Some Liberals Already Calling for Gun Control

Totalitarian homunculus Michael Bloomberg can't stop yammering about it.

Bloomberg applied pressure on the presidential candidates two days after a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. using an assault rifle and other semiautomatic weapons. Both Obama and Romney have muted their campaign rhetoric since the shooting spree and offered condolences to the victims’ families.

“Expressing sympathy is nice ... but somebody’s got to do something about this,” Bloomberg said. “And this requires, particularly in a presidential year, the candidates for president of the United States to stand up and once and for all say, yes, they feel terrible. Yes, it’s a tragedy. Yes, we have great sympathy for the families, but it’s time for this country to do something. And that’s the job of the president of the United States.”

Jesse Jackson sounded off less than a day after the shootings. Dianne Feinstein said that during an election year "it's a bad time to embrace a new subject." Election year? More like right now is a bad time. Howard Kurtz pointed out how troubling it is to turn the atrocity into ideological fodder so soon--while victims are still being treated.

Regardless, some apparently feel it is appropriate. CNN's Candy Crowley pressed John McCain, who stated what should be obvious: Stricter gun control laws will not deter determined lunatics. The Norway killer, Anders Breivik, for example, was able to acquire weapons and carry out mass slaughter in a country with very tight laws. Crowly continued, though, framing her questions in a way that assumed the reasonableness of gun control. (Video below the fold.) Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, took a similar position: "“I’m not sure there is any way in a free society to be able” to stop a deranged individual from assembling a deadly arsenal . . . ."

The Wall Street Journal asks how a free society protects itself from a twisted mind and concludes there is no real defense other than law enforcement and community.

The much harder question is how a free society protects itself from a twisted mind. Families, educators and medical professionals need to be aware of the behavior that might signal psychotic breaks of the kind that tormented Loughner. In the case of Breivik, simple evil seems to suffice as an explanation. (See Sohrab Ahmari's account of his trial nearby.)

A civilized modern society is paradoxically more vulnerable to an act of individual malevolence than it is to a terror plot that at least its law enforcers are watching for. There may be no real defense against the Loughners and Holmeses save for the guardrails of watchful friends, family and community. And society's determination through its justice system to suitably punish the killers.

(Edited: I took out the auto-starting Breitbart video.)

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posted by rdbrewer at 05:22 PM

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