Tea at Trianon: A New Yorker on Gun Control

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 2, 2018

A New Yorker on Gun Control

From A Pius Geek:

Yes, yes, I'm know. NYC is one of the safest big cities on the planet Earth, but that also requires a police force that is literally bigger than the ENTIRE FBI. It's probably also bigger than Interpol, but I haven't looked up those numbers yet, so I can't say for certain.

Yet, everywhere I turn, there's yet another idiot online talking about how "we need gun control."

Well, we have gun control. It's called Chicago, where there's a shootout every weekend, and over a dozen fresh bodies in the morgue. It's called London, where guns are banned, but the assaults with a deadly weapon are so high, kitchen knives must be banned, and restricted -- and no, I'm not kidding. We have Australia, who confiscated guns, and all of their violent crime SHOT UP.

Then there are places where gun control means that you hit what you aim for. I call it Switzerland, the country where every home has a NATO-issue rifle. Their crime rate is insanely low.

What's what you say? Switzerland has a different culture? Funny, every time someone holds up European and Australian gun laws as an example of what we do, "it's not our culture" somehow never applies.

But okay, fine. How about we compare and contrast America. (Read more.)