Brian Stelter Goes off Half-Cocked

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In an analysis, CNN’s Brian Stelter insinuated that nobody will consider tougher gun laws to prevent such an incident. He should have looked at the facts before going off half-cocked.

The suspect in this case is known to have purchased the shotgun and a handgun used in the attack from two different California gun stores. He had to pass two California background checks and endure two separate waiting periods. It is widely known California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and the suspect was able to complete his legal purchases. Just what more does Stelter think could be done?

Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
April 27, 2026
CCRKBA RIPS CNN COMMENTATOR’S CALL FOR GUN CONTROL AFTER ATTACK – CCRKBA

Obviously, the gun control we have does not work to prevent crime. Hence, we need ban guns completely just like we do with hard core recreational drugs. Then we won’t have to worry about getting shot while eating dinner at a fancy hotel. Duh!

</sarcasm>

I always found it curious that politicians thought it necessary to pass a constitutional amendment to allow them to ban alcoholic drinks and create an income tax, but no constitutional change was required to ban arms. Grok gave me reasonable answer to that. I still think it is bogus, but I have a better understanding of how it happened.

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13 thoughts on “Brian Stelter Goes off Half-Cocked

  1. Summary of the gun/alcohol issue: the alcohol people were more honest about their intentions.

    yes, yes, there are more details, but that’s the foundation it’s all laid on. The Prohibition people were completely open about their intentions, pushed an Amendment to do it, and got it passed. It turned out badly, there was an Amendment to undo it, and it passed.

    The anti-gun people won’t do that. They lie. A LOT.

    • To be fair: The Prohibition (of alcohol) movement could BE honest about their intentions; excess alcohol consumption has basically zero redeeming social values. Even moderate consumption has very few. They could make an argument that complete prohibition is a public good; the problems happened afterward, with increased widespread crime, smuggling, black market and gang activity, etc., and insignificant reduction in actual consumption. In short, Prohibition was ineffective and had many, many negative second-order effects, but the core argument in favor of reducing (if not banning) alcohol consumption is fairly solid.

      OTOH, Prohibition (of firearms) — because it IS a “Prohibition” movement — cannot be so honest. Private firearm ownership, even to “excess” (i.e. owning more guns and ammo than you could reasonable expect to use yourself, or lawfully shooting more than you “need”), DOES NOT have the same health and safety risks as excess alcohol consumption, and DOES have positive social benefits — most notably as a deterrent or defense to crime, but also the defense of the homeland in case of foreign invasion, the amelioration/prevention of tyrannical domestic government, increase in self-sufficiency, etc. While guns CAN be used for crime and violence, they can ALSO be used to prevent the same, and arguably ARE used that way far more often than Prohibitionists admit.

      An honest argument for Prohibition would — at the VERY least — acknowledge the social good that privately-owned firearms provides, and then attempt to justify prohibiting them anyway. A FULLY honest argument would also acknowledge the potential second-order effects of banning guns, such as increased crime against citizens rendered defenseless by the ban. But that would be an uphill battle, so Prohibitionists choose instead to “lie by omission,” frame their arguments exclusively around the social negatives of crime and violence, and never mention that guns can also be defensive or how often defensive gun use happens.

      Anti-gun people lie — a LOT — because they have to. If they were honest about their intentions or the real-world effects of their proposed laws/policies, they’d never succeed.

  2. The reason that the Left is still pushing gun control is obvious… but it’s something that the generally libertarian pro-2A people are uncomfortable hearing.

    Simply put, they are pushing gun control because they have concluded that we are wimps who won’t fight back. Oh, sure, we’ll legal back, but when it comes to confiscation, they are convinced that we’ll bitch a lot while they take them.

    The reason they believe this is simple: we hold literally billions of firearms among us, yet we are still letting them push us around. Just now they very nearly killed the president and vice president of the US and their wives, and Republican commentators are psychoanalyzing them instead of calling for joyous bloodshed. They literally helped Red China in a biological warfare attack, yet not one Democrat has paid for this high treason with his life .

    The average gun rights supporter has a live and let live philosophy. This is no longer a realistic tactic, if it ever was. When we let them just live their weird little lives, say by letting them have furry conventions, they don’t say, “What a wonderful country, where I can dress up as a mouse and they can own firearms.” Instead they say, “We’ve got those pussies on the run! Confiscate their guns.”

    Laissez-faire is a bullshit quasi-religion, not a workable way of doing things in the world. We need to go after them on their ground, not ours. We need to keep them from doing the things they love, so that they will have to fight over their rights, instead of ours.

    And no, you can’t blame Thune/Cornyn and the GOPe for the inaction on our side. There is plenty that we in the private sector can do to make things ugly for them.

    • Laissez-faire (“let it fair”) is traditionally a pro-capitalism economic policy, not a social or political one. It means the government shouldn’t intervene heavily in the free market. It doesn’t typically refer to the small-l libertarian “live and let live” philosophy.

      That said, I generally agree: Just because we’re willing to leave the Left alone, does NOT mean the Left is willing to leave US alone, and they’ve gotten WAY too comfortable spitting in our eye and facing zero consequences for it. And while there is a fair share of blame for Thune/Cornyn and the GOPe for not “striking while the iron is hot” (read: passing pro-2A legislation when the GOP has double-majorities and the White House), the bulk of pro-2A action should not be in the halls of Congress OR in the state and federal courtrooms; it should be local, by pro-2A individuals and businesses in our own neighborhoods and communities.

      The anti-2A crowd can act nationally ONLY because they have a foothold locally. Remove and deny them their local footholds, and they’ll have a MUCH harder time doing anything.

      • Laissez Faire = Literal translation is “let (them) do.” or “allow (them) do.

  3. Maybe no one on our side reads Sal Alinsky. But the commie left lives by it.

    “They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.”

    Just like Mao told them to.

    • And just like the Calvin and Hobbes conversation with his babysitter depicted in the cartoons [We’ll work within your system until we can work within ours].

  4. But more appropriate to Stelter himself would be Hunter Thompson;

    “The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

    • No really, don’t hold back, tell us how you REALLY feel.

      Ouch. Not saying he’s wrong, but wow, ouch.

    • I’m kind of young to know for sure, but we might have had better reportage and more individual freedoms before these people weren’t Journalists, but were “mere” reporters. The pursuit of “professional” status and recognition has had the deleterious secondary effect of Professional Courtesy directed to other professional trades, including, most unfortunately, the Professional Politician.

  5. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » HALF BAKED POTATO:  Brian Stelter Goes off Half-Cocked.

  6. Mr. Potato is still around?! I love the clown face artwork of comrade Brian.
    Bolshevik Mockingbird enemedia slime are for you to laugh at.

  7. I think it is bogus, results-based reasoning, too.
    \
    “Alcohol required an amendment because of limited federal power and no countervailing right. Drugs used expanded Commerce Clause authority.”

    If there was no countervailing right, why was an amendment required? So, with an express countervailing right in the Constitution, NO Amendment is required to limit or eliminate it? So the same thing can be done with the rights enumerated in the First Amendment or the Fourth Amendment so long as each curtailment is limited in scope until the entire right is so limited that it means as much as the prohibition against quartering soldiers in time of peace?

    There was, I think, an effort to nail down the Alcohol Prohibition until it was airtight and virtually unbreakable, but I think the inverse of that was true, also (nobody will vote for this, It’s an unreasonable restriction on a common, popular and widespread activity that many people enjoy with a meal. besides, an Amendment is hard to get and will take a lot of time. The Federal Income Tax Amendment is proof of this. A National Income Tax law was enacted many times and was struck down many times because the Constitution did not allow taxation without apportionment among the states.

    And the Commerce Clause as a basis for Drug Prohibition is effective and allowed because the “Camel”s Nose” of the Incredible, Expandable, All-Powerful Commerce Clause is already in the tent thanks to all the New Deal Legislation, approved because of the threat of Court packing.

    And Wickard v Filburn as controlling Authority!
    Well, It seems to still be good law, just like Dread Scott v Sanford and Plessey v Ferguson, I just wonder when Wickiard will be used to require citizens to eat at a restaurant once a week, because in the aggregate, all those home-cooked meals have a restricting effect on commerce

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