By now it has become a familiar charade to anyone watching the gun debate in America:
As soon as any newsworthy crime is committed by a criminal with a gun, before the details of that crime are even clear, people come out of the woodwork—like motorists who happen upon a car wreck 10 minutes after the fact—to offer their uninvolved, uninformed and unqualified “expert opinions” on the cause.
They blame gun owners. They attack the 5 million law-abiding members of the NRA. And they indict your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms
Last week we saw it yet again, after a murder-suicide at UCLA.
After a man drove from Minnesota to Los Angeles and apparently killed a professor before killing himself, nearly before the ambulances had even arrived on the scene, all manners of self-appointed busybodies piled on to offer their “expert opinions” on why the crime took place.The Twitter blitzkrieg grew more outlandish, outrageous and nonsensical by the minute.
For example, 35 minutes after UCLA’s alert system issued an “active shooter” warning on the campus—before police were even sure the shooting was over—Igor Volsky, a deputy director at the leftist Center for American Progress, ran off to Twitter to pronounce:
Fox commenting how it’s sad that UCLA has webpage about shootings. Even sadder that network is mouthpiece 4 @NRA propaganda about gun reform
As fast as electrons run down a race of copper, other self-appointed experts jumped on to use the event, and whatever celebrity or following they might have, to push their own agendas and promote their own careers by latching onto the anti-gun narrative.
Within minutes of the shooting, actress Debra Messing took a selfie and pasted it into a tweet:
HORRENDOUS Watching news about shooting at UCLA with casualties while taking selfie 2bring awareness to Gun Violence pic.twitter.com/ws1DAHQpHb
— Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) June 1, 2016
What a convenient way for an actress who needs face time to get herself a free publicity selfie!
Soon after, as the Daily Caller reports, CNN’s Sally Kohn jumped at the chance to display her own digital “awareness bracelet” through her own Twitter sanctimony:
Praying for everyone at #UCLA. And knowing prayers aren’t enough to end scourge of gun violence. #Enough — Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) June 1, 2016
For NFL non-starter Chris Kluwe—who couldn’t get a punting contract and who blamed bigotry for his firing from the Vikings—the UCLA shooting was a chance to lash out and blame others:
Thanks, gun nuts and @NRA. Just. Thanks. You do so much for the world. So. F---ing. Much. Harm. https://t.co/nVp5MASBE2 — Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft) June 1, 2016
From there, Kluwe went off on a tireless and tiresome Twitter harangue, ending with:
Chris KluweVerified account
@ChrisWarcraft
3. The NRA opposes gun control.
4. Only a bad person would want to cause more deaths.
5. The NRA has guns.
What a convenient way for an actress who needs face time to get herself a free publicity selfie!From across the Atlantic, discredited former CNN host Piers Morgan went off half-cocked, as usual, immediately blaming the shooting—which was committed with a pistol—on a “machine gun.”
And the Twitter blitzkrieg grew more outlandish, outrageous and nonsensical by the minute.
Maybe the most representative of them all was offered by Wil Wheaton, an actor who appeared in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “The Big Bang Theory”:
Wil WheatonVerified account
@wilw
F--- the NRA.
We’ve edited out the profanity in these, but you get the idea.
You know, it’s a testament to the empowering nature of the Internet that an actress can hitch her publicity “selfie” to a Twitter feed discussing today’s headlines ... or that some out-of-work actor can garner some attention ... or that some CNN talking head can officially register her outrage at the “scourge of gun violence” ... or that Piers Morgan can lob a digital spitball at American gun owners from the other side of the Atlantic ... through the magic of social media.
And it’s charming that people whose sole claim to fame is that they can kick a football, or read a Telepromter, or memorize some sitcom drivel feel compelled to lecture and regale us all with their learning and wisdom and sage advice about the causes of crime.
But as usual, these actors and athletes and sundry celebrities get it all wrong:
The professor who was murdered at UCLA was in the supposedly safe “Gun Free Zone” of a college campus in one of the most anti-gun and gun-restricting enclaves of the state that has more anti-gun laws than any other state in the nation.
California’s waiting periods didn’t stop him. California’s gun bans didn’t stop him. Not one of California’s countless anti-gun laws could stop the UCLA shooter, either.
The only thing that might have stopped that bad guy with a gun was a good guy with a gun.
And yet, these actors and athletes and celebrities sit in their gated communities and their insulated, guarded offices and villas … and tap out their silly, sanctimonious and wildly inaccurate tweets whose primary purpose, if anything, is to deny others the same level of protection that they consider their due.
What’s entertaining is that as these luminaries wax philosophical and offer their obligatory hand-wringing, goatee-tugging, and self-righteous concern over “the scourge of gun violence,” most Americans see their pretense for what it is—repellent, abhorrent, blatant hypocrisy.
These people are hypocrites who “debate” in bad faith. If they’re not hypocrites, they’re uniformed fools. Whatever the case, every American gun owner should call them out for their insincerity, hypocrisy and self-serving agendineering.
