Fayetteville, AR –-(Ammoland.com)- Kellie Collins, a former candidate to represent Georgia’s Tenth Congressional District, who ran on a platform that included more restrictions on gun rights, has been arrested in the shooting homicide of Curtis Jason Cain, her husband, and one-time campaign treasurer. Her Twitter account has disappeared, and her campaign materials don’t appear to be available, either, but WSB-TV in Atlanta reports that she ran on “responsible gun regulation to protect the community,” whatever all that may mean.
It’s easy to be snarky here, though we must remember that someone has been killed. This incident is illustrative of the hypocrisy of many advocates of gun control, however, and that’s worth sorting out.
Must an advocate of gun control refrain from exercising gun rights? No. And yes.
Rights are inherent in each of us, regardless of whatever political, philosophical, or religious position we take. That is a necessary stance in a free society, and we test our commitment to freedom by how we treat people we disagree with, no matter what degree of vehemence that disagreement takes. This is hard to remember when I’ve demolished an opponent’s argument to my satisfaction, but rights aren’t conditioned on what I think is intellectually consistent.
It is fair to say that when someone wants to restrict my gun rights, while owning and using guns herself, that is an act of hypocrisy. California Senator Dianne Feinstein had a carry license, for example, a license that she got when her life was threatened, saying that “I know the urge to arm yourself, because that’s what I did.” She “made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out I was going to take them with me.” And then there’s Michael Bloomberg, infamous for his hatred of private gun ownership and carry, who understands that being armed against a threat is a good idea. He’d just prefer that it’s his people who are the only ones who have the guns. A pacifist who argues that violence of any kind is always wrong is one thing, but that is rarely the position of people who advocate for gun control.
Acknowledging that rights aren’t dependent on one’s political beliefs, we can also say that to be honest, anyone—and especially any politician—who wants to make ownership and carry of firearms more difficult should comply with that burden. Collins is by no means alone as a poster child for the “rules for thee, but not for me” attitude. In 2012, Donne Trotter, an Illinois state senator who had a long record of voting against legal concealed carry in that state, was arrested when he was found to have a handgun in his bag while trying to board a plane. California state senator, Leland Yee, worked to worsen his state’s onerous list of infringements on gun rights while trying to sell guns to an FBI agent who posed as an international arms trafficker. And on and on.
This is about much more than gun rights. It reveals a mindset among too many politicians that they are above the rest of us. A practical effect of exercising gun rights is to test the understanding of public officials, elected or otherwise, that the people loan them power for a set period, that this power belongs to the people.
Murder has many motivations, and anyone is capable of it, but it’s hard to be shocked when someone who works to curtail the rights of others commits the ultimate infringement. We voters have the duty to vote out and vote against candidates who declare themselves willing to start down the path of restricting our rights, especially when we find that they are hypocrites about those rights.
About Greg Camp
Greg Camp has taught English composition and literature since 1998 and is the author of six books, including a western, The Willing Spirit, and Each One, Teach One, with Ranjit Singh on gun politics in America. His books can be found on Amazon. He tweets @gregcampnc.
It is so sad that people cannot even properly mourn the horrible death of a man whose life was taken needlessly by the woman whom he trusted most because she gunned him down for whatever reason to be determined. Instead, we are commenting on her advocating gun control in the political arena for her district while she was practicing hypocrisy. She did not just happen to have a gun in her hand at the moment she decided to shoot and kill her husband. No, she had s gun in her hand before she confronted her husband whom she had already… Read more »
The left tells us to “do as I say, not as I do”. The “liberalism Mental Disease” is based on hypocrisy but only thinking people are smart enough to realize it.
Evidently she was ill enough to murder her husband,I think that qualifies her.
Green Mt Boy, I agree, being liberal is a mental issue
The great State of Georgia can now claim politicians that are very familiar and able to warn us about the stability of islands and the practical application of “gun control”.
Sorry ! I couldn’t help it ! (Snark-Snark !)
It’s quite obvious that the gun went off by itself w/o her knowledge.
@vasnu: Heres the rest of the story..the gun was on the table, her husband walked in and startled the gun, the gun fired , panicking to save its self , the gun jumped in to her hand to frame her
They must ban those smart guns before they go on a killing spree killing thousands at the direction of Twitter and using Facebook facial recognition software. I only want dumb guns that will lay on a table, stand in a corner or even fall out of an airplane and not harm anybody [ unless it hits somebody on te head ]. BTW, I’ve seen the TV commercials with the cars that brake, backup, even trailers. Will the such smart cars have a speed limit over-ride for escape from a forest fire or taking a person to a hospital? What if… Read more »
Unless I missed it–nowhere dos the author mention she is a DEMOCRAT.
T’would have been a waste of words.
I may well have this case confused with another similar one of the past few days, but recently a women, recently married and who had even mroe recently become the named beneficiary of her new husband’s signficant life insurance pollicy, AND who was strongly anti-gun, used one of the very tools she worked to deny everyone else, and killed her husband, thus, in theory, at least, setting herself up to receive the signficant payout from the insurance policy. Again, I may be conflating this one with that one…. but in both cases a strong anti-gun female used the took she… Read more »
@Tionico, be confused no longer. This is the very same anti-gun woman that was running on the Democrat ticket for congress in the state of Georgia.
She is Google it
Don’t want to bust your bubble,wait now that I think about,yes I do.She is a full fledge democrat an probably has a lot of communist in her.
If Ms. Collins is indeed guilty of the charge of murder of her spouse,maybe she will be hung if guilty? Ms. Collins may
feel much more comfortable with using a rope, versus a bullet coming from the muzzle of a gun.
It seems like the religious zealot who marches against pornography. Many of them have a weakness so rather than getting themselves counseling they want a law against all forms of anything they think is pornographic. Like a marble statue or classic literature.
They feel homicidal and/or suicidal and rather than fixing their weakness they demand all the normal people go defenseless.
Ive come to the conclusion thst people who are antigun and think regulation of an inanimate object will somehow be effective at curtailing what is obviously a problem are mosty people who lack enough self controle of their temper and dont trust themselves to act rationally when enraged. These “antigunners”, usually left leanning, tend to have a superiority complex and fausly believe most people are incapable of controlling their emotions will also act irrationally. Since the “antigunner doesnt trust him or herself with a gun other most if not all people cant be trusted to posses these tools/”death dealling objects… Read more »
You often see and fear in others what you fear in yourself. Fear that people with guns can’t control themselves and use them right comes mostly from the anti-gun libtard crowd who spew hatred and hate everyone who does not play by their rules. Wonder why she killed her husband.
They just can’t keep in check the mental illness that is Leftardism.