Land of the Screed, Home of the Slave

If pressure cookers are outlawed, only outlaws will have pressure cookers...

Retailer Williams-Sonoma is removing pressure cookers from its stores near Boston.

“It’s a temporary thing out of respect,” the manager of a store in Natick said. The move is local and the cookware will still be available on the store’s website. He referred all other questions to the company’s corporate headquarters.

Another nearby store, Crate & Barrel, is continuing to sell pressure cookers. However, it did observe a moment of silence yesterday and asked employees to wear Boston-themed clothing to honor the victims. (Investorplace.com)

At first I thought this was a joke, or perhaps a rightwing fever swamp meme gone viral, but it looks like it could be true.

After all, we law-abiding gun owners were supposed to hang our heads in shame and stand silently in the public square to be pilloried and stripped of our rights after Sandy Hook, as progressive hosannah choirs screamed "IT"S FOR THE CHILDREN!"

After Sandy Hook, President Obama and his Ploofian nudgers orchestrated an operatic assault on our emotions, complete with pictures of children and a media blitz of grieving parents, but liberty-lovers stood firm and pointed out the non-sequitur that it all was. 

We all grieve, but further circumscribing the rights of law-abiding citizens won't bring back one murder victim, and, lamentably, it won't prevent further random acts.  Nothing in that grimy fistful of bills the Senate voted down would have prevented a Loughner, Lanza or a Holmes from commiting their grim crimes.  But those of us who point this out are callous bastards.

Have we really arrived at the intellectually-vapid condition where we believe an all-powerful state can overcome random acts of human nature? Have we become so emotion-driven that we cannot intellectually separate a benign instrument from a criminal who uses it to create destruction?

There are over 300,000,000 guns in this country. In 2011, there were 8583 homicides by firearms, 19,392 suicides, and 606 firearm-related accidents.

So, percentages by firearm for murders: 0.002861%; suicides: 0.006464%; accidents: 0.000202%.

I bet the pressure cooker percentages are even less, even including accidental explosions, and let's hope no one runs the numbers on automobile deaths...

An even scarier prospect is a nefarious murderer who crafts weapons of mass destruction from whisky or microbrews, or Gaia forbid, a toilet paper bomber...

Jacob Sullum, a great libertarian American who goes after Republicans and Democrats with equal gusto,  eviscerates President Obama for playing politics with dead children.  He also skewers the left's emotion-laden, logic-free arguments.

 See also:  Atlantic - Gun Violence in America