Straw Demon

UPDATE: below

WaPo columnist Richard Cohen has been wacky, or worse, for years. He so disapproves of the death penalty that politicians on the other side -- even Howard Dean and Mario Cuomo -- must be "craven" vote panderers. Last year, he called teaching high school algebra useless:

sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not.

Cohen reasoned Republicans won in 2004 because, "Sometimes a voter may actually decide to vote against his or her economic self-interest," prompting Charles Austin's apt answer:

Alas, this is the Democrat’s real problem, but until all those damned trees are cut down they won’t be able to see the forest. In other words, it’s not the economy, stupid! Sure the economy matters, but not so much when there are people trying to kill you, and another very large, and very loud, group of people are telling you it’s your own damn fault somebody wants to kill you, you freakin’ Jesusland morons! My personal economic self-interest demands that I be alive to have an economic self-interest.

On the other hand, Cohen recognized that revealing Valarie Plame's employer wasn't a crime and so savaged the Scooter Libby prosecution. The WaPo writer also dismissed Senator John Kerry as "overly nuanced."

Still, yesterday's column is among Cohen's wackiest. He belatedly attacks Fred Thompson's three month old National Review article responding to the Virginia Tech shooting:

Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk, joke, and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms -- and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to obtain. . .

Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion that people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least many of us, as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a convenient weapon. Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus. . .

So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university's "concealed carry" policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who have passed background checks and taken training classes. The university, however, lobbied against that bill, and a top administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the measure. . .

Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses -- and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

Castigating Thompson's position, Cohen channels TV's Gunsmoke:

Marshal Dillon had the same policy for cowboys when they rode into Dodge: They had to surrender their guns. The Marshal Dillon Rule is based on common sense, not to mention the law of averages: The more guns you have, the greater the chance they will be used. But both common sense and the law of averages escape presidential candidates, especially Republicans looking to assert their conservative bona fides. . .

Marshal Dillon . . . might point out that young people -- especially young men -- sometimes drink too much and have hormonal surges that compare, on a mild day, to Vesuvius on Aug. 24 of the year 79. To think that a university president in his or her right mind would permit students to carry guns on campus so stretches the term "right mind" that it loses all meaning.

But, Cohen's claim is a straw man; Thompson praised a policy that would have limited permits to trained adults age 21 years and up. In contrast, Virginia Tech's rule went beyond students to cover faculty and staff, any one of which -- had they been wearing a weapon -- might have shortened the killing spree.

Mind you, in something of a contradiction, Cohen's column endorses personal gun ownership:

I am on record as being sympathetic to those who like to keep a gun in the house. This is because I was burglarized one very dark night by a klutz of a thief who burst though my back door and ran around the first floor making so much noise that I was certain he was coming for me. (This was before the deranged had recourse to e-mail.) I very much wanted a gun -- not to whack the intruder but merely to protect my life.

But Cohen ignores adults who happen to be enrolled in, or employed by, a college. And he demonizes Thompson, and anyone such as NOfP with similar views, as crazy:

The rational desire to protect yourself and your family in your own home -- whether or not you approve of guns -- is understandable. Allowing college kids to party with guns -- and don't tell me they won't -- is another matter entirely. But Thompson, out to show he can non-think with the best of the right wing, has outlined a position that suggests he has either lost his mind or will out-pander the nimblest of them to become the GOP presidential nominee. I think it is the latter.

Not so fast, Richard. As Patterico observes, Cohen's position is little more than "guns for me but not for thee." On Fausta's Blog, SC&A calls it "the same MSM dog and pony show." Discerning Texan predicts the WaPo calling Thompson overly pro-gun will be a plus in the campaign.

But the best take is Perfect Sense's comment on Patterico:

Hmmm. As I recall, despite the "no gun" policy, Marshal Dillon had a gun fight every week for 20 years which must be a violation of the law of averages. Maybe that is why the radio and TV show was called "Gunsmoke" and not "Multiculturalism Conflict Resolution on the Prairie."

When we followed James Arness, Dennis Weaver and Amanda Blake, what program, I wonder, was Richard Cohen watching?

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AVI observes in comments:

I like the part where he thinks algebra is not useful, but then invokes the "law of averages."