My old friend Jason Mattera, now with the Andrea Tantaros show, participated in a stress test of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's journalist repellent systems, and I'm pleased to report that the system is functioning beautifully. The Mayor is protected from a number of things he would prefer his citizens remain vulnerable to, including impertinent questions. He doesn't seem any more eager to declare his own personal "gun-free zone" than most other gun control zealots, but he's strongly in favor of journalism-free zones:
You can tell Jason is mellowing out, because in his wild youth he would have done the interview with a Big Gulp in his hand. If he gets a chance to conduct a follow-up interview, I'm hoping he'll ask if Bloomberg has ever participated in Barack Obama's "frequent skeet shoots," which I believe look something like this:
It's remarkable how reliably the "why won't you disarm your bodyguards?" question discombobulates the anti-Second Amendment crowd. They really don't have a comfortable focus-group-friendly answer to it. The coldly logical responses - "because I'm more important than you, so I need protection" - simply do not sit well with the public. That includes people who might otherwise be content to ride in the gun-control bandwagon, until they hit this particular intellectual speed bump.
The question is not, "Why should you have a professional security detail while I must defend myself?" If that were the issue at hand, it wouldn't be tough to answer the question. Instead, the ruling class finds it difficult to explain why they should enjoy armed protection while the rest of us are forbidden to defend ourselves at all, or must do so within an environment of complex restrictions that put us at a pronounced disadvantage against attackers. This position might be easier to defend if the Little People faced no significant risk of criminal attack, but that's obviously not the case. It's especially obvious if you know more about the recent history of law-abiding citizens defending themselves with firearms than the national media wants you to know.
Serious students of American liberty read the Second Amendment and see the right of individual citizens to defend themselves, and their families, against tyranny and barbarism. It is increasingly offensive to hear people with armed security details lecture us on how it's really more like a provisional license to shoot ducks and clay pigeons.
Update: You'll have to make do with the artistic representation of Obama's frequent skeet shooting sessions provided by Messrs. Brooks and Korman, because the White House refuses to provide photos of our gun-slinging President filling the sky with hot lead.
