Des Moines Register editorial: "Death to gun owners!"

[midnight rambler]

Why, it's another Gannett newspaper -

http://moonbattery.com/?p=23424

Of course cowards like this wouldn't dare get their hands dirty, they'd simply send out hired thugs.

[mick silver]

the same cowards are the ones that run to someone every time they need help . there never able to make it on there own

[palani]

Here is the follow-up. Kaul comes up with some far-out ideas. He suggested the government convert Des Moines into a seaport back in the '70s. Had his suggestion been taken seriously there would be far less unemployment today and less need for a superhighway corridor from Mexico to Canada.



http://abetteriowa.desmoinesregister.com/2013/01/06/kaul-deploying-satire-at-my-own-risk/


Kaul: Deploying satire (at my own risk)

I think I hit a nerve.

I recently had a thoughtful, well-reasoned column (“Nation Needs a New Agenda on Guns,” Dec. 30) suggesting ways to cut down on gun violence in our ever more violent society. It proposed, among other things:

Repealing the Second Amendment and with it the right to buy assault weapons at will.
Declaring the National Rifle Association a terrorist organization and making membership illegal.
Confiscating all assault, semi-automatic and other military-style weapons designed to kill large numbers of people very quickly.

As I said, thoughtful, well reasoned.

I also proposed, satirically and more in sorrow than in anger, tying House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to the back of a pickup truck and dragging them around until they agreed to exert some control over guns.

Well, you would have thought I’d suggested selling Sarah Palin to the Taliban. The Internet exploded in outrage, and emails by the hundreds — hundreds! — came flooding in. My phone started ringing incessantly, too.

Most of the emails were abusive and a few were borderline threatening. Gun owners, it seems, are a sensitive group whose feelings are easily hurt.

Who knew?

I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose. I’ve rapped the gun control hornets’ nest with a stick many times before in my career — dozens, actually — without much effect. This time, in the wake of those 20 children ruthlessly murdered in Newtown, Conn., I decided to hit it with a baseball bat. It worked. I got their attention.

Gun owners seemed particularly upset at the suggestion that Boehner and McConnell be dragged. The tactic, which dates back to the days of lynch mobs, became a more modern nightmare in the wake of the 1998 dragging murder of James Byrd by white supremacists in Texas. Many of the people I heard from said I should be arrested for threatening federal officials, and one said he had personally reported me to the FBI.

Let me say this about that: That wasn’t a suggestion to be taken literally. I don’t believe Boehner and McConnell should be dragged. I was using it as a metaphor for making politicians pay a price for their inability to confront the gun lobby. It’s a literary device.

Think of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” written 200 years ago, in which he suggested that the Irish famine could be relieved if babies of poor families were confiscated at 12 months and sold to rich people, who could eat them.

Swift, an Irishman, didn’t mean that literally. It was a satiric device to underline the misery that had been visited on the Irish by their English landlords.

So too with my dragging of the Republican leaders.

Neither do I really want to repeal the Second Amendment. I merely wanted to point out that it is being misinterpreted and misused.

I may now be closer to believing the NRA is an organization of terrorists, however. I’ve been getting hostile telephone calls at all hours of the day and night for the past several days. Why would you call a stranger at 3 a.m. if you weren’t trying to frighten him? It’s what terrorists do — frighten people.

I rest my case.

The more reasoned of the angry emails I’ve received recite the NRA catechism in justifying the Second Amendment — outlaw guns and only outlaws will have them, blah, blah blah.

But none of them mentioned assault weapons. Not one. And that’s what we’re talking about. Not hunting or target practice — assault weapons.

There’s no justification for unfettered access to them.

The NRA looked at the Newtown massacre and saw a need for … wait for it … better mental health screening in our schools. Some even tried to blame autism. That’s like blaming World War II on the Germans’ propensity for head colds.

Perhaps my column jumped the shark a bit. I was angry. But worse would have been to watch those little bodies being carried out of the Newtown school, shrug, and say “Gee, that’s terrible. We’re going to have to do something about that someday, if the NRA approves.”

That would have been immoral.

[Twisted Titan]

The more reasoned of the angry emails I’ve received recite the NRA catechism in justifying the Second Amendment — outlaw guns and only outlaws will have them, blah, blah blah.

But none of them mentioned assault weapons. Not one. And that’s what we’re talking about. Not hunting or target practice — assault weapons.

There’s no justification for unfettered access to them.




Because in the History of The world much less in the past 60 years Gubbermints have never turned on it people and commenced in wholesale slaugther where not even childeren were spared from meeting the most horiffic end imaginable.

Glad i got clear on that.

[chad]

my neighbor's cessna is an "assault airplane" if flys it in to a federal tax building. maybe he should turn it in. i don't know if i can trust him, he does own a winery.

[messianicdruid]

"Why would you call a stranger at 3 a.m. if you weren’t trying to frighten him? It’s what terrorists do — frighten people."

"Neither do I really want to repeal the Second Amendment. I merely wanted to point out that it is being misinterpreted and misused."

Why would you want the goobermint to do something to your fellow citizens that you would not do yourself? Mr. Kaul's inability to recognize or admit who is doing the misinterpreting {and misusing} is frightening.

[gunny highway]

i say, send the people who want to ban guns out to do the confiscations. they will quickly realized the error of their ways. demanding that the military do the job is chickenshit. you don't want me to have a gun, well come take it from me yourself you piece of shit.

also, what would happen to a gun owner if he wrote a similar editorial about non-gunowners, calling for their deaths, wishing ill will on them?

[palani]

my neighbor's cessna is an "assault airplane" if flys it in to a federal tax building. maybe he should turn it in.
The feds are more concerned with the registration certificate than the actual airplane. The certificate is what causes the damage in an airplane-building collision.