Mike Huckabee is a Dolt (Shooting Off One’s Mouth Edition)

Hey, Mike! Long time no talk with! Seems ages ago since you were the avuncular guest visitor on Jon Stewart. Y’know, the guy who was clearly conservative, but also clever, friendly, smiling, and probably a neat fellow to have over to the house. So what’s new?

Oh, you have an op-ed at Fox News? That sounds fun.

Why is Obama more eager to politicize victims in Oregon than reduce violence in America?

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/10/09/guns-arent-problem-obama-should-address-root-causes-violence-in-us.html

Are you going to ask him if he’s stopped beating his wife, too?

President Obama’s unwelcome visit to Roseburg, Oregon Friday …

Which, remarkably, actually occurred after this op-ed was printed — amazing, Holmes! — and before he actually spoke with reporters or anyone else there.

Also, “unwelcome”?  Would it have been better if he’d gone golfing? Oh, wait, Fox News criticized him last time he did that in what it deemed a crisis.

Obama is visiting, as president, along with Oregon’s two US Senators and Rep. Peter DeFazio. Were they unwelcome, too?

Or was it his message, of late, that gun violence and … well, guns, might somehow be linked?

According to local press coverage, there were in fact some protesters at Obama’s visit. And they had a message that seems eerily like yours, Mike. Wonder how that happened.

There were also some folk who welcomed his visit.

I haven’t heard from the families he visited privately to give his condolences. Did any of them not show up in protest? Were they a majority? Is that where we are now at with polarization in this country?

… makes one thing clear: he is clearly more interested in politicizing the nine dead victims at Umpqua Community College than reducing violence in America.

Because his immediate and continuing message has been, “This is all the GOP’s fault! If the Republicans didn’t hold the House, these nine people wouldn’t be dead. Vote Democrat in 2016!”

No, wait, that hasn’t been it. Oh, yeah, he’s indicated that gun control might play a role in addressing these incessant — and increasing — occurrences of gun violence.

Now, there are certainly people who disagree with that. But, heck, there are people who disagree with almost any policy proposal one might make. The argument that to propose policy for an ongoing problem that keeps recurring but that nobody seems willing to act on, or even talk about — too soon! now is not the time! is somehow politicizing the matter is ludicrous. It’s almost like saying that a presidential candidate accusing another politicians of politicizing something is, itself, politicizing the matter.

Oh, wait …

If the president truly wanted to solve the issue, he wouldn’t call for new gun restrictions, he’d instead address the root cause of violence in America – sin and evil and the families broken and torn apart because of it.

Yes, we need a debate about Theodicy, why God lets evil occur in this created universe when He is all-loving, omniscient, and omnipotent.

What’s that, Mike? You don’t want to go after that deep of a “root cause”? You’d rather just waive your hands about sin and evil and preach to constituency?  Hmmm. Got it.

So, you’re running on the “no sin and evil” platform. Well, that’s certainly an interesting and, um, all-inclusive stand, Mike.

President Obama’s hometown of Chicago would actually be a perfect place to start.

Yes, because as President of the United States, he has complete policy control over his home town.

Despite restrictions on guns in Chicago, bullets spray like summertime sprinklers in Obama’s hometown.

Oh, now you’re willing to grant that a major city in the United States is Barack Obama’s “hometown.” Got it.

Before you go onto a litany of horrors about Chicago and gun control and gun crime, let’s step back a moment and look at a couple of things, Mike:

1. 

   Chicago’s gun control laws are not all that tough. And they’re hampered by Chicago’s immediate proximity to Indiana, which has very limited gun restrictions. Nearly half the guns taken by the police in relation to crime in Chicago were from Indiana or from nearby areas that have looser restrictions. Chicago’s own restrictions have been loosened substantially over the past decade, due to court rulings.

2. You’re hinting at a good point, but going at it sort of behind the curtain, Mike. There is a definite difference between mass shootings of the sort in Oregon (and Sandy Hook, etc.), and the everyday gun violence that occurs in this country. The former get a lot of the press (and therefore political pressure); the latter is a hugely larger source of death and tragedy. Depending on which you want to fight, various measures might be more or less effective than others. Criticizing Obama for suggesting we should try to do something about mass shootings by lunatics because it won’t solve the problems of, say, gang violence, is like criticizing him for meeting with China when that does nothing about Mexico.

This year alone, there have been 2,300 shooting victims.  Obama’s fellow community organizers on the South Side live in a war zone, and the dots marking crime spots on these neighborhood maps look like a decade-old dartboard.

Local gang territories mirror school district maps, so teachers and parents protest redrawn school districts because it inevitably means open warfare. On Sunday a man was shot to death and four others were wounded, including two 14-year-old teens, just a few miles from the President’s Chicago home.

On weekend nights throughout the summer, ambulances and emergency rooms staff-up to treat the inevitable casualties. In the past two years, there have been 500 murders and more than 5,000 shooting victims.

Yes. There are gun violence problems in Chicago. Aside from hand-waving an implication that this is somehow all associated with Obama, or that since it’s in Obama’s “hometown” he should somehow focus on fixing that problem first, what’s your point?

Or, rather, what’s your solution?

The South Side of Chicago would be a perfect place for the president to condemn the root causes of this senseless violence – the evil and sin. That evil and sin has broken homes leaving children with no good role models, devalued life and made people believe the lie that one life is more important than another.

President Obama should use the White House pulpit to confront this issue head on and crush our culture of violence that glorifies death and destruction.

Lack of respect for life and the ever increasing coarseness and crudeness in our culture contribute to a community of indifference, self-centeredness, and mayhem.  This evil infects neighborhoods, parks, and bus stops every day.

Ah, right, the anti-evil, anti-sin (also anti-crudeness, I guess) platform.

Aside from taking the Bully Pulpit and preaching to the people of Chicago “Don’t be so naughty” and “Evil and sin are wrong,” do you have something more concrete? Because I’m pretty sure that he’d be willing to do that if it would make a concrete difference.

Most of the victims are teenagers and young adults, but in the past decade, more than 90 children under five have been killed in the crossfire.

Hey, Mike? Did you know that in the one year after the Newtown massacre, 100 children were killed through firearm accidents? That in over a third of the cases, the wound was self-inflicted? And in three-quarters of those cases, the shooter was under 14?  Is that a case of sin and evil, too?

And, yes, American kids are getting murdered — kids in the US ages 5-14 are seventeen times more likely to be murdered than kids in other industrialized nations. And we’re not talking here just about kids in poor, gang-banging neighborhoods; the stats are still much higher even when you account for poverty, education, and city-dwelling. Just having a gun in the house increases the risk of death by firearm — from which I might conclude that having a gun in the house is, itself, a mark of evil and sin, but I suspect that’s not the point you’re trying to make, Mike.

But instead of going to Chicago to address the real issue …

Because Obama is president of Chicago.

… Obama travels to Oregon to politicize last week’s community college shooting …

By suggesting that we should do something to keep it from happening on a near-weekly basis?

… and demand ineffective backwards gun-control policies that empower criminals and terrorists at the expense of law-abiding citizens.

If we control guns, the terrorists will win! Gun-wielding criminals will run amok! That’s why there are so many criminal and terrorist killings in the UK! And Australia! And Switzerland! Be warned!

When it comes to advancing his liberal agenda, President Obama will exploit anything, even death and suffering.

Well, as long as we’re not politicizing our discourse, right, Mike?

 The Oregon shooting occurred in a “gun-free zone.”  It’s time we realize that “gun-free zones” are “sitting duck zones.”

Hey, Mike, guess what? That college was not a “gun-free zone.” While the administration discouraged people from carrying guns on campus, it was not against the rules, and the school was not labeled anywhere as a gun-free zone. In fact, there were people on campus who had guns — and either didn’t have an opportunity to do anything, or were concerned that they might do more harm than good (or, worse, get shot themselves by the police when they showed up).

This has been known since the earliest coverage of this crime, Mike. Why are you not aware of it (or not correcting your stump speech for it)?

Question, Mike. Back in your days in the Arkansas state house, what was the policy for visitors carrying guns in and around the offices of your administration? Did you encourage it? Or was it banned — leaving state workers as “sitting ducks”? Should the US Congress get rid of those metal detectors and, yes, no-guns policy? Will that make them safer than they are now?

So, what’s your next fact-based policy observation, Mike?

If existing gun laws did not prevent this massacre, there’s no reason to believe more restrictive laws will.  In fact, I keep asking liberals: ‘What law could we pass that would’ve prevented this?”  Liberals never have an answer because there isn’t one and they know it.

Now, see, that’s a good way of framing a policy debate: what would actually do something to have stopped this particular tragedy. If you were expounding on caution on that basis — “Let us not take rash actions in response to this crime that would not have actually stopped this crime” — then I could respect your position.

Given how fact-challenged you’ve been elsewhere in this op-ed, though, I have grave doubts as to your “no reason to believe” or that “there isn’t an answer” assertions.

And beyond that, to be honest, how “knee jerk” is any sort of gun control proposal at this point? It’s not like the Oregon tragedy was the first of its kind, after all. We’ve been debating this for mass shootings for many years; for gun violence in general for much longer than that.

Obama’s hometown has some of the toughest, strictest gun laws in America.

No, actually, it doesn’t.

Prohibitions, bans, registrations, confiscations, and mandates—Chicago has it all. And what has it accomplished to make the streets safer? Absolutely nothing. Chicago remains one of the most dangerous and violence cities in America.

Actually, it doesn’t even show up in the list of the 100 most dangerous cities in America, based on the chance of a person living there being involved in a violent crime. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t very dangerous parts of Chicago, but there are also a lot of place in Chicago where people aren’t being mown down like weeds.

Beyond that, consider as well: if guns were freely available within Chicago city limits (i.e., strike down all the current gun laws), would it make matters worse? Better? Or the same? Would the impoverished citizenry of the South Side be able to arm itself and drive out the gangs? Or would the gangs just be able to buy (or steal) more guns than they currently have?

This real issue, at its core, demonstrates how conservatives differ from liberals whenever any “new” law is being discussed:  Liberals ask, “How does this law make me feel?” Conservatives ask, “What does this law do?”

Talk of gun control makes the liberals feel warm and fuzzy.

Well, as long as we’re stereotyping, I might argue instead that conservatives ask, “Will this hurt business?” Conservative politicians ask, “Will this torque off the NRA?”

However, the cold reality is that when you disarm the good guys you put them at the mercy of the bad guys. That’s what gun control does.

Thus the mass violence and post-apocalyptic streets of Canada.

Alternately, when you make arms freely available to “the good guys,” it means “the bad guys” can get them, too. Legally. Or by stealing them from the good guys. It also means the good guys are a lot more likely to use guns when they get really angry. Or really depressed. Or when they think someone else is a bad guy.

The Second Amendment is the last line of defense against evil and tyranny and it must be protected.

Oh, wait, we’re talking tyranny, too? See, Mike, you can’t bury something like that in your last line and hope that it will be noticed and accepted. Here I thought liberals wanted gun laws because it make them feel all fuzzy — now I have to consider that it’s because they are nascent tyrants who want to, um, take our guns and, um, let evil and sin reign. See? Your message is just too darned muddled. Along with your facts.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is a 2016 Republican candidate for president of the United States.

God help us all.