Confiscate! Confiscate! Confiscate!

Hell hath no fury like an anti-gunner who doesn't get her way on gun control.

The Star-Ledger reported last Friday that after a closed-door hearing on gun control in the New Jersey Senate the previous day, three state senators--believed to be Democrats Loretta Weinberg, Sandra Cunningham and Linda Greenstein--were caught on tape, complaining that bills introduced in the Garden State--including one that would require mandatory training to possess a firearm--don't go far enough.

First, a voice is heard complaining, "We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate." Then, the trio apparently focuses its ire on gun control opponents who say that the way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is to throw the book at them.

Weinberg, willing to have no part of it, says "They want to keep the guns out of the hands of the bad guys, but they don't have any regulations to do it." Cunningham then snipes, "They don't care about the bad guys. All they want to do is have their little guns and do whatever they want with them," and Greenstein chimes in that enforcing existing law is "the line they have developed."

Strong rhetoric that reveals how gun control supporters really feel about their issue is nothing new, of course. Nearly 20 years ago, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that if she had been able to muster the votes, her 1994 "assault weapon" ban would not have merely prohibited various guns from being made with pistol grips, folding stocks and flash suppressors, but would have required a far harsher outcome; as Sen. Feinstein put it, "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in."

However, the fact that gun control supporters still feel that way, after violent crime rates have plummeted as gun controls have been eliminated and gun sales and gun ownership rates have soared, suggests that we're up against ideologically driven adversaries with whom there can be no negotiation--only victory or defeat.