From Ron Silver.
Since 2001 it has become apparent to me that many people are indeed afraid. It has also become apparent to me that the people who are most afraid are behaving hypocritically and cowardly. I do not make these assertions lightly. It
Church Massacre Spurs Calls For Effective Gun Control
December 14th, 2007
COLORADO SPRINGS (APUPI) As a mass memorial service was held today for the seventy-three victims of the massacre at the New Life Church, one of the largest such grim tolls in the nations’ history, gun-control advocates pointed out the continuing folly of allowing civilians access to pistols and assault weapons.
“This never would have happened had Matthew Murray not been able to get his hands on those weapons, ” said Sarah Brady, head of Handgun Control, Incorporated. “He had two handguns, an assault rifle, and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Seventy-three people are dead now, and thousands more wounded, because the NRA continues to block reasonable gun-control measures.”
With Sunday’s slaughter still fresh in the minds of many, she pointed out that now was the time to end such incidents once and for all, with effective laws against both handguns and assault weapons.
The toll was horrific for the church, which lost not only many parishioners, but its senior pastor, Brady Boyd. Also killed was Jeanne Assam, one of the church’s security guards. She had bravely stood up and warned the gunman as he entered the building after killing two girls in the parking lot, and pointed out the “gun-free zone” sign at the church entrance. However, she herself was unarmed, per church policy, and was shot down before Murray went on to shoot numerous others behind her.
While the police are to be commended on their fast response of twelve minutes from the time someone had the presence of mind to call 911 on their cell phone, by the time they could bring in someone to take out the shooter, he had had time to kill sixty nine others, and wound another hundred and twenty one.
Some have made the controversial suggestion that the death toll might have been lower had Ms. Assam been allowed to carry a firearm herself, something which, as a former police officer, she was well trained to do. In addition, she held a permit to legally carry a concealed weapon in Colorado. But the church rules, for obvious safety reasons, didn’t allow weapons on the premises.
Mrs. Brady finds such suggestions dangerous and ludicrous. “What is a woman going to do with a handgun against a man with two pistols and an assault rifle?” she asked. “Adding more weapons to the mix would only have increased the carnage. What they needed was bigger letters on the sign.”
[Copyright 2007 by Rand Simberg]
Losing Their Touch?
I believed, with a lot of other conservatives, that the Clintons were really good at destroying people. Judging from the last three weeks, they are really bad at destroying people. Maybe all those people they destroyed in the 1990’s were just easily destroyed? This is very disorienting…
I think that there are several factors here. First, when they were successfully destroying people, they had political power, either as Arkansas governor, or as co-president. I don’t think that being an ex-President and senator give them as much clout or ability to hurt their enemies. Also, most people weren’t aware of their record in that regard in the 80s and 90s. Now, it’s their most famous feature. Now, when they attempt to smear someone (as they did with Obama), the press calls them on it, instead of simply being stenographers for the smear. Of course, it helps a lot that the people they’re trying to destroy are fellow Democrats, so even those in the media who want to help them are conflicted in a way they wouldn’t be in the general election.
And, finally, I think that a lot of their former allies and toadies are tired of them, had enough, and starting to turn on them (watch this trend accelerate once people decide that she’s not “inevitable” and they don’t have to worry about being on the wrong end of the wrath of another president Clinton). Without the help of all these others, they are more powerless as well.
Plus, is Hillary Ed Muskie?
On Projection
The basic problem liberals have a hard time grasping: Murray is a soaked-to-the-bone libertarian. He doesn’t think the government is qualified or entitled to do much of anything. But whenever liberals hear conservatives or libertarians talk about race they automatically leap to images of Nazism or Fascism when virtually all serious or mainstream rightwing thinkers endorse, at most, benign neglect AKA colorblindness. You can take exception to such arguments, even passionate exception, but it is outrageous to suggest that Murray or Bill Bennett (remember his Freakonomics hypothetical?) or pretty much any other conservative or libertarian worthy of the label wants to use state power to oppress or eliminate minorities. It is a slanderous projection of liberal biases onto conservatives and it has been with us since the days when Herbert Spencer was demonized for being a radical liberal.
This is the same mindless jumping to conclusions that causes some people to call me a Republican, or “right winger” or “conservative,” or “neo-con.”
By the way, Jonah’s new book looks pretty interesting.
I love the cover.
Wise Words
From Mike Potemra:
To the readers..who have written me about how I should be worried about the (in the words of one) “extremely strange” and “Scientology-level strange” beliefs of Mormons, here’s my response: In my own faith, we believe that the cause of all evil was a single mistake by human beings many millennia ago
To Know Him Is To Dislike Him
The more I learn about Huckabee, the less appealing he becomes:
Huckabee doesn
Voices In Your Head
This is kind of disturbing:
The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an “audio spotlight” from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For random passersby and residents who have to walk unwittingly through the area where the voice will penetrate their inner peace, it’s another story.
I predict a lawsuit at some point.
A Sincere Apology To Huckabee
Well, actually, replace “sincere” with disingenuous. Nonetheless, this is one of the reasons that, if I were a Republican, I’d be voting for Fred Thompson.
And I should add that I don’t actually agree with the Cuba embargo, but it’s not a huge issue for me either way.
And speaking of Huckabee, one can see why the Dems would think him the most beatable candidate. I pretty much agree with everything here. I can’t stand Huckabee, either. My nightmare is a Hillary!/Huckabee choice.
Oh, one more comment. I was listening to Dennis Miller this morning in the car on the way to the dentists, and they said “Hey, he misspoke about Mormons thinking that Jesus and the devil were brothers. He meant to say Jews.”
Zero G Found to Cause Cluelessness
Marc Kaufman of Washington Post finds that in zero g, “Microbes May Threaten Lengthy Spaceflights[;] Immune Systems Of Astronauts Found To Be Weakened”. I guess the whole spinning-like-a-carnival-ride thing is far too obvious a solution even if the problem is not worthy of a “crash program or anything like that”.
“Blowback”
Lee Harris points out the fatal flaw in the argument of the “non-interventionists“:
We may agree with Ron Paul that our interventionist policy in the Middle East has led to unintended negative consequences, including even 9/11, but this admission offers us absolutely no insight into what unintended consequences his preferred policy of non-intervention would have exposed us to. It is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.