Why Should We Give More Power to Those Who Presume to Rule But Can’t Even Govern?

The left has reached new heights in its paroxysms of rage in the aftermath of the Parkland mass school shooting.  But anger and over-the-top virtue signaling fail both on substance and rhetoric.

In terms of substantive policy, the recommendations range from the utterly ineffectual (another symbolic ban on “assault weapons”) to the wildly overinclusive and utterly impractical (“ban all guns” or “ban all semiautomatic weapons”).  Overinclusive (if practical) because they would penalize the vast majority of gun owners who are not mass murderers–or murderers at all.  Impractical because (a) seizing tens of millions of firearms from tens of millions of Americans is an obvious impossibility, and (b) a country that cannot stop the mass importation of opiates, cocaine, and marijuana would never be able to stop gun running either.  The end result would be disarmament of the law abiding, and the empowerment of the criminals.

It is also rather amazing to see people demanding more laws in the face of the clear and systematic failure of every level of law enforcement in the Nikolas Cruz case.  I noted this failure in the hours after the shooting, and the subsequent days have seen an avalanche of new evidence of this systematic failure.

Episodes like Parkland are not due to guns per se, but to the intersection of guns and clearly disturbed individuals like Cruz, who seems to be a classic psychopath who was pegged as a potential school shooter by many who came into contact with him.  The school, social services, local law enforcement, and federal law enforcement observed his aberrant behavior, or were warned of the risk he posed, multiple times, yet did nothing. Repeatedly.

If the “authorities” can’t intervene to stop Nikolas Cruz, who raised more red flags than a Soviet May Day parade, who can they stop? The question answers itself.

Further: why should we expect more from, or grant more power to, the same people and institutions that proved feckless and incompetent in dealing with Cruz (and many other mass shooters before him)? Talk about a triumph of faith over bitter experience.

Yet further: in the face of this evidence of the inability of authorities to protect the citizenry, few things incite more leftist rage than someone who protests against being deprived of the means of self-defense. The more the institutions fail us, the more we are supposed to surrender to them.

Which brings me to the rhetoric. The left does not even attempt to persuade or understand those who hold different views on guns. For all their bleating about The Other, leftists are the passed masters at treating those who have the temerity to disagree with them as an unspeakable Other that is completely beyond the pale. If you object to their demands that you disarm, if you assert your right to self-defense, they label you a Nazi, a child killer.

This may be emotionally satisfying, and a way of bonding with those of like mind, but it is utterly self-defeating as a matter of practical politics.  Have they learned nothing in the two years? Do they really think that reprising memes about “deplorables” and “bitter clingers” is going to advance their political agenda by cowing people into acquiescence and silence? Shouldn’t they have figured out by now that shrieking invectives only galvanizes the opposition, especially given that much of that opposition consists of prickly Jacksonians?

We are constantly told about the need for “conversation” and “dialog”, but what we actually get are lectures and shout-downs.  The natural responses are to tune out or shout back, and to view every gun control proposal as merely a first step towards ultimate confiscation (because that is the only policy that is consistent with the maximalist rhetoric about the evils of guns–and those who own them). The result is that the left fails politically, because it is not a majority that can impose its rule in a democracy, which only stokes its rage to greater heights.

What’s that about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? And these are the Smart People? After all, they constantly tell us so.

Maybe they are smart–but just insane.

The fundamental problem is that a would-be ruling class can’t even govern. This failure is widely understood, which means that demands for more power will produce resistance, rather than submission. This is especially true when the demands are made against the background of as grotesque a failure as could be imagined, as in the tragic case of Nikolas Cruz and the seventeen people he murdered, where “serve and protect” proved to be a sick joke.