Frankly I’m speechless. I feel like I’ve stepped through the looking glass into an alternate universe. In this world (apparently) Rush Limbaugh is arguing for massively increased entitlements, Mark Levin is known for his soft spoken sweetness and National Review is a publication that supports using regulatory loopholes to abolish our constitutionally protected rights.
Today, Clifford D. May is offering an endorsement of a piece of anti-gun legislation that Frank Lautenberg has been shopping around for years. As you can imagine – this has blown me away.
Lautenberg, as you almost certainly know, is one of the most reliably anti-gun legislators in Washington. He’s a big proponent of restricting the right to keep and bear arms whenever and wherever it’s possible. And his latest gimmick for meeting that goal has been a bill that will deny the right to purchase a firearm for anyone on the ‘terrorist watch list’. There will be no due process involved. If you are so much as ‘suspected’ of being a terrorist, you are put on the list and your rights will be immediately suspended.
In anti-gun states we are very much accustomed to using the bureaucracy to restrict rights. The procedural ban on concealed carry permits in NJ (Frank Lautenberg’s home state) is an excellent example. There is no law against concealed carry in NJ… that would be unconstitutional. But NJ hasn’t issued even a single permit to a private citizen in over 25 years. Anti-gun pols have arranged the process for issuing permits around a procedural loophole that achieves the goal they want without having to endure the burdensome process of doing so under the law.
If this bill were enacted, I have little doubt that the number of suspected Terrorists in NJ and other anti-gun states will skyrocket. Even me, a married, middle aged, prosperous, professional, Irish American from a family with a long military history, will no doubt be suspected of something. I have several guns after all – and if you ask my more liberal neighbors, that alone should make me immediately suspect. It won't matter if I'm a terrorist, only that I'm 'suspected'. So when they lob an accusation my way and my name is put on the list, my rights will be immediately forfeit.
That Lautenberg offers an idea like this should surprise no one. He’s anti gun now, he has been anti-gun in the past and he will no doubt remain devoutly anti-gun in the future. It’s never really been about public safety for a guy like Lautenberg. The latest data says that his regulatory ideas don’t increase public safety anyway. For him, it’s always been about control. A disarmed populace can be commanded, while an armed populace cannot. That was always his real agenda.
But that National Review could sign on to such an idea is absolutely shocking to me.
No one is perfect. Errors in critical thinking do occur sometimes, and being journalists – the staff at NRO is certainly not exempt from them. But this seems like a big one to me. It’s equivalent would be supporting Nancy Pelosi’s defense department proposals, or Maxine Water’s economic ideas. Given Lautenberg’s long and unapologetic anti-gun history, you would think they’d see this coming.
It’s certainly not the job of the NRO staff to keep someone like me happy. I’m an NRA member, but I don’t work for any political organization at all. I’m just a guy who lives in a radically anti-gun state, who enjoys sport shooting and hunting as a hobby. So although I may not be ‘important’ I think I am typical of a portion of NRO and National Review readers. And having them come out in favor of restricting the second amendment absent due process feels like a real betrayal to me.
The world will still turn on it’s axis I suppose. But that they produce a piece like this totally unchallenged will definitely color my views of the publication going forward.
3 comments:
I too am disappointed that Clifford May was taken in by this nonsense. But this wasn't an editorial. He wasn't speaking for NR or NRO corporately.
NRO has always had a diversity of opinion among its writers. I'm a big fan of Derb (except when he has kind things to say about protectionism) yet on several occasions I seem to recall him parting ways with the official editorial position. Certainly his atheism sets him apart from several of his NR colleagues. I'm not ready to give up on NRO. Overall, they seem to publish more pro-gun than anti-gun opinions.
More disappointing to me was Charles Krauthammer's 1996 column on the assault weapons ban.
I get it Matt, but I still have 2 issues. first - I believe that weighing cost and benefit is a integral part of conservative decision making. But Cliff either didn't know about or didn't care about the costs of a policy like this. He most certainly didn't consider them.
Second, I have an even bigger issue that an arguably un-conservative position like this can go unchallenged at NRO. If someone else wrote something pointing out that it might not be the most conservative position to take, then I'd be fine. But offering it without dissent is the kind of thing that empowers the left. Anti-gun lobbyists will be throwing this piece up in our faces for years, but if there were a published exception to it then at least there would be a clear response, and it would eventually fade away.
But as it stands, this is simply a case of kicking the ball into the other teams goal.
Fair point.
I just searched the Corner and no one has raised any objections so far.
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