John Glenn’s Heroic Legacy Dimmed By His Support For Gun Control
BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 4 months ago
“Pro–gun control advocates mobilized and constructed an effective pro–gun control pressure group called the Emergency Committee for Gun Control,” Encycopedia.com documents. “The bipartisan organization was headed by Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., a former astronaut and friend of Senator Robert Kennedy.”
The most significant federal legislation since the 1934 National Firearms Act, GCA ’68 “primarily focuses on regulating interstate commerce in firearms by generally prohibiting interstate firearms transfers except among licensed manufacturers, dealers and importers.” It also added marking requirements, denied guns to specific classes of “prohibited persons” and placed import restrictions on “non-sporting” weapons.
Make sure you read the comments as well. I’ve dealt with the sporting purposes test before, and I consider it to be one of the worst abominations ever to be enacted into law. It is certainly logically self referential and incoherent.
So I’m willing to grant that some men perform admirably when it comes to brave actions under duress, and John Glenn is one of them. But David is much kinder to John than I would have been, or will be. Bravery under duress while obeying orders is just that, and admirable depending upon the entire context. Bravery of the Nazi SS troops while herding Jews into train cars isn’t admirable, nor was their bravery on the field of battle fighting for the wrong cause.
Here is the better test. Rather than focus on what a man does while acting under orders and not in command, I’d rather know what he does when he is the one giving the orders. The later rather than the former is the true test of a man’s world view and his character. How does he treat others and how much does he respect their rights?
On that test, John Glenn failed, regardless of his prior bravery.
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On December 12, 2016 at 11:18 am, Frank_in_Spokane said:
“I’ve dealt with the sporting purposes test before, and I consider it to be one of the worst abominations ever to be enacted into law.”
Priorities, guys. Priorities.
“Four terms (24 years) of a voting record that earned him a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood.” http://www.ncregister.com/blog/boneel/john-glenn-astronaut-and-senator-1921-2016
On December 12, 2016 at 12:17 pm, Fred said:
So, he was for killing all the people that you want to kill as long as they can’t fight back.
May he burn forever.
On December 12, 2016 at 12:49 pm, Col. Douglas Mortimer said:
I won’t condemn him as it is not my place, but yes I agree with the rest of your comment Fred. As tempting as it is to condemn people that may deserve it, I can’t look past my own sins and faults.
On December 12, 2016 at 2:32 pm, Fred said:
I make no claims of aspiration to virtue beyond those made on my behalf by Christ and I certainly don’t pretend to affect his eternal station. “May he burn forever” is a mean, cruel, and hardhearted thing to say but I ain’t gonna un-say it either.
On December 12, 2016 at 2:56 pm, Col. Douglas Mortimer said:
I’m with ya!
On December 12, 2016 at 2:41 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Frank the context of David’s article is gun rights, which is primarily mine as well. I’m sure there are many issues with which I would take issue concerning the man’s views.
On December 12, 2016 at 4:40 pm, Frank_in_Spokane said:
Understood. I was simply taking issue with the use of the word “abomination.”
When nationalist hyperpatriots complain about “desecration” of the flag by idiot “protesters,” their implication is that the flag is “sacred.” Similar issue — applying religious / theological terms to (to some of us) lesser issues.
I had just learned yesterday that Glenn (surprise surprise) was a stalwart enabler of baby-killers. I consider Roe v. Wade to be a capital-A “Abomination.” So to hear the sporting purposes clause described as an abomination just struck me as … well, odd.
There’s “abominations,” and there’s ABOMINATIONS.
Just my 2c. Press on.
On December 12, 2016 at 12:37 pm, Col. Douglas Mortimer said:
Slightly off topic, but after I get through the two current books I’m reading, I’m looking forward to this one. The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories
by Joshua Rubenstein for sale on Amazon.
The description reads “The Unknown Black Book provides a revelatory compilation of testimonies
from Jews who survived open-air massacres and other atrocities carried
out by the Germans and their allies in the occupied Soviet territories
during World War II — Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
and Crimea. These documents are first-hand accounts by survivors of work
camps, ghettos, forced marches, beatings, starvation, and disease.
Collected under the direction of two renowned Soviet Jewish journalists,
Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, they tell of Jews who lived in
pits, walled-off corners of apartments, attics, and basement dugouts,
unable to emerge due to fear that their neighbors would betray them, as
often happened.”
I once subbed to a youtuber who opined that “being anti-gun is anti-American”, and I agree. This above is what happens to disarmed people.
On December 12, 2016 at 12:47 pm, Col. Douglas Mortimer said:
As far as John Glenn, no question he is the definition of an American hero, but his aviation and space accomplishments aside, he was for big government trying to run your life and telling what you can do, own and think.