The following is Tom McClintock’s reponse to a Bee editorial. And a reader’s response, critical of our Congressman, is here:
On August 5, the Sacramento Bee published an editorial entitled “Why Does Anyone Need a 100-Round Rifle Clip.”
Congressman McClintock offered the following response, which the Sacramento Bee refused to publish.
What’s the Sacramento Bee Afraid Of?
In its editorial (“Why Does Anyone Need a 100-Round Rifle Clip,” August 5), the Bee notes that I “failed to respond” to its inquiries. The editorial amply demonstrates the reason: the Bee is notorious for stating one-sided political manifestos, listing its heroes and villains, and offering no opportunity for a balanced debate.
In the event I am mistaken and the Bee actually welcomes a differing viewpoint, here is mine.
The inherent fallacy of all gun bans is that only law-abiding citizens obey them. Violent predators already operate in an extensive underground economy and such laws merely incentivize and reward an additional criminal class to traffic in the contraband.
Gun bans might make it more difficult for lunatics to obtain them, but they make it impossible for the law-abiding. The Bee notes that guns make it easier for a criminal to commit a crime, but forgets that guns also make it easier for the law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, as thousands do every year.
Indeed, the theater in Aurora that banned firearms on its premises became a tragic microcosm of the world the Bee’s policy would produce: a defenseless civil society in which the gunman is king.
The Bee lost this argument long ago and is now reduced to chipping away at ancillary issues like limiting ammunition clips. After all, no legitimate target shooter or hunter can justify a gun with more than ten rounds. The Bee wonders why any decent citizen would want more?
I certainly wouldn’t.
Unless, perhaps, I worked the night shift at a convenience store; or I owned a theater where such an attack could happen again; or I owned a ranch or home near the border where drug cartels often operate; or if I were planning to take a sailboat into international waters; or one of countless other reasons the law simply cannot anticipate.
The Bee asserts that gun related deaths have dropped faster in California than the rest of the nation and credits its strict gun laws. True, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, between 1994 and 2010 violent crime in California declined 56.5 percent while falling 43.4 percent nationally – a 13-point difference. But the Bee somehow missed the other half of this statistic: non-violent crime in California (unaffected by its gun laws) dropped by a nearly identical spread, (48.9 percent compared to 36.7 percent nationally).
What would account for an equal decline in both violent and non-violent serious crimes in California since 1994 relative to the rest of the nation? Perhaps harsher sentencing laws in the 1980’s, culminating with California’s “Three Strikes” law of 1994 that locks up repeat offenders for both violent and non-violent serious crimes explain the statistics far better.
Of course, the Bee opposed the “Three Strikes” law when voters enacted it. The editorial was ironically entitled, “Shooting Ourselves in the Foot.”
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Would one expect any less from our soon to be ex-Congressperson, who spoke at Tea Party events held in or on the parking lot of a gun store?
I am sure a quick way to jail is try to bring a gun into most countries.
Perhaps Kim Pruett can explain why Congressman McClintock thinks it is more useful for the AM-PM clerk to have 100 bullet in a semi-automatic weapon, rather than only 6 or 10 in a handgun. I don’t get his logic here. I thought that the point of having an armed clerk is to deter, not blow out every window in the shop. But maybe I’m missing something?
These Rambos fail, due to lack of on the ground experience, to realize that in close quarter fighting, such as the chaos that had to exist in the theater, rifle barrels are ackward, hard to manuver and certainly not the weapon of choice for a stand-by hero to use. If anything were to be effective, imo, it would be a handgun, but even that idea is crazy and indefensible.
Big, long rifles become unweildy in close combat, a principle Shaka Zulu learned quickly and used to defeat the other surrounding Xhosa peoples. Shaka shortened the then popular, long, throwing spear into a short, stabbing spear, much as the Roman Legions conquered their opponents with the short stabbing sword, by which the Gladiators became known, Shaka cut off most of the shaft, leaving a long blade. Now his troops, organized if file, could manuver the spears in front of their bodies, making thier Asagais easy to manipulate in crowded conditions and his troops much more deadly. Thus was the Zulu Empire built, along with the usual palace intrigue, murder, and private equity deals.
If armed men could stop violence, then why can’t our troops stop uniformed Afgani’s for killing a few more NATO troops each week?
They want guns, let them have black powder muskets and rifles; now that originalist thinking. And Scalia and Alito,Roberts and Thomas my relatives were, for good or ill, forging and opening this country 100 years before the Constitution and the 2nd amendment which you can’t seem to find any reasonable restraints about ownership of weapons. Then I guess I can buy a M-79 large caliber round launcher; just a stubby rifle, single shot; what’s the harm? IT’s my right, right. Only it’s a mechanism looking like a stubby rifle that shoots a grenade, but that’s just a bullet of a bigger calliber, so what’s the harm, Scalia Brocolia.
Brilliant last two pieces!
Good luck to you, Ed, in your current health challenges. My thoughts are with you.
Political cartoon opportunity here. McClintock banging on a 100 round magazine drum.
The gun shop called “Sacramento Black Rifle” sells a t shirt that declares:
Obama loves America like
OJ loved Nicole.
You never know what’s in the email. Whether or not it’s true…Here’s an interesting surveillance video and comment…”Don’t mess with those seniors If you are going to rob a place, make sure there is no senior citizen present and especially one that is an ex Marine
click to view: