'Gun Fanatics' Strike Again, Frighten Abortion Fanatics

Run for your lives! It’s inanimate objects!

Even by the standards of the Daily Beast/Newsweek/Whatever, there’s a remarkably silly and poorly argued piece of emotionalism masquerading as journalism by one Jamelle Bouie, in which our intrepid reporter sees a bunch of guns and freaks out:

For years, police officers in North Carolina had a choice when it came to confiscated guns. They could use them for law enforcement purposes—training, testing, examining—or they could destroy them.

But a new law passed by Republican lawmakers in the state changes that. Police officers can still use confiscated guns, but as of this week, they can’t destroy them. Instead, if a department wants to get rid of a gun, it has to sell it or auction it. Effectively, men and women who once worked to keep guns off of the streets must now moonlight as gun dealers.

The headline says it all: Gun Fanatics Score Big Victory in North Carolina. Here’s the gist of the argument:

It’s a fanaticism that hints at something elemental. It’s one thing to support and defend gun rights, which through the years have become an integral part of American identity. It’s something else entirely to oppose the destruction of guns used to commit violence and harm innocent people.

You read that right: the guns themselves committed violence and harmed innocent people, and therefore need to be destroyed before they can wound and kill again.

Even by the standards of leftist argument, this is remarkably stupid, except that in the world of magical thinking they inhabit, inanimate objects either have minds of their own, or they can exercise strange mind-control over helpless liberals and make them do crazy things. Like this guy:

Must… kill… the… Queen!

But let’s take Bouie’s argument one step farther — and apply it to the left’s fervently held belief about the sacrament of abortion. Which is to say that slightest infringement of the abortion “rights” invented by the Supreme Court during one of its periodic brain farts is the slippery slope leading to no abortion at all:

While non–gun advocates may strain to see the link between prohibiting the destruction of guns and defending the Second Amendment, it makes sense when you consider the attitude of the NRA and its supporters: any encroachment on gun rights—defined as the right to own any firearm, at any time—is a threat to all gun rights.

So what’s the difference? Well, one might be that the Second Amendment is actually part of the Constitution — and “shall not be infringed” seems fairly clear enough — and Roe v. Wade is a 1973 decision that — like Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson — eventually will be overturned, most likely on Tenth Amendment grounds. Despite the fear-mongering from the absolutist Left, this would mean that abortion would still be legal nationwide, but would return the contentious and destructive issue to the states for individual legislative solutions.

The larger question for me, though, remains: what’s it to the “non-gun advocates” — who by self-definition don’t know and don’t want to know a thing about firearms, except that they frighten them — what happens to confiscated firearms in North Carolina or anywhere else? I thought the Left was in favor of recycling. But, then, a skittish busybody’s work is never done, is it?

By the way, here’s the super-scary picture from the Beast story that vividly illustrates the threat from confiscated but still-functioning firearms. Might be some bargains here, once you tame their murderous impulses: