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Wooly Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen weighed in on the Tucson shooting that resulted in the death of U.S. District Judge John Roll and five others during a botched assassination attempt of Rep. Gabby Giffords.  In a stunning feat of logical contortion, Cohen, who looks like the spawn of an unholy union between David Letterman and Wolf Blitzer, equates the tragedy to the discovery of America.  America, he says, was not discovered by Columbus.  It was discovered by the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.  Really. I’m not kidding…

I had a teacher in college who used to ask, Who discovered America? He would offer some choices. They were Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus or the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. The answer he wanted was the three ships with which eventually someone would have discovered the New World and without which everyone would have remained in Spain.

It is no different with the tragedy in Tucson. Hate speech and madness were part of the mix, but it was the gun and our insane gun laws that resulted in six deaths. Until we come to grips with that, as a nation, we remain armed and dangerous.

Hmmm, I guess that means a petri dish discovered penicillin.

Maybe Cohen has a point.  Maybe the gun brainwashed Jared Lee Loughner with fiery political rhetoric like a snake charmer’s pungi.  The gun hypnotically played, “Kill her, she supported ObamaCare.  Kill her, she’s a Jew.”  And Loughner’s serpentine arm uncoiled like a cobra, gun in hand, spitting death.  Poor Loughner, who will surely spend the rest of his pathetic days behind bars, was merely a victim of the gun like those whose bodies were torn apart by hot lead.  Meanwhile, the Glock 19 will get off Scott free.

Cohen even admits that he almost fell sway to the influence of a handgun’s charms.

I have in the past admitted a sometime yen to have a handgun for protection — I have twice been burglarized, once while I was in the house

Have any of you ever “admitted a sometime yen?”  Not me.  I yearn.  But that’s beside the point.  Cohen was strong.  He resisted.

[M]y own moderate paranoia cannot make me duck the obvious. Six people are dead and 14 wounded in Arizona not just because a man went crazy or just because political rhetoric has gotten too raw, but because they were shot. It’s the gun that did it.

Who knows what evil Cohen might have committed if he had yielded to the handgun’s siren song.  Maybe he would have flown to Arizona and tried to kill Gabby Giffords himself.  Maybe worse.  Fortunately, Cohen resisted his yen long enough to warn us all: Beware! Ships discover.  And guns kill.

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23 COMMENTS

  2. I used to live in a house with my brother, his friend from high school, and a couple with a baby. At one point my parents asked me if I wanted to keep the firearms we had with me in the room my brother and I shared, but the couple living with us didnt want guns in the house. For whatever reason, they felt that the guns being in the house would have a negative impact on their kid, even though they would be out of reach and wouldnt have any access to ammo.

  4. Does a gun that kills on it own, load its own ammo? Does ammo kill?

    I am looking at the M&P pistols on S&Ws web page and don’t see a “self-killing” option although I do find an internal lock option….I wonder if RF thinks I should get the one with the internal lock…hmmm

    Do self-killing guns cost more or less? Will it clean itself? Does it do the dishes?

    I wonder where the term “loony left” comes from.

    • Rabbi you’re on to something – a self-cleaning gun! I’ll take one of those, a self-cleaning car, and a self-trimming lawn while you’re at it!

  6. If he really feels that way, then why doesn’t he have the balls to call for all charges against Loughner to be dropped and for him to be released unconditionally?

  7. I want two of these “MAGICAL GUNS” that will do all work for me. It’s a good thing that I now have a kinder gentler side now or poor Robert would have to ban me from his site. LMAO

  8. FINALLY!! I now have the proof I need to collect money for my health care from those damn fork and spoon manufacturers.

    BTW I didn’t type that. My keyboard did.

  9. I luv that one KW, so any accidental flames from me are my “KEYBOARDS FAULT”. Please try and remember that Robert, because even thou I now have a kinder gentler side, my “KEYBOARD” is really the one responsible for the any future flames. LMAO your to funny KW

    • Thanks Joe. It’s kind of along the same lines as Ralph’s post where he said Cohen didn’t write that. His word processor did.

      I can’t help thinking we should send Cohen one of the tshirts from the movie Happy Gilmore. The one where “Jaws” from James Bond fame sported the phrase, “Guns don’t kill people, I kill people.”

  10. Proposed bumper stickers for the Brady Campaign:

    People Don’t Kill People…Gun Do. All By Themselves!

    Inanimate Objects Scare Me!

    Forget Bush. Blame Guns!

    Society’s innocent! It’s all GUNS fault!

  12. I wonder if Mr. Cohen then also believes that the planes did it on 9/11, or that the bomb did it in Oklahoma, or the knife did it over and over and over again in countless stabbing sprees throughout the world. The machine or the mechanism by which death comes does nothing without an operater. How about we ban all cars, after all there are countless (I’m sure somone’s counting) deaths caused by vehicles anually. Any body out there know how many automobiles just start themselves and run people over? Mr. Cohen?

  13. This guy is a literate moron, as was his college professor. No one is born with this kind of arrogant stupidity, you pay top dollar for it.

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