Friday, October 18, 2013

Gun-grabbers promise protection they can't deliver

 

By GREGORY KANE | OCTOBER 17, 2013 AT 8:52 AM
When a group of thugs dragged Alexian Lien from his SUV on Sept. 29 and savagely beat him, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was nowhere to be found.
Neither was President Obama.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, reputed to be a presidential aspirant, wasn’t on hand to protect Lien, either.
It should be pretty obvious what Bloomberg, Obama and O’Malley have in common, other than protoplasm.
We’ve been hearing from all three since the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., on the matter of America needing more gun control laws.
Bloomberg, Obama and O’Malley were among those calling for laws that would limit the magazine capacity for firearms.
The argument of gun controllers goes like this: There really isn't a need for guns with magazines that can fire large numbers of rounds, because only crazed killers would want to kill that many people.    
Lien should have been armed with a gun that had a high-capacity magazine as he drove on New York City’s Westside Highway on the afternoon of Sept. 29.
No one wants deranged killers mowing down large numbers of people with weapons that have large-capacity magazines.
But I want people that are attacked by members of, oh, I don’t know, say a motorcycle gang, to have enough firepower to defend themselves, too.
So I wasn’t in favor of the proposal to ban guns that had large-capacity magazines. My argument was simple:
People like Bloomberg, Obama and O’Malley really shouldn’t be in the business of telling the American people how many attackers they might have to shoot.
A six-shot revolver would have done Lien little good in defending himself. But a semiautomatic handgun with a magazine capacity of 15-20 rounds might have come in real handy.
The gun-grabbers use logic similar to their “no one needs to shoot that many people” argument when they talk about banning assault rifles. No one, they claim, needs an assault rifle.
Whether a person needs an assault rifle depends strictly on how many people are present to do him harm.
I don't know if those Korean-American merchants that had to defend their lives, homes and businesses during the 1992 Los Angeles riots had used assault rifles, but they'd have been darned well justified if they had.
Los Angeles police, for whatever reason, provided no protection for those Korean-American merchants.
So they decided to protect themselves, and made many Americans proud to be Americans when they did.
According to news reports, there were undercover New York City police officers among the biker thugs that attacked Lien. They were of no help, either.
The gun-grabbers assure us that the cops will protect us whenever we need protecting, but the incidents in Los Angeles 21 years ago and on New York City’s Westside Highway on Sept. 29 prove what a world of delusion they’re living in.
Cops can’t protect us in every situation. In Lien’s case, a cop might have been one of the bikers trying to smash his SUV window.
Citizens have to protect themselves. That’s why we have a Second Amendment in the first place.
When elected officials like Bloomberg, Obama and O’Malley advocate and sign laws designed to restrict the gun rights of law-abiding citizens, they’re in essence cutting a deal. They’re making us a promise.
They’re telling us that we don’t have to fret about protecting ourselves, because they and their big, bad, brave police force will protect us.
But the likes of Bloomberg, Obama and O’Malley are lying when they make such a promise, and they know darned well they’re lying.
They’re also writing a check with their mouths that they know our bodies won’t be able to cash.

GREGORY KANE, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.

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