In the wake of the terrible massacre of 20 first-grade kiddies (and 6 adults) by an evil, likely-deranged lone gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the usual gun-control hyenas are braying.
This time, however, they may succeed in their gun control agenda, at least in getting assault weapons banned.
The Usual Hyenas:
CNN anchor Don Lemon (pic above) went on an anti-gun rant on Monday morning: “We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets. They should only be available to police officers and to hunt al-Qaeda and the Taliban and not hunt elementary school children.”
In a Twitter exchange on Saturday, MSNBC host Ed Schultz asked “Why should anyone own an assault rifle ?” and proposed a “confiscation of these types of weapons”. He also told one poster that “a Glock pistol qualifies as an assault weapon.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg renewed his perennial call for punitive federal gun control laws in the United States by lying that shooting deaths “only happen in America.” Not true. There have been shootings in other post-industrial societies, including Oslo, Norway; Winnendon, Germany; Kauhajoki, Finland; Beslan, Russia; Monash University, Australia; Dunblane, Scotland. (For those shootings, go here.)
Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel is calling for a nation-wide ban on assault weapons. When he was Obama’s COS, Emanuel famously said that “No crisis should go to waste.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) has pledged to revive a law banning assault weapons at the opening of the next session of Congress in January.
Ominous Signs:
The powerful pro-2nd Amendment National Rifle Association (NRA) shut down their Facebook page and have not had any Twitter activity since the massacre on Friday morning. NRA officials have kept quiet. On Twitter, NRA president David Keene and NRA members have received death threats — calls for them to be shot.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has been a strong supporter of 2nd Amendment rights with an A rating from the NRA — is signaling he’s changing his mind. On Monday outside the Virginia Capitol, Warner said: “I‘ve been a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights. I’ve got an A rating from the NRA. But the status quo isn’t acceptable. I’ve got three daughters. They asked me on Friday evening, ‘Dad, what are you gonna do about this?’ There’s got to be a way to put reasonable restrictions, particularly as we look at assault weapons, as we look at these fast clips of ammunition.”
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Meanwhile, the American people are responding with an upsurge of gun purchases, even more than the marked increases in gun buying since Obama first occupied the White House.
In Colorado, for example, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation received 4,154 requests for background checks from potential gun buyers on Saturday, the day after the Connecticut shooting. That was so many the CBI couldn’t process them all and the backlog grew to nearly 18 hours. Extra staff was brought in over the weekend and workers are still trying to clear the backlog.
~Eowyn
