Shall Not Be Questioned

Remember when President Obama ordered the military and federal agencies to come up with a plan on how to promote smart-gun technology through the procurement process? Well, that report might be due out this week:

Sources in and out of government say the administration is about to put forward a report from the agencies on the way forward on smart guns. The document could be released as early as this week, these sources say.

Its exact recommendations are being closely guarded by the White House, but it’s likely to reopen a years-long debate on whether smart guns ultimately can cut down the number of accidental shooting deaths — 500 in 2013 alone, 30 of those under age 5.

Bicycles kill more people in accidents every year. Accidental poisoning kills 38,851 people every year, and 76 of those were children under the age of 5 (via Poison Control Center). Unlike accidental shootings, which thanks to community education efforts have been on the decline, accidental poisonings among both adults and those under 5 have been increasing substantially. So why all the attention on this issue? To me, the answer is clear. This isn’t about saving the lives of children, it’s about gaining political advantage over those rubes in flyover country.

We have to be ready for this. Any manufacturer who cooperates with this shit gets the Smith & Wesson treatment. For those readers who are young, gun owners nearly drove the iconic gunmaker out of business because they cooperated with the Clinton Administration to enact back door bans for civilians. Military and police contracts represent a small percentage of the industries overall business. If a company wishes to lose all their civilian business entirely, by all means, bow to pressure from this administration or the next.

I guess the epic smackdown Michael Bellesiles received at the hands of Clayton Cramer and other in the gun community wasn’t enough. The left is back again with this fraudulent argument, arguing that Americans had no real interest in guns until after the Civil War. In this case, the argument is that Big Corporations made us love guns. I can’t imagine why anyone heading out west on the wagon train might, for perfectly rational reasons, desire themselves a repeating rifle. Yep. Must be slick marketing.

What it boils down to is that this is an election year, and Clinton is determined to get elected on a platform with gun control at the center. Notice Haag, the author, says:

Haag says she began this project determined not to become “entrapped” in gun-control politics. “I came to this material as an historian,” she writes. But she concludes with calls to put the bottom-line gunmaker, rather than the emotionally invested gun owner, at the forefront of the battle over gun violence. She calls for “smart gun” technology, by which a weapon can be used only by its rightful owner. She wants to remove the barriers to research and data collection on gun violence. She calls for additional consumer regulations and protections involving firearms. (“A toy gun is subjected to more consumer safeguards as a product than a real gun,” Haag writes.) Most important, she urges the repeal of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields manufacturers, distributors and dealers from civil liability for damages caused by their products.

Yes, I do not wish to become “entrapped” in gun control politics. She’s just a poor little innocent historian, after all. So now allow me to regurgitate every talking point from Hillary’s campaign.

NRA has already pointed out some issues with this narrative, but I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Like most people who support gun control, I figured this article was written by an old white woman, but she seems to be of my generation. The silver lining in this article is that if she’s having to deal with female students exciting about shooting, we’re winning. Winning even though in this case, she questions giving a student a recommendation because the student enjoys shooting:

She seems to be a good kid, Sarah. And I don’t know what she really thinks of gun advocacy and political failures that have cost us all these lives and our sense of safety as educators. I don’t know what she does on the weekends. I also don’t know if she understands emotions, or what real rage feels like. It seems to me no person who has truly experienced the full impact of their own emotions would ever go near a gun.

Sounds like you’re projecting some of your own personal failings onto others there, Professor. I agree, if you’re so emotionally unstable that you worry you’ll hurt others in a fit of rage, don’t own guns. It’s really not for you. She speaks of her mother who got rid of all the guns in the house because her father was manic depressive and had wild mood swings. No one on our side would argue with that. But not everyone is the same way. I’ve never in my life been so angry that I felt like I did not have control, and I’ve been plenty angry. There are millions of other Americans who are the same way.