Biased Agendas

A spark of sanity from one Democrat in an otherwise darkness of clabbering Jackass insanity. It was soon extinguished.

Hard Reality: No Mainstream Gun Control Law Would Have Stopped the Texas High School Horror

Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner told CNN’s State of the Union that he doesn’t think “there’s a single piece of legislation” that could have prevented last week’s horrible killing at a Texas high school, adding that a more holistic “series of actions” are needed.  His other nod to reality was acknowledging, after being prodded by host Jake Tapper, that Democrats failed to act on gun control when they controlled all three elected levers of power in Washington, DC during the Obama years. “Perhaps, in retrospect, more should have been done,” he said, amid various evasions and excuses.

Warner — who has moved to the left with the rest of his party on guns — also mentioned background checks and “military-style assault weapons” in the interview, each of which is irrelevant to the latest incident.  The Texas killer was not legally permitted to own guns, and used more traditional (i.e., not an “assault rifle”) firearms during a rampage that left ten people dead.  Nevertheless, these facts, which Warner at least partially recognizes, didn’t stop one of his colleagues from Connecticut from unleashing his preferred brand of demagogic post-tragedy moral indignation:

Chris Murphy (Dolt) CT tweeted: Let’s call it like it is: the horrifying inaction of Congress, slaughter after slaughter, has become a green light to would-be shooters, who pervert silence into endorsement.

I’m left unclear as to what exactly Murphy is talking about. As the New York Times has confirmed, the shooter in Texas used a shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver — and nothing else besides. Moreover, because he was 17-years-old, he was ineligible to purchase a gun either privately or commercially, and thus had no contact with NICS background-check system that Murphy wants to expand. What, precisely, did “Congress” fail to do here?
What perverted signal did it send? What “endorsement” did it provide? … As for the implication that is embedded in Murphy’s tweet — namely, that declining to prohibit a given tool is in some way an endorsement of those who would abuse it — well, I can think of few more destructive ideas in a free country. Was Thurgood Marshall sending a “green light” to the KKK when he voted with the majority in Brandenburg v. Ohio? Are the many opponents of the Patriot Act offering an “endorsement” to the devotees of Jihad? Hardly. By suggesting that his opponents disagree with him because they are happy to “allow” massacres, rather than because they think that his proposals (such as they are) will be useless, Murphy is seriously damaging our debate over guns, and hurting our political culture.

“As far as I can see, there are only two reasonable ways to interpret this behavior: 1) That Senator Murphy is a grandstander who does not understand this issue well enough to do anything but shout “do something!” whenever he sees an abomination on the news; or 2) That Senator Murphy actually does want to ban shotguns and revolvers and everything else besides — and, by extension, that he wants to repeal the Second Amendment to the Constitution in order to get it done.”  Which is it, Senator?  This is why so many gun rights supporters view the gun control movement’s loudest voices as peddling in ignorance or dishonesty.  Take this tweet, for instance, which was shared thousands of times: [snip]