-By Warner Todd Huston
CNN sports writer LZ Granderson tried to write a serious column about Chicago’s gun ban laws and only ended up making himself look foolish for the effort. This is what happens when sports dorks try to think on subjects outside their silly, inconsequential world of sports.
With his columns, “When a City’s Gun Laws Get Shot Down,” it seems that Granderson was trying desperately to make sense of the failure of Chicago’s gun ban to keep the city safe and it appears that he is supportive of taking away American’s Second Amendment rights merely by local government fiat. Yet even as he seemed to support gun bans, nearly every word he wrote proves that gun bans don’t work.
Sadly, after reading his mush of a column, it is almost impossible to figure out what they heck this guy’s point is supposed to be. but it does show that he is not capable of logically thinking through a problem and writing a cogent discussion of that issue.
Granderson begins relating the story of a young man who was murdered by a robber on Chicago’s south side, then he mentions the fact that Chicago’s gun ban was thrown out by a federal court and the city told it had to lift its ban on gun stores. Granderson notes the judge’s ruling that gun bans don’t work and then says there is “an obvious flaw in [the judge’s] logic.”
The sports guy then goes on to note that many of the guns that are used in crime in the city of Chicago come from outside the city. He throws around a bunch of statistics to sound like he’s smart, I guess, showing where all the guns are coming from.
But, one is hard pressed to get what “flaw” Granderson sees in the judge’s logic that gun bans don’t work. Clearly Granderson doesn’t seem to understand how to make an argument.
This dopey sports geek writes, “It is disingenuous for gun rights advocates to dismiss the effectiveness of a city’s gun ban without acknowledging that guns are coming into the city from other areas, including the suburbs, making it easy for criminals to game the system.”
Yes, it is true that Chicago’s gun ban didn’t work. The judge was right. It is also true that the gun ban failed in part because the criminals just imported the guns from elsewhere. But that isn’t a “flaw” in the judge’s logic, Mr. Granderson. That is a flaw in the Chicago gun ban, the law you seem to support.
The flaw is in you, Granderson, not the judge.
However, Granderson is right in one respect. A ban in one city while everywhere else has no ban is stupid for just the very reason described; people just get their guns elsewhere and bring them into the ban area.
But, if Granderson wants to talk “logic” his column leads to only one conclusion and that is that he thinks guns should be banned everywhere so that Chicago’s gun ban can work. Naturally, Granderson doesn’t have the stones to stipulate this conclusion in uncertain terms. But that really is where he leads readers in the end.
Like all simpletons, Granderson sees a black and white world. In his little child’s world, a ban on all guns would mean that all murders would miraculously disappear. Granderson should look to countries where guns have been banned to see if his simpleminded solution works.
He’ll find it doesn’t.
Gun bans don’t work. Period. And that isn’t even to mention that gun bans violate the U.S. Constitution–as judges are increasingly finding.
Also going to Granderson’s simplemindedness is the fact that he quite conveniently discusses a Constitutional issue without once addressing the fact that it is a Constitutional issue.
This column does lead to a final conclusion, though. Mr. Granderson should stick to the inconsequential world of sports and leave the heavy thinking to those more suited to it.
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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
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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, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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