San Bernardino Destroys the Gun-Control Movement

Getty Images
Getty Images
John Hayward

If there was any logic behind gun-control zealotry, the San Bernardino atrocity would be a haymaker punch the movement would never recover from.  

First, gun-control advocates made fools of themselves in a disgusting rush to politicize the incident while bullets were still flying – and not just the usual activist knuckleheads, but the Democrat Party’s FBI-investigated front runner for President, Hillary Clinton, along with that other guy supposedly running for their nomination.

Then we learned the killers were not white NRA members driven into a bullet-spewing frenzy by the presence of a Planned Parenthood clinic 1.3 miles from the site of the attack.

The Democrat mediocrity currently squatting in the White House squeaked something about the need to take guns away from people on the federal no-fly list. As with every other effusion of gun-control zealots, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the atrocity under discussion. Sayed Farouk and Tashfeen Malik didn’t have any trouble flying to Saudi Arabia.

They carried out their bloody crime in the state that has some of America’s toughest gun laws, using weapons that were purchased legally by every current indication. Farouk was a county employee whose family professes themselves to be utterly shocked by his crime. His surviving co-workers describe him as quiet and devoutly religious.

Based on what we know as of Thursday morning, there seems to be nothing about the couple that would have blocked them from purchasing firearms under any conceivable screening in this politically-correct age. Our friends in the gun-control movement aren’t going to rouse themselves from their current nervous breakdown to suggest Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns, are they?

Or people who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca? Does anyone think a longer waiting period for guns would have dissuaded a couple that carried out a planned terrorist attack with body armor and GoPro cameras? They tried to use bombs as well, and we are very fortunate their weapons didn’t detonate. Shall we ban toy cars, to deprive terrorists of radio detonators?

The reason liberals are currently going insane with hatred and confusion is because they’re totalitarians who think everything is a matter of collective judgment and political power. They were so incredibly psyched to think a shooting rampage they could use for political gain was under way. They aren’t much interested in public safety, individual dignity, or Constitutional rights. They worship the State, and they hate and fear middle America. They have no idea how to process an atrocity that runs counter to all of their cherished narratives, and has no political value to them whatsoever. They were blaming every Christian in America for the Colorado shootings as of yesterday morning, and they’re extremely frustrated that they’ll have to stop writing screeds about collective guilt and start doing the Lone Wolf Howl again.

Everything for the Left is about advancing their latest political objective.

It’s what makes them so dangerous.  It’s why Obama and Clinton lied about Benghazi – it’s why they caused Benghazi. They are incapable of seeing or understanding any event, anywhere in the world, through any lens except their own immediate gain, or damaging their hated political enemies. Not only is the world in turmoil after Obama’s disastrous presidency, but America is torn by strife from coast to coast. No one has driven us apart more than this man, and it’s because he sees nothing but his ideology, thinks of nothing but dividing Americans and lining them up like pieces in a chess game. The sheer, national shame of the American president babbling about the latest “no-fly list” gun control bauble on his Christmas – excuse me, Generic Winter Holiday – list while American citizens are dying is difficult for reasonable people to wrap their heads around.

The Second Amendment is all about individual rights and dignity.

It must therefore be sacrificed in the quest for citizen control and obedience to the State. This collectivist approach to safety will never work – but it’s especially useless when combined with blinding political correctness, making it impossible to perform the sort of tough screening that collectivism demands. It is madness to entrust ideologically blind people with security screening.

The cops can’t be everywhere – and at this point, there are politically significant elements of the deranged left-wing coalition that don’t want them anywhere. There is no way every soft target in a diverse nation the size of the United States can be hardened against murderous rampages. Gun control theories require us to view people in a collective manner, but liberal ideology insists that only certain people can be viewed that way.

Concealed-carry permits and gun rights aren’t a perfect response to crime and terrorism either, but the important point is that there is no “perfect” response. We’re always playing the odds, and the hard cold fact is that good guys with guns change the odds. It should be painfully obvious by now that terrorists and mass killers choose targets where they know the chances of facing armed opposition are extremely low – they want slaughter, not shootouts. On a less spectacular scale, common criminals perform that sort of calculation all the time. Disarming law-abiding people indisputably raises the odds in favor of murderers.

There will never be total gun confiscation in this country – the Constitution forbids it, the American people don’t want it, it’s logistically impossible, and the Left doesn’t have the stomach to try their usual social-engineering tactics or power grabs to make it happen. They don’t have the stomach for the kind of politically incorrect screening or border security their gun-control dreams require, either.

There is no reason to fear a law-abiding American Muslim, Christian, Jew, or atheist purchasing a firearm… but if the day comes that a citizen from any background turns their weapons to evil intent, perhaps years after the purchase, society should be as prepared as it can be to respond. Either we respect individual choice and responsibility – the dual components of dignity – or we don’t. We have to respect them for everyone equally, no matter what the Left’s latest crackpot theories of systemic bigotry or “oppression” say.

Let us dispense forever with the illusion of State-provided total safety, because it’s an expensive fantasy that gets people killed, and the effort to keep it alive is driving America to the brink of civil war.

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