Banning scary-looking guns

You can pretty well set your watch by the time it takes the Left to crawl out from under their rocks and call for stricter gun laws, following a mass shooting such as the one in Aurora, Colorado, or the one in Connecticut. Leftists, whose basic functions are right brain based and thus “feel” more readily than think, believe the solution to gun crime of the recent sort is to ban assault weapons.

And there’s no end of Progressive politicians, whose prime interest entails wielding power over their fellow citizens, to accommodate these wishes. Only problem is assault weapons, categorized by the US Government as Class III weapons, have been tightly controlled in the US since Congress passed the National Firearms Act back in 1968. The act covers fully automatic weapons such as machine guns, AK-47s and military grade AR-15s, as well as short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and silencers and explosive devices. What the Left is really calling for here are tight regulations over guns that are scary looking, such as the civilian version of the AR-15 or AK-47. The difference between the military and civilian versions of these weapons is that the former are fully automatic, meaning that the gun keeps firing so long as the shooter keeps his finger on the trigger and there’s ammo in the magazine, while the latter lose one round at a time each time the trigger is squeezed. The civilian version of these firearms is no more dangerous than a common hunting rifle or shotgun, both of which also come in the semi-automatic function.

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But thinking and rational thought is anathema to the Left, particularly the low-information component of that group whose interests run more to watching the Kardashians or Honey Boo-Boo, rather than sorting out complex issues like identifying and then dealing with potentially violent mentally ill individuals. If we were to be rational and follow such reasoning to its most absurd end, then we would be able to have a strong case for banning cutlery, accelerants and automobiles, as knives, fires and car accidents account for way more deaths per annum than crazy people with guns do. Those politicians who are willing to accommodate the demands of their less than insightful constituents are particularly dangerous to the common weal, as it offers them yet another opportunity at forcing needless regulations down the country’s throat. It’s truly ironic that the administration that brought us the ‘Fast and Furious’ fiasco, which saw thousands of Class III firearms being handed over to Mexican drug cartels under the watchful and approving eye of the ATF and the Justice Department, now wants to impose strict regulations on non-Class III firearms. Of course, the underlying motivation here isn’t so much the control of guns as it is an assault on the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to own firearms. The rationale is that if a wedge can be inserted for certain types of firearms it’s a good first step in strictly controlling and eventually confiscating all firearms from US citizens. Here in Canada, where we enjoy some of the strictest gun laws in the world, we had a gun registry for close to two decades. The registry came about as a result of a mass shooting in Quebec by a seriously disturbed young man, who wound up murdering 14 young women. This gave Liberal politicians the perfect cover to enact legislation that they said would protect all Canadians from gun violence and would cost less than $2 million dollars. The registry finally died a miserable and ignominious death, as the Conservative government of Stephen Harper closed it down. Predictably, the Canadian gun registry did not reduce gun violence to any great degree and wound up costing in excess of $2 billion dollars. It’s sad, really, that not one politician has talked about mental illness and how to help people in so much distress, as to feel it necessary to go our and kill as many people as possible. This would be a much better place to start than enacting tougher gun laws. But that wouldn’t necessary strengthen the Progressive agenda now, would it?