic State’s legitimacy and thus its allure to young Muslim men.  The threat is religious and ideological.

Obama also said this:

Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. … There’s no magic to the phrase of radical Islam.  It’s a political talking point.

And yet, here he is, making it a political talking point.  As well as repeating his lack of understanding of what our enemy is and so preventing himself from constructing a means of destroying it while also preventing Defense from constructing such a means and then acting on it.  As well as repeating his lack of understanding of why it’s important to accurately name our enemy.  The idea of accurately identifying our enemy is not to “make it go away.”  It’s to help in accurately understanding our enemy so we can destroy it.

The term “radical Islam” plainly is extremely important to Obama, too, despite his emotional denial of the importance of it; his seven and a half year refusal to use the term to identify the terrorists demonstrates that.  His steadfast refusal to identify these terrorists, to say who they are, also says far more about his failure to do his duty regarding our nation’s safety, and it says far more about his level of immorality in that failure than it says about any of his critics who decry his failure.

Talk about playing politics with terrorism.  Jeez.

Elections have consequences.