The Left lies, but that is not news

I have read several accounts of the First Amendment being treated like we treat the Second Amendment.  These accounts usually involve sending articles to the government for bureaucrat to pass judgement on before you are allowed to publish.  They have journalists and authors being required to be licensed, or you needing a licence to buy books, with the dealer in books having to send your name into a government data base to discover if you have certain disqualifying characteristics before selling you the book.

Its all done in jest to make a point, and its very amusing, unless you, like me, have lived for a while in a country that restricts what you can see, read, and hear. Mrs. PolyKahr and I were stationed in Panama during the Noriega years, and had it not been for the fact that we were U. S. citizens with a Status of Forces agreement. we would not have had access to many books, newspapers, and other media.  But that's a different story for another day, and I digress.

The point, while it is obvious to those of us who routinely deal with guns, it is lost on many, because they don't see the power of words.  But tell that to the 6 million Holocaust victims in Nazi Germany.  The Anti-Semitic ideas of Hitler were spread by words, by speeches, by discussions with his inner circle, by sales of his book Mein Kamp. They were also justified by words, and the final solution was developed by words.  It remained only to put those words into practice that made it real.  The resultant tragedy you know, or should know.

Bad ideas, unless spoken against, become bad acts. The only thing that can counter bad and false ideas is the truth. And the truth is that your Second Amendment rights should be treated exactly as your First Amendment rights. You have them until you abuse them.  The Second Amendment was not put into the Constitution as an after thought, but was very intentionally put there to provide a balance of power against the Federal government.  While weapons have grown more and more lethal, our hunting rifles, sporting rifles, and handguns do still provide that balance because of the overwhelming number of them.

So, I was reading today another set of analogies, this time between the treatment by the Left, through its propaganda arm, of Islam and the NRA. The article, at the American Thinker, is entitled The Media, the NRA, and Isam by Chuck Hustmyer. Hustmyer:

It's too bad the American left doesn't treat the NRA even half as fairly as it treats Islam.

• NRA members haven't committed any mass shootings.

• NRA members haven't hijacked airplanes and flown them into buildings.

• Thirteen percent of NRA members don't support mass murder as a legitimate way to defend the NRA or advance its ideological agenda.

That would refer to American Muslims, 13 percent of whom, according to the Pew Research Center, say they support suicide bombings and other violence against civilians in defense of Islam. (According to Pew, the percentage is considerably higher among foreign Muslims.)

Yet every time a jihadist goes on a killing spree, the American left, through its propaganda arm – otherwise known as the mainstream media – is quick to remind us that Islamic terrorism is an aberration and in no way reflective of the "religion of peace."

The latest rounds of walk outs and protests have featured numerous calls to end the NRA, as if it was the NRA that was endorsing, organizing, and supporting the murders that happen all too routinely at schools and other gun free target rich environments. Nothing could be further from the truth.  The murderer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was not an NRA member, and indeed, I do not think any of the mass murderers that have taken place on American soil for the last 30 years has been an NRA member.  Neither the NRA nor any of its 5 million members had even a whiff of responsibility for this, or any other mass murder that has happened.

On the other hand, Islam is responsible for the murders perpetrated by the members of that religion, because it teaches that violent jihad is the duty of every Muslim.  Every Islamic terrorist who starts shooting up as many victims as he can in as short a time as he can, first yells out Allahyu Akbar. but somehow the Left can never connect the dots back to Islam. Why is that?

But just imagine if a group of conservatives – the Tea Party, for instance – took to the streets in cities all over the country after the next jihadist terror attack and waved around the exact same signs as the anti-gun left but replaced the initials "NRA" with the word "Islam," so that the signs read "Abolish Islam," "Islam = Terrorists," and "Islam blood on your hands."

Can you hear the left's screams of rage and its hysterical accusations of.. (take your pick, but "racism" is their favorite, despite the fact that Islam comprises members of all races and nationalities)?

If the left was even close to treating the NRA the way it treats Islam, millions of honest, law-abiding Americans, many of whom are military and law enforcement veterans, who are members of the NRA wouldn't be condemned as domestic terrorists and child-murderers. But then again, that's exactly what the left wants.

Need I also note that the Left will also suppress the truth, as they did in Panama during Noriega's time.