October 5, 2015

Fox's Bill O'Reilly seemed a bit confused during his Talking Points Memo this Monday evening, when he lashed out Hillary Clinton and "liberals" in general over calls for more gun control laws. Bill-O did his best to try to convince his audience that Hillary Clinton proposed rounding up everyone's guns in the country and called her proposals more government "regulation."

Then he turned right around and basically said he agreed with her when it comes to the need for better background checks and for closing the so-called gun show loophole.

Bill-O sounds like he agrees with a number of Clinton's actual policy proposals if he'd bothered to actually listen to any of them. Instead he paints a caricature of Hillary to call names and fearmonger over.

O'Reilly also of course continued to play one of the right's favorite games, bringing up Chicago's gun laws, as though the residents of that city live in a vacuum and can't go right across state lines to buy guns. Don't look for O'Reilly to support any laws which will put a stop to that problem any time soon, since he still wants to leave most of this to the states.

Here the transcript of his latest rant for anyone that can't watch the clip:

As you may know, President Obama and now Hillary Clinton are calling for more regulation of gun sales in the USA.

That is bitterly opposed by the National Rifle Association and other Americans who believe the government should not intrude on the right to bear arms.

Of course there are logical compromises that can and should be made.

But the issue is all about emotion, not rational thinking.

Perhaps the best sound bite I heard after the Oregon massacre was this:

RUDY GIULIANI (R), FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: “I mean the reality is gun control laws control the behavior of legitimate people. People who rob stores, people who rob banks, and people who are insane and want to go ahead and murder don't follow the gun control laws.”

Of course that is largely true.

No amount of legislation is going to stop a madman from killing.

And right now there are more than 300 million civilian owned firearms in the USA, according to congressional research data.

That's just about one gun for every U.S. citizen.

So even if you stopped gun sales, which is unconstitutional, there would still be 300 million firearms floating around.

In order to stop the insanity, Talking Points will now put forth what should happen in the gun arena.

First of all, the politicians should knock off stuff like this:

HILLARY CLINTON: “We have got to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them—domestic abusers, people with serious mental health problems. There’s got to be better tracking and record keeping.”

Mrs. Clinton knows it is impossible to keep guns away from dangerous people, so why demagogue the issue?

However, better tracking and record keeping would be a good thing.

For example, convicts should not be able to buy guns and the FBI database is there to flag gun sellers to that circumstance.

Also if an American undergoes treatment for mental illness and is hospitalized because of it, that should be in the FBI database as well.

Yes, there are some privacy violations here but the greater good is served by keeping people with criminal records and mental problems away from firearms.

Therefore background checks should be mandatory -- even at gun shows and on the internet.

Conservative Americans who value keeping the peace should back that.

Liberal Americans who want all kinds of regulations are being irrational.

Every time I bring up the Chicago murder rate where gun laws are stringent, I get blank looks from the left.

They don't want to talk about it, they don't want to hear it, they have no solutions.

Chicago is run by ardent liberals and gun crimes there are totally out of control despite all the laws.

If tough gun laws don't work in the Windy City, why should they work anywhere else, President Obama and Hillary Clinton?

Talking Points has said it before, all gun crimes should be federalized and gun laws themselves should be made by the states with the two exceptions of mental health and convicted criminals.

If Texas wants to have lenient gun laws, fine.

If Massachusetts wants the opposite, fine.

But if someone commits a crime using a gun and is convicted, they should receive a mandatory five years in a federal prison on top of the punishment for the other crime.

That would go a long way in stopping the abuse of guns.

Would it not?

Right now in Chicago cops can find you with a gun and little happens in many circumstances.

There are plea bargains all over the place.

That's gotta stop.

Summing up, the husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who herself was shot by a madman, told the truth yesterday when asked this:

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: “What gun laws can you point to that specifically would have prevented the shooting in Roseburg, Oregon, or any of the horrific shooting events we have seen in the last five years or so?”

MARK KELLY, HUSBAND OF GABBY GIFFORDS: “You know -- you know, with individual events, I mean, sometimes there isn't a specific law that you can point to that would prevent a tragedy like this from happening.”

Mr. Kelly, a good man, wants more stringent background checks when guns are sold.

But he knows that laws cannot stop madness.

And that's the memo.

Replace the word shooting with terrorist attack, and someone tell me if Bill-O and his buddies would be throwing their hands up in the air and pretending there's nothing we can do about it.

Can you help us out?

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