UPDATE 8/7: Suddenly I'm getting a lot of visitors from a blog called War on Guns, whose gunsplainer-in-chief, "long-time grassroots armed citizen advocate, David Codrea," operates out of my hometown of Hudson Ohio. (Where I learned to shoot, before I found more constructive fascinations.) Here's how he introduces the post, below: "Who better to dictate your rights than morons who think they're smart?" (That's me!) —DM
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"These guns," an even-keeled, politically circumspect colleague who almost never swears wrote to me yesterday morning, "are pissing me off."
I knew the feeling.
I'd woken up to C-SPAN, where callers were invited to share their thoughts about the mass shootings over the weekend.
An elderly black caller said the reason for the shootings is that one out of every 10 Americans is a racist. He knows, because of all the white people he's met, that's about the percentage he's seen.
An elderly white caller said these young men are killing people because they don't know history, they don't recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and all they do is fool around with their video games and their cell phones.
Another caller said the problem is mental illness.
Another caller said the problem is too many guns.
Another caller said Trump.
Another caller said guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Another caller cited his knowledge as a gun owner and pointed out that semi-automatic handguns are just as dangerous as semi-automatic rifles, and that the only reason people hate assault rifles is that they look "evil."
Every one of those callers had a point.
Except the last caller, who is a bluffer—one of the many in the gun world, who use most people's lack of interest in guns as a form of self defense: the way an imperious literature professor uses most people's lack of interest in Proust, the way a greedy trader uses most people's lack of interest in derivatives, the way a crooked lawyer uses most people's lack of interest in the law: To imply that it's all too infinitely complicated for a lay person to understand—and, if you don't understand all the Byzantine details, you don't get to talk. Leave it to me.
First off, The Bluff is as bogus as it is common. But it's effective, under all but the most extreme conditions. For instance, up to this very day—and despite witnessing many dozens of CNN Shooting & Sobbing Marathons—I've never been tempted to write about guns here, and if you'd have asked me why, I'd have told you, "Gun regulation is not my meat." (But you didn't ask why, because gun regulation is not my meat.)
Secondly? The Gun Bluff is more bogus than the Proust Bluff, the Derivatives Bluff or the Law Bluff. That's because guns, as varied as they are, are not exactly French literature, high finance or codified civilization. They're more like motorcycles. Gun knowledge qualifies you to be a technical consultant on the film, not the fucking director.
And yet, we've allowed the Gun Bluffers to pretty much set U.S. gun policy up to now.
Things aren't going very well. They're going so badly, in fact, that it's time for the simpletons to have a turn—whether the Gun Bluffers like it or not. (As Jim Morrison sang: "They got the guns but we got the numbers.")
Now I gotta warn you, Ph.D.s of Peashooters: Since we are indeed so gun-dumb (not to mention ordnance obtuse), we Bump-Stock Bumpkins are going to make this super simple indeed:
We are going to make it illegal to own anything in this country that's this shape (I drew it from memory, from all the CNN bloodbaths I've seen, not one of which involved any other shape).
With our ban, we won't care if it's an AK-47 or an AR-15 or an official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with an erection.
We won't care if it's a Super Soaker or a throw pillow or a water bong or even a crude drawing on an anti-gun blog post.
We won't even care if we forgot to draw the pistol grip on our model, above, which we did.
This shape doesn't occur in nature. Nothing else is even close to this shape (except possibly evil itself).
And we'll maintain this policy for 10 years. Nah, make it 25. Just to see what happens over time.
Because what do we know, right?
Maybe it won't work. Maybe it will.
It'll be fun to find out!
"Let's do something," my old man used to say at times like this, "even if it's wrong."
Let's see if American life gets better, or American life gets worse—or if American life stays about the same, just with fewer shootings that are less deadly. (And more stylish? Maybe the new crop of handgun shooters will be a bunch of cool-ass pistoleros in ten-gallon hats and fancy chaps!)
Does that sound glib and reckless to you? I know the feeling.
Don't think of it as the government coming to take your semi-automatic assault rifle. Think of it as an adventure, involving guns. Isn't that what you've fantasized about all along?
Does that sound presumptuous and condescending? I know the feeling.
Meanwhile, you may use the time you save now that you're not on the shooting range blowing watermelons to bits, studying Proust (who once challenged a literary critic who accused him of being a homosexual, to a duel in Paris!).
"Proust took his shot first. The bullet hit the ground next to Lorrain’s foot. Lorraine then took aim and fired. His bullet went wide of his mark. But two bullets had been exchanged, and the witnesses agreed that with this meeting, Proust’s honor was restored. Proust and Lorrain would continue to hate each other, but this particular issue and the duel that followed, which was reported on in the newspapers, had been publicly laid to rest once and for all."
Bon spectacle, messeirs! That's the kind of gunplay we need to get back to!
Do I sound stupid? When it comes to guns, stupidity is my core competency.
So… someone who has carried firearms for decades as military, peace officer, and private citizen; who has researched firearms, policy, law, crime stats, and wound trauma; and analyzed studies for decades should not have a say on the subject. But someone who sketches on a kindergarten level should. Got it.
That sketch: Is that supposed to be a firearm or a gerrymandered congressional district? If it’s a firearm, in which direction does it shoot?
And I couldn’t read much past the sketch: Did you volunteer to personally lead the stack for a confiscation raid team?
And have you come up with a way to get the 5,000,000+ stolen firearms which are in circulation?
What is hilarious is that the writer’s crude sketch eloquently but accurately recapitulates the entire foundational approach of the 1994 federal “Assault Weapons” ban.
That ban was based entirely on cosmetics instead of function, because a functional categorization that distinguished “evil” guns from “non evil” guns was impossible via any rational means.
(For more on this subject, see https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-new-york-posts-assault-weapons-editorial-is-nonsensical/ .)
The manufacturers easily evaded every one of the ban features — easily, because they were entirely cosmetic in nature — spurring the sale of even more guns than usual, as buyers invested in the newer, “non-banned” versions.
As autopsied by the National Institute of Justice, the ban had zero observable effect on gun violence, as did the sunset repeal of the ban ten years later. Zero effect.
So to summarize this article, “It worked so impotently last time, let’s do EXACTLY the same thing again and expect different results.”
At least the writer admits, “When it comes to guns, stupidity is my core competency.” What concerns me is hundreds of ignorant politicians, each no more competent than the writer, who “know” they have all the answers and are preparing to shove them down all our throats.
This will not go well. And that’s no “bluff.”
What I don’t understand is why pro-gun control supporters get so rabid about this issue, and let it suck up so much oxygen, but can’t get their act together to organize and unite behind a candidate for President who can beat Trump. Instead they promote having the Democratic candidates kill each other off on national TV – in their own version of El Passo or Dayton or Las Vegas or Colombine and so many others – so that Trump won’t have to sweat the election.
What I don’t understand is why anti-gun control supporters stop at owning AR-15’s when they could be more manly and more recreational by owning tanks and howitzers and perhaps a nuke or two. Doesn’t the Second Amendment expressly allow private ownership of bigger weapons?
And isn’t it oxymoronic to spend the next year or so arguing about hand-guns and bumpstocks and Little Rocket Man, Iran, or our friend Vladimir, when the biggest threats to domestic and national security are Moscow Mitch and Goldilocks?
And can’t anyone see that this is just what Trump wants, with even the liberals dancing to his tune and tripling the attention he gets, leaving no room for adult conversation or practical and pragmatic solutions to this issue or any other of the many real issues facing voters.
The reality is as a nation, so far, we have not been serious about gun control. The media loves gun violence and mass shootings because they provide cheap “content”, anchors can pose as moral arbiters, and media bean counters are happy because they can sell more advertising. Politicians love it because they all win: the pro-gun control lobby is sympathetic to their constituents and the anti-gun control lobby is sympathetic to NRA fans, and no one actually has to accomplish anything except try to look and sound profound.
Reference this and other Gun Confiscation Lobby screeds…the answer is still NO.
Your move.
At least as far back as an Obama administration internal memo, where he was advised that Democrats didn’t need white working class voters to win, said white working class folks have been told that they are being inevitably pushed to the side and out of the main stream by an increasing number of voters of color.
Now keep in mind that the folks telling them of their eminent political demise, the Leftist political elite, believed all along that said threatened group was racist, violent, and armed to the teeth.
Yet the possibility that at least some of the threatened group would react violently seemed to come as a shock to that very same Leftist elite.
I’m reminded of President Jimmy Carter saying that the biggest shock of his administration was the realization that Leonid Brezhnev, leader of a regime known for its penchant for distortion, obfuscation, and outright lies, had lied to him.
That inability to predict or even consider a possible if not probably violent backlash to the Leftist agenda tells me that the Leftist elite is in no way prepared to make the predictions needed to safely and successfully lead this nation going forward.