By now we all know Gersh Kuntzman, the anti-gun journalist whose “run in” with an AR-15 “bruised him body and spirit.” Kuntzman’s latest anti-gun salvo concerns the recent police shootings of two armed men. Who’s to blame? It’s the evil NRA. I mean, what other explanation is there when a cop, who works for the government, shoots [allegedly] innocent civilians? It’s the NRA! Oh and the gun nuts.

I blame the gun nuts. Gun lovers and their mouthpieces at the National Rifle Association have done more to damage to police-community relations than poor cop training, racism, crime and fear could ever do. And it’s all due to the NRA’s twisted, sick perversion of the Second Amendment from a cherished right to keep and bear arms as part of a well-regulated national defense into a call to “stand your ground” in all circumstances.

I’m actually surprised to see anti-gunners still attacking the NRA. The NRA supported (if not crafted) recent anti-gun legislation: the no fly list and terrorist watchlist prohibition. You’d think they’d be warming up to the NRA as most of us pro-gunners are cooling off towards the “pro gun” association. [/sarc]

Anyway, here’s another excercpt from the nypost.com article where Mr. Kuntzman further argues that civilians are to blame for the Louisiana and Minnesota shootings.

The victims in two recent shootings — Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile near Minneapolis — lawfully carried weapons. They were the “good guys” with guns that the NRA is always talking about. But in the recent police shooting of Dylan Noble in Fresno or of Dillon Taylor in Utah two years ago, the victim was unarmed. And that’s the problem: In a country where law-abiding citizens are encouraged to protect themselves with guns, police increasingly assume every person they stop is indeed armed.

Newsflash: Mr. Sterling was a convicted felon who did not carry a firearm lawfully.

There is no other interpretation of the Second Amendment than the one set forth by Founders, you know, the guys who actually penned it. “…shall not be infringed,” is pretty clear. That includes protection against the government, a.k.a., a bad cop if need be. Lives aren’t less valuable simply because they don’t have a badge on their chest.

Those two men had every right to defend themselves, but that’s still the problem. Neither appeared to be, in fact, defending themselves. One was already subdued and the other was reaching for his license. I’m not even entirely sure which videos Kuntzman watched to draw his conclusions, but maybe his shoulder is still sore and it’s affecting his brain; he did give himself PTSD after all . . .

The irony, of course, is that there’s no way for cops to distinguish who are the “good guys” with guns, who are the “bad guys” with guns, and who are the rest of us who don’t want to be in any crossfire. There’s no evidence that Sterling or Castile, or many of the other legal gun owners shot and killed by police were “bad” guys. In fact, Castile’s girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds, said her boyfriend was the ultimate law-abiding citizen. “He works for St. Paul public schools,” she said. “He’s never been in jail, anything. He’s not a gang member.” So why did he feel he needed a gun? Perhaps he simply heeded the message of the nation’s most powerful lobbying group: law-abiding citizens should be armed. But the results are almost always tragic: Any time a cop answers a 911 call, he now has to assume everyone in his immediate view — the “good” guy, the “bad” guy and even the innocent bystanders — has a gun. So the incident inevitably escalates. And, suddenly, the NRA’s “good guy with a gun” is the one who ends up dead.

The results of being armed aren’t “almost always” tragic. There are somewhere between 50k and to 1m successful defensive gun uses per year. But you know what is almost always tragic? How some people believe that a country where only the police are armed would be safer than one where the citizenry can defend themselves with guns — despite the lessons of history, both past and present.