The following is my first entry in a gun debate with Politico writer Brett Joshpe. I will post a link to his response when it is published.
By Selwyn Duke
A few weeks ago, author and Manhattan-based lawyer Brett
Joshpe penned a pro-gun-control piece
whose thrust was that conservatives need to be sensible with respect to
firearms legislation. It’s not sensible, said he, to oppose any and all further
restrictions on Second Amendment rights. Well, let’s discuss what’s “sensible.”
By Selwyn Duke
First there was the anti-Western Westerner, the hate-America-first
crowd, and the self-loathing white person. Now we have the anti-human
human, who, like General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes,
seems to think that “the only good human is a dead human!” Of course,
the Kum-Gaia-singing misanthropes don’t actually say that; rather, as
David Attenborough recently opined, they assert that man is a “plague”
whose burgeoning population threatens to do to the planet’s resources
what the feds do to the treasury. Now, I already pointed out in a recent piece that Attenborough is factually wrong: The world will in the foreseeable future likely face a population implosion, not an explosion. But he is philosophically wrong as well.
There is no doubt that we should be good shepherds of the Earth. We
have a responsibility to conserve resources when possible and should
cherish God’s creation. And while we can acknowledge that we all too
often fail in that regard, it is quite another thing to call man a
“plague,” which clearly implies that he is a troublesome life form
deleterious to something more important. Yet the issue here isn’t just
that some ascribe greater value to the Earth than to man, or at best
equal value. It is the larger questions of why they believe the Earth
has any intrinsic value at all and the basis on which that value is assessed.
Read the rest here.
By Selwyn Duke
Okay, half-slow laughin’ Joe didn’t actually say that, but
he might as well have. While defending his position a week ago that
banning the rifles incorrectly called “assault weapons” won’t negatively impact
upon Americans’ safety, he pointed out that you shouldn’t trouble yourself:
shotguns would still be available — and they’re more effective, anyway. He
said, reports
the Daily Caller:
A shotgun will keep you a lot safer
— a double-barreled shotgun — than an assault weapon in somebody’s hand who
doesn’t know how to use it, even one who does know how to use it. You know,
it’s harder to use an assault weapon to hit something than it is a shotgun.
[…]You want to keep people away in
an earthquake? Buy some shotgun shells.
Alright, Joe; if you’re talking about close-quarters
self-defense, you’ll get no argument from me. Now, would you again explain why
you want to ban AR-15s?
By Selwyn Duke
Liberal icon Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You’re
entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” But
that was decades ago, and today more leftists than ever have graduated from
confusion to delusion and believe they’re entitled to their own fiction.
A good example is naturalist David Attenborough, who
recently complained that man is a plague upon our planet. He warns that our
burgeoning population will ensure that we consume the world’s resources like a
sun-occluding swarm of high-tech locusts. Writes The
Telegraph:
By Selwyn Duke
It’s probably not quite true that gun-control advocate Piers Morgan
has been “standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook,” as
Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro put it.
It’s more correct to say that the cheeky Brit has been standing on the
graves of the children of Sandy Hook, jumping up and down, and stamping
his foot. I can say nothing else about a man who repeatedly combines the
Newtown tragedy with lies, misconceptions, and deceptions to push a
political agenda. What am I talking about? Well, here’s a top 10 list.
Walmart and the 100-round magazine
Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail,
“I can saunter into Walmart — America’s version of Tesco — and help
myself to an armful of … magazines that can carry up to 100 bullets at a
time.” Perhaps he could.
But he can’t.
Read the rest here.
By Selwyn Duke
In the wake of tragic Sandy Hook, many Americans are
desperate to prevent further school shootings. Thus do we find ourselves
debating two very divisive ideas: gun control and armed guards in schools. But
there is another idea, one both simple and acceptable to virtually all:
lockable, bulletproof doors for classrooms and school entrances.
This is a common-sense suggestion that has precedent. After
9/11, we had similar debates to those raging now. Today we’re divided over the
idea of arming some teachers; back then there was rancor over the idea of
arming pilots. Of course, we did finally appoint air marshals, the equivalent of
armed guards in schools. Yet no one had to debate what was universally self-evident:
the need to reinforce cockpit doors.
By Selwyn Duke
You might think that a professional outfit such as Bank of
America operated based on stated policy and not caprice. But not according to
owner of American Spirit Arms Joe Sirochman.
On his Facebook page, Sirochman tells of his adventures with
the banking giant. Like other gun dealers and manufacturers, his business is booming
currently — Internet orders are up 500 percent. This caused there to be an
unusual number of deposits made to his business’ BoA account via his website’s e-commerce
system, triggering an account freeze. This may not seem strange, as banks have
security systems that temporarily freeze accounts when detecting anomalous
activity. This happened to me once after using my debit card to make an unusual
series of purchases; the freeze was irritating, but nothing a few minutes on
the phone didn’t remedy. But this is where Sirochman’s story takes a bizarre
turn. He writes
(edited for style):
After countless hours on the phone
with Bank of America, I finally got a manager in the right department who told
me the reason that the deposits were on hold for further review. Her exact
words were:
“We believe you should not be
selling guns and parts on the Internet.”
selwynduke.com 