PA Bill Number: SR77
Title: A Concurrent Resolution petitioning the Congress of the United States to call a Convention for proposing amendments pursuant to Article V of the ...
Description: A Concurrent Resolution petitioning the Congress of the United States to call a Convention for proposing amendments pursuant to Article V of the ...
Last Action: Reported as committed
Last Action Date: Apr 30, 2024
Thugs resorting to knives; proof that Clinton, anti-gunners need to shift focus :: 02/26/2016
A wave of knife attacks in New York City reported yesterday by Fox News, and an incident involving a Metro Bus assault in King County provide all the evidence necessary to demonstrate that criminals will use whatever weapon is handy to harm other people, and gun control is not the panacea proponents think it is.
It may be time for Democrat front runner Hillary Rodham Clinton to back away from her war on gun rights as part of her White House campaign. In an interview with television personality Steve Harvey that aired yesterday, she couldn’t even get it straight about which right is enshrined in the Constitution, and which is merely mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Had a Republican made such a gaffe, it would be a leading news item.
The string of knife attacks in New York, which Clinton represented when she was in the U.S. Senate, began with the new year, Fox indicated. So far this year, there have been 567 such attacks, the story said, prompting Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, to tell Fox, “This is proof positive that demonizing guns does not solve the problem of violence. I bet some of those victims wish that they had a gun for self-defense.”
But in Clinton’s New York, it is almost impossible to get a concealed carry permit unless one is politically or financially “connected.” Wealthy Republican front runner Donald Trump, a New York resident, has said he’s got a permit. Maybe that’s why he repeatedly alludes to his support for the Second Amendment in campaign appearances.
Maybe Trump and Clinton both would have learned something had they been on a Metro bus in South King County yesterday. According to the King County Sheriff’s office, a 38-year-old man “backhanded” the bus driver and when a deputy arrived a few minutes later, he pulled a knife on her.
The Seattle Times reported this morning that the man told the deputy “just shoot me.” According to the initial press release from Sgt. Cindi West, who confirmed the details in a telephone conversation with this column Wednesday afternoon, the knife-wielding man also told the female deputy, “F--- you.” The deputy, showing remarkable restraint, did not shoot the guy, instead repeatedly ordering him to drop the knife. He backed away and then ran, West said via telephone. Several other officers and deputies soon arrived, along with the Guardian 1 helicopter, and the suspect was subsequently arrested.
Beyond the fact that Clinton could have learned that people with badges aren’t trigger-happy as often portrayed by protesters, she needs a civics lesson, and maybe Harvey – the fellow who flubbed naming the winner of the Miss Universe contest in December – does too. When Clinton blew it commenting about constitutional rights, he reflexively agreed. Apparently, it’s a no-no to correct Clinton in front of live and television audiences.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Clinton was discussing gun control, asserting, “We’ve got to say to the gun lobby, you know what, there’s a constitutional right for people to own guns, but there’s also a constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that enables us to have a safe country where we are able to protect our children and others from this senseless gun violence.”
“Absolutely,” Harvey concurred, the Free Beacon reported.
Perhaps they skipped the same U.S. History class. Whatever the case, the video clip is racing across the Internet today faster than the Shot Heard Round the World did in April 1775. And that brings us around to Lexington, the Massachusetts village where that famous confrontation between British regulars and the local militia sparked the Revolutionary War.
There, as reported by NPR earlier this week, a man named Robert Rotberg, described as a “professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard” and 40-year member of the Lexington Town Meeting, has proposed an amendment to the town code that would ban so-called “assault weapons” and original capacity magazines.
Keep in perspective that what the Redcoats were after in Lexington and nearby Concord were the “assault weapons” of that era: muskets, powder and ball, and maybe a cannon or two. For the regulars, and their commander, Gen. Thomas Gage, it was a monumental error in judgment that turned a show of government force into a demonstration of armed resistance. After the Lexington confrontation, the regulars marched to Concord and by the time they arrived, hundreds of armed and angry colonials were there to greet them. The rest, as they say, is history.
Times may have changed, but public disarmament is still a tinder box issue. American gun owners see Clinton’s candidacy and campaign rhetoric as a frontal assault on their constitutionally-enumerated right, and those in the Lexington region are preparing for a political battle.
Yesterday, Gottlieb described the situation in New York City as “an epidemic with sharp blades.” Equally contagious is the belief that eroding the Second Amendment rights of people who still understand what the battles of Lexington and Concord were all about will somehow prevent bad people from doing bad things.
In the 240 years since that shot was fired on Lexington commons, one would think that people like Clinton might have learned something. Good citizens will tolerate bad laws only so long. Bad people ignore the law altogether.
