Keeping Up With The News

I wanted to give you all a heads-up on staying on top of the news. Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell and John Richardson at No Lawyers, Only Guns & Money are doing yeoman's work in staying on top of all the ramifications of the Tucson shootings. I strongly suggest checking with them every morning to see what's up.

One article worth reading is from Fortune, titled Why There's No More Debate on Gun Control:

How did we get here?

The answer owes in part to the National Rifle Association itself, whose opponents acknowledge as an unrivaled grassroots political force.

Obviously, read the whole thing. NPR has the typical histronics, but even they're not baying at the moon:

Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, says he sees McCarthy's proposal as the beginning of a "serious push for new gun laws." But he acknowledges that the 2008 Supreme Court decision affirming the constitutional right to keep and bear arms has complicated the control effort.

Those last, dying elements of the "antigun movement" have simply lost the American people; they are as out of touch as the flat-worlders, and have about as much influence.

I also wanted to address a comment on yesterday's post from Brian J. Here's his comment:

Michael Bane.

Words have consequences.

You are also part of the diatribe of noise on the subject. You use the same phrases you accuse the 'other side' using, you just change the names. 'Loony Left and gun grabbers' and the like.

You say OH I did not invent the phrase so and so said it first.

Really? This is not the 5th grade. You are an adult and appear to have enough gray hair that you should get what I am saying.

Just saying. Noise is noise, no matter where it comes from. We need a conversation among the people, not mouth pieces on the left or right.

Right now I feel I can not have a conversation with anyone on either side.

As an American is am disappointed in us. We should strive for debate, yes! Should we strive for agreement but we may only find common ground.

Diversity is the spice of these United States but too much of one thing is too much.

Brian, fair comments, and words do indeed have consequences. But you misunderstand me...I am not interested in having "a conversation with the other side." That phraseology are simply "code words" for "let me explain to you why you're wrong." Or, worse, "let me explain why it's important that you give up some of your rights because, you know, it is." In many many cases, debate is a disease. Debate implies that you triumph over me in a war of words, I am prepared give up something that's valuable to me, e.g., a portion of my enumerated rights.

For decades the gun culture was obsessed with debate...after all, we were on the side of the angels and the data was all in our favor. We debated and we debated and we debated and we LOST! We lost because the other side understood absolutely that the debate was all a sham...the more of our efforts that went into the debate, the less impact we had on the true battle, that for the hearts and minds of the American people.

I, along with Paul Erhardt, were early adopters of the more confrontational style of dealing with the other side and the MSM that has worked so well for us. In short, we don't compromise on our rights. I thought it was powerful that Congresswoman Gifford read the First Amendment on the opening day of the 112th Congress — freedom of speech is freedom to create the "noise" that's bothering you so much. The rough and tumble partisanship and its attendant language — and believe me, in the past it has been a lot worse! — is part and parcel of the only successful democracy on earth. I would posit that the at times inelegant, raucous, over-the-top shouting of an overheated body politic is in fact why we're still a democracy. It works.

I grew up in the Jim Crow South — my grandmother's favorite story was how I kept going into the "Colored" door at the What-A-Burger. I despise racism in all its myriad forms. But I unconditionally champion the right of racists, of haters, of reprehensible people to write and say what they will. The free marketplace of ideas will quash their venom more effectively than any "hate speech" legislation.

In any public tragedy, there is a strong — and fundamentally incorrect — impulse to find some wider, more equally distributed blame. When President John Kennedy was shot, our teachers asked us all to write poems about how we with all our many failings "helped kill" the President. Except we didn't...an unhinged Marxist who admired Cuba killed the President. My ninth grade class didn't have anything to do with it. As President Ronald Reagan so eloquently stated (and Sarah Palin so aptly referenced yesterday): “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

As Americans our job is not to "reach consensus" or "have a dialogue." Our job to carry our Founders' vision of freedom into the future, for the sake of our children, our grandchildren, for the sake of the world. Sometimes that is a hard and scary thing to do. Sometimes our duty will require us to make decisions that take us out of our comfort zones — who does not feel sick inside at some of the horrific comments of the real haters? Who is not appalled to see an American flag burned? Who doesn't look at an event like Tucson or Virginia Tech and be sickened? Freedom comes with built-in risks, but the alternative comes with chains.

So Brian, yes, words have consequences, and that's why I remain an unabashed, unreconstructed, uncompromising advocate for our rights. An advocate, not a debater...

And BTW, thank YOU for having the cojones to join in the fray!