Delaware’s Democrats, emboldened by the groundswell of anger about the NRA’s role in America’s deadly gun culture, introduced a bill yesterday that would raise the minimum age for buying a long gun from 18 to 21, which already is the minimum age for buying a handgun. This tiny baby step was trumpeted to the skies as proof of Pete Schwartzkopf’s commitment to gun control in our time. The bill is most likely doomed, because most long guns are NOT military-style rifles but hunting rifles, and only two states, Hawaii and Illinois, have a minimum age of 21 for all long guns. An adult-sized step would have been a bill to ban military-style rifles.
Meanwhile, students from nearly 20 Delaware high schools announced a school walkout for March 14, the one-month anniversary of the Parkland massacre.
Here’s the question: Which action took more guts and showed more leadership?
Another wild day at the White House yesterday, as Trump once again proposed the death penalty as a solution to the opioid crisis, then announced big tariff increases on steel and aluminum, drawing worldwide threats of retaliation from our allies, producing farm country fury and triggering a Dow-Jones collapse — thereby answering the question, “So we elected Trump? What could go wrong?”
Forgive the inside-baseball aspect of this story, but it’s useful for those who’d like to learn how to read access journalism. Within hours of Hope Hicks’ resignation, New York Times White House reporter Maggie Haberman was out with a piece claiming it had nothing to do with Hicks lying to Congress. Josh Marshall pointed out that this piece had an aroma of bovine manure about it, drawing a snippy response from Haberman, thereby all but confirming that Hope Hicks was a key Haberman source, and Haberman ran that piece to keep her channel open. Trust me, people, journalism is not pretty, and it’s not a good fit as a profession for the pure of heart.
Our situation is so dire that God is now dropping metaphors on us from above. A woman walking along the Susquehanna River near Bloomsburg, Pa., found two bald eagles floating together in the water, their talons locked together. Fighting eagles often get entangled like that during aerial duels, and wildlife officials said they probably fell into the river, where the cold water tightened their muscles and made it impossible for either to let go. They were taken to a nearby fire house, where an hour out of the cold allowed them to free each other and fly off.