Never one to let a crisis go to waste, Rep. Charlie Rangel has weighed in on the execution-style murder of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu by cop-hating gang-banger Ismaaiyl Brinsley.
Rangel decries the police union’s response, which has included a statement to Mayor Bill de Blasio from the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association that “the blood of these two officers is clearly on your hands.” In fact, Rangel has some stage directions for the police leadership:
“They should be conducting interviews mourning those that they lost and their family, talking about how do insane people get firearms and not criticizing but seeing how we can stop insane people from getting an opportunity to get firearms to kill anybody,” Rangel said on MSNBC’s “The Rundown.”
Well, sure. Now that two policemen have been killed, it’s time to forget that Bill de Blasio threw the entire NYPD under the bus, not only with his meandering rant on teaching his son to deal with implicitly racist cops, but with an equally incendiary rant on “centuries of racism” as the cause of Eric Garner’s death. Forget all that; it’s time to “come together.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Rangel…said that the true takeaway of the tragedy should be an increased push for gun control, specifically focused on restricting access to guns by the mentally ill. …
“We’ve got serious problems to deal with and screaming and pointing fingers about ‘blood on your hands?’ No, we have to come together as a city.”
Now, the only people I’ve heard “screaming” are the ones who claim that police officers, a “racist society,” a brutal, vicious AmeriKKKa, etc., have the blood of black lives on their hands. The sound of “screaming” is what goes with bloodthirsty anti-police chants:
What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!!
The police, by contrast, have remained almost entirely silent, making any dissatisfactions they harbor known through the official statements of their representatives – as well as with the quiet, disciplined, and immediately viral action of turning their backs on de Blasio at his press conference on the murder of Liu and Ramos.
If that “statement” by the police is more powerful and moving than the literal screaming of thug-protesters for more dead cops, as soon as possible, chalk that up to the difference between having character and responsibility, and not having them. It’s amazing how differently people hear you and perceive you when character is your calling card.
It’s no surprise, of course, that the Reverend Dr. Al Sharpton has already appealed to police leaders to “stop the blame game.” Only Sharpton gets to play the blame game, thank you. But Rangel is now one-upping Sharpton with the “gun control” gambit.
That’s no surprise either, given Rangel’s history of reverting to a gun-restrictions agenda on any and all occasions. He makes his own occasions when they aren’t readily available, as when he claimed in March 2013 – with ineffable idiocy – that “millions of kids” are being shot down by “assault weapons.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eqyDyMb7Kk
The new New Republic has already stepped in to lay the ground work for Rangel’s appeal with a completely illogical post, arguing, as far as I can make out, that it was too easy for Brinsley to steal a gun because we don’t have enough background checks. We can expect to see more noise-blasts about guns in the coming days.
I think they’ll be muted, however. It’s distracting to go full-bore on the anti-gun theme when that can only steal attention from the victims-of-racism-busting-out theme. It’s hard to make all the themes hang together here, because, well, they don’t. If people’s anger at racism justifies howling for dead cops, now, and a black felon then shoots cops, it’s just an awkward-pause kind of interjection to bleat “gun control.” It doesn’t fit the narrative.
No one has clarified that more precisely than a young woman named Khadijah Lynch, a junior at Brandeis, who tweeted a series of perfectly-cast meme-thoughts about racism and cop-hatred over the last month. (Replete with obscenities, so be warned.)
From “I am in riot mode. F*** this f***ing country” to “lmao, all i just really dont have sympathy for the cops who were shot. i hate this racist f***ing country,” she’s had the zeitgeist roped and tied throughout the period since the grand-jury reports on the Michael Brown and Eric Garner incidents.
And Ms. Lynch’s perspective on guns and violence is uncompromising:
i need to get my gun license. asap.
— Khadijah (@punQros3) December 21, 2014
amerikkka needs an intifada. enough is enough.
— Khadijah (@punQros3) December 21, 2014
Somehow, poor old Charlie Rangel, with his gun-restrictions shtick, comes off more like a dotty, superannuated church-lady than a meaningful political leader. Like Sharpton, he’s just an old guy who’s going to really need the cops protecting his behind in the days ahead.
There’s an 800-pound unclothed emperor in the room now: a reality that everyone except the warmed-over ‘60s radicals can see clearly. The American middle class, with its police forces and work ethic, isn’t only white; it isn’t even overly white; it isn’t vicious and oppressive; and it isn’t “the problem.” It’s actually the most successful solution the world has ever seen. And it’s obvious that it is under attack today, by race- and class-baiters as well as by gun “controllers.”
Khadijah Lynch has her perspective on guns. More and more middle-class Americans are seeing the prudence of hearkening to actor James Woods’s perspective, tweeted yesterday:
Never felt more certain that the Second Amendment is a necessity to protect the Bill of Rights from tyranny.
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) December 21, 2014
Middle-class Americans have no intention of being disarmed by Rangel so that mobs of Lynches can mow them down.
