This guy? His name is Jeff Duncan. He’s a Congressman from South Carolina, serving his second term in the House of Representatives. He’s an idiot.

Congressman Jeff Duncan, Republican Idiot

I know, I know…it’s rude and juvenile to call people names. But I don’t really consider this as name-calling. It’s more of a political taxonomy — a system of classification. Jeff Duncan falls into the class of Republican Idiot.

I base that classification entirely on statements made by Jeff Duncan his ownself. For example, there was the time when Duncan believed President Obama was somehow going to issue an Executive Order that would…well, he wasn’t quite sure what the Executive Order would do, but it was something about guns, and dammit Jeff Duncan was not going to stand for it. Whatever it was. Or might have been. If Obama had actually done it. Which he didn’t. But this is what Duncan said in response to the Executive Order That Didn’t Exist Dealing with Something about Guns:

“The Founding Fathers never envisioned Executive Orders being used to restrict our Constitutional rights. We live in a republic, not a dictatorship. I will use every means at my disposal to combat the agenda of the Executive branch to undermine our Second Amendment rights. I will also fight any legislative action that is taken to implement more gun control. Americans don’t want their Second Amendment freedoms restricted in any way.”

A dictatorship? That’s idiotic on two levels. First, I guess it never occurred to Duncan that in an actual no-shit dictatorship anybody who suggested the president was a dictator would have a short shelf life. But Duncan felt perfectly safe in publicly suggesting the president is a dictator. Perhaps he thought President Obama just wasn’t a very good dictator, because any dictator who’d put up with Jeff Duncan would need some remedial dictatorship lessons. The second reason this was idiotic is because there was no such Executive Order. This is all based on something Duncan believed the president might be considering. Not even something he thought Obama might do; just something he thought he might be thinking about doing.

But okay, everybody over-reacts on occasion. You can over-react without being an idiot. If those comments were the extent of Jeff Duncan’s foolishness, I’d be reluctant to classify him as an idiot. But he’s built on that foundation of idiocy.

Jeff Duncan likes him some guns. That doesn’t make him an idiot, either. A lot of smart people like guns. But anybody who thinks he needs to be able to tote a firearm into Applebee’s in case he might need to shoot somebody for some reason (because you know how lawless Applebee’s is), well that person is an idiot. Duncan complained that the South Carolina legislature refused to pass a law permitting people to carry concealed weapons in establishments serving alcohol.

“[W]e can’t even pass [a law] to allow CWP (concealed weapon permit) holders to eat inside restaurants like Applebees and Ruby Tuesdays because they have a bar.”

Of course, CWP holders can eat in an Applebee’s in South Carolina. They just have to leave their firearms in their vehicles. Jeff Duncan is far more at risk from eating the desserts at Applebee’s than from its rowdy clientele*.

Troublemakers and hooligans hanging out at Applebee’s

In case there was any doubt left about Duncan, he established his Idiot bona fides recently by posting a lengthy screed on his Facebook page. Here’s some of what he says:

There is a reason that some want to end private gun ownership, limit ammo purchases, limit magazine capacity…. Ask yourselves about a National gun registry database and how that might be used and why it is so wanted by progressives.

Read about the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Read that all Tutsi tribe members were required to register their address with the Hutu government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for slaughter at the hands of the Hutu. (Since the government had the names and addresses of nearly all Tutsis living in Rwanda (remember, each Rwandan had an identity card that labeled them Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa) the killers could go door to door, slaughtering the Tutsis. Not with firearms, mind you, but with machetes.

I use this example to warn that national databases can be used with evil consequences.

That’s right, Congressman Jeff Duncan is apparently afraid that ‘progressives’ want a ‘National gun registry database’ so they can can go door to door and slaughter decent gun owners. With machetes.

Unidentified ‘progressive’ with a gun that shoots machetes

Is there any legislation under consideration by Congress that includes a national gun registry database? No, there is not. Is there a Federal law prohibiting the creation of a national gun registry? Yes, there is — since 1986. Is the United States in 2013 just like Rwanda in 1994? No, it’s not, and you’d have to be an idiot to think so.

Jeff Duncan is no natural-born idiot. He’s come by his idiocy the old-fashioned way; he earned it.

Editorial note: In Duncan’s defense, a 30 year old man and his girlfriend were shot in the parking lot of an Applebee’s restaurant in Georgia in January of 2012, following a play-off game between the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco Forty-Niners. The shooter, a Saints fan, got into an argument with the victim (oddly enough, not a Forty-Niners fan – just a guy cheering on the team because his girlfriend was a fan). The shooter was forced to go to the parking lot to get his pistol, since it’s illegal to carry a concealed weapon in a bar in Georgia. The shooter was then forced to wait for two more hours until the victim and his girlfriend left Applebee’s, at which time he shot them. If Duncan had his way, the poor shooter would not have had to waste those two hours.