James Kerian: No Endgame For A Gun Control Movement Making No Progress
The violent crime rate is dropping. The murder rate is dropping. Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century. Another such incident occurred last week, however, so the left-wing outrage machine is gearing up for another fundraising scheme political campaign to be certain that responsibility for this tragedy is placed exactly where they want it… on anyone who won’t support President Obama’s background check legislation.
It does not matter to the left that this legislation would have had no impact whatsoever on the ability of this recent murderer to acquire weapons. Every event (regardless of the facts) is to be used as an excuse to further concentrate power.
[mks_pullquote align=”left” width=”300″ size=”18″ bg_color=”#000000″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]Britain last summer launched an anti-knife campaign because apparently just as guns kill people in America knives have similarly bad habits back in England. Last spring twenty-nine people were killed in a knife attack at a Chinese train station.[/mks_pullquote]
Fortunately the whole thing is political theater. Congress has not substantially changed since the last time the Democrats tried to use a horrible tragedy like this as a wedge issue and a fundraising scheme. The politicians and the voters who noticed that the Newtown murders had nothing to do with background checks are likely to see the same thing this time.
If, however, the American left is ever able to start making real anti-gun progress there is no reason to think they would be satisfied anytime soon. President Obama wants an assault weapon ban. Bernie Sanders wants a ban on every firearm not designed for hunting. At that point, as many liberals have pointed out, the obvious next step would be a complete ban on any and all guns.
Think that would be the end? A quick look around the globe tells us that’s very unlikely. Britain last summer launched an anti-knife campaign because apparently just as guns kill people in America knives have similarly bad habits back in England. Last spring twenty-nine people were killed in a knife attack at a Chinese train station. It doesn’t take too much imagination to think of what the American left would do with an incident like that once gun confiscation was complete. As surely as “global warming” became “climate change” you can bet that “gun control” will become “weapon control” if that was what the left needed to keep up the charade.
The charade can’t stop because the gun control movement has never actually had anything to do with making Americans safer. That’s why the legislation proposed never actually relates to the tragedy that is being used to push it forward. The dual purpose of the gun control movement is to further concentrate power in fewer hands and to allow urban Americans to voice their infinite confidence in their intellectual/cultural/moral superiority to rural Americans.
