Adhering to the principle of never letting a crisis go to waste, within a day of the second attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, opinion writers and editors started exploiting the incident by calling for additional gun controls, as if the gun somehow is responsible.
For example, Ned Barnett, associate opinion editor at the Charlotte Observer wrote, “After Sandy Hook, we know there is apparently no level of gun violence that will make Republican politicians question their devotion to the illusion that more guns create more safety. But now even Trump may be wondering whether more guns actually create more danger…”
Insisting that “Gun control isn’t about ripping firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. It’s about ensuring that firearms – especially assault weapons – don’t get into the wrong hands.” And then he says it is “crazy to have millions of assault weapons floating around the U.S.”
Bounce over to Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, who observes in an opinion piece headlined, “It’s the Guns, Stupid,” that there had not been much talk about guns, so he took it upon himself to broach the subject.
“Indeed, guns have been weirdly missing from the national commentary,” he writes. “Obviously, if we want presidential candidates and schoolchildren safe from assassination attempts and mass classroom mayhem, the most direct route is not a more massive Secret Service or better duck-and-cover school drills, but ending mass ownership of assault weapons.”
Good luck with that since some estimates go as high as 20 million modern semiautomatic rifles now in private ownership. They are “commonly owned” by any definition and are most likely protected by the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms are challenging a ban in Maryland, and SAF, long with the Firearms Policy Coalition, on Monday submitted a petition for certiorari to the high court in a different case in Delaware.
Kuttner, who is also a professor at Brandeis University, criticizes the Supreme Court for “making it easier for anyone to own any sort of gun.”
Then comes MSNBC columnist Frank Figliuzzi, who argues, “Something must change…We can talk all day about the need for increased use of technology, drones, cameras, aircraft, dogs, increased staffing of the Secret Service and enhanced federal funding for local police support of the Secret Service, but none of that will change the fact that people who should never have a gun are walking around with high-powered weapons.”
Several paragraphs later, he declares, “we need to significantly reduce the number of assault-style rifles in this country.”
In a moment of clarity, Figliuzzi does observe, “Ask any responsible gun owner if this guy should have a gun, and they’d tell you, ‘No.’ That’s where we need to focus: the guns, and people who shouldn’t have them.”
That much is accurate. No “responsible gun owner” wants violent criminals or raving lunatics to have guns, but they also insist disarming bad guys should not involve disarming good guys, or even infringing upon their Second Amendment rights.
But there is another problem, which the establishment media seems loathe to address.
Where the American Prospect’s Kuttner righteously declares, that guns have been “weirdly missing” from the debate, so also has been any discussion of the vile rhetoric from the left which may be compelling these would-be assassins to try murdering a man who has been demonized before taking office back in 2017.
Enter Hillary Rodham Clinton who, according to Fox News, stated on Monday in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, that Trump is a “danger to our country and the world.”
She criticized the media for not hammering away on Trump as she believes must be done.
“I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is,” Clinton pontificated. “You know, the late great journalist Harry Evans, one time said that journalists should, you know, really try to achieve objectivity, and by that, he said, I mean they should cover the object.”
“Well, the object in this case is Donald Trump,” she continued. “His demagoguery, his danger to our country and the world. And stick with it.”
Two months ago, Republican Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana, himself a survivor of an assassination attempt at the hands of a deranged Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supporter, told Fox News, “I mean, everybody’s got to look at the rhetoric. But, you know, it’s one side that is going after Donald Trump in a way to demonize him personally. You know, when we talk about the policies of the Democrats and the progressives, it’s those policies that need to be front and center but the left seems to have targeted Donald Trump as a person. They don’t talk about how they don’t like his pet tax and border policies. They just go after him personally, they demonize him.”
This occurred the day after the first assassination attempt. According to Scalise’s website, he also observed, “I mean, look, there’s legislation right now filed by Democrats from months and months ago to take away Donald Trump’s Secret Service protection. That’s a very specific targeted action because they don’t like the person. They can’t tell you what policies of his they don’t like. When Donald Trump was president, name something he did that you didn’t like. You didn’t like a hot, strong economy? You didn’t like a secure border? You didn’t like peace around the world?”
Nobody from the Left is criticizing the inflammatory rhetoric directed at Trump, which might qualify as “hate speech” if it were directed at anyone else. So, before blaming guns, there might be reasonable grounds to blame the political left for its non-stop demonization of the former president.
Nah, it’s easier to blame guns.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
