How about banning hands and feet?

Wayne Lutton, editor of Social Contract Quarterly, writes:

That was a very sensible “Terrific comment on the gun control issue” posted on the 19th. It is basically what the NRA has been saying the past few days.

I am astonished that they haven’t publicized FBI crime statistics about the weapons used in murders. In 2010, rifles were used to kill 358 people. Knives were used to kill 1,704 (over four times the rate for rifles). Hands, fists, and feet were used to beat to death 758 people (over twice as many).

Clearly, rifles are way outstripped by other weapons used for murder. But does the left notice? Or care? And how about the dumb right?

- end of initial entry -

December 24

Ken Hechtman writes:

James N. wrote:

Do you think it is possible for all of the organs of public opinion to operate in this coordinated a fashion without at least informal collaboration on strategy and tactics?

In particular, the demonization of the NRA for making the only sensible proposal to come out of this horror is astonishing—both for its wrongheadedness and for its uniformity. Everybody hates the NRA all of a sudden, like a hive.

It’s not all of a sudden. Everyone on the left has hated the NRA for 20 years now. This is mostly the NRA’s own fault. Back in 1988 I used to know communists and anarchists and black nationalists who had NRA memberships. It was a big-tent single-issue lobby group back then, the second-most successful one in the country after AIPAC. But in 1992 the NRA decided to become a full-spectrum culture-war organization and it picked the losing side. Twenty percent of Democrats still own guns. Almost half of Independents do. The NRA cannot afford to alienate these people and yet it is doing its best to alienate them.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 23, 2012 07:19 PM | Send