© Reuters / Lucas Jackson
The NRA uses its wealth and strength to "incite gun owners to acts of violence," declared the resolution adopted Tuesday by the all-Democrat panel, urging the city not to do business with anyone associated with the organization.
Comment: Dems want to allow any foreigner to live in the US, even those with violent records, and in the same breath want to take away American citizens' rights to protect themselves. The Left's logic is downright befuddling.
It also accused the NRA of spreading "propaganda that misinforms and aims to deceive the public about the dangers of gun violence," and promoting "extremist positions, in defiance of the views of a majority of its membership and the public."
Democrats used to accuse President Donald Trump of lying when he said they were out to take away Americans' guns. Now they are falling over themselves to prove him right.
There are many things to unpack here. First of all, the resolution does not have the force of law. Cities or even states don't get to define terrorism, domestic or otherwise - that's the federal government's job. According to the FBI, domestic terrorists are primarily US-based movements "that espouse extremist ideologies of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature."
So what would opposing the US Constitution - its Second Amendment, to be precise - amount to, then?
Then there is the hypocrisy. Supervisor Catherine Stefani tells the media the resolution was inspired by mass shootings in recent months. Not a single perpetrator of those has been a member of the NRA - unlike the Texas man who stopped a mass shooter at a church in 2017, for example.
"They should reasonably know by now that they are fueling the hate fire in this country," Stefani told the Washington Post. "People are dying, and they continue to stand in the way of reform."
However, no amount of gun laws means a thing if the authorities are unwilling to prosecute people due to political considerations. The man who shot and killed San Francisco woman Kate Steinle in 2015 first dodged murder and manslaughter convictions, and last week got his gun possession conviction overturned on a technicality. Critics are saying the only reason for this treatment is that the killer is an illegal immigrant, and Democrats are determined to make San Francisco and California a sanctuary for those.
Last, but not least, we get to the twisting of the meaning of words. Stefani told KQED radio that NRA bumper stickers about not giving up guns are "saying reasoned debate about public safety should be met with violence."
Refusing to give up one's constitutional right is somehow an incitement to violence and hate, but Congressman Eric Swalwell talking about using atomic weapons on civilians is fine? Ah, Swalwell has a (D) next to his name, however - so that makes all the difference.
San Francisco has a bit of a history of trying to change the meaning of words in order to force social and political change into existence. Just last month, the very same board of supervisors mandated calling a former felon a "justice-involved person" or "returning resident," while a juvenile offender became a "young person impacted by the juvenile justice system," to name but two examples.
This may sound like silly virtue-signaling, even as San Francisco is drowning in human waste, used needles and other detritus of the city's skyrocketing population of addicts and the homeless - another (side?) effect of bleeding-heart refusal to enforce laws about public safety.
"This is just another worthless and disgusting 'sound bite remedy' to the violence epidemic gripping our nation," NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter said, dismissing the resolution even as she called it a "reckless assault on a law-abiding organization."
Manipulating the language is never a laughing matter, though, and shows that this is not about guns, and never was. It's about power. Between their two recent resolutions, the San Francisco supervisors have decided to boldly cross through the looking-glass, so to speak:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all."
Reader Comments
Some citizens like to hunt and do feed their families that way, some want to 'protect' themselves, some just like and collect guns. These things can all be done without military-type weaponry.
Government, as we know it now, bends to the loudest organization voices with the biggest 'campaign contributions', entities that will also helpfully write desired legislation. It will be difficult to increase the safety of the public through Congress. Arms makers want to sell guns, any and all that the market will accept. The right to make and sell things should be regulated as it is in many other cases (lead paint).
The public has the need and right to be reasonably safe, even from themselves. While smoking and tobacco are regulated to the nth degree, the wide availability and misuse of armaments has made the public unsafe.
In these times, with militarized local police forces and the threat of military (ours) control of domestic situations, not to mention possible economic, civil, and natural disaster events, there can be an argument for private ownership of guns.
It's not about finding the Bad Guy or who's right or wrong but about discussing societal problems and solutions like we were all in this together, which we are.
Whether people's fears are reasonable or ignorant, Joe Blow does not need an
assault rifle- No, I beg your pardon, I mean military or automatic weapon. [Link]It's like abortion and other public health/safety issues, it has no clear solution, but people line up to emotionally argue each side of it anyway. Somehow disturbed young men are getting and using guns to kill and injure people they don't even know so licensing and access to guns has to be addressed. But I am not qualified nor knowledgeable enough to discuss this further.
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I don't know the true statistics on how many class 3 license holders there are. Nor how many machine guns are in private hands. But the only mass shooting where large numbers of bullets were fired was in Las Vegas. The official story is some old left wing crazy got a few AR's with bump stocks and fired 5000+ rounds from his hotel room. But...that's NOT what happened. Looking at the pictures from the hotel room, taken after the guy supposedly offed himself, you see maybe 100 shell casings scattered around. 5000 casings would be all over the floor, in piles easily visible. There is a small stack of magazines in a neat pile in one pic. Nowhere near enough to hold even 1000 rounds, much less 5000. Then the most important thing, the guns. AR15's are civilian versions of military weapons. They aren't make to handle the heat generated by sustained fully automatic operation. So after 500-1000 rounds, they begin to heat up so much that the plastic furniture starts to melt. The parkerizing finish, the black coating on the barrels and receivers begins to scorch off and the fire control system, the trigger, heats up and will randomly begin to lock up. After 1000 rounds, the bolt will fuze its self to the receiver, ending the guns life. Yet, if you listen to the sounds in the videos of the Vegas event, the guns continue to fire, never vary in their cadence. It's likely Vegas was done by multiple shooters using real machine guns, not a lone nutjob with AR's.
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Vegas is the example for "why" high capacity magazines are bad and should be banned. But if we don't know the truth about what happened, if real machine guns were used by real military or ex-military shooters, then the whole premise is false. Hinting at a psyop designed to demonize guns and hi cap magazines.
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The wording of the bill or rights, along with the authors private writings, show that what they meant was the people should have access to the same weapons the military and governments used. To them, firearms weren't only tools used for hunting or self defense, but were a way to prevent any government from becoming tyrannical, authoritarian or oppressive. So is it any wonder that government officials and those who wish to force America into a global system of rule seek to disarm the American people? Of course you'll never hear this discussed in the media. But both the founders and those who have studied the globalist threat understand this.
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I agree that mass shootings are a horrible thing that needs to be addressed. But more gun control will not fix anything. Criminals and crazy people don't obey laws. And there are so many guns already on the streets that no law will affect those already "illegal" guns.
From your first paragraph, the thought of 1-5000 rounds being fired at the country music festival if that's the one we're talking about, is startling and horrific, and it's not somehow better that it may have been only around a hundred. Also, I'm not impressed by the cost and paperwork of Joe Blow obtaining military weapons when JB doesn't need and shouldn't have them anyway. I do agree that people should learn more about guns before getting involved in such discussions.
My father hunted and had guns, even gave me a .22. In AK we had a bunch of guns (for hunting or just collected). My gun-owning partner did his own reloading. No doubt there is still trophy hunter tourism up there.
I'll just say a couple things about your second first paragraph. In pre-Revolutionary times, local leaders encouraged the early Americans to be armed not only for hunting and 'protecting themselves' against Indians, but also because it was hoped they would join the upcoming fight (or so I read recently) against England which would have been the tyrannical, etc. government at that time. And - when you mentioned "the small stack of magazines" found in the sniper's nest hotel room, I naturally first thought of, you know, a pile of magazines (periodicals), lol.
The authorities lie about public shootings (and much of everything else) so your opinion as expressed has weight with me. TY for your replies.
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I'm not sure if the videos are still online. They may have been removed, but after Vegas happened there were a bunch of videos taken by people either at that concert or nearby. You could clearly hear way more than 100's of shots. So the approximation of 5000 rounds is pretty close. And yes, that's damn sick. Whoever did it, it's horrible and they should all be in prison.