By Shawn Mitchell
Monday, April 08, 2013
Our government says it absolutely cannot keep track of
its own borders or the 12 million people who live here illegally, but, it
absolutely can keep track of the purchases, transfers, and components of
hundreds of millions of guns and gun owners. It’s hell bound determined to try.
It would be prudent to distrust the priorities and
intentions of such a government and astute to pay attention to its inevitable
idiocies.
Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, the lead sponsor of one of
the president’s lynchpin bills—to ban high capacity magazines--embarrassed
herself not once or twice, but thrice last week, and not just herself, but the
president and his agenda. DeGette’s missteps reflect the clumsy grasping of gun
controllers nationally and, also reflect the willful abuses played out in a
battle test ground in her home state of Colorado.
In the tumult of debate over state and federal gun
measures, the Denver Post sponsored a forum on gun control last week where
DeGette explained the genius behind banning high capacity magazines:
"These are ammunition, they're bullets, so the people who have those now,
they're going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of
these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time
because the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more
available."
DeGette attempted
damage control in a quickly published Post OpEd, but her remarks are
staggeringly ignorant of a subject she claims to have “taken the lead on” for
years. Magazines aren’t bullets; they hold bullets. They are eminently
reloadable. It would be very bad conservation and environmentalism to discard
them after a single use.
DeGette might as
well have advocated a ban on large-bowl marijuana pipes: “These are buds;
they’re weed. People are going to smoke them. So, if you ban them in the
future, the number of these pipes will decrease because the pot will be smoked,
and they won’t be available anymore."
Within hours after the forum, her office leapt into
damage control only to make things worse. A spokeswoman asserted the
Representative meant to refer to “clips” not magazines.
Wrong again.
Besides the fact that clips generally are as reusable as magazines, they are
not the subject of DeGette’s bill. It bans magazines. There is no reason on
earth she would have been referring to them.
Finally, at the same forum, DeGette answered a senior
citizen questioning her about having to rely on police response, rather than
self defense. No problem, she reassured him, Denver police will be there within
minutes, and, she told her graying questioner, “You’d probably be dead anyway.”
Still waiting for AARP’as outraged response to hate speech.
This is the face of progressive gun restrictors:
ignorant, unyielding in error, and coldly arrogant.
The national debate was presaged in DeGette’s home state
of Colorado, an Obama laboratory project, where Michael Bloomberg funded a
lobbying campaign and Vice President Biden called to strong arm wavering
Democrats to push the national agenda into a western showcase talking point: if
we can pass it here, we can pass it anywhere.
Pushing a slate of anti-gun bills including a ban on high
capacity magazines, universal background checks for transfers, and new fees for
the checks for private gun buyers, Colorado lawmakers disregarded public
opinion, facts, and gaping flaws in their bills. They pressed to seize a moment
of opportunity and to satisfy the drivers of the national agenda.
There were several revealing moments on the path to the
governor’s desk. A witless state rep. argued that women can’t be trusted to
know if they’re in danger of rape; they might get nervous and “pop, pop” an
innocent passer-by. Another lawmaker argued that for self defense, women should
relay on convenient items like ball point pens. And another lawmaker, a woman
no less, lectured an actual victim of rape that she shouldn’t fight for gun
rights, because the statistics aren’t on her side.
A state senator argued against exceptions to new
restrictions for veterans. “Many of them come home with mental problems” she
charmingly explained. Icing the cake, Colorado’s Senate President John Morse
admitted on MSNBC he urged Democratic Senators to ignore the deluge of opinion
in calls, letters, and emails opposing the anti-gun bills, because “It can wear
you down.”
The package that reached Governor John Hickenlooper’s
desk was so rushed and riddled with error that he issued a signing statement,
trying to explain and mitigate the flaws and unenforceable provisions in the
bills he was signing. The statement was meaningless though, because unlike the
US president and the Department of Justice, Colorado’s governor has no
authority or supervision over local police or prosecutors.
Flaws and defects are unimportant. Passing something on
gun control is important. President Obama was delighted to fly to Colorado last
week (apparently his jet fuel for propaganda trips is exempt from
sequestration) to spike the football.
One small step for gun control. One giant leap for the
Obama agenda.
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