Last week legendary actor Kirk Douglas posted a short plea
for – something, it’s unclear exactly what – at the Huffington Post, a vague call for the elimination of guns in
America, because, as he put it solemnly, “America’s
Cowboy Days Are Over.”
In case you’ve been in a coma for the last century, Douglas,
now at the almost Biblical age of 96, is the steely-eyed, cleft-chinned international
superstar of such films as Paths of Glory,
Lust for Life, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Seven
Days in May, and perhaps most memorably, Spartacus. The talented, ridiculously handsome actor has played
everything from tortured artist Vincent Van Gogh to a Viking warrior, military
officers, cowboys, and, well, Spartacus.
In his HuffPost
piece, Douglas says that “under the flooring of my dressing room is a safe. In
it are two guns that I used to shoot the bad guys in movies and a silver plated
revolver with my name engraved on it which was given to me by some crazy fan.” He
writes that “I often played the good cowboy on screen, riding in to save the
day. Now, everybody thinks he is a cowboy too. That frightens me. We have
become a cowboy country with too many guns.”
How many is too many, Mr. Douglas, and who gets to decide
that figure? The Hollywood left generally marches in unthinking lockstep to the
progressive call to get rid of guns altogether in America – a simplistic,
utopian fantasy that does not and cannot possibly address the complicated
reality that millions of guns are already in circulation in this country. The
left pontificates about “getting them off the streets” and seems to believe
that this is best accomplished through the bureaucratic hassling and
demonization of law-abiding gun owners, if not by actually forcing them to turn
in their guns to the government – you know, for the sake of the children. Of
course, despite a brainless video plea from a gaggle of Hollywood actors to “demand
a plan,” the left doesn’t seem to have a plan for disarming criminals,
gangs, and the violent mentally ill, who came by their firearm possession
illegally.
Actually, there are any number of safe spots, although atop
a cabinet isn’t one. It’s very simple to ensure that your young children cannot
have access to guns at home, and responsible gun owners do exactly that. Keeping
your firearms inside a safe underneath the floor may be overkill, however, especially
if you find yourself in sudden need to defend yourself and those same children.
“I cannot understand the people who are against some form of
gun control,” Douglas muses. “They should be the first to welcome a message on making
it more difficult to get a gun.” People aren’t against “some form of gun
control” – they are against restrictions that do nothing to make people safer
from gun violence, that only punish law-abiding, responsible gun owners, and
that are a thinly-veiled gun grab by a totalitarian government that seeks to
disarm its citizens supposedly for their own good.
“Many of them,” Douglas went on, “seem to propose more guns
being available to everybody.” Do they? Who are these “many” who “seem” to
propose that everybody have guns? I don’t know any gun owner who thinks
everybody should have guns. I’m fairly sure no one wants gangbangers to have
access to guns, or the mentally ill, or Mexican drug cartels, although our own
government has no problem arming the latter.
“I have many grandchildren,” says Douglas. “I would hate to
leave them a world where guns are easily accessible.” We all would. No one
wants guns to be easily accessible to unsupervised, untrained, or very young
children. That’s why responsible gun owners take measures to prevent that.
Then he intones the kneejerk anti-gun mantra of the left: “It's
time to do something to make our children safer.” Who can argue with that? Who
doesn’t want to make children safer? It’s typical leftist, feel-good blather that
everyone agrees with but which ignores the reality of an issue and offers no real-world
solution.
Douglas closes with his pronouncement that “America's cowboy
days are over,” seemingly unaware of his own moral contradiction. He began his
article pointing out how he used to ride to the rescue as a movie cowboy – back
in the day when Hollywood still celebrated good guys rather than anti-heroes – and
closed by complaining that he is frightened that now “everybody thinks he is a
cowboy too.” What does he have to be frightened of from the good guys?
Apparently he would like to leave to his grandchildren a
world in which there are no cowboys riding to save the day; instead, we
surrender our 2nd Amendment rights and trust the government to ride
to our rescue.
Under President Barack Obama, America’s cowboy days are
indeed waning, a prospect which sends the pacifist totalitarians of the left
into giddy spasms of joy. But we live in a world in which people still need Americans
infused with the cowboy spirit to come to the rescue, both at home and abroad.
Kirk Douglas, acting legend and honorary cowboy though he may be, has joined
the ranks of Hollywood dreamers who don’t seem to grasp that it’s not only in
movies that good men with guns must stop bad ones; that holds true for the real
world too. Disarming the white hats only leaves us all at the mercy of the
black hats.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 6/12/13)
