You sort of have to take one with the other, know what I mean?

For those of you who are not criminally stupid or bereft of any sense of history, if you think back a few years, you might remember this picture, which graced about a billion, skillion, kajillion newspapers and magazines:

Yes, that was Cuban miracle child Elian Gonzales, being mercilessly torn, at fully automatic gunpoint, from the loving embrace of ... well, let's let a couple of the more storied wingnuts have their say, shall we? Re-linking to Our Lady of The Dolphins:

Saturday, in the darkness, came the nightmare: the battering ram, the gas, the masks, the guns, the threats, the shattered glass and smashed statue of the Blessed Mother, the blanket thrown over the sobbing child's head as they tore him from the house like a hostage.

And wingnuttery just wouldn't be wingnuttery without the batshit craziness of David Horowitz:

LET'S BEGIN with the big lie—that Elian Gonzalez was separated from his father by his Cuban-American relatives living in Miami, and that father and son were reunited by Janet Reno's INS storm troopers. (What else can you call them, given their pre-dawn assault on a private home to snatch a child who was not a hostage, at gunpoint?)

Yes, the outrage was endless. Amazingly, though, the folks who were livid over the heavy armament that was used in the Elian Gonzales case are, curiously enough, the very same ones who are now arguing for unlimited weaponry for the masses, suggesting that, when a law enforcement officer opens a closet door, he might have absolutely no idea what kind of firepower is waiting for him, but it's just unseemly and inappropriate for him to be properly prepared for it.

The Right: supporting your local law enforcement. Up to a point.