NICHOLAS KRISTOF can’t make up his mind about who’s more dangerous: al Qaeda or gun-toting Americans. Kristof recently wrote two columns on the dangers of nuclear proliferation, his conclusion being that we are now more vulnerable to nuclear attack than ever before. In his August 11 column, Kristof speculated that, if a 10-kiloton nuclear device exploded in Times Square, “it would vaporize or destroy the theater district, Madison Square Garden . . . the United Nations,” and so on. He concluded that the casualty figure would be approximately 500,000 dead, and that the likelihood of this occurring in the next 10 years is somewhere between 20 percent (his guess) and 50 percent (the guess of Harvard Professor Graham Allison, author of Nuclear Terrorism).
In Kristof’s August 14 follow-up column, he conceded that “President Clinton’s approach to North Korea wasn’t a great success, but at least North Korea didn’t add to its nuclear arsenal during his watch.” Yet Kristof seems to feel that the nuclear threat posed by rogue states North Korea and Iran, and terrorists like Osama bin Laden, is actually quite minimal when compared with a lapse in the assault weapons ban.
In a column last week, Kristof accused Bush of flip-flopping on the assault weapons ban, because during the 2000 campaign he stated that “it makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society,” while he now promises to sign the ban only if it reaches his desk. As flip-flops go, this isn’t quite “I voted for it before I voted against it,” but Kristof has a small point. From there, he takes off:
About 100 times as many Americans are already dying from gunfire in the U.S. as in Iraq. As many Americans die from firearms every six weeks as died in the 9/11 attacks–yet the White House is paralyzed on the issue.
Mr. Bush needs to live up to his campaign promise and push to keep the ban on assault weapons. Otherwise, we’ll bring more of the Iraq-like carnage to our own shores, and his refusal to confront our gun problem will kill more Americans over time than Osama bin Laden ever could.[Emphasis added]
The wiggle words “over time” buy Kristof an out–after all, many, many years from now, the number of people killed by lightening will eclipse the number killed by bin Laden. But Kristof’s hysterics look even worse than usual next to his own recent writing.
Michael Goldfarb is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.
