Better To Remain Silent Lest You Be Thought A Fool...
Than open your mouth and remove all doubt. I love that old axiom. It fits no one this week better than one of the Indianapolis Star's chief editorialists, Dan Carpenter. His editorial, "Hoosiers Under Fire", was a finely crafted piece of boring talking points that looks like he just couldn't figure who to attack that week. To be safe, it looks like he just fired a shotgun full of ink at the easiest of conservative or Republican targets. For example:
All those poor souls stuck like penned cattle in a bureaucratic cyber-mess at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles -- and no Kernan-O'Bannon administration to blame it on. Well, we can all give thanks they weren't waiting for concealed-weapons permits. I can tell you I feel a lot safer now that you can buy one of those for a lifetime.
It was important, said one of the legislators who championed this latest victory for the gun lobby, that good citizens be spared the "hassle" of renewing permits for lethal firearms every few years. He didn't mention the joy of periodic driver's license renewals; but, hey, maybe he killed two birds with that bullet. Surely, any clerk anywhere is going to think twice about hassling customers when just about anybody might be packin'.
Well, in two short paragraphs, he managed to malign the BMV, gun owners, legislators, possibly the governor and people who don't speak quite so eloquently as he (packin'?). That's got to be some kind of record.
Let's concede that we know Carpenter hates gun owners, because he buys in to the elitist claptrap that somehow if you disarm the citizenry or make it difficult for them to get guns, crime will magically drop. The English and Canadians thought that too, as did the Australians, and you don't have to be a man of the world to see how stupendously that failed.
And hey while we're on the subject, I'm all for lifetime driver's licenses. At most, they check your vision. What's the point? People have the chart memorized anyway. Read line 3. Sound familiar? It's just another way for the State to now squeeze $21 out of our wallets every six years. I guess license plate fees weren't high enough. But that's beside the point. Licenses are not always ways to demonstrate competence. You could just as easily say that columnists such as Carpenter and bloggers such as I need get license. Still doesn't speak to our competence, does it Dan?
In most common cases, like driver's licenses, it's all about the fee. Just some extra money to be made for the state's coffer and the concealed carry license is no different. And would Dan please explain to me how it's going to make a lick of difference if someone has a concealed carry license for 1 year or 100 if they get convicted of a felony? They'll still lose it. It's not irrevocable. Setting aside that I'm all for a system like Vermont and Alaska have (no permits needed to carry concealed), I think Dan either doesn't want to or somehow can't understand reality, as evidenced by his deep desire to spout off ridiculous rhetoric like he's reading off the DNC's '92/'94 federal platform.
What might be more something for Dan to think on is not so much a clerk being concerned about hassling someone not knowing if they're packing so much as the criminal who won't necessarily commit that violent crime for the same reason. But then, in liberal land there are no criminals, only society's victims, right Dan?
Then Dan goes over the National Asset Database which ridiculously lists several Indiana attractions (I'm sure Santa Claus Land is in there without even looking) as terror targets. That one I have to agree with Dan on. Someone check the temperature in Hell.
But, Dan just can't let sleeping dogs lie. He has to prove to you that he really can fit his whole foot in his mouth.
Just to kind of bring things full circle, Paul Helmke, the former Republican mayor of Martone's hometown of Fort Wayne, blasted Florida Gov. Jeb Bush last week for attributing a dip in that state's (still horrendous) crime rate to a new law allowing citizens to "meet force with force" when they feel threatened.
Helmke, who became president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence just last Monday, issued a statement noting that violent crime has decreased nationally since the restrictive Brady Law went into effect in 1994. He questioned whether that's not a better idea than encouraging folks to carry heat and handle their own policing when they get, er, hassled.
Now there's a credible source. The Brady Campaign, formerly the Artist known as Handgun Control, Inc. saying that their prize gun control legislation, which did exactly nothing to stop criminals from getting or using guns, was responsible for a crime wave decrease that started at least a year before the legislation was adopted. Certainly it wasn't the dip in the crack drug trade or the fact that criminals themselves were reporting (from behind bars, thankfully) that they preferred to avoid targets and homes they feared to be armed. Couldn't be that cities with highly restrictive gun laws saw their crime rate decrease at much lower levels than the rest of the country (except New York, go Rudy).
But to review, the Brady Law primarily hassled law-abiding gun owners, and I remember it well because it restricted my and others' lawful purchase activities at the time, but I knew dealers in our neighborhood who had no trouble acquiring stolen guns. The law didn't affect them, apparently. Primarily, it made someone wait seven days to get a gun legally (unless you had a permit) and then only until they had the national instant check system. It restricted clips for semi-auto handguns to 10 rounds and banned certain cosmetically unique firearms from new manufacture and sale in the U.S. You could still own them or buy older ones, and you could still own clips that had greater than 10 rd. capacity. So who did it stop? Well, if you were trying to purchase one of those items legally, it stopped you most likely. Clips that were $13-$15 suddenly were over $100 and stayed that way for 10 years. Rifles that had been $400-$500 suddenly went for well over $1000 or more. No change, just availability.
All that law did, and anyone that was listening to Handgun Control, its Marxist sympathizers, and Bubba C in the White House on his more candid days, was price some guns and accessories out of the range of the poor and middle class, which was what they wanted. Brady was a test law to see if they could start down the slope to bury gun rights. The '94 election proved that they had rather grossly misjudged Americans and their habit of not liking freedoms restricted for their "own good".
So Dan might consider some of that before spouting useless drivel in the form of quotes from an outspoken anti-gun-rights advocate who has taken the lead of a largely discredited agitprop anti-gun rights organization. Of course, if he were to stop, then I wouldn't have such pretty gems to pick up and run with the following day, so perhaps you should keep opening that mouth, Dan. Just try and remember that old axiom.
Than open your mouth and remove all doubt. I love that old axiom. It fits no one this week better than one of the Indianapolis Star's chief editorialists, Dan Carpenter. His editorial, "Hoosiers Under Fire", was a finely crafted piece of boring talking points that looks like he just couldn't figure who to attack that week. To be safe, it looks like he just fired a shotgun full of ink at the easiest of conservative or Republican targets. For example:
All those poor souls stuck like penned cattle in a bureaucratic cyber-mess at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles -- and no Kernan-O'Bannon administration to blame it on. Well, we can all give thanks they weren't waiting for concealed-weapons permits. I can tell you I feel a lot safer now that you can buy one of those for a lifetime.
It was important, said one of the legislators who championed this latest victory for the gun lobby, that good citizens be spared the "hassle" of renewing permits for lethal firearms every few years. He didn't mention the joy of periodic driver's license renewals; but, hey, maybe he killed two birds with that bullet. Surely, any clerk anywhere is going to think twice about hassling customers when just about anybody might be packin'.
Well, in two short paragraphs, he managed to malign the BMV, gun owners, legislators, possibly the governor and people who don't speak quite so eloquently as he (packin'?). That's got to be some kind of record.
Let's concede that we know Carpenter hates gun owners, because he buys in to the elitist claptrap that somehow if you disarm the citizenry or make it difficult for them to get guns, crime will magically drop. The English and Canadians thought that too, as did the Australians, and you don't have to be a man of the world to see how stupendously that failed.
And hey while we're on the subject, I'm all for lifetime driver's licenses. At most, they check your vision. What's the point? People have the chart memorized anyway. Read line 3. Sound familiar? It's just another way for the State to now squeeze $21 out of our wallets every six years. I guess license plate fees weren't high enough. But that's beside the point. Licenses are not always ways to demonstrate competence. You could just as easily say that columnists such as Carpenter and bloggers such as I need get license. Still doesn't speak to our competence, does it Dan?
In most common cases, like driver's licenses, it's all about the fee. Just some extra money to be made for the state's coffer and the concealed carry license is no different. And would Dan please explain to me how it's going to make a lick of difference if someone has a concealed carry license for 1 year or 100 if they get convicted of a felony? They'll still lose it. It's not irrevocable. Setting aside that I'm all for a system like Vermont and Alaska have (no permits needed to carry concealed), I think Dan either doesn't want to or somehow can't understand reality, as evidenced by his deep desire to spout off ridiculous rhetoric like he's reading off the DNC's '92/'94 federal platform.
What might be more something for Dan to think on is not so much a clerk being concerned about hassling someone not knowing if they're packing so much as the criminal who won't necessarily commit that violent crime for the same reason. But then, in liberal land there are no criminals, only society's victims, right Dan?
Then Dan goes over the National Asset Database which ridiculously lists several Indiana attractions (I'm sure Santa Claus Land is in there without even looking) as terror targets. That one I have to agree with Dan on. Someone check the temperature in Hell.
But, Dan just can't let sleeping dogs lie. He has to prove to you that he really can fit his whole foot in his mouth.
Just to kind of bring things full circle, Paul Helmke, the former Republican mayor of Martone's hometown of Fort Wayne, blasted Florida Gov. Jeb Bush last week for attributing a dip in that state's (still horrendous) crime rate to a new law allowing citizens to "meet force with force" when they feel threatened.
Helmke, who became president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence just last Monday, issued a statement noting that violent crime has decreased nationally since the restrictive Brady Law went into effect in 1994. He questioned whether that's not a better idea than encouraging folks to carry heat and handle their own policing when they get, er, hassled.
Now there's a credible source. The Brady Campaign, formerly the Artist known as Handgun Control, Inc. saying that their prize gun control legislation, which did exactly nothing to stop criminals from getting or using guns, was responsible for a crime wave decrease that started at least a year before the legislation was adopted. Certainly it wasn't the dip in the crack drug trade or the fact that criminals themselves were reporting (from behind bars, thankfully) that they preferred to avoid targets and homes they feared to be armed. Couldn't be that cities with highly restrictive gun laws saw their crime rate decrease at much lower levels than the rest of the country (except New York, go Rudy).
But to review, the Brady Law primarily hassled law-abiding gun owners, and I remember it well because it restricted my and others' lawful purchase activities at the time, but I knew dealers in our neighborhood who had no trouble acquiring stolen guns. The law didn't affect them, apparently. Primarily, it made someone wait seven days to get a gun legally (unless you had a permit) and then only until they had the national instant check system. It restricted clips for semi-auto handguns to 10 rounds and banned certain cosmetically unique firearms from new manufacture and sale in the U.S. You could still own them or buy older ones, and you could still own clips that had greater than 10 rd. capacity. So who did it stop? Well, if you were trying to purchase one of those items legally, it stopped you most likely. Clips that were $13-$15 suddenly were over $100 and stayed that way for 10 years. Rifles that had been $400-$500 suddenly went for well over $1000 or more. No change, just availability.
All that law did, and anyone that was listening to Handgun Control, its Marxist sympathizers, and Bubba C in the White House on his more candid days, was price some guns and accessories out of the range of the poor and middle class, which was what they wanted. Brady was a test law to see if they could start down the slope to bury gun rights. The '94 election proved that they had rather grossly misjudged Americans and their habit of not liking freedoms restricted for their "own good".
So Dan might consider some of that before spouting useless drivel in the form of quotes from an outspoken anti-gun-rights advocate who has taken the lead of a largely discredited agitprop anti-gun rights organization. Of course, if he were to stop, then I wouldn't have such pretty gems to pick up and run with the following day, so perhaps you should keep opening that mouth, Dan. Just try and remember that old axiom.
posted by Rob Beck | 11:37 PM
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