Three Wise Men and a Virgin?
Jim Taranto writes at the Wall Street Journal that Gabby Giffords is at the head of the parade of “moral panic” as it pertains to Obama’s efforts at gun control.
Anger still pervades those wanting to see some kind of anti Second Amendment action regardless of what it might accomplish. Taranto takes some of that misguided anger and breaks down specific comments made by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords. One of the funnier lines that Taranto writes goes like this:
The no-true-Scotsman move. “These senators have heard from their constituents–who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks,” Giffords writes. She ignores the possibility that those polls are flawed and that the senators are hearing a different message from their constituents. Then she qualifies her claim of public unanimity: “I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth . . .” See what she did there? (The switcheroo to every reasonable American reminds us of a probably apocryphal tale about Adlai Stevenson. A woman is supposed to have said to him, “Governor, you have the support of every thinking American,” to which he replied: “But madam, I need a majority.”)
Giffords also speaks as though from fact that the majority of Americans want universal background checks before gun purchases. According to Jim Taranto, Giffords says:
“These senators have heard from their constituents–who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks,”
I have spoken with many people over the past few weeks about this background check issue. Most rational people understand that all polls, regardless of who makes them, are designed to achieve desired results. If you think they are not, you are the reason polls continue as a tool.
There is much left unsaid and either misunderstood or deliberately left out of these so-called polls that show the majority of Americans want background checks on guns. Some have claimed as many as 90% of Americans wish this. Really? Perhaps I can easily get a handle on a poll that said that 90% or more of Americans don’t what guns getting into the hands of criminals and mentally whacked out people. A lesser percentage of people might respond to a generic question about background checks in a favorable way. But few people are in favor of background checks that seriously overstep the bounds of privacy and the rights to that. How many people polled had read the proposed bills? How many people polled were asked specific questions that revealed their desires of what should be found in background checks? I’m guessing none and none.
Can’t we fix the broken parts of background checks now with better information on the mentally ill? Are we more interested in protecting the rights of the mentally ill and not of lawful citizens?
I can casually ask anybody on the street if they wanted guns in the hands of crooks and mentally ill people and the answer is a no-brainer. Ask them if they favored background checks that involved a retention of private data or a registry and the outcome is vastly different.
A “common sense” anti rights bill today becomes……?
Mike Lee explains why he opposed the Manchin/Toomey gun control bill.
The Toomey-Manchin amendment admirably attempted to carve out certain protections for gun owners, but today’s carve-outs are tomorrow’s loopholes. The current “gun show loophole” was itself once considered a legitimate carve-out that protected certain private sales.
Working Toward Increased Safety for Kids…..or NOT
At first read, I thought how nice it was that at in some areas efforts are underway to actually accomplish tasks that would make our schools safer from deranged idiots with guns. And then a couple of lines I found in the Morning Sentinel about a study approved by the Maine Education Association that would look at ways to increase safety in school buildings. Check this out:
The study, to be performed by the Maine Department of Education, would look at a wide range of physical measures to improve security at schools.
They include upgraded doors, walls and windows and even “ballistic protection” for walls around administrative areas in schools.(emboldening added)
Hmmmmmm! Is that where the kids hang out?
