“So if you love guns…then you need to be shot. You need to feel a bullet rip through your flesh, and if you survive and enjoy the feeling—then the right to bear arms will be all yours.”
Salon is a widely known left-wing rag, a den for liberals to cobble together irrational screeds. No doubt, the writing process begins in crayon and on widely ruled hand writing paper, peppered with large chunks of unprocessed wood chips. It actually sparks a bit of nostalgia, since the vast majority of us left those infantile tools behind in preschool. However, liberalism is the creed of the eternally infantile. It isn’t a rationale but merely a collection of assertions; the intellectual equivalent of the fabled caveman’s grunting and wild gesticulating. It’s emotive and is, therefore, extremely popular with the TMZ constituent, whose intellectual development has been stunted by an unrelenting consumption of Kardashian trivia.
D. Watkins scribbles for Salon and produced a piece breathtaking in its psychosis. But, that’s to be expected of a liberal. The experience of the real has no bearing on the fairy tale world of liberalism’s dogma. It’s a Bizaro world where everything is backwards. Up is down because desire, not rationality, forms the basis for every liberal presupposition. But, just for laughs, let’s follow D. Watkins down the rabbit hole.
For most liberals, the issue of violence and mass killings in particular is a question of “gun violence.” Usually, the unstated premise is that but for the presence of a firearm the violent act would not have occurred. For any thinking person this is child’s play. Violence is triggered by the presence of emotion, usually hate. Place a hammer in a room with two amicably disposed people and murder is unlikely to occur simply because the hammer is there. But, this is precisely the argument proffered by liberals like D. Watkins. “Guns break apart families and ruin lives.” It’s laughable.
What isn’t humorous are the Democrat policies and attitudes that promote hopelessness, despair, and inflame the passions of unstable personalities. After roughly fifty years of the Democrat’s war on poverty, more people are on welfare than ever before. The soul crushing mantra from Democrats is you can’t make it without us. You’re not smart enough, determined enough, or privileged; therefore, the American dream is out of your reach unless the government deigns to reach down to you and shepherd you through life. The result is generational impoverishment and reliance on the Democrat party gravy train. Additionally, the racist and inflammatory statements constantly propounded by Democrats, their operatives, and the demonization of law enforcement all combine to produce a perfect storm of misdirected rage. And, rage doesn’t need a bullet to kill. In fact, contrary to Watkins’ infantile assertions, the worst mass killings have been perpetrated with explosives, which are and have been strictly controlled. Weren’t three thousand Americans killed when two commercial jets were weaponized?
Watkins’ misdirection is probably unconscious but typical. Since liberalism, at it’s root, is a political construct and alibi for license, placing blame on an object or circumstance, rather than asserting personal responsibility, is central to its ethos. Criminals aren’t responsible for their actions, so they are placed in institutions to be rehabilitated. Homosexuality isn’t a choice but a function of biology. Poverty isn’t a product of poor choices; it’s the result of institutional unfairness, racism, or victimization by rapacious capitalists. And finally, violence isn’t a problem of the spirit, of the disintegration of the traditional family, or of the unrelenting messaging of a thug culture—it’s a gun problem. And, Democrats know it’s such an easy sell. It’s in our nature and as ancient as the Garden of Eden. When Adam was confronted with his sin he actually blamed Eve and God. It’s so much easier to believe that fault lies with something external to ourselves.
Another favorite device of the anti-gun Left is the straw man argument. Watkins states that Dr. Ben Carson makes “matters worse” by offering “guns as a solution to everything.” Second Amendment advocates have yet to offer the proliferation of guns as a solution to the tale of climate change. No one has ever suggested that guns are the solution to poverty. Nor, does the NRA suggest that placing a firearm in everyone’s possession will solve the issue of mass killings. What is asserted is that good people with guns always thwart bad people with guns. And, in law enforcement circles, it is a proven law of nature that active shooters always stop their killing as soon as someone bearing arms confronts them.
Watkins is right about the futility of “more rigorous gun laws coupled with a stricter screening process and plans that are never clear or properly fleshed out.” But, this is by design. Like most liberals, Watkins is a dupe of the Democrat ruling class. Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton could care less about the deaths caused by homicidal individuals. Chicago, Detroit, New York all have the strictest gun laws in the country and yet are plagued by violent crime. What Democrats desire is power and if they have to climb over a mountain of corpses to acquire the power they desire, then so be it. Real solutions aren’t offered because violence is a canard.
Firearms are tools of power and as such, in the hands of the people, they are a democratizing element. Democrats and RINOs desire the coalescence of power in Washington. So, guns represent a threat to that objective. Never wasting a good crisis, Democrats politicize every mass shooting with the simple objective of parting as many citizens as possible from their gun rights—their civil rights.
Finally, Watkins makes an incredibly ironic “argument.” He says, “Gun praisers are just like the people who were in favor of slavery back in the day…” The Dred Scott case, where the Supreme Court held that blacks were mere chattel, argued that if blacks were to be considered citizens they would have the same right to keep and bear arms as white citizens. Chief Justice Taney (appointed by a Democrat) was horrified by this idea—that blacks would possess the means to free themselves. The “gun praisers” that Watkins vilifies would have been the abolitionists back in the day. One would think that black Americans would be the most vociferous defendants of Second Amendment civil rights, since their not so distant ancestors felt the searing pain of the lash having been stripped of the ability to defend their natural rights.
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