Turning Bethesda Into Baghdad

Mr. Bush wants to rally the nation to impose gun control on Baghdad, but he won’t lift a finger to impose gun control on Bethesda, six miles from the White House.

Personally, I’m glad Mr. Bush is focused on disarming Iraq’s madman and tracing Iraq’s Scud missiles and weapons of mass destruction. It’s a worthy project. I just wish he were equally focused on disarming America’s madmen, and supporting laws that would make it easier to trace their .223-caliber bullets and their weapons of individual destruction. A lot of us would like to see more weapons inspectors on the streets here, and in the gun shops here, not just in Baghdad.

So wrote Middle East expert Thomas Friedman on the New York Times Op-Ed page yesterday. Perhaps in a future installment, when news is slow from Baghdad, Friedman will flesh out just what kind of “gun control” he would like the president “to impose” (by martial law?) on Bethesda. What is the basis of his confidence that laws purporting to “make it easier to trace .223 bullets” would in fact work? Exactly how would he disarm America’s madmen without disarming everyone else? Exactly what would the legions of weapons inspectors that he would like to see on the streets inspect?

If he is like many gun control advocates, Mr. Friedman probably doesn’t care very much about these particulars. The alleviation of his insecurity does not require the implementation of policies that actually might reduce the threat from madmen sharpshooters — such policies are unknown, and perhaps even unknowable because they probably don’t exist. No, what he craves is something politicians are adept at delivering: a demand for tougher laws (whatever they are), denunciations of the gun lobby — in short, some “I-feel-your-pain” pronouncements that would reduce his “sense that this administration is so obsessed with Saddam it has lost touch with the real anxieties of many Americans.”

He’s not likely to get that cheap and easy reassurance from the president. But not to worry: there are candidates on the state and local level who are more than willing to provide it to him. They will probably make him feel better. But neither their rhetoric nor their policy proposals, even if passed, will do anything whatsoever for the pizza deliveryman he describes, who has “to drive around here at night, standing on people’s doorsteps with [his] back to the street….”

Say What? (2)

  1. Anonymous October 14, 2002 at 1:55 pm | | Reply

    I second all of your comments and add another — apparently Friedman could care less about the United States Supreme Court’s recent jurisprudence on federal gun control legislation. See United States v. Lopez; Printz v. United States. Yes, the Congress has broad authority to regulate commerce (and therefore guns), but wouldn’t it make at least SOME sense if Friedman went to Maryland Governor Glendening FIRST to see if MARYLAND might do something about the “problem”? Oh, you mean Maryland ALREADY has gun control legislation? Oh, and Bush DOESN’T control the Congress and CAN’T unilaterally regulate firearms in and among the several States as he sees fit just because there exists the ATF?

    Do New York Times editorialists even THINK any more before they write?

    (Does everything I say have to end in a question mark?)

    –Felix (?)

  2. Fizzy Pop! (Culture) October 21, 2002 at 4:55 am | | Reply

    WE don’t need no stinking title

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