Monday, April 6, 2009

The 'logic' of gun control

Cenk Uygur at Huffington Post:
How many shootings do there have to be in the news before we wonder about the wisdom of allowing just about anyone to get a gun in America? Our gun culture is completely out of control.
OK, let's be clear that he's talking about the Binghamton massacre (13 victims) and the nut who shot four cops (three fatally) in Pittsburgh. What do we know about these specific cases and the perpetrators? Here is a video about the Binghamton killer:

So the Vietnamese immigrant was angry about losing his job and upset that his unemployment checks were too small, and therefore shot a receptionist and 12 fellow immigrants. This makes no sense, and how he got the gun, I don't know. Maybe the Vietnamese have got a "gun culture" problem we need to look into.

Now, let's look at the Pittsburgh case, which Dave Neiwert blames on Glenn Beck, but which Cenk Uygur blames on an out-of-control "gun culture." Unfortunately for Niewert and Uygur, the key witness in the case blames . . . the family dog:
On April 4, 2009 at approximately 7:03am, Allegheny County 911 dispatch received a call from complainant Margaret Poplawski for a domestic incident involving her son [suspect] Richard Poplawski, who she wanted out of the house because he was giving her a hard time. . . .
Complainant Margaret Poplawski reported that she awoke early on this date to discover that the dog had urinated on the floor inside her house at 1016 Fairfield Street, at which point she awakened her twenty-two-year-old son, [suspect] Richard Poplawski, to confront him about it. Mrs. Poplawski reported that she called 911 dispatch, and two uniformed police officers responded to her address at 1016 Fairfield Street a short time later, at which point she opened the front door of her residence and admitted them, saying "come and take his ass."
Now, you can blame the dog. Or you can blame Mrs. Poplawski. Or you can blame Glenn Beck. Or you can blame a "gun culture."

Me? I blame Richard Poplawski.

UPDATE: You know your argument is pathetic when it ends with "Max Blumenthal has more."

3 comments:

  1. AMEN, Brother! I wrote the same thing on my blog. http://rightviewfromtheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2009/04/three-pittsburgh-officers-killed-and.html. Of course the left wants to blame a "gun" culture. No, there are just some people that will kill no matter what. With a gun. A knife. Hell, a baseball bat.

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  2. If you're interested taking your populace further down The Road to Serfdom the Cenk's junk makes perfect sense.
    It only becomes nonsense when you care about individuality.

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  3. As a "liberal" please allow me to moderate the sense that there is some monolithic anti-gun movement decrying "our gun culture." I live in a big city, don't hunt, and have never owned a gun. Still, that's not the same thing as believing we even have a "gun culture," and it's not the same thing as wanting to confiscate guns. I like the idea of improving background checks to make sure proven lunatics like that guy at Virginia Tech can't buy guns -- but that's about it, and I'm not unusual. But I also am startled by what strikes me as the serious paranoia of much of the commentary of the Right, vis-a-vis Michelle Bachmann's fantasy that Obama aims to do away with the dollar, or Noel Sheppard's charge that media reports which note Polawski was a Glenn Beck fan somehow constitute a conspiracy to remove Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity from the airwaves. To see such a conspiracy or goal in the noting of such a fact is, at best, misplaced creativity. There is, worse, a sort of sputtering anger and fear in it that I don't really understand. And I think that anger and fear is what a lot of moderates increasingly associate with the Right. To sum up: My side doesn't want your guns, and your side is not well served by many of its spokespeople.

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