Myths About Afghanistan
Victor Davis Hanson on whether Afghanistan is really the "graveyard of empires ..."
From Yahoo (AP):
The federal agency that monitors gun sales wants weapons dealers near the Mexican border to start reporting multiple sales of high-powered rifles, according to a notice published in the Federal Register.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has asked the White House budget office to approve an emergency request requiring border-area gun dealers to report the sales of two or more rifles to the same customer within a five-day period.
The emergency request, published Friday in the Federal Register, is likely to face stiff opposition from gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association. ATF wants the Office of Budget Management to approve the request by Jan. 5.
NRA officials did not immediately return a telephone message for comment Monday. Last week the group’s chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, told the Washington Post that the “NRA supports legitimate efforts to stop criminal activity, but we will not stand idle while our Second Amendment is sacrificed for politics.” The Post first reported the proposal.
High-powered rifles have become the weapon of choice for Mexico’s warring drug cartel. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s drug war since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the powerful drug gangs shortly after taking office in late 2006.
Officials on both sides of the border have said weapons bought legally in the United States are routinely smuggled into the Mexico. The proposed reporting requirement would apply to sales of two or more semi-automatic guns more powerful than .22-caliber rifles that use a detachable magazine within a five-day period.
[ ... ]
Currently there are no reporting requirements for rifles.
If approved by the White House, the new reporting requirement would affect nearly 8,500 border-area gun dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas and be in place for 180 days.
Analysis & Commentary
Ah. It all has the ring of reasonableness and exigent need, doesn’t it? Who in their right mind could possibly object to the sale of multiple long guns with detachable magazines being monitored and approved by the federal government if those same weapons could end up harming U.S. citizens? Or so the thinking goes.
Besides chipping away at Second Amendment rights, the trouble with this plan is that it doesn’t do anything to fix the problem – it only pretends to be a solution. It merely throws a band aid on symptoms of the problem. The problem is a porous border, with lack of robust rules for the use of force for border guards, and even when the National Guard is deployed to the border, they have been deployed to do paperwork, report illegal border crossings, and do fence repair. In most cases, their orders don’t even include having a weapon with a chambered round.
As I have said before, piracy and illegal immigration exists because we want it to. Build the fence, imprison the CEOs of corporations and even small companies who hire illegals, and secure the border with robust rules for the use of force, and the problem is solved. There is no need to “deport” anyone. They will leave of their own volition, at least if we cease and desist funding their families with government sponsored programs.
Illegal immigration isn’t a hard problem to solve. We just don’t want to badly enough. Rather, our government would just as soon go after long guns under the guise of stopping trouble on the Southern border.
Don’t believe the ruse.
And in Second Amendment quick hits (something that will become a regular feature of The Captain’s Journal):
Someone in Kansas is telling us that police assistance is available in a matter of minutes, when in fact, most violent crimes are over in seconds.
We do not live on the frontier. Police help is available to citizens with cell phones in a matter of minutes. And if your call to the police is an overreaction, you can apologize to the police. You can never apologize to the person you’ve shot because they cut you off in traffic, or to the neighbor who comes over to check on you because he hasn’t seen you out of your house for a week, and who tries your door when you don’t answer the bell.
And Fred Grimm with the Miami Herald is lamenting rapid fire.
Like accountants working a cold night in hell, crime scene technicians recorded the number of gunshot holes in Ciara Lee’s Liberty City home, scrawling a black numeral where each bullet had penetrated the concrete block wall or blasted through a window.
On the front stoop, clustered around a door and window, gunshots 64, 65, 66 . . . up through 73 had been dutifully marked.
The gunmen missed a toddler’s purple tricycle stashed by the porch.
But not the child inside.
Down the west side of the house, the techs enumerated bullets 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87.
It’s the gruesome new numerology of Liberty City and other neighborhoods where teenage gangbangers wield the same weaponry carried by soldiers and insurgents in war-afflicted places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than 100 bullets were fired at the block house about 1 a.m. Tuesday from military assault weapons.
Police think there were two shooters. They fired so many shots so quickly a cop outside the crime scene Wednesday wondered whether the weapons were semi-automatic, the AK-47-style weapon available at any gun shop, or guns converted to automatic — converter kits are available on the streets — transforming these rifles into virtual machine guns.
Either way the firepower was so formidable it didn’t matter that Ciara Lee, 24, a state corrections officer, and her 2-year-old son Devin, were “safe” inside their home, asleep in bed. Both were killed. Tony Lee, 49, Ciara Lee’s cousin, was hit in the leg.
Once again, innocents in communities like Liberty City suffered the murderous reality created by Second Amendment absolutists — those who talk of the right to own military assault weapons as if these guns should be regarded no differently than handguns or hunting rifles.
Fred wouldn’t like my weapon. You know, we wouldn’t want American citizens to own the same weapons owned by insurgents in, oh, let’s say, Afghanistan.
Those long guns can do some damage. Shouldn’t we regulate pistols, too, given the capability to deliver rapid fire? How about the Kel-Tec PMR30?
Goodness. The philosophical and even tactical problems are so immense for the statists. It’s so hard to stay consistent, is it not?
