The Illinois State Rifle Association has taken a good, hard look at the massacre of 20 children at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., and figured out who the real victims of that crime are: gun owners, whose rights are threatened by parents so hysterical they can no longer comprehend the Second Amendment. Here’s an excerpt from an ISRA “Special Alert” issued after the National Rifle Association convention in Houston:
Like all people of good conscience, gun owners were appalled at that the crimes that took place in Newtown. Nevertheless, gun owners really don’t put much credence in what the Newtown parents have to say. After all, having a child murdered doesn't automatically make one an expert in violent crime or an expert in the U.S. Constitution or an expert in the shooting sports. Likewise, being the parent of a murdered child does not give one the right to demand that lawful gun owners give up their constitutional rights just to bring closure to that parent's grief. No, we gun owners will not be supporting any proposals to ban our guns, limit our magazines, tax our rights, snoop deeply into our backgrounds, or register us like sex offenders. As we have said many times before, we will not accept responsibility for what happened in Newtown because it is not our responsibility to accept. Obama, Biden and the rest of the gun-grabbing crew needs to understand well that our resolve is set in stone.
We’ve all gotten used to gun owners’ convictions that their right to bear arms is a gift from God. That it’s a right more fundamental than the right to live to a ripe old age without being shot to death by a mentally ill young man carrying an AR-15 rifle. But this letter reaches a new low in smugness and insensitivity. The gun fetish movement has become so emboldened by its judicial and legislative victories that it feels safe in brushing aside any opposition as the emotional mewling of liberals who don’t understand that some principles are more important than public safety. Is this letter bad PR for the gun rights movement? The gun rights movement doesn’t care. Guns, they believe, are inviolate, and gun rights are immune from public opinion.
To paraphrase former Mayor Richard M. Daley, how would the ISRA and The Armed Citizen Project like it if someone shoved an AR-15 up their collective butts?
