Remembering a Gun Control Failure

.Don Chicchetti, writing at the American Thinker on November 18, 2016, has an excellent article entitled Arm the Innocent. Chicchetti uses the attack on the Bataclan theater in Paris on November 13, 2015 as the example for failed gun control policies in the West. Chicchetti asks:

Let me ask you a question: would you prefer, or not prefer, for that brave soul to have been armed? Would you prefer, or not prefer, that 20-30 of the concertgoers had been armed? If you cannot easily say that yes, you wish they had been armed, then you are either allowing your ideology to hold sway over your morals, or you are simply not morally serious. What does it mean not to be morally serious? It means to value your view of yourself as peaceful/pacifist, or simply morally superior, more than you value other people’s lives.

T.S. Eliot said:

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

In the end, other peoples lives, and even our own should weigh more heavily than hanging onto a notion of pacifism that, frankly, is Unbiblical. Jesus was not a pacifist. Neither should we be.  I don't carry a gun because it makes me feel anything.  Indeed, what I feel is a terrible burden of which I would as soon be rid.  But that in not the world in which we live.

The Eagles of Death Metal singer and guitarist Jesse Hughes was front and center at Bataclan when the massacre started. He escaped without injury but the experience changed him, and for a brief moment, the truth shot right through the media wall of leftist thinking when he said:

“I’ll ask you: Did your French gun control stop a single [expletive] person from dying at the Bataclan? And if anyone can answer yes, I’d like to hear it, because I don’t think so.” As he continued: “It just seems like God made men and women, and, that night, guns made them equal. Maybe until nobody has guns, everybody has to have them.”

It appears Democrats found some new voters

An old joke goes along the lines of:  if the voters don't want to vote for you, you need to find some new voters.

I thought in a year that Republicans seemed to be taking every seat, my adopted home State, North Carolina, seemed to be bucking the trend.  While we delivered the Presidency and the Senate to Republicans, for some odd reason, these same people voted against a Republican Governor that has done a fantastic job.  Whereas near disasters and potential disasters on Democrat Bev Perdue's watch were turned into disasters, Governor McCrory handled Hurricane Matthew as well as can be expected.  But McCrory has done most things right.  So why did NC voters turn against him?

As it turns out, they may not have turned against the Governor.  Instead, it appears there may have been some vote fraud going on.  Matt Vespa at Townhall.com reports that North Carolina Gubinatorial Recoun: Protest Filed in 11 More Counties Over Fraudulent Absentee Ballots

In addition to funneling money to the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC, the North Carolina Democratic Party simultaneously transferred money to political action committees in these 11 counties. Similar absentee voting and handwriting patterns as in Bladen County have been discovered in at least one of these counties, suggesting these PACs may have been harvesting and witnessing multiple absentee ballots as well.

Whenever I have brought up the notion of vote fraud, I usually get the moral equivalence arguement-both sides do it. I also acknowledge that that may be so, for Heaven knows there are no saints on the Republican side either. But, from the Nixon-Kennedy election on down, I never hear or read about a Republican win because of voter fraud. when I hear or read about it, it is always Democrats. This leads me to believe that voter fraud is a distinctly Democrat form of corruption.  And the first clue that it is a uniquely Democrat form of corruption is that the Democrats are always the first, and the loudest, to yell that there is no voter fraud.

As David Codrea is fond of saying, every day is opposite day with these people.

Leftist acting as if the election was rigged or something3

I was over at National Review this morning, and saw an intriguing article by Kevin D. Williamson, a writer whose style I greatly admire, so I clicked on it.  The article, entitled I Won quotes President Obama in noting that elections have consequences. The subtext was, of course, that Republicans should sit down and shut up. With the shoe on the other foot, how does it feel? Not so good, huh?

Williamson's point is that Democrats are going to rediscover a lot of their old talking points, because, heaven knows, they won't sit down and shut up.  Last night, I went to sleep with some leftist stabbing her fingers at the conservative as she explained in a loud voice why Donald Trump is more evil that Hitler himself.  But, the real point Williamson is making is that Leftist, by and large, are a totally unaware lot.  The protesters and rioters seem to be poster children for the unexamined life. Williamson:

Ten minutes ago, Democrats were fretting that Donald Trump and his partisans would refuse to concede defeat, and insisting that Trump must make a dramatic public commitment to personally working toward a peaceful transfer of power. (Well, he did.) There were whispers of political violence, of riots in the streets, arson, smashed windows, violent assaults. Five minutes later, all of that came to pass — perpetrated by progressives in reaction to Trump’s winning the election fair and square.

Ten minutes ago, Democrats were complaining that Trump’s talk of “rigged” elections undermined faith in democracy and in the legitimacy of the United States government. Five minutes later, Democrats were complaining that the elections were rigged against them by an electoral system that treats the states as states — entities with political interests of their own — rather than as administrative subdivisions of the federal government. With their candidate set to lose the presidency in spite of her being projected to win the most individual votes, Democrats once again turned their rage upon the American constitutional order itself, and out came the signs: “America Was Never Great!”

If it is any consolation to them, I doubt Trump will treat these people the way conservatives have been treated for the last eight years.  It is hard not to throw it all back in their faces, but it also doesn't advance what we need to do.  It is even harder to pray for these people, though I know I must, and so should you, dear reader.

Meanwhile, go to the National Review and read Kevin Williamson's article.  Then start figuring out what you can do to help make our lives livable again.

Assassination Threats? Isn't that Unpossible?

So, Trump has won.  Yes, I voted for him.  I now pray daily that he will surprise us all by being a good President, and begin the long slog back to Constitutional governance.  In the meantime, it is interesting to note that the New York Post reports that assassination threats flood twitter. Aren't these the people who wanted to take away guns? Aren't these the same people who are so peaceful, so tolerant, so brilliant, so...well...you get the idea. What gives?  Apparently the only people who should have guns are Hillary supporters.

Moreover, the people plotting to take Trump out have misplaced their anger. They should be angry at me, at you, at all the Trump voters, and if you look at a map of all the counties that voted Trump, there are a lot of us. We voted for him for a variety of reasons, most of which can be summed up as weariness with the arrogant Left. In putting up a literal criminal as a candidate, and supporting that criminal, you, who voted for her, took that criminality on as well. Perhaps it would be wise for you to, as you said to us, "sit down and shut up." But I don't say that to try to actually shut you up. Rather, maybe before you go out an riot and shoot your mouths off about assassinating people, you should listen and learn first.

If you have been following this blog, you know that there is no love for Trump here.  I will be the first to call him out for any betrayal or misstep.  But I do think you should give him the same chance we gave Mr. Obama.

As for those who vowed to leave if Trump was elected, maybe that would be a good idea.  I have also noted many times that there are plenty of liberal utopias around the world.  Pick one.  Canada speaks English and isn't that far.  But Sweden is also a good choice.  Bernie seems to think Sweden is a good model for the masses, though I understand it he has just bought himself a $575,000 house, his third, so he won't be moving any time soon.