Actor Alec Baldwin and California lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom have helped launch a crusade to win an Oscar for the documentary Making A Killing: Guns, Greed And the NRA.  Their reasons in this case may go beyond the predictable liberal virtue-signaling.

When a sex scandal erupted against producer Harvey Weinstein, his first response was to pledge that he would "channel anger" in a campaign against the National Rifle Association, one of the most reliable devil-dolls liberals stick pins in to prove their bona fides.

Weinstein must have been shocked when this gesture did not gain him instant forgiveness for his sexual sins and shortcomings.  After all, were not guns phallic symbols?  Was not his anti-gun gesture therefore a symbolic repudiation of his own out-of-control manhood?

As the Weinstein scandal keeps expanding, threatening other prominent abusers in Hollywood and politics, many are eager to change the topic and move on by gunning for the NRA before the public hunt for wrongdoers sets its sights on them.

In some cases, the interest of leftists may be more personal than we know.  After all, predators want their prey unarmed.  One liberal benefit from California's strict gun control is that a Hollywood or Sacramento power-broker never need worry that the women he forces himself upon will be able to defend themselves with a firearm.

As author and commentator Katie Pavlich reminds us in a recent video for Dennis Prager's online university, "gun rights are women's rights."

A handgun gives a 100-pound young woman the power to stop a 250-pound satyr like Harvey Weinstein.  No wonder Hollywood wants women unarmed.

Is Weinstein exceptional?  Let's remember that the politically ambitious Gavin Newsom reportedly once had an affair with the wife of his own campaign manager.  The explosively emotional Alec Baldwin reportedly may have known that in the 2006 film Mini's First Time, he was having an affair and playing erotic scenes with what in real life was an underage girl.

When Weinstein, Newsom, and Baldwin prate about their moral superiority in wanting to disarm Americans for our own good, keep this in mind.  In fact, whenever you hear any liberal man calling for stiffer gun control laws that would effectively disarm young women, think about their secret reasons for denying equal power to women.

Those on the left also have a different morality from the rest of humankind.  When Bill Clinton was caught having an affair with a woman almost as young as his daughter – a woman who, like many of his victims, Bubba had the power to fire from her government job if she refused his advances – the response of his comrades was revealing.

"Bill Clinton is the one of the most moral people I have ever known," said Steve Grossman, a chair of the Democratic National Committee, to reporters.  To those familiar with leftists, Grossman made perfect sense because of the way they define morality.

If a Republican is faithful to his wife, leftists nevertheless see him as immoral.  The Republican practices "bourgeois morality" but, as a capitalist, does not practice collectivist "social morality" because he opposes socialism or Marxism.

By this standard, it does not matter if Stalin happened to kill 60 million people in his effort to "build socialism."  If Harvey Weinstein rapes women, it means nothing when weighed against the millions he donates to elect and empower Democrats.

If President Bill Clinton personally sacrificed virgins to his appetites, this was no problem because he was "socially moral," the only morality that counts for leftists.  And if Hillary Clinton protected Bill's power by destroying the reputation of women he raped – in effect, raping them a second time – this, too, was "socially moral" and "politically correct."

Liberals at first tried to protect Weinstein.  Fashion designer Donna Karan said that his young victims had "asked for it" by dressing provocatively and being seductive.  Such a statement by a Republican would have elicited leftist catcalls.

When public opinion turned overwhelmingly against Weinstein, and young women were torn between their loyalties to leftism and feminism, it became necessary to throw him under the bus to prevent further damage to the Democratic Party.  And now liberals aim to change the topic to the NRA.  They want to continue taking power from the hands of non-leftist Americans to make sure nobody can resist what they want to do to us.

Lowell Ponte is author or co-author of eight books.  He can be contacted for interviews at radioright@aol.com.