I love it when Liberals stomp their feet, hold their breath, and general act like two-year-olds. Very entertaining. So when I was reading my morning ePaper this AM, you’ll understand why I was chortling over this missive from the Indianapolis Star, by crack reporter Matthew Tully, as he sulks in print over Indy’s new gun law. It is to laugh. To wit:
Tully has his Progressive knickers in a knot over the “Preemption of Local Firearms Regulation Act,” a law that will bring some order and sanity to the hodge-podge, patchwork quilt of local regulations. Now I suspect that if the law coming out of the State Assembly in Indiana went the other direction, in other words, providing more restrictions on guns, rather than the way the new law relaxed restrictions, Tully would be singing it’s praises from Elkhart to Evansville. But since it is a direct affront to his gun-grabbing sensibilities, he takes umbrage with it’s very existence.
As a gun owner, I really don’t want local laws that set up a “gotcha” situation when I’m going to conceal carry. Think of it like this: I leave my home in one city and drive across town. Along the way, I drive through a couple of suburbs, each with their own city council and their own local laws. Do I really want to risk running afoul of one of those city’s laws, should I have a fender-bender or a little car trouble along the way? Of course not. But if local laws are allowed to supersede State or Federal law, that’s exactly what could and would happen. Far better to have some consistency, at least within a state’s borders.
But Tully sees things differently. And his arguments are simultaneously petulant and amusing. Here’s a sample:
This new law has been eerily and accurately titled: “Preemption of local firearm regulation.” This unnecessary law, pushed by Republicans but endorsed by many Democrats, tells cities and towns across the state that the General Assembly and the National Rifle Association know what is best for them. It also tells the state’s urban centers that they must adhere to the wishes of lawmakers who in most cases don’t live in those cities.
Allow me to paraphrase: This new law has been accurately titled: “Preemption of local firearm regulation,” (which I find scary). This law (which, because I’m anti-gun I find completely unnecessary), pushed by Republicans (Troglodytes) but endorsed by many Democrats (Traitors!), tells cities and towns across the state that the General Assembly and the National Rifle Association know what is best for them. (Oooh, I’m so mad, I could just stamp my feet!) It also tells the state’s urban centers that they must adhere to the wishes of lawmakers who in most cases don’t live in those cities. (The nerve of those brutes, telling us how to live our lives…why a lot of them don’t even live near me! That’s completely unfair – unless it’s a law covering a Liberal cause, in which case it’s okay.)
So his big argument is “local control?” Where was he when local councils wanted to control virtually anything else – taxes, unions, et cetera? His petulant rant continues:
The state legislature, a k a Big Daddy, runs the show in Indiana, regardless of whether it’s Portage or Princeton or Posey County.
Well excuuuuuuuuse me, but isn’t that their State Constitutionally-mandated job? Then we are treated to a quote by fellow-traveller Matt Greller, executive director of a lobbyist group representing (some) cities and towns.
It’s really just another example of the legislature acting as a mega city council. Listen, if someone is really intent on doing something bad, an ordinance probably isn’t going to stop them. But we have always appreciated the deterrent effect.
Oooh. Listen to that – if someone is really intent on doing something bad, an ordinance probably isn’t going to stop them. First honest thing he’s said. But then he shows his hand: But we have always appreciated the deterrent effect. Um. deterrent effect? Oh, wait, he means “deterrent” in the sense that it made it a lot more difficult for law-abiding citizens to carry guns, especially as they could literally cross a street and go from “law-abiding” to “pre-felon.” Yeah. THAT deterrent.
Tully whines that the legislature is not keeping their eye on the ball for such issues as the economy and education. I could argue that, without protecting the 2nd Amendment right to self-defense, none of those other things amount to a hill of beans, but instead, I’d rather focus on his argument that the legislature doesn’t have time to deal with gun issues. I’m thinking if these guys don’t have time to do their job (which should include a little multi-tasking, ya know?), then it’s time to get some new guys in office that can. Oh. Wait. These ARE the new guys, and they ARE doing a bang-up job, working on fixes to their economy, education, immigration, and such. Just not in the way Tully wants.
He then pouts and says that it’s too bad the Republicans and Gov. Mitch Daniels couldn’t have “called a truce” on social issues. Um…let’s see now, the voters across the state threw out the old guys, and put in a bunch of new, conservative people in office. And Tully wants them to ignore their mandate to make changes, all so that they won’t ruffle the feathers of the minority of people who lost control of the government in the last election cycle. How much do you want to bet that, if the shoe was on the other foot, Tully would be screaming that the Legislature and Governor weren’t moving fast enough?
Here’s the kicker: In November of last year, Tully was the victim of an attempted mugging on election night. Now you’d think even a Liberal might want to do a wee bit o’ agonizin’ reappraisals when he’s thrust into a life-or-death situation. You know, like “hey this Liberal philosophy is all well and good, but if someone’s gonna try and mug me, maybe I’d better make an exception and carry some kind of weapon.” Nope. Not our boy Tully. He’s dyed-in-the-wool Progressive, through and through.
Tully ends with a semi-refreshing, begrudging dose of reality, then follows it up with one last swing for the bleachers on the petulance scale:
In the end, I don’t worry too much about this law, which affects licensed gun owners. As gun advocates rightly argue, most gun crimes in Indianapolis are committed by people who illegally possess them. Still, guns don’t belong everywhere, and the legislature doesn’t need to meddle in everything.
But legislators do, and along the way they create awful laws like this one.
Thankfully, the majority of Indiana voters don’t agree with Mr. Tully. If you’d like to contact Tully, he thoughtfully provided his email and phone in the article. You can reach him at 317.444.6033, or via email at [email protected]. You know, if you’d like to share your ideas on his article, the same way he shared his.
Just another hoplophobe who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Seems like they’re all either liars or idiots.
“a number of really stupid laws take effect”
This is what I might call… A prime example of bad journalism. This is filed under news? The IndyStar needs to toss this in their opinion section.
“legislature doesn’t need to meddle in everything.”
I giggled when I read that, because I bet he wouldn’t be writing that if the Indiana legislature had passed any sort of statewide anti-gun law that pre-empted local law…
And reading through a few pages of the comments on his article, he seems to be getting slammed by his readership…
Yet another unarmed man in the eternal battle of wits.
What would his outlook be if towns and municipalities wanted to ban abortion.
He would be the first in line screaming “federal law says blah blah blah, state law says blah blah a town or city cant outlaw this.”
Can’t resist nit-picking: there’s “its”, and there’s “it’s”, and there’s a difference.
Imma write him. This was a great laugh and he needs to know how he has warmed my heart.
The media left has been slowly losing it for years, and Mr Tully is another prime example. His writing could become a fascinating train wreck of cognitive dissonance should President Obama lose badly in 2012.
I think he made perfect sense and to me he didn’t sound like he was stomping his feet at all. Brad, why do you have to ridicule those who disagree with you? If you’re in the right, why do you have to use those low tricks?
In the end of his article he said the “legislature doesn’t have to interfere in everything.” That made me realize how you guys are. You love government interference when it suits you. You onely hate it when it doesn’t. But to listen to you, you’d think you guys are on such a moral high-ground that you’re right and every one who opposes you is wrong.
The truth is you just don’t want to be inconvenienced, damn the consequences.
MikeB, here’s the way I see it. The voters had their say. They elected a majority of conservatives, who in turn passed laws they promised to put forward during their campaigns. The reporter doesn’t like these laws, so he complains about how the legislature is doing their job. He goes on to claim they are meddling in local affairs. He conveniently overlooks the fact that it’s the job of the legislature to pass laws that affect all the state. He quibbles with the purpose of this law (bringing some consistency to gun laws across the state). He whines that the legislature should have “compromised” (i.e.: capitulated) to the liberals who had been in charge, and just forgotten about all those campaign promises. Hmmm…sounds like he’s guilty of exactly what you are accusing ME of. But I’m not the one claiming that the legislature is wrong for doing their job. I’m not the one suggesting that the newly-elected members of the legislature should “go with the flow” and forget about the will of the voters.
Sorry Mikey, but this guy’s tirade was more than whiney. It was petulant. And if the shoe were on the other foot, he’d be lauding the legislature with praise for “striking a bold blow for common sense” or some such drivel.
Oh, and on the gun laws thing, we ARE right. And you – and your liberal buddies – are wrong. The voters seem to agree with us. Look around. Your side is not doing so well. The handwriting, as they say, is on the wall.
There’s the old adage to “Never trust the government that doesn’t trust its citizens with firearms”; Tully proves the corollary ‘Never trust someone who wants to take away your Rights’. And I don’t see his tantrum as childish, but barely controlled rage at the left wing anti-gun agenda being thwarted (again).
I had a friend in school who was as misguided a liberal as this fellow. He asserted, with straight face, that everyone must be disarmed: “… yes, criminals will still be able to get guns illegally, and it will take time to get those guns off the streets.”
I point out to him that his misguided approach will only disarm the law abiding, and that many innocent people will die at the hands of criminals for want of a means of self-defense. I remind him that this means of achieving ‘order’ is morally reprehensible and no different than how the Nazis disarmed the citizens of Germany. I asked him how much collateral damage would be acceptable to achieve the sort of society that liberals like him envision, based on the statistics available to me in the early 1990’s. Approximately 25,000 homicides annually in a nation of about 250 million (I may be off on my math, which i was never good at; but per capita I believe that worked out to 10%!) In nations like England & Australia, among other places enacting total civilian disarmament, murders went up 400%, and other violent crimes like assault, rape and home invasion robbery also dramatically up.
I asked my friend, statistically, such a jump in crime in the USA would mean about 10 million Americans dead as a consequence of disarming the law-abiding to achieve this mad quest of a gun-free society. My friend’s reply was, verbatim:
“TEN MILLION DEAD IS AN ACCEPTABLE COLLATERAL LOSS TO ACHIEVE THE DEMOCRATIC GOAL.” Floored, I said, “What if there were complications??!? What about double that??!?” And he said, “Even 50 million dead would not be out of the question to achieve a new world order.”
It was at that point, both of us being 20 years old and going to college, that America faces two futures. One leads, as gun control always does, to disarmament & genocide. The other leads us back to ordered liberty under the Constitution. It was at that point I knew I was a conservative, and that this friend I went to school with for many years was no longer a friend, but a domestic enemy. He was a classical lefty Democrat, despised the military and everything good that it stood for. I, on the other hand, signed on the dotted line; I raised my hand and took that oath to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution, from ALL ENEMIES, foreign AND domestic. And when I uttered the words “…and domestic”, my erstwhile schoolmate was foremost in my mind. To this day, aside from the knee-jerk types who thoughtlessly parrot the party line, I regard all these hardcore leftists as enemies within. Some are undoubtedly traitors, the evidence of which is yet to be uncovered.
But no doubt, there is an agenda to betray America into a totalitarian system they have been erecting for decades now, while the majority of Americans are asleep both intellectually and spiritually. And the GOP is not undeserving of the the baleful glare of a just accusation: more liberties have been lost during the Bush administration than during all administrations going back to Woodrow Wilson and his administration’s 1913 treason selling us out to the international bankers (who shortly after used our confiscated money to bankroll Mr. Hitler). Only Obama has surpassed Bush in terms of the liberties he has eviscerated while in office. Bush may have regarded the Constitution as “only a goddamned piece of paper”; but Obama has dictatorially rendered that sacred charter into nothing more but the flimsiest of tissues. The “mainstream” prostitute media owned by the global elites will diligently work to maintain the ILLUSION that we still have democracy, and the illusion that America has free, honest & open elections; when in fact our electoral system has been scientifically subverted.
It is not true that the 2nd Amendment protects duck hunting. It protects the ability of the American people to go TYRANT hunting, if all other measures to protect and restore lost liberties should fail. And when the radical lefties I’ve known calmly discuss the ‘necessary elimination’ of millions of my fellow citizens to achieve their nightmare vision, as though 10, 20, or 50 million lives are nothing, I know that it is time to stock up, because the need for that 2nd Amendment is getting stronger all the time. Like Rosie O’Dumbbell saying that gun owners should be disarmed and then put into concentration camps (Note the disarmament part comes first). They see it too, and that’s why their efforts are being redoubled. They have lost in the legislatures, and they have lost in the courts. Least of all they know they don’t have the support of John Q Public, so they are trying for the last refuge of a gun-grabber, and that’s the UN and their ATT gun ban treaty that recently was rejected.
Should the day ever come that the Senate votes in favor of it, with the President’s signature to follow, I can guarantee you that the original intended use for the 2nd Amendment *WILL* come into play, and tens of millions of angry Americans are going to be locking and loading on everyone that tried to disarm them! This I guarantee! And so you know that I am right, if that happens watch for NORTHCOM to declare war on the citizenry by calling upon foreign armies such as Canada, who signed a ‘Civil Assistance Plan’ with NORTHCOM to put troops on our streets in the event of martial law. Google THAT.
Charlton Heston once famously said “..From my cold dead fingers!!!” while lofting a musket over his head. My soundbite would have to be, “Eat me”, with every pull of the trigger. Because the only proper response to forcible disarmament is to give it to them. one. bullet. at. a. time. 🙂
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