On Guns And Ballot Boxes

Ana Marie Cox is a writer for the New York Times Magazine and longtime staple of left-leaning political blogging. As the founder of Wonkette, she’s been around to have had a chance to understand how the systems work in this country…which is why she’s been catching hell all day for this tweet she sent out.

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Now, keep in mind that all anyone is really talking about doing on voting is requiring photo ID. You know, the thing that you have to show every time you go to purchase a firearm?

But let’s take this in a different direction. Let’s say we treated both of these rights equally and made it just as easy to vote as it is to buy a gun. In this wonderful land of make-believe, we’re going to take every law that applies to purchasing a gun applies to voting.

First, every time you go to vote, you have to fill out a form asking if you’re a felon or taking illegal drugs while showing a photo ID. Lying on this form means you could be charged with perjury.

After you fill out the form, you have to go through a background check to make sure you’re actually eligible to vote.

In some jurisdictions like Chicago, it’s even more difficult. There you have to pay $250 or so for a special permit before you can even start the process for voting–whether poll tax laws will apply is irrelevant for this exercise. Remember, the same laws for both voting and guns are applied and no one on the left is lamenting the undue burden on Chicago gun owners.

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In some places, you can only vote for a set of pre-approved candidates and the laws are structured so you can only vote for future candidates that meet specific criteria. After all, if California can block certain guns because they don’t microstamp, then it can also block candidates who won’t hold certain positions.

Some locations will also restrict just how many elections you can vote in or how many races you can vote on in an election, even if there are more on the ticket. After all, do the words “ten-round magazine” ring any bells?

Are we starting to see how absolutely ridiculous the idea is?

Guns actually are regulated. Exercising one’s right to keep and bear arms involves plenty of burdens that simply don’t exist with regard to voting or any other right. Not only that, no one is really talking about keeping citizens from voting. They just want to make sure the people voting are actually eligible to vote…and they’re not even talking about a background check.

Yet Cox will pop off on Twitter like she’s actually saying something profound, or President Obama will claim it’s easier to get a gun than a book in some neighborhoods, yet the media never seems to call them on this. They let it stand because it advances the narrative. They want people to believe these lies.

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The truth is, buying a gun isn’t without burdens, even in this day and age of supposedly unfettered gun access, and you’re a liar if you say otherwise.

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