Sunday, February 25, 2018

It's Not About The Gun It's About The Good

I notice that a lot of progressives are having trouble internalizing a concept; what matters is the substance, not appearance. For example, if a person has double bit axe & a flannel shirt that does not make him a lumberjack; if a person has a 28 oz. waffle headed Eastwing & faded jeans that does not make him a framing carpenter; if a person possesses a ten gallon Stetson and a horse that does not make him a cowboy, and if a person possesses a doctor's stethoscope and a pastel shirt that does not make her an RN (right Miss Behar?)

Case in point:

"A good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun"

Simple enough, right? Not to progressives. Ya see, it has the word "gun" in it, which therefore becomes the fixation. Trips them right up, every time.

The thought (I use the term loosely) is that because Brave Sir Deputy failed to stop the mass murderer at the Parkland high school then voila! It is now proven that a good guy with a gun cannot stop a bad guy with a gun.

I present to you this dribble from one Elliot Hannon over at Slate:

"The problem is that there was a good guy with a gun at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that day" (emphasis in original)

This is very easy to clear up, and I shall in a moment.


Pardon My French, But GVRO Hell No

David French writes glowingly of Gun Violence Restraining Orders. In a fantastically doublespeakish introduction, French claims that GVRO's "...make us all safer while empowering the individual and protecting liberty."

(Hugh Hewitt has also been talking about a principal or some other school administrator being able to call NICS and place a "no buy" type of hold on someone. Most of my objections to GVRO's fall along similar lines so I won't deal with that proposal directly here.)

The concept is thus: Person A (family member, spouse, roommate, boyfriend or girlfriend, etc.) calls the cops and makes a claim that Person B is too dangerous to have firearms. The cops along with Person A (in theory) go in front of a judge and the judge decides whether or not to grant this GVRO.  Person B may be allowed to defend himself against the claims at the initial hearing, but an ex parte hearing is also an option for a temporary GVRO, with a 72 hour or so duration. If it is issued then the cops take away Person B's firearms. There should be an expiration date with either type of GVRO so that the claim must be reviewed and the GVRO either continued or rescinded.

That's the basics of it. French's piece is fisk-worthy of itself, but I lack the time to really dissect his arguments bit by bit. 

I will say I think this is a great idea - if the republicans are tired of being a majority party.  Otherwise it's problematic in all of its' aspects.