Time for Dianne Feinstein to Quit Waving the Bloody Shirt of Harvey Milk

Just again, we saw it last week, Dianne the Indignant, droning on about how she is qualified to testify about gun violence, having seen it "up close and personal". Having the blood of her fellow members of the SF Board of Supervisors on her like some 'Red Badge of Superior Knowledge'. Please! A couple of months ago, I was in a hospital operating room, observing my surgeon perform arthroscopic knee surgery. And even though I was there and awake the whole time, with my surgeon giving me play by play of exactly what he was doing, I don't expect the AMA to coming calling on me anytime soon for my advice. I was a spectator there. I suppose, had I stuck my finger into one of the incisions to check my pulse, I may have been better qualified, as is Ms. Feinstein. What's up with that, anyhow? Who sticks their finger into a bullet wound to get a pulse? Did she excuse herself, waltz into the ladies' room to scrub in first?

If seeing bullet wounds and their effects "up close and personal" is qualification for setting gun control policy, shouldn't we ask the paramedics who arrived at the scene what their opinions were? They've undoubtedly seen more bullet wounds than Ms. Feinstein. How about the coroner? Does he get a say? Military corpsmen (that's pronounced "Core- men", Mr. President) see more trauma from bullets than the average city coroner. Let's let them decide!

Witnessing an accident by the side of the road, no matter how gruesome, does not qualify you to make decisions on highway construction, signage or guardrail construction, either. While it may have been quite traumatic for you, it does not confer any technical or legal expertise upon you.

The exact opposite case could be made, Ms. Feinstein, in the shooting of your colleagues, if after nearly 35 years, your emotions are riled up to this extreme, where you have to "cool off" after a few simple Constitutional questions, maybe you are too emotionally involved to make rational decisions about it? If you cannot control yourself, Ms. Feinstein, perhaps you should recuse yourself?

The legislative "solutions" you are pushing, would not have prevented the shooting at Sandy Hook, the shooting in the Aurora theater, or the shooting in City Hall in 1978. We all know your antipathy towards handguns, at least, towards those other than the one you happen to be carrying at the time. And your present rhetoric notwithstanding, you have stated that if it were within your power you would ban the private ownership of all guns.

Since you are pushing a "solution" that solves nothing of the problem of Sandy Hook, which supposedly was so great that the Senate was compelled to write a bill within a matter of weeks, when you and your fellow Senators have failed to produce a federal budget, required by the Constitution every year, for the last four years, and it solves nothing of the shooting of those men, whose bloody shirts you love to wave, why should we not see your actions as just one more bit of incrementalism when it comes to banning our Constitutionally protected firearms?

As sad as it is, the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone benefited you personally, Ms. Feinstein. The sudden power vacuum at the top of the Board of Supervisors was filled by the supervisor with the blood stained fingers. You became Mayor of San Francisco, which gave you a larger platform to do things, like pass an un-Constitutional ban on handguns in your city, (which was fortunately overturned). It gave you a platform to run for higher office. But stop pretending that tragedy gave you any special insight into the Constitution or how to solve the problem of gun violence. It did not. That is evidenced by the shallow, knee jerk response you have to every shooting tragedy, whatever the cause and whatever the weapon. Waving the bloody shirts of Harvey Milk and George Moscone will not change that. It just makes you look like you haven't learned anything of use in the last thirty five years, except to play upon people's emotions.

Cross posted at LCR.