The gun debate has simply spiraled into a battle of reason vs. insanity lately– while reason and common sense say that to get rid of gun violence, you need to get rid of guns, the NRA’s insane gun culture continues to force the issue the other way. And that’s seen clearly in the recent Zumbo case.
The nation’s police chiefs have a serious problem. Their troops are being out-gunned, and to correct the situation taxpayers must increase law-enforcement budgets substantially or find some way to ban the circulation of weapons and ammunition meant for the battlefield – mainly, semiautomatic assault rifles and armor-piercing bullets.
Because the latter alternative is not politically practical, the cost of law enforcement can be expected to rise considerably. And where citizens are unwilling to spend the money to equip their guardians with weapons and armor now readily available to criminals, the threat to themselves and those they hire to protect them is likely to increase proportionately. It’s just that simple.
No matter how much evidence is supplied to back up their arguments and how loudly the associations that support them yell, the chiefs’ chances of winning out against the insanity of the nation’s gun culture are slim to none. Actually, make that none. The Maryland legislature currently is considering a bill to ban the semiautomatic rifles, and the opposition has been loud and persistent.
If you doubt this, the victories by the forces of destruction over those of common sense and responsibility are too numerous to count. This is a land where the right to traffic in firearms, no matter how dangerous to law and order, is protected by constitutional language designed for a militia carrying muskets and enforced by a self-appointed virulent lobby called the National Rifle Association. It purports to represent the nation’s sports shooters, but in reality is the arm of the manufacturers and importers who profit handsomely from the carnage.
That’s rough language, but to emphasize just how unforgiving are those who subscribe to the NRA’s opposition to any restraints no matter the threat to the public welfare, one should consider the case of Jim Zumbo.
Zumbo, as you know by now if you are a regular reader, is actually a gun guy. He believes (wrongly so, according to the courts of the United States) that the Second Amendment grants an individual right to own firearms. But even he realized that there’s no reason at all to own these semiautomatic firearms, weapons used by murderers and terrorists (he even suggested calling the weapons “terrorist rifles,” simply because those kinds of rifles don’t belong in the same hunting tradition that he was so proud to be a part of). And how did gun guys reward him for this reasonable thinking that just happens to be against the gun industry’s wishes? By ending his career, and making him a warning that anyone in office who supports reason over their insanity would see the same fate.
His career was as shattered as though hit by a hail of bullets fired from an AK47. Within a relatively few hours, his column was canceled and his cable TV show eliminated. All this occurred despite a profuse apology from an obviously desperate Zumbo.
Would it be out of place here to suggest that this swift and unrelenting attack by the NRA on one of its own proves conclusively that Zumbo was right in suggesting that terrorism is not unknown to the gun lobby? After all, the NRA has been terrorizing its political opponents for decades, winning battle after battle by playing on the paranoia of its followers. As a result, the lobby has managed to foster a national armory of privately owned firearms that exceeds some 300 million, enough for every man, woman and child in America.
…Certainly Congress has pretty much given up, refusing to renew an expired law that banished military assault rifles. The outcry that protects the legitimate gun owner also protects the criminals, leaving federal and local agencies undermanned and unsupported in their efforts to find ways to keep them out of the hands of bad guys. So the bill now being argued in the Maryland legislature to ban the assault weapons at the behest of law enforcement probably doesn’t have a prayer.
In the meantime, the intrepid hunter who wants to blast away at animals from bears to (as Zumbo complained) prairie dogs can do so with impunity. How sporting!
So because insanity has won a temporary battle in the fight over gun policy, Americans die while gun sales see record profits, and Jim Zumbo loses a career for saying something that 68% of Americans actually agree with. And gun guys use AK-47s to kill prairie dogs. It’s not reasonable– it’s insane.
