Monday, December 03, 2012
I read the online Star-Ledger every day. Men kill their wives/girlfriends/mothers of their children with handguns. Occasionally with a rifle or shotgun. Less commonly the murderers shoot themselves afterward. They also stab. Mainly, though, men beat women, often to death, more often half to death, with fists, baseball bats, whatever heavy objects are handy. The never beat themselves to death afterward.
Bob Costas can imply the need for a total ban on handguns to an NFL audience on national TV. That's 'courageous." It's also easy. Discuss reforms to gun laws & gun design, & people's eyes glaze over. Since the N.R.A. opposes everything, it doesn't make any difference if one supports potentially effective reforms that don't challenge a sane, law-abiding citizen's claimed basic right to own a handgun, or if one stakes out the ban 'em all position of Costas.
Illegal guns are the problem in Jersey, & not just the handguns a gangbanger can stick in his baggy pants waistband & use to jack a car or shoot a convenience store clerk, although those guns are the biggest problem. There's serious ordinance out there possessed by known violent criminals & by crazed, paranoid white guys in the suburbs, much of it military grade adapted for civilian use by the manufacturers. We couldn't keep a national ban in place on that kind of armament.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Bob Costas can imply the need for a total ban on handguns to an NFL audience on national TV. That's 'courageous." It's also easy. Discuss reforms to gun laws & gun design, & people's eyes glaze over. Since the N.R.A. opposes everything, it doesn't make any difference if one supports potentially effective reforms that don't challenge a sane, law-abiding citizen's claimed basic right to own a handgun, or if one stakes out the ban 'em all position of Costas.
Illegal guns are the problem in Jersey, & not just the handguns a gangbanger can stick in his baggy pants waistband & use to jack a car or shoot a convenience store clerk, although those guns are the biggest problem. There's serious ordinance out there possessed by known violent criminals & by crazed, paranoid white guys in the suburbs, much of it military grade adapted for civilian use by the manufacturers. We couldn't keep a national ban in place on that kind of armament.
