Exposing The Left On Gun Issues

A column today in the New York Times by Verlyn Klinkenborg leaves me laughing for several reasons. The biggest reason being that he is doing what liberals do best – attempting to allow rights to only those he would agree with and taking away from those he doesn’t. In this case the right to keep and bear arms.

His op-ed is entitled “Once A Progressive State, Minnesota Is Now A Fief Of The N.R.A”. Oh the poor folk in Minnesota.

I’m not too ashamed to admit that I don’t know what a fief is. In context I had an idea but wasn’t sure so I went and got a definition from Wikipedia -the American Heritage Dictionary failed me miserably. Here’s what Wikipedia says about fief (pronounced feef).

Under the system of feudalism, a fiefdom, fief, feud, feoff, or fee, often consisted of heritable lands or revenue-producing property granted by a liege lord in return for a form of allegiance, originally often to give him the means to fulfill his military duties when called upon. However anything of value could be held in fief, such as an office, a right of exploitation (e.g., hunting, fishing) or a revenue rather than the land it comes from.

Now that we’ve all had our vocabulary lesson for the afternoon, let’s move on.

Klinkenborg mystifies us all by his remarkable ability to draw conclusions based on observations made of the things surrounding him. This is astonishing.

A couple of weeks ago, I checked into a hotel in Bloomington, a Minneapolis suburb framed by the airport and the Mall of America. On the hotel door was a sign: “Firearms Banned on These Premises.” The next day I drove to St. Joseph, an hour west of the Twin Cities, where I saw the same sign. Slowly the logical conclusion sank in. If firearms are banned on these premises, then they must not be banned in other places.

Unless Minnesota annexed to Canada or became a separate country within the last few minutes, the citizens of that state are guaranteed the same rights under the Constitution as the rest of us. What is unfortunate is that places like hotels, shopping malls, etc. can trump the Constitution and remove a persons right to carry.

Klinkenborg whines and carrys on about how terrible it is that Minnesota “passed a law” allowing citizens the right to carry concealed. I sure wish someone would tell these people about the Constitution.

He further goes on a typical liberal, anti-gun rant using choice words to describe guns, gun owners, gun carriers and all.

The way I see it, Minnesota is only one step away from requiring every citizen to carry a gun and use it when provoked.

This guy actually gets paid to write for the largest newspaper in the country. There’s hope for me because obviously you don’t need too many brains and zero common sense. At least I have some common sense.

Klinkenborg warns the citizens of Minnesota about the dangers that await them in the future.

There are some other twists to these laws. A person carrying a concealed weapon cannot be banned from a public building, even if it’s a library full of kids.

Gosh and I thought I was the only one who knew that everyone who gets a permit to carry concealed, the only reason was so they could go into a library full of kids and kill them all.

Here’s a statement that he just doesn’t get at all. He is so mired in fighting to take away lawful citizen’s rights because he don’t like them that he can’t see the right of self-protection that could apply to himself in one of the laws passed in Minnesota.

The application for a concealed-weapon permit appears to have been created by people who believe the real threat in carrying a gun is the loss of privacy entailed in filling out the form. Yet it isn’t possible for a member of the public to find out who has received a permit and may, in fact, be packing heat.

Oooh, tough guy! Packing heat….I know that scares me. Here he is so muddled in any sense of right and wrong he doesn’t get it. Is he or any of his other progressive friends aware that not only could anyone obtain the public record to know who had a permit but who doesn’t. Criminals aren’t completely stupid. They have a right to public records too. What better place to break into than a house knowing that the owner at least doesn’t have a concealed carry permit. Or, steal their car or assault them in other ways. These things do happen. They are not all random acts.

We can’t get through an anti-gun rant until we hear the “Some of my best friends own guns” mantra.

I grew up hunting and shooting, and I still own two rifles (a .22 and a .270) and two shotguns (a 20-gauge and a 12-gauge, to be specific). When I was young, I expected that I would own guns when I grew up because I enjoyed hunting and I liked the good hunters I knew — as I still do.

But to me, owning guns and knowing how to use them properly was part of a civic bargain. I would leave the police work to the police, and they would leave the squirrel hunting to me. The notion that 38 states would have “concealed carry” laws in 2006 would have seemed insane, a regression to a more primitive idea of who we are.

No, Mr. Klinkenborg! That would be who YOU are. Don’t include me in your own paranoid cabal, as you put it in your column.

The “good hunters”? More than likely Klinkenborg is trying to sneak one in there to convince readers that it’s the bad hunters who are committing the violent crimes in this country. You know, they’re the ones who can’t hit a target so they get frustrated and decide they’ll first learn to shoot better by taking aim at kids in libraries.

And if that wasn’t enough, he wants us to believe that those people obtaining concealed carry permits are doing it because they want to be the police force. I wonder if Mr. Klinkenborg knows how many people in this country have any faith at all in law enforcement? The same law enforcement that takes your guns away when you need them most.

Every concealed weapon, with very few exceptions, is a blow against the public safety.

I wonder why he doesn’t back this up with facts? I know, I know, pick me, pick me! There aren’t any to support his lies.

The police are trained to handle guns. The criminals know they’re not supposed to have them but find them easy to get, thanks to the N.R.A. Let them fight it out. No one is safer if gun-carrying civilians believe their rights entitle them to pretend they’re cops.

Does any of this make any sense? What a spew of garbage. The criminals in this country are better able to get illegal guns because of the NRA. That makes as much sense as saying that car thieves can more easily steal your car because of the American Automobile Association.

In Klinkenborg’s infinite wisdom he makes a total fool of himself by giving the NRA credit for something I wish were really true.

Sometimes I think the N.R.A. isn’t really about guns at all. It’s about making certain that the public — our political and civil society, in other words — has no ability to limit the rights of an individual. That is really what the logic of the “concealed carry” and “shall require” and “shoot first” laws says.

WOW!! That the public has no ability to limit the rights of an individual. Isn’t that what America is supposed to be? Land of the free and home of the brave. Isn’t freedom something that is enjoyed responsibly and not restricted by people like Klinkenborg who believe it is their right to strip others of their’s? I believe that unknowingly, Klinkenborg exposed himself to the truth of who he and his liberal progressive friends really are.

They’re not about protecting anybody or anything. They are 100% about themselves. Simply put, they don’t like my right to keep and bear arms so he wants it removed from the Constitution. Mr. Klinkenborg is a writer. Do you suppose that others have a right to limit his freedom of speech. Now you know he would jump up on his soapbox over that one and he has the right to defend his right to free speech. As much as some times I think the media can be very destructive and can hurt a lot of people, I wouldn’t pretend to take his right away. So I ask, why does he think he has a right to take away mine?

If what he says is true that the logic behind the new concealed carry laws is to not restrict an individual’s rights then hail to Minnesota and the lawmakers who are getting it right.

Tom Remington