OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
In New York, they are rounding up the crazies. In Seattle, they want armed police invading the homes of law-abiding gun owners for annual “inspections.” In Denver, plans are under way to levy new taxes on gun owners to raise millions for the state’s strained coffers.
If this sounds like science fiction from the Cold War era or grainy reels of the Gestapo in the run-up to World War II, then you have not been reading the papers.
The New York Post reports a new police effort to track down all the mentally ill in the city deemed as “dangerous” by the government. “Scoop the nuts,” the Post explained, in its typically sensitive style.
Forget the shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn. New Yorkers are seized with fear over recent episodes where loony kooks on subway platforms shove people onto the tracks of oncoming trains.
Instead of banning subways or requiring licenses and background checks for every rider, New York City has decided to round up all the crazies. But these people on government lists are not necessarily criminals. They are simply people who are suspected of not taking their court-ordered medications. Am I the only one who remembers “A Clockwork Orange” or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”?
In Denver, lawmakers struggling to make ends meet have devised a sick new strategy. By exploiting the unspeakable killings of schoolchildren in Newtown and theatergoers in their own state, they hatched a tax scheme for gun owners that proponents hope will raise some $5 million.
That seems like a mighty small amount in a $7 billion budget to whore yourself out over 20 dead children. But then again, if you are going to be a whore, may as well be a cheap whore.
The most sinister news of all comes from Seattle, where “liberals” love their freedom, so long as it involves aborting fetuses, smoking pot and joining the modern cult of tats and piercings. But a law-abiding citizen owning a legal gun for hunting or home protection? Call in the Gestapo!
There is actually a bill in the Washington Legislature that would ban the sale of “assault” rifles — those small-caliber, semi-automatic rifles with scary-looking stocks. As for those already in the hands of law-abiding citizens? Well, the law would give local police extraordinary new powers to conduct home inspections every year. No warrant. No probable cause. Just march right in and take a look around.
Failure to comply, according to the Seattle Times, would result in a year in jail.
Am I the only one who gets seriously creeped out by the government rounding up loonies for not taking their government-mandated mind-altering opiates, punishing law-abiding gun owners with special taxes, and empowering police to march into private homes of law-abiding citizens to carry out “inspections”?
SEE ALSO: N.Y. bill would force gun owners to buy at least $1M in insurance
As Randle McMurphy, Jack Nicholson’s character in “Cuckoo’s Nest,” memorably said: “If that’s what being crazy is, then I’m senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, wacko.”
• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com.
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