A Cynical Double-Standard

Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review takes some shot at Piers and the rest of the Gun Control Crowd.

Last night, on his CNN show, Piers Morgan expended a considerable amount of energy railing against the AR-15, a rifle that he evidently disfavors. Citing evidence that was mysteriously never shown, Morgan insisted that an AR-15 had not only been used in the shooting at the Navy Yard but had been legally bought in a Virginia gun store by the perpetrator himself and then taken deliberately to the scene. This, Morgan said, was obviously going to be the case because, as we all know, the AR-15 is the choice of serial killers and mass-shooters.

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It is fair to say that this is an obsession shared by much of the Left. If it weren’t, progressives wouldn’t spend their time compiling lists of which guns and magazines citizens should be allowed and which they should be denied. Taxonomically, “assault weapon” means little more than “gun I want to ban”; politically and legally, however, it means “gun that made it onto the list of banned guns.” To most advocates of gun control, there are Bad guns and Less Bad guns, and, in a country with “sensible gun safety regulations,” we should all agree, per the president’s own language, that “weapons of war have no place on our streets” and that “military style” weapons should not be privately owned. Weaker weapons, on the other hand, are fine — for now, at least . . .

Right? . . .

All of this is to say that Morgan’s position is effectively this: If a shooting is carried out with a firearm he wants to ban, it is extremely important that it was used and its use tells us an awful lot about how our public policy should be developed. If, on the other hand, a shooting is not carried out with a firearm that Morgan wants to ban, it doesn’t matter at all — and you are probably a freak for even caring. Are we to presume that Morgan’s new position, “it doesn’t matter what the shooter used,” implies that he doesn’t want to ban any particular type of firearm because they are all the same? Or, perhaps, that he wants to ban all firearms?

Either way, there is only one word that comes to mind: Hypocrite.

Actually, I disagree, the word I would use is Statist.