When It Comes To Executive Power For Banning Firearms, NY Times Is Down With That

Here was the NY Times on the opinion pages and in the “news analysis” (still opinion) pages

• Have We Had Enough of the Imperial Presidency Yet?
• President Trump Thinks He Is a King
• Trump and His Lawyers Embrace a Vision of Vast Executive Power

Just a few examples, and many, many more, which are often about the border wall, like

A Trump-Made Emergency

With his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, President Trump takes executive overreach to dizzying new heights. The damage to American democracy threatens to linger long after his administration is no more than a dank memory.

Dizzying new heights! Especially when it comes to protecting the board, which is actually in the Constitution. Also the Editorial Board

America Deserves a Leader as Good as Jacinda Ardern

The murder of 50 Muslim worshipers in New Zealand, allegedly by a 28-year-old Australian white supremacist, will be long scrutinized for the way violent hatreds are spawned and staged on social media and the internet. But now the world should learn from the way Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, has responded to the horror.

Almost immediately after last Friday’s killings, Ms. Ardern listened to her constituents’ outrage and declared that within days her government would introduce new controls on the military-style weapons that the Christchurch shooter and many of the mass killers in the United States have used on their rampages. And she delivered.

On Thursday, Ms. Ardern announced a ban on all military-style semiautomatic and automatic weapons, parts that can be used to turn other rifles into such weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. “It’s about all of us,” she said, “it’s in the national interest and it’s about safety.”

See, when it comes to banning firearms by executive fiat, the NY Times is good with that. Of course, as has been noted by so many, New Zealand doesn’t have a 2nd Amendment or any other guarantees for citizens to have firearms. And both the Times (which has armed security at its New York City office) and Ms. Arden (who surely has armed security) will be denying citizens the same security, are good with the massive over-reach in making law abiding gun owners into criminals. One of the tweets I ran across from a New Zealand resident wondered if this would lead to massive crime in New Zealand because law abiding citizens are disarmed and criminals aren’t much like in places like Chicago.

Earlier in the week, she told Parliament that social media sites must address the ease with which the internet can be used to spew hate and images of violence. “We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published,” she said. “It cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility.”

Ms. Ardern didn’t propose immediate measures to limit the reach of Facebook, Twitter and other internet publishers, and it’s not obvious what could be done without trampling freedom of speech. But she made clear that she believed that those social media platforms, like gun manufacturers and dealers, bore some responsibility for the carnage visited on Christchurch and so many communities in recent years.

The same NY Times is incensed by Donald Trump saying mean things like “fake news” about the NY Times and other news outlets. Trump has really never proposed doing anything about it, including even in a manner just meant to troll the leftist news media, but, if we go by the NYTEB’s newfound love of executive power, they’d be good with a crackdown by Trump on news outlets, right?

Hey, I know: Trump can declare all firearms in areas that vote Democrat banned. Including for law enforcement. California, the NY City area, NJ, Chicago, and others. Nothing bad could happen, right?

Oh, and

Since Democrats are suddenly eager to embrace laws from New Zealand, let’s have a conversation about their immigration and visa laws.

— JWF (@JammieWF) March 21, 2019

They are very tough laws.