Logic and Facts Must Trump Emotion If We’re Really Determined to Protect Kids
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Because no low is off limits for Trenton’s Democrats, Save Jerseyans, they’ve flown in victims’ families from Newtown, Connecticut for a presser at the State House that preceded fresh gun control hearings.
Emotional appeals are the refuge of people who don’t have the facts on their side. Liberals consequently excel at soaring rhetoric devoid of substance! But today’s most effective rebuttal of the Assembly’s Newtown exploitation didn’t come from a Republican, but in a release from the Democrat President of the State Senate Steve Sweeney:
Twenty years ago, New Jersey implemented a limit on the size of ammunition clips. For two decades that limit has been effective. What we must focus on now is preventing guns from getting into the hands of those who should not have them. That means addressing issues of mental health, background checks, illegal guns, and straw purchases.”
The Senate Democrat leader is at odds with the lower, bluer chamber whose majority wants to reduce the legal capacity of New Jersey-owned ammunition magazines from the current limit of 15 to only 10. So God help you if your home is “invaded” by a few robbers and your aim isn’t excellent under duress, Save Jerseyans!
Sweeney’s analysis of this situation is also — hold your breath — 100% right on this point…
New Jersey already has the toughest laws on the books of any state in America. Our society isn’t facing down a “gun violence” problem so much as a proliferation of moral/cultural decay, under-parented children and inadequate mechanism to redress mental illness.
When a pitbull strikes (as they often do because now it’s fashionable to own one), does anyone blame the dog qua dog? Of course not. We blame the morons who’ve bred aggression into them and, situationally, the owner who was insufficiently trained to handle such a dangerous beast. The gun question is analogous, distinguishable only insofar as a dog is an animal no matter how well you train it and, as such, can never be perfectly controlled or predicted behaviorally. A responsible, trained gun owner can theoretically exercise a much higher level of control over an inanimate object!
Therefore, the”common sense” middle ground in this gun debate should revolve around revisiting regulations on problematic people, not weapons. Right? Extended, streamlined background checks. Reformed mental health procedures. Heightened security for school buildings. Correcting flaws in the sentencing and parole systems for violent and repeat offenders. We’ve discussed these issues at length here at Save Jersey.
Reducing magazine capacity from 15 to 10 won’t stop the next Newtown. Pretending it will to score political points, and exploiting grieving families to the make the argument, is wrong, disgusting, and beneath the dignity of these Democrat politicians’ offices. Shame on them.
