The madhouse congress: Diana DeGette

In the once and future swamp that is Washington, D.C., many people pursue many agendas, to do with how to wield the powers of the state. One presumes they are well intentioned, for the most part. We may think that some of them have intentions that are wrongheaded, but that is in the nature of political debate.

We can at the least expect them to be well informed. But it is not so with House of Reprehensibles member Diana DeGette (D-Colorado). She is the lead sponsor of a bill to forbid to us peons ammo magazines of normal size. Here is her explanation of why that would be a good idea: After all, there are lots of these normal magazines already around. Her response:

“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those know they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”

People who have actually fired a gun before were quick to point out to Rep. DeGette that you can reuse a magazine many times. An excuse was soon forthcoming from her office:

“The Congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years, and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism,” Johnson said. “Quite frankly, this is just another example of opponents of common-sense gun violence prevention trying to manipulate the facts to distract from the critical issue of keeping our children safe and keeping killing machines out of the hands of disturbed individuals. It’s more political gamesmanship that stands in the way of responsible solutions.”  (Source of quotes: Denver Post)

Talk about digging yourself in deeper! Not only are clips reusable too, they last even longer, in many cases, than magazines. In my collection I have some old clips: WWI Springfield clips, M1 Garand clips from WWII, Mauser clips of a type that spanned both wars. They are still perfectly usable. So long as there is spring pressure to hold the cartridges together they are good to go.

No good can come of it if we allow gun policy to be dictated by people who make stuff up as they go along, then make up more stuff when they are caught, and try to point the finger by saying naysayers don't want to keep children safe from killing machines and disturbed individuals. Actually, I'm all for safe children. Let's get some effective security going at our schools and take a real look at the problems of those disturbed individuals.

The amount of falsehood or ignorance in this supposed "broad national conversation" is astounding. The President declared lately that the AR-15 is "fully automatic." He says they are battlefield weapons, but pray tell, what battlefield? He goes on saying that up to 40% of gun sales happen without background checks, which has been roundly debunked, even by such administration-friendly sources as the Washington Post. Vice President Biden is all for arming yourself with a double barrel shotgun, firing warning shots and shooting it through your door!

This is not a broad national conversation. This is babble in a madhouse. It is not substantively about safe children or disturbed individuals. It is about your guns and your rights, and it isn't making any sense.