Our government says it absolutely cannot keep track of its own borders or the 12 million people who live here illegally, but, it absolutely can keep track of the purchases, transfers, and components of hundreds of millions of guns and gun owners. It’s hell bound determined to try.
It would be prudent to distrust the priorities and intentions of such a government and astute to pay attention to its inevitable idiocies.
Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, the lead sponsor of one of the president’s lynchpin bills—to ban high capacity magazines–embarrassed herself not once or twice, but thrice last week, and not just herself, but the president and his agenda. DeGette’s missteps reflect the clumsy grasping of gun controllers nationally and, also reflect the willful abuses played out in a battle test ground in her home state of Colorado.
In the tumult of debate over state and federal gun measures, the Denver Post sponsored a forum on gun control last week where DeGette explained the genius behind banning high capacity magazines: “These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”
DeGette attempted damage control in a quickly published Post OpEd, but her remarks are staggeringly ignorant of a subject she claims to have “taken the lead on” for years. Magazines aren’t bullets; they hold bullets. They are eminently reloadable. It would be very bad conservation and environmentalism to discard them after a single use.
DeGette might as well have advocated a ban on large-bowl marijuana pipes: “These are buds; they’re weed. People are going to smoke them. So, if you ban them in the future, the number of these pipes will decrease because the pot will be smoked, and they won’t be available anymore.”
Within hours after the forum, her office leapt into damage control only to make things worse. A spokeswoman asserted the Representative meant to refer to “clips” not magazines.
Wrong again. Besides the fact that clips generally are as reusable as magazines, they are not the subject of DeGette’s bill. It bans magazines. There is no reason on earth she would have been referring to them.
Finally, at the same forum, DeGette answered a senior citizen questioning her about having to rely on police response, rather than self defense. No problem, she reassured him, Denver police will be there within minutes, and, she told her graying questioner, “You’d probably be dead anyway.” Still waiting for AARP’as outraged response to hate speech.
This is the face of progressive gun restrictors: ignorant, unyielding in error, and coldly arrogant.
The national debate was presaged in DeGette’s home state of Colorado, an Obama laboratory project, where Michael Bloomberg funded a lobbying campaign and Vice President Biden called to strong arm wavering Democrats to push the national agenda into a western showcase talking point: if we can pass it here, we can pass it anywhere.
Pushing a slate of anti-gun bills including a ban on high capacity magazines, universal background checks for transfers, and new fees for the checks for private gun buyers, Colorado lawmakers disregarded public opinion, facts, and gaping flaws in their bills. They pressed to seize a moment of opportunity and to satisfy the drivers of the national agenda.
There were several revealing moments on the path to the governor’s desk. A witless state rep. argued that women can’t be trusted to know if they’re in danger of rape; they might get nervous and “pop, pop” an innocent passer-by. Another lawmaker argued that for self defense, women should relay on convenient items like ball point pens. And another lawmaker, a woman no less, lectured an actual victim of rape that she shouldn’t fight for gun rights, because the statistics aren’t on her side.
A state senator argued against exceptions to new restrictions for veterans. “Many of them come home with mental problems” she charmingly explained. Icing the cake, Colorado’s Senate President John Morse admitted on MSNBC he urged Democratic Senators to ignore the deluge of opinion in calls, letters, and emails opposing the anti-gun bills, because “It can wear you down.”
The package that reached Governor John Hickenlooper’s desk was so rushed and riddled with error that he issued a signing statement, trying to explain and mitigate the flaws and unenforceable provisions in the bills he was signing. The statement was meaningless though, because unlike the US president and the Department of Justice, Colorado’s governor has no authority or supervision over local police or prosecutors.
Flaws and defects are unimportant. Passing something on gun control is important. President Obama was delighted to fly to Colorado last week (apparently his jet fuel for propaganda trips is exempt from sequestration) to spike the football.
One small step for gun control. One giant leap for the Obama agenda.
Shawn Mitchell is a former state senator from Colorado; this article originally appeared in Townhall.com.
