U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Let’s talk reality and fantasy in Virginia,” Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak instructs her readers in a Monday opinion piece that does exactly that, although, not as she intended (at least with those informed enough to recognize who’s projecting magical thinking). Naturally, she has to ease into her thesis with a few horror stories, just to get her marks properly primed.
So Dvorak tells them about a motorist whose car was hit by celebratory New Year’s Day gunfire shot off by criminal morons who ignore police warnings. She recounts a woman shot in a “domestic dispute”—but fails to mention the “alleged” perp was a convicted felon and “prohibited person. She similarly fails to mention that the “alleged” cop blaster fleeing a traffic stop “has a long record of being pulled over—and arrested.” And unsurprisingly, when recounting the tale of the Lynchburg McDonald’s attack, suffice it to say she did not see fit to remind readers of all the “gun laws” the suspect disregarded.
“Shattered glass, shattered bones, shattered lives,” Dvorak “solemnly” intones with faux moral authority. “This the reality of gunfire in Virginia. Yes, Virginia, you have a gun problem.”
Really? Virginia is the headquarters home of the National Rifle Association, and a cursory scan of the news feeds turns up no evidence of any of its five million heavily-armed yet peaceable members shooting guns in the air, or at their wives, police officers or fast-food workers (and you know there’d be screaming national headlines if they had). It would seem, at least to someone grounded in reality, that Virginia’s problems are not with the “progressive” fantasy that guns cause anything.
Dvorak presses on, raising the tired old “developed world” canard that cherry-picks countries to exclude those with restrictive disarmament edicts and high rates of violence. She also seems to think her case is bolstered by mentioning the Virginia Beach massacre, all the while ignoring the gun owner victim who wishes she had listened to her instincts instead of obeying the city’s “gun-free zone” mandate.
Instead, she represents Bloomberg Astroturf as grassroots and praises the infringements being enabled by elitist money and politically manipulated immigration demographics, including:
“There are measures to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, bump stocks and silencers. There are proposals to require background checks on all firearms sales and transfers, as well as limit handgun purchases to one a month. And there is a move to adopt the same kind of ‘red flag law’ in at least a dozen other states that allow law enforcement to temporarily remove guns from people deemed a threat to themselves or others, thwarting domestic violence shootings and suicides.”
You know, effectively neuter the militia of the whole people, supposedly guaranteed by the federal and Virginia constitutions and deemed “necessary to the security of a free State.” That and go full Queen of Hearts (What could be more preposterously un-American than “Sentence first. Verdict afterward”?).
“It’s pretty common sense,” Dvorkak absurdly insists. Plus, she gives a nod to farmers and Fudds, while advancing the indefensible meme that the Founders risked it all to hunt ducks.
But we gun owners are the ones not living in reality, she charges.
“The gun guys are scared out of their minds that someone’s going to come and take their guns. (Again, fantasy),” she asserts.
I know professionally trained and experienced colleagues who are rightfully concerned about gun-grabbers who don’t know when to quit and who are trying to cow us into surrender, but to dismiss that as being “scared out of their minds” would be a most critical miscalculation. And how many more indicators do we need, from “Hell, yes!” Beto to a retired SCOTUS judge calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment to conclude insistence that “No one is talking about taking your guns” is a lie? Sure they are, and they have been for a long time. Only a liar, an ignoramus or both would claim otherwise.
“They live in a make-believe world where they are the heroes and the patriots under attack,” Dvorak sneers. By “they,” assume she means Americans who, along with their forebears, built this country and have always tried to be patriotic, law-abiding and productive, but now see themselves being portrayed as “deplorables,” as “haters,” and even as “terrorists.” Meanwhile, newly-emboldened and unreconstructed socialists, abetted by a salivating DSM, egg on usurpers to deny what Founder Tench Coxe recognized as “the birthright of an American.”
And of course, the U.N. wants our guns but just currently lacks the means to force the issue. They say so openly and speculations by a handful (but attributed to all of us) on trucks being routed for delivery don’t change that. But at this point, Dvorkak has descended into full Alinsky Rule 5 Ridicule and relieves us of any obligation to meet her point-for-point.
Our “sanctuary cities” are populated by “extremists,” to provide “safe spaces for imaginary cowboys,” she sneers. “Good guys with a gun” are a myth, she insists, in spite of example after example where that has proven exactly what was needed, as recently seen again in a church in Texas.
One wonders what Dvorak or her snotty WaPo colleagues would be prepared to do in a like situation. At a minimum, they’d prove capable of being even more useless.
“They are people who want a culture war, a fight, a reason to feel powerful and superior to the people who are in hospitals, doctor’s offices and funeral homes living with the reality of an unhealthy and irrational obsession with guns,” the self-styled superior Dvorak accuses. Actually, the culture war is being initiated by those attacking a uniquely American culture that has made this the go-to location the rest of the world is desperate to get into. The “irrational and unhealthy obsession” comes from those who reject the most egalitarian power-sharing arrangement yet devised, and instead demand a totalitarian “monopoly of violence.” And as for doctors, some yet exist who have the right prescriptions to heal bodies as well as the body politic.
But her job is done. Dvorak’s got the mighty Washington Post to amplify her voice. Any rebuttal – like this one – will be on a much smaller platform and mostly relegated to the echo chamber. And she’s not the only one, because the rest of the media is piling on using the same technique of ridicule, trivialization, and dismissal, such as “Don’t believe the scaremongering on gun legislation” in The Roanoke Times.
How paranoid is it to take exception to others, whose edicts are backed by force of arms, and who presume to limit your rights by dictating how much of them you may claim at any given time and prescribing where you may not claim them at all? That’s exactly what “one handgun a month” and a patchwork quilt of “local gun ordinances” that supplant “the supreme Law of the Land” do.
“Dan Casey knows a little bit about a lot of things but not a heck of a lot about most things,” the screed author’s profile statement tells us. “That doesn’t keep him from writing about them, however.”
Obviously.
“So keep him honest!” readers are encouraged.
“Comments disabled,” they are then informed.
Look for further such manipulative efforts to dominate the media, especially as “Lobby Day” approaches and as more Virginia communities make their determinations to defy infringements known. And don’t discount the potential for an escalation in hostilities as tensions increase from the deranged and hate-filled fantasists of the left. Remember that with “progressives,” every day is Opposite Day, and the projection is strong in them. Their accusations of fantasy and reality denial notwithstanding, we know with whom the delusional disorder resides.
Interesting times lay ahead and we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Let’s hope no one here shrinks from continued preparation for them or loses heart due to insulting rants from yapping and clueless media dwarfs.
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine observed in The American Crisis. Chances are we may soon find out who among us are mere “sunshine patriots,” and more importantly, who are not.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.