Progressives versus the constitution

I’ve got a friend who is a liberal—probably the only liberal I call a friend—with whom I have regular “discussions” about current events. I can have these conversations with him because, unlike other liberals, he can “take it” as well as “dish it out”, and doesn’t resort to the furious insults that most liberals belch out any time their “righteous” arguments are contradicted. In other words, he’s idealistic and (in my opinion) naïve, but not a narcissist.

This friend openly admits he hate guns. Hates them. When we discuss President Obama’s record on taxing guns, on AG Holder’s and Sec. of State Clinton’s wish to reinstate the “assault weapon” ban (“AWB” for short in this article), he agrees that they should be banned. Why? “No one needs an Uzi to hunt ducks”, he once told me.

As if the Founding Fathers wrote the second amendment to protect our access to sporting goods.

That statement led to a series of arguments about the Second Amendment, and about the statistics about how rarely the “assault weapons” are used in crime in the USA.

I found another interesting link about the ballistics of assault weapons, which revealed the amazing statistic debunking the myth about their “deadliness”. In short, the thesis goes this way: assault weapons and their ammunition are designed for use in combat, and are not designed necessarily to kill, but rather, to maim as many enemy combatants as possible. The full metal jacket on the rounds is designed to penetrate and exit the body, causing significant but not overly severe wounds. A man shot in the belly—even the chest—can survive if given timely medical treatment. So, by shooting an enemy with an M-16 round (.223) or an AK-47 round (7.62x39), you not only take out the victim, but also his comrades who have to evacuate him. And you create a costly mass of casualties that the enemy must treat in hospitals.

The author performed a study of several mass killings by criminals. Some used “assault weapons” such as the AK-47. Others used shotguns. He analyzed the survival rate of the victims and found a surprising result:

While victims of an AK-47 attack had a 76% survival rate, the victims of a 12-gauge shotgun attack only had a 33% survival rate. In one case, 35 people were shot with an AK-47, and 30 survived—five people tragically died. In another, 21 people were shot with a shotgun, and only seven survived.

In other words: shotguns are more than twice as deadly when used in a criminal attack as an assault weapon. So, logically, why stop with the AWB? Progressives, I argued, will never be happy with that limited ban.

When I pointed out that statistics show that assault weapons are used in less than ½ of 1% of all criminal acts in our country, and that Shotguns are actually twice as deadly, I asked him, why should we reinstate the AWB? His response: “Because five died.”

Five deaths were too many, and constitute a reason to abandon the second amendment?

If we extend this illogical reasoning, we could come to the following rationale:
· When Jeanine Garrafolo insulted the 100,000+ participants by calling them “tea-bagging racists”, which hurt their feelings. 100,000+ insulted people versus Free Speech. Better restrict the first amendment so we’ll all be happier.
· 10,000 people per year die because we have our guns…better eliminate the second amendment; it will save thousands of lives.
· Thousands of people die each year because we weren’t able to search the property of criminals without cumbersome legal constraints. If we eliminate the fourth amendment; it will save thousands of lives.
· Forty million babies have been aborted: better revoke Roe V. Wade immediately to stop this holocaust.
· Thousands of criminals are released each year because of due process laws that restrict our ability to lock away these dangerous villains. We should eliminate the fifth amendment; it will save thousands of lives.
· Thousands of criminals are released each year because a it was not possible to gather the required proof of guilt, since everyone has a right to a speedy trial. We should eliminate the sixth amendment; it will save thousands of lives.
· Thousands of criminals are released each year because trial-by-jury failed to prosecute the murderers, who were released and killed again. We should eliminate the seventh amendment; it will save thousands of lives.
· Police, FBI, CIA, cannot use coercive methods (such as water-boarding and bugs in boxes) to interrogate terrorists with information about upcoming attacks (such as the one “illegally” and “immorally” thwarted by the Bush administration that would have taken place in LA). Better eliminate the eighth amendment; that will save thousands of lives.

He responded to this sarcastic analysis thusly; “I have no interest in barring anyone from owning a gun. I think people should own guns. I just don’t like them. It’s a personal feeling that I have and I don’t {like} them. No one is going to repeal any of the amendments that you’re talking about.”

But our Dear Leader has already telegraphed his intentions. He and his cohorts have repeatedly mentioned the reinstatement of the ban, and even altered the statistical facts regarding Mexico’s drug war to try to gain political steam and press forward.

In fact, "progressives" just proposed a new ban on the possession of semi-automatic guns in specific zip codes in Illinois, mostly in primarily black and latino neighborhoods. And they have a provision in the law they passed that if there is too much outrage about it, they can simply remove the zip codes, making the law apply to all of Illinois.

So here’s your “good intentions” run amok again: because there is a high crime rate in certain neighborhoods, which also just happen to be primarily Black and Hispanic, they ban the legal possession of firearms there. This of course ensures that law abiding citizens in the most violent neighborhoods are unarmed, while the criminals can continue to be armed.

And, what’s the most astonishing aspect of the Democrat law? It unfairly targets minorities. No, progressives could NEVER be racist, or discriminate, or profile their constituents. They are too good, too kind hearted, for that kind of thing. That’s something only those evil ”tea-bagging racist” Republicans would do.