[May 07, 1999]
by Tom Laughlin
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Few things were as sickening as watching President Clinton grandstand and take advantage of the anguish of the shooting at Columbine by pretending he was really determined to do something about assault weapons, and sincerely wanted to protect our children and other victims of these completely unnecessary guns. Of course Clinton didn’t mention the phony so-called “ban” on the manufacturing of assault weapons he, and members of Congress of both parties, bragged so extensively about when they passed it. Shortly thereafter, 60 Minutes ran a show showing that all of these politicians taking credit for “banning” the manufacturing of assault weapons knew full well they didn’t ban them at all. As the 60 Minute program showed in detail, the manufacturers simply made a small insignificant modification to the assault weapon ban, like changing a wood stock to a plastic stock, and continued to manufacture them under another name.
Equally important is the deceit Clinton and those members of Congress who bragged that they banned the manufacturing of assault weapons when they knew full well they didn’t even slow down slightly the manufacture of these weapons, is the fact that the President and the Congress did absolutely nothing about the sale of these weapons whose only purpose, as the student of Columbine High who escaped said, “Their only purpose is to kill people.” While the right to bear arms for hunting or self protection is Constitutionally protected, the one place the NRA and gun control advocates can agree is on the harshest possible penalties possible for those who commit crimes with a gun, as well as the fact that certain weapons whose sole purpose is to kill as many people as possible in the shortest period of time, such as sidewinder missiles, should be banned, and their sale absolutely prohibited.
To understand the extreme callousness of this phony pretense by Clinton and other legislators that they urgently want the manufacturing and sale of assault weapons banned, go see the movie Primary Colors which is a thinly disguised recitation of the events that actually happened during President Clinton’s run for the Presidency in 1992. There is a scene in which John Travolta as President Clinton, meets with a group of dysfunctional people trying desperately to learn to read. In telling them how much he admires them, he breaks into tears as he recalls the struggle of his own uncle Charlie, a dyslexic who also went through the agony of not knowing how to read. Afterwards, when the Stephanapolous character tells Clinton’s aide how incredibly moving Clinton’s speech was, the aide calmly informed Stephanapolous that there is no Uncle Charlie. Clinton made the whole story up, and is such a superb actor he could cry at the drop of a hat.
Well, we saw his great acting ability when he and the Congressmen staged all those events telling America they were now safe because they had banned the manufacturing of assault weapons (perhaps the families of the victims at Columbine didn’t know they were so safe), and we saw it again last week as he with great sincerity and moral outrage called for new gun legislation. One can only wonder, did it bother the President as he spoke, or any other member of Congress who passed the phony ban on assault weapons that if they had acted properly back then all of the victims of Columbine would not be lying dead as he spoke, nor would all the other victims at all the schools, post offices, and business places where people have been slaughtered in seconds by assault weapons that have no other purpose but to kill lots of people rapidly. (It goes without saying that all of these sophisticated weapons are absolutely essential to protect ourselves militarily.)