We’ve landed on a revelation concerning Chris Christie.

“What role does the media play in terms of the violence we see on television and the movies? And the violent video games that I think desensitize our children to the real effects of violence. So I think we have to have a national discussion,” said Christie on New Jersey 101.5fm’s “Ask the Governor,” a monthly call in show.

When asked if gun control was an issue as well, Christie said “gun control absolutely has to be part of that discussion too.”

Christie said New Jersey has the second toughest gun laws in the nation, behind New York. “I’ve been a supporter of that as governor and will continue to be,” he said.

Jumping on the bandwagon, is he?  Or not.

In his first campaign for elective office in 1995, Christie based his bid for the state Assembly on supporting New Jersey’s assault-weapons ban.

Christie is a gun-grabber from way back.  He has Presidential aspirations.  But he will never be President because he doesn’t believe in the second amendment.  Well, in addition to the fact that he is a loud mouth blowhard.

We’ve discussed the notion that guns are evil.  Silly idea, that is.  Larry Pratt goes on the record on this very idea with Piers Morgan.

On the heels of the tragic Newtown, Conn. school shooting which left 26 people dead, this evening “Piers Morgan Tonight” invited Larry Pratt to the program to share his strong perspective on the firearm debate.

“Since we have concealed carry laws in all of our country now, people can get a concealed firearm. And yet, we have laws that say not in schools,” the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America said. “And so in the very places that have been sought out by monsters such as the murderer of these adults and children, we’re saying, ‘no, we don’t want you to be able to defend yourself. It’s better that you just sit there and wait to be killed.’ And we find that morally incomprehensible.”

Pratt says he’s deeply disturbed by the anti-gun supporters. It’s “deeply disturbing, that the desire to defend life has been so cast aside. And to whatever political correctness views guns as the ultimate evil. Evil’s in our hearts. Not in the guns.”

The staunch defendant of the Second Amendment tried to explain that the gun problems in America occur solely where guns aren’t allowed. “The problem occurs, sir, in those areas precisely where we have said no guns. The problem doesn’t occur where the guns are allowed freely to be carried to be used by people. There we have very low murder rates.”

Well, of course.  Gun free zones are anything but that to the criminals.  Pratt is to be commended for going on the record with an ignorant, preening, self-righteous douchebag like Morgan.  And as if directly on cue, we learn today that the shooter in Connecticut was a devil-worshipper (from a British newspaper, no less, because American newspapers don’t report the news any more).

The NRA wants to contribute and be helpful in the national conversation, apparently.  Listen carefully.  Negotiation and vacillation have never brought law-abiding believers in the second amendment any good whatsoever.  Like it or not, Pratt is telling the truth.

Opening The Nation’s article on Five Assault Rifles You Can Pick Up At Walmart, I expected to be entertained just a bit over the fact that they aren’t really assault rifles.  It was even better than I had expected.  I was treated to this.

I guess you learn something every day, huh?

Glenn Reynolds links to (what should be) an embarrassing blunder concerning Howard Kurtz discussing a “high magazine clip.”  This is reminiscent of Carolyn McCarthy’s blunder that is still a favorite over at reddit/guns.

From a pitifully inept and incomplete blog post by Andrew Rosenthal of the NYT:

This country has a history of facing tragedy and becoming better for it.

Where “gun violence is a serious problem,” as Justice Scalia said it is in the U.S., the courts must be very cautious about extending the individual right to own a gun.

Other nations have suffered similar rampages, but they have reacted quickly to impose new and stricter gun laws.

First of all, the Supreme Court cannot “extend” rights that are already ours (although everyone treats it that way, including them).  The rights outlined in the constitution are merely recognized, and ultimately granted by God.  Second, these laws that Rosenthal wants (e.g., assault weapons ban) won’t have any effect on crime.  Assault weapons are used in only 2% of crimes nationally.

But I don’t know why I would expect anything better by the NYT.

According to Mark.

Guns are, socially and ethically, devastating. Worthless. They add nothing of positive, intrinsic value to a culture, a people, a country. They only diminish, destroy, display an awesome sense of malformed ego and disastrously warped humanity.

Too much? Too far? Not really. I’m sure you already sense that all those cartoonish action movies, thuggish hip-hop songs, clunky old westerns, ultra-violent video games and the racks of high-caliber weaponry over at Cabela sporting goods and the local gun show – all of which we’ve been led to believe are so essential to our national identity – none of them offer anything of deep worth to the culture; no authentic masculinity, no real patriotism, no genuine power or strength or class. Heart, soul or integrity? Don’t be absurd.

It’s all a vulgar illusion, Hollywood glitter-bombing, manufactured mythology in service of shameless capitalism and a false, bloody American ideology that’s never served us well and only made us the ugly, violence-drunk stepchild of the civilized world. Don’t you already know?

Here is the truth: Guns are pain. Guns are impotence masquerading as virility, shame masquerading as valor, the devil disguised as an outrageously misinterpreted chunk of the Constitution that was never meant to suffer what the fat lords of the gun lobbies have made it suffer.

Do you wish to speak of false gods? Things virulently anti-Christian? The antithesis of everything a peaceful, advanced country is ideally supposed to be founded on? Because guns are all that and more. Jesus would be disgusted.

Mark is just confused.  Objects are something that the theologians call adiaphorous, neither good nor bad.  They can be used for either.  They can be used for home defense, and when a family remains alive after they have defended themselves from a home invasion, they have been used for good.  If they are used to slaughter innocents, they have been used for evil.

Mark wants to find negative ethical value in something that cannot possibly sustain such weight, any more than automobiles can be evil if someone perishes from them.  As for what Jesus thinks of guns, the founding fathers, who knew Jesus much better than Mark does, carried theirs to worship and were required to practice with them on Sundays, as well as introduce their children to them at a very young age.

Mark is just being hysterical, like the rest of the anti-firearm lobby.  Come to Jesus, Mark.

There is a crescendo in incivility, with gun owners being called everything from stone age vigilantes to tinfoil hat Bircher NRA peckerwood with a long gun.  This is the social media equivalent of the posturing over guns that is occurring on the political scene, but it matters because it emboldens the politicians.

Democratic Senators are threatening a new “assault weapons” ban, something openly pursued by Senator Feinstein immediately after the election.  But in addition to the known anti-firearms politicians, the movement has gained supporters from the ranks of those whom we all knew were anti-firearm, but who persuaded the electorate otherwise.

A growing number of lawmakers – including a leading pro-gun senator – called on Monday for a look at curbing assault weapons like the one used in a massacre at a Connecticut grade school, a sign that attitudes toward gun control could be shifting.

Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative West Virginia Democrat who has earned top marks from the gun industry, said Congress and weapons makers should come together on a “sensible, reasonable approach” to curbing rifles like the one used in the killings Friday of 20 young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

A hunter and member of the National Rifle Association, Manchin said the availability of such high-powered weapons does not make sense and called on the gun lobby group to cooperate with a reform of the nation’s gun laws.

A 10-year U.S. ban on assault weapons expired in 2004.

“We’ve got to sit down. I ask all my friends at NRA – and I’m a proud NRA member and always have been – we need to sit down and move this dialogue to a sensible, reasonable approach to fixing it,” he told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.

“Never before have we seen our babies slaughtered. This never happened in America, that I can recall, ever seeing this kind of carnage,” said Manchin, an avid hunter who once ran a campaign ad showing him firing a rifle at an environmental bill. “This has changed where we go from here.”

Historical scholarship may not be his strong suit.  In 1927, Andrew Kehoe used explosives to attack a local school in Bath, Michigan, apparently being disgruntled over paying higher taxes to fund that school.  Thirty eight children were killed, with one family losing three.  Nearly every family in the town of 300 lost a child.

The only gun Kehoe carried was used to light one of the explosive charges.  The only weapon used by Timothy McVeigh was explosives.  But the point is not to show that it can be worse.  Those poor souls who search for answers in guns, mental illness, and societal problems will search in vain.  The problem is evil, and it is one of the oldest philosophical issues known to man.

The proximate answer for those who would perpetrate violence on you or your loved ones is to respond by stopping them.  Shopping malls, schools, public buildings, parades and other activities and places are often “gun free zones.”  This means that only the criminals have guns, and thus they are unimpeded in their nefarious aims.

The Connecticut shooter, as I pointed out, could have perpetrated his evil acts with single action revolvers and bolt action rifles if he had desired.  No one could stop him, and that’s the problem.  No one could have stopped the criminals who attacked Mr. Bayezes and his wife without the use of a rifle that will be illegal under the Ms. Feinstein’s proposed ban, along with a 30-round magazine.  He emptied one magazine and retreated to find another.

Mr. Bayezes did what what we all should have done, for we all have a moral duty to defend self and family.  Sacrificing the best home defense weapon because someone may use it to perpetrate acts of evil is like being forced to return to horse and buggies because there are 40,000 vehicle accidents every year.

But along with the factual silliness of being worked up over fully automatic weapons (which were not used) and other misdirects, there are nonetheless very clear plans being deployed for sweeping bans.  The Democratic Senators want it, Obama has said that he wants it, and communist China agrees.  The voters in West Virginia who thought they were voting for a conservative or defender of the second amendment got hoodwinked.  Manchin has declared that he is no defender of the second amendment, and the Democrats are getting their support lined up.

The proposed ban may not end with guns.  Token conservative David Brooks has floated the idea of an ammunition ban.  No doubt the Democrats have included this in their plans, but it must make them feel confident to see a “conservative” agree with them.

Don’t be deceived into thinking that you can buy them now while they’re legal and keep them.  Feinstein has made it clear there will be no grandfather clause in her version of gun control.  Besides, grandfather clauses are problematic anyway.  The federal government may not need to enact confiscatory policies immediately.

For example, they may make all or some of our weapons illegal, along with their high capacity magazines, and then empower gun ranges, local law enforcement officers, and gunsmiths to confiscate any illegal component they find, while they also call the ATF.  You may end up in a federal penitentiary if you take your firearms to the range or use them in self defense.

Make no mistake about it.  There is a war on guns and ammunition.  It wasn’t stated by advocates of the second amendment, but it has landed squarely in our laps.  Obama will never have more power than he does now, right after the election, still controlling the Senate, and right after a horrible event such as in Connecticut.

Gird your loins and prepare for the battle if you care about the second amendment and your rights under the constitution and God.  Now is not the time to be weak, weary or squeamish.  In many ways the progressives and statists have been waging this war for years, while many second amendment advocates have sat on the sideline.  It’s time for everyone to play in the game.

UPDATE: Thanks to David Codrea for the attention.

Prior:

The Wrong Way To Argue About Assault Weapons

Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense

No One Needs ARs For Self Defense Or Hunting?

Do We Have A Constitutional Right To Own An AR?

Dreams Of International Gun Control

In Come And Get My Assault Weapons, we talked about threats to “come after” the assault weapons owned by “Stone Age Vigilantes” such as me.  The bigotry and incivility only continues to escalate.  On Friday, Mother Jones’s Adam Weinstein said the following:

As a 3rd-gen. gun collector, I say you can have ’em. Now. And go after every tinfoil hat Bircher NRA peckerwood w/a long-gun, too. Now.

As I said before, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.

As seen on Facebook.

But see Jeff, I think you’ve overlooked one problem.  If you don’t believe in “assault weapons,” then you don’t have any.  I have them, and you don’t.  How are you going to get them from me?

As Glenn Reynolds replied to similar threats, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.

There will be further calls for stricter gun control.  Obama will do it, the Democrat senators will do it, and the left-leaning think tanks will do it.  Expect it.

Next, remember that despite what you will hear, gun violence is not soaring in America.

Also, despite what you will hear, law abiding citizens will still need protection from criminals, including the very type or pattern weapon that the shooter used with a high capacity magazine.

If the school was unprotected with concealed carriers or security, the pattern weapon the shooter used is irrelevant.  He could have been carrying a 5-shot revolver and accomplished the same violence.  He was unimpeded, and that’s the problem.  This is sad, and it could have been ameliorated to some extent if someone had been carrying a weapon.

As I’ve said, crime is a moral decision, value judgment and social and cultural phenomenon.  It isn’t related to the existence of guns, and if guns weren’t available, they will use hammers.  Gun control laws cannot raise children to believe in values.

Despite what you will hear, gun control won’t stop injuries and crimes.  In China, a knife-wielding man just injured 22 children in school.

As for the national conversation about guns that we are said to need, we’ve been having it for years.  Gun control advocates don’t want to have a conversation.  They want to confiscate guns.