Back when I was working at NRA’s national headquarters, I would occasionally see cars in the D.C. area that had “Shame On The NRA” bumper stickers on them. I made sport out of doing whatever necessary in traffic to drive up alongside to get a good gander at the vehicle owner. There might have been a few violations of civil traffic laws in the process, but the risk was well worth the reward.
Without fail, the operators of these vehicles looked impossibly meek. They were attempting to hide from the dangerous and unknown world around them. They hoped that if they just shuffled along through life unnoticed, they would make it day-to-day. They always crouched over their wheels with their eyes barely visible above the dash. It was oh so predictable. The meat-eater gene had been bred out of these folks to be sure. I would get a good laugh each and every time. In some twisted way, I miss those days.
I’m fairly certain one of those people I laughed at back then was Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Washington Post. He certainly looks like he couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag. Like the rest of the meek, he’s an avowed statist. He needs something big and beyond his control to protect him, and there are few things that fit this bill better than the state. The more power it has, and the less the fellow citizens around him have, the better off he believes he is. The balance of power between the government and the people is a zero sum game, after all. He needs something big and beyond his control to protect him, and there are few things that fit this bill better than the state.
Fred wrote a piece in his paper earlier this month that calls for “prohibition,” a “mass buyback” and ultimately a “gun-free society.” There is hardly any way to better illustrate the detachment from reality that he and all of those who share his perverted politics suffer from. They are sure that the drug dealers, gang bangers, rapists, robbers and murderers will simply give up their guns. Those criminals would become dental hygienists, dog groomers, chefs and other contributing members of society if only a comprehensive gun ban could be imposed. They are certain that, unlike the trade of every other forbidden item in human history, there will be no black market for guns if they are prohibited.
Being the good statist that he is, Hiatt explains how he wants law enforcers and the military to have an absolute monopoly on the possession of firearms and the use of force. He says it sounds “logical” and “safe.” He’s not worried about the weak and the infirm. They’ll be dominated by the strong and the evil in all instances, as they will not be able to avail themselves of the most efficient means of defense.
He’s not concerned that eliminating the predators’ fear of being harmed during their next planned attack will only embolden them. This is why the thugs in England regularly kick the front door off of its hinges while the family is present during home invasions. In America, burglars go to great lengths to try to ensure no one is home. They know they otherwise stand a good chance of being shot. Hiatt would like to change this.
Mass “buyback?” What is this? How could any supposedly educated person use this term with a straight face? How can government officials or anyone else buy back an item they never owned in the first place? This is a euphemism for confiscation, and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he knows it.
He and his ilk are the ones who have always ridiculed the NRA by saying it consists of a bunch of paranoid “black helicopter” watchers who think the government is coming for their guns. They smugly claim the NRA is populated with irrational alarmists who claim that the slightest infringement on the right to keep and bear arms will ultimately result in confiscation. Like too many in the current administration, they are followers of Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals. Rule #5 specifies, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” They use this one well.
So, after all of these tired claims that the government isn’t really going to try to take anyone’s guns, Hiatt is encouraging the government to take everyone’s guns. Remember, this guy isn’t some crackpot from a local paper in some suburb of Bridgeport, Conn. I mean, he’s obviously a crackpot, but he is one of the top crackpots at one of the top three newspapers of record in the United States of America. He really is making an impassioned case—however out of touch with reality—for total confiscation.
I do have to chuckle a little when he writes, “Societies change, populations evolve.” He wrote this while talking about how Australia was a “pioneer nation” too and how all of the Australians passively handed over their firearms during the enormous government confiscation of 1996. Well, without going into too much detail, our countries’ histories are actually a little different. It doesn’t surprise me that Fred would know more about the histories of utopias like China, the old Soviet Union and Laos better than he would his own country, but he might want to refer back to this article of mine to get a taste for how things really might go down here if he gets his way. How can government officials or anyone else buy back an item they never owned in the first place?
He says he “believes” that gun control policies like mandatory trigger locks, closing the so-called “gun show loophole” and gun rationing work to reduce crime. Like most of his buddies, what they believe is the only thing that matters. Scientific evidence be damned; this is all about emotion. It shouldn’t faze them that government study after government study shows that there is not a single shred of scientific evidence indicating any of the gun controllers’ policies do anything to reduce violence. Maybe these guys are spending their lives auditioning for a cameo role as a walker on The Walking Dead?
Hiatt ignorantly claims that the U.S. Supreme Court misread the Constitution when it ruled in Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right. In his dream world, the “right of the people” really means the “right of law enforcement and military personnel.” He says the Court has “corrected itself” before and should do it once again. Of course, this is one of the reasons why the next presidential election is so critically important. It’s likely that the next president will appoint a minimum of three new justices to the Court.
At least he does recognize that there is a legitimate method of amending the Constitution that was devised by the brilliant founders of our country. He does this when he talks about the repeal of the Second Amendment. Unsurprisingly, this legitimate route to change comes only after he does all in his power to pick the statist route of having the courts perform mental gymnastics to “interpret” our individual liberties into oblivion.
Hiatt’s blissful ignorance is sort of difficult to criticize. If he were a kid, it would be cute. He talks about how public opinion could shift to support his ultimate desire to secure what he thinks would be a “gun-free society.” One small problem that those of us who are actually informed know he may face is that public opinion is decidedly favoring individual freedom these days, and there is no end in sight for this trend. Support for gun rights is growing, and we’re not talking about only arming military and police here.
Back in 1995 when Sen. Dianne Feinstein said, “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,” many on her side of the debate panicked and claimed she wasn’t really talking about confiscation. No, she really was. She was just a little ahead of her time. The others are coming, including Mr. Hiatt.
The gun-banners are apparently done playing what he calls the “incremental approach.” Get ready for the battle. “Gun confiscation” and “strict prohibition” were forbidden speech in the gun control movement up until now. They have decided on a new approach. It will make all of the interim policy steps seem that much more modest. We should ensure our fellow Americans remain informed and are not fooled.
