So, the mighty Jim Hoft tells us that former Shuttle astronaut, husband of shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords, and likely future politician, Mark Kelly decided to pull a cute publicity stunt that did not involve dragging his brain-damaged wife around as a show-and-tell prop. He went to an Arizona gun dealer and bought an AR-type rifle, which he erroneously calls an assault weapon, with no intention of keeping the rifle. As anyone who has filled out the ATF form for a firearms purchase knows, one of the questions which the signer must answer is if the firearm is being purchased for oneself.
To buy a firearm for another person -- whether that person can pass a background check or not -- is defined as "straw-buying". There are people sitting in jail cells right now who knowingly acted as straw-buyers. Mark Kelly perjured himself on a federal form, and, were he an evil conservative, he would likely be prosecuted for this. Of course, it is unlikely that a conservative would ever do anything like this and then be stupid enough to post it on Fakebook and hold a press conference admitting to it.
I don't think, for the record, that Mark Kelly should be prosecuted, but I do think his credibility on this issue should be questioned. It's one thing to have the "high moral ground" and be all indignant about one's wife being shot in the head -- by a madman with a handgun incidentally. It is quite another to deliberately break the law to make a point about how easy it is for an upstanding citizen with no past criminal record -- a freaking astronaut -- to buy a perfectly legal firearm. Justice would argue that Kelly never be allowed to buy another firearm since he would like to deny that right to the rest of us. Plus, he, unlike the rest of us, committed a federal felony.
While we're on the subject of high moral ground, being a victim does not give one the high ground. Being moral and doing the right thing, the honest thing, the honorable thing secures the high moral ground. It doesn't matter whether or not a person belongs to a protected class or the political class or whether a person has suffered some injustice in life. I would guess that the vast majority of us have gotten the short end of the stick on occasion. Everybody could claim some form of victim-hood if we were to think about it long enough. Most of us have better things to do and better sense than to do it.
I feel great sympathy for Ms. Giffords and her family -- even for her opportunistic husband. They suffered something no one should have to suffer. But a lot of people experience what could be called unnecessary tragedies. A little nine-year-old girl was murdered in that same incident by that same madman. She is rarely mentioned these days. She is just one of the six people who died. Gabrielle Giffords survived. The description of the incident always makes Giffords the main victim. She was not, though she may have been the focus of the murderer's evil intent.
People are killed on the highways by drunk drivers every day in this country. Children are diagnosed with cancer and other dread diseases. People are murdered with weapons of all kinds daily on the streets of Chicago and Detroit and East St. Louis. In a perfect world, none of those things would happen. Every one of those deaths, every hampered and crippled life is "unfair". Most of us, though, understand that death and disease, loss and suffering are as much a part of life as health and wholeness. We live in an imperfect world, but it is a real world, and it is better to be free in it than to trade real liberty for false security.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (I Corinthians 13:11, ESV)
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