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While I rarely ever agree with Bill Clinton on anything, the man is smart, and knows a thing or two about the political game. Of the things he’s said that I agree with, there is one truth his friends in the “reality based community” just can’t seem to wrap their heads around.

Back ‘94, after almost six decades in the political wilderness, the Republicans retook control of both houses of Congress by a landslide. Though it probably pained him to say it, President Clinton acknowledged that it was in part the ridiculous, newly inked “assault weapons” ban which cost them the election. Despite all their attempts to scare people into accepting it, it seemed that most Americans realized things like bayonet mounts have little to do with crime.

In 2000, after running on a platform which included even more Unconstitutional gun control, Al Gore lost the election by a razor thin margin which the courts ended up deciding. He even lost his own State, of all places. While lots of people were surprised by this– and even more blamed voter fraud –President Clinton again acknowledged that gun control lost them even more votes than fraud could have possibly eaten.

Did anybody listen this time? Apparently not.

In 2004, after staging a photo op with some hunters to try and gain some Second Amendment street cred, John Kerry flew back to DC a day or two later and voted to ban virtually all centerfire rifle ammo used by hunters. And people wonder why he lost to a rather unpopular incumbent…

Fast-forward to 2006, and one might be forgiven to think the Democrats had learned their lesson on guns. In July of last year, the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of prohibiting gun confiscations in emergency situations when said people need them most (as happened in New Orleans). Just before the elections, Democrats far and wide told us the party was no longer interested in banning guns. In fact, a number of the Congressional seats they picked up– as well as a handful of Governors such as Ohio’s Ted Strickland –were won by pro-gun “blue dogs.” So, yea, all that means they learned their lesson, right? RIGHT?

Nope.

As of Thursday, there are 59 cosponsors signed up on Carolyn “Shoulder Thing That Goes Up” McCarthy’s draconian new “assault weapons” ban. Or, in other words, 25.3% of Democrats in the House of Representatives are seeking to ban virtually every firearm designed in the last hundred years. The last Representative to sign on was Dennis Kucinich, who is running for President. On the Senate side, Joseph Biden, who is also running for President, introduced a bill Thursday to ban all the “assault weapons” and close the so-called “gun show loophole.” I imagine that sponsorships from Obama, Dodd, and Clinton can’t be far behind.

Which would leave us with half the Democratic Presidential candidates who haven’t heeded Bill Clinton’s warning.

The real irony here is, some of the candidates like, say, Kucinich, are running on a platform that Bush is an evil dictator out to destroy the Constitution. Yet they want destroy parts of the Constitution themselves. And if you’ve every spent any time rubbernecking at sites like Daily Kos or Democratic Underground, you’re bound to have seen countless tinfoil-hat-induced threads about how Bush and Cheney plan to cancel the elections, set up a totalitarian government, then send Blackwater around in black helicopters to put all the Democrats into concentration camps or something. Yet they continue to support candidates who would give Bush a total monopoly of force, enabling him to do just that.

Go figure.

Ex-NRA pres Sandra Froman has an oped over on WorldNetDaily warning us that if we vote for a third-party in 08, we’ll lose the Second Amendment by letting Hillary!™ wins the election. While I have lots of respect for Ms. Froman (and have no doubt that Mrs. Clinton hates the Second Amendment as much as she hates the First), this article left me scratching my head. After filling in the back story about how some Christian conservatives are threatening to jump ship and that the Supreme Court’s balance is important, she hits us with this one:

Every Republican candidate – including current front-runner Rudy Giuliani – has promised to appoint originalists and textualists to the Supreme Court.

The same Giuliani who pretty much started the modern trend of trying to bankrupt the gun industry with frivilous lawsuits (which Emperor, err, Mayor Bloomberg has taken up)? The same Giuliani who supported Clinton’s cosmetic feature gun ban? The same Giuliani who said the NRA were extremists because they believe the Constitution means what it says? I’m sorry Ms. Froman, but if Giuliani told me the sky was blue, I’d go outside to double check.

The man has flip-flopped so much it would make John Kerry dizzy, yet we’re supposed to believe him now? Are we supposed to believe him more or less than George HW Bush, who nominated Justice Souter? A Justice, who, ironically enough, Ms. Froman goes on to label as the “third most liberal.” If that was Bush 41’s idea of an “originalist,” I shudder to think who Rudy might pick. Next up, the Democats:

Every Democrat candidate – led by Hillary Clinton – has promised to appoint justices who would continue supporting a liberal social agenda. History shows that the activist agenda includes holding that the Second Amendment does not give you the individual right to own a firearm.

Err, did you forget about Bill Richardson? Last I checked, he was a Democrat with a better record on gun rights than MSM anointed Republican “front runners” Giuliani, McCain, and Romney put together. Granted, he’s a bit of a long shot at this point, but if some group like, say, oh, I dunno, the NRA acknowledged his existence and supported pro-gun candidates on both sides of the isle, we wouldn’t have to play this stupid “lesser of two evils” game. And they wonder why the gun grabbers refer to the NRA as a Republican shill group..

As for the initial question of whether a “3rd-party vote = loss of 2nd Amendment,” well, speaking of supporting someone other than a Republican, you know, if the NRA urged its members to support a third-party, maybe one could actually win? Believe it or not, there were parties before the Republicans and Democrats who have gone the way of the dodo once the voters got sick of the “lesser of two evils.” Does nobody remember the Whigs or the Federalists?

At any rate, if it does come down to Giuliani vs. Hilary!™, we might actually be better off with the latter. As stupid as this may sound at first glance, at least with Clinton we’ll know where she stands. With Rudy, not only do we have to worry about him pulling out another Justice Souter (or two or three..), Republicans in the House and Senate will be more likely to let him get away with anti-gun stunts due to blind, partisan loyalty. Whereas with Clinton, they will fight tooth and nail to block everything she does.

Via GamePolitics comes this anti-freedom two-for-one piece from Time Magazine. Like clockwork, they’ve got a gaggle of statists seeking to blame inanimate objects for the recent “surge” in cop killings. Naturally video games and scary looking guns are the main target. First, the statistics:

As of September 18, the [National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund] showed shooting deaths up nearly 60% over last year, from 34 in 2006 to 54 this year (the worst year for such killings was 1975, when there were 99 deaths in the same period).

While the death of any police officer in the line of duty is tragic, that 60% increase doesn’t sound so bad when viewed in statistical context. According to the FBI, the average number of officers murdered per year from 1996 to 2005 was 57.5. In 2005, the year before the low cited in the article, the number was 55. If anything, 2006 was the deviant from the norm, not this year.

So with the fear-inspiring statistics out of the way, let’s get on with the finger pointing!

South Florida, along with the rest of the Southern U.S., where guns are easier to come by, has been particularly hard hit. In the past six weeks, two officers have been killed, and one recently got off life support after a gunman on a motorcycle shot him in the head. On Sept. 13, Miami-Dade police Sgt. Jose Somohano died and three other officers were injured by an assailant armed with an AK-47, three years to the day after the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons ban.

Ah, yes, of course, things like this only happen in Southern States. This couldn’t happen in beautiful gun-free NYC, right? Oh, wait.. And it’s been three years since the so-called “assault weapon” ban expired, but just now we’re seeing an increase of, what, one or two shootings? I thought the streets were supposed to “run red with blood” when the ban expired..

Next up, we have Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who some of you may remember as a poster boy for the Brady Bunch, weighing in with this:

Timoney’s answer to the emboldened attacks on his colleagues is to give them matching firepower. Although it had been in the works prior to officer Somohano’s death, the day after the fatal shooting Timoney signed a new police directive authorizing Miami patrol officers to carry AR 15s, a military-grade assault weapon. “Cops understandably feel they are outgunned,” Timoney says.

Outgunned you say? That’s funny, because on the news footage of the search for the suspect, I saw no less than half a dozen officers carrying AR-15s.

Are we to believe that all of these officers were “outgunned” by a single man with an AK-47 lookalike? And did our eyes lie to us when we saw officers carrying the carbines before you claim to have authorized it?

But then, I suppose the anti-gun crowd has never been known for telling the truth..

Last but not least, we have retired Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who, while generally quite pro-gun, sides with anti-gun politicians like Hillary!™ when it comes to removing the First Amendment.

Grossman relates how officers raiding methamphetamine labs and gang hangouts often find violent video games left behind. “Every time they take down a gang house, there’s always one thing that will always be there,” Grossman says. “It’s a video game. The video games are their newspaper, their television, their all-consuming narrative. And their video games are all cop-killer, criminal simulators.”

Because we all know that there were no violent, drug-dealing gangs before video games. Or violence for that matter. Never mind the fact violent crime went into a near free-fall since Mortal Kombat and Doom were released in late 1992 and 1993, they obviously caused the non-existent rise in crime, right? So, if we just skip that whole pesky First Amendment thing and ban all virtual guns, crime will go away? I guess it makes almost as much sense as banning safety features on rifles.

Now that you mention it though, it seems that all the gang houses have another thing in common: They’re all houses. Quick, let’s ban all homes! Especially the dreaded “assault houses” which can hold ten or more occupants. Think of the children!

It’s been a while, but I’ve finally redesigned the site again, and made a shiny new blog to go with it. Now that there’s a proper system for posting stuff, hopefully I’ll be motivated to update more often.

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