Thursday, August 14, 2008

Delaware Liberal and Gun Control

If you want a good buffet of left-leaning and far-left-leaning opinions, there's no better place to go than Delaware Liberal. Unlike, say, Pandagon, which is a one-note harangue, Delaware Liberal tends to cover a range of topics, local, national, and international, with a predictably liberal slant. If Rush Limbaugh is looking for material, he doesn't need to go further than this site.

I like DE because it provides a variety of subjects to discuss, but none has crept into more conversations lately than gun control. That's because of the relatively recent appearance of Mike W. as a counterpoint to any gun control argument.

I don't agree with gun control. The Second Amendment is clear that everyone has a right to own guns for any reason they choose, whether it is protection, hunting, or collecting. And most gun owners are fairly careful about gun safety. The reason a 3-year-old shooting his grandmother makes the news is that it doesn't happen very often.

The owners of DE are a relatively patient lot. They don't ban anyone (that I've seen), but they feel well within their rights to use illogical arguments and ad hominem attacks when logic and facts fail them (hell, who doesn't?). I thought the comments on this thread regarding the shooting of the Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman went a little off the rails.

Jason 330: BTW - The guy just died.

Happy now?

Why would anyone be happy that a guy died? Many at DE assume a conservative shot the chairman for political reasons, but, to date, there has been no political motivation unearthed for the shooting. That hasn't stopped the DE crew from hammering away at the theme that Republicans kill Democrats.

Yet again, there are those interested in blaming anyone but the perpetrators of crimes. As of now, we have no idea why this man shot the other man. Maybe they knew each other. Maybe the gunman had wanted a job and was turned down. Maybe he was a nut. Who knows? But it isn't helpful to automatically brand it as a political problem.

And let's look at their highest profile examples of Democrats who have died because of conservatives:
John F. Kennedy--Kennedy was shot and killed by a communist sympathizer named Lee Harvey Oswald. No conservative here.

Martin Luther King, Jr.--King was assassinated by career criminal James Earl Ray. The Wikipedia entry doesn't give any motivation for the killing, but it is assumed to be racial. No conservative credentials listed.

Robert F. Kennedy--Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian who said he decided to kill Kennedy because of his support for Israel (a conservative position, mind you). Diaries show he had decided to kill Kennedy before that position became public, but there's no evidence that Sirhan Sirhan had any conservative motivations for killing Kennedy.

I suppose pointing out that killing Democrats has been the sport of the left far more than the right would be futile. But that doesn't mean every murder of a political official is politically motivated or that gun control has made life any safer for Democrats.