Wednesday, October 21, 2009

You'd think a journalist would know better..

...than to display this sort of complacency (h/t Armed and Safe):

For those of us not yet convinced the feds' grand plan is to strip us of our inalienable rights, the visions of doom seem a bit over the top.

Odd. I have yet to see the NRA as a organization or any of its representatives try to persuade the people that "the feds' grand plan is to strip us of our inalienable rights," just that we should be alert and on guard, as the Founding Fathers intended, against government's natural propensity (even if it is unintended) to grow more powerful and take more of our rights. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a West Coast journalist would misrepresent the NRA's or American gun owners' position to advance his own, but it's still quite disappointing.
That's just the capper to this whole bit of inanity, as Mr. Barnidge had this to say earlier in the piece:
Was it (the Second Amendment -- ed.) intended to protect states' rights to arm a "well regulated militia" against an overbearing national government as the wording suggests, or does it mean that every American has the right to strap on a shoulder holster in the morning and keep an Uzi under his pillow at night?
Wow, where to start with this? Considering the Founding Fathers had just finished throwing off a tyrannical government, the prospect that they would codify in the Constitution the right of ANY government to arm itself is utterly fatuous. It's also incredibly hypocritical and self-serving for the leftists to advocate this position. Considering how they've been denigrating the Tea Party activists for the activists' advocacy of a less powerful federal government in favor of power decentralized among the 50 states (see also the Dems' shrieking about Rick Perry's comments vis-a-vis secession), does anyone honestly think they're seriously advocating the Second Amendment allowing the states to arm to protect their respective citizens against the depredations of the federal government? They can't have it both ways.
As for the Uzi-under-the-pillow argument -- well, of COURSE the 2A allows for that. No honest reading of the amendment allows for any other interpretation. To reprise and revise my comment from Armed and Safe, though -- if I had my choice for a subgun, I'd take a 10mm MP5. While we're talking about gun fantasies, how about a few hundred mags of full-power ammo of various weights from Double Tap? With that longer barrel those 155- and 180-grain Gold Dots would take care of anything you needed to take care of with that MP5...