Happy days are here again! At least if you’re in the assault weapons—I mean modern home sporting defense black assault rifle gun weapons business. “As a result of a Post investigation into the effectiveness of the federal assault weapons ban is both encouraging and heartbreaking,” The Washington Post editorial opines. “Encouraging because the ban appears to have worked, at least as far limiting the proliferation of high-capacity magazines; heartbreaking because the use of such magazines in crimes rose dramatically after the ban was irresponsibly allowed to lapse.” That after I emailed them the link to my post debunking that junk. Anyway . . .
Jared Lee Loughner appears to be a deeply disturbed young man who should never have been able to obtain a weapon of any kind, let alone the kind that easily transforms a lone gunman into a mass murderer. The data from Virginia show that the federal ban worked. Lawmakers should not wait for another Tucson-like tragedy to resurrect this common-sense law.
Note to WaPo: I think you’ve answered your own question there. Everyone agrees that Mr. Loughner was not suitable for gun ownership—ipso facto. But here’s the real conundrum: how could anyone have prevented Jared Lee Loughner from obtaining a weapon of any kind? A knife? A baseball bat? A car? Poison?
All of these weapons are easily obtainable. All have been used for mass murder.
Actually, there is a way Mr. Loughner could have been separated from all deadly weapons: someone could have confined him into a rubber room and monitored him constantly. How Mr. Loughner avoided that fate prior to the attack is an interesting question—whose answer may not be the one we’d like.
Meanwhile, it’s worth mentioning that no weapon of any kind “transforms” a lone gunman into a mass murderer. That transformation occurred in the dark recesses of Mr. Loughner’s deeply disturbed mind. And he didn’t need a 31-round magazine for it to happen.
I’ll just post these comments underneath the WaPo edirotial . . . Hang on, what’s this? The comments’ section under the editorial’s closed? First Amendment, Second Amendment. Funny how the Washington Post is willing to subvert the former to undermine the latter. Just sayin’ . . .
We know what to expect from the Washington Post, and accurate reporting isn’t on the menu.
‘Tis a shame that so much of the anti-gun news/propaganda is so easily defeated with a simple analysis but someone who passed stat&prob in high school.
So many people can’t/don’t read critically enough to know when the numbers are being twisted right out in the open.
“OMG! We went from one homicide to two. Crime is up 100%! Panic!”
Again, I live in Northern Virginia. I have yet to hear of a violent homicide involving assault weapons or high cap magazines since I moved here in August.
Progressive Thought o’ the Day: “Never let a few inconvenient truths get in the way of a pet theory.”
Nor let a tragedy go un-exploited. Did Loughner use an “assault weapon” (aka, scary black rifle)? No. Does it matter? No.
It’s a gun. There’s no way (politically) to ban pistols. Not now anyway. Let’s harness whatever residual shock and outrage we can to illegalize at least SOME kind of gun. We’ll move on from there. Just give us time.
Loughner managed to actually research ahead about assassins, death penalty, and all the consequences that could happen to him before he struck. He knew exactly what he was doing. What could have stopped him from making a bomb perhaps just as powerful as the one in Moscow?
You know what I’ve never understood; why do we as a gun community ask if the gun control fetishists would rather ban alcohol?
They come at us with this line about “common sense” gun control, and like to note that “Nobody [i]needs[/i] high capacity clips!” Why don’t we point out that nobody needs intoxicating beverages?
Far more innocent people are killed on our roads by drunk drivers every year. Scores more die expensive, early, painful deaths from years of alcohol abuse. Millions of families are put into very dark places for extended periods of time when someone in that family is addicted to alcohol. The social costs of drinking likely total in the tens of billions of dollars.
Yet, nobody ever advocates for it’s abolishment from our society.
Assault rifles, used as (one of the man possible) tools to harm others inflict 150-200 deaths a year in this country, and banning them would do little/nothing to quell that violence.
Why not point out the double standard?
Banning booze worked out well for the criminal underworld. Banning guns would, too.
God, I’m sick of hearing about the high-capacity magazines. If they keep this up, and especially if they ever mention again that 1000-foot rule, I might just switch sides. It’s too embarrassing trying to support these arguments when we have bigger fish to fry. Sometimes I wonder what side some of these politicians are on.
What side? Their own.
I think we should ban tractor-trailer trucks on public highways. They are way more dangerous than anything a single person can hold in their hands. Actually, we should probably just eliminate driving all together. Who really needs a car anyway? They are horribly dangerous devices. We can all ride bicycles and take those high speed trains the President would like us to have. Oh wait, that actually sounds nice. But let me keep a Saiga-12 with 20 round drum in my house. Just in case.
Well now that we’re going to start banning everything, we should begin with diesel fuel and fertilizers. I think we all know what great harm these two evil manmade inventions are capable of inflicting on our society. All I can say is look at what happened to the MURROW FEDERAL BUILDING IN OK. The mass murderer is this case didn’t use a single bullet or gun, and look at how many people he killed. We’re lucky that Jared Lee Loughner didn’t have a backpack bomb. (I guess we should ban these evil backpacks just in case)
I guess we should start ban commercial airliners after all two them crashing in world trader center one in pentagon on 911 kill far more people than glock 19 used buy Jared Lee Loughner. Yet ant gun people have ever one think evil guns kill more people than dui and cancer from smoking cigs. Yet more people die from drink drive from cancer than do geting shot buy guns.
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