Democrats & Press Beating the Drum for Restrictive Gun Laws of a Radical Left Agenda
by Roger Katz
Ammoland.com
September 12, 2019
New York – -(AmmoLand.com)-
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” ~ Philip K. Dick, Twentieth Century American author; prolific writer of science fiction and winner of prestigious Hugo award for best novel: “The Man in the High Castle,” published in 1962.
In an article posted in The New York Times, on September 2, 2019, titled, “Congress Faces Fresh Urgency On Gun Laws,” the Times is pressing Congress to cave to the frenetic urging of the Leftist antigun crowd, hell-bent on further weakening the Second Amendment, having found an opening in the recent spate of random shootings that occurred in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and, now, Odessa, Texas. Exploiting these tragedies, appealing to emotion, rather than to reason, employing the informal logical fallacy of ad misericordium, a fallacy well known to the ancient Greeks: the fallacy of appealing cunningly to pity, and misery, and sympathy, playing on the public’s emotions, rather than appealing to the public’s reason, to obtain the goal, to obtain their goal, an unarmed citizenry that, if that should come to pass, will not secure public safety, but will endanger the life and safety of the citizenry and will be an open invitation to tyranny. Where will appeals to pity and sympathy for Americans rest, then?
Extremist elements are hammering Congress, first and foremost to enact more gun background checks, even as the New York Times acknowledges in its own story that:
“In fact, whether a background check would have prevented the West Texas gunman from acquiring his weapon is not known. Chief Michael Gerke of the Odessa Police Department said the gunman, who had been fired from a trucking job, had used an AR-15-style rifle, but had a criminal record. It was not clear on Sunday whether the gun had been acquired legally, and the authorities stressed that they had not established a motive.”
What is deeply disturbing, perplexing and distressing is that President Trump seems to be allowing himself to be caught up in the frenzied emotion of the moment, seeming to give in to moronic emotional, irrational rhetoric, spawned by another convenient shooting incident. We say this because President Trump has himself resorted to using the same language of the antigun zealots, such as “common-sense” gun laws; and “really common-sense sensible, important background checks” as he appears to be considering the proposals coming from U.S. Presidential Democratic Party candidates. The New York Times details this in their typical tabloid fashion, using colorful and inapt language, like, ‘gruesome,’ and ‘ massacre,’ and ‘assault weapon,’ and ‘powerful gun rights lobbying group’—which emphasizes the NY Times own personal distaste for guns generally; its abhorrence of civilian ownership of guns particularly; and its hatred of the NRA, singularly and emphatically. The article, appearing in the national news section of the paper, reads more like an Op-Ed piece than a news story. But, then, from the content of New York “news” reporting today it is clear that no efficacious distinction exists any longer between the reporting of news and opining about it. The use of Section Headings in the newspaper are superfluous, and need no longer exist, but the paper keeps up the pretense, obviously to confuse its readers into believing that what they take for fact is merely personal value judgment, as the following purported story illustrates. The NY Times “reports/opines”:
“The deadly shooting spree in West Texas this weekend — the latest in an especially gruesome summer of massacres — has intensified pressure on congressional Republicans to take up gun safety legislation, giving fresh urgency to a debate that was already expected to be at the top of lawmakers’ agenda when they return to the Capitol next week.
The attack in Midland and Odessa, Tex., which left seven dead and 22 wounded, comes weeks after a 24-year-old gunman with an assault weapon killed nine people in Dayton, Ohio, in early August. That massacre, hours after one that killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, thrust gun violence into the Washington debate just as Congress left town for its annual August recess.
President Trump expressed new openness to gun safety laws — including, he said then, “really common-sense sensible, important background checks” for gun buyers — and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, promised a Senate debate. But in the weeks since, with lawmakers scattered across the country in their home districts, the issue seemed to drift from public view.
Now it has come roaring back, with Congress set to return on Sept. 9. At a briefing about Hurricane Dorian at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters on Sunday, Mr. Trump, who has a record of flip-flopping on gun safety, pledged to find a way to “substantially reduce” mass shootings. But he earlier appeared to dismiss background checks, telling reporters that “they would not have stopped any of it.”
The Rest…HERE
