The American Spectator on Wednesday published a scathing analysis of recent school shootings and the Left’s knee-jerk response that takes the Obama administration’s education secretary to task for his “shoot-from-the-hip” reaction to the Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas.
Former education chief Arne Duncan’s suggestion that no student attend school “until gun laws change to keep them safe,” says the American Spectator piece, authored by Chris Talgo and Justin Haskins, “embodies the ‘action for the sake of action’ mentality that so often follows in the wake of heartbreaking school violence.”
Talgo and Haskins are with the Heartland Institute, described by Wikipedia as “an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank founded in 1984 and based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.”
Some of their observations could have come from P.J. O’Rourke, who is credited with this observation about liberals: “At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
I”f simply passing gun-control legislation worked, then those cities and states with the strictest gun laws would be the safest, and the evidence shows they clearly aren’t. Don’t believe us? Go ask the people of Chicago’s South Side whether they think gun control has worked in their community. Or take a few minutes to examine the crime statistics in states such as Idaho or New Hampshire, where guns are readily accessible and gun-related homicides are relatively rare.”—Chris Talgo and Justin Haskins, writing in The American Spectator
It apparently also is a philosophy of public disarmament. Talgo and Haskins note how anti-gunners leap to exploit such tragedies as school shootings.
“Gone are the days of respecting the grieving process for victims and families,” they write. “Now, everything is said and done for political gain, and it happens almost immediately after a tragedy — especially when guns are involved.”
The American Spectator piece says something that Second Amendment activists better take to heart: “anti-gun groups will use whatever tactics necessary to ‘win.’”
Right now, for example, Florida high school student-turned-gun-control-activist David Hogg is spearheading an effort to register teens to vote this fall, according to the Associated Press. The goal is to replace politicians “beholden to the National Rifle Association” with people friendly to gun control; i.e., people “beholden to” the gun prohibition lobby exemplified by Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety and Seattle’s Alliance for Gun Responsibility.
But Talgo and Haskins are on to them.
“Student-led’ protests and Duncan’s call for a nationwide school boycott this fall to spur legislators to pass gun control laws are disingenuous and put the cart before the horse,” they write. “The student-led protests are little more than AstroTurf shenanigans perpetuated by the anti-gun lobby, which uses students as pawns to garner attention and sympathy.”
Gun control is on the front burner in Washington and Oregon, where proponents think it will be a useful political tool in November.
If rights activists intend to protect what’s theirs this fall, they need to get busy now.
