Higher Taxes Unsurprisingly a Major Point in Elizabeth Warren’s Gun Control Proposal

I don’t know why I was even remotely surprised to find out that higher taxes was the main point in Elizabeth Warren’s recently rolled out gun control platform. But of all the things higher taxes can’t fix, gun violence is the one it can’t fix the most.

Not according to Warren, though.

I can’t even begin to address all the logical fallacies in the opening paragraphs of this platform– and that’s before she even gets to the actual POLICY. But just to poke a few holes in some neatly arranged bullet points:

• Our firearm homicide rate is 25 times higher than other comparable countries.

• Our firearm suicide rate is nearly 10 times higher.

• Women in the U.S. are 21 times more likely to be shot to death than women in other high-income countries, most killed by an intimate partner.

• 21 children and teenagers are shot every day.

• What does “comparable country” even MEAN???
• Suicide is an extremely complex issue and, without getting into the issue too much because a) that’s not what this article is about and b) there’s definitely more informed people out there to handle the topic, method of suicide is a particularly nuanced aspect of suicide statistics, should not really be tied to gun statistics.
• And where are women more likely to be stoned to death, hm? Beaten to death? Burned to death?
• Okay this one is actually fairly straightforward and a huge bummer which should never happen, I’m not really going to fight her on this.

Soooooo that’s the kind of “fact finding” we’re dealing with here.

Side note: I hate when liberals talk about “common sense” or “sensible” gun reform. That is vague and meaningless and gets us nowhere except you maybe get a chance to grandstand.

Anyway.

In 2017, almost 40,000 people died from guns in the United States. My goal as President, and our goal as a society, will be to reduce that number by 80%. We might not know how to get all the way there yet. But we’ll start by implementing solutions that we believe will work. We’ll continue by constantly revisiting and updating those solutions based on new public health research. And we’ll make structural changes to end the ability of corrupt extremists to block our government from defending the lives of our people — starting with ending the filibuster.

YOU. LEAVE. THAT. FILIBUSTER. ALONE.

• As president, I will immediately take executive action to rein in an out-of-control gun industry — and to hold both gun dealers and manufacturers accountable for the violence promoted by their products.
• I will break the NRA’s stranglehold on Congress by passing sweeping anti-corruption legislation and eliminating the filibuster so that our nation can no longer be held hostage by a small group of well-financed extremists who have already made it perfectly clear that they will never put the safety of the American people first.
• I will send Congress comprehensive gun violence prevention legislation. I will sign it into law within my first 100 days. And we will revisit this comprehensive legislation every single year — adding new ideas and tweaking existing ones based on new data — to continually reduce the number of gun deaths in America.

Thanks for making this super easy for me with the bullet points, Liz:

• Anyone promising executive action “immediately” is not someone I trust to hold the office of the president. That’s a sign of someone who thinks the P in POTUS stands for Dictator.
• “Sweeping legislation” gives me the same totalitarian vibes. Anyone else? Also, I’d like to just bring up my pal Ben Franklin for a sec and say that “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
• Doesn’t Congress have to, you know, PASS your legislation before you can sign it into law? YOU’RE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, NOT ALL-POWERFUL EMPRESS OF AMERICA. Good Lord, did you even show up for 8th grade civics???

Ugh. Anyway, the rest of the post is just elaborating on these bad and unconstitutional ideas, I won’t go through it all because I don’t particularly enjoy suffering. But highlights include an increased tax on guns from 10% to 30% and from ammunition from 11% to 50% so that she has more money to spend on taking away constitutional rights. LITERALLY: “to bring in new federal revenue that we can use for gun violence prevention and enforcement of existing gun laws.” Anyone who believes that “gun violence prevention” doesn’t mean the eventual repeal of the second amendment to Elizabeth Warren is fooling themselves.

All her proposals related to “keeping military-style assault weapons off our streets” were clearly written by someone who doesn’t understand anything about firearms. Like, I know barely more than nothing about firearms, and even I can tell that she’s talking nonsense.

Then she wants to “keep guns out of the hands of those at highest risk of violence” by allowing the government to decide if you’re too unfit to possess a firearm (“Extreme risk protection orders allow families and law enforcement to petition to temporarily restrict access to firearms for individuals in crisis or at elevated risk of harming themselves or others”), because that’s exactly who you want making that decision for you. But my favorite is that “guns have no place on our campuses or in our schools. Congress should improve the Gun-Free School Zones Act to include college and university campuses, and apply to individuals licensed by a state or locality to carry a firearm.” How is it lost on her that gun-free zones are the most popular place to commit mass shootings???? How can you be that dense???!

I can’t anymore. I can’t even make it to the part where she wants to hold gun manufacturers directly liable for gun crimes, you know, the way you hold knife manufacturers responsible for knifings and pharmaceutical companies liable for drug overdoses. She’s nuts, you guys, in a really scary and horrifying way. I need a break. I’m going to go relax and read about Marianne Williamson.