-By Warner Todd Huston
On Sunday Senator Chuck Schumer tried to pass off the 1994 assault weapons ban bill that was canceled eight years ago as the reason that today’s violent crime rates have been down.
In a discussion about gun control with Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and Lindsey Graham (R, SC), David Gregory of NBC’s Meet The Press correctly pointed out that past gun banning laws like the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban didn’t work and that is a challenge to Schumer’s anti-gun position. Schumer answered to Gregory with a nice twist of logic saying,
“Well, the amount of gun violence since we passed the assault weapons ban and the Brady law is down considerably,” Schumer said.
This is a twist of logic. Firstly the assault weapons ban has been off the books now for eight years so it is a big stretch to say it factors into what is happening today. Further, since the Assault weapons ban lapsed every state but one (Illinois) has passed some sort of concealed carry law meaning that there are more guns “on the street” in as much as more law abiding citizens are allowed to carry their firearms everywhere they go.
So, logically, if Schumer is saying that gun bans work and he’s pointing to the lower numbers of gun violence as “proof,” the fact that more guns are being carried should have made gun violence go up. Yet, it hasn’t. As Schumer correctly noted, it has gone down. The facts undermine Schumer’s argument, here.
Later during the panel discussion the gun control debate continued with Andrea Mitchell making another point without any meaning.
Talking about how the various states have different gun laws, Mitchell said, “You’ve got states now that permit guns, concealed guns, in elementary schools, in houses of worship, on college campuses. I mean you’ve got such a patchwork quilt of states permitting guns and access to guns in places where common sense says they shouldn’t be…”
Yet, incidents of shootings in schools or churches just aren’t perpetrated by legal concealed carry license holders. So, again, this point is meaningless.
The fiscal cliff also came up on this broadcast of Meet The Press.
During the panel discussion, Chuck Todd urged the President to forget about any “small deals” and go big. As always, Todd wants the President to steam roll over the GOP as much as possible.
“We’re going to be getting a small deal,” Todd began. “It’s a shame,” he said sadly.
“I think politically the President’s making a mistake to go for a small deal. He’ll lose leverage as the year goes on. He’ll get a big political victory, but he should try one more time for the big deal,” Todd said. “I think go one more time.”
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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