After months of political maneuvering, self-righteous anger, and hysterics, the Senate defeated the proposed Gun Bill. The vote was quickly followed by an angry speech from the President and seething editorials by the leaders of the Leftist anti-gun movement.
As a gun-owning pro self-defense member of society, I must admit that the final version of the bill didn’t seem extremely offensive to me; the measures proposed wouldn’t do much to bother legal gun owners, but they wouldn’t do much to inhibit criminals either.
None of the proposals put forward by the Left in the past four months would have done the slightest to prevent what happened in Newtown or some other similar event. All of the recent shooters would have passed background checks and in the case of Adam Lanza, he stole his mother’s legally owned weapons and killed her with them. Limiting “high capacity magazines” may sound like it will save lives, yet with an estimated 40 million already available in the US, I doubt criminals will have a hard time finding them. Indeed, immediately after the gun bill was announced, senate aides involved in crafting the bill acknowledged that nothing in it would have prevented Newtown had it been passed before the shooting. Even Senator Joe Manchin, an author of the bill, admitted that families of Newtown knew that the bill would have not saved their children.
Still the Left played the heartstrings angle hard. Gabby Giffords, Mayor Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Piers Morgan, and rest of the crowd continually used the memory of Newtown to generate sympathy for their argument. Routinely charging any opponent of their cause as heartless killers who are complicit in murder. After the vote The Huffington Post continued their method of attempting to shame the other side with a picture of Newtown and the caption “No Justice”. I don’t understand how passing a bill that would have had zero effect in stopping the Newtown shooting would have given justice to the victims or their families. Prior to the final vote, Mayor Bloomberg had this to say about the vote that brought the bill to the floor.
“Those Senators….that voted for this should have a big smile on their face, they did something to save your life and your kids’ lives, and make this country a lot better.”
Even though the bill up for vote would have had precious little effect on saving anyone, Bloomberg felt these Senators should be happy because they could feel like they had done something. That is what this entire debate was about for the Left… feeling like they were doing something.
It is true that we, as humans, have trouble accepting the randomness of life. Fair amounts of people insist on seeing sinister schemes and conscious motives behind events that impact the world. The conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination, 9/11 and every other shocking event is proof of people’s need to see order in chaos.
I believe the people who have led the charge against guns are being affected by a similar manner of thinking. Instead of seeing a conspiracy theory behind Newtown, they seek to make sense of the tragedy by believing that some action they can take will change things by making us “safer” or provide “justice” to those involved.
The Gun Bill would have zero effect on most gun violence and as we saw recently in Boston, terror and death can be produced with any number of devices. Passing this legislation was about easing the pain on the Left’s collective conscience. A horrible tragedy happened and they felt it was their duty to do something about it; the details were not important, as long as they did something.
Some people may deal with tragedy by donating time or money, attending church or other soul soothing methods. However the Left’s go-to response is to call for government intervention. They have trouble accepting that there are some things that no government law or regulation can prevent. This is part of the reason we experienced such angst directed at opponents of the bill. Opponents weren’t merely defeating a bill, they were defeating the Left’s effort to find peace with what happened. Sadly for the Left, the purpose of the Government is not to be an emotional crutch. Passing laws should not be based on by how happy they make the lawmakers or how sensitive they make you seem.
Senseless violence will continue regardless of how many pieces of legislative bureaucracy are debated among our Senators. What we can do to make this nation a safer, better country is trusting citizens over regulators, self-reliance instead governmental dictates, and reality over emotions.
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