Gun violence hasn't gone away, and gun nuts are making their insane presence known on social media.
The USA continues to be distracted from a major ailment. Gun violence isn’t going away. People are still dying needlessly from this American plague. As per usual, there are flare ups on social media regarding guns, and as per usual, gun nuts are making their insane presence known.
Here’s the part where we say that not all gun owners are gun nuts. Not that it matters. The usual motley assortment of gun zealots will attempt to virtually shout down this piece. They always do. That is their right, First Amendment and stuff, even if they refuse to recognize that same right from anyone else. Indeed, they regularly threaten those who oppose them.
But the gun violence issue still manages to stay in the news, although it’s so common now it doesn’t seem to be considered very important. Even when a Florida man killed his own daughter and six grandchildren, including a 3 month old child, say again, 3 month old child, it barely registered a blip in the evening news. Two days later it was a forgotten story, buried under dozens of screaming and hysterical headlines.
Instead, focus was given to Ebola and subsequent paranoia over an outbreak at that time. Darrell Issa couldn’t even pronounce the disease correctly, let alone get the name of an origin nation right, but we’re all supposed to believe he’s some kind of authority on the subject. ISIS had center stage for a while, but they’ve lost traction on the American psyche.
Hell, Renee Zellweger took over the headlines from gun violence when she showed up in public with an altered face. This brought Americans of all political stripes together in order to say mean things about her. Caitlyn Jenner is doing the same thing more recently.
This seems to be a commentary on how Americans have resigned themselves to constant shootings. One doesn’t see that attitude in other countries. Canadians are still talking about a surprise mass shooting in New Brunswick last year. But not only are shootings much bigger news in Canada, how Canadians handle those shootings is considerably different than Americans do.
A surprise attack in Canada’s capital led to a soldier shot in the back and killed, and a gun battle within the very halls of Parliament themselves. Unthinkable. The Canadian reaction was one of shock and sadness, but not hysteria. There was instead a renewed sense of solidarity from America’s northern neighbors.
After a two year campaign to push Benghazi as the President’s or Hillary Clinton’s fault, Americans don’t get to make fun of Canadians anymore. That nation defined the Ottawa shootings as an attack on them, not an attack by them. And there’s Darrel Issa, Mr. Benghazi, still talking, unable to pronounce “Ebola” correctly after months of headlines.
Hold up a minute, just think on this; Darrell Issa represents you. He represents America. Whether you like it or not, Issa makes us all look like ignorant fools.
Cue Fox News, who immediately cranked up the right wing hysteria machine. To them, the Ottawa shooting meant the gun control debate would be sparked again, and that was clearly a bad thing. And what does an attack on Canada really mean for us, anyway? John McCain will probably extoll the virtues of a border fence to secure us from the Canadian threat on his next round of weekly Sunday show appearances.
On Twitter, gun nuts rolled in force. “False flag” this and “More guns” that. The usual insane ridiculousness and utter hyperbole. One fellow sat on the hashtag for the Ottawa shootings, telling everyone that the Canadian guards weren’t given working guns, and that’s why they were killed.
Again, just take a minute here; there are people out there saying that the soldiers guarding Canada’s Parliamentary were not given operable weapons. As a friend of this writer said in reaction,“What does he think the Canadians killed the shooter with? Baseball bats?”
Here we have the big difference between Canada, indeed, the rest of the world, and the United States; gun nuts. Yeah, it’s a derogatory term, because these people deserve no respect. A small but extremely vocal portion of the American populace using insane arguments and blatant mistruths to form the narrative on guns in America.
What’s truly frightening about this isn’t that their arguments are so insane, but they have been repeated so often that they have become so commonplace as to be accepted without challenge. Gun advocate John R. Lott Jr., gets to not only continue with a gun advocate career after being exposed as a fraud, but leads the charge against common sense regulations for weapons responsibility. We can’t be surprised about an unfettered amount of absolute insanity from that faction of Americans.
And if massive intellectual dishonesty works for Lott, then it does for the NRA too. On the one hand, they have their pet Republicans block the nomination of the Surgeon General because he correctly believes America’s gun violence is a health hazard. The NRA says doctors should not be allowed to ask patients about their guns.
Then they turn right around and say gun violence is a mental health issue, and something doctors should be screening their patients for. And, OMG, Ebola! That’s the real killer of Americans! Where’s the Surgeon General? Why isn’t he doing anything? Get Darrell Issa on this!
Pretty simple math, America, lies work. Hell, they not only work, they work well. The moral is to keep hitting your message, even if it’s been debunked. John Lott has never been seriously held accountable for his fraudulent data about firearms. Indeed, his “research” is the cornerstone of gun lobby talking points. As a result, gun nuts are empowered to spout off blatant mistruths. Call them on it and they’ll just repeat it.
This very piece is sure to see the same commenters that previous writings on the subject attracted. Here are their arguments in a nutshell: “Nuh-UH!”
Anyway, there’s been another shooting recently. And gun nuts are once again riding hashtags, directing bile at anyone calling for something to be done. Same as it ever has been. They are empowered by the fraudulence of John R. Lott, the ignorance of Darrell Issa, the greedy fear mongers at Fox News, and most importantly, the apathy of the American Electorate.
Yes, America, this is ultimately all of our faults that deception, ignorance and gleeful hatred runs rampant like it does. Bill Maher once said that people don’t vote to say “thank you,” but to say “fuck you.” This is the result.
We could blame Fox News, but the people who watch it are the real issue. We could blame Darrell Issa, but the people who voted for him are responsible for putting him in power. We could blame John R. Lott, but that we aren’t holding him accountable for his fraudulence means we’re all complicit in his continued success.
This is not to say what’s done is done. This is certainly not to say that nothing can be done. But when Americans choose to abstain from voting then they can expect more of the same insanity. So much more. When a country has a low voter turnout, it is extremists who win.
Gun nuts do not represent the vast majority of American hearts and minds, but they’re going to be at the polling stations every Election Day. They will continue to keep a stranglehold on all national conversations this way. Not showing up to vote only gives them a clear path to do so.
Just remember what happens when there’s low voter turnout:
“Obamacare is going to kill us! Obstructionism. Benghazi! Sequester. The Shutdown. Nothing getting done. Benghazi! Screaming about Syria but not doing anything about it. Lawsuits against the President for issuing fewer Executive Orders than the average President and then having the gall to ask him to do it again to solve the child refugee crisis at the border.
Benghazi! Screaming about ISIS but not doing anything about it. Obamacare is, like, really bad. Immigrants from Mexico are ISIS militants! Beng- Oh, wait, we were wrong? Okay forget it. Ebola! Immigrants from Mexico are giving us Ebola! Obamacare is- Oh wait, it’s working? Okay forget it. Ebola!”
And all along, swimming like an unseen monster just under the surface, gun violence. Far more Americans have died from the ongoing national domestic gun violence epidemic than ISIS and Ebola combined can ever hope to match. Every time the furor over guns dies down a bit, that monster casually snatches a few more victims. Children. Women. Men.
And all the while, the gun nuts howl like loons to distract us. They ramble about spoons making you fat. Cars. Criminals. Terrorists. Obama’s comin’ fer ma gunz! Molon Labe! Twisted interpretations of the Constitution, its Amendments, and/or the Bible. Right wing pundits help out with hysteria over Benghazi and Ebola.
No, they’re never going to stop. Gun nuts are nothing if not a dedicated bunch. The insanity will continue, the distractions will pile up. When you do nothing, when you abstain from voting, they gain more power, and the gun violence epidemic will continue unchecked. That’s how they like it, and how they want it.
You can choose to do nothing. Or you can choose to say enough.
The 250 million times typo was entered months ago and corrected with a week to the correct figure, which is 2.5 million times a year.
Just dropping in on this article to mention that I sincerely appreciate my right to own and bear arms and I think the idea of “magazine capacity laws” and “assault weapon bans” is ill-informed, based on a genuine lack of knowledge of how firearms operate; I also, however, appreciate the concern over mass shootings and gun violence and I agree that it should not happen and should be prevented within any reasonable means available.
The fact of the matter is, you cannot catch 100% of the criminally insane 100% of the time when they want to purchase a firearm. The profile of a mentally unstable individual is not so clearly defined that upon point-of-purchase of, say, a “big, bad, evil AR-15” that you can easily distinguish them from the crowd and deny them access. As a private business owner, you reserve your absolute authority over your institution to deny service to any individual, including me just for being a gay Democrat-identifying voter, and I would not have it any other way — but in my honest opinion, this pressure to prevent mentally unstable individuals from purchasing firearms regardless of prior screening throws the authority of the legitimate business owner into question for obvious reasons. Consider a schizophrenic individual that wants to commit a murder, or several, and has no prior psychiatric screening or signs indicating that it would be unsafe for him to possess a firearm — he goes to buy a firearm. Now, he owns that firearm. What to do?
In a scenario as close to ideal at this point as possible, he has purchased an AR-15, one of the most pathetic modern firearms known to civilized society. Law-abiding citizens around him may or may not be concealed-carrying handguns of their own. The criminally-insane individual engages individuals he believes is unarmed. He injures or kills a minimum number of people before I draw my Five-Seven and end his murder spree with one shot. Game over. It’s not ideal, but the situation is not easily preventable and given circumstance, the best way it could have possibly ended is as described.
In this scenario, it is demonstrable that being able to own and bear arms is a part of — not the largest, but certainly a part of — maintaining public safety. Inclusive of that right to bear arms is to be properly educated on the use, maintenance and safe handling of your arms. In light of this, I argue that “more guns” was never the answer people seem to believe “gun nuts” are fishing for; the answer is and always has been education, and it is a strawman argument to argue anything to the contrary about the majority of law-abiding gun owners.
In short, I argue that it is silly to think that it is possible to totally prevent mentally unstable individuals from owning firearms — it simply can’t happen without undermining your rights in my opinion; I also contend that while more firearms isn’t necessarily a bad thing — it’s always fun to get that fancy new toy and try it out at the range — it’s also not necessarily the argument posed by most firearm owners in the first place. The core of owning a firearm is education on its proper and safe use, not regulating that you can’t own an AR-15 because it looks evil.
I’m glad that your comments are civil and respectful in their disagreement. I aagree that you cannot completely prevent the mentally unstable from owning firearms, any more that you can completely prevent any undesirable circumstance through regulation. That being said, common sense regulation can and does certainly curtail whatever mischief is being addressed. Statistics show, for example, that the faster we drive our cars, the more likely we are to get in an accident. Speed limits are imposed, and viola! Less accidents (but accidents still occur). Drunk driving still occurs in spite of laws, but they happen far less often than without them.
I am a Canadian and we have effectively banned or prohibited firearms designed to kill people (a bit of an oversimplification, but close enough). most handguns, for example; and yes, the so called “assault rifles”. We have strict storage, transport, and handling provisions. We have licensing requirements. End result: about one tenth the gun deaths per capita of the US.
In fact, among “first world” nations where rule of law is an established institution, and gun laws are enforced, you will find the same. Stricter gun laws, less gun deaths (again, oversimplification, but you get the point).
There are over 300 million people in this country and about the same number of firearms. There are only 5 million members of the NRA, so its really surprising they have as much lobbying success as they do. Could it be that the majority of American citizens and the majority of our legislators (both Republican and Democrat) like guns and don’t want to get rid of them? No other country on the planet loves its guns more than we do and no other country uses guns to defend freedom more than we do. I’d say the good outweighs the bad.
What good?
The 250 million times a year a law-abiding citizen uses a gun to stop a crime in progress, almost never having to fire a round in the process. The fact that a gun makes a 90-lb female the tactical equal of a 250-lb rapist. The fact that a gun puts the advantage in the hands of the defender of an assault instead of the assailant. The fact that every time the forces opposed to the whole idea of citizen liberty are ready to make a move to consolidate their control over the masses, the first thing they do is try to pass laws — well, “color of law” since the legislation is without delegated authority — restricting the private ownership of firearms, and every time they do that the number of firearms in private hands nearly doubles before the law can go into effect, thus postponing the planned Bolshevik Revolution Redux. The fact that in Arizona, for example, there were no violent riots in support of a thug who brought his fists to a gunfight with a cop, because there would be too many dead rioters to count. The fact that everywhere in the world the right to keep and bear arms is respected under the rule of law, the crime rate is significantly lower than it is in neighboring areas where air-headed fools supports laws (colors of law) prohibiting the right to self-defense with anything effective enough to do the job. That’s “What’s good.” And that is by no means an exhaustive list.
Did you actually just claim that people use guns 250 million times a year to stop violent crimes, in a country that has about one million violent crimes per year?
Yes. Yes, you did.
That’s about enough internet for you today.
I already entered this but it appears in an unrelated area. The post you are responding to was entered months ago and the correction to 2.5 million times a year was made within the week.
BTW, the right to keep and bear arms is supported not only by the 2nd Amendment, but also by the 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments, all of which establish the Rule of Law in this country superior to the Rule of Man. The efforts to destroy our right to keep and bear arms by demanding background checks actually violate, with the purpose of rendering them moot, the 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments, and thus the Rule of Law. Ultimately the gun control movement’s objective is to restore the arbitrary rule by whim of kings and princes and neighborhood warlords (aka Marxist Compliance Officers) to the first nation in the history of the planet making personal liberty superior to the whim of government functionaries. We don’t intend to allow you to accomplish that objective.
Part of the problem is the people who love things and use people, instead of the other ‘way around. Gun owners tend to be guilty of that as much as gun banners.
I agree with your comment. There just is no easy solution to the gun violence problem, and prohibition has never worked as we are seeing first hand now with the drug war. Guns only kill when there is a person involved. I am no gun nut, I do not like the NRA, but I do own a gun or two. I also own a car, another lethal weapon.
Not true check out Swittzerland which has the loosest gun laws of ANY country. Every household there has a gun. By the way facts are always inconvenient. Switzerland has the lowest murder rate of all Countries. Less than 1 per 100k.
The U.S. is 111th with 4.7 murders from all causes.
The Countries with gun bans pretty much round out the top 10 with more than 50 murrders per 100k.
Not quite true – while Switzerland does allow you to own a gun, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO KEEP AMMO AT HOME.
Let’s try some facts.
FBI crime data:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/1tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_1_crime_in_the_united_states_by_volume_and_rate_per_100000_inhabitants_1993-2012.xls
The NRA obviously has a strangle hold on the FBI now.LOL
Paul Joe G.
Geez, Chad, take a breath. Save that bile for next Tuesday after the GOP takes control of the Senate. I suspect you’re going to need all you can muster.
Well, it didn’t take long before someone commented on here (probably a Gun Nut) the bogus assertion that gun crime is down. So, let’s take a look at that statement and expose why it’s a bogus assertion.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that gun crime actually has decreased over the past decade (proof of such a thing would be great, but the Gun Nuts don’t have it). The fact is that, since the Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to expire ten years ago, the number of mass shootings has shot up considerably. While you can say that gun crimes have gone down, that’s only because gun crimes OTHER than mass shootings have went down.
Now, trying to figure out why mass shootings have increased is fairly easy. First, there’s the fact that was mentioned earlier in the comment thread about how Ronnie Reagan ordered the doors to be thrown open and let the insane back out into the public. Not helping is that fact that the country’s population is growing, so the number of insane people will also grow. More insane people plus no common-sense and reasonable gun legislation equals more mass shootings.
Generally, the Gun Nuts use four logical fallacies to justify their gun lunacy.
The first is known as Special Pleading or “Cherry-Picking”. They employ this fallacy by completely ignoring the first 13 words of the Second Amendment. The Gun Nuts probably don’t even know what those first 13 words are, so, here’s what they are: “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state….” Then, the Gun Nuts expect a rigid interpretation of the rest of the amendment: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. Pathetic cherry-picking there.
The second logical fallacy employed by the Gun Nuts is known as “black or white” or “all or nothing”. They’ll tell you that, since the Second Amendment exists, NOTHING can be done; there’s no middle ground, according to them. Bullshit. There is middle ground: universal background checks to slow down the instances of criminals and the insane getting guns, especially assault weapons, would be a great start.
The third logical fallacy used by the Gun Nuts is called the “Gambler’s Fallacy”. The best way to describe this fallacy is to examine a situation where a coin is flipped a hundred times. Even if the coin lands on one side or the other all one hundred times, the fact remains that, when you flip the coin, it can land on heads or tails. Each coin flip has nothing to do with the others. So, simply doing nothing doesn’t mean that a “phase” of mass shootings will pass. So long as criminals and the insane have any access to guns, they can be used for criminal purposes.
The fourth logical fallacy is called “ad hominem”, where, instead of employing a cogent argument to support your point, you attack your debating opponent. “Oh, he’s just a Gun Grab proponent” is the statement Gun Nuts use to oppose common-sense gun legislation.
You may be able to add a fifth logical fallacy to the mix that the Gun Nuts use: appeal to emotion. Instead of using a cogent argument, they appeal to emotions of baser instinct, like saying, “Obummer’s comin’ to git yer gunz!”. Never mind that, in the nearly six years he’s been President, the only meaningful thing he’s done regarding guns was to sign an executive order allowing people to bring guns into national parks.
There’s even a sixth logical fallacy the Gun Nuts use: Straw Man, where they misrepresent the arguments of those who, like me, want sane and reasonable gun legislation. They make the false claim that we want a total gun ban.
There you have it. It’s time to invoke “cloture” on the gun debate and pass reasonable and sane gun legislation.
I do see sense in your post. I do not place much reliance in the 2nd Amendment as a definition of the human right of self-preservation. That is the actual intent though. A well regulated militia is not one that is regulated by a central government. It is a locally regulated force. They should be trained, vetted, and proven to the community. All citizens of good standing may then keep and bear arms to ensure the security of a free state. Australia adopted such a means of being well regulated. Their ability to own firearms is proven to the local shooting organization who then endorses their ownership of certain guns to the governing authority. This is a proven system. This is essentially licensing by degree of proficiency. Too many people are simply buying what ever they want without proper safe handling and storage. Universal background checks are somewhat of an arbitrary gesture as it relies on an easily avoidable bureaucratic step to the process between two individuals. A step that is not necessary with a vetting process for ownership in the first place. That is how I would address your first three fallacies. The fourth fallacy is accurate, but I would caution you in engaging in the same tactic in some of your speech. Compromise works best when both parties are cordial. Not everyone who wants a better society is a gun grabber and not everyone who wants personal liberty is a gun nut. On the fifth fallacy, emotions are natural and reciprocating with empathy is better than alienation. Finally, banning incrementally is an infringement. My example is the National Firearms Act. It did not actually ban anything. Even more increasingly dangerous items can be obtained by private citizens who go through the process to obtain them. The use of NFA firearms in violent crime is virtually nonexistent. Rather than banning certain magazines and rifles it would be more of a compromise to amend the NFA and add them.
And the NFA was and is unconstitutional. The US Attorney-General of the time said so, and was ignored. The federal government has no authority whatever over the right of the people to keep and bear arms; nor does it have any authority to license or regulate firearm dealers. See the Tenth Amendment.
Wow, what a bunch of … well, something, I’m not sure what I’m allowed to call it since Andrew Rei cynically tries to pre-empt the field by basically claiming any realistic description of his argument is an ad hominem attack that doesn’t agree with him. Well, Andrew Rei, that really doesn’t work, does it? You guys are always claiming you want a “rational discussion” on the subject of “gun violence” (which doesn’t exist, by the way), and when anyone presents facts to refute your argument you either bail out of the discussion entirely if it is one-on-one or you claim known facts are lies if you are arguing on a forum.
Okay, Andrew, I will be your huckleberry. Here goes:
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that gun crime actually has decreased over the past decade (proof of such a thing would be great, but the Gun Nuts don’t have it).” Sure we do. FBI Uniform Crime Reports say so.
“The fact is that, since the Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to expire ten years ago, the number of mass shootings has shot up considerably.” So has the number of locations where air-headed fools have posted signs saying “No Guns Allowed,” and every mass shooting in history save one has occurred under a “No Guns Allowed” sign. Seems like maniacs may be mentally defective, but they aren’t dumb, are they? They never vent their lethal rage where they know they will be stopped with extreme prejudice after the first round is fired, do they?
Besides, qualified people who actually crunch the numbers know better: “Without minimizing the pain and suffering of the hundreds who have been victimized in senseless attacks, the facts say clearly that [there] has been no increase in mass killings, and certainly no epidemic,” (Criminologist James Alan) Fox wrote in a column for Boston.com in August. “Occasionally, we have witnessed short-term spikes with several shootings clustering close together in time. In the 1980s, we had a flurry of postal shootings, and the 1990s included a half dozen schoolyard massacres. Other than the copycatting reflected in these cases, the clustering of mass murders is nothing more than random timing and sheer coincidence.”
Aside: Say, Andrew, what is it you like so much about murderous massacres that you want to create an environment in which they can be conducted with impunity?
“Cherry-Picking” … “They employ this fallacy by completely ignoring the first 13 words of the Second Amendment.” No, we don’t, and neither did the Founding Fathers: All the males between 18 and 45 are members of the militia, Andrew, plus anyone else who wants to be, including women. The first 13 words gives the reason why the PEOPLE have the right to keep and bear arms, and the PEOPLE have the right to keep and bear arms whether they are members of a militia or not: The Founders said so and the Supreme Court in Heller v. DC said so.
“There is middle ground: universal background checks to slow down the instances of criminals and the insane getting guns, especially assault weapons, would be a great start.” Really? How would you like to be compelled to undergo an interrogation under penalty of perjury and a search of your personal records (papers and effects) as a precondition to being allowed to spout off on this blog? Or march in a protest rally for or against illegal immigration, or gun control, or other government corruption? Or have a letter published in a newspaper? How would you like to be designated “mentally ill” if you publish a letter opposing some government policy? I know you would be happy as a clam to get universal background checks because that means universal registration and the next step is designating anyone with a firearm as mentally ill, isn’t it? Not to mention the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment, prohibiting unreasonable searches in the absence of probable cause of wrongdoing, and the evisceration of the Fifth Amendment guaranteeing the right to due process, and the evisceration of the Tenth Amendment declaring the federal government has no lawful power to do anything for which the power is not delegated by the Constitution, and declaring the States are prohibited any power prohibited by the Constitution (like the Second Amendment). Not to mention pesky little doctrines like being secure from being compelled to waive a right as a condition for being allowed to exercise a right.
There is a better way to slow down the instances of criminals and the insane misusing guns than destroying the Constitution of the first nation on the planet to establish individual liberty as superior to the whim of kings and princes and government functionaries, Andrew: It’s called the right to keep and bear arms. Criminals and maniacs don’t shoot up places where people are known to be armed. If everyone is armed, they tend to keep their nose clean. It’s not perfect, but it is better than requiring innocent people to suffer their own murder because leftist idiots don’t trust them with their own defense.
I’ve never heard a pro-rights advocate use a “Gambler’s Fallacy” as an argument: Personal defense is not a coin toss; you either protect yourself with the equipment and training for self defense or you accept the fact that you are a coward unwilling to protect yourself, your family, and other innocents from evil when it occurs — or you are a brave person willing to die because your bravery is meaningless without arms to accomplish the defense like the principal and school psychologist at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
You “ad hominem” claim is ludicrous given the fact that anti-rights folks use ad hominem arguments against pro-rights opposition more than anyone. It is a technique developed by Lavrenty Beria, First Deputy Premier of Stalinist Russia, and proselytized by V. I. Lenin’s disciple Saul Alinsky in his “Rules for Revolution.”
“Gun Nuts” have not convinced me or anyone else that “Obummer’s coming for yer gunz.” Obama has expressed his desire to do so; Obama has directed John Kerry to sign to UN Small Arms Treaty which has, as its purpose, the registration of every firearm in private hands and the confiscation of same for the purpose of making the world safe for dictators and kings and princes who wannabe, and Obama’s Marxist sycophant in the US Senate has attempted to do so by calling for a vote on legislation that would ban every semi-auto firearm in existence, and failed because we, the people said you do that and try to enforce it and we WILL defend ourselves. Gee, suddenly he discovered he didn’t have the votes he thought he had. And then we have people like you, who have expressed a sincere desire to destroy the Fourth, Fifth, Tenth, and Second rights of the American people, and you have the unmitigated chutzpah to sit there and claim WE are paranoid? It doesn’t fly, Andrew, and you can take your totalitarian philosophy and go pound sand.
Now, if you are true to form among Marxist anti-rights apparatchiks you will claim the above is just another indication it is impossible to have a “rational discussion” about “sane and reasonable gun legislation.” If that is your position, make the most of it. But know this: Your efforts are a fool’s errand because they are illegal under the U.S. Constitution in every respect and we will not allow you to destroy our free country. We know who is backing your efforts and we know their agenda; like you, the very idea that a free people can tell those who think they are the rightful masters of humanity to go pound sand just sticks in their craw, and it sounds like it sticks in your craw. Tough crunch, old man, get used to disappointment.
Brave, you are, Chad McDonald, for inviting the wrath of the paranoid-schizophrenic who feels impotent without a steel gun and balls to protect him or her. Surely, in no time, the comments section would provide a wealth of qualitative samplings of the mental health problem in this country that Reagan unleashed.
Take one paranoid-schizophrenic gun nut combine that with inadequate community mental health resources and options and you have a recipe for disaster.
Afraid of people not their own color, or from another country, they ignore statistics that show majority of gun fatalities in the home happen because a gun is in the home and not despite it. That they are only killing themselves off is no consolation when too often it’s the children and women in the house, who had not armed themselves to protect themselves against accident, domestic violence or child abuse.
MRIGC: CRIME rates are falling. Have been for the past few DECADES. All across the country with the exception of only a few scattered outliers. In all regions and states. Many people are asking why. But while failure is an orphan, success has many parents. Everyone wants to take credit for the decline. Was it the result of tougher sentences? Policing strategies? New York claimed success with zero tolerance practices while at the same time California claimed success with community policing initiatives. Could be as simple as the aging out of the baby-boomer population. Some credit abortion. Maybe it’s none of this at all. Maybe criminals have moved away from street crimes to cyber offenses. See – when we say “crime rates” are falling that only means the UCR crimes that the federal government tracks. And these are street crimes: Murder, Forcible Rape, Robbery, Aggravated Assault, Arson, Burglary, Larceny, Motor Vehicle Theft. I bet you can think of a gun crime that’s not on this list or included here. Like unlawful discharge of a weapon. Negligent supervision. Not counted under the UCR. Not reported under the UCR. Would have to gather this data from all the law enforcement agencies. UCR does not track cyber offenses, federal offenses or white collar offending. So there is no real way of knowing if crime is really declining, absent these comparisons.
John E. Reuter: Really? A measure that seeks to reduce crime and injury must fail if it doesn’t prevent every conceivable injury? Well, then, let’s release all the prisoners immediately. Since imprisoning offenders doesn’t eliminate crime entirely, must not work and we shouldn’t use it at all. Oh, and forget police to solve DUIs. No one police officer could prevent or reduce ALL DUI offenses, so let’s not have any police anywhere doing DUI enforcement. Yeah, that doesn’t make any more sense than you claiming that because not all atrocities can be prevented, we shouldn’t try to prevent some.
Your letter is hilariously ironic sense I just got through pointing our to totalitarian-advocate Andrew Rei that the next step after Universal Background Checks looking for mental illness is to designate anyone who believes in private rights as “mentally ill.”
Your garbage is a fool’s fantasy, obj. We will not comply with color of law legislation depriving people of their natural rights our nation was founded to protect. And we will defend ourselves if you force us to.
Gun crimes (crime in general) is down about 50% over the last 20 years. And know one is focused on the question “why”. Meanwhile, gun-violence coverage has increase to about 113% over the same time period (study looked at the number of shootings vs news stories). So the illusion is that gun crime is increasing, reality is it continues to fall. Gun-control groups are starting to panic, along with the millions/billions of people like Bloomberg. Not a good mix.
Assuming that I agree with all that you write here and more. Further, assume that I empathize with your outrage and agree with your observatiin, how would “gun control,” even the global absence of every gun or rifle on earth, have prevented the Florida man from murdering his daughter and six grandchildren? It would not. Your blog today is a very good rant, but I doubt anyone who reads it will be compelled to go to the polls because it persuaded them to do so.
It inspired me to go vote.
Good for you!
There you go, just as stated in this article. Ignore the facts and trot out the talking points.
I can pretty much “guaran-god-damn-tee” you, that if I were in a room with someone who wanted to kill me, and we were of relative equal strength/intelligence/resourcefulness, and gunless, there would be no murder taking place that day! Easier to run from a knife than it is a bullet.
People who intend to commit murder rarely pick on someone their own size. The purpose of a firearm (one very important purpose) is to make a 97-lb 86-year-old grandmother the tactical equal to a 250-lb drug addict rapist. It’s amazing how many people on this board, including Chad McD himself, who would rather see that grandma slaughtered.
Obviously it inspired a lot of more sensible people to go vote for Republicans.
Why Esq.?
The term is common among lawyers.