Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
As was pre-ordained, the House Judiciary Committee passed HR 1808 on to the full House of Representatives yesterday. The bill moved on after a party-line vote which was preceded by some of the most entertaining debate and testimony in recent memory. And by entertaining, we mean in a facepalmingly sardonic, end-of-the-empire kinda way.
As was noted yesterday in a piece by the Outdoor Wire’s Jim Shepherd, this is all an exercise in election year kabuki. Democrats don’t really want to run on $5-a-gallon gas, 9% inflation, and scarce baby food this November. They know damn well that, particularly after passing the Cornyn-Murphy gun control bill, the Senate has zero appetite for diving in for more gun control four months before an election.
That’s why the hearings on this new bill, as well as their attempt to kill the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, are doomed legislatively. As Politico reports, Nancy Pelosi is having trouble wrangling all of her own troops to vote for this thing so close to November. But they’re trying because the bill would give them something “positive” to run on with their hard core anti-gun base as the midterms draw closer.
So committee Dems, under the able leadership of noted firearms expert Chairman Jerry Nadler, took the opportunity yesterday to rail against individual firearm ownership and the horrors that rain down upon a society that allows civilians to own “weapons of war” while tossing out sound bites and scoring some rhetorical points…or so they thought.
What the committee’s Dems actually did was display a jaw-dropping level of stupidity, ignorance, misinformation, and outright lies that was nothing if not revealing.
Take, for instance, Chairman Nadler explaining to Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie — an avid gun owner who has an engineering degree from MIT — why the “assault weapons” ban bill they’ve written would outlaw .223/5.56 AR-15 rifles, but not the .30-06 M1 or the 7.62mm SKS You know…actual weapons of war.
(Please be sure to swallow anything you may be drinking before watching the video…you have been warned.)
For more adventures misinformation dissemination, it was hard to beat Rhode Island’s David Cicilline.
You have to feel for Rep. Massie, whose head must have been ready to explode listening to the lava flow of red hot idiocy that was spewing from his distinguished colleagues from across the aisle. Massie pointed out to Cicilline that a pistol brace is noting whatsoever like a bump stock. The only thing that accomplished was to provoke this . . .
Riding right behind Cicilline on the Nitwit Express was self-taught pathologist and ballistic aficionado Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Bloomberg). She helped to educate her fellow committee members on the devastating effects of AR-15 ammunition on the human body.
We would have suggested that Rep. Massie point out that at least “assault rifle” ammunition doesn’t “blow the lungs out of the human body” like 9mm ammo, but he’d already done admirable work. Besides, in the words of one of the nation’s smartest women, what difference at this point does it make?
Besides, the committee didn’t just rely on their own accumulated expertise. They also brought in highly trained subject matter experts like Dr. Kyleanne Hunter.
Okay, she’s just a Phd, not an actual doctor, but she used to fly helicopters for the Marines and “her research focuses on the intersection of social integration and military effectiveness, with a focus on gender and unconventional warfare.” Who knows more about rifles and ammo than a gender studies devotee?
The range of expertise the committee assembled was really quite impressive. When it was time to address the efficacy of semi-automatic rifles as personal defense weapons, who better to turn to than California’s own compromised Rep. Eric Swalwell?
Rep. Swalwell’s incontrovertible comments did the committee a service by clearing up what might otherwise have bogged the proceedings down over a heated point of contention.
Finally, yesterday’s hearing was punctuated by contributions from the visitors gallery when a Parkland “survivor” contributed the product of his feelings based on his own lived experience. Ivy League student and inveterate attention whore David Hogg simply couldn’t let the opportunity to speak up pass him by.
So there you have it. In a day that featured example after example of conspicuous imbecility, face-palming fatuousness, appalling grandstanding and a ghastly lack of self-awareness, these were the best examples we found.
Keep in mind, however, that these are the very people who voters, in their infinite wisdom, return to Washington, term after term, to apply their bottomless supplies of venal stupidity and blinding ignorance to writing and voting on the laws that govern the lives of us all. I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.