Don鈥檛 take away our gun fixations
If this country gets more gun laws to prevent the wrong people from getting their hands on deadly weapons, a few bigwigs at the NRA might have to relinquish them.
In recent days, they’ve released a particularly vile Internet ad that calls into question their mental health. Calling President Obama “an elitist hypocrite” is the least of the repugnant statements of the NRA’s latest assault on decency. The point of the ad is that Obama’s children have Secret Service protection at their schools, but Obama doesn’t want “your children” to have armed police protection in theirs.
First, using the children of the president to make a point has always been considered off-limits. Second, and this is a growing trend, the NRA continues to marginalize itself in the public square.
If it was just the NRA that espoused these kinds of nutty notions, a serious discussion about gun violence and its effects could be had.
However, there are far too many other shrill “defenders of the U.S. Constitution” who’ve tried to convince gun owners that they’re in jeopardy of being disarmed in the face Obama’s non-existent “tyranny,” that have intervened in an otherwise serious national discussion about gun ownership.
“I’m against having a king. I think having a monarch is what we fought the American Revolution over, and someone who wants to bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress — that’s someone who wants to act like a king or a monarch,” says Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
Paul, who seems to have caught the “Impeach the president” bug ever since he took office in 2010, is hinting at that kind of thing again. “And I promise you, there’ll be no rock left unturned as far as trying to stop him from usurping the Constitution,” he added.
Paul probably doesn’t know this (He’s too busy running his mouth to pay attention to anything else.), but if you owned 50 weapons the day before Obama first took office, you’ll most likely own all of them the day after he leaves it.
The president’s much talked about gutting of the U.S. Constitution, last week, had nothing to do with any form of a “gun grab.” He did, however, issue 23 executive orders that are designed to strengthen existing laws. He also proposed that Congress take up the matters of banning military-style assault weapons and limiting magazines to 10 rounds per click.
Oh, how difficult it must be to find articles of impeachment that would conceivably support those moves. I’m sure they’ll be trying, anyway.
In the meantime, if you like running out to the firing range and plugging a cardboard cut-out with a truckload of flying metal — have at it.
Before the president rolled out his proposals, one Texas Republican House member, who’d only been sworn in for less than two weeks — was ready to play his impeachment card.
Rep. Steve Stockman served one, unremarkable term in the 1990s. He’s back. “I will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary, including but not limited to eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment,” Mr. Tough-guy Stockman said.
It must be painful, hoping Obama will fulfill his role as some kind of tyrannical ogre, when he appears to be thoughtful, and in accord with most Americans.
One of those Americans, the longtime Republican Gen. Colin Powell, had strong words about some weapons on NBC’s Meet the Press the other week. “You want to fire a Bushmaster, go out to a range and fire a Bushmaster. How much are we really giving up if we said that this kind of weapon should not be readily available to anybody who wants to buy one,” he asked.
For his honest assessment about guns and gun violence, Powell was called a “traitor.” Here’s a guy who spent much of his adult life defending this country in uniform, and he’s called a “traitor” by people who’d stop firing at those cardboard cut-outs at the firing range, if one of them fired back.
No wonder even some Republicans are turning on them.
Uniontown native Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net