In a jaw-dropping segment of callousness, Fox News trotted out contributor Jonah Goldberg to attack Vice President Joe Biden’s statement about his task force looking to curb gun violence, “Even if what we do only saves one life, it makes sense.”
Host Mike Jerrick introduced the segment on Fox & Friends this morning by saying, “It doesn’t make sense to our next guest.” Jerrick gave Goldberg an extra boost of credibility by saying, “He says using this kind of rhetoric actually puts politics ahead of what’s going on and what is best for the country.”
Jerrick and co-host Tucker Carlson listened credulously as Goldberg said:
The problem is, it’s just flatly not true. And it’s a kind of rhetorical bullying… If you disagree with Joe Biden about saving even one kid’s life, it’s worth it, then it automatically puts you in the defensive position of being pro dead kid which, you know, is completely unfair.
And the simple reality is that if we had a standard that any law was justified if it saved just one life, then we would ban cars, we would ban plastic buckets because somewhere between 10 and 40 little kids a year drown in their backyards in plastic buckets. We would ban ladders, we would ban, you know, virtually every household appliance. We would basically handcuff every everybody in America to their radiators. ‘Cause that would definitely save at least one life. And this approach to things is a – basically, it’s a way to give an absolutely unlimited warrant to government actions without having any significant standard for what the results of that government action will be.
Well, talk about faulty logic. For one thing, nobody in the Obama administration is talking about banning guns. They may be talking about banning certain kinds of guns – the same way, say, cars without seat belts are banned. In this case, Obama is considering banning some semi-automatic weapons. And there’s another difference, semi-automatic weapons are hardly analogous to plastic buckets. The vast majority of usage of plastic buckets, ladders and even cars is innocuous, not harmful. The sole purpose of guns, on the other hand, is to kill or injure. Thirdly, there’s plenty of regulations and restrictions on cars to make them safer.
But, predictably, neither of the two hosts challenged a thing Goldberg said. Carlson went on to suggest that people were too focused on saving people by regulating guns instead of looking at the supposed danger of regulation: “Why is there so little discussion of the costs of government action?”
That was pretty much Goldberg’s point, that saving lives via gun regulation is just not worth the “cost.”
All regulation has to have some kind of cost/benefit analysis. Right? We know we would save thousands of lives if we made the speed limit five miles an hour. But at the same time, the loss to the economy of making the speed limit five miles an hour would make a lot of people poorer. And it’s just not worth it. It’s also a deep infringement of our freedom. And so the problem with this standard of if it saves just one life, it’s worth it, means excluding all other considerations.
That begs the question, how many dead children would be “worth it?” But, of course, neither host asked.
Bottom line: Allow a crazy to get his hands on a gun and crazy things will happen. Make it hard for him to get a gun and he can’t help but do less damage.
If push comes to shove, I’d do everything in my power to save the lives of children.
If that means making guns less easy for the crazies to get hold of, so be it.
If that means expecting gun owners to keep their toys under lock and key, so be it. If that means requiring gun owners to be registered and pay for insurance coverage, so be it.
If that means making sure smokers don’t subject them to their smoke, so be it.
If that means expecting the FDA to be strict in regulating food quality, so be it.
No self-respecting, law-abiding person could be against that, now could …. Oh wait.
May I invite you to take a stab at speculating on what might have happened had it been more difficult for Lanza to get his hands on a gun. Don’t forget to speculate on a hypothetical case, not your own. Please do leave aside for a moment any kneejerk fear of losing your toys. This is only a game.
Then start speculating on what might be done to reduce the risk of Lanza (representing the crazy “du jour”) getting his hands on a gun should the berserk-urge ever hit him.
Oh, Ben . . .
- there were armed guards at Columbine
- there were armed campus police at Virginia Tech
- Ft. Hood was a military base
And, if you’re gonna have an armed guard at a school, it helps if he’s present — which the one at Taft Union HS wasn’t . . .
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Fox and Newscorp US? Didn’t put in any bids for sponsorship. Didn’t even try to support them. Only two media outlets to do this.
You know who made the largest bid? GE/NBC.
You’d think Fox News viewers would be questioning why their network, who actually claimed to be the only one on their side, wouldn’t put a wooden nickel into supporting the event, while the big, bad boogeyman NBC literally put their money where their mouth is…
But no. They’re over on Fox Nation, worshipping the ground GE walks on for this. Their outrage/praise is that selective.
http://nation.foxnews.com/nbc/2013/01/11/nbc-sponsors-biggest-gun-show-us
No, I’m not letting that go- not for a while.
“Compassionate Conservatism” in action . . .
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a) most mass murderers are men
b) the weapon of choice is guns
c) guns don’t kill, mostly men kill
d) CONservatism is a Patriarchy
e) we will close ranks and denounce women as a distraction while supporting gun ownership
f) more children will be murdered but the Patriarchy will remain Intact (this isn’t a ‘gun’ issue, it’s a Male Dominance Issue)
Mission Accomplished!
Once you are born you’re fair game.
But when it comes to regulating guns to curb school shootings, and lessen the impact of the ones that still happen… fuck the children.
Yeah, I’m gonna go throw up now.