Posted on 09/03/2019 5:42:33 AM PDT by SJackson
The callous privileging of one sort of death over another.
The second multiple-victim shooting in Texas in a week brought out the usual clichés and useless policy prescriptions from the progressive media and Democrats running in the presidential primary. And also as usual, the protestations of being “heartbroken,” and the demands for banning and confiscating certain weapons, are rote responses that apart from having little material value, display a cynical exploitation of suffering for political gain.
One wonders, for example, why all this “heartbreak” and “thoughts”––“prayers” are now verboten for progressives––are never publicized about the lethal violence in Chicago, Baltimore, and other blue-state fiefs. Fifty-three people died in August from mass shootings, an unusually high amount. The August toll in the Windy City was 46 murdered––almost a quarter fewer than last year. And these sorts of numbers happen every month of the year in Chicago totaling 539 dead in 2018. But do we hear politicians preening their “heartbreak” over these deaths? Are not those lives as precious as those of mass shooting victims? Aren’t those families of the victims just as devastated?
Most of the victims in Chicago and Baltimore are black, as are most of the murderers. I guess “black lives matter” only when the police are involved, or the perpetrator isn’t black. Black-on-black crime doesn’t fit the narrative of “racism,” “white privilege,” or “white supremacism”––unless one wants to depict blacks as helpless victims of “racism,” powerless to control their behavior. By the way, that claim has been an argument for slavery and segregation going all the way back to Aristotle. And just who created the character-degrading, family-destroying, federally subsidized blue-city hell-holes that comprise the “environment” manipulating black people into crime? No wonder race-industry progressives don’t want to call attention to these grisly facts.
More useful for the left are the deranged white losers who make up most mass shooters. No doubt environmental factors or mental illness somewhat account for their actions, but deterministic arguments always collide with the fact that millions of individuals with the same environmental or psychological challenges don’t go on murder sprees. In the end we don’t know why these shootings occur, because for all our pseudo-scientific “knowledge” about human behavior, it is still a mystery. Dostoevsky is closer to the mark than are deterministic explanations: Such horrors happen because a soul alienated from God is free to choose even murder simply because he can.
All that, however, is mere religious superstition and obscurantism to our enlightened “brights.” Talking about our spiritual alienation created by more than a century of radical secularism is so old-fashioned and unsophisticated, the argument of “smelly” Wal-Mart shoppers and “bitter clingers” to guns and religion. How much easier––and politically useful–– to focus on the material cause: guns and “gun violence.” After the latest Texas shooting, Dem primary candidates pounced on the opportunity to exploit the killings. Corey Booker hit every stale gun-control nostrum in his tweet: “Beginning on Day One in office, I will take executive action to reduce gun violence—closing dangerous loopholes in gun sales, cracking down on gun manufacturers, and investing in communities impacted by gun violence.”
The banality of these threats is equaled by their complete emptiness: what “loopholes”? “Cracking down” how? “Investing” in what? Since 1965 we’ve “invested” $20 trillion in dysfunctional “communities,” and little has changed other than the size of the redistributionist feds and the debt used to finance these “investments.” At least “Beto” O’Rourke is more honest, if also incoherent: “I want to be very clear. The government will not take away your guns. But if you own guns, you will be forced to sell them to the government.” And that logical contradiction is “very clear”?
For decades we’ve heard these gun-control mantras, yet none of them offer anything that could either pass Second Amendment muster of be effective. As I wrote a few weeks ago,
ML/NJ
Chicago is the city that shall not be named when Dems talk about guns
Why no talk of the shooting in Alabama? Oh they were black, now they got a white boy.
Peogressives? The House, including the GOP is ready to vote on the trump administration’s gun control package. Gun owner’s of America is speaking up while the NRA stays silent.
The enemy within our ranks remain the most malignant.
And standby folks, Abbott is getting wobbly, they will go up against personal sales soon.
You wont be able to gift you child peepaws shotgun without paying a fee and going through the ATF
Whoever sold this clown the gun after he failed NICS is gonna be screwed and righty so.
We have laws in place.
Pedestrian Deaths in 2018 6227
Bicycle Deaths in 2017 777
Motor Vehicle Deaths 2018 40,000
Mass Shooting Deaths 2018 85
The above data makes it plain we should ban bicycles, cars, and walking!
In a serious note I admit we have much gun violence in the USA, 39,773. The vast majority of these deaths are gang bangers and suicide. 69% were suicide, 37% murder, 3% etc.
Some other nations with strict gun control actually have a higher suicide rate. They just kill themselves in other manners.
If one takes out the gang bangers and suicides our murder rate is as low or lower than many nations with strict gun control.
GUN CONTROL IS ABOUT CONTROL OF THE PEOPLE, and not safety of the people!
First, how do you know he didn't already own this firearm, prior to the NIC fail? Nothing released publicly explains the NIC fail. He did own firearms, the neighbors complained and the Law ignored the complaints.
Second, does Texas ban private sales by Law? We have more than 20,000 firearm laws, none of which prevented this, obviously.
And THIS is how the liberals planed to get handguns out of your hands, one step at a time.
Since they failed at that, they are going after rifles, something they always said they would NEVER DO, till 1984 when they made a grab for them.
From 1976.
Nelson T. ‘Pete’ Shields
Founder of Handgun Control, Inc.
“I’m convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest.
Of course, it’s true that politicians will then go home and say, ‘This is a great law. The problem is solved.’ And it’s also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time.
So then we’ll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time.
My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — TOTALLY ILLEGAL.”
-Pete Shields, Chairman and founder, Handgun Control Inc., “A Reporter At Large: Handguns,” The New Yorker, July 26, 1976, 57-58
“Yes, I’m for an outright ban [on handguns].”
-Pete Shields, Chairman emeritus, Handgun Control, Inc., 60 Minutes interview
HCI, now the Brady Center, in 1984, came out in favor of a ban on semi-auto rifles and shotguns.
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