There is a reason the left loves to live by Rahm Emanuel’s mantra of ‘Never let a serious crisis go to waste’. When there is a national outcry to ‘do something’, we are prone to making decisions anchored in emotional responses rather than thoughtful principle.
In the wake of the school shooting in Florida, there was an outpouring of grief and pain. Understandably, parents wanted action — ANY action — to be taken to assure them they would never again face the pain and fear they felt that day.
A scant 23 days after that shooting, a law was passed, bearing the name of that school. ‘Something’ was done. The question of whether it was the RIGHT thing would have to wait for later… as it was considered in the courts.
A Florida appeals court ruled Wednesday that the state’s ban on concealed carry by adults ages 18 to 20 violates the Second Amendment, finding that young adults are entitled to the same constitutional protections as law-abiding adults over the age of 20.
In a sweeping opinion, the court said 18-year-olds can serve in the military and defend the nation but face restrictions on their ability to exercise the same self-defense rights available to older adults.
“Eighteen- to 20-year-olds can defend the country without restriction but can only utilize their Second Amendment right to self-defense with severe restrictions,” Judge Spencer D. Levine wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeals.
“Restricting 18- to 20-year-olds — members of the same ‘political community’ as other law-abiding adults — from rights to self-defense would make the Second Amendment a ‘second-class’ right,” Levine wrote. — NYPost
That’s the news.
Now here’s some opinion.
If the left can claim to be masters of any one thing, it would be in harnessing emotional arguments to drive political agendas. It’s why they can have so many different responses to seemingly identical events, like mass shootings. Who is the shooter, who are the targets, and what is the locale.
If it’s the South Side of Chicago…
The news of the shooting will never see the light of day beyond (perhaps) the local news. Not just Chicago, either. If it’s some other place where the real problem is an outcropping of urban decay, shootings won’t even make a blip in the news cycle.
When it’s a politically inconvenient example like Iryna Zarutska, they pivot away from that story as quickly as possible. We have politicians actively taking down memorials and murals made in her honor. More recently, Karmelo Anthony is being elevated by some as a ‘victim’ after fatally stabbing another kid in the heart.
But if political activists both inside and outside the media can leverage a racial injustice story, however ludicrous (see: Daniel Penny), or a school shooting (demonizing gun ownership) the rush to make it a national story.
The left watches for an opportunity to turn an event into political action. When they find one that meets their criteria — be it Charlottesville (with some very sketchy involvement by the SPLC), BLM, ICE, No Kings, gun rights, the Dobbs Decision, or any of a thousand permutations of the recurring cast of characters who just happen to be around for agitating in the front row of protests in cities around the country for causes whose only unifying thread is the billionaire leftwing donors who keep funding them and providing the printed signs and the flags of whichever country or cause happens to be the Current Thing. Ukraine one week. Palestine another. Trans the week after that. Then maybe an eco cause or solidarity with Venezuela or Cuba.
When the right cause comes along to prompt ‘direct action’, they shift into high gear. Activists organize. They flood town halls. They fill panels on the news shows. They lead rallies. ‘Grassroots’ protests. They sing cheesy songs. The usual Hollywood flunkies pay homage to the cause du jour.
And true to Alinsky’s Rule 7,”A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag”, they pivot to the next thing as the news cycle shifts, so the public can be swept along with fresh energy.
But along the way, they have usually found some way to move the political ball down the field. Pushing policy, elevating ‘subject matter experts’, shifting the Overton Window.
Which brings us to how we got to this being a story in the first place: politicians crafting legislation that is based on fear or outrage, rather than weighing the benefits and limitations of a given course of action.
