At the bottom of a Bloomberg column yesterday, it reads:<\/p>\n
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The opinions she expressed are also something I haven’t run across since West “Dirty Liar” Skoglund left office and the public eye: the kind of comical, context-challenged buncombe that more-or-less savvy gun control advocate stopped using<\/a> ten years ago.<\/p>\n
In other words, I fisk this column for the same reason “historical re-enactors” dress up in Civil War uniforms and re-enact the Battle of Antietam; partly so that people don’t forget how bad things were, and partly for the sheer joy of blasting away at a target that can’t maneuver.<\/p>\n
Second Amendment fans were at the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday arguing that the constitutionally protected right to bear arms should kill Chicago\u2019s gun law.<\/p>\n
The court will probably do just that. But Chicago\u2019s ban on handguns, along with one in suburban neighbor Oak Park, are the only laws that are so restrictive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well, no.\u00a0 Many cities around the country enact laws that are almost as dim as Chicago’s.\u00a0 New York allows registered <\/em>guns in the home\u00a0 (although good luck using them in self-defense); carry permits are the exclusive franchise of the “elite” and well-connected.\u00a0 Los Angeles and San Francisco are highly restrictive; indeed, virtually every metropolitan area in the country is run by far-left governments that would <\/em>ban guns if they could; only Minnesota’s highly-restrictive pre-emption clause has prevented serial attempts by the DFL to ban guns for brown people<\/span>.<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t reflect what is going on across much of the country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The real problem is that state legislators want to give more people the right to buy more guns and carry them into more places.<\/p>\n
In my home state, Georgia lawmakers are pushing a bill that would welcome handguns into bars and houses of worship, onto college campuses and state playgrounds. Subways would be fine places to bring your firearms, as would the world\u2019s busiest airport, Atlanta\u2019s. Political rallies, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Er, yeah.<\/p>\n
Because college campuses<\/a>, playgrounds<\/a>, subways<\/a> (or whatever), airports<\/a> and big crowds<\/a> are such safe places when guns are banned.<\/p>\n
But then, Ms. Woolner, most of us have known that for years.<\/p>\n
Chicago\u2019s looking better to me all the time.<\/p>\n
In Virginia, a new law lets people with hidden guns take them where alcohol is served.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But why, Ms. Woolner?\u00a0 Why would they do that?<\/p>\n
Because carry permit holders (not just “people”, mind you) already carry in bars in most of the 40 states with some sort of shall-issue law, with (statistically) no problems.<\/p>\n
Anywhere.<\/p>\n
Ever.<\/p>\n
Plus, legislators there are working to repeal a law that limits gun buyers to one purchase a month, the New York Times reports.<\/p>\n
Twelve new guns per year per person apparently aren\u2019t enough in Virginia, in spite of bumper stickers claiming Virginia is for lovers. That is fine until your multiply armed lover thinks you are flirting with someone else as he downs a few drinks at your neighborhood tavern. (Maybe that is why they are called shooters.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There was a time in my life when I’d have wondered what would prompt an ostensibly smart person to claim that the number of guns one bought<\/em> would affect ones’ propensity to crime.\u00a0 As if the idiot boyfriend in Ms. Woolner’s wooly-headed example would have been perfectly safe with eleven guns, but it was the twelfth <\/em>that put him over the top?<\/p>\n
But that was back when people like Wes “Lying Sack of Filth” Skloglund not only spoke in public, but had political power.<\/p>\n
Out West, Arizona and Wyoming lawmakers are pondering the idea of letting people carry concealed weapons without a permit.<\/p>\n
Wild West<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Right – because they already do in Alaska and ultra-liberal Vermont.\u00a0 Without incident.<\/p>\n
Which Ms. Woolner would have known if she knew the issue, rather than the stereotypes she nurses.\u00a0 Stereotypes that used to irritate me – until I learned what they really meant.<\/p>\n
More on tht in a bit.<\/p>\n
So eager are some states to let gun-toters tote guns that Montana and Tennessee legislatures last year voted to exempt the states from federal restrictions for guns and ammo that never cross state lines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That’s actually a protest for the Tenth, not Second, Amendment.\u00a0 Because the battle for the Second is largely won.\u00a0 Again, a modestly-informed commentator would know that; one with integrity would pass it on to her no-doubt-grossly-ill-informed readers.<\/p>\n
So while the Supreme Court seems poised to say state and local gun control laws can be limited by the Second Amendment, I\u2019m headed in the other direction.<\/p>\n
I favor a reverse Second Amendment. It would read something like this:<\/p>\n
\u201cWell-regulated firearms, being necessary to the security of the states, the right of the people to be safe from gunfire as they go about their daily lives shall not be infringed.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now, there was a time I’d have taken this idiocy apart, word by word, line by line.\u00a0 But then I realized; Being a gun control advocate in this era is like being one of those Japanese soldiers that held out on one of those Pacific islands for decades after the war ended, either refusing to believe the Emperor had pulled the plug, or just never having heard it.\u00a0 Lost in a little world of their own creation, untroubled by reality, their loyalty to their lost cause festered on like a neglected boil.\u00a0 To not much effect at all.<\/p>\n
Well, there is one effect; given that Ann Woolner, like Wes “Lying Sack of Filth” Skoglund, has a position of influence and responsibility, both can influence the other weak-minded, ill-informed and duped.<\/p>\n
For example:<\/p>\n
True, gun lovers have suffered setbacks, too. A federal appeals court sided with Atlanta last year for declaring Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport a gun-free zone despite a 2008 state law allowing firearms there. That decision is one of the reasons lawmakers want to take another run at it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Right – lawmakers need to untangle the jurisdictional tangle that the court noted.\u00a0 They’ll make it happen.\u00a0 That’s not a setback.\u00a0 That’s a character-building experience.<\/p>\n
In Maryland, the gun-rights and gun-control forces are in a stalemate, says Mark Arthur, who stood in the cold on the lower plaza of the Supreme Court yesterday holding a sign favoring gun rights.<\/p>\n
A 40-year-old restaurant worker, Arthur is among others trying to persuade the Maryland legislature to ease restrictions that now require people to show \u201cgood and substantial reason\u201d to get permits to carry guns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an individual right,\u201d he says. The Supreme Court said so in 2008 when it struck down the District of Columbia\u2019s gun ban. He is hoping the Supreme Court will give his cause another boost by saying states and cities can\u2019t interfere with that right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Again, that’s not a setback.\u00a0 That’s how we proles change laws against the force of a plebeian class every bit as ill-informed and blinkered as Ms. Woolner.<\/p>\n
But gun-control advocate Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, also sounded hopeful when he talked to reporters outside the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crucial thing here is to have the court endorse reasonable restrictions,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Right.\u00a0 And in the special little world Paul Helmke, Ann Woolner and Wes “Lying Sack of Filth” Skogland live in, a complete, arbitrary ban is “reasonable”.<\/p>\n
So now we are down to what is reasonable and what isn\u2019t. The notion of attending a political rally where people angry over health care or anything else are packing heat scares me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well, relax, Ann.\u00a0 If you’ve been to a rally in any red state, or Vermont, held anyplace other than in a school or on federal property, you’ve been around people with guns.<\/p>\n
And yet you live.<\/p>\n
Anyone for a reverse Second Amendment?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Er, no.\u00a0 But the fact that someone can regurgitate this twenty-year-old, long-debunked swill on the pages of a major news service is part of a case for a reverse First Amendment.<\/p>\n
Who the hell is checking the IDs at Bloomberg, anyway?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the bottom of a Bloomberg column yesterday, it reads: (Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.) The opinions she expressed are also something I haven’t run across since West “Dirty Liar” Skoglund left office and the public eye: the kind of comical, context-challenged buncombe that more-or-less savvy gun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,22],"tags":[202],"class_list":["post-9023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scotus","category-victim-disarmament","tag-skoglund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023","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=9023"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9026,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023\/revisions\/9026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}