Never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats who favor
national restrictions on guns have turned the assault in San Bernardino in the
direction of gun control laws they favor. If U.S. Senator Chris Murphy is not
leading the pack, he is barking loudly with the other hounds.
A day after the terrorist attack in California, Mr. Murphy
tweeted to the world, “Your
‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should
be for forgiveness if you do nothing - again.”
The Murphy tweet
produced others chastising the Senator for devaluing prayer. But Mr. Murphy’s
tweet was not so much an assault on the efficacy of prayer as it was a case of purposeful
campaign posturing; tweeting brings out the worst in many of us. If people are
unwilling to do something to stop the carnage, Mr. Murphy seemed to be saying,
“their ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness.” Mr. Murphy did not say in his
initial tweet who should be forgiven or why (Baathist tyrants in Syria? Islamic
terrorists?) but then the purpose of a tweet is not to elicit clear thought but
to gather in as many hits as possible.
During an
interview on the day following his tweet, Mr. Murphy offered to a Hartford Courant reporter the following clarification: “’Having lived through Sandy Hook, I know that
thoughts and prayers are important but they're not enough,'’ the Democratic
senator said. ‘I'm sick and tired of my colleagues (sic) response to these mass
shootings starting and ending with sympathetic tweets and press
releases. I believe these nice sympathies are empty unless they are
accompanied by’ new policies.”
On the same day,
November 3, Governor Dannel Malloy offered similar thoughts on the terrorist attack to the editorial board of The Day in New
London:
“‘Put it this way,
people are saying we shouldn't allow people from other countries into our
country, why would any country allow Americans to go there? We're the most
violent society, or one of the most violent societies, on the face of the
Earth,’ Malloy said during a meeting with The Day's editorial board Thursday.”
This is not a
careful analysis of the Middle East terrorism that has spawned the refugee
problem besetting nearly all the Western nations in Europe; it is a rhetorical
hairball. Paris was recently assaulted by Islamic terrorists, any one of whom is
far more violent than the average American living, say, twenty minutes from a
police station who reasons that he may need a weapon to protect his family from
improperly paroled prisoners such as the two housebreakers with long felony
records that murdered the entire family of Dr. William Petit, save the doctor
alone, who escaped the carnage. Prayers were offered at the time on behalf of the
doctor’s family. In that particular case, the criminals were far more violent
than their victims, no?
In fact, is it not always the case that criminals are
more violent than their victims? Possibly that is why peaceful Americans –
there are some few among us – think it necessary to arm themselves with weapons
to protect those they love against violent criminals. Mr. Murphy is quite right
that morning prayers alone offered up by the Petit family on the day of the assault in the absence of remedial action would not have dissuaded the paroled criminals from murdering a mother and two
daughters. The
responsible use of a gun might have prevented the assault; but Dr. Petit was an unarmed and peaceable
American. Mr. Petit’s state had failed to protect his family from criminals
whose just punishment, a death penalty, later was rescinded by prayerful legislators convinced that a death penalty would not deter future
mass slayings such as had occurred in Cheshire.
Certainly the war-torn refugees Mr. Malloy is prepared to accept in Connecticut are far less
violent than the execrable and murderous dictator of Syria, Bashir Assad, whose
depredations have caused massive relocations. Is Mr. Malloy suggesting that Mr.
Assad should not allow visas to Americans for the reason he has stated: that
the average America is far more violent than the members of Mr. Assad’s Ba'ath Party?
Are Americans as a rule more violent than the terrorists in the caliphate newly
formed by murderous ISIS terrorists in parts of Syria and northern Iraq?
Paris only recently
has washed the blood shed by Islamic terrorists from its streets. Gun laws in
Paris are more restrictive than they are in Connecticut. To purchase a firearm
in Paris, one first must obtain a hunting or shooting sport license, which
requires a psychological evaluation and frequent renewals. All semi-automatic
weapons holding more than three rounds, as well as rifles and handguns with
military-grade calibers, require permits. Fully automatic weapons are banned
for civilians, and the punishment for the illegal possession of a gun is seven
years in prison plus a fine. None of these laws prevented two massive assaults
on Paris by non-law-abiding radicalized Islamic terrorists.
The married couple who opened fire on peaceable American citizens in California were 1) Islamic; both had recently returned from the hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and 2) terrorists; a terrorist plainly is someone who engages in terror acts. The husband was an American citizen radicalized by other Islamic terrorists, and his recent bride, also a Muslim, was from Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was hunted down and murdered on orders from President Barack Obama, an American. CBS reported on December 3rd that the female shooter had passed the Department of Homeland Security’s “counterterrorism screening as part of her vetting” for a refugee visa. The FBI has reported that the female terrorist had pledged her fealty to ISIS shortly before the attack. Both Islamic terrorists, professing a religious infused ideology alien to peaceful Americans, were more violent than the society that has produced Mr. Malloy and Mr. Murphy.
It’s time for
Democratic leaders to holster their rhetoric and think lucidly.
ISIS must be
destroyed.
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