Emotion-based Democrat’s argument for banning specific models of semi-automatic weapons deserved better refutations than those offered by Republican Lawyer Cruz.
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) reads bullet wounds like Hermann Rorschach read psychiatric patients’ ink blot interpretations. And we suspect the diagnosis of Feinstein’s view of blood-splatter patterns as requiring the banning of precisely 157 guns would be one of delusions of grandeur.
Predictably, the former Mayor of San Francisco’s bill, that would also ban certain types of ammunition and magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, garnered the votes of all 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee recommending that Majority Leader Harry Reid bring it to the floor for a vote by the whole of the U.S. Senate.
All eight Republicans on the committee voted against the proposed so-called “assault weapons ban,” but our tea partier conservative star from the Lone Star state disappointed us in this (edited) exchange:
Sen. Cruz: “The Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights provides that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” Cruz started out — and then asked whether the First Amendment should “only apply” to certain books or the Fourth Amendment should only protect certain people from unreasonable searches.
Sen. Feinstein: ”I’m not a sixth grader. Senator, I’ve been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in — I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I’ve seen the bullets that implode. In Sandy Hook, youngsters were dismembered.”
Cruz, who has developed a reputation for feisty debate in committee hearings, responded that “nobody doubts (Feinstein’s) sincerity or her passion.”
However, he noted, she “chose not to answer the question that I asked.”
Cruz again asked if the Constitution would allow certain books to be banned.
“The answer is obvious — no,” Feinstein said, though senators subsequently agreed that some pornographic content could be regulated.
If you are dizzy from the blur of senatorial non sequiturs, you are not alone. In fact, an earlier example in which the senior senator from California sought to justify her bill with reference to the over 2000 weapons the bill keeps legal and a rhetorical question suggesting Americans don’t need Bazookas, reveals how Cruz’s suggested absolutist view of the right to bear any and all arms left the station long ago.
Bazookas, automatic weapons including machine guns and scores of other arms that can be borne have long been banned, consistent with the purpose of the Second Amendment as a check on a tyrannical federal government. Defamation and fighting words have long been deemed actionable. The reasonableness of searches and seizures have always varied depending upon the place to be searched and the particular facts and circumstances of same. Even political speech can be subject to time, place and manner restrictions.
And what are bans on particular arms if not restrictions on the “manner” of the bearing of said arms.
We think the veteran appellate attorney from Texas would have made a better case against the banning of the particular arms, ammo and magazines in the Democrats’ bill by specifically answering Sen. Feinstein’s rhetorical question concerning the alleged lack of a need for those weapons, with reference to the self-defense right laid out by the Supreme Court in its two recent seminal cases of DC v Heller (2008) and McDonald v Chicago (2010), as follows:
Given that the particular arms, ammo and magazines proposed to be banned have been legal for many years, and that those presently owned by Americans will not be confiscated, it is clearly foreseeable that one could well need arms equal to those that an aggressor may bear in order to effectively defend oneself.
Moreover, murder and violent crime generally has fallen since the lifting of the previous 10-year federal assault weapons ban in 2005. Additionally, mass murder incidents have occurred at approximately the same rate before, during and after the 1994-2005 Clinton ban. The fact is that violent crime has fallen dramatically for the past three decades due to the increased incarceration rates of violent criminals, an aging population and the increase in the number of law-abiding Americans bearing arms.
But just as with White racism and clean air and water; Democrats can never admit that any problem has ever been solved lest the need to vote for Democrats to solve them evaporate.
We are used to identity, emotion-based, logic-free arguments for more laws from Democrats. We hope that the next time one of our most admired conservatives takes on the Democrats in such a public way, that he brings his A-game. For instance, when he follows through on his vow to do all he can under senate rules to defund Obamacare, but I digress.
There is no rhyme or reason to Feinstein’s Democratic Party-backed bill meant to use the Sandy Hook massacre to advance liberal ideology, and on that score, Ted Cruz and the other seven Republicans on the committee got it right.
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
Diane’s only notable mission in that 20 years has been meaningless gun-control and she keeps coming away empty. She finally gets her “window” and then Obama decides to pull the sequester “world is ending” stunt. I think the public is getting tired of having their heart-strings pulled. Timing is everything Diane.
Great point tee’!
I ain’t too smart Mike but despite being called every name in the book in the liberal blogsphere, I can somehow formulate thoughts…sometimes wrong but amazingly usually right.
Note to Howard if he is lurking, I’m here a lot because I detest doing personal taxes…was actually thinking about buying a cat so cleaning the litter box would be yet another distraction that would be better than doing personal taxes.
That’s it??! We at LU work our fingers to the bone trying to provide food for thought, and for you this is all tax-prep avoidance? I gotta tell ya, teejk, I’m crushed. Time to go drown my tears in a bacon cheeseburger — maybe with fried onions to really help with the pain.
Guess I posted that last one in error. I’m sorry to have wasted your peoples’ time with my mindless thoughts. I’ll try to keep your busy schedules in mind before I reply again.
Enjoy your cheeseburger. I just prepared my egg salad (never understood why eggs got a pass on the meatless Friday thing) but I still observe since maybe there is something to it (would hate to die and have to spend eternity with a bunch of liberals solely because I ate meat on Friday in Lent).
Again, my sincere apologies for my rude behavior.
Still no nested comments beyond three iterations! Note to self: Email tech guy.
I happen to be a huge fan of egg salad. If it weren’t so utterly terrible for you, I’d have it at least once a day.
Well, I’d love to continue chatting, but my busy schedule beckons.
Egg salad is only bad for you for a 10 year period that starts and ends every 10 years (kinda like coffee…after all these years, what is good and bad depends on the agenda of the outfit doing the study). If you get to that big deli on 41st and park, they make a good chicken salad and on Wednesdays they do a good sausage and pepper…get the hard roll)
41st and Park? Are you sure you’re remembering the right corner? There’s no deli there now, and I can’t recall a time when there was one.
It was a big one (buffet/deli with sitdown eating). Maybe they consider it 42nd St. And maybe it doesn’t qualify as a true deli.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of the New York Public Library. It’s at 42nd St and it doesn’t qualify as a true deli either. It doesn’t offer sitdown eating, but it does offer sitdown reading. In any case, the NYPL makes a mean cheeseburger with Francis Bacon.
NY public library is a few blocks off Park Howard…the one I’m thinking of was across the street from that evil Philip Morris building (the one where people protested all the time with the body bags). Closer to the library was a pretty good sandwich shop (Hometown deli or something like that…a hard working husband/wife team that I think were in the process of divorcing yet still managed to work together even with all those sharp knives around).
In that case I am stumped. (I guess the Francis Bacon joke fell flat.)
“Bazookas, automatic weapons including machine guns and scores of other arms that can be borne have long been banned, consistent with the purpose of the Second Amendment as a check on a tyrannical federal government.”
That remains quite debatable and, besides, it contradicts the following quote:
“Given that the particular arms, ammo and magazines proposed to be banned have been legal for many years, and that those presently owned by Americans will not be confiscated, it is clearly foreseeable that one could well need arms equal to those that an aggressor may bear in order to effectively defend oneself.”
This contradiction is so because the 2nd Amendment is about our rights as human beings to defend ourselves and our loved ones against personal threats to be sure but it is also about our right and our duty as citizens to defend our country against a tyrannical government or against an invading foreign force both of which would use these weapons as a matter of course. An under-gunned citizenry is not an effective militia which, according to the 2nd Amendment, is necessary for the security of the state.
The 2nd Amendment has already been eviscerated by those whose best interest is to rule over a weakened and disarmed citizenry.
But the contradictions don’t stop there. Here is an example of judicial ambivalence. Shotguns with barrels lengths under 18” were ruled illegal early last century because, the state argued, these were not considered military arms which, the state also argued, were the guns protected under the 2nd Amendment. OK, we get that. However, if that argument held water then, and still does now, surely a full auto M-16, MP-5 or any other military weapon would pass that precedent-setting legal requirement/definition. But they don’t.
Gun control, all forms of gun controls, are about controlling people, not the instruments that they might choose to use. After all, people are bound to follow rules, inanimate objects are not.
RH
RH
No contradiction. One can be an effective check on one’s own government without having personal armed nukes and we have armed government forces to face foreign foes. more later