We Don’t Trust You to Regulate Firearms

And its because you’re untrustworthy.

In what has become our new national pastime, the recent tragedy in Orlando was immediately politicized, and as such, internet, radio, and television were all inundated with nonsense in short order. It makes me wish there were some way to convert inexhaustible cognitive dissonance into renewable energy, for it seems as though a great many liberals think that an ambulatory AR-15 rifle walked into a club and killed dozens of LGBT folks because it was homeschooled by conservative Christians.

Then they turn around to demand “common sense” gun regulation to prevent any more untimely deaths and get immediately flabbergasted that anyone would resist such measures.  After all, how could anyone be so cruel, uncaring, and blinded to the suffering of others by their ideology to refuse some simple and practical rules about who can acquire guns?

So liberals and progressives, let me lay it out for you: One’s invocation of common sense invariably falls on deaf ears when one is uncommonly senseless. The left’s reactions to Orlando do not exhibit the kind of good judgment necessary for making sensible decisions about who is allowed to own which weapons.

Some of you want to ban what you call “assault” weapons. Now, that’s a rhetorical label rather than a meaningful term, but behind it is the wish to outlaw weapons whose design and purpose is primarily to kill large numbers of people at once. On its face, that sounds like a sensible reaction to someone killing a large number of innocent people at once. That is, until you demonstrate the kind of gross ignorance and hyperventilating fear that makes one incapable of sound judgment.

I generally notice liberal incompetence on matters with which they have little experience when it comes to religion—for example, the tendency of liberal reporters is to report on the pious as though they were discovering a remote tribe of hunters and gatherers for the first time. While I’m no gun aficionado, my understanding is that the same is true for firearms. When reporters, politicians, and your other decision/opinion-makers get basic facts like what gun was used, whether fully automatic and “military grade” weapons are readily available, and so forth wrong on a regular basis, they merely demonstrate an ignorance that should disqualify them from making sweeping decisions on what weapons should be available for everyone.

As for the kind of overwhelming fear and terror that drive out rational thought, Gersh Kuntzman provides the quintessential example:

I’ve shot pistols before, but never something like an AR-15. Squeeze lightly on the trigger and the resulting explosion of firepower is humbling and deafening (even with ear protection).

The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary case of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.

These are not the words of someone making a sober assessment. They are the words of someone who, as Kuntzman himself admits, “was just terrified.” He actually thinks that firing a gun a few times gave him PTSD.  Stephen Green put it well over at instapundit: “Other than the fact that Gersh Kuntzman was apparently holding the rifle incorrectly, firing it incorrectly, made an incorrect (and shameful) claim about having PTSD, was incorrect that Mateen used an AR-15 in the Orlando terror attack, and was incorrect about being able to purchase a fully automatic ‘tactical machine gun,’ this is a totally accurate piece he’s written for the Daily News.”  How are folks that wet themselves at a firing range going to make sensible decisions about which weapons are too dangerous to own?

Others of you want to keep any weapon out of the hands of dangerous people. That too sounds very sensible until we consider who you seem to deem most dangerous. Every time a Muslim slaughters a bunch of people, you fall all over yourselves to assure everyone that a religion characterized throughout its history by violent expansion is really a religion of peace. Instead, you try and find a host of bizarre ways to somehow blame the murderous actions of a gay Muslim Democrat on conservatives, Christians, and 2^nd Amendment supporters. Heck, a liberal reporter just blamed the shooting on supporters of the North Carolina bathroom bill. In light of this, it is perhaps understandable that conservative Christian gun-owners think that when you want to come take guns away from dangerous crazies, you really mean us.

But its no better when we move beyond popular rhetoric into the realm of official acts. Why not use the no-fly list or the terror watch list or some other official list to enumerate who may not own a gun? Well, in addition to such lists being notorious for lacking any due process because they’re the products of unaccountable bureaucrats, too many of those bureaucrats bear the same prejudices as the typical liberal. The FBI was watching Omar Mateen, but decided he wasn’t a threat. The State Department shut down an investigation into his mosque because it “unfairly singled out Muslims.” This fails to inspire much confidence that public service will somehow improve on the left’s typical ability to make good judgment calls. From top to bottom you have folks who think that a boy’s declaration that he’s a girl really makes him a girl, but that a boy’s repeated declarations that he’s killing people on behalf of ISIS has nothing to do with why he’s killing people. We would have to be insane to let you decide which of us should be armed.

Our right to bear arms is guaranteed in the constitution because our founders wanted to put decisions about who is empowered to defend themselves and their liberties outside the purview of mobs, politicians, and bureaucrats whose interests in the matter run contrary to the interests of the American people. Every time a mass shooting happens, the over-reactive left only proves the wisdom of that decision.