Newsmax columnist Michael Reagan spent a lot of time ranting after May’s spate of mass shootings — not about the prominent role guns played in them, of course, but about others talking about that role and other things that clash with right-wing narratives. When President Biden pointed out that the perpetrator of the Buffalo massacre, Reagan used his May 20 column to play whataboutism by hyping massacres committed by non-white people:
But as usual he was very selective when pointing out recent examples of racially motivated mass murders. No mention of the angry “Black supremacist” who plowed through a parade of white men, women and children at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisc., last year, killing six and injuring 60.
No mention of the mentally troubled Black man — another racist “Black supremacist” who openly hated whites, Asians and even some Blacks — who shot up a New York City subway train last month and injured 10 people.
No mention of another apparently mentally troubled Black man who’s accused of shooting but not killing three Korean women in a Dallas hair salon last week.
And you know the Bidens won’t be visiting the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods in Southern California to show their sympathy for the deadly shooting that happened there earlier this week.
The Asian shooter — an American citizen born in Taiwan — planned to kill many members of the congregation, who are Taiwanese, because he doesn’t think Taiwan should be independent of China.
Like the other shootings, that potential mass shooting, which was stopped when members of the church overpowered the shooter, did not fit the Biden-media narrative that the only kind of racism in America is white and that mass murderers come in only one color and one kind of politics.
The reaction to the Buffalo tragedy by Biden, the Democrats and the liberal media was the usual “We need more, more, still more gun laws.”
But how about enforcing the d**n gun laws we’ve already got?
How about putting some teeth in so-called “Red Flag” laws?
After the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, Reagan rushed to defend guns again in his May 28 column, invoking some of his earlier COVID insanity for good measure:
In his vile speech just after the Uvalde murders, Biden yelled, “Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake.”
Which is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, the Second Amendment isn’t a hunting amendment. It’s a freedom amendment.
Regardless of what they say, the assurances they give and the fake sincerity with which the announcement is made, we can’t trust the government when it comes to our basic God-given rights.
COVID-19 proved that.
Twitter pundit Peachy Keenan explained the situation in only 240 characters: “The trouble with ‘common sense gun legislation’ is that the people who turned ’15 days to stop the spread’ into ‘get the vaccine or we take you off the organ transplant list’ are the same ones who swear they don’t want to take all our guns.”
And, yes, liberals were somehow to blame for this massacre:
What no one on the left wants to discuss is the cultural sickness discussed earlier that is currently plaguing America. A sickness the left has done much to create.
The Uvalde, Texas shooter, like the Parkland, Florida shooter, like the Sandy Hook, (in Newton Connecticut) shooter and so many more had no father in his life.
None of them had a positive male role model in their lives to teach them how to live.
What they did have was dope-smoking and a poisonous social media and online gaming culture producing violent results.
Instead of looking at the motivation of these murderers, the left focuses on the tool used.
Reagan didn’t mention that the perpetrator would not have been able to murder so many children if he didn’t have that gun. He did, sprurpsingly, diverge from right-wing dogma and appear to endorse red-flag laws in his June 4 column — though, weirdly, of the do-it-yourself variety, not if the government is involved:
We also learned that the 18-year-old killer, as is so often the case, was known by his family, the authorities and his schoolmates to be a mentally unstable and scary gun nut, yet no one “red-flagged” him as a potential threat to himself or others.
And how many times have we heard stories about how the parents of future mass murderers continued to let them have access to guns even after it had become obvious to them that their children were dangerously disturbed?
What we’ve seen over and over again in these mass shootings is that everyone’s waiting for someone else to do the right things, but then no one does the right things.
[…]No one expects Biden to know what he’s talking about when he talks about guns, and the dishonest major media are too much on the gun-control team to discuss other sensible, doable ways of preventing future school shootings.
Putting well-armed security guards in our schools is extremely important, obviously, but it is parents who are the first line of defense.
If you realize your kid is out of control and truly dangerous, take their guns away.
Give them to a neighbor. Lock them in a safe.
And please don’t wait for the government, the school principal or anyone else to red flag your child as a threat to themselves or others.
Do the right thing. Throw the red flag yourself.
Despite his own status as a right-wing celebrity prop for Reagan acolytes, he mocked Matthew McCouaughey for being one in speaking out against guns in his June 10 column — while, again surprisingly, agreeing with much of what he said:
McConaughey got — and deserved — praise for much of what he said in the White House briefing room on Tuesday.
Sure, he was a celebrity prop being exploited by President Biden and House Democrats to sell their hysterical and unconstitutional gun control ideas to the American public.
But while McConaughey is definitely no closet conservative Republican, he owns and shoots guns and is not a stereotypical Hollywood liberal who wants to disarm every American citizen — except their own bodyguards, of course.
In a city full of Democrats exploiting the latest national tragedy for their own political gain, McConaughey came across as refreshingly reasonable, sensible and bipartisan on several gun-control issues.
Most Americans would agree with him that you should be 21 before you are allowed to buy an AR-15.
Most Americans would agree with him that there should be a cooling off period between the time you buy a handgun and the time you get it.
And most Americans would also favor his call for the increased use of “red flag” laws that allow authorities to take guns away from mentally disturbed persons who are a threat to themselves or the rest of us.
McConaughey’s rational approach to solving a highly contentious and seemingly unsolvable political issue reminded me of another movie actor I knew pretty well – Ronald Reagan.
Reagan then went on to claim that his father would have supported such restrictions — but he didn’t mention that his fellow right-wingers and even the gun lobby oppose red-flag laws, and they also object to raising the age to buy an AR-15. So much for common-sense solutions.