COLUMN: Sit in, shut up and disarm: The Democratic response to terrorism

If you are old enough, you remember how campus after campus in the 1960s had the president’s office “occupied” by students who would rather be making demands for “social justice” than actually attending class. These ruffians were loud, petulant and self-righteous, and they considered their issues more important than civil behavior, the rights of others or common decency.

Sound familiar? That’s because, if you follow the timeline from the late 1960s to now, you will discover that many of those unwashed radicals or their younger siblings are running everything from major corporations to, yep, Congress. And the lesson they learned is that if you are loud enough and obnoxious enough for long enough, you just may be able to get your way after all.

Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives showed their true colors Wednesday when they returned to their roots and staged a disruptive “sit-in” to shout down opponents and shut down congressional business because they didn’t get their way on gun control.

Now, mind you, gun control is a legitimate topic of debate, and that’s why the U.S. Senate held four votes on background checks, terror watch lists and other issues last week. None of the bills managed to garner enough support to be passed, which is why the House of Representatives did not need to follow through with its own votes. Legislation has to be passed by both houses of Congress in order to be sent to the president, and there is no reason to do “show votes” on legislation that won’t pass just so various members will have talking points when they return home to stand for re-election.

But this sit-in wasn’t about legislation; it was about propaganda. It was about making sure that the crisis brought about by the murder of 49 people in Orlando, Florida, by a Muslim terrorist did not go to waste. It was a prime opportunity for Democrats to push their divisive anti-gun agenda, and so they ignored the obvious lessons of a jihadist massacre and focused not on the killer, but on the weapon. Gun control, after all, is a major plank of the Democratic Party, even in gun-loving Montana.

A statement from Sen. Jon Tester noted that “Jon supports the House members in their efforts to try and hold votes on legislation to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and those who want to do us harm.” A remarkable utterance by a politician who won election in 2006 by declaring that he wanted to make Washington, D.C., more like Montana; apparently, to the contrary, Jon Tester is now more like Washington, D.C., a city which famously once banned all handguns.

Tester now stands firmly with the East Coast and West Coast hypocrites who think the best way to fight crime is penal reform (i.e., putting more criminals back on the street by freeing them from prison), the best way to fight illegal immigration is immigration reform (i.e., rewarding law-breaking border crossers with U.S. citizenship), and the best way to fight greedy health insurance companies is to require all private citizens to buy health insurance (i.e., Obamacare). Most importantly, the best way to fight Muslim terrorism is to invite more Muslims into the United States and cross our fingers that they are not terrorists as well.

But really, what difference does it make anyway if they are radicalized jihadi terrorists as long as they can’t get guns? That’s the imbecilic argument emanating from the whiny brats in diapers who took over the House of Representatives and thumbed their nose at the rule of law.

Let’s face it: If you don’t want to offend Muslims, then Muslim terrorism is all about the guns. It’s not about the ideology of hate they are taught; it’s not about the supremacy mindset that makes Islam consider itself better than all other religions; its just about the guns, stupid.

Well, we will have to see whether this “publicity stunt,” as Speaker Paul Ryan called it, will work. The sit-in certainly didn’t result in the rape of the Second Amendment that its leaders intended, but the 25-hour protest may just be the first of many. Now that Democrats have gotten a taste for disruption, they may decide it’s more conducive to winning elections than doing the hard work that legislators are supposed to do. And they may be right. We will just have to wait and see how perceptive the American voters are these days. I’m not holding my breath.