Not Pullin' My Weight

I haven't been pulling my weight around here since Publicola asked me to stop by and guest-blog for him while he's gone. Frankly, I haven't even been doing that much gun/RKBAblogging at my own place, and of course that stuff's the primary product over here. Now I'm feelin' bad, so something I posted a couple of days ago that's on-point, and on which I'll expand a little further:

Marion Barry is angry about being robbed in his southeast Washington, D.C., apartment, but he's not out for revenge against the young men who did it.

The D.C. councilman and former four-term mayor appealed to the robbers to turn lves in, saying he doesn't want them prosecuted. . . . (Link.)

Barry vowed not to move from his home in the council district he represents. But he said he will push for tougher gun control laws. Last session he offered a bill mandating a 10-year sentence for those caught with a gun. So far, a hearing has not been scheduled, but Barry hopes to see action on it this year. (Link.)

Two quick points:

(1) Guns are effectively banned in D.C. Have been for the past thirty years.

(2) Marion wants a ten-year mandatory sentence for possessing a gun, presumably in order to further deter possession of firearms in the District, but he doesn't want people who commit robberies using guns to be prosecuted. Hmm. Ponder that on the Tree of Woe!

Although Marion Barry is a joke, and generally shouldn't be taken as representative of anyone other than Marion Barry, I think his positions on this situation actually pretty well exemplify the mindset of a great many liberal gun controllers. It has to do with a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of human beings. Leftists largely believe that people are basically good, and that anyone who does evil must do so not as a moral agent, but under the compulsion of some force beyond his or her control. Thus leftists need to find some external force to assume the role of moral agent for wrongdoers. For many leftists, that moral agent is guns. Thus the desire to ban guns while hesitating to punish wrongdoers -- who, by definition, are not culpable for their actions if they're not acting as moral agents.

Posted by Matt Rustler at January 5, 2006 11:33 PM | TrackBack