Gun Rights: All Politics
Is Gun Politics
We’re reaching the point where politics takes the trajectory we’ve endured in gun politics for decades. “Reality don’t matter.” Too often, our Constitution is not even an afterthought in legislative chambers. Facts and math have no meaning. Reasoned logical debate is fruitless. What the public wants can be ignored totally and with impunity by motivated “authorities.” So-called “news” media has completely sold out, going along with — or worse — cheerleading for tyrannical, unconstitutional power grabs.
Leadership in America has proposed federalizing elections. The Constitution is explicit about elections: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof (Art. I, Sec. 4, Cl. 1).”
“Reality” TV?
If you’re unaware, the administration has mocked up a room across the street that looks like the Oval Office. President Biden goes there to deliver carefully controlled teleprompter speeches. It’s in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, displaying fake flowers through a faked window, mocked by those who found out (or attended!) as “the Truman Show White House,” literally a game-show set. Antony Blinken (Sec. of State), Janet Yellen (Treasury Sec.) and U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield have cooperated and used the set for official events. They’re in on the deception and keep up the pretense. It’s not so different from using a murder scene as a backdrop to deliver anti-gun-rights spiels.
So, our Founders put power to control elections in the hands of the states. When the president proposes a federal takeover, regardless of excuses for “fairness,” new-fangled equity, or reparations for unspecified past injuries, copywriters at the news conference, sometimes called reporters, don’t grumble or ask questions. That’s precisely what gun owners have faced with “shall not be infringed” since the 1960s. The government has been deciding to do what it wants, including infringements, let the rules be damned. What Constitution?
We gun-rights stalwarts raised these issues loud and clear, showing dramatic evidence of such tyrannical usurpation for all to see. Mass media covers it up, if they cover it at all, calling it overreach, a comfortable euphemism failing to convey the serious treachery of the proposals and acts.
Sleight Of Hand
Lying and fabrication have been the main tools in the anti-gun debate and have become standard tools for other government operations. We have been side-stepped with arguments about “ghost guns,” misdirecting time, energy and political capital on an invented “problem.” Shops haven’t been robbed at ghost-gun point; few, if any, muggers use ghost guns. Smash-and-grab theft doesn’t even use guns, but we’re told we must control guns to control crime. We keep having to point out gun control is not crime control. We get it and they don’t even listen. Like a magician misdirecting your gaze to pull off a sleight-of-hand, the right to build a gun for yourself at home disappears.
Lies in the general political arena have gotten so blatant that, despite seeing it with our own eyes — like countless immigrants illegally flooding across the border — we’re told, to our faces, “The borders are closed.” It’s a lie, total bull pucky. We experienced equivalent balderdash early, with nonsense about “invisible guns” that could sneak past security checkpoints. That was as real as closed borders, with invisible invaders. It’s similar to being told the riots would stop by outlawing retail ammo sales or the AR-15 during summer riots. Pay no attention to the anarchists and race-baiters running the riots, murdering and burning what’s nearby.
The one that got me most perhaps was saying a trillion-dollar spending bill would cost nothing. There’s barely a parallel to the gun quicksand. The Brady Bill, when it passed, included a quarter-billion-dollar price tag to build the national background check computer (NICS) for the FBI. At least the price tag showed in the bill itself — along with the known-to-be-false promise it would control criminals. Criminals remain armed to their hearts’ content, though NICS does encumber sales to the innocent public.
Liars Figure
Numbers and statistics have been a source of misinformation and manipulation from long before guns became controversial — in the mid-1960s, by the way. Before that, they were just part of life. Watch some olden film noir for that sense. Lately, the most significant statistical lies have been “Inflation is merely transitory and at 4%.” When gas and many of the groceries you buy cost double, that’s hard to swallow. Remember when you were told guns are many times more likely to hurt you than defend you? Disproven beyond doubt — by hard facts — the number got mystically lowered to just 2.7 times more likely. Politics and gun politics are merging in abandoning truth.
“Our exit from Afghanistan was a complete success.” If you count leaving our people behind against their wishes, along with a billion dollars of our most advanced weaponry, a success, then sure. About as successful as waiting to see if waiting periods stop crime or make abusers pause.
Award-winning author Alan Korwin has written 14 books, 10 of them on gun law, and has advocated for gun rights for nearly three decades. See his work or reach him at GunLaws.com.