Know what has gotten to be so obvious that it has become a cliché? Progressivism.

Notice how every state in the union suddenly has a bill on the table about firearms. And notice how oddly similar they all are. Americans of all political stripes are calling foul—high capacity magazine bans, bans on assault rifles defined by cosmetic features, registration of weapons with faceless bureaucrats, and so on would not prevent another Newtown shooting.

Except this is exactly backward. Even though none of these proposed laws would prevent another Newtown massacre, the Progressives are pushing for bans on most magazines, assault rifles, and unregistered weapons.

In other words, Newtown has nothing to do with anything.

And so you might be inclined to ask what any of this has to do with anything. Why the insistence on these particular items?

Here is how this all transpires. The Progressives need to eliminate, or at least severely compromise, the possession of firearms by private citizens—not because they think the Second Amendment is wrong; rather, because they know it is exactly correct.

They know that gun ownership is rampantly popular in these United States, so they need to change the perception. To do that, you change the language. In the 1980s, the concept of the “assault rifle” was introduced: an ugly word that instantly connotes the military. Is there any reason that any citizen should have a military-style weapon that can fire as many times as you can pull the trigger? Heck no, says the average American, not realizing this describes nearly every rifle.

Thus, the news media begin reporting on the dangers of assault rifles, and politicians hold up exotic weapons and claim to have purchased it at a candy store, and kids write letters to their Progressive politicians demanding that scawy-wooking assault wifles be taken out of their ƨkoolƨ. And in time, the Progressives have won the first step: Americans dislike assault rifles, even though they themselves own them in large numbers.

And is there any reason that the average person should have a handgun capable of firing a ton of bullets? The average beat cop has a little six-shooter, and you want just anybody walking around with doens of nine millimeter bullets when the neighborhood cop has only six .38 bullets?

The average American says hell, no! Because he does not realize that a .38 is bigger than a 9mm, and that counting reloads and the shotgun in the trunk, the average neighborhood ticket writer has more firepower than the homeowner has in his 9mm locked in a drawer. But now, suddenly, Americans may not like these big-clip guns, or whatever they are. After all, that doesn’t apply to their innocent 12-round Taurus upstairs. Does it?

And so on. Meanwhile, the Progressives draft legislation. They did this with Obamacare: they write up the new law years in advance of its passage and keep circulating it around. Interns dutifully look up references and pepper them in. Sometimes they don’t even check them. As a result, the longer it goes, the bigger the bills get.

Then, the moment a crisis occurs—bad ones like Newtown or a unified Democratic Congress and presidency—the old bills are pulled out, the dust blown off, and the copy and pasting begins. Just like those emails you keep getting from liberal friends, where sixteen people email you the same typo-ridden checklist of complaints about conservatives.

Can’t pass it on a federal level? No problem—get it passed locally.

And then, ten seconds after passage, people begin to realize the law doesn’t stand up to scrutiny because it was written by people who didn’t understand any of it. Unintended consequences follow, costs skyrocket, cops wind up having their weapons banned, and so on and so forth.

In time, the law gets junked. The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban is a good example. Or in Illinois, the proposed tenth amendment to a gun control bill.

No matter—the next crisis occurs again, and the same languages gets put back into play. Sen. Feinstein of California had little trouble reintroducing the same failed legislation that got her mocked almost verbatim. In Illinois, the failed 10th Amendment sponsor simply reintroduced the same language as a proposed 12th Amendment, and so on.

Copy and paste, and they hope eventually something sticks.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.