Toledo Blade editorial board member tirade: This explains everything
Now that Toledo Blade editorial board member Dan Simpson has written his "The disarming of America" tirade, we guess you'd call it ("rant" probably being too mild, and more accurate words being inappropriate to print), we can finally understand some of the anti-gun editorials that the Blade has spewed over the past 3-4 years.
Thanks to NBC's sick attempt to lift their dismal ratings, we've all viewed and heard the video tapes of the Virginia Tech mental case and his little tantrums against his schoolmates. After reading Mr. Simpson's words, we're at a loss to decide which author is more psychotically disassociated from the world the rest of us live in.
We're leaning towards Mr. Simpson.
Commentary by Buckeye Firearms Association Northwest Ohio Chair Chad Baus in crimson type.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The disarming of America
By Dan Simpson
Last week's tragedy at Virginia Tech in which a mentally disturbed person gunned down 32 of America's finest - intelligent young people with futures ahead of them - once again puts the phenomenon of an armed society into focus for Americans.
Actually, despite how hard you anti-gun media elitists have tried, the focus has actually been more correctly focused on the murderer, who could just as easily have used a pipe bomb as a gun.
The likely underestimate of how many guns are wandering around America runs at 240 million in a population of about 300 million. What was clear last week is that at least two of those guns were in the wrong hands.
When people talk about doing something about guns in America, it often comes down to this: "How could America disarm even if it wanted to? There are so many guns out there."
Kind of like how much cocaine, heroine, crack, crank, crystal meth and marijuana there is out there...oh, wait, that stuff is already banned. Bad example.
Because I have little or no power to influence the "if" part of the issue, I will stick with the "how." And before anyone starts to hyperventilate and think I'm a crazed liberal zealot wanting to take his gun from his cold, dead hands, let me share my experience of guns.
As a child I played cowboys and Indians with cap guns. I had a Daisy Red Ryder B-B gun. My father had in his bedside table drawer an old pistol which I examined surreptitiously from time to time. When assigned to the American embassy in Beirut during the war in Lebanon, I sometimes carried a .357 Magnum, which I could fire accurately. I also learned to handle and fire a variety of weapons while I was there, including Uzis and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
I don't have any problem with hunting, although blowing away animals with high-powered weapons seems a pointless, no-contest affair to me. I suppose I would enjoy the fellowship of the experience with other friends who are hunters.
Nothing about which Simpson just wrote disproves the notion that he is "a crazed liberal zealot wanting to take his gun from his cold, dead hands".
Basically what we've learned about Mr. Simpson is that:
Now, how would one disarm the American population?
Enter the "crazed liberal zealot wanting to take...gun[s] from [our] cold, dead hands".
First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.
After all, these types of laws have worked so well for that cocaine, heroine, crack, crank, crystal meth and marijuana I mentioned earlier. Sure the druggies and suppliers aren't afraid of those laws, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't respond to this insanity, right?
Hunters would be able to deposit their hunting weapons in a centrally located arsenal, heavily guarded, from which they would be able to withdraw them each hunting season upon presentation of a valid hunting license. The weapons would be required to be redeposited at the end of the season on pain of arrest. When hunters submit a request for their weapons, federal, state, and local checks would be made to establish that they had not been convicted of a violent crime since the last time they withdrew their weapons. In the process, arsenal staff would take at least a quick look at each hunter to try to affirm that he was not obviously unhinged.
It would have to be the case that the term "hunting weapon" did not include anti-tank ordnance, assault weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, or other weapons of war.
I'm sure that Columbus police officer recently busted for stealing hundreds of firearms from the evidence room and illegally selling them on the street is looking for work. Perhaps he could get a job on Mr. Simpson's "arsenal staff".
And as for that "quick scan" to ensure that hunters coming to pick up their Red Ryder BB guns for an elk hunt aren't psychopaths on their way to shoot up another 'no'guns' zone, whatever makes Simpon think they'd be allowed (let alone qualified) to make that call? The good people of Virginia were legally prohibited from expelling a suicidal student last February.
All antique or interesting non-hunting weapons would be required to be delivered to a local or regional museum, also to be under strict 24-hour-a-day guard. There they would be on display, if the owner desired, as part of an interesting exhibit of antique American weapons, as family heirlooms from proud wars past or as part of collections.
Gun dealers could continue their work, selling hunting and antique firearms. They would be required to maintain very tight inventories. Any gun sold would be delivered immediately by the dealer to the nearest arsenal or the museum, not to the buyer.
Right, so Simpson thinks people are going to spend good money on a product they will never be allowed to possess. I mean, truly, it's almost as if he's trying to be sarcastic to prove the point that gun controllers are insane. But I don't think so.
The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.
Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for "carrying."
Mr. Simpson is proposing so many violations of Constitutional rights here it is difficult to know where to begin.
While he is all for strip searching "grandma" for a gun she might need to protect herself from a violent predator, my guess is he is one of those who opposes profiling twenty-something Middle Eastern men who are traveling in packs on our major airlines. At least he didn't propose domestic wire-tapping of gun owners (just an oversight, perhaps)
I believe is quite safe to say that if Mr. Simpson's "special squads of police" ever see the light of day in this country, I hope they wear red coats. It'll be easier for the many gun-owning patriots who stand against his tyranny to remember the battle cry than if we have to yell, say, "The taupe coats are coming!"
The "gun lobby" would no doubt try to head off in the courts the new laws and the actions to implement them. They might succeed in doing so, although the new approach would undoubtedly prompt new, vigorous debate on the subject. In any case, some jurisdictions would undoubtedly take the opportunity of the chronic slowness of the courts to begin implementing the new approach.
No doubt one the first jurisdictions to begin implementing Simpon's approach will be his home city, even as grassroots Americans try and defend their beloved Constitution, the People's Republic of Toledo.
America's long land and sea borders present another kind of problem. It is easy to imagine mega-gun dealerships installing themselves in Mexico, and perhaps in more remote parts of the Canadian border area, to funnel guns into the United States. That would constitute a problem for American immigration authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard, but not an insurmountable one over time.
Naw, they're great at keeping all the drugs and illegals out, so who could imagine they'd have trouble stopping gun running?
There could conceivably also be a rash of score-settling during hunting season as people drew out their weapons, ostensibly to shoot squirrels and deer, and began eliminating various of their perceived two-footed enemies. Given the general nature of hunting weapons and the fact that such killings are frequently time-sensitive, that seems a lesser sort of issue.
I thought Simpson already had the answer for this one - weren't we going to start hunting bear with BB guns? He thinks everything else is too "high-powered", creating a "no-contest" hunt.
That is my idea of how it could be done. The desire to do so on the part of the American people is another question altogether, but one clearly raised again by the Blacksburg tragedy.
You've been warned, Ohio: Seung-Hui Cho isn't the only one who flew over the cuckoo's nest this month. The mental patients at the Toledo Blade are getting mighty restless.
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