TOO AWFUL TO POLITICIZE – YET
The tragic slaughter of five Dallas police officers on Thursday evening was a departure from the usual.
It was a gunman with possible accomplices, picking off police officers who were protecting protestors. Ten cops shot, five dead.
That’s unusual. That’s warfare. That’s downtown Baghdad on a Friday night.
The gunman was African-American and a veteran. That’s unusual. Most black gunmen in the past have been involved in shootings of a more pedestrian nature, not actual target practice on police.
And a third unusual item: The left-wing intelligencia has been stone-cold silent on its usual go-to cry for more gun control. At least for now.
Hillary Clinton has always used these incidents to push for universal gun registries and tighter gun laws.
Last month she said: “It’s time to act. As President, I’ll take on the gun lobby and fight for commonsense reforms to keep guns away from terrorists, domestic abusers, and other violent criminals—including comprehensive background checks and closing loopholes that allow guns to fall into the wrong hands.”
After the Orlando shooting, she said: “If you are too dangerous to get on a plane, you are too dangerous to buy a gun in America.”
After the Charleston shooting, she said: “I do support comprehensive background checks, and to close the gun show loophole, and the online loophole, and what’s called the Charleston loophole, and to prevent people on the no-fly list from getting guns.”
Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, President Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi — they always have something to say about gun control. Liberal pundits always use this type of incident to push for trimming the Second Amendment. But this time, not so much.
This time it’s deep in an an election cycle. Hillary must be more careful than ever as the Republican and Democrat conventions approach. She can make no false moves on the issue of guns.
Hillary, her team, and the entire liberal establishment have a problem. They don’t know enough about the gunman to know exactly how to spin this one as a push for gun control. But they’re working the white boards to find the right message.
Her biggest anti-gun messaging problem is that shootings like this make other Americans want to go out and arm themselves, because they realize the world just got scarier, and the government can’t keep them safe. Gun sales will soar, just as they also do after every big push for gun control. Hillary doesn’t look like the kind of person who could keep anyone safe.
SHOOTER WAS A RACIST? DOES THAT MAKE IT A HATE CRIME?
The Dallas shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, age 25, was honorably discharged from the Army National Guard in 2015, did a tour in Afghanistan.
Pass all the gun restrictions you like — no reasonable law would have prevented Mr. Johnson from obtaining firearms, and he was trained by the best riflemen in the world — the U.S. Army, which is also the most ethnically and racially integrated organization in the world.
“He was upset at white people. He wanted to kill white people, especially police officers,” said Dallas Police Chief David Brown.
There’s no fix for that.
While Hillary Clinton talks these days about Donald Trump fanning the flames of racial hatred, it’s really the president, Al Sharpton, and even Beyonce and rappers who have stoked that fire the most. Obama joined in with his premature involvement in the Trayvon Martin shooting in Sanford, Fla.
Since then, the president has routinely passed judgment on local law enforcement, making prejudicial observations from his bully pulpit.
OBAMA TALKS ABOUT COP KILLINGS, RACIAL DISPARITIES
Obama signaled today that there was to be no mention of gun control for now, but that it would come later, as he gathered information. This was a time to grieve.
In his grief, Obama would curiously balance the horrific cop killings with the sin of racial injustice, as though they were on a list of equals:
“I will have more to say about this as the facts become more clear. For now, let me just say that even as yesterday I spoke about our need to be concerned, as all Americans, about racial disparities in our criminal justice system, I also said yesterday that our police have an extraordinarily difficult job and the vast majority of them do their job in outstanding fashion.
“I also indicated the degree to which we need to be supportive of those officers who do their job each and every day, protecting us and protecting our communities…”
He went on like that, as he does. Stone cold.
He was far more emotive, genuine, expansive and lecturing explaining “why emotions are so raw around these issues…” the day before when he spoke about the shootings of two African-American men by police officers during the last week.