XDA

Here is a heart-felt but fairly ignorant opinion piece about gun control by Amy Sullivan at the New Republic. There are more than a few ironies therein. She can't see why our leadership won't try to pass more gun control laws in the wake of several high profile shootings lately. Opening quote:

Earlier this morning, a man with a gun opened fire outside the Empire State Building in busy downtown Manhattan. Last night, 19 people were shot across the city of Chicago in seven different incidents. Thirteen of those victims were shot within one 30-minute period. A man walked into the Washington, DC building that houses the Family Research Council last week and shot a security guard. At the beginning of this month, a white supremacist shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, wounding four others. And we are barely one month removed from the horrific mass shooting that killed twelve and wounded a sickening 58 other people in a movie theater in Aurora, CO.

New York remains the last bastion for banning private ownership of hand guns (for all but a few "influential" citizens via the Sullivan Law). Funny how that didn't stop the Empire State Building shooting. Perhaps the Sullivan Law is not enough of a ban to prevent such things. Oh, and in Chicago, where the black on black murder rate is sky high, the city still has very restrictive laws since the outright handgun ban was declared unconstitutional under the 14th and 2nd Amendments in McDonald v. Chicago. Perhaps the huge number of shootings in Chicago, both before and after McDonald, somehow supplies empirical data that gun control actually works. The same is to be said for D.C., the third place Ms. Sullivan mentions, which still makes it very hard for citizens to keep and bear handguns despite the striking down of the outright ban in Heller.

Moving on. Ms. Sullivan says, after dismissing Mitt Romney's idea about changing the heart of the murder as pie in the sky "magical" thinking:

But a policy can make it harder for a gunman to obtain weapons that mow down large numbers of victims in minutes or seconds. A policy can make it harder for someone with a history of violence—domestic assault, for example—to purchase a gun.

By policy, she means gun law; she just doesn't want to use those words. And how is the gun law supposed to stop a criminal intending to "mow down a number of victims in minutes or seconds" from breaking the law banning assault weapons, for example? Is the guy inclined to break one of the most ancient and sacred prohibitions (Thou shall not murder) going to reconsider his evil ways when he merely seeks to obtain a prohibited weapon, or is he far more likely to break that law than he is actually to start murdering people?

Oh, and Ms. Sullivan. We already have a law that makes it harder for someone with a history of domestic assault to purchase a gun; it's called the Lautenberg Amendment (18 USC Section 922 (g)(9)) You know, doing just the tiniest bit of research into existing gun laws might give your opinion a tad more credibility here.

Ms. Sullivan then goes somewhat hysterical about certain places to carry weapons:

New polling by the Public Religion Research Institute shows just how extreme the views of those who identify with the Tea Party are on guns. In a survey released last week, PRRI asked whether people should be allowed to carry a concealed firearm in a church or other place of worship. (The survey was conducted three days after the Sikh temple shooting.) Most Americans—including most Republicans—say they should not (76% overall). Only 9 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of Republicans support concealed weapons in houses of worship. Among Tea Partiers? A majority—55 percent—think Americans should be able to bring their weapons into church along with their Bibles.

For Ms. Sullivan, members of the Tea Party are "extreme" to believe we have the right to carry weapons to church, along with our Bibles. Huh? Perhaps she is as unfamiliar with this story, or this one, as she is with Frank Lautenberg's contribution to diminishing our 2nd Amendment freedoms.

Righteous armed people can prevent gun free zone slaughters.

You see, if you say certain areas gun free zones, all you've done is disarm the law abiding there. Bad people can actually still bring a gun into the zone, but then there is no good guy who can effectively stop the gunman. A lot of schools are gun free zones and a lot of schools have mass shootings. The Sikh Temple was a gun free zone (although Sikh men are religiously bound to always carry a weapon, they have made it a small knife, the Kirpan, not much use against a Springfield X-D--more's the pity). The theater in Aurora, which had the mass shooting that was so horrific and sickening to Ms. Sullivan, was a gun free zone.

Who's engaging in magical thinking to believe gun free zones are actually safe places?

There was no one armed there to stop the shooting.

I am still waiting for a mass shooting at a gun show. Anyone care to wager if that will ever happen?

Does anyone think Ms. Sullivan is intellectually capable of knowing why there are no mass shootings at gun shows?

Labels: Gun Control; Ignorance; Amy Sullivan