The disarmament of American civilians is progressing at a breakneck pace and is being carried out by enemies of liberty across all bands of the political and social spectra, from the White House to the court house.
The anti-gun mindset in the judiciary is evident in this story reported by The Oregonian this week.
Kenneth Walker, a Multnomah County, Oregon, Circuit Court judge for nearly 10 years, looked at a man he was sentencing to prison for manslaughter and attempted murder and launched into an anti-gun rant that was as unhinged as it would be unconstitutional if actually implemented.
“If I could I would take all the guns in America, put them on big barges and go dump them in the ocean,” Walker declared to the defendant. “Nobody would have a gun. Not police, not security, not anybody. We should eliminate all of them. We could save 33,000 people a year if we didn’t have guns in this country.” Of course, that is not how “disarmament” works in the real world. Should the guns be confiscated, the government and the criminal element would still possess them, and the people would be defenseless.
Not content to descant in favor of absolute disarmament, the judge then added mistakes of fact to his disregard of the Constitution. “Australia after a major shooting rounded up all the guns, and they haven’t had near the death that we do here in this country,” he said.
But as this writer reported recently regarding the effectiveness of gun control Down Under:
“Melbourne is in the grip of an unprecedented wave of gun violence.”
Thus begins a report published [recently] in the Australian newspaper The Age of a “three-day investigative series that should concern every citizen of a metropolis that has repeatedly won the accolade of “world’s most livable city.”
The situation is critical according to the article. “Gun-related crime has surged,” the writers declare desperately, and “innocent people have been killed.”
What do the authors of the series suggest as a solution to the crescendo of crime? “Concerted action” [must be] taken by those who make laws and those who enforce them.”
Then, the paper presents the facts and figures that detail the depravity into which their once peaceful city has descended:
The facts are chilling and compelling. In as little as five years, gun crimes have more than doubled. Some very dangerous people are involved; in 2015 alone, more than 750 people with serious criminal convictions were caught carrying guns. That’s up a staggering five times since 2011. Shootings have literally become a weekly event.
Crimes related to firearm possession have more than doubled in the past five years. The number of young criminals has rocketed; almost 1500 people aged between 20 and 34 committed a gun offence [sic] last year, more than twice the number five years ago. A culture of carrying, and using, guns is becoming worryingly entrenched in criminal circles.
Not surprisingly, Judge Walker didn’t bother explaining to the court and the convicted how he would suggest that all the guns be confiscated or by whom.
Ironically, Walker offered his opinion while addressing a man whose actions evince the indisputable inability to make the purposefully lawless obey the law. Oregon Live published the following summary of the defendant’s deadly rampage:
Marcell Lee Daniel Jr. had unleashed 30 bullets during an afternoon drive-by shooting of an innocent man on a North Portland sidewalk. The man, Andrew Coggins Jr., 24, died.
The shooting happened about 2:45 p.m. on June 30, 2014, as Coggins was standing in a grassy median in front of the New Columbia planned community at 4900 N. Fessenden St. talking to a friend next to a broken down Grand Marquis Mercury.
An unidentified driver pulled up and Daniel, a passenger, fired the barrage of 9 mm bullets. Two struck Coggins, including a fatal bullet that entered his back and traveled to his chest. Another man suffered a grazing wound.
No one else was hit, but bullets lodged in the nearby home of an 8-year-old boy. It was a warm summer day and children played in the streets and at McCoy Park, less than a block away.
The problem with panaceas such as that offered by Judge Walker is that they leave the target population — armed criminals — completely untouched and unaffected, while the law-abiding will submit to the confiscation — as they submit to any law — leaving them unarmed and more vulnerable than ever to the terror of the violent and lawless.
Walker told Oregon Live that he made this “remarkable” spectacle because he is frustrated by all the deaths caused by firearms.
Again, Walker’s frustration is misplaced, as all guns are inert — that is to say, they cannot act, but must be acted upon — and cannot commit any crime. To accomplish that worthwhile goal, one would need to outlaw law-breaking.
While gun ownership can be legislatively proscribed, the madness and callousness that compels one person to kill another person with a gun (or any other weapon) cannot be cured by statutes. Thus Walker’s solution is no solution at all.
Photo: AP Images
