Paul Krugman appeared on TV and said that the leaders of the NRA are insane. Of course his remarks were a follow up to NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre calling for greater enforcement of gun laws and for putting the medical records of dangerously insane people into the existing background check system.
LaPierre's discussion of the meaning of the second amendment and the right to keep and bear arms including his opposition to regulations of the number of cartridges a firearm can hold are not insane discussions, they are rational and related to current events.But Krugman chose to avoid logic and reason and respond by calling NRA members "insane". He said that the NRA acts as if we live in some sort of Mad Max world where people need guns. He misses the point. Mr. Krugman, we in fact DO NOT live in a Mad Max world precisely BECAUSE people have guns. Mr. Krugman I would urge you to please remember, an armed society is a polite society.
Krugman then went on and said that the NRA is insane because it it believes everybody should be armed despite the fact "that we have police forces that provide public safety". Again Krugman is the one who is ignoring reality.
Police departments are there to investigate crimes and aid in apprehension and prosecution of criminals AFTER CRIMES ARE COMMITTED. Police departments do not serve and cannot serve as the personal security force of every private citizen.
Two of my favorite sayings are "I carry a gun because a cop would be too heavy" and "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away".
Krugman's bias is showing. He cannot accept a world view where people accept individual responsibility for their lives. Instead it is he who lives in a dreamworld where government is imagined as the great protector. I submit that if the definition of insanity is living your life in a fantasy world and in denial of reality then it is Krugman who is insane.
I have a couple of personal experiences with crazy people being let out early and then getting guns and shooting people. I represented a victim of such a shooting and lost a good friend to such a shooting.
Which makes Krugman's remarks that much more infuriating.
When a madman burst through the door of my friend Bob Palmer's home as he was sleeping, the fact that he was a police officer and had a gun nearby but safely out of reach of the children did nothing to save his life or that of the babies the mental patient systematically killed before Bob could react. But it did allow him to return fire, kill the assailant and prevent even more murders. [More here]
So don't tell me that it is lawful gun owners who live in a fantasy world like Mad Max. It is the nut jobs who live in the fantasy world, and it is THEY who behave like Mad Max.
It is the law abiding citizen, like my friend Bob Palmer, who by lawful gun ownership and use, help to keep the number of crazy people under control.
*The crazy assailant, John Bundy, was able to obtain a handgun in Ohio despite his history of hospitalization for mental illness. The NRA wants this data included in the background check database and if it had been he would likely not have been able to procure that gun.
Another analogy that I have seen is that we don't need fire extinguishers in our home because we have the fire department. Same logic doesn't seem so sane in this context.
Posted by: Tim Gray | February 04, 2013 at 11:22 AM