"This is not how it works. This is not how any of this is supposed to work" - Speaker of the US House Paul Ryan edition - Granite Grok

“This is not how it works. This is not how any of this is supposed to work” – Speaker of the US House Paul Ryan edition

Okay Paul, you're up. No more fooling around: Are you ready to get serious? Or do you just want to continue to nibble around the edges?
Okay Paul, you’re up. No more fooling around: Are you ready to get serious? Or do you just want to continue to nibble around the edges?

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.” – President Obama, Inauguration (2009

Politically lazy or political cowardness?

“House Speaker Paul D. Ryan backed away Wednesday from legislative action to ban ‘bump stocks,’ the device a mass shooter used in Las Vegas earlier this month to create machine-gun-like rapid fire from his legal semi automatic rifle, killing 58,” washingtonpost.com reports. “Instead, Ryan and many of his fellow House Republicans hope the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will act administratively to outlaw the devices, which the agency ruled legal in 2010.” Translation . . .

Administratively“? Congress is supposed to legislate and the Executive Branch is supposed to, well, execute those laws. Period.  If one is to be true to the Constitution there should be no discussion.  This is a really damning statement from a Republican whose Platform says that the GOP believes in a limited Government and that Ryan has said the same thing on multiple occasions. The GOP and Ryan has made much of the Constitution and that the government’s governance is governed by it. Yet, go back and read that bolded part again and ask yourself “cognitive dissonance, or trying really hard to not stand up, trying not to lead, trying to avoid a hard situation, wanting to punt it elsewhere, and not wanting  (eventually) to take a vote”?

THIS is one reason why he got elected both as a US Rep and as Speaker – to do all those things that now seem to be giving him the shakes.  He wants the ATF to make the decision?

As Glenn Reynolds keeps saying we are blessed in having the worst political class ever!

I know that I am Old School but it is the Old School that actually taught how our Government was supposed to operate but then came the Progressives starting with one of the worst Presidents we’ve ever had – Woodrow Wilson who was the first President to openly dismiss and denigrate the Constitution.  Progressives (e.g., incremental Socialists and Progressive Totalitarians) have always wanted to take the real power from We the People and invest that power into the Administrative State.  A bunch of technocrat expertise filling government with a non-partisan attitude; the goal pushing has continued since that time.  Sure, we get to vote but….

This utterance shows the continued cowardness of our elected officers.  Lead, follow, or get out of the way.  Well, he’s supposed to lead given his position.  There is no one to follow so the only other option is to resign and let someone else lead if you can’t stand the fire.

The ATF has already made its ruling BASED ON THE CURRENT LAW’ parameters. Legislators and the President (no, not this one) laid down specific parameters as to what would constitute the illegalities of higher rates of fire and none of them fit bump stocks.  They’ve already made it clear that BASED ON THE LAW, it’s legal.

Ryan’s feeling the heat from NRA and, perhaps, The People of the Gun.

He should be feeling the heat but for a completely different reason – not doing is job and being all too willing to punt it off to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.  Remember, however, that Wisconsin was one of the birthing places of Progressivism and that’s where he’s from.  While it isn’t limited to WI or Democrats (re: former Congressman Charlie Bass (R (sometimes) – NH), leader of the Main Street Republicans which his father started).  After all, it was folks like him that signed the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act).  That Act jumpstarted the Administrative State, put it on steroids and stuffed a rocket up its butt, in allowing it to craft its own legislation euphemistically called “regulations” and allowed it to levy its own taxes.

So not only have our simply stellar Legislators (/sarc) not doing their Constitutional duties, Ryan demonstrates with this high priority issue that they are all too willing to throw others under the bus so as to act like Pontius Pilate.  Proceed:

Ryan’s newfound support for the NRA’s solution — asking the ATF to reverse their previous, completely rational decision approving bump fire stocksis only a less-bad option. If the ATF is free to interpret law, rather than follow it, the NRA and its supporters will have opened a proverbial Pandora’s box.

In the big scheme of things, it is the WORST option.  Period.  But then again, Ryan wants to throw shade on the rest of us:

Speaker Ryan doesn’t see it that way: “We think the regulatory fix is the smartest, quickest fix, and then, frankly, we’d like to know how it happened in the first place.”

 

Notice that he didn’t say BEST.  It is only the smartest and quickest way out of a political pickle he doesn’t want to be in and the spotlight that comes with it

Lazy?  Certainly wants someone else to do the dirty work.  Cowardly?  The former proves the latter.

(H/T: The Truth About Guns)

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