Carolyn McCarthy is a victim. Her husband was tragically killed and her son paralyzed by a madman, Colin Ferguson, who opened fire on a crowded Long Island Railroad train killing six and injuring nineteen. McCarthy, who was a Republican, switched parties and ran for Congress on the gun control issue after her Congressman Dan Frisa voted against an assault weapons ban that she supported and she won the seat. She has been on a mission ever since to impose tighter and tighter restrictions on guns, believing that will make the world safer. She wants you to feel her pain, literally.

The assault weapon ban was part of a campaign to ban all guns. It was a starting point; the thin end of the wedge. Put that ban in place and work to expand it. But when you come right down to it, no one has really been able to define what an assault weapon is other than it looks more menacing than other guns.  There was no legal definition of an assault weapon prior to the ban. Think about it. There was great urgency to enact a law to prevent something we can’t define but, don’t worry, we’ll come up with something. Isn’t that ass-backwards? Congress, in the most blatent political pandering, rushed to pass a law to ban something that they couldn’t even define. How did they know it was a bad thing if they couldn’t define it? It didn’t matter. What they were banning was something that included the term “assault weapon” and applied to guns. As long as one gun was affected, they considered it a success. Here are some of the critical components that differentiate an assault weapon from non-assault weapons:

• For rifles:
  • Folding or telescoping stock
  • Pistol grip
  • Bayonet mount
  • Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one

Can anyone seriously call this thoughtful legislation? These features somehow make a weapon, unreasonably dangerous? A pistol grip? a bayonet mount? a folding stock? Yet, when this ban was debated you would think that Congress was trying to prevent hand grenades being packed in the kiddie’s lunch boxes.

McCarthy Slips?

“I think when you think about just common sense here, large capacity clips [sic] that can basically, in my opinion, be weapons of mass destruction, should not be available to the average citizen,” McCarthy said in an NPR interview.

Finish the thought. It should only be availabe to criminals? Although I don’t believe that is what she meant, probably meaning law enforcement and the military, but that is what it means in practice. All of these gun laws that pertain to what people own, rather than what they do, only constrain law abiding people. A criminal will get whatever they want or feel they need for their situation. A criminal who wants a gun, will get a gun.

Also, a criminal intent on causing mayhem will take the time to prepare for his attack. Colin Ferguson carried with him on that train 106 rounds of ammunition and he was re-loading for the third time when he was finally tackled. Consider the homeowner who hears glass breaking in the middle of the night and his child call out, because four armed men have broken in. The homeowner doesn’t have time to go rummaging for all the necessary equipment. Pants, check; gun, check, holster? extra magazines because Carolyn McCarthy says my magazine can only carry ten bullets… On the other hand if the homeowner could grab his gun that already had fifteen or twenty rounds or more, he could focus on protecting his family immediately.

The average gunfight between armed fighters lasts around three to five seconds. On the Long Island Railroad that fateful day, Colin Ferguson methodically shot his victims for three minutes or thirty-six to sixty times longer than an average gunfight. Why was he able to do that? Because he was armed with a gun and everyone else was not. The only hope for those passengers in New York was to have a plainclothes or off duty cop in that particular car on that particular train at that particular time. They had no such luck.

Carolyn McCarthy wants to make sure that you are similarly defenseless at home, at work, or on your way to work as her husband and son were. The tragedy is, that if New York didn’t have such strict gun laws, her husband might be alive today and her son not paralyzed. But Carolyn McCarthy wants you and your family, not just in New York, but everywhere in America to be as defenseless as her family was that infamous day. No thank you. When confronted with a deadly foe, it is not enough to dial 911 and wait. Dial 911 by all means if you can, but once you have done that, you need to protect yourself and your loved ones. That’s what the Second Amendment is really all about.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

I was having lunch with a colleague the other day and the conversation turned to the economy. He spoke of some recent analysis of the number of jobs that would be lost if the Big Three failed.  He recounted not just the employees of the auto companies themselves, but the employees of their suppliers, advertising firms that produce car ads, and on and on.  His final tally was well over 1 million jobs lost.  He concluded by saying it would make the current financial crisis a walk in the park.

Getting enough exercise?

Does that mean that we are all going to start walking?  Not that that would be a bad idea, we could all stand to lose some pounds, but for someone who has a 23 mile one-way commute with no option for mass transit, it’s just not going to happen.  So what do we do?  Well, one of several scenarios is going to happen.

Scenario 1:  The Big Three Close Their Doors

If this scenario came about, what would we do?  We would go buy Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, Volkswagens, etc.  Those companies would have to scale up to fill the void caused by the Big Three closing their doors.  That demand would need people.  So a significant number, but by no means all, of the laid off workers from Detroit would move to North Carolina, Alabama, and other points south, and join these auto companies at their U.S. plants.

Likewise the suppliers would form new alliances to supply these car companies, as would all the other ancillary companies that currently support Detroit.  Would jobs be lost?  Yes.  Would it be anywhere near the number of jobs my friend projected?  No.

Scenario 2: The Big Three Reinvent Themselves

The liberty of the car companies to reinvent themselves is constrained by government regulations.  Surprise!  If the Big Three have any hope of reinventing themselves, they have to have the freedom to do so.  Start by eliminating the CAFE standards.  CAFE, which stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy, is the mileage standards dictated by the government that the auto companies must comply with or face heavy fines, draining more money from the Big Three’s coffers.  So for every car that the Big Three build that may get 20 mpg, they may have to build and sell perhaps 3 that get 30 mpg, in order to meet the standard.  But what if they can make money on the 20 mpg car, but they lose money on every 30 mpg model?  What if the reason they can’t make money is because of their labor costs per vehicle, their pension costs per vehicle, their health care costs per vehicle, when added up are too high compared to their foreign competitors.  They are basically forced by the government to make an unprofitable product.

Why not abandon the CAFE standards?  Let Detroit build the cars and trucks that they can make at a profit.  Let the foreign manufactures make cars that they can make at a profit, including high mileage cars.  Let the American people have the freedom to choose which they want.  As the price of gasoline climbs as it did, and will again, people will want to buy high mileage cars, hybrids, electric cars, but they will also want to buy SUVs, luxury cars and light trucks.  Why does a particular manufacturer have to produce all kinds?  When has government ever made the right call on what products to produce? (Hint:  think of all the five-year plans and Great Leap Forwards from the Communist world).

Scenario 3: The Government Bails Out the Big Three

The government prints up a bundle of cash, $25 billion or more, gives it to the auto companies and hands the IOU to you and me.  The new Democratic Congress and Administration will toe the line for their backers in the environmental movement and demand higher CAFE standards for the auto companies in the interest of addressing: our dependence on foreign oil; green house gases; and helping consumers.  This will put increased pressure on the Big Three to make more unprofitable products and we will find ourselves back in the same place a few years hence.  More liberties will be vaporized as the government appoints a czar to oversee the auto companies to be sure they are building the right products, that management is not getting paid too much money, and well let’s face it, they would basically be nationalizing the auto companies.  Management talent would dry up, and socialism would make greater inroads into the U.S. economy.

The Best Scenario

The Big Three file for bankruptcy, if that is what they need to do.  The stockholders would probably be wiped out, the management team would be replaced, and this will let them re-negotiate their labor agreements.  Congress and the new Administration realize that people will want to purchase cars with higher mileage as the price of gas climbs regardless of any government requirement.  There is no justifiable reason that any particular auto company has to build a particular car because the government says so.  Achieving this state of enlightenment, Congress repeals the CAFE standards.  With the liberty to manage the company to make a profit rather than meet the constraints of a bevy of interest groups, a more energized management team takes the reins, and returns the Big Three to competitiveness.

Drawing a line in the Sand

If we don’t take a stand here and now, every company that wants a cash cushion will be working the halls of Congress to get their hands on your money.  There is not enough to go around.  In addition, many of the problems we are facing were created by government initiatives.  The mortgage mess was not the result of not enough regulation but by government programs that compelled lenders to give loans to people who could not afford them.  Detroit’s problems are a result of CAFE standards and onerous union contracts.  Since government created many of these problems why do we think that government knows how to fix them?  What we need to do is tell them to back off and let the free market work.