Posted on 06/03/2002 12:08:54 PM PDT by Lazamataz
Various people have various ideas about what the country needs most. Seniors think it's prescription drug benefits; the young are for more liberal college loans. But our attorney general, John Ashcroft, has the most novel: He thinks what this country needs is more guns. Already there are 200 million guns in circulation within our borders. Does this number help to explain why we have between 20,000 and 30,000 gun deaths a year?
Editors note: Omigosh! Guns are dying!! We must set up a trama center for the poor dying guns!!!! Do it for the DERRINGERS......
Ashcroft does not connect the dots, as we say all the time now. Ashcroft is passionate about guns, and although he promised the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearings that he would set aside his personal feelings, his passion has become a policy. The attorney general thinks that any American who wants a gun should have one. He's gone to the Second Amendment of the Constitution for ammunition.
Editors note: Sorry, Mar... Ashcroft said no such thing. He did not say that he thinks that 'any American who wants a gun should have one', he said he believes that the Second Amendment pertains to individuals, not your Federal National Guard.
You know, like the rest of the Bill of Rights. Individual rights. Kinda like that.
While 60 years of court opinion have held that the Founders intended to extend a collective privilege for militias -- after all, they were doing their drafting while the redcoats were still coming in memory -- Ashcroft told the National Rifle Association in a letter of a year ago: "Let me state unequivocally my view that the text and original intention of the Second Amendment clearly protects the right of individuals to keep and bear arms."
Editors note: Hey, Mar, you liberal flake: Nice of you to care about the last 60 years as regards the Bill of Rights, while conveniently ignoring the other 166 years! but, your claim the courts are consistently ruling anti-gun is wrong.
It is somewhat embarrassing that the chief law enforcement officer of our country is a gun nut, but it is more than that. Dennis Henigan of the Brady Center to Prevent Violence warns that felons arrested for gun possession will claim the alibi Ashcroft has provided them: the right to keep and bear arms.
Editors note: Dear Mary McGrory: Dust has accumulated in the crevices of your brain: A gun nut is something you screw onto a gun-bolt to secure a gun part. Your use of the term 'gun nut' kinda belies your extremist agenda. Since you have been so kind as to label the Atty. General as a gun-nut, allow me to label you as a neo-socialist gun-grabbing constitution-hating liberal scumbag hoplophobic evil hunchbacked old-and-twisted piece of fecal matter.
Lawyers for John Walker Lindh have asked that gun-bearing charges against their pro-Taliban client be dropped under Ashcroft's second thoughts about the Second Amendment. Ashcroft's intervention in the Lindh case illustrates how he sees his role. He feels he was chosen to be a temporary Grand Inquisitor sniffing out heresy -- which to him means any resistance to Baptist fundamental doctrine -- in all corners of the country.
Editors note: Fascinating that you would bring religion into it, now. So being a Baptist does not fit MARY MCGRORYS LIST OF ACCEPTABLE TRAITS?
Listen, you wheezing ancient she-dog, you only have a few years of life left in you. You'd better get right with G-d right-quick, and part of getting right with G-d means to stop knocking religions.
Lindh, the Marin County youth who obsessed about Islam, brought all the attorney general's aggressions into full play. With reckless disregard for the inappropriateness of attempting to influence a trial outcome, he declared he was still hoping for the death penalty, another of his enthusiasms.
Gun control, once considered a winner by Democrats, has fallen on hard times. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) recently made a much-remarked speech to the NRA in which he declared that Democrats had lost in Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia on guns -- and would again. In support of universal armament, he quoted John F. Kennedy -- who was talking about war -- the most conspicuous victim of gun violence in our generation.
Editors note: Gun control *IS* a political loser. That is why I encourage you liberal Democrats to push the issue as hard as you can.
Gun control has always been a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Even at the height of the agony and shame over Columbine, Vice President Al Gore had to break a tie over gun-show checks. A new gun-show bill from Joe Lieberman and John McCain is coming up.
A new group called Americans for Gun Safety (AGS), funded by billionaire Andrew McKelvey and headed by John Cowan, formerly of HUD, is vigorously backing the check. Cowan says his group's premise is that there is nothing to be done about the 200 million guns already here and that Democrats should learn to love gun-owners -- who have been brainwashed by the NRA to think a handgun ban would mean the confiscation of their hunting rifles. No one seems able to convince them that even the mouthiest Massachusetts liberal has no designs on long guns. AGS says it's a battle that can't be won.
Editors note: ANOTHER anti-gun group. Golly, they come and go faster than you change underwear -- and at your age, you need to change underwear very often.
Leadership on guns may be passing from Democrats to doctors. Nine thousand U.S. medics have formed a coalition to fight guns as a health hazard. Their leader, Dr. Jeremiah Barondess of New York, was shown on "Sixty Minutes" asking patients about guns in their homes. A counter-group of 900 physicians rages that the questions are intrusive and based on a political agenda unbecoming a doctor.
Editors note: And the counter-group of doctors are brave and intelligent professionals who are hewing to the needs of their profession, as opposed to embracing your lame political agenda.
Ashcroft's attempt to take the Second Amendment to the Supreme Court may not come about before the election in November. But his full-throated support for a gun for everyone could be an issue in the campaign, aggravating the kind of gun- shyness exhibited by Tom Strickland, a Democratic Senate candidate in Colorado, who, after Columbine, made fiery statements about guns but this year is saying, "We don't need any more gun control."
Editors note: I am proud of Ashcroft for his full-throated support of a clearly-defined and plainly-worded amendment contained in a document that pertains only to individual rights.
Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, a gun-control stalwart who retains his convictions, says of the Ashcroft initiative: "I don't think it will make the country safer."
Editors note: As opposed to supporting the disarmament of old people when thugs are all around, Dick? As opposed to making helpless women in cities filled with rapists, Dick? As opposed to making it impossible for shopkeepers and businessmen to protect their lives investment, Dick?
Dick, you are a disgusting piece of filth.
A line from Army Lt. Col. Patrick L. Fetterman comes to mind. He's trying to root out rocket-launching terrorists from the mountains in Afghanistan, and he complained to The Post's Peter Baker that "Everybody in this [expletive] country has a weapon." That may be true of us soon.
Editors note: Hey, Mar, you liberal flake: He was talking about rocket-launched grenades. You, on the other hand, are talking about single-shot .22 rifles. Don't try to lie to us yet again, you old, oddly-smelling crow.
Oh, she's smart. She just lies a lot.
She could get a job with the New York Times. They really love liars.
'course, 20-30,000 car deaths are casually brushed off by the author as "acceptable".
Watch the ageism there pal, some of us are getting up there.
You are a spring chicken compared to this mummy.
What? I think she and Helen Thomas are identical twins separated at birth.
LOL Laz!!! That translates into a mortality rate of 0.015 percent per annum! omigod it's a holocaust! (poor little daddyless derringers.... )
Poor Mary. I wonder if she's heard that the Supreme Court has scheduled a conference on the Emerson appeal for this Thursday, June 6 -- D-Day no less. best, bb.
Dennis Henigan of the Brady Center to Prevent Violence warns that felons arrested for gun possession will claim the alibi Ashcroft has provided them: the right to keep and bear arms.
The alibi? Leaving aside the obvious fact that old Mary is just now, in the year 2002, hearing about the 2nd Amendment, does she really believe ASHCROFT gave it to us?
ALIBI??????
Hmmmmm 60 out of 226. I'd say that doesn't really mean much.
I'm going to be unfeeling and blunt. Nobody ever said freedom was supposed to be risk free. Quite the opposite, in fact. Live with it or leave it for a more comforting, totalitarian regime, Mary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.