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Tipsheet

Disappointing: NY Post Editorial Board Caves To Anti-Gun Noise And Backs Scary Gun Ban

AP Photo/Elaine Thompson

There are times where slight cracks are seen in the Second Amendment movement. Red flag laws sound great. In principle, I support them, but Democrats will never agree to the strict due process mechanisms that ensure people’s rights aren’t trampled on and it would most certainly be abused and morphed into a confiscatory weapon. In short, this will be the first of many policy weapons the anti-gun Left wants to use in their safety over security (and due process) agenda when it comes to gun politics. We’re now at it again: two horrific mass shooting less than 24 hours apart in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. 

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The liberal media is blaming everyone who isn’t them for this awful tragedy. They hate us. What else is new? That’s perfectly fine because there is no gauge out there that could accurately measure the hatred I harbor for them—all of them. They think we’re trash. I feel the same way about them. And then, there are times where publications that veer closer to us break away because, I don’t know, it’s hard to defend gun rights when the body count is high. It’s not easy. Defending the Bill of Rights can be hard—and right now is another test. There is no body count high enough that could ever make me for a second think that we should re-think the U.S. Constitution. Millions feel the same way—and we vote. It’s why we win and the Left loses when it comes to gun control unless it’s some policy that’s pushed in the uber-liberal urban bastions of America. For The New York Post, well, they’ve decided to back the assault weapons ban, which had little to no impact in curbing violent crime. And even liberal gun reporters have acknowledged the ineffectiveness of the Left’s ban on scary, scary guns:

Beginning with the return of an assault weapons ban.

We know: That label doesn’t actually describe a clear class of guns. And that some studies show that the last ban, in effect from 1994 to 2004, had a limited impact. But that simply means the next ban should be better written, with a clear definition focused on factors like firepower — rate of fire, muzzle velocity, etc. — not on cosmetic features.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment protects the right to own “guns in common use.” That doesn’t cover the semiautomatic weapons regularly used only in mass shootings.

[…]

Even though the vast majority of Americans are in the middle, desperate for practical measures to stop the carnage.

One of the big reasons that crime has fallen so far in New York City is a crackdown on guns. Their ownership is restricted, and the NYPD is focused on getting illegal ones off the street. Gun control works.

An assault weapons ban is aimed at the likes of the El Paso shooter, who coldly plotted how to kill as many as possible, as quickly as possible. Let’s make that a lot tougher for the next monster.

“Guns don’t kill people, people do,” says the cliché. But the twisted and the evil can kill a lot more people when handed a murder machine. Our Founding Fathers gave us the right to bear arms in a time of muskets. They did not foresee a time when one 21-year-old could kill 20 people in the span of minutes thanks to poisonous beliefs and an assault weapon.

It does not have to be this way. It should not have to be this way. Mr. President, do something — help America live without fear.

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Americans don’t live in fear. Mass shootings are still rare. Homicide rates are down, violent crime is down, and the reason it doesn’t appears that way is because Democrats and their allies in the media crank the echo chamber up to 11 and make it seem like the country is a shooting gallery. It’s not. Second, quit it with what the ‘Founders never envisioned’ nonsense. We don’t know and neither did they. But I can assure you that they knew that society would modernize in all its forms—even weaponry. And surely I would never trust a liberal to tell me what the Founders did or did not foresee in the fullness of time. The arrogance liberal America has coupled with their historical illiteracy, and tendency to destroy our history is nothing short of incredible. Again, it’s simply a talking point to push a trash policy. 

‘The Founders never thought this would exist, so it gives us the right to ban it.’ Are you on crack? Some of the most brilliant men in the world never thought society would craft a better firearm, among other things in socio-political life? It’s just nonsensical. Third, semiautomatic rifles are widely used and owned. Millions of Americans own AR-15 rifles. Charles Cooke at National Review also took this editorial to the woodshed:

Its primary flaw is a chronic — perhaps even proud — lack of precision. The editors acknowledge that the term “assault weapon” “doesn’t actually describe a clear class of guns,” but then demand that the ban they covet be predicated upon “a clear definition focused on factors like firepower — rate of fire, muzzle velocity, etc. — not on cosmetic features.” But there is a reason that both state-level bans and the now-expired 1994 federal ban were cosmetic in nature, and that reason is that the sorts of rifles that the Post wants banned do not differ either in their “rate of fire” or “muzzle velocity” from the sorts of guns that the Post does not want to ban.

The Post’s editors insist that they have no interest in taking away weapons from people “who hunt or keep guns for self-defense.” But that is exactly what their approach would do. The AR-15 and AK-47 — the guns used in Dayton and El Paso respectively — both have exactly the same “rate of fire” as does every other semi-automatic firearm on sale in America. As a result, one cannot base a narrow ban predicated upon “rate of fire” without also banning the majority of the firearms owned and sold in America. By the same token, to build a ban around “muzzle velocity” would be to prohibit almost all of the standard hunting rifles that gun-controllers say they have no interest in prohibiting. Dianne Feinstein, who has spent the last 15 years trying to pass another “assault-weapons ban,” is still focused on cosmetics because she understands that that is the only way to do it given that the objection she is trying to address is . . . cosmetic.

One suspects that the editors of the Post know none of this, and, indeed, that they have bought fully into the erroneous notion that the AR15 and its cousins represent egregious super-weapons that exist in a discrete class of their own.

[…]

But this isn’t true. Not only is the AR-15 a standard sporting rifle, it is also the most popular rifle in America; at a conservative estimate, there are between 8 and 15 million of them in private hands. The idea that they are used “only in mass shootings” is so preposterous as to defy belief — akin in silliness to suggesting that the Ford F-150 is used “only in hit and runs.”

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We’re in another vicious and idiotic cycle of ‘do something’ from liberal America. Put the show on mute, folks. Ignore them just as they dismiss us. We’re right and they’re wrong. Period. This debate is over, which is the cherry on top of this freedom sundae. Liberals always want to do something when these tragedies happen. It’s our job to say slow down or stop. In this case, a rather loud ‘hell no’ is required. Stand firm, dig in, and stack those sandbags. A river of anti-gun, anti-Trump, and anti-American filth is heading our way. 

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