Categories
crime and punishment Second Amendment rights

Gun Nuts

“Gun violence is as serious as the Ebola virus is being represented in the media,” says Beloit, Wisconsin, Police Chief Norm Jacobs, “and we should fight it using the tools that we’ve learned from our health providers.”

Hmmmm, I immediately wondered what tools used against Ebola could possibly be used against “gun violence.” Will police don Hazmat suits? Should we quarantine criminals who shoot and kill people? (Well, more on that shortly.)

No, the Beloit Police Department is launching a new program asking city residents to voluntarily permit officers to search their homes for guns.

According to Wisconsin Public Radio, Chief Jacobs wants to “encourage people to think about gun violence as an infectious disease like Ebola, and a home inspection like a vaccine to help build up the city’s immune system.”

Yes. He actually said that.

Perhaps the chief is a little overwhelmed. More than 100 murders have been committed this year in Wisconsin using a gun. That’s a problem, for sure — whether a gun is involved or not, though. But searching the homes of law-​abiding folks isn’t any sort of solution.

What seems most statistically significant is the fact that 93 percent of those accused of committing these murders have a prior arrest record, as do the 94 percent of Badger State victims of gun violence.

Pretending that the problem is not criminals, but, instead, firearms “hiding” in the homes of the law-​abiding? A gross misdiagnosis.

And deadly … stupid.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

An Ebola Education

Sen. Mark Pryor (D‑Ark.) faces a tough re-​election contest. Following his campaign, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt inquired: “Do you think the Obama Administration has done an appropriate job handling the Ebola crisis?”

The senator responded with the universal politician distress call: “Uuuhhhhmmmmmm.”

Then Pryor stumbled ahead: “I would say that … it’s hard to know, ah, because, um … I haven’t heard the latest briefing on that to know all … [inaudible] can somehow read the paper and all. My impression is that we have people over there both from CDC and other medical-​type people and even some engineers to try to build … um, you know, medical facilities. That’s what they need over there; they need the medical infrastructure.”

When Hunt asked whether the Administration had been “aggressive enough,” the senator returned to: “Uuhhhmmmmm. Again, I’d have to see the latest numbers.”

“Oh my god,” uber-​liberal host Mika Brzezinski reacted to Pryor’s stumbling. “She asked a gentle question … and the guy just collapsed.”

“What was that, Kasie?” laughed Joe Scarborough. “Why were those questions so hard for the senator to answer?”

“I was a little surprised …” Kasie chuckled, noting that Sen. Pryor had earlier run a ludicrous TV spot accusing his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, of voting “against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola.”

One might think the incumbent senator actually followed and cared about the effort to combat a horrible disease that could kill untold people. Instead, it appears he knows Ebola only as a brickbat with which to slug a political opponent in hopes of staying in power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.