Thanks once again to The Other McCain for the Rule Five linkery!
On to today’s topic: Stupidity. The once-respectable (around 1940, maybe) New York Times is apparently staffed with imbeciles, cretins and nincompoops. Reason recently took apart their editorial advocating banning self-defense by the law-abiding as a means to combat Islamic terrorists. Excerpt:
The New York Times for the first time since they were mad at Warren Harding will publish a front-page editorial on gun control in today’s paper.
The Times is appalled by murders and terror, and especially appalled by instruments used in the latest act of terror in San Bernardino.
The Times could take some national pride in the fact that we as a nation have made amazing progress in curbing the scourge of gun violence, cutting it nearly in half in the past couple of decades.
If the Times got its way, their confiscation program would almost certainly require a buyback, as in much-lauded Australia. Enormous law enforcement effort and time would have to go into trying to enforce the prohibition as well, if it were to have any meaning.
Also from Reason: How Background Checks And An “Assault Weapons” Ban Failed in San Bernardino.
Let’s forget for a moment the utter and abject failure of gun-control laws to control violent crime – anywhere, anytime. Let’s also forget for a moment that gun control legislation – like California’s “universal” background checks and “assault weapons” bans didn’t and wouldn’t do dick to prevent another such massacre as was perpetrated by two Islamist shitbags in San Bernardino. Let’s forget for a moment that possibly – not certainly, but possibly – a person in the group with a concealed handgun may have been able to take some action to prevent or terminate the attack, whereas the completely helpless people at the event were able to do precisely nothing. Let’s also forget that the Second Amendment would prevent (at least, in a sane world – damn little evidence that we live in one these days) the mass confiscation of firearms.
Has the New York Times, whose editorial staff these days is only slightly to the left of Leon Trotsky, actually stopped to consider what implications of their proposal would be?
Imagine 160 million gun owners being asked to give up some or all of their firearms. Imagine, let’s say, one percent – 1.6 million gun owners channeling their inner Leonidas and saying “come and get them.”
Imagine a significant proportion of law enforcement – I’m only guessing, but over half seems reasonable – refusing to enforce the law. We already have a precedent for that here in Colorado, where the vast majority of our county Sheriffs are refusing to enforce the nitwitted “high capacity” magazine ban.
Imagine the consequences of passing laws that cannot be enforced, and the consequences of such an open, massive event of civil disobedience, the likes of which have not been seen in the United States since 1861.
If the New York Times editorial staff had their heads any farther up their own asses, they’d be looking at the insides of their own windpipes.
