Tag: NRA

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Anti-​Gun Barrage

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America’s would-​be gun-​grabbers, chiefly in the media and “on the left,” don’t know much about guns.

But they know what they hate.

After the horrific terrorist shooting spree in San Bernardino, MSNBC and CNN went on a shooting-​their-​mouths-​off spree, relentlessly pushing the need for stricter gun control. President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats echoed the theme.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks went full accelerando, unleashing a foul rant about how “we” are the terrorists and “we” are letting “us” get away with mass murder “every week,” ignoring the statistics that murder rates have gone down, are still going down, and that the rest of the world is being hit with mass shootings too, mainly from Muslim radicals.

When the news came out that the perps were, indeed, Muslim, the barrage of anti-​gun talk didn’t stop, though their intellectual ammunition had fizzled.

The president went further off his rocker, calling the guns he wanted to ban “powerful” — though they are of lower caliber than many handguns — while Hillary Clinton talked about the need to ban “assault rifles.”

As has been noted by others, “assault rifle” only means what anti-​gun folks say it means, and what they designate as assault weapons are not (contrary to their constant implications) the equivalent of machine guns (which have been illegal for citizen ownership for a long, long time).

Being scared of scary-​looking guns is no excuse not to be able to define them. While it would be good to reduce incentives for folks to “go postal” or to commit terroristic acts, we aren’t going to prevent mass shootings by a simple prohibitionary or mere regulatory regime.

That’s for scare-​mongers to push. And us to resist.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency national politics & policies

The Latest Legislative Land Mine

The most prescient thing ever said about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, was articulated by then-​Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

The medical reform package is quite the hodgepodge. Actually reading the whole thing makes taking on Middlemarch, War and Peace, and In Search of Lost Time a course of light entertainment.

The latest revelation from its thousands of pages? A passage prohibiting doctors from asking their patients questions about guns in the home.

The Washington Post reports that many gun control groups are incensed at the power of the NRA to limit their ability to “collect information”:

Physician groups and public health advocates say the cumulative effect of these restrictions undercuts the ability of the White House and lawmakers to make the case for new laws, such as an assault-​weapons ban, in the face of opponents who argue that there’s no evidence such measures are effective. Advocates for regulating guns lament that reliable statistics are limited in part because physicians and health researchers who could track these patterns are being inhibited.

Considering the quality of previous doctor-​led sociological studies into gun usage — and really, this is not a medical problem but a complex, society-​wide issue far beyond the competence of medical training to comprehend — the prohibition might really best be described as a defense of scientific method.

But the big issue here is not the politics of “research.” It’s that a health care reform package passed nearly three years ago contains hot potatoes such as this, and we are only discovering them now.

Nancy, you were all too disastrously correct.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Second Amendment rights

Magazine Misfire

David Gregory, of NBC, is one of those folks who wants to prohibit not merely criminal acts, but also objects and products that can be used as aids in some of those acts.

It’s not an uncommon attitude. I know conservatives who want to prohibit smoking utensils such as bongs, because their main use tends overwhelmingly to be for smoking illegal substances. To find someone in the “main stream media” supporting a similar ban on objects — such as certain guns and types of ammunition — is hardly surprising.

On Meet the Press, December 23, Gregory interviewed the head of the NRA, pressing the spokesman to concede, “if it’s possible to reduce the loss of life, you’re up for trying it.” The man took the bait. Then Gregory switched the topic away from the NRA’s notion of placing armed guards in every school to …

Well, Gregory retrieved and held aloft a “magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets.” He hazarded that prohibiting such devices, leaving legal only smaller-​sized magazines, might reduce loss of life.

“Loss-​of-​life reduction,” though, proves to be not much of a standard. There are many ways to reduce crime: imprison everyone in a criminal risk category, without trial, might do that very well. Perish that thought, though.

Many other innovations might seem plausible, as well, but nevertheless unleash counterproductive side effects.

What’s interesting about this case, though, is that Gregory held up a magazine that turns out to be illegal in Washington, DC, where Meet the Press is shot.

His “crime” is now under investigation.

I’m conflicted: On the one hand, he did nothing wrong. On the other hand, he supports such unprincipled laws, so … book him. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.