Through the vitriol of another tiresome debate on gun control -- or "common sense gun safety legislation" as liberals have taken to robotically mouthing instead -- it is refreshing when a left winger blurts out his or her actual, underlying view on the issue.
Such was the case earlier this week with Thom Hartmann, who hosts one of the top-rated programs on that lifeless moonscape known as liberal radio, during a debate with Carl Higbie, president of the pro-gun rights Citizen League.
Hartmann's bracing candor did not come until the end of their exchange, but it was worth the wait --
HARTMANN: When Australia had their 19th major gun massacre, they did a nationwide gun buyback program, bought back some 6- or 800,000 weapons and they made it fairly simple and straightforward, it's you can still own a gun in Australia, you just have to demonstrate that you're competent and you're proficient and that you actually have a reason to own it. Now, acceptable reasons include personal protection, target practice, hunting, that's all fine. But they haven't had a mass shooting in Australia since 1998 when they did this.
A "buyback" where Aussies were given the option of surrrending their guns for compensation -- or going to prison. A Corleonesque offer they couldn't refuse as aptly described by the NRA's legislative arm.
HIGBIE: But look at the highest, the highest murder rate in the world is socialist-controlled, gun-banned Honduras. The lowest, the absolute lowest murder rate in the world is Switzerland, OK, Switzerland. You must own a gun in Switzerland.
HARTMANN: No, actually you must be in the militia in Switzerland if you're a male between the ages of 17 and 45 and your guns are held at the local community's armory. They are typically not in your house. (crosstalk)
Hartmann apparently alluding to a proposal put before Swiss voters in 2011 -- and rejected by them.
HARTMANN: With regards to Honduras, I think you have to have a conversation with Ronald Reagan about that. You know, sending death squads into a country is a great way to screw it up and we started doing that in the '80s.
Got that? Honduras' sky-high murder rate is Reagan's fault, more than a quarter of a century after he left office. Somehow George W. Bush evades responsibility for this one.
HARTMANN: None of that, Carl, nice digressions, but not of that addresses the fact that we have that all the research indicates that the more guns you have, the more people are going to die from guns, particularly suicides, accidentally deaths caused by children finding the guns, and homicides, you know, moment of passion homicides. And that for every one percent increase in gun ownership, you've got a nine-tenths of a percent increase in the homicide rate. That doesn't even include the suicide rate. More guns, more deaths. How do we get fewer guns?
Which makes it all the more perplexing, as Bill Whittle explains at Truth Revolt, that while the United States is first in the world for per capita gun ownership (90 guns per 100 Americans), we are -- wait for it -- 111th in the murder rate. The innumerable lives saved by defensive gun use once again managing to fly beneath the gun-loathing left's radar.
HIGBIE: Well, that's actually not true at all. The murder rate is much higher in Great Britain per capita than it is here in America and they banned guns.
HARTMANN: We're not talking about Great Britain, we're talking about the United States ...
While also talking about Australia ...
HARTMANN: ... and I don't recall Great Britain having had a mass shooting recently.
HIGBIE: The stats don't support that. If you really want to get to the bottom of this, it comes from ...
HARTMANN (becoming agitated, as liberals invariably do when discussing firearms): I'm not talking about murder rates, Carl! I'm talking about gun violence. I'm talking about suicide. I'm talking about children killing each other.HIGBIE: Oh, of course when you take guns away, you lose gun violence.
HARTMANN: Yes. if you take ...
HIGBIE: I'm talking about overall violence ...
HARTMANN: Well, you can talk overall violence all day long and you can pull out the example of the Democratic Republic of Congo or something or Syria ...
Or Australia, to cite an obvious example ...
HARTMANN: ...none of that is relevant. The United States right now is experiencing an epidemic of mass killings with high-powered weapons. Wouldn't it be a fairly simple process and, for that matter, outside of the advocates over at the Small Penis Gun Club over on Facebook ... outside of them, you know, the people who are just like profoundly insecure and feel the need to have a lot of guns to make up for that, why should anybody in the United States be, you know, basically collecting large quantities of weapons? I mean, we hear about these kids who have like, involved in these shootings who have five, 10, 15, 20 weapons. What the hell do you need that for?
HIGBIE: Well it's America, we don't have to answer that. I mean, what do you want, do you want to ban all guns, Thom, is that what you want to do?
HARTMANN: No, no, I don't.
No, I'd prefer a nationwide mandatory gun buyback, preferably at gunpoint.
HIGBIE: OK, what is your solution?
HARTMANN: My solution is very straightforward. When we figured out in the 19-teens and 19-tens that the automobiles that we were selling were starting to go fast enough to kill people and large numbers of people started dying as a result of them, we took some very, very simple and straightforward steps. Number one, we said that the car must be registered from the time of manufacture until it's destroyed so we always know who's responsible for it. Number two, we said you must have a driver's license. You must demonstrate that you know how to use this deadly, this deadly tool. And number three, we said you must have liability insurance so if you accidentally kill or harm somebody, they will be covered. I think it's a disgrace that the children who were killed in Newtown, if they had been killed by Adam Lanza driving as a drunk in a car, Geico would be paying each one of them, you know, a million bucks but because they were killed with guns, Congress has basically made it impossible for them to even get burial fees.
And fully a century after we imposed these "very, very simple" and "straightforward" steps to control this "deadly tool" known as the automobile, we still lose tens of thousands of lives every year to fatal accidents on our roads. Wouldn't it make more sense for the government to buy back these deadly tools and end the carnage once and for all? If only for the children. You haven't forgotten about them, have you, Thom?
HIGBIE: The fundamental difference, though, is that driving a car is not protected by a constitutional right.
HARTMANN: Actually it is.
HIGBIE: No, it's not.
HARTMANN: Yes it is. It's Article I, Section 8 -- the government has the right to appropriate money to build roads. The roads are obviously there for all of us. It's part of the commons.
HIGBIE: Roads, we're not talking about, this is vehicles, though. The issue, Thom, is ...
HARTMANN: You know, the Second Amendment, Carl, doesn't give you an individual right to own a gun either.
HIGBIE: Well, look, we've allowed our society to slip further and further away from morality. Do you really want to stop ...
HARTMANN: Exactly, yes, I would like to stop that slip, I would like to get control of these guns. I am so, so over all these men compensating for the size of their penises by trying to say, oh, I've got a gun, I'm going to go out in public with a gun, I'm going to open carry with a gun.
Former Navy SEAL Higbie, who served two combat tours in Iraq, a stellar example of this kind of man ...
HARTMANN: C'mon, Carl, this is a socio-, this is a pathology.
HIGBIE: You know, you would, and (inaudible) is going to come with a gun and, you know what, the first thing you do when an intruder with a gun comes into your house ...
HARTMANN: Is you run. You run. If you have a gun, the odds are that you will be killed.
Liberal self-defense in a nutshell -- surrender your firearms (Not to worry, Uncle Sam will give you a fair price!), then run like hell when criminals who opt to remain armed show up inside your door, confident in the knowledge that you've been disarmed rather than face a lengthy stint in that liberal utopia known as prison, where meals, rent and health care are "free" and only the guards have guns.
