Aye, aye, aye…
Gun fetishists are in complete freakout mode right now because they realize that the rest of the country is no longer buying their tripe about the evil unconstitutionality of controlling guns and ammunition in this country. They are so mindless about this that they have latched onto one of the weirdest reasons imaginable for not passing any gun laws.
I’m going to try to explain this but, I’ll be frank, their “logic” is anything but logical. If you don’t follow it, that’s completely understandable.
It started with Meet this Press this past Sunday. David Gregory had NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre on and LaPierre proceeded to double down on his positively absurd argument that there isn’t a single gun control law that could be passed that would have a positive impact on gun violence in this country. In fact, according to LaPierre, we need to pass laws to control video games and violent movies because those things are what is responsible for gun violence, not the ubiquitous presence of guns in our society. If only we could put over 100,000 new guns into our schools, THEN we could solve this problem of guns in our schools once and for all, according to LaPierre and the National Gun Fetishists Association (NRA).
During that interview, Gregory held up a 30-round magazine and asked LaPierre a fair question:
Here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. Now, isn’t it possible if we got rid of these, if we replaced them and said, ‘Well, you can only have a magazine that carries five bullets or ten bullets,’ isn’t it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?
LaPierre’s response?
“I don’t believe that’s going to make one difference.”
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Of course. Not when there’s all those violent video games and movies out there. We’re powerless until those are dealt with.
(Don’t worry, my eyes are rolling dramatically, as well.)
As it turns out, possession of that clip is illegal in Washington, D.C. The conservative blog Patriot Perspective posted a piece saying that Gregory had broken the law by showing the magazine on his show. Their “reporting” on this was picked up by Drudge, Breitbart.com, Michelle Malkin, The Blaze and a site called Legal Insurrection who has breathlessly been “covering” this story. The right seems to be using two specific explanations why this is all clear evidence that high-capacity magazines should not be regulated:
- We already have lots of gun laws so we don’t need more.
- It’s easy to break gun laws because there are so many of them. See? Even David Gregory broke one!
I don’t know if Gregory broke the law. There is an ongoing investigation and emails have turned up saying that NBC asked for permission to have the magazine and were denied.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn if he did or he didn’t. The dude is a journalist showing America that all we’re talking about here are reasonable regulations that make sense and aren’t onerous to anyone except the most ardent gun fetishist. The Washington, D.C. police will resolve this intelligently, I’m sure. But, at the end of the day, this “story” has nothing to do with the conversation many of are desperate that we have in this country and one that the NRA has been keeping us from having for decades.
The fact that we already have gun laws on the books does NOT mean that more are necessarily inappropriate, particularly when we’re talking about banning assault weapons or limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines. Neither is the fact that gun laws are restrictive a compelling argument about further reasonable restrictions. Frankly, I want gun laws to be restrictive. They should be. These are guns we are talking about, weapons used for one purpose: to kill or injure other humans. So, yeah, restrictive is fine by me and not a valid excuse at all.
The freakout by the gun fetishists is actually pretty comical. They’ve gone so far as to put up a petition on WhiteHouse.gov demanding that David Gregory be “formally charged for violation” of a Washington, D.C. gun law.
Gun fetishists have crossed the line into a sort of self-parody when they use something like a journalist showing an outlawed magazine as justification for preventing sensible gun and ammunition control. It’s not a coherent argument. It’s not a rational argument. It is, in fact, a joke. They are only hanging their hat on this incredibly lame shiny distraction from the real debate we should be having because the days of ignoring this cancer in our society are over and they know it.
