The left is using the Rahm Emanuel school of crisis control - never let a crisis go to waste. This has led to an embarrassing about of political posturing.
First came the slaughter in Paris. President Obama insisted that the response to this was an international agreement on global warming. While this was rather lame, the rest of the left used the tragedy to bludgeon the right over concerns that the proposed 10,000 Syrian refugees will not be properly screened.
Then came the Planned Parenthood shooting. The perpetrator was a disturbed man with a long history of hating Planned Parenthood. He lived off the grid without even electricity. Accordingly, it is debatable how aware he was of the videos showing some of Planned Parenhood's unsavory practice. Regardless, several of Planned Parenthood's supporters insist that after that shocking incident, all criticism of Planned Parenthood is now banned. There was also a lot of talk about Christian terrorism.
President Obama, following up on his intended push for gun control, stood in Paris and said that shootings like that just don't happen in other developed countries. Obama and the left in general repeated their call for "common sense" solutions to gun control, ignoring the fact that these have already been passed where the shooting happened.
The White House also pushed the idea that anyone on the terror watch list should be banned for buying a gun. Never mind that the left has been objecting to this watch list for years. Never mind that it's so loose and unaccountable that Senator Teddy Kennedy was on it and was unbable to find out why. This idea was still repeated constantly by the left. Even Hillary Clinton repeated this claim. This is just political posturing since no one has named any shooter who would have been prevented from buying his guns.
Then came the terrorist attack in San Bernadina. President Obama had been briefed and must have known that it was likely a terrorist attack when he gave his standard speech about common sense gun control and it not happening in other countries. It was the same gun control speech he gives for any shooting with no indication that this might be something special.
The entire left has taken up this new call to arms (so to speak). Guns are responsible for the tragedy and anyone one who opposes gun control is an accomplice. The idea is to channel outrage at a domestic terrorist attack at Republicans for allowing it to happen.
There are problems with this line of attack. California, where the attacks happened, already passed the full slate of gun control and it failed to stop the killing. The married couple was not on any watch list to say nothing of the no-fly list.
There is a bigger flaw in the gun control argument. Gun control does not stop terrorist attacks. France has tighter controls than anything seriously proposed for the US but it had multiple terrorist attacks this year. These terrorists happened to use guns this time but they had also bee working on building bombs. The Boston bombers only had one pistol between them. They used a home-made bomb. The San Berdina terror couple was working on similar bombs.
Even Columbine was meant to be a bomb attack killing 1,000. If the pair of killers hadn't had access to guns then they might have successfully reset their bomb.
In Israel, terrorists are using kitchen knives and cars to attack people - something the msm is ignoring.
Either the left knows that terrorism will not be stopped by background checks and hopes the rest of the country is too stupid to realize it or they have worked themselves into such a state that they don't stop to think about what they say - possibly both considering President Obama's incoherence on the subject.
Regardless, the left is using tragedies to push an agenda that will do nothing to stop further shootings. This is insulting to Americans.
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