HERE COMES THE BRADY (GUN CONTROL) BUNCH

I knew it would be only a matter of time before the anti-gunners would come out from under their rocks in response to the Tucson shooting. The first one I heard was NBC’s Tom Brokaw who warbled that we need to change the easy way people can obtain guns. And now, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy are introducing bills that would outlaw high-capacity bullet magazines such as the 30-round clip used by Jared Lee Loughner.

McCarthy has been a strong gun-control advocate ever since her husband was killed and her son was wounded on a Long Island Railroad commuter train by a gunman in 1993. She and Feinstein want to restore that part of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (which expired in 2004) limiting magazine capacity to a maximum of 10 rounds. I’ve gto news for those two ladies – a 10 round clip would not have prevented the killing of six people and wounding of 14 others. A determined gunman would just buy several 10-round clips and if he was an experienced shooter, he would be able to unload an empty clip and reload his pistol with a laded magazine in two or three seconds.

Sen. Barbara Boxer is going even further than her fellow California Democrat. Yesterday Boxer called for tougher federal gun laws, including banning large ammunition clips and federal regulations on concealed weapons permits.

And, of course, we are beginning to hear from anti-gun columnists. Investor’s Business Daily offers a section titled ‘On the Right’ and ‘On the Left.’ In Monday’s ‘On the Left,’ Richard Cohen offered a load of anti-gun nonsense in his column, ‘It Was A Gun That Resulted In Six Deaths.’ Cohen is a real jerk! It was a head-case that did the shooting in Tucson, NOT THE GUN! And the Brady Bunch statistics he quoted are highly suspect.

Here are some excerpts from Cohen’s nonsense:

__The American culture, the American gun culture, insists on a constitutional right to bear arms — even concealed weapons such as a Glock 19 semiautomatic handgun capable of doing immense damage. A 22-year-old man, already hallucinating on the Internet, making no sense in his classes and booted from school for his strange ways and probably unable to show up with a friend, can buy such a killing device almost on the spot. If he is crazy, then so are we.

__But rather than going on a national guilt trip, we should turn our attention to the one element in this tragedy that can be controlled: easy access to guns. After all, enough ought to be enough. Rifles can kill (John F. Kennedy, for instance), but most homicides committed using firearms — more than 70% — are the work of handguns (Robert F. Kennedy, for instance). The handgun is wonderfully effective. It's little and it's lethal.

__Gun statistics are nothing less than astonishing. According to the Brady Campaign, an advocacy group, "more Americans were killed with guns in the 18-year period between 1979 and 1997 (651,697) than were killed in battle in all wars since 1775 (650,858)." Even assuming that some of those deaths were suicides or accidents, the gun is what did it. Had it not been handy, then a death might have been avoided.

__Little in life is easy or open and shut. There is probably no getting rid of all guns, there is no denying their appeal and there is no use ignoring the Second Amendment. But amendments can be repealed and then reworded (long guns only?) and somehow made to conform to the 21st century.

Those of us who believe that the Second Amendment gives us the right to own guns, must be ever vigilant that the tragic shooting by a crazed gunman does not lead to the Brady Bunch desire for a ban on private gun ownership.