Saturday, July 21, 2012

Zack Beauchamp/Think Progress: Boy, you've got it backwards; mass murder is not progress.

Zach Beauchamp over at Think Progress blames expiration of the Clinton era  Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.  The 1994 law prohibited the sale of one of the firearms used by the psychotic Aurora shooter used in his theater rampage. 

So?  Psychotics or terrorists intent on mass murder will find weapons.  If he could not have obtained an AR-15 he would have used a different firearm.  If he could not have obtained a single firearm he'd have brought several. 

Failing to obtain a firearm would have changed the means, not the result.  Fertilizer can become an instrument of mass murder.  Arson, literal fire in a theater so to speak.  The Aurora monster had smoke grenades (which are already pretty illegal).  Zach, have you heard of a Molotov Cocktail?  Gasoline kills.  Think about the mass casualties if the Aurora shooter's bombs would have worked as intended.

However, repealing the the no gun zones in movie theaters might have at least stopped a shooting rampage.  Such bans ensure that the only firearms present are in the hands of the criminal shooter (almost always already illegally in those hands as well).  The presence of a brave and armed citizen, or more than one, would have been more likely to stop or limit the carnage than attempting to disarm, and then, when that fails, search everyone to keep weapons from madmen dedicated to murder.

It was much easier to obtain firearms fifty years ago.  It was much easier to carry those weapons into now restricted places.  Yet the growing cultural phenomena of mass shooting has grown with each such restriction.  More restrictive possession of firearms may not cause gun crime but it does not prevent gun crime, either.  Particularly the psychotic mass murders. 

Liberal reaction to Aurora has displayed two enduring principles of liberal thought:

1.  Never let a crises go to waste.  Beginning with ABC's defamatory link of the shooter to the Tea Party the anti-Second Amendment choir has been at full throat, practically climbing over the victim's bodies to advance their cause.

2.  Occupy a parallel false reality.  The statistical fact that more gun control merely results in more gun crime, where literally only the criminals have guns, is lost on the liberal.  The liberal solution is simply do more of what has in many ways already failed.  A free society simply cannot ensure perfect safety and law enforcement cannot be everywhere, even in places like North Korea or New York City.  While law enforcement cannot be everywhere a widely and legally armed citizenry, if not everywhere, can be anywhere, just like the evil doers themselves.

Even the website appears an oxymoron.  More mass murder is definitely not progress.  But our failing culture needs to start examining the real causes of rage that create these mass killers and stop worrying about their anti-Second Amendment agenda.

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