Here:
I don't subscribe to the NYT, and wasn't interested enough to pull the tricks I sometimes pull to access an article. I know what it says: leftwing talking points. Gun owners are the problem. Gun cult is the problem. Fear and rage among the right is the problem. Anything and everything right of center is problem. To the left being the beautiful people who are never to blame.
Oh, perhaps he mentions crime rates within the black community, the high rates of gang and drug violence that contribute to the overall homicide rate. Perhaps he ponders the uptick in crimes and attacks against police officers and thinks it might have to do with BLM rhetoric. When he speaks of fear and rage, he might cast a glance at the growing narrative that conservatives and Christians are engaged in a genocide against the transgender community, and muse over whether that might have had an impact on the Nashville shooter, whose manifesto has yet to be released.
If he goes there, then fair enough. I'm all for looking at anything when it comes to problem solving. But if not, then I have a hard time believing French gives a rip about gun violence one way or anther and, like the Left in general, sees it merely as one more weapon in the leftwing arsenal, to be used only when convenient.
FWIW, I'd love to see the stats on how many lawful gun owners are behind the gun violence, how many NRA members, how many MAGA types, how many who are part of this 'gun cult' actually become involved in gun violence. Just like the stats that show pro-life people don't care about kids, or conservatives don't care about the poor. I always ask, and yet I never see.
Is David French the Protestant Steven Greydanus, or is Steven Greydanus the Catholic David French?
ReplyDeleteRegardless, it's worth emphasizing that, unlike most gun owners, David French probably has the blood of innocents on his hands.
https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/705824118109679618/
French is a shill and a poseur.
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There are lots of biographical curios about him - e.g. how he ever landed a berth at Harvard Law School given his background, who financed his schooling, why he relocated from the east coast to Kentucky in 1997 to work for a non-profit, the quality of his representation provided during the succeeding years, why he quit practicing law in 2004 (bar one year as an Army JAG in 2007-08), why he's maintained an active law license in Kentucky (with a notation he's not taking cases) even though he lives in Tennessee a hundred miles from any town in Kentucky), how he's paid his bills for the last 19 years, why National Review was at one point paying him a six figure sum each year for occasional topical commentary &c.
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Lot's of funny stuff about this guy.
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteFrench strikes me as a gentry Republican (by birth, aspiration or achievement). These, like Lord Marchmain, will lead their working-class yeomanry into combat with the Left when it serves their purpose: tax policy, green nuttiness, First Amendment issues (to a degree), but what they really want is to preserve their wealth and personal liberty of action. When issues don't touch on that or might threaten it (like restricting trade with slave states like China) they cluck their tongues to murmurs of "free enterprise". So they'll work to keep us from forced participation in abortion, but don't REALLY want abortion banned because the backlash might cost them. They stayed on the margins of the school choice fight until the mid-90s, letting the Evangelicals and charter-mongers do all the heavy leaving (because after all, THEY already can pay for THEIR kiddies). While they recognize common concerns with working-class conservatives, they are determined we shall not take over their party: part of the reason they despise Trump.
Nope. He had a small town evangelical upbringing and his father had a common-and-garden middle class job. (I've learned and forgotten where the man worked). He attended an ordinary private college in Tennessee; that's what makes his appearance at Harvard Law School in 1991 so odd. I don't think his wife's from a tony background either.
DeleteWell, for my part, I'm just glad that the New York Times has finally taken a break from its ceaseless uncritical praise for gun owners and is giving their readers a little balance!
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that it's a pitch-perfect bit of framing by French there, grabbing an easy-to-sneer-at snapshot as a lead-in to his latest bit of concern trolling. Any Nazi or Soviet propagandist would give him at least a B+ for that.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you that those with CCW licenses are less criminal than law enforcement officers. And they're probably the most gun-happy members of the gun culture you're going to meet.
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