A week ago, I reported that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wanted to define the right to keep and bear arms as a government proffered “privilege” that could be revoked anytime. Some Americans responded with almost prideful relief that in the US, “we” have the Second Amendment to stop that. After all, it’s explicit, actually stating, in part: “… the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
In reality, the Second Amendment has been broken more often than Evel Kneivel’s bones, and contemporary politicians like Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) are rabid to break it even more.
Booker’s (D-NJ) oafish August 3rd performance with “Reverend Al” Sharpton on MSNBC to discuss the mass murder in El Paso speaks volumes about this, and his lack of respect for others.
First, viewers were treated to an intro they might find ironic.
Al offered this:
We’re talking about human lives. We’re talking about people who were out shopping, back to school, uh, no taxes, uh, a shopping day, in Texas… What is your message?
Message? Given Al’s own problems with tax non-payment to the federal vampire even as he’s consistently called for more government spending on welfare and higher taxes on the so-called “rich”, that’s an inauspicious start. But Booker didn’t care.
Like a racehorse, Cory burst out of the gate:
…Obviously, we’re sending energy, and love, and support to all those who were involved right now, all those who’ve been effected, all those folks who responded. But that’s just not enough. It is not enough…
Perhaps prayer might be what he wants? Not a chance. He wants to insult history, overlook facts about violent crime, disregard his oath to the Constitution, and attack rights themselves…
This is a uniquely American problem. No other nation sees this kind of carnage happening within its own borders, unless, of course, they’re at war, using weapons of war.
Let’s not dive into Booker’s inconsistency on the US government unconstitutionally using weapons of war on foreign civilians – inconsistency apparently dependent on whether there’s a Democrat he likes or a Republican he dislikes in the White House. Let’s just focus on this: when one studies the internal carnage of nation-states, there have been over 100 million people wiped out by their own governments in Russia, Germany, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, and others…
That carnage came after civilians were disarmed by politicians claiming the “power” to do it. Yet this is precisely Booker’s line of “reasoning” here.
The painful thing for me is? That the majority of Americans agree with me.
It wouldn’t matter if every American but one agreed with this man. They would not have a right to take away that lone dissenter’s gun, or to threaten him or her at all.
It’s called a right for a reason, Senator, because it is inherent in each person, it is universal, and it is equally hands-off from one to another.
You, Senator, are the one threatening peaceful people merely for owning something, and to prove it, we will ask you four questions.
First, is the ownership of an item a violent act? No. It is not.
Second, does ownership connote intent? No. One might try to guess as to why someone bought something, but one cannot be sure in every individual instance. A person buying a pair of scissors might want them to cut paper, or want them for a theatrical play. It is not our place to assume for another why he acted to procure something in a peaceful manner. And even if we were to assume, as Booker does, the CDC has shown that armed civilians are 3.6 times more likely to stop crimes than to engage in them, so if you wanted to force people, Cory, you’d want to force them to buy guns.
Third, we might ask… who would be coming to arrest these peaceful people, Cory? That’s right, armed agents of the state, under your statutory command, paid for by the expropriation of money from the very people you would attack with arms. So, who’s really engaging in threats of gun violence?
And, finally, Cory, when you and others praise police for stopping violent attacks, what tool do police carry that helps them bring down killers?
But Booker didn’t want to use logic or facts on MSNBC. He had righteous invective to spit in our faces:
We have evidence-based measures that we could be doing… But they are being frustrated by spineless politicians and folks who are doing the bidding of the corporate gun lobby and the NRA.
Is it spineless to stand up for an inherent right? No. It’s spineless to kneel before the state.
Booker, and many like him, callously disregard the Second Amendment, and they’ve done so to such an extent as to not only make the Amendment non-functional, but to have shifted the popular vocabulary away from rights entirely. The idea that the right can be infringed is taken as a given, and the debate is merely about how and to what extent.
Should you stand in his way, you are the bad guy.
'We have the power to do it,' he continued. 'And doing nothing? You are complicit in the kind of carnage we are seeing in our country these days.'
This is defamatory. It is close to both slander – defamation in verbal, aural form -- and libel -- in word, pictures, or on video. Mr. Booker is labeling you, me, and anyone else who believes in leaving his or her neighbor free to exercise their rights to self-defense, as complicit in mass murder. If he were to single you or me out by name, he’d be on very shaky legal ground.
What is allowing this level of carnage to continue is the inaction – is the inaction – of good people.
Those would be the “good” people he just said were complicit in mass slaughter. But take no notice, we’re in the homestretch… Time to trot out the old collectivist lingo as we head to the finish line:
It is common sense that we should have gun licensing in this country.
Whose common sense? Licensing is precisely what the Second Amendment forbids and what has been used to disarm millions worldwide who were wiped out by their governments.
If you need a license to drive a car, you should need a license to buy a firearm.
Not only is that a false equivalency, this is where the history of liberty might be something Booker would like to learn. He might want to learn that asking for a license is asking permission from agents of the state to engage in a peaceful activity, that it’s a form of state coercion.
And he might learn the “evidence-based” information that licensing for the roads has been forced on us because the government slowly took over the building and so-called “management” of roads – and they do a terrible job, pushing people of varying skills onto the same roads when private roadways would distinguish and allow for more safety on various roads hosting various levels of driving skill, speeds, and traffic. He might know that the first many thousands of miles of roads in early America were built privately, without taking land through eminent domain, and without taking tax money for building or maintenance. Booker might even discover that in ancient England, the early roads were created by neighbors to allow for travel past fields and were maintained voluntarily.
And if Booker’s so concerned about needless deaths and licensing to stop death, why doesn’t he license baseball bats? Not only are they used in acts of violence, reportedly over 25 people a year are killed – accidentally or intentionally – with baseball bats.
Want to know how many people are injured in chainsaw accidents every day, Cory? 99. Per day.
Someone drowns in a bathtub nearly every day in the US, Cory.
Over and over the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics show that more people are killed with hammers and blunt objects each year in the US than with rifles.
This is not to downplay or make light of people shooting others. But if Booker is so driven to license and take measures to “keep the deadly weapons out of the wrong hands”, why isn’t he crusading to license baseball players, bathtub owners, lumberjacks, carpenters, and anyone who wants to buy a damned hammer?
The reason appears to be that Booker doesn’t care about consistency or statistics, and he doesn’t care about rights or that document supposedly written to protect our rights from attacks by insufferable blowhards like him.
And Booker doesn’t care about the most fundamental fact: anti-gun statutes will not stop criminally minded people from getting firearms.
In his own New Jersey he could have noticed that after a sweeping “gun control” measure was passed in 2009, violent crime increased there the next year. And it remained virtually unchanged in 2011, equaling approximately one murder, one rape, 33 robberies, and 37 aggravated assaults per day. 2012 saw virtually the same numbers, as did 2013.
Booker’s cavalier -- nay, almost prideful and arrogantly righteous -- disdain for other peoples’ rights cannot change the facts or hide his hypocrisy. It can’t change the fact that nearly 80 percent of criminals caught with firearms had guns that didn’t belong to them. It can’t change the fact that the alleged shooter in El Paso used an AK 47 (something the accused mentioned in his own words). It can’t change the fact that automatic versions of the rifle were banned by the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) and revisions that expanded the ban in 1986. As The Federalist notes:
Under the (revised) NFA, it is illegal for any private civilian to own any fully automatic weapons manufactured after May 19, 1986. Only certain types of FFL/SOTs may make them, and then only for purchase by qualified state and federal agencies. There are no exceptions. According to the ATF’s official handbook on NFA laws and regulations, it’s not even legal to make new replacement parts for pre-1986 machine guns: ‘There is no exception allowing for the lawful production, transfer, possession, or use of a post-May 18, 1986 machinegun receiver as a replacement receiver on a weapon produced prior to May 19, 1986.’
Oh, and Mr. Booker, murder of human beings outside the womb is against the law in every state. You might want to consider how well those statutes stopped the shooters.
Fatuous. Insulting. Errant. Pompous. Conceited. Dangerous.
We could go on, Cory, as long as you do.