When Hysterics Are All They Have

Once upon a time, The Daily Kos was one of the premier blogs of the left. They’ve fallen off a great deal since their heyday, to say the least, but from time to time, I find some ridiculous takes on guns there. Often, it’s from non-staff members. One of the unique things about The Daily Kos is that it also provides a blogging platform for its community, where just about anyone can write whatever they want, and while I won’t say they won’t take stuff down, insane takes on gun rights aren’t exactly against their community standards.

But today, I’ve got one of those takes from a staff member that would put even the most nutbar reader to shame.

Let’s start with this banger of a headline: “Potential murderers, rejoice! Trump is making it easy to arm up.”

Now, I’m not going to blame writer Lisa Needham for the headline, because editors often make changes there or outright decide the headline themselves. But she (they?) only gets a pass to a point, because the stupid doesn’t stop at the headline.

It’s a terrific time to be an absolute freak about guns, as the Trump administration races to dismantle even the slightest and most common-sense gun control efforts. In its latest attempt to make the United States as unsafe and unstable as possible, the administration is getting rid of over three dozen gun regulations—all in the name of “freedom.” 

Of course, there’s nothing “common-sense” about any of these rules, but try telling an anti-gunner that. They won’t listen, especially as none of those rules did a damn thing to make anyone safer.

Everyone in the administration, along with people who love guns more than they love schoolchildren, is pretending this is just a rollback to the pre-Biden era, which, lol, lmao. In reality, this is a pretty wholesale repudiation of gun safety. 

This is the point where I mention my response to Needham is brought to you by the letters “F” and “U.”

I’m absolutely sick of this line of rhetoric that people who support gun rights don’t care about school children. Hell, our own Ryan Petty’s daughter was one of those school kids killed by a maniac with a gun. Believe me, he cares. I care.

But since people like Needham can’t actually imagine anyone might actually have a good-faith disagreement about gun control, we all know that reasoned discourse is impossible.

Everyone in the administration, along with people who love guns more than they love schoolchildren, is pretending this is just a rollback to the pre-Biden era, which, lol, lmao. In reality, this is a pretty wholesale repudiation of gun safety. 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives—which you are forgiven for perhaps having assumed no longer existed, given how little the Trump administration wants to regulate these things—already eliminated the zero-tolerance policy for gun dealers. Under that policy, the ATF was empowered to yank the licenses of gun dealers who break the law.

We’re talking about objective lawbreaking here, requiring a showing that the dealer willfully committed serious violations, such as failing to perform background checks or falsifying business records. But you see, per the Department of Justice, not letting dealers break the law to sell infinite guns is actually an “undue burden” on gun buyers, who are presumably utterly hobbled if their dealer has to follow the law.

The new standard is that the dealer must know they are violating the law, which is kinda what “willfully” violating something means.

Except that wasn’t how the rule was applied. Abbreviations, misunderstandings about what counted as “three days” for a waiting period, and other examples all resulted in people losing their licenses to sell guns. These weren’t someone willfully violating the law and trying to sell guns out of the back room. These were paperwork errors.

But then again, Needham didn’t actually look at any of the examples of people who lost their licenses, just what the anti-gun lobby claimed was the norm. It’s not like they have a reason to lie, now do they?

See, people like Needham aren’t actually aware of the status quo on guns. They like to pontificate on it so they can feel righteous about everything, so they can tell themselves they’re good people, when they never bother to even consider how criminals keep getting guns despite the plethora of laws on the books, but law-abiding citizens who want a firearm for self-defense are the ones having to navigate the draconian gun control schemes in place.

All they have are hysterics. It’s all they can have right now. 

While Needham gloats that gun sales have dipped, the rest of us shrug. We know that restrictions drive sales, but we’d rather see fewer sales of guns and not have to worry about someone taking them away next week. We’re fine with a dip, because business is still good for pretty much everyone. Especially now that they don’t have to worry about an innocent mistake destroying their business once and for all.

Meanwhile, despite the doomsaying following the Bruen decision, violent crime has been down significantly since its pandemic high and has fallen at a record pace. It’s still falling, even, “despite” the pro-gun moves of both the Trump administration and the Supreme Court.

So, to people like Needham, suck it up. We’re tired of your hysterical tantrums because you can’t take away our rights with impunity anymore.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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