Sean Hannity is an Idiot: Locked and Loaded Edition
| By MattSinger - Mar 16th, 2005 at 7:05 pm EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
I tried to think of a more graceful headline, but that's about what comes to mind reading this MediaMatters' report of an exchange on yesterday's Hannity and Colmes. It seems that Hannity thinks that firearms and weapons are only dangerous sometimes:
I went shooting for the third time in my life a couple weekends ago and had fun shooting two different handguns, a hunting rifle, and a 20 and a 12 gauge shotgun. Here in the West, that's not a big deal.
And, frankly, admitting that weapons are dangerous shouldn't be a big deal. Alcohol is dangerous. That doesn't mean we outlaw it. Tobacco is dangerous. That doesn't mean we outlaw it. Cars are dangerous. That doesn't mean we outlaw them.
We accept certain levels of risk in our society and encourage responsibility. That's an intelligent thing to do. Claiming that guns are only dangerous in the hands of criminals, on the other hand, is insanely stupid and exactly the wrong message to send to people who consider purchasing guns without getting trained in how to be safe with them.
On the March 15 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity claimed: "It seems that people, and politically speaking on the left, have this misconception about weapons being something dangerous. They're only dangerous in the hands of a criminal." In fact, there are approximately 800 accidental firearm-related deaths and 15,000 unintentional gun-related injuries in the United States each year.Now, I'm not even one to say that gun rights shouldn't exist, but this is just dumb. Of course guns are dangerous. That's why they have safeties and trigger locks and actions that can be disengaged and all sorts of protective measures. I mean, Sean Hannity may not know anything about guns since he's kind of a New York pretty boy, but the first lessons around guns are typically entitled "hunter safety" for a reason - the damn things are dangerous in the hands of just about anyone.
I went shooting for the third time in my life a couple weekends ago and had fun shooting two different handguns, a hunting rifle, and a 20 and a 12 gauge shotgun. Here in the West, that's not a big deal.
And, frankly, admitting that weapons are dangerous shouldn't be a big deal. Alcohol is dangerous. That doesn't mean we outlaw it. Tobacco is dangerous. That doesn't mean we outlaw it. Cars are dangerous. That doesn't mean we outlaw them.
We accept certain levels of risk in our society and encourage responsibility. That's an intelligent thing to do. Claiming that guns are only dangerous in the hands of criminals, on the other hand, is insanely stupid and exactly the wrong message to send to people who consider purchasing guns without getting trained in how to be safe with them.
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The right wingers deep down know they are dead wrong about guns, but to give in
and say what they believeitk would be a sign of weakness which they preceive as a surender.
The truth is something they are not good atellingt.
this post by columnist Charley Reese. It pretty
much sums Hannity up just as dramatically as Jon
Stewart did to Tucker Carlson...you know the same
Tucker Carlson
that continually advocates more hatred and
contempt
for even those countries we have had great
relationships with in the past. The same
pundit
who openly and unashamedly denigrates those
countries that do not unflinchingly do
everything Dubya demands. This includes a number
of countries who gave W the benefit of the doubt
on Iraq and offered any and all help in
developing
poignant strategies immediately after 9/11.
Ironically many of these countries that offered
sympathy AND empathy have suffered from multiple
and consecutive
terrorist attacks in the past and thus have both
an
intimate knowledge of these tragedies and an
untold
number pragmatic and helpful strategies in dealing
with Counter-Terrorism.
Here is Mr. Reeses article"
Sean Hannity, a radio talk-show host and Fox
News
whiner, has a one-rut mind. Every criticism or
dissent, no matter what the subject, the topic
or
the source, is a left-wing attack against his
hero, George W. Bush.
Well, what can you expect from an immature
groupie? Every time he tries to think, his
face
reflects the pain of the effort. But he really
showed his emptiness recently when he said
that
criticism of the United States failing to
guard
the Iraqi National Museum was — you
guessed
it — just left-wing soreheads who are
mad
that President Bush's war has been so
successful.
Give me a break. That museum is one of the
five
greatest museums on Earth. It contained
treasures
that are the heritage of mankind. There are
140,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. We've
protected all the oil fields, north and south.
Do
you really believe we couldn't have spared two
fire teams to guard the irreplaceable
artifacts
of
the beginnings of Western civilization? Of
course
we could have. Somebody just goofed.
This is not a left/right, liberal/conservative
issue. It's not a question of patriots versus
traitors, as the morons among the
neoconservative
crowd try to paint every human being who
refuses
to click his heels and salute their guru,
Richard
Perle, and their emperor, George Bush. This is
a
cultural issue. Three great treasures —
the
museum, the National Library and the largest
collection of Koranic writings in the world
— were looted and burned. Since we had
destroyed the Iraqi government, it was our
responsibility to protect them.
I don't blame President Bush. I'm sure he's
unaware of their existence. After all, he
brags
about not reading. But what would we say if
the
crowds who have rioted in Washington in the
past
had been allowed to loot and burn the
Smithsonian
and the Library of Congress? Do you think we
would
have accepted an excuse that there weren't
enough
cops to protect those two treasures?
One hates to disillusion the permanently
adolescent among us, but this tiny sliver of
life
in which we are participating is a dot on a
long
line of human civilization. One day, we will
be
as
forgotten as the Assyrians, and hopefully some
museum will have artifacts from our brief stay
on
the stage of history.
How true it is...
vitality
Consider just a few incidents:
In Dallas, 4 are dead after being shot with an assault weapon by an assailant hanging out of a sunroof of a car....
In Philadelphia, 9 were killed in unrelated incidents over this last weekend....
In Atlanta, 4 are dead after a gunman opened fire in a courtroom....
In Chicago, a judge's husband and mother-in-law were brutally gunned down in their own home....
In Wisconsin, 7 were killed by a madman while they attended church services....
In Houston, a 2 year-old was killed by a 4 year-old who found a gun in his mother's purse....
In California, another Columbine was averted when two juveniles were arrested for plotting to shoot up their high school....
And probably most shocking of all, the GAO reports that 47 people on the terrorist watch lists were allowed to purchase guns.
And the list goes on and on.
So instead of looking for solutions to these terrible problems, such as making it illegal for terrorists to buy weapons (including assault weapons!), our fearless leaders in Congress are on the verge of voting to protect reckless gun dealers and make it impossible for victims of gun violence to have their day in court. They do not care about public safety, they are more interested in taking away the legal rights of gun violence victims.
Sounds unbelievable, but it is true. And we cannot stop them without your help.
Stand up and be counted! Please contact your Senators and tell them to oppose S.397!