Not a day has passed since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that some idiot on the right hasn't made an excuse for why we shouldn't take a different approach to gun violence. The Patriot Of The Day happens to be John Hawkins, a "professional blogger" who runs Right Wing News, but writing a column Saturday for TownHall.com. He seems to be under the impression that we're the only ones calling for change, despite evidence to the contrary:
There are now calls from the Left for gun control legislation in response to Adam Lanza's unconscionable mass killing of innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary.
He asks us to consider this:
However, very few people seem to be asking the most basic question of all before getting started: What gun control legislation could have stopped Adam Lanza?
To which he answers rhetorically:
The answer is "none."
Putting aside this opening "one-size-fits-all" nonsense, let's take a look at those ten rather
flaccid 'facts' he has for us:
1) The school was already a "gun free zone;" so obviously that wasn't effective. Of course, the sort of people who would respect a "gun free zone" in the first place are the very ones you wouldn't have to worry about carrying a gun; so it's an almost useless designation.
His solution is to do nothing. Don't create more gun-free zones, because they failed to scare-off Adam Lanza, and because his armed citizen posse can't protect us as well with all those restrictions in place.
2) What about closing the supposed "gun show loophole?" Well, since Lanza killed his own mother and used her legally acquired guns for his rampage, making it harder for googly-eyed loners to acquire weapons wouldn't have changed a thing.
An open loophole will enable his citizen posse recruits to expedite their weapon acquisition process, allowing them to begin security duties much sooner than they'd be able to otherwise. A closed loophole, by contrast,
couldn't possibly prevent a lunatic who
did choose to acquire his weapon this way from doing so. Of course.
3) Some people are calling for a ban on automatic weapons. Setting aside the fact that the regulation of fully automatic weapons is already tighter than Spandex, Adam Lanza didn't use a fully automatic weapon.
Who could possibly think a ban on weapons so essential for hunting and home defense would prevent their use by a future lunatic? Not to mention...
Adam Lanza didn't use one...
4) Then there are calls for the "Assault Weapons Ban" to be reinstated. One problem: the semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 rifle that Lanza used wasn't covered by the bill. So, his mother could have bought that exact same gun with a sheriff looking over her shoulder while the ban was in place.
How about an assault weapons ban that
does include the Bushmaster .223 rifle, and every other variation thereof? Would that help solve the problem?
No, because he finds a reason why that wouldn't work either:
5) We could, of course, pass a newly updated "Assault Weapons Ban" that covers the semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 rifle. Then, gun manufacturers would try to create weapons that can get around the ban. They would probably be successful. Even if they weren't, it's not as if Lanza was battling Marines. When you're a coward who's attacking unarmed children, any gun will work.
In that case, maybe we should set our sights
even higher and clamp-down on the gun manufacturers
themselves, since their insatiable appetite for revenue appears to be a problem that needs an intervention.
Besides, who needs all this heavy firepower anyway? It's a question he himself answers when he says, "its not as if Lanza was battling Marines." Indeed, and neither is anybody else who owns these weapons, until the secession thing happens, at least.
6) We could also ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, but given the 3-5 second reload time, that would have been a minor inconvenience to Adam Lanza at worst. After all, it's not as if a group of small children were going to be able to scamper away or gang up on him during a four second window.
Maybe he can tell us why high-capacity magazines are necessary for anything other than maximizing body count at minimal inconvenience.
But...but...but Adam Lanza didn't use one...
The author of the article now invites us to have a look at what a Hellish world we'd inhabit without the Second Amendment, and even more frightening, with gun control laws:
Let's also pretend that the American public would go along with the following laws and attempts to implement them wouldn't lead to wide scale violence and unrest.
Translated: All the
terrorist cells militias with their military-grade weaponry would activate. Yet another point in favor of putting an end to this Mr. Macho Commando Weapon idiocy.
The idea of legions of lunatics armed with near-military grade weapons rising up to defend against the war on guns, and all the "collateral damage" that would inevitably result, really makes me wonder if their priorities are in the right place.
Continuing down the author's dark path into post-gun Hell, we at last reach the climax of their collective hallucination—so far removed from what anyone is even contemplating at this point in time, that I'll just truncate and list them:
7) Congress could ban the manufacture and sale of bullets and magazines. [...]
8) Congress could also ban the manufacture and sale of guns. [...]
9) Then, there's the most extreme step of all: Congress could ban the ownership of guns. [...]
10) Let's go Steven Spielberg on this problem and assume space aliens show up and use some bizarre technology to get rid of all guns. [...]
After that last one especially, there should be little doubt left in anyone's mind that these people prefer doing nothing, out of irrational fear for the "lives" of their guns, over taking any steps that might prevent future Adam Lanza-like individuals from threatening the lives
of actual people.