Legendary singer Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco, but after his rant on gun control that is now making its way across the Internet, one might reasonably wonder where he left his brain.
Maybe he turned it in for a gift card at Mike McGinn’s Freeway Firearms, a bubble that may be popped this afteroon by KIRO.
On the other hand, action film star Bruce Willis came out candidly the other day about the dangers of eroding the Bill of Rights, and particularly the Second Amendment, because it would lay the groundwork for assaults on other civil rights.
The crooner joined Amanda Peet, Chris Rock and others in a campaign for – whether they realize it or not – gun prohibition. But it was what Bennett said that is currently lighting fuses in the firearms community and raising questions about whether the singer may have lost his marbles somewhere on the Golden Gate Bridge.
“It's the kind of turn that happened to the great country of Germany, when Nazis came over and created tragic things, and they had to be told off,” Bennett said. “And if we continue this kind of violence and accept it in our country, the rest of the world's going to really take care of us, in a very bad way.”
Willis, on the other hand, offered some sound remarks in an interview with ABC that may be seen here.
“I think that you can’t start to pick apart anything out of the Bill of Rights without thinking that it’s all going to become undone,” Willis observed. “If you take one out or change one law, then why wouldn’t they take all your rights away from you? I know what happens when crazy people pick up weapons and commit mass murder.”
And in that, Willis cracked a code. Crazy people commit mass murder. Responsible gun owners, exemplified by the people who crowded into the Oak Harbor City Council meeting Tuesday evening visibly armed and obviously angry, yet nobody suffered a scratch. Some egos were bruised, perhaps, but a room filled with armed citizens did not erupt into violence, which seemed to be what some anti-gunners on Whidbey Island, and Mr. Bennett, have intimated in their remarks about firearms and the people who own them.
Willis has made some rather violent films. His “Die Hard” series has a body count rivaling a battlefield. But he has separated that from reality, and offered a rather intelligent summation in the midst of carefully manufactured hysteria from the gun ban lobby.
Bennett should stick to singing. It’s what he is good at, if not gifted. Willis should consider doing a film in the Puget Sound area and call it “Gun Control Myths Die Hard.”
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