Posted on 09/20/2013 9:20:55 AM PDT by neverdem
The Navy Yard massacre won’t revive the gun debate in Congress for a simple reason. There is no gun control agenda this side of a total ban and confiscation that would have stopped Aaron Alexis.
The Toomey-Manchin bill could have passed Congress unanimously. The assault weapons ban could still be in place. Gun-controllers could have achieved their long-ago goal of barring the private purchase of handguns. And every step of his mayhem at the Washington Navy Yard would have been unimpeded.
The media rushed, based on erroneous reports from law enforcement, to place in his hands an AR-15, the popular rifle that has been used in mass shootings before and that an assault weapons ban would prohibit.
The front page of the Daily News blared, “Same gun, different slay.” The newspaper’s columnist Mike Lupica worked himself into lathers of dudgeon over the offending gun. “They call semiautomatics like this sports rifles,” he fumed. “You bet. Mostly for the sport of killing innocent people, and killing them fast.”
Lupica’s screed would have been absurd if an AR-15 had been the murder weapon — hundreds of thousands of them are bought annually, by people with no interest in killing innocent people — but it turns out that the best sentence he wrote about the gun was the disclaimer: “We still don’t know how much Alexis used it Monday.”
He used it, we now know, not at all. When the Newseum has a special exhibit and panel discussion on the journalistic history of going off half-cocked, Mike Lupica should be an honored guest. If the Pulitzer committee ever establishes a special category of opinion-writing, “Powerful, If True,” Lupica’s column should win going away.
(WATCH: Breaking News: Shooting at Navy Yard)
According to law enforcement, Alexis used a shotgun in his rampage. This didn’t compute in some newsrooms. CNN referred to the weapon as an “AR-15 shotgun.” Maybe the new protocol should be that any gun used in commission of a crime automatically gets an “AR-15” prefix.
Alexis chose a weapon, as it happens, that has been endorsed and promoted by the vice president of the United States, who makes it his business to tell us which guns should be banned and which are all-American tools of self-defense. The shotgun is firmly in the latter category. Joe Biden sounded like a pitchman for Remington at a Facebook town hall earlier in the year when he urged a mother concerned about safety: “Buy a shotgun, buy a shotgun.”
This may be fine advice, but there should be no mistake: Shotguns are dangerous. When it comes to “the sport of killing innocent people,” almost any gun will do, especially if it is in a permissive environment where no one else is likely to be armed. This makes a hash of the conceit that the government can ban a few guns — based largely on cosmetic features — and make shooting rampages less likely.
(PHOTOS: D.C. gun-control march)
Other common panaceas would have had no effect, either. Alexis bought his shotgun from a duly licensed dealer, not at a gun show. He passed a federal background check with no problem. He didn’t have a high-capacity magazine. He reportedly got the handgun or handguns he may also have used in the attack after shooting a security officer.
So the Navy Yard rampage demonstrates the essential sterility of the gun control debate, and all the ill-informed nattering that the likes of Piers Morgan can muster won’t change that fact. It is true that James Holmes and Adam Lanza used AR-15s. But Seung-Hui Cho and Jared Loughner used 9-mm semi-automatic pistols. And Aaron Alexis used a shotgun.
The common theme is that they were all deeply disturbed young men whose acts of murder had a sickening aspect of utter senselessness. The Daily News got it backwards. Its headline about the Navy Yard should have read, “Different gun, same slay.”
(PHOTOS: Politicians with guns)
Maybe, just maybe, this time we can have a real debate about mental illness. To this point, we’ve had a simplistically instrumental focus. It’s like seeing a mad man wearing a tinfoil hat to protect himself from radio waves and thinking, “That’s a shame, if only we could ban tinfoil.”
When Aaron Alexis called the Rhode Island police a month ago to tell them that enemies were harassing him with a microwave machine, it was clear that he was suffering paranoid delusions and needed help. But the authorities let him go his merry way, evidently to sink deeper into the madness he mistook for reality.
If we had the same callous disregard masquerading as compassionate nonjudgmentalism for people suffering from Alzheimer’s, they would be sleeping in our streets, eating from our trash cans and rotting in our jails. It needs to be easier to compel treatment for the mentally ill. That may or may not reduce random shootings, but it would reduce the total amount of suffering from an illness that wellness-obsessed America is happy to ignore.
There will be another Aaron Alexis. If we can’t predict what gun he’ll use, we already know his mental state.
Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.
the story is done.
All that stays in the minds of the stupid is “ar”.
they want the issue, facts do not matter.
it is like reporting 100’s dead because tea party nut used loophole. it is an utter falshood but the effete media have claim on the issue.
“There is no gun control agenda this side of a total ban and confiscation that would have stopped Aaron Alexis. “
Don’t let anyone lie to you and tell you any different because THAT is the gun banners ultimate goal.
It’s true - all the liberals say “just ban all guns in the US” will make us safer. Look to the UK, AUS and NZ to know that doesn’t work. Heck, just look to Chi-Congo to see that gun bans don’t work.
If some person calls the police claiming he (or she) is being harassed by aliens or some secret spy agency, and the caller has no history of violent behavior, we can assume that the person, though a nut, is probably harmless. However, when the nut caller has a history of violent behavior including shooting guns at people for trivial reasons, the nut should be apprehended and put in a place where they can’t do anybody any harm. Like Alexis should have been.
http://www.dangermouse.net/blog/images/trek/TheWayToEden.jpg
“Ex-employee goes on shooting rampage with AR-15 Red Ryder. 13 eyes shot out.”
Oops.
Ignore the link. Left over cut and paste...
If I had a dollar for every time a fellow academic (I teach at a university) told me that “AR” stands for “Assault Rifle”, I could have retired some time ago. :)
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
Absolutely! Why do decent people who want the blessings of liberty have to abide, and pay for, people that can't or won't accept the responsibilities of liberty?
Damn straight, and they know they won't reach that goal without a fight. Therefore, it's the Leftist gun grabbing CommieLibs that are pushing for a civil war. Don't for a second think otherwise...it's the only way they'll be able to exert final, total control over the sheeple.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
The only problem I have with this is: Who gets to define "nut?"
Are TEA Party members nuts?
What about Iraq/Afghanistan veterans? The media just loves to throw out nonsense statistics like '75% of all returning veterans have PTSD.'
Are home schoolers, un-socialized nutcases?
What about Christians or Orthodox Jews and their crazy ways?
Remember the psychiatric community that once said homosexuality was a mental defect?
Well, thanks to the left, homosexuality is now 'normal, safe, and to be celebrated.'
TEA Partiers are deranged, racist, extremists that spit on Pelosi and Jesse Jackass; veterans are unhinged nut jobs; home school families are weird social outcasts; and devout Christian and Jews are dangerous bigots waiting to blow up federal buildings in Oklahoma or cast some Zionist plot to bring down the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Be careful what you wish for.....and realize who controls academia, mental health professions, and the "MSM."
False axiom in the story: “There is no gun control agenda this side of a total ban and confiscation that would have stopped Aaron Alexis.”
A total ban and confiscation wouldn’t have stopped him either. Likely it would have made his attack deadlier.
I don’t care what your politics are...if you have a history of shooting at innocent people, and you’re now claiming aliens are trying to control your mind through signals sent through your tv, you deserve to be locked up.
Good article. Thanks.
I have a good comeback for you.
Tell them, "No, AR stands for 'a&&holes reaction'", then look at them and smile broadly.
'Car bomb' kinda rhymes with 'carbine' so I would understand if they made that mistake, telling us the bombing was done with an AR-15 Carbine.
Demorats reasoning......
America is too violent,... we must git rid of all the guns.
Syria is too violent, .....we must send them more guns.
However, leftists are not reasonable people. Need I remind you of the 2009 DHS manual detaing to the FBI and state/local law enforcement how to profile, what they believe to be, the most likely terrorists.....I'll give you a hint - things to look for were pro-2A, libertarian stickers, Gadsden flags, Sons of Liberty Stickers, anti-abortion/pro-life stickers etc.
Not to mention "returning veterans" were of high priority for skepticism.
Why is there not an armed patrol force continually walking about in the Navy Yard?
And why was this deranged individual permitted entry, along with a firearm concealed in his automobile?
Oh, I know. Because the root of the problem, the ultimate cause of this tragedy that should be the focus of our angst, is that too many law-abiding, peaceable, sane Americans are allowed to keep firearms in their homes and places of business. Government is thus barred from imposing order and safety.
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