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Last weekend's atrocity in a movie theater, where a psychology student gassed and shot dozens of innocent audience members from babies to the elderly, seems to demonstrate that our society is not yet so jaded as to be incapable of horror. America was quite rightly horrified, so much so that President Obama and Gov. Romney both called for a brief suspension of political partisanship while we all grieve.
If only that were true! Of course, it isn't; the Left spared not a moment in calling this a time to set partisanship aside and unite behind their longstanding gun-control agenda. From New York's Mayor Bloomberg to little-known Democrat Congresscritters, statists across the fruited plain leaped upon this tragedy as yet another reason why law-abiding citizens should be deprived of their right to defend themselves.
Never mind the countless examples of would-be mass murderers stopped by an armed citizen. Never mind the increasing numbers of people who're killed or hurt in victim disarmament zones. Never mind the clear and obvious link between gun control and crime: the tighter and more draconian the gun-control regulations, as in America's major cities, the more violent crime there is.
Gun control laws are a way to disarm the law-abiding, not to hamper criminals. Yet again we are seeing an example of Rahm Emanuel's advice to President-elect Barack Obama:
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
The Left has tried this, and tried this, and tried this. Every time there's a notorious murder, the usual suspects come out screaming for gun control. It's taken the Stupid Party many decades to catch on, but these days conservatives are just as fast out of the gate with the truth - criminals prefer unarmed victims.
There's another truth we seem to be missing here. It's a fact that accused gunman James Holmes, as his description implies, used guns. It's also a fact that the atrocities were committed in a theater showing the extremely violent Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. Furthermore, it seems to be the case that the perpetrator identified himself with Batman's most famous enemy:
New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Friday that the alleged gunman in the attack on a packed theater in Colorado identified himself as Batman’s arch-enemy “The Joker” after he sprayed bullets into a midnight showing of “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.”
“He had his hair painted red, he said he was ‘The Joker,’ obviously the ‘enemy’ of Batman,” Kelly said at a news conference.
Isn't there an obvious connection here?
“There have been a tremendous number of studies showing that violent movies can indeed increase the likelihood that somebody in the audience will act aggressively,” Leonard Berkowitz, PhD, Professor of Psychology Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, Madison, explained to FOXNews.com. “There is considerable research that such an effect could have indeed taken place. Just as people get sexual ideas from watching a sexual movie, other people can get aggressive ideas from watching an aggressive movie. Those members of the of the audience who have some violent tendencies or an aggressive disposition may then be influenced to act upon those ideas.”
Barely two weeks ago, a major research study presented conclusive proof that watching sexual scenes on TV leads teenagers into promiscuity:
Writing in the journal Psychological Science, the researchers said that greater exposure to sexual content in movies at a young age led to a higher peak of sensation-seeking in adolescents.
They said that children who are exposed to sex scenes in movies had longer periods of sensation seeking that lasted much longer than for children who had not, extending for some into their early 20s.
According to study co-author Ross O'Hara, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, popular films seemed to have a far-reaching influence on sensation-seeking traits in children and teenagers, changing their behaviour to make it more risky.
But the researchers warned that the effect of movie sex scenes was not limited to sensation-seeking, and that teenagers had also reported learning "sexual scripts" from films, which they relied upon as a guide in complicated emotional situations.
Is anyone suggesting that sex scenes should be banned from movie or TV? Of course not - after all, we have our First Amendment rights!
If the sexual behavior of adolescents is provably affected by the sex scenes they've watched on the screen, it would beggar belief to imagine that watching violence wouldn't have a similar effect. The shooter himself said that he was inspired by the violent Batman movies he'd watched - he named himself after the villain. What more do you want? Yet, again, we don't see people seriously arguing that violent movies, video games, or music should be banned.
The reaction should be exactly the same about guns: we have our Second Amendment rights, and no matter how one evil individual may misuse them, they must never be taken away from everyone else.
If there's one thing all Americans should be able to unite behind, it's the Constitution. The fact that Democrats never miss an opportunity to attempt to falsely unite everyone against our Constitution tells us all we need to know about them.