"The
whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and
hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless
series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." —H.L. Mencken
The
country is again in an uproar following the latest mass shootings in
Texas and Ohio. In response to the hysterical clamor in the media to
"do something," politicians in both the Democratic and Republican
Parties want (yet again!) more gun laws. Republicans, including
President Trump, are proposing a "red flag" confiscation law that would
enable police to summarily seize an individual's guns based on
hearsay. Such a law would blatantly violate the First, Second, Fourth,
Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. In practice, these laws would have no
significant effect on actual shooters, but would ensnare people like
Donald Montgomery, a retired police officer from Long Island who sought
insomnia treatment — and was declared "mentally ill" and had his guns
permanently seized under Andrew Cuomo's notorious "SAFE"
Act. Republicans should know better, but apparently, they don't.
Democrats
are calling for a national ban on semi-automatic "assault weapons" and
magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds. If elected, there is
no question that they will enact such a ban. Some are even calling for
a national confiscation, patterned on the confiscations in Great
Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.
What
is absolutely certain is that such a ban will have no impact whatsoever
on mass shootings. It is entirely possible to commit mass murder with
weapons that do not fall under the label of "assault weapons," and a
significant number of mass shooters have done so. In 1949, World War II
veteran Howard Unruh murdered 13 people with a German Luger pistol with
an 8-round capacity. In 1966, University of Texas shooter Charles
Whitman employed a bolt-action Remington hunting rifle in his spree. In
1993, Jamaican immigrant Colin Ferguson, motivated by anti-white
hatred, murdered six people and wounded 19 on the Long Island Railway
with a 9mm pistol. In 2006, Korean immigrant Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32
people at Virginia Tech with a brace of pistols, a 9mm Glock and a .22
caliber Walther. Two thousand nine Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan used a
Fabrique Nationale pistol to kill thirteen and wound thirty
victims. Twenty thirteen Navy Yard killer Aaron Alexis used a stolen
9mm pistol and a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. The Thousand Oaks,
California killer murdered thirteen people with a .45 cal. pistol in
2018.
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