I missed this, but the White House statement from “President Biden” (Who wrote it? Who approved it? Did the President even know about it?) following the Madison, Wisconsin school shooting two weeks ago couldn’t be a better demonstration of the intellectual dishonesty and ruthlessness of the Left’s anti-Second Amendment fanatics. Apparently gun-phobics are thrilled any time a gun-related tragedy occurs so they can rush out junk like this and fundraising appeals to exploit the event for all it’s worth, and the higher body count the better. The alleged Presidential sentiment deliberately misrepresents the shooting by linking it to standard tenets of the anti-gun agenda that literally have nothing to do with the incident being exploited.
The Biden statement also brands itself as standard issue cant by using the deliberately meaningless Axis phrase “commonsense gun safety laws,” overwhelming used by those whose idea of “common sense” is not to allow legal private gun ownership at all. Then the letter advocates universal background checks, a national red flag law, a ban on assault weapons, and a ban on high-capacity magazines, not one of which would have done anything to prevent the shooting that is supposed to be the subject of the letter.
The shooter in Madison was a 15-year-old girl who couldn’t legally purchase a gun anyway: background checks don’t apply to shooters like her. Nor would a “red flag law” have flagged her, since it doesn’t include children too young to own guns. The shooter didn’t use an “assault weapon”; she used a pistol; nor was a high-capacity magazine involved. Never mind! Guns bad, so this tragedy that might have been prevented if only “we could melt all the guns and give a new world to our daughters and sons” (which we can’t: Who recognizes the song lyric?) justifies rushing out anti-gun propaganda when the appeal to emotion would be most effective.
Yecchh.
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Pointer: Not the Bee
Ethics Alarms 
Two things:
1. Yes, I recognize those lyrics. I did a lighting design for a benefit performance of that show fortysomething years ago.
2. There is, to my mind, such a thing as common-sense gun laws which would move, rather than create, a line beyond which the 2nd amendment doesn’t apply. The fact that these laws would not have prevented this incident doesn’t mean they’d be useless.
It does mean that they aren’t relevant to the shooting being used to promote them, however.
About that show: I loved it, saw the touring company three times, and even the first time found that particular Summer of Love lyric beneath the show’s other virtues.
Just curious… do you object to the lyrics of the entire song, or just (or primarily) to that one line?
That line poisoned the song for me, but the whole thing smacks of John Lennonism at its ickiest: “All You Need is Love.” Imagine,” etc. Still Mort Shuman had to end the revue somehow, and the frequent cynicism of the rest of the songs was not the way to send the audience out humming, so I didn’t object to “If We Only Have Love” too much in context. So mach of the show is brilliant, I can’t be too tough on the finale.
I’ll go even farther: I think it’s the best pure musical revue of the past 50 years or more. I just realized that I’ve used more songs from “Jacques Brel” in my own revues (not counting Gilbert and Sullivan revues) than from any other source: seven. I’d like to do a seminar about it.
I always thought these stanzas/lyrics were idiotic:
“If we only have love
Then tomorrow will dawn
And the days of our years
Will rise on that morn”
and
“Then with nothing at all
But the little we are
We will have conquered all time
All space, the sun, and the stars”
jvb
Oh, they are, but I was willing to give the Brel translator a pass on that nod to the Age of Aquarius because the rest of his lyrics were generally clever and even brilliant. You have to remember that the show was written in 1967 and premiered in 1968, when everybody was taking stuff like that as profound, heavy and cool, man!
Oh—I believe “red flag laws” are unconstitutional as prior restraint.
I’ll agree with that.
Even if it is used against gangbangers.
“There is, to my mind, such a thing as common-sense gun laws which would move, rather than create, a line beyond which the 2nd amendment doesn’t apply. The fact that these laws would not have prevented this incident doesn’t mean they’d be useless.“
Well, let us know when someone finds those effective but heretofore somehow elusive laws. Maybe they’re just looking in the wrong places.
Odd that years ago, anyone with the cash could walk into a Sears, Western Auto, K-Mart, etc., and walk out with a firearm. They could mail-order one. School kids would commonly carry pocket knives, and high schoolers could have shotguns or rifles in the trunks of their cars after a weekend hunt, and nobody was stabbed or shot.
Maybe the compulsive control fanatics need to stop looking for that hidden magical gun law, and maybe they need to redefine the problem.
the only line the 2nd amendment has is “shall not be infringed”. Let’s start there, today.
gun owners are the single most Law abiding demographic, better than police, federal employees,politicians, etc.
in short “bite me”
Well said…and I have nothing to add.
I lied. I’ll add one thing…something I’ve written numerous times, but it always bears repeating. The 2nd Amendment does NOT establish my right to bear arms. It merely states that the federal government shall not infringe it.
That means the my right to bear arms exists whether or not the 2nd Amendment exists.
In short…”bite me”…squared.
“gun owners are the single most Law abiding demographic, better than police, federal employees,politicians, etc.”
Is there a link for that, JH?
PWS
FBI statistics.
link to a paper that says of course, they pass a background check they are more law abiding, then argues that not true since we just don’t know enough.
https://www.gvpedia.org/gun-myths/no-crimes/
Sherlock Holmes,
the dog didn’t bark. How often in mass media is a CCW carrier in the news for crime? If it wasn’t rare we would certainly know the opposite.
Thanks!
PWS
Mark Glaze, former head of Michael Bloomberg’s Astroturf anti-firearms group Everytown for Gun Safety:
“… Is it a messaging problem when a mass shooting happens and nothing that we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting? Sure it’s a challenge in this issue.”
So, it’s just a “messaging problem”, not reality, that’s keeping them from getting “common sense” regulations?
“Messaging problem” must be an newspeak way to say “we must lie in order to gain support of the ignorant”.
See also: https://youtu.be/G50QlMeKErE
This reminds of an article from 2013, when FJB was Vice President.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/how-the-gun-control-debate-ignores-black-lives/80445/
Obama went over the litany of school shootings — Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown — and made a brief nod to the deaths of “kids on street corners in Chicago.” But his plan included no money for the urban violence strategies his Justice Department described as effective. His platform didn’t refer to them at all.
A staffer said that the political will of the country was not focused on urban violence, several ministers who attended the meeting recalled.
Has anyone asked why this is so?
Why did not Obama use the bully pulpit to call attention to urban violence?
Why did not FJB use the bully pulpit to call attention to urban violence?
Do you have a cite on this?
AFAIK, the specific weapon has not been mentioned. Just that it was a 9mm handgun. Nor as the total number of shots been fired been disclosed.
In the gun world, “high capacity magazine” implies greater than the firearm was designed for. In a handgun, that usually means a magazine longer than the grip. For a rifle, it usually means a drum.
But in the anti-gun world, they’re calling any magazine with a capacity over 10 a “high capacity magazine”. Given that more than 10 rounds is standard in a 9mm, it is quite likely this was a “high capacity magazine”.
But kind of irrelevant here, a 10 round magazine could have easily killed just as many.
We’re almost twenty responses into yet another discussion involving guns and the 2nd Amendment – one in which a statement has been made suggesting “common-sense gun laws” could make a difference – and there has yet to be one actual “common-sense gun-law” proposal made by anyone (and I’m not just picking on Curmie here, I’m looking around at all gun-control proponents) that 1) makes any impact on the already-exaggerated “scourge of gun violence”, 2) causes criminals to stop using guns when committing crimes, or 3) doesn’t abrogate the 2nd Amendment by infringing on lawful citizens’ right to bear arms.
I think that’s the longest sentence I’ve ever written…
common sense gun law
use the laws on the books to remove violent firearm-using repeat criminals.
stop prosecuting victims of violent crimes, that use a weapon in self-defense. Offer classes in public school and locally to adults. Not advocating required training, but familiarization and demystifying a tool.