On CNN this morning, in a quote captured by Rush Limbaugh on his program today (but predictably ignored by David Edwards covering the broadcast at Raw Story), Carol Costello told viewers that "no one is talking about overturning the Second Amendment or confiscating guns in America."
Wow. What hermetically sealed cave have you been living in during the past few weeks, Carol -- or for that matter, as Limbaugh effectively asked, where have you been during the past 4-1/2 decades? Here's some of what Rush had to say in response (bolds are mine):
You see? This is a great illustration of exactly what I'm talking about. Here is a woman -- she's an anchorette, she's an infobabe at a major cable news outlet -- who is clueless. "What could an executive order do? Nobody's talking about overturning the Second Amendment." Carol, I'm 62. My whole life they have been dreaming of "overturning the Second Amendment," and for many of these years they have said so!
And everybody knows this.
Where have you been?
"No one's talking about overturning the Second Amendment. Nobody's confiscating guns." Why are gun sales at an all-time high? Why are people running out and buying guns at a record pace? The NRA has gained more than 100,000 new members in the last 18 days. Why is that? The media has done nothing but try to destroy the NRA the last 18 days. The last 18 days they have tried to humiliate, destroy, obliterate Wayne LaPierre, the NRA, and anybody else associated with it.
People are buying gun at a record clip, joining the NRA at a record clip.
... What are they afraid of? They know who Obama is. They know what Obama and Biden are talking about when they start throwing around executive orders as they talk about "the gun problem." To a liberal, what is "the gun problem"? That they exist! That is the problem, to a leftist, to a Democrat. The problem is the guns exist.
Therefore, what is their solution?
If the problem is the existence of guns, the solution is, get rid of 'em. That's like 1 + 1 = 2. They don't get it, and somebody who points this out is obviously an extremist, wacko, Dick Dastardly kind of guy. That's me.
Here are some of the "no ones" who have talked about gun confiscation since the Newtown, Connecticut massacre:
- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a "no one" who governs the fourth-most populous state in the union, told an Albany radio station on December 20 that "Confiscation could be an option."
- From the Daily Caller on Wednesday morning: "In an interview with the Daily Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa, state Rep. Dan Muhlbauer said governments should start confiscating semi-automatic rifles and other firearms." A state legislator; obviously another "no one."
- Several TV commentators who have the respect of the extreme left have called for confiscation, including, as Dan Gainor noted on December 16, MSNBC's Ed Schultz. You can make the case that Schultz is a "nobody," but Carol Costello would likely not be among those trying to make it.
- At the Washington Examiner on December 21, Joel Gehrke reported that "Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that she and other gun control advocates are considering a law that would create a program to purchase weapons from gun owners, a proposal that could be compulsory." A compulsory buyback such as Ms. Nobody Feinstein proposes is really confiscation with compensation.
As to those who have been talking about or repealing the Second Amendment or have taken concrete action to try to repeal it -- extralegally in all cases, because no one who doesn't like the right to keep and bear arms ever proposes trying to do it the proper way, i.e., trying to pass a constitution amendment which would repeal it -- there are at least the following:
- The four Supreme Court justces who dissented in the 2008 Heller decision which (we hope) established once and for all that the Second Amendment relates to an individual's right, not just the rights of a collective "militia."
- The four Supreme Court justces who dissented in the 2010 McDonald decision which ruled that, as described at the link, "the right of an individual to 'keep and bear arms' protected by the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and applies to the states."
- President Obama himself, specifically in work done in conjunction with an initiative at the Joyce Foundation for several years beginning in 1999. The objective of the project was "the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment" by stacking respected law review publications with anti-Second Amendment diatribes, giving court judges a falsely driven impression that the tide of legal opinion was turning.
- More recently, just a few who have weighed in with a wish that the Second Amendment be repealed include: Kurt Eichenwald at Vanity Fair, Myles Spencer at MinnPost.com, Edward Falzon at the Huffington Post, and probably half of the other items listed in a Google News search on "repeal the Second Amenmdent" (in quotes).
Sorry, Carol Costello. Plenty of people, quite a few with political power, are "talking about overturning the Second Amendment or confiscating guns in America" -- and they are quite serious.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
