Why "liberals" are anti-gun.

An intriguing editorial in the Sonoran News by Dr. R. B. A. DiMuccio may explain the Incredible Hopelessness of America's Gun Conversation DiMuccio writes:

Today’s political landscape is rife with puzzles and paradoxes in desperate need of Rosetta Stones. The one that I want to discuss is this: Why are we so profoundly incapable of having a reasonable dialogue about guns? National Review writer David French describes the “conversation” as hopelessly polarized. It’s as if, he laments, we are coming from entirely different worlds when processing events like the massacre that took place in Orlando.

The basic facts of that incident are not in dispute: A self-professed ISIS jihadist indiscriminately slaughtered dozens of innocent people at a gay nightclub, literally pledging his loyalty to ISIS via a phone call to a 9-1-1 dispatcher as he was committing the atrocity. Seeing this, conservatives generally zeroed in on the evil of the perpetrator and addressed the broader war on terror. Viewing the same facts, leftist commentators and pundits invariably settled on a narrative driven by a fixation on “America’s gun culture,” a narrow focus on stricter gun control, and blanket calls for “tolerance” of the “LGBTQ” agenda by conservatives and Christians.

Naturally, I find the liberal diagnosis of the problem, and the "liberal" prescription insulting and wholly inadequate. As a Christian, and a conservative, I sympathize with the gay community, even while acknowledging that their lifestyle is sinful. But, if Jesus loves these people, who am I to deny it.  Jesus does indeed love them, but not their homosexuality.  In Christian love, therefore, I must try to gently turn them from an active gay lifestyle.  But that is not out of hate.  The second thing I find unhelpful is the fixation on guns.  As a conservative, I know that the problem is not the tools he chose to use, but the evil heart of the man who did this,  He could have chosen a bomb, a gas attack such as Saran, or to become a suicide bomber.   The tools a perpetrator uses reflects the tools he is most familiar with, and nothing more.  In any case, at this late date, you can not practically ban guns.  The technology is too well known, and despite what liberals may thing, it is much too easy to manufacture a gun, especially if it is a one off version.

But all of that doesn't begin to answer the question, which is why is this debate hopelessly deadlocked?

Fortunately, in our quest to comprehend the incomprehensible, we have a Rosetta Stone in the form of Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Righteous Mind.” Haidt’s moral-foundations theory is an extraordinary body of work that is meticulously empirical and thoroughly cross-cultural (agree or disagree this how Haidt defines his terms). In a nutshell: liberals’ moral reasoning rests almost exclusively on the left-most of six moral pillars. Liberal moral cognitions are triggered by indications of suffering and injustice. The conservative moral matrix couldn’t be more different. While it is somewhat biased toward the right-most moral pillars, conservatives clearly demonstrate a relatively balanced concern for all six.

The implications of this difference are far-reaching. Liberals seek to establish “justice” for those they view as harmed, but with essentially no concern for other moral foundations. Conservative moral thinking is “advantaged” in the sense that it is likewise prompted by indications of suffering but also by threats to foundational societal principles and institutions.

Haidt puts this “conservative advantage” to the test—literally. The test (page 287 in the book) involved asking hundreds of subjects to guess how people in the opposite camp would respond to political/moral questions. The result? Conservatives describe the liberal morality far more accurately than liberals describe conservative morality. The most dramatic errors in the entire experiment came when “very liberal” respondents were asked to empathize with conservatives around the care/harm pillar.

In short, conservatives can relate to liberals but the converse is not true. And there may not be a better example of this than the “gun conversation” going in in America right now. Consider the typical liberal triggers and conclusions in responding to the Orlando massacre: For liberals, the culprit is not radical Islam but the NRA; the victimization and suffering easily justify challenging the Second Amendment, which either doesn’t actually guarantee the individual right to bear arms or was meant only to account for flintlock rifles and the like.

We conservatives have often made fun of liberals moral posturing and moral signalling, as if these and other behaviors could solve anything. A typical behavior is the candle light vigil, These pop up after every major tragedy, and the only thing they seem to accomplish is to allow people to be seen as caring, for all the good that may do. Now I finally understand.  It also explains liberals' inexplicable imperiousness to the utter failure of the welfare state and similar programs.  These programs were never put in place to actually DO anything, but once again to signal compassion and caring.

 

But what about those who believe that individual liberty and the right to self-defense are foundational? What about people who accept 200-plus years of Supreme Court rulings and several state constitutions and agree that the Second Amendment self-evidently guarantees the individual right to bear arms? What animates them after Orlando is the same grief, shock, and revulsion that liberals experience. They feel a similar desire to find ways to prevent and limit the deadliness of such occurrences. But what’s almost literally a world apart is that they want to accomplish this without undermining the individual’s liberty—the right to self-defense or the right to bear arms.

As DiMucci concludes, we may know the "why," but there appears to be no solution to the question of how to we get around this? Half the country simply does not understand the other half,  I do not know if this lack of understanding is sheer stupidity, or just plain obstinance.  I know many who have given up, and I am often tempted to, but I care about my grand children too much.

And then there is this: while liberals may be anti-gun as a way to signal moral compassion, what about the Left.  What's their excuse?

Paul Ryan Faces Mutiny in his Own Ranks

Redstate has a post up entitled Paul Ryan Faces Mutiny over Gun Grab Gambit. Of course, you need to read the whole thing. As far as I can tell, Justin Amish is the hero here, being the first to pointing out the Unconstitutional nature of this bloody abortion on social media.

Here's the thing.  Suppose you are a typical person making ends meet, with a little free excess income that you can save up for a $500 pistol, and maybe cough up the roughly $100 training and application fees so that you can carry your pistol legally. Your job takes you to some questionable neighborhoods There are a lot of jobs like this, and a lot of people quietly carry even though their employers may frown on it. Better to be fired than to be killed.  Somehow you get on a list, and now you have to go into court to get off that list.  First, the odds are stacked decidedly in the Government's favor.

This is essentially a warmed over version of the terror watch list prohibition. If you think that any judge is going to rule in your favor if a law enforcement agency says you might commit an act of terrorism at some point in the future, you really need to get out more. It ain't gonna happen because that judge is not going to take a chance that the government was right.

But then there is the very real impediment of the costs of going into court to prove your innocence (as if this could logically be done. All you could really show is a lack of evidence.) The cost of going to court range in the neighborhood of $10,000. Who has that much in disposable income? If you don't think this is a very real danger to Americans' rights, you haven't been paying attention.

As an aside, looking at the statistics for this blog, I notice that my readership numbers are trending upward on a daily basis, but I am not getting any comments.  Doesn't anyone out there have anything to say?

Schumer's Gambit

Andrew McCarthy has an article over at National Review exposing Chuck Schumer's latest attempt to skirt around the Constitution in order to negate the Second Amendment entitled Democrats "Emergency" Attack on the Second Amendment. A Hat Tip to David Codrea over at War on Guns Go read the whole article.

Of course, Chuck Schumer knows all of this, and he is well aware that the right to self defense, and the right to  means to do so, predate the Constitution, and that it can not be negated by statutory law. He just doesn't care. If he can convince Republicans to go along with it, and in the current Judicial climate. he would have his fait accompli.

Indeed, I suspect the death of Scalia earlier this year is what Schumer is counting on now.  Remember that Democrats have been trying to take away guns for close to a hundred years.  If Schumer's present gambit would have worked, it would already be done.  But now there is a real possibility that the stalemate on the Supreme Court could be broken in favor of the Left.

Be Prepared

Bob Owens reacts to the news that Hillary Clinton goes scot free right after the FBI Director Comey laid out her guilt for all the world to see over at Bearing Arms entitled When the Rule of Law No Longer Matters, It's Time to Gun Up. Ownes is justifiably outraged. Others I have talked to are similarly outraged, as if they honestly believed it would turn out any other way. I am not so outraged. I have known the Democrat party has become, maybe always was, a criminal organization. If any of the prosecutors who famously prosecuted the mafia under RICO statutes had any integrity, they would be prosecuting Democrat officials across the country (and not a few Republican officials as well.)

But, Owens outrage aside, his point is still well made.  Jesus said in Luke, that any of his now apostles who do not have a sword, should sell their cloak and buy one.  Today that translates as anyone who does not have a gun should sell whatever he needs to and buy one, and 1000 rounds of ammunition to go with it.  No, I am not advocating revolution.  Rather what I am saying is you will need it for self defense in the coming months and years.  When no one respects the law, anarchy is sure to reign.  Be prepared is my motto.

Having found freedom in Christ, I will not be returned to slavery

First, I want to highlight some changes to the reading file to make it more relevant.  I have eliminated a number of blogs in the file that have gone dark, and not posted in a year or more.  However I have added the  The Armed Lutheran to the list. The Armed Lutheran is a member of an ELCA congregation. ELCA stands for, as he says, "Every Liberal Cause in America." That's a joke, don't you know, but seriously, it stands for Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He brings in Lutheran pastors to he radio program to explain things from a moral perspective. Self defense is truly a right and a duty from God. But at the same time, revenge is God's place, not man's.  As in the Lord's prayer, it helps to know your place in the universe.

Next up is a piece from the American Thinker today by Michael N. Mattia entitled The Second Amendment is the First Domino in the Toppling of the Bill of Rights Please go read all of it. Read it? Good. The theory explained in this short essay is the reason I place so much emphasis on Second Amendment rights. I actually want ALL the rights listed in the Constitution.  But I recognized early on that in order to fully strip us of our rights, they would have to nullify the Second Amendment first.
Forty years ago, when I first became involved with guns and gun rights in a serious way, the saying was that if the outlawed guns, only outlaws would have guns, meaning that the powers that be would turn law abiding citizens into outlaws.  Because when, ever, has it gone well for a group of people to give up their weapons?  Eventually, someone enslaves those people.  The "conversation" has been going on since before that time, and came to a temporary conclusion with the Heller and McDonald decisions. The "Progressives" (read Communist, Socialists, Fascists, Neomarxists, etc.) having resoundingly lost the debate, now wish to pretend it never happened and start all over again.

Well, I say, NO!  No, you can't have them.  Like Charlton Heston I say "From My Cold Dead Hands."  Having found freedom in Christ, I will not be returned to slavery.  And that is what the Progressives are aiming at.

Independence Day

Today is July 4, 2016.  Last night I could hear fireworks going off in celebration.  But frankly, I have not felt like celebrating 4th of July in a long time.  As I have said in the past, we now live in a land called the USA, but it no longer is.  I call it the Former United States of America, FUSA for short.  I have also noted how lawless the FUSA has become, and have also noted that what no longer binds them no longer binds me as well.  But these ideas are now going mainstream with the publication today of Kurt Schlicter's piece entitled You Owe Them Nothing=Not Respect, Not Loyalty, Not Obedience. It is a decidedly bitter piece, no doubt because the author feels betrayed by those he was taught to respect, to obey, and to be loyal. Here are Mr. Schlicter's words:

So if you are still obeying the law when you don’t absolutely have to, when there isn’t some government enforcer with a gun lurking right there to make you, aren’t you kind of a sucker?

snip...

The Romans had principles for a while. Then they got tempted to abandon principle for – wait for it – short term political gain. Then they got Caesar. Then the emperors. Then the barbarians. And then the Dark Ages. But hey, we’re much smarter and more sophisticated than the Romans, who were so dumb they didn’t even know that gender is a matter of choice. Our civilization is permanent and indestructible – it’s not like we are threatened by barbarians who want to come massacre us.

...snip...

They don’t realize that by rejecting the rule of law, they have set us free. We are independent. We owe them nothing - not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. But with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we will still mutually pledge those who have earned our loyalty with their adherence to the rule of law, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It is long past time that we take our rights (and our responsibilities as well) and quit asking for permission just because they say we should. We do in fact, owe then nothing, and our rights are granted by God, not by Government permission. To those who would point to the Apostle Paul that Governments are appointed by God, I would say this: Governments are to be obeyed as long as Governments act in accordance with God's word. Our so called masters have not for a long time, and it is time we cease recognizing any authority the may claim over us.

Today I declare my independence.

The Evil Left Strikes Again

Tom Trinko had an article up over at The American Thinker Thursday that spells out The Heart of Darkness, the Evil at the Core of Liberalism. It is long past time to acknowledge that those who claim the mantle of "Liberal" have long ago left the classical liberals in the dust, and have joined their brothers, the Communists, Socialists, and Fascists in their debauchery.  At issue is the latest from the Supremes on abortion:

This week the abominable evil at the heart of liberalism has been revealed once again.

The Supreme Court has ruled that a woman’s health is less important than ensuring that she can be used as a sex object.

What matters is not a woman’s right to choose but her ability to be used. The Court has said that access to unsafe abortions is more important than ensuring that a women’s life is not at risk when having an abortion.

The Supreme Court also ruled that Muslims must serve pork in their restaurants. Oh wait, no -- the Supreme Court would never issue that ruling, but the Court did rule that pharmacists whose deeply held religious beliefs tell them that abortion is murder must actively cooperate with the murder of unborn blacks -- black women are 5 times more likely to abort their child than white women, a disparate impact that never seems to bother liberals.

That’s on par with saying that Jews must serve as guards at Nazi concentration camps.

Trinko marshalls fact after fact to support his thesis that liberals are no longer simply good people, with bleeding hearts who desparately want to help the poor, but have become the demon possessed destroyers of our culture. For instance, he notes that:

It’s settled science, far more settled than so called climate change, that human life begins at conception. That’s why when polled only 12% of Americans believe that abortion should be allowed for any reason at any time in a pregnancy.

That makes sense given that the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a spinoff of Planned Parenthood, tells us that 1% of abortions are due to rape or incest and 3% are due to possible maternal health problems which means that 96% of abortions are not the hard cases that are used to sell abortion.

Or this:

By saying that abortionists need not have admitting privileges at a hospital, a significant thing if complications develop which they often do, and that abortion mills need not meet the same standards as other surgical facilities the Supreme Court is putting the back alley back into abortion.

Instead of asking what sort of doctors can’t get admitting rights at a hospital, or why abortion clinics don’t want to provide a safe environment for their customers, the Court decided that all that mattered is that as many abortion mills as possible should be open.

These are but a few samples of Trinko's tour de force.  Go read the whole thing, then come back here to read  Jonah Goldberg The Left's Different Approach to Rights it Opposes. Goldberg starts out, channeling Jonathan Swift with a proposal:

I have an idea.

The federal government needs to compile a list of women who shouldn't be allowed to get abortions. The criteria for getting on the list must be flexible. If an official at, say, the NIH or FBI think that a woman should be a mother for some reason or other, he or she can block an abortion. Maybe the woman has great genes or a high IQ or the sorts of financial resources we need in parents. Let's leave that decision where it belongs: in the hands of the government.

Heck, there's really no reason even to tell women if they're on the "no abort" list. Let them find out at the clinic. And if they go in for an abortion only to discover they are among the million or more people on the list, there will be no clear process for getting off it, even if it was a bureaucratic error or case of mistaken identity.

Sound like a good idea?

While I am one who believes that abortion is murder, and murder of the most innocent and the least deserving of punishment, the above idea suffers from the same deficiencies as the "No Fly" list and the other lists the Government maintains: no due process. If a person's rights are to be taken away, even temporarily, the Constitution has a process, and putting someone's name on a secret list is not how it is to be done. Claims of expediency are illegitimate. The Constitution must be honored even when, especially when, it is most unpopular to do it. ( Now, as an aside, whether or not abortion is a right, it can hardly be denied that the unborn have at least an equal right to life, and these conflicting rights, the right to life versus the right to murder, should be adjudicated in front of a judge and jury.  The problem as the law stands is that the State is essentially sanctioning the murder of unborn children in our name.  Our objection to this is not unlike the abolitionists objection to slavery.  It can not stand, and as before, it pits the Republican Party as the party of anti-abortion and anti-slavery against the Democrat Party as the party of pro-abortion and the party of pro-slavery.)

Which brings us to this:

The contradiction I find most glaring and galling is that the euphoric hysteria from the left over the court's decision occurred right in the middle of a conversation about guns and terrorist watch lists.

In that conversation, many of the same voices on the left argued that the federal government can -- nay, must! -- have the unilateral power to put American citizens on a secret list barring them from exercising two constitutional rights: the right to bear arms and the right to due process when the government denies you a right. (Both, unlike abortion, are rights spelled out in the Constitution). Congressional Democrats even staged a tawdry tantrum on the House floor about it.

Never mind that the Orlando slaughter -- the event that set off the House sit-in -- would not have been prevented if the Democrats had their way. Writing for the majority in the Hellerstedt case, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that the Texas statute was unnecessary because "determined wrongdoers" like Gosnell wouldn't be deterred by new laws given that he was willing to violate existing laws.

Maybe so. But isn't that exactly the NRA's position on gun laws? Murderers, never mind terrorists, by definition don't care about the law.

It is indeed.  We in the gun rights community have been making that point for a very long time.  It is good that a mainstream journalist like Goldberg noticed.  Or as Dave Workman noted in 2014 in an article entitled Is it Time to Treat the First Amendment just like the Second? there is "world class hypocrisy" in these laws and decisions, but it is not accidental. It is quite deliberate, and it is evil. Everyone legally residing under the jurisdiction of the Federal Governmentment should receive equal protection of the law. Today, with the left's full knowledge, indeed with its blessing, Christians, gun owners, and other undesirables are being treated differently under the law. If we don't capitulate, the left is fully prepared to step things up a notch, and to ratchet them further if need be. The goal is capitulation, and the Constitution be damned. How will you feel when your grandmother and grandfather are sent to a death camp for being a Catholic and a gun owner?