An MSNBC roundtable on guns is bound to feature a diversity of opinions. Like leftists who want to ban guns and a Never Trumper working for the New York Times who wants to ban guns.
The difference is that Stephens actually acknowledges the existence of the 2nd Amendment. Most lefty gun banners just pretend it doesn't exist. Like Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech.
"There doesn't seem to be even a moment of silence and compassion and thoughtfulness on the part of gun advocates for what has happened," Bret Stephens said to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace. "There is something kind of aggressively and inhumanly repetitive about this line that guns are essential to American liberties, hard one to stomach when so many thousands of people are dying every year for this so-called liberty."
I guess Thomas Jefferson was aggressively inhuman.
And we all know how much thoughtful compassion the left projects after every Islamic terror attack and how willing they are to listen to calls to halt terror migration... even if only saves one lives.
Open borders are apparently "essential to American liberties", but not the actual Bill of Rights.
And then Stephens offers this nonsense.
Stephens also argued that restricting gun rights has led to a dramatic turnaround of homicides and crime in New York City. He claimed it is a "huge reason" why the city went from 2000+ homicides a year to under 400.
"The NRA is not buying politicians. It's representing a broad segment of opinion which means that it falls to opinion makers and shapers to change those views," he said. "I mean, here we are in New York City. New York City has registered some of the most historic drops in crime in the last two decades, accounting for a large -- which is a large reason why crime nationwide has fallen so much. Talk to Bill Bratton, talk to Ray Kelly, talk to anyone who has been in charge of security. They will tell you that aggressive enforcement of gun laws has been a huge reason why this city went from north of 2000 homicides a year to whatever it is, I think under 400, historic lows, not seen since the 1940s or '50s."
Every major city aggressively enforces gun laws. Chicago aggressively enforces gun laws. It doesn't seem to help.
And there's been a larger nationwide drop in crime across the country. So it has nothing to do with gun laws in New York. New York's crime rate drops have far more to do with the city's gentrification just as the rise of crime in certain cities has to do with their further decline into misery. But saying that is politically incorrect. It would get Stephens fired from his cushy New York Times gig.
What New York did was broken windows policing to turn around communities and crack down on blight actors. That's the policy utterly rejected by the left. The Obama administration went so far the other way that its actions wrecked Baltimore and turned into a killing zone. They enforce gun laws in Baltimore, but they don't enforce any other laws.