Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
In a rare display of honesty, a United States congressman has acknowledged what most of us already knew; yes, the left really does just want to ban guns. After California (natch) Representative Eric Swalwell’s opinion piece in USA Today yesterday, lefties will no longer be able to hide behind the lie that “nobody wants your guns.”
“Ban assault weapons and buy them back. It might cost $15 billion, but we can afford it. Consider it an investment in our most important right, the right to live,” reads the opening salvo of the barrage of bullshit that is to follow.
And bullshit it is, dear readers. At no point does Mr. Swalwell come even close to making a valid argument. After that bombastic opening, he dives into a naked appeal-to-emotion fallacy as he describes the gunshot wounds suffered by a guy whose murderer he helped prosecute.
“Lee took his revenge by shooting and killing Jackson with an AK-47-style semiautomatic assault rifle. I was the prosecutor who persuaded a jury to convict Lee and persuaded a judge to put him away for 65 years to life. But Gary’s autopsy report still haunts me. Trauma surgeons and coroners will tell you the high-velocity bullet fired from a military-style, semiautomatic assault weapon moves almost three times as fast as a 9mm handgun bullet, delivering far more energy. The bullets create cavities through the victim, wrecking a wider swath of tissue, organs and blood vessels. And a low-recoil weapon with a higher-capacity magazine means more of these deadlier bullets can be fired accurately and quickly without reloading,” Swalwell lied in his piece.
Well, either Swalwell is lying, these “trauma surgeons” are lying, or the 108th Edition of “The Shooter’s Bible” is lying, because that reliable tome lists the standard 124-grain NATO ball load for 9mm as having a muzzle velocity of 1150 feet per second. That same book lists the muzzle velocity of the standard load of the AK-47 at 2365 fps. But hey, facts aren’t important to lefty politicians. Also, by definition an assault rifle isn’t semi-automatic any more than “barely twice” is “almost three times.” And, all bullets are designed to create cavities through the bodies they hit, that’s what bullets do. But again, facts aren’t important to these people, which is why he returns to the same appeal-to-emotion later in his piece.
So, because a criminal who had a grudge against the victim shot him with an AK-style firearm, all other humans in the USA are in immediate danger of death because of the mere existence of these arms, Swalwell essentially argues and then prescribes the remedy.
“Reinstating the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 would prohibit manufacture and sales, but it would not affect weapons already possessed. This would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come. Instead, we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons. The ban would not apply to law enforcement agencies or shooting clubs,” Swalwell wrote.
He’s correct insofar as the “assault weapons ban” was utterly useless and would have zero effect on the Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs, or, what grownups call this class of firearm) already in civilian hands. But then, he turns downright creepy. First, he wants to create millions of brand new federal criminals out of nothing with the mere stroke of a pen, because, many Americans will not sell their rifles to the government at a loss. Second, he reiterates his devout statism by reassuring the cops that they, of course, get to keep their guns to shoot us with. Third, he creates this exemption for “shooting clubs” which will obviously come with a whole raft of new regulations designed specifically to give the government total control over the possession of useful firearms.
Of course, the good statesman has a perfectly valid reason for wanting to do this, right?
“There’s something new and different about the surviving Parkland high schoolers’ demands. They dismiss the moral equivalence we’ve made for far too long regarding the Second Amendment. I’ve been guilty of it myself, telling constituents and reporters that ‘we can protect the Second Amendment and protect lives.’” reads literally the very next paragraph of Swalwell’s piece.
So, no. There is no real justification for his desires; he’s couched it again in a lie and another appeal-to-emotion. There is nothing at all new or different about the cynically-manipulated students from Parkland, Florida and the only reason Swalwell invoked them at all was to tug at the reader’s emotions.
But, he doesn’t stop there. Oh no, he lays it on nice and thick:
“The Parkland teens have taught us there is no right more important than every student’s right to come home after class. The right to live is supreme over any other,” Swalwell continued.
Here, the congressman has employed a false dichotomy fallacy to supplement the appeals-to-emotion he’d been relying on so far. Despite his attempts to boil the question down tp one of kids ever coming home from school again versus Americans keeping their guns, the fact is that we can, and do, have both. Being shot by a semi-automatic rifle is still among the least-leading causes of death among all Americans. Furthermore, given that Americans use a firearm more than 2.2 million times per year to ward off a violent crime – against 9-11K firearm homicides annually on average – and it becomes very obvious to any objective and lucid observer that the right to live is intrinsically and inextricably related to the right to own all manner of arms.
Of course, the congressman isn’t objective and not terribly lucid, either. After citing court rulings that support his idiotic and immaterial contention that the Second Amendment doesn’t cover MSRs, he found another country to make a spurious and asinine comparison to.
“Australia got it right. After a man used military-style weapons to kill 35 people in April 1996, that nation adopted strict new measures and bought back 643,726 newly illegal rifles and shotguns at market value. The cost — an estimated $230 million in U.S. dollars at the time — was funded by a temporary 0.2% tax levy on national health insurance. America won’t get off that cheaply. Gun ownership runs so deep that we don’t even know how many military-style semiautomatic rifles are in U.S. civilian hands. Based on manufacturing figures and other indirect data, there could be 15 million assault weapons out there. If we offer $200 to buy back each weapon — as many local governments have — then it would cost about $3 billion; at $1,000 each, the cost would be about $15 billion,” Swalwell gushed.
Indeed, what’s there for a leftist not to love? Thousands of people lefties don’t like made a criminal by government action overnight? New taxes? Government destruction of private firearms?
Of course, the idea that Americans would surrender anything like a half-million guns is asinine. The notion that a half-million guns is even a drop in the bucket of America’s private arsenal is laughable. But, the statesman isn’t afraid to spend other people’s money or put them in cages.
“It’s no small sum. But let’s put it in context. The federal government is spending an estimated $4 trillion this year; $15 billion would be 0.375% of that, not that we must spend it all in one year. Meanwhile, the GOP’s tax “reform” — a giveaway to corporations and the rich that threw comparatively meager scraps to working families — is projected to increase the national debt by $1.9 trillion over the next decade,” Swalwell wrote.
In other words, because the government is already wasting tons of money, it should waste some more on his idiotic idea, because he says so. And, to “prove” it, Swalwell goes on to talk about the gunshot victim he opened his long, whiny rant with. Then, he concludes with some real drivel.
“America has a deadly problem, a problem other developed nations have avoided or addressed. Some say we’re already too far gone to take corrective action, but we cannot have a defeatist attitude about this. Fixing our problem requires boldness and will be costly, but the cost of letting it fester will be far higher — for our wallets, and for our souls.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Yes, other nations “avoided” the “problem” of an armed peasantry by banning swords and spears before firearms were ever even invented. That the USA wasn’t born into utter serfdom the way those other “developed” nations were is a “problem” that he wants to take “corrective action” against. Those of us not willing to surrender our arms or be put in a cage are “festering;” exterminating us now will be cheaper than doing so later. But, make no mistake, we, the civilian firearm owners of this nation, are to be eliminated one way or another per California Representative Eric Swalwell.
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