{"id":29564,"date":"2012-08-14T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T17:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29564"},"modified":"2012-08-14T10:20:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T15:20:32","slug":"fareed-zakaria-is-too-stupid-to-pity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29564","title":{"rendered":"Fareed Zakaria Is Too Stupid To Pity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the one hand, Fareed Zakaria &#8211; the perpetually hapless hack for the left &#8211; has been suspended\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2012\/08\/10\/time-cnn-suspend-fareed-zakaria-for-apparent-plagiarism\/\">for plagiarism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand? \u00a0At least when he plagiarizes, he has a chance of sounding smart.<\/p>\n<p>On his dim little CNN show a few weeks back, in the immediate aftermath of the Aurora shooting, Zakaria noted perfunctorily that (and i&#8217;m paraphrasing closely here) &#8220;while some people note that there might be a link between psychology and gun violence, you are entitled to your opinion, but not to your own facts; it&#8217;s all about the availability of guns&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In so doing, he ignored, well, the facts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Crime is broadly down nationwide &#8211; a drop that has closely\u00a0paralleled\u00a0the skyrocketing sales in guns.<\/li>\n<li>Notwithstanding the nationwide trend, violence is steady to up in places with the tightest gun control &#8211; Chicago and DC.<\/li>\n<li>On the other hand, it&#8217;s been generally down in New York, which has gun laws that Benito Mussolini would love.<\/li>\n<li>On the other hand, crime is lower still in many places with gun-friendly shall-issue laws&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;and plenty high in other places with shall-issue laws, like the Deep South, with a culture of violence that started long before the age of civilian firearms (where crime is well above the national average, but has also fallen faster than the national average).<\/li>\n<li>Even in areas that are ostensibly identical, violent crime rates vary wildly. \u00a0Minneapolis and Saint Paul are part of the same metro area; by state statute, they have identical gun laws. \u00a0And yet <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate\">Minneapolis&#8217; murder and violent crime rates are a dramatically &#8211; as in, 50% &#8211; higher than in Saint Paul<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So when Zakaria &#8211; one of the most noxious anti-Second Amendment orcs there is &#8211; says &#8220;you&#8217;re not entitled to your own facts&#8221;, what he really means is &#8220;ignore the facts that gut the chanting point I&#8217;m repeating&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Good riddance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the one hand, Fareed Zakaria &#8211; the perpetually hapless hack for the left &#8211; has been suspended\u00a0for plagiarism. On the other hand? \u00a0At least when he plagiarizes, he has a chance of sounding smart. On his dim little CNN show a few weeks back, in the immediate aftermath of the Aurora shooting, Zakaria noted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29564"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29595,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29564\/revisions\/29595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}