The Democratic Party’s disconnect from reality

The Democratic Party’s disconnect from reality
by Robert Zimmerman

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Three stories today once again illustrate better than anything the leftwing Democratic Party’s profound disconnect from reality:

Most Now Oppose an Assault Weapons Ban; Doubts About Stopping a Lone Wolf Run High (Poll)
House Democrats Introduce Bill to Ban Manufacture of ‘Assault Weapons’
Victory! New York stops sale of toy guns, levies massive fines
The first story is a new poll of the public’s opinions on the subject of gun control and the idea of banning “assault weapons” (whatever those might be). Not surprisingly, the public opposes future bans, and the trend lines show a continuing and nonstop shift away from gun control and towards gun rights that has been on-going since the 1990s.

A majority of Americans oppose banning assault weapons for the first time in more than 20 years of ABC News/Washington Post polls, with the public expressing vast doubt that the authorities can prevent “lone wolf” terrorist attacks and a substantial sense that armed citizens can help. Just 45 percent in this national survey favor an assault weapons ban, down 11 percentage points from an ABC/Post poll in 2013 and down from a peak of 80 percent in 1994. Fifty-three percent oppose such a ban, the most on record.

Indeed, while the division is a close one, Americans by 47-42 percent think that encouraging more people to carry guns legally is a better response to terrorism than enacting stricter gun control laws. Divisions across groups are vast, underscoring the nation’s gulf on gun issues.
The second story describes how, despite the above very broad and obvious poll numbers, ninety-one House Democrats today introduced a bill to ban the sale and manufacture of “assault weapons”. In announcing the bill, its lead sponsor, David Cicilline (D-Rhode Island), made this vague effort to define “assault weapon”:

Assault weapons are designed for the sole purpose of killing as many people as quickly as possible.
Since all guns are expressly designed to kill people, with some doing it faster than others, this definition is really a bit silly. At what speed of killing does Cicilline draw the line between what is or isn’t an “assault weapon?” 5 murders a minute? 10? 15? 20? 1000?

And then there is the third story, where New York’s attorney general has successfully imposed a ban on the selling of certain toy guns in New York, imposing total fines of $27K on 30 online retailers. As the writer notes,

We may not be able to put the actual criminals in jail at a reasonable rate, but by golly we’re going to stick it to those toy retailers. The 30 or so retailers are paying fines which total more than $27K. (That’s on top of [the attorney general’s] move back in August when he nailed Amazon, Kmart, Sears, Wal-Mart and ACTA for $300K, so if nothing else the state coffers are getting fatter.) If these scofflaws want to peddle their dangerous wares in the Empire State in the future they will have to be colored “white or bright red, orange, yellow, green, blue, pink or purple.”
Though the obvious goal here is to make sure a toy gun in the hands of a child cannot be mistaken for a real gun, the focus on banning toy guns, as if that will make the people of New York safer, illustrates well how reality-challenged leftwing Democrats are. New York is one of the nation’s highest crime regions (as are most places nationwide that impose strict gun control laws). Rather than focus on catching the bad guys who do this, the attorney general is spending his time going after honest businesses.

But then, this pattern is national. Democratic lawmakers everywhere are always more focused on attacking innocent citizens instead of going after the bad guys. When terrorists kill dozens, the knee-jerk response of all leftist Democrats it so ban innocent Americans from owning guns. And they are making this one of their central campaign promises at a time that Americans nationwide are making it very clear they are very strongly opposed to such bans.

This kind of disconnect from reality baffles me. Then again, it might be a very good thing, because it is going to result in many Democrats losing many more elections, something that needs to happen if we are ever going to reform that generally very corrupt and increasingly fascist political party.

One additional thought: Since the Democratic Party and the intellectual class of the United States are generally one and the same, this disconnect from reality sadly also applies to our most educated class of citizens. At a time when we need thoughtful muscular and blunt honest analysis from our intellectual elites, we instead have academics who want to hide from differing opinions because those different opinions might offend them.

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