John R. Lott: Anti-gun extremists go off half-cocked

[dZ]

Anti-gun extremists go off half-cocked

http://dailynews.philly.com/content/daily_news/2001/01/17/opinion/LOTT17.htm?tem
by John R. Lott Jr.

Ted Kennedy accused Robert Bork of wanting to force blacks to sit at "segregated lunch counters," to let governments at their whim
"censor" writers, to ensure that "schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution."

But, as false as those accusations were, no one claimed that Bork was in league with mass murderers. There was still some line, however far
out there, that wasn't crossed.

Now, during a mass press conference last week with activists from dozens of liberal organizations, Handgun Control announced that
"Perhaps most disturbing of all, Mr. Ashcroft apparently believes in . . . the same extremist theory subscribed to by Timothy McVeigh."

If it wasn't to link Sen. John Ashcroft with a mass murderer, what is the point of the statement? Of course, McVeigh's views on the Second
Amendment seem irrelevant here. He killed 169 people with a bomb, and Handgun Control isn't objecting to Ashcroft's views on fertilizer
control.

It is difficult to believe that anyone takes McVeigh's musings seriously.

Yet in any case, McVeigh and Ashcroft aren't even in the same universe on the issue of guns. McVeigh disdained the NRA because of its
willingness to accept some regulations. Sen. Ashcroft strongly supports people's right to own guns and be able to defend themselves from
criminals - but, in 1999 alone, he voted six times for more gun laws.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example of Handgun Control's extremist rhetoric. Take their logical leaps linking Ashcroft with the
threats posed by militia groups illegally possessing machine guns: "One militia leader in Colorado was successfully prosecuted for illegally
possessing a machine gun; another stockpiled an arsenal of weapons. As Ashcroft and the militia share similar views of the Second
Amendment, one wonders: will he vigorously enforce and prosecute the gun laws against them?"

How about Handgun Control's claim that Ashcroft supported a concealed-handgun law that "would have allowed convicted child molesters
and other violent criminals to carry Uzi pistols into bars, sports stadiums, casinos, day-care centers, on school buses and onto school
grounds."

Never mind that the law had one of the most extensive criminal background checks and restrictions on where the guns could be carried.
Never mind that federal law forbids carrying guns within a 1,000 yards of a school. Even the one correct reference to an Uzi pistol is
designed to mislead and conjure up images of machine guns, when Uzi is simply a brand name and the pistols they make are no different
than any other type of pistol.

Handgun Control claims that "John Ashcroft cannot be trusted" to enforce our nation's gun laws, but no evidence is provided that he failed
to enforce gun-control laws while he was attorney general or governor of Missouri.

The worst complaint seems to be that Ashcroft supports throwing out the gun-purchase records now being kept by the federal government.
There is only one problem with this complaint. Ashcroft proposes to do precisely what the law says: The federal government may not keep
these records on its citizens. It has been the Clinton administration that isn't obeying the law by retaining them.

If Ashcroft's views were as dangerous as the gun-control lobby claims, why has he regularly earned the support of all the major
law-enforcement organizations in Missouri?

This last election, he was endorsed by everyone from the St. Louis Police Officers Association, the largest police union in the state, to
sheriffs and police chiefs statewide. If these claims were true, why weren't other senators speaking out before he was nominated to be
attorney general? Why were liberal Democrats like Sen. Daniel Moynihan saying that "John Ashcroft will be a superb attorney general"?



Advocacy groups sometimes go to extremes to stir up their constituents and generate contributions. Yet many winced when the NRA called
some federal agents "jackbooted thugs" after Waco and Ruby Ridge. Former President George Bush even resigned from the NRA in
protest, and a chastened NRA apologized.

But where is the outrage from the left - or for that matter, anyone - when Handgun Control shamelessly links a dedicated public servant to a
mass murderer?


John Lott is a senior research scholar at Yale law school. He lives in Swarthmore.

 

[egroeg]

I can't read other peoples' minds, but I can tell you what I think.

Don't waste your limited time and emotion on things you have no affect on. HCI subscribes to centralized control and they will use tortured logic to reach their goal. Sometimes RKBA supporters fall into the same trap for their goal.

Obviously, Lott is looking for big name people to criticize the HCI falsehoods. The people who frequent this forum will have no affect through letters to the media or representatives.

Would Ashcroft be better than Reno? That is the wrong question.

The problem is, the DOJ which the AG heads is an unconstitutional agency, like most of the other ABC agencies in the executive part of our federal government.

Down deep inside I prefer Ashcroft to Reno because he will likely not abuse the illegal power as much as Reno. But why should I be happy about that?

 

[Futo Inu]

Let's look at this statment by HCI

"Perhaps most disturbing of all, Mr. Ashcroft apparently believes in . . . the same extremist theory subscribed to by Timothy McVeigh."

OK, so if Tim McVeigh believes in the THEORY of gravity, that things fall down, and so do Sen. Ashcroft, then these two people both believe in the same theory, right? So what? So do billions of other people. Why pull McVeigh out of a hat? Only difference in what HCI is alleging is with the addition of that one adjective, "extremist", to describe the theory. This negative-connoting word is arbitrarily injected to discredit the both of them, when in fact, the theory referred to, that of the purpose of the second amendment is not the least bit extremist. It was discussed extensively by the founding fathers, and NOT with respect to PRE-revolution government, you a$$hole Kennedy, but with respect to the NEW, POST-revolution government. So the use of the word extremist is just a lie. Saying something does not make it so. Which brings us back to what McVeigh has to do with the price of rice in China.