Reblogged: Who Framed the Second Amendment?

[Rule of Reason Blog]

“If there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try,” said President Barack Obama.

In the fantasy world of Left/Liberalism, in which the vacuity of preventive, positivist law reigns and is unquestioned and adopted as policy, countless lives will have been "saved" with gun bans, smoking bans, big soft drink bans, msg-bans, transfat bans, medical insuranceless bans (Obamacare), lead gas bans, "dirty" energy bans, pollution bans, drug bans, asbestos bans, greenhouse gas bans, Islamophobic speech bans, hate speech bans, and so on.  But how, then, is it proven that even one life has been "saved"?  Will the Left/Liberals be able to trot out the single life that has been saved? Will that single individual become the poster child of tyranny?

Let's up the ante, and move on to "countless" lives saved. Where are the graphs, the pie charts, the statistics to come from? Is there a kind of gigantic federal database that collects, analyzes, correlates and decollates "non-events" to prove the efficacy of bans? Oh, they can be produced, but will they be as credible as, say, the numbers produced by the wizards of University of East Anglia to "prove" anthropological global warming?

The absurdity of bans is nearly self-evident, but not so much that liberals and leftists can grasp it. Were it as self-evident as a sunrise, we would not be bothered with pontificating, sanctimonious rhetoric surrounding the signing of executive orders to "save" one life, never mind countless lives.

Let's examine the absurdity for a moment, even though Ayn Rand counseled (through one of her villains), "Don't bother to examine a folly – ask yourself only what it accomplishes."*

The purpose of any ban is to cause an absence of a consequence. The absence or delinquency of a consequence is held as proof of the efficacy of a ban. Thus, the presence of a gun in someone's hand will likely cause the death of a child. The absence of a gun in someone's hand will result in the child not being killed by a gun. In logic, this is the fallacy of attempting to prove a negative. The absence of something causes a non-event. In fact, it causes nothing.  Ergo, a universal gun ban – of handguns, automatics, clip-loaded, whatever – will consequently cause incalculable non-events.

Let's imagine more non-events. That guy you passed on the street did not try to rob you because he had no gun. Because there are no guns in your house, your wife, son, or daughter did not try to kill you with a gun because there are no guns in your house. Your three-year-old kid did not accidentally kill herself while playing with a gun because there were no guns for her to play with. If your son is mentally unbalanced, he could not go to a local school with a gun and begin killing students and teachers.

Just imagine: If no guns had been allowed in Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza would not have been able to go to the Sandy Hook school to commit a massacre.

Just imagine:  If George Zimmerman had not been carrying a gun that fateful evening, Trayvon Martin would still be alive today. Possibly he would be in jail for assault and battery, and Zimmerman beaten to a pulp by a punk and still recovering from his wounds. But, the saved life is the important thing, you see.

Okay. No guns. But that does not rule out clubs, knives, frying pans, tire irons, rolling pins, or other objects that can be used to kill. I can't recall the number of times the cartoon character and moonshiner Snuffy Smith was beaned by his wife with a rolling pin. Those cartoons were dangerous. Provocative. And sanctioned violence! Then there was Joe Palooka, and Popeye!

So, just imagine: There's this unstable fellow who's really, really mad at the world. At his parents. At his siblings. At his teachers. His classmates. At that girl who won't look at him twice because he's wearing razor blade earrings and has a steel pin lanced through his lower lip to complement his multi-dyed semi-Mohawk hairdo with a cowlick and the stud affixed to his tongue. He's so upset, he sits in his room and pounds the top of his desk in frustration and anger and just knows that he is alone in his victimhood. Nobody understands him. He's the only sane person in his known world. What's a guy to do? It's hopeless. He's doomed to unhappiness and solitude! He may as well try to make a statement, or die trying. And make others die while he tries. It's all their fault, you see, that he's so terribly frustrated! He shakes his feeble fist in the air, and cries, "Cruel world! Hear me roar!"

In the fantasy world of Left/Liberal bans, he calms down, cleans himself up and finds a job at the local Burger King, or volunteers for community service, or masters quantum mechanics. Why? Because he had no access to guns! No guns in his house! No gun sales allowed in his town! No gun ownership allowed in it whatsoever! Guns aren't even available for purchase across the state line. Not anywhere. All is peaceful. Nothing happens, except that flowers sing as he passes by, everyone smiles at him, and the world throbs with the placid quietude of a gun-less society.

The fantasy world of the gun-haters is about as real as Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

In the real world, he finds a tire iron or baseball bat and goes to the nearest primary school and starts killing children and teachers with it. But first murders his parents and siblings. See? It was a no-gun non-event! Lives were saved from guns! Think of all the disgruntled former employees who can't go to their former workplace and start shooting. Of all the gang members who won't be able to rub out their neighborhood rivals. Of all the bank robbers who can't rob banks because of the absence of guns. Of all the men and women whose spouses had no guns with which to punish them.

By now, one should be convinced that banning guns – any type of gun – from sale or ownership, will have only two real-world consequences: criminals and the criminally insane will get them somehow, somewhere; and victims, real and potential, will be disarmed against them. There will be real, demonstrable events, which the MSM and anti-gun advocates will ignore or gloss over or explain away.

Aside from scrutinizing the deadly fantasy worlds of the Adam Lanzas and Andre Breiviks and Timothy McVeighs of the world, the Technicolor fantasy worlds of anti-gun advocates should also be subjected to close examination. It will be seen that their projections and forecasts have all the substance and veracity of a computer model predicting next week's weather.

Then we'll know who framed the Second Amendment – and why.

*Ellsworth Toohey, p. 666, in The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand (1943).  New York: Penguin/Plume Centennial Edition, 2005.  

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