This is CNN. The network known for asking an alleged Bill Cosby victim why she didn’t she bite his penis, hypothesizing that black holes were responsible for the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, and not knowing the difference between semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms (and these are just the most recent forays into the bizarre) has a new observation: the situation French Muslims face in France is just like Ferguson, Missouri.

No, I’m not kidding. CNN’s religion editor, Daniel Burke, said this:

“I think it’s kind of like what we saw in Ferguson. That this was a kind of, in some ways, the tinder that lit the spark, but the embers were already burning. There is a prevailing feeling in France among many Muslims that they are not treated as part of the state at large. France has a very proud, very long secular history, and it’s not always done the best of integrating any of its religious minorities, French Muslims included.”

CNSNews.com’s Curtis Kalin pretty much took this to the woodshed:

First off, the contention that an Al-Qaeda directed, sponsored, and funded terrorist attack was somehow the fault of France is absurd. It is another in a long line of attempts to blame the victims of violence for the acts perpetrated upon them. In some ways, this statement is worse than those expressed blaming the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for their own deaths. Burke lays blame for an act of foreign terrorism on an entire country.

Second, the nonsensical comparison with the events of Ferguson, Missouri underlines the lack of understanding Burke seems to have for the Michael Brown case itself. He shifts blame from looters and rioters in an American suburb to the town itself just as he blames France for the Paris attacks.

While it can be said that discontentment exists along racial lines in Ferguson and religious lines in France, to jump to the conclusion that the communities themselves share more blame than the actual perpetrators of a terrorist attack or looting and rioting is intellectually perilous and simply wrongheaded.

Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen claimed responsibility for the shootings today.

There have been some really wacky statements made in the horrific aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris. We had the Washington Post publish one of the most entertaining pieces in recent memory; questioning why didn’t France’s stringent gun control laws save them.

Yep, some folks are questioning why terrorists don’t follow the law: [emphasis mine]:

How did the attackers get the guns?

Almost certainly illegally. Bloomberg reports that weapons designed for military use, such as the Kalashnikov AK series, have been illegally flooding France over the past few years, with state bodies recording double digit increases.

“The French black market for weapons has been inundated with eastern European war artillery and arms,” Philippe Capon, the head of UNSA police union, told Bloomberg. “They are everywhere in France.”

The number of illegal guns is thought to be at least twice the number of legal guns in the country. Weapons such as AK-47s can be bought for the equivalent of a few thousand dollars.

#GunControlForTerrorists – let’s get that trending, folks!

Liam Neeson, star of Taken 3, which made a killing (sorry for the pun) at the box office over the weekend, decided to use the Charlie Hebdo shootings to comment about Americans’ Second Amendment rights (via the Independent):

“There’s just too many f**king guns out there,” he told Gulf News when asked about the recent terror attacks in Paris at the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

“Especially in America. I think the population is like, 320 million? There’s over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America.”

He went on to describe the situation as a “f**king disgrace”, but declined to go into detail over US police responsibility for gun crime.

Again, these were terrorists, who obtained illegal firearms that carried out the attacks. I don’t see how disparaging the vast majority of law-abiding Americans gun owners are relevant to this awful attack–probably because it isn’t.

Lastly, Eugene Robinson, also a Washington Post columnist, stipulated that the carnage in Paris would’ve been greater if law-abiding French citizens had more access to firearms or something.

Just to keep it into perspective, I don’t think we should imagine that the conditions and the threat are exactly the same in the United States as they are in France. They are different. In fact, one thing that is different here is weapons are universally available and so it is actually a very good thing that, that the tensions are not exactly the same because we would expect to have a lot more carnage.”

Right, and curbing access to those who actually want to kill us all will limit that possibility? Such a notion has been pretty much rejected. As Katie wrote over at Townhall, in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings, in which the Tsarneav brothers were on the run, 69 percent of Americans would’ve liked to have a firearm in the situation.

So, while the gun control narratives are annoying, I guess they were to be expected from a movement that’s starved of oxygen and has had little success pushing through new anti-gun legislation. Hence, why they’re taking the fight to the state-level, but the looping of a terrorist attack to the situation with French Muslims, and then saying that it’s similar to Ferguson is not just a poorly mixed cocktail; it’s abjectly stupid.

(H/T Curtis Kalin)