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On the renewed push for gun control

First, the left will never ever stop.  Ever.  This you know, and this you’ve read me write about here for like, ever.

But disturbingly, what we’re seeing now is a kind of very cynical politicization of grief that goes beyond grief into something else:  a desire to exact revenge against anyone, in any way, for actions committed by someone very specific, in a very specific way.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in the Sandy Hook lobbying efforts of families of victims, who have taken to the road to engage in a kind of repulsive emotional blackmail against lawmakers whose job it is to stand up for our natural rights.

The intellectual justification for this push we see from people like Newtown Police Chief  Michael Kehoe in his testimony before the Connecticut legislature, where he argued

“When these freedoms are cause of enormous pain for Americans that we have felt over the past several years, with the many mass murders we have experienced, then it is time to sacrifice portions of these entitlements to change the culture of society.”

— Which is of course utter bullshit, and the hallmark of one who would prefer a police state to a free society.  If Kehoe wants to “sacrifice portions of these” rights — not “entitlements,”  as he tries to slip in but natural rights that shall not be infringed, and not his, mind you, but ours — he is welcome to try to push for a Constitutional amendment that rescinds the Second Amendment protections granted to a free people in the Bill of Rights.  Short of that, he can get stuffed.

And so too can the traveling maudlin show that is being promoted by the mainstream press and the various anti-gun organizations, up to and including the current administration.

For instance, the New York Daily News recounts a confrontation between the daughter of a victim and a GOP lawmaker, Senator Kelly Ayotte, who voted quite sensibly voted against gun measures that would have done nothing to prevent the tragedy, and would only serve to take away rights from those inclined to follow the law:

The most dramatic moment came when [slain Sandy Hook Principal Dawn] Hochsprung’s daughter, Erica Lafferty, spoke up.

“You had mentioned … owners of gun stores that the expanded background checks would harm,” Erica Lafferty said to Ayotte, according to NBC News.

“I am just wondering why the burden of my mother being gunned down in the halls of her elementary school isn’t more important than that,” Lafferty said.

The senator responded meekly.

“Erica, I, certainly let me say — I’m obviously so sorry,” Ayotte said, according to NBC News.

“And, um, I think that ultimately when we look at what happened in Sandy Hook, I understand that’s what drove this whole discussion — all of us want to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” she added.

Look: no one is trying to minimize the grief of these families. But having said that, the families, in turn, have a responsibility not to exploit that grief at the expense of the rest of us, whose hearts are just as broken about a senseless act of murder as any on the anti-Second Amendment side of the equation.  To suggest otherwise is repulsive — and, from my perspective, is deserving of the kind of harsh words I offer as a proxy for Senator Ayotte.
It may seem harsh and unhelpful, but this is a natural right on the line here — a right that I rely upon to protect myself, my home, my family, and my freedom — and we simply can’t let grief pimps guilt us into surrendering it.  So the proper response to Ms Lafferty’s question — which wasn’t so much a question as an accusation couched as a poignant plea — is this:
“Your mother was gunned down with a weapon stolen by a guy who killed his own mother by shooting her.“And perhaps had someone in the school been armed besides the murderer with the stolen weapon, your mother would still be alive. I know that’s no real comfort, but it has the luxury of being the truth. No extra burden put on law abiding citizens would have stopped that horror from happening. But perhaps had the murderer believed he wasn’t walking in to a turkey shoot, he would have thought twice.

“Oh, and pimping out your own dead mother with the object of denying law abiding citizens their natural right to protect themselves — something your mother couldn’t do thanks to laws passed in your state — that’s some sick-in-the-head shit.”

The more diplomatically-inclined among you might wish to leave out that last bit, but the truth is, that last bit is important, too:  we needn’t continue to pretend, out of a sense of social propriety, that it is okay to give absolute moral authority to those who are so clearly bent on using a personal tragedy for political gamesmanship.
It is impossible, months after the tragedy, to believe that Ms Lafferty doesn’t already know the particulars of the crime — that the “gun lobby” had nothing to do with her mother’s death, and that a lack of “assault weapons” bans or “hi-capacity” magazine restrictions or “universal background checks” weren’t responsible in any way for what happened.
To pretend otherwise is to lie in the service of a political ideal, not to express grief.  And at that point, we are under no compulsion to react with kid gloves.
We are sorry her mother was senselessly killed.  But her desire to take away our rights as a result — knowing as she does that depriving us of those rights would in no way have saved her mother — means she’s nothing more at this point than a political shill.
And her waving around the bloody shirt of her mother is repulsive to me.
The truth hurts, but there it is.  Deal with it.  And make sure your risk-averse Congresspeople do the same, particularly those in the House, because it’s becoming clear to me that after certain minor adjustments to receive cover, several of our lawmakers (and the Dems who stood against gun control) are going to buckle and punt this over to the House, where Boehner and Cantor and Paul Ryan have each already expressed a willingness to listen to “common sense” proposals.
Which in the absence of a commitment to the Hastert Rule means they are willing once again to caucus with Democrats and screw over their constituencies.
And we simply can’t let that happen.  Again.
(h/t nr, RI Red)

 

 

17 Replies to “On the renewed push for gun control”

  1. Silver Whistle says:

    O/T

    Three more suspects taken into custody in Boston bombing case

    Given how full of crap the media have been about everything on this case, I’ll wait and see.

  2. BigBangHunter says:

    – The simple unspoken truth is that no one, nada, knows what the hell to do about the public mental health problem, so we’ll just look over here on the bridge for the lost watch where the light from the street lamps is so much better. Dysfunctional society/politics at its finest, and the Left is leading the parade.

  3. sdferr says:

    a desire to exact revenge against anyone

    Exhibiting a human disposition toward cruelty, to reach to injustice in the demand for misjudged justice. We might say an irrational disposition (it makes for enemies). An evil given to pile on evil suffered.

    Hence the justice and propriety of the rebuke.

  4. Spiny Norman says:

    Isn’t it true that Adam Lanza had been denied the purchase of a firearm because of a background check? Or was it because he didn’t want one because he knew it would be a “do not sell” (or however that works in Conn.)?

  5. Spiny Norman says:

    BBH,

    – The simple unspoken truth is that no one, nada, knows what the hell to do about the public mental health problem…

    “Deinstitutionalization” hasn’t been a rousing success for society as a whole, no.

  6. leigh says:

    Spiny, not quite. He had to wait for two weeks or some such according to the Connecticut state rules. He got impatient, whacked mom and we know the rest.

  7. geoffb says:

    Peter King [RINO-NY] and 109 Democrats have submitted HR-1565, which is Shumer-Manchin-Toomey, to the House.

  8. Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe very obviously failed to pay attention in Civics class when they discussed the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Why he isn’t immediately drummed out of office for putting forth such a heinous set of statist falsehoods hurts my head.

  9. mojo says:

    Not giving up shit here, boss! Sorry about your mom getting wasted by the crazy, but no. Not now, not ever.

  10. Ernst Schreiber says:

    RE: The Politicization of Grief:

    When the personal is political, as it has been for two generations now, the political ineluctably becomes personal, but only personal.

    The Res Publica? None of your damn business.

  11. Gayle says:

    Grief porn. With no shortage of willing pimps.

  12. Merovign says:

    If waving the bloody shirts gets people power, they will wave bloody shirts.

    Kind of why, metaphorically speaking, the Geneva Conventions says not to use human shields, but then says hitting human shields is not a violation. Because if it was, all the bad guys would use human shields all the time.

  13. leigh says:

    Grief porn.

    That is excellent, Gayle. I am stealing it.

  14. newrouter says:

    the show “of force” was a farce

    Boston Manhunt ‘Missed the Boat’ as Police Skip Street

  15. leigh says:

    You know, nr, it’s a good thing Unnamed Citizen was a smoker. Young Tsarnaev would’ve been but a memory when they pulled that tarp back to get the boat ready for Memorial Day weekend.

  16. newrouter says:

    if the state wasn’t filled with massholes there might be some outrage over the fascist reaction of the demonrats

Comments are closed.