Some People Will Never Get it Part II
Continuing in our discussion on how some will never get it on how ineffective gun control is, I turn your attention to a little story from Washington D.C. It seems the former disgraced mayor and criminal and current City Councilman Marion Barry was the victim of a home invasion. Some kids (read little thugs) that he paid to help him bring in some groceries apparently broke in later, held a gun to his head and stole his wallet, cash, and credit cards. Cam Edwards details a list of other celebrities in the D.C. area that have also been assaulted in the gun-free utopia that is Washington.
Although the former mayor and crook himself described the incident as “traumatic”, he still has no seeming desire to see such crime reduced by repealing the ridiculous 1976 gun ban. Barry, like most Washington city officials, still blames the gun and not the criminal. He has often railed at how readily accessible guns are from nearby Virginia (where crime is considerably less) and can be transported into the anti-gun haven of Washington. In the past couple of years, there have been attempts to ease the ban or repeal it altogether, but they have largely failed. It would take the likes of figures like Barry to renounce the law to and in some small way perhaps reduce crime in the Washington D.C. area.
What we will likely see, though, is more anti-gun rhetoric. It’s often said that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. There are exceptions to every rule, though, and individuals such as Marion Barry personify that exception in this case. It’s not the thuggish kids, or the welfare state, or the decline of family or the ridiculous gun laws. No, it’s the guns. Such individuals, even when they literally have a gun in their face, seem to want to believe this, and this is what makes it so hard to have a serious debate on such issues.
MTV also seems to have a little trouble getting it. One of their regular series last week showcased four people who owned guns or whose lives were touched by guns. They interviewed a coed who had purchased a gun after an attempted assault, a hunter, a gang member, and a former gang member who’d been shot and partially paralyzed. Of those, the gang member owned his guns illegally and the paralysis victim was a strong anti-gun advocate.
So we have 50% pro and 50% con (as it were), right? That might be balanced if it also reflected how many guns are used in crimes. Less than 1% of the guns in the U.S. are used in crime, but that statistic wasn’t quoted. Nor was there any counter to the former gang member’s litany of gun control statistics, most directly off the Brady Bunch’s web site. The hunter just talked about hunting and the coed seemed mostly concerned with her own safety and not statistics. That’s all well and good, but it does subtly and deliberately skew the “documentary” to the leftist side.
Again, they just don’t want to get it. The issue is treated in a vacuum, once again. Take nothing else into account but what bad can be done. Don’t take into account (and MTV did not) the over 7,000 estimated uses of a gun for self-defense every single day. Take into account the gang member who is already committing a crime just having the illegal weapon. Take into account the anti-gun activist who is immune from criticism because a bullet crippled him. Show a stereotypical hunter and a scared woman who is still unsure of her feelings on the matter and call it balanced.
That’s not balance, that’s misdirection. That’s a dirty hand at alteration of perception. Before I start sounding too much like Jesse Jackson, I’ll leave you with this. Even today, when gun rights are fading as a hot-button issue with the Left, make no mistake that they will still attempt to peddle their agenda as quietly and aggressively as possible.
Continuing in our discussion on how some will never get it on how ineffective gun control is, I turn your attention to a little story from Washington D.C. It seems the former disgraced mayor and criminal and current City Councilman Marion Barry was the victim of a home invasion. Some kids (read little thugs) that he paid to help him bring in some groceries apparently broke in later, held a gun to his head and stole his wallet, cash, and credit cards. Cam Edwards details a list of other celebrities in the D.C. area that have also been assaulted in the gun-free utopia that is Washington.
Although the former mayor and crook himself described the incident as “traumatic”, he still has no seeming desire to see such crime reduced by repealing the ridiculous 1976 gun ban. Barry, like most Washington city officials, still blames the gun and not the criminal. He has often railed at how readily accessible guns are from nearby Virginia (where crime is considerably less) and can be transported into the anti-gun haven of Washington. In the past couple of years, there have been attempts to ease the ban or repeal it altogether, but they have largely failed. It would take the likes of figures like Barry to renounce the law to and in some small way perhaps reduce crime in the Washington D.C. area.
What we will likely see, though, is more anti-gun rhetoric. It’s often said that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. There are exceptions to every rule, though, and individuals such as Marion Barry personify that exception in this case. It’s not the thuggish kids, or the welfare state, or the decline of family or the ridiculous gun laws. No, it’s the guns. Such individuals, even when they literally have a gun in their face, seem to want to believe this, and this is what makes it so hard to have a serious debate on such issues.
MTV also seems to have a little trouble getting it. One of their regular series last week showcased four people who owned guns or whose lives were touched by guns. They interviewed a coed who had purchased a gun after an attempted assault, a hunter, a gang member, and a former gang member who’d been shot and partially paralyzed. Of those, the gang member owned his guns illegally and the paralysis victim was a strong anti-gun advocate.
So we have 50% pro and 50% con (as it were), right? That might be balanced if it also reflected how many guns are used in crimes. Less than 1% of the guns in the U.S. are used in crime, but that statistic wasn’t quoted. Nor was there any counter to the former gang member’s litany of gun control statistics, most directly off the Brady Bunch’s web site. The hunter just talked about hunting and the coed seemed mostly concerned with her own safety and not statistics. That’s all well and good, but it does subtly and deliberately skew the “documentary” to the leftist side.
Again, they just don’t want to get it. The issue is treated in a vacuum, once again. Take nothing else into account but what bad can be done. Don’t take into account (and MTV did not) the over 7,000 estimated uses of a gun for self-defense every single day. Take into account the gang member who is already committing a crime just having the illegal weapon. Take into account the anti-gun activist who is immune from criticism because a bullet crippled him. Show a stereotypical hunter and a scared woman who is still unsure of her feelings on the matter and call it balanced.
That’s not balance, that’s misdirection. That’s a dirty hand at alteration of perception. Before I start sounding too much like Jesse Jackson, I’ll leave you with this. Even today, when gun rights are fading as a hot-button issue with the Left, make no mistake that they will still attempt to peddle their agenda as quietly and aggressively as possible.
posted by Rob Beck | 5:35 AM
1 Comments:
Rob, it's just not possible that some little thugs held a gun to Marion Berry's head. Washington DC banned guns! That means there aren't any more guns there! Laws always work. Don't you know that?
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