The editorial board of cincinnati.com would have you believe that gun rights should be curtailed in the interest of public safety — as if Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms depends on considerations of public safety. It does not. But when you think that way, when you favor gun control, that’s the way you roll. Like this . . .
The wrongheaded basic philosophy behind this bill is two-fold: Criminals don’t follow laws, so gun-free zones don’t work, and more guns on campuses, in day care centers and elsewhere means more safety, by arming civilians and effectively deputizing them to fight crime.
The first claim is easily dismissed: What other law do we eliminate just because someone may not follow it? Gun-free zones keep guns out of, for example, on-campus disputes between otherwise law-abiding individuals who lose their cool. Gun-free zones keep accidental shootings away from large groups of people. Gun-free zones ensure that when a potential shooter carries a gun on campus, he or she can be identified as a lawbreaker more quickly – an invaluable guide for potential victims and law enforcement alike.
Let’s see . . .
We eliminated the law against the highly dangerous substance known as alcohol because people weren’t following it. In five years of daily gun blogging, I haven’t encountered a single example of an “otherwise law-abiding individual” — by which I think they mean sane — losing their cool on campus, whipping out their gun and shooting someone. I can think of one — count it one — example of a non-injurious negligent discharge by someone in a school. And I can think of no examples of a school shooter stopped by someone who noticed he had a gun (before the shooting).
Again, this isn’t relevant. But if we’re playing this game . . .
As to the second claim: No, more guns don’t equal more safety. Carrying a firearm doesn’t make a person a police-caliber responder equipped with close-quarters combat training. Additionally, an armed “good guy” could easily be mistaken for a shooter by police and terrified students during an attack, leading to even more unnecessary bloodshed.
“Police-caliber responder”with “close-quarters combat training,” eh? I don’t suppose cincinnati.com’s editors had a look at the New York Police Department’s “hit rate.” Again, there are no examples of a civilian shot by police responding to a school shooting. And, as we’ve said here many times, so what? Does the paper prefer to eliminate the possibility of a counter-attack to the existence of a crowd of defenseless victims? Yup.
Again, this isn’t relevant. To their credit — by which I mean their eternal shame — the paper proposes the following “solutions” to school shootings:
Consider universal background checks, so felons and the severely mentally ill can’t buy weapons, at gun shows or anywhere else. Consider requiring those background checks to occur before guns are sold. Crack down on easy ways shooters get illegal guns, through straw-man purchases and gun-store thefts. Consider allowing federally funded, publicly available research into gun crimes so law enforcement can make decisions based on facts, not fiction – particularly propaganda from either side of the debate.
The paper believes this pathetic plank of civilian disarmament proposals will stop criminals, crazies and terrorists from getting guns by cracking down on legal purchases. And here’s the really odious bit: the editorial is titled Editorial: Gun rights? Yes. Gun control? Yes. I don’t think the word “rights” means what cinicnnati.com wants it to mean. Never did. And never will.
I’m finding it useful to explain to my ambivalent friends why we oppose CDC or any other ‘research’. A surprising number of people don’t understand our objections. I had previously thought that to be clear.
It won’t be clear to anyone who hasn’t been engaged in Second Amendment advocacy. (It didn’t become evident to me until I really dug into the gun debate and the gun-blogosphere.)
The whole public discourse on this topic is slanted so pervasively leftward that most people don’t know it’s leaning; they think institutions like newspapers and the CDC are actually neutral.
You might point out that the law they are carping about doesn’t prohibit “research”, it specifically prohibits “gun-control advocacy”. If the CDC can’t or won’t distinguish between the two, that’s kind of their problem.
That’s an easy one, just point out to them that the CDC got caught red-handed back in 1990s engaging in blatant bias regarding gun research, and was lying about what the actual research said. And that is why their funding for such research was cut. It was not due to some evil nefarious gun lobby not wanting research done into the issue. Then explain that much of the issue of guns, such as gun violence, is not even a public health issue. Explain that the field of criminology has been researching for decades many of the questions that the gun control proponents think are not getting researched because of the CDC ban.
“Police-caliber responder”
My diameter is usually quite a bit less than most police I encounter.
My thought is it doesn’t much matter what the caliber is if it doesn’t come out of the barrel until after the target is long gone. (or, in the case of the spree killer, until after the “target” has had 10 minutes or so of uninterrupted victim-hunting).
I think he’s referring to the waistline.
That’s a bingo!
I actually knew that. Was just making a slightly different point off the same phrase.
Full court press seems the today’s theme of the day for America’s bird cage liners, excuse me, print media. Not one but two anti gun articles in my local today…
Some smart ivory tower Progressive political adviser has determined that the way to get their low-information urban voters to the polls next November, other than free bus rides and other inducements, is to double down on the gun control theme. They seem to think that they can convince Dem voters who live in the urban blight the Dems have created and where over half of the criminal and gang-related gun crime occurs that the Progressive gun control bills will protect them as well as all the other Progressive policies have (not).
Repeat this frequently: Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.
This does not mean that no effort should be made to educate the victims of the mistake as to its extreme danger to them.
All these reports of gun-grabber logic have a single, overwhelming theme: “if it stops one….” Based on that logic, gun ownership by individuals IS subject to balance against the safety of that “one”. This logic cannot be dislodged, ever.
Thinking more of the content of the blog should be related to guns and gear, less to presenting the latest mush-brained drivel of the near-insane.
I disagree. The advocacy content on this blog (and the comments) are very educational to those who aren’t in the know. I was one of those people. But not for long after I became a TTAG reader.
Advocating a position is one thing (and congrats on your intellectual acumen). Frequent posting of the mush-brain comings and goings are not helping the “advocating” thing. Letting us know when bad legislation is on stage is very useful (repeating the stupidity of those sponsors is not). Reporting gun law developments regards self-defense with a firearm is very useful (distributing muddled-thinking and childish attitudes of the grabbers is not). Relating incidents of a DGU where tactics and legal issues resulting is very helpful (a steady diet of “how dimwitted can the anti-gun crowd get?”, is not).
We know all the themes of the gun confiscation crowd; no need to give them audience.
Apparently, you did not buy the “if…only one” arguments, which means you weren’t really among the mush-brained, at all. Congrats, again.
I don’t think I ever fell into the “mush-brained” camp. I wasn’t even a fence sitter, really. I was among those who just didn’t give a shit one way or another. Mostly because I hadn’t taken the time to give these issues any serious thought.
The “mush-brained” among us are beyond help. What this type of content does, along with the frequency with which it’s posted, is help the fence sitters or those that just don’t care realize just how asinine the other side’s arguments are.
It can turn someone who doesn’t care into a fence sitter, then into a convert.
Would people you describe not respond to postings in this blog that are not regurgitations of anti-gun idiocy?
Curious, how did you go from “don’t care” to becoming interested?
Living in northern Michigan, I bought a shotgun. Old beat up single shot 12. I started to shoot. At that point I still didn’t care about the ISSUE, I just wanted to go out and make some clay dust and ruin the day for a couple of ducks.
Shortly thereafter I decided to buy a pistol. Still didn’t care about the issue, I just wanted to make holes in paper. It has since changed, but at that time I was required to go to the local sheriff before buying a pistol and get a purchase permit. It pissed me off that I needed to ask permission to buy ANYTHING, the fact that it was a gun didn’t really matter, yet.
I took a CPL class with the intent to never actually carry. I wanted the flexibility in transport. I didn’t want to worry about triple and quadruple checking that I unloaded and locked the pistol when we were done shooting. I also drive a pickup, and I didn’t want to chance some cop deciding that pistol locked in the back seat and ammo under the front seat wasn’t far enough apart.
So I started to research the carry laws, making sure I knew the ins and outs so as not to give myself a hassle if I were to get pulled over. During that phase, I landed here. Right about the time Dirk’s would be girlfriend was laying out her first layer of astroturf. Reading the constant derp spewing from her and others like her flipped the switch, finally making me care about the issue. (So I suppose I have to thank TTAG AND Shannon?)
An engineering professor once told me a variation on the “college makes you liberal” thing:
College does one of two things. If you go in leaning left you’ll find that you’re surrounded by like minded people and become a liberal for life. If you come in leaning right you’ll find out that you’re surrounded by lunatics and become a conservative for life.
I figure it’s the same thing here. The “mush-brained” will frankly never come to the realization that any of this stuff matters. Give some people a six pack and cable TV and they’re content. Hell, I could name a dozen people I know like that.
The ones we need to target are the ones that are either already on the fence, just dipping their toes in the water. Or the ones that have the capacity for rational thought, they just haven’t taken the time to turn that thought to the issue of gun rights.
Thanks for the comment.; interesting path. Your input is more useful to an “undecided” than near-daily slop repeated from the anti-gun gangsters.
If it was not for Ohio’s preemptive law, places such as Cincy proper would be gun control paradises.
Watching the Cincy News, it seem like almost all of the gun violence comes out of Over The Rhine or East Price Hill. Most of the crime in Cincy usually involves people of color.
I know the denizens were all upset about an indoor gun range 400 yards away from a school in Loveland.
As far as campus gun violence goes, you might ask the local campus police about them shooting some guy over a traffic stop.
“As far as campus gun violence goes, you might ask the local campus police about them shooting some guy over a traffic stop.”
That’s different, everybody knows that.
Oh Tom… Keep giving Indiana the rep it’s earned over the years. If you lived here, or watched the news on the regular, you’d realize we have a whole bunch of white criminals and scumbags here, too! I’m sure they only got that way because they bought drugs from those darned “people of color”, though. Just say “black people”, man, it doesn’t bother us. You are correct about the preemption laws, though.
The channels that I get for TV are all out of Cincy and I used to live in Harrison.
I have a daughter that goes to IUPUI in Indy and I keep getting all sorts of campus alerts of black criminals with guns running around the gun free campus. SSDD.
We have our problems with non black criminals in the sticks, but the volume and frequency is just lower.
Fair enough, Tom. Fair enough. I often castigate the left for not addressing the very real problems that ARE rampant in the black community, but as a black man, I can’t help but be guarded against the very real conscious/unconscious racial biases we practically all possess. To say most crime involves black people is a big stretch, but I know what you mean. At the end of the day, I think we’ll all be speaking Chinese in 50 years and none of this crap will matter, anyway. Hope your daughter stays safe over there.
The problem with black society is not the skin color or the guns, but more of lack of nuclear families, lack of education and valuing an education, jobs leaving the cities due to progressive politicians, gun control, statist theology, and victim ideology.
Ireland was occupied for 700 years and there were actually more Irish Soldiers of the State at times than black slaves in Colonial America. Irish seem to be doing OK.
Mitch, I can only imagine how difficult it could be dealing with these issues as a black man. I have a black friend who has been chastised for trying to be “white” because he didn’t talk in “ghetto” and because he has a nice engineering job! I think Tom hit on a few of the issues but one I tend to point out is the prevalence of the “rap culture” now. This mindset that being a criminal/pimp/dealer/etc is a *good* thing and something to aspire towards. The same mindset ends up leaving many children fatherless either through neglect (i.e. She was just a “hoe” kids not my problem, etc) or because daddy was killed in gang activity. I know having a father was a big part of my life and feel like growing up without one would be a sad loss.
And Cincinnati is a crap hole. I prefer to stay here across the southern border in KY. 😉
BTW, did anyone else notice that terrible abomination of an HK MP5 clone in the photo?!
Gun-free zones keep guns out of, for example, on-campus disputes between otherwise law-abiding individuals who lose their cool. Gun-free zones keep accidental shootings away from large groups of people.
Any real studies to back up this position, no, I did not think so.
Studies, hell, they don’t even have a handful of anecdotes.
Does not happen.
But, they have feels, all kinds of feels.
Not to mention “commonsense”–which apparently has no relation whatsoever to common sense.
Consider universal background checks, so felons and the severely mentally ill can’t buy weapons, at gun shows or anywhere else. Consider requiring those background checks to occur before guns are sold.
Most gun show sales are done by FFLs so there are background checks.
One interesting note is that the Cincy Police were selling used Glocks out of the trunks of their cars without background checks which the liberal Cincy media squawked about.
I have proposed and will continue to propose,as a life long resident of Ohio; that Cincinnati be annexed. A true wasteland of debauchery and uninteresting news reporting.
Hey now. Lifelong cincinnatian here. What are you talking about. We have alot to be proud of, like the cincinnati bengals, and pete rose… oh, wait a sec…
Bacon and eggs right back on my plate
The Bengals seem to be doing somewhat better.
How about WKRP in Cincinnati? I hear they play great music.
“…you believe that gun rights should be curtailed in the interest of public safety…
– So, “safety” defined how? If you’re alive, but “Everything not compulsory is forbidden!”, and you are universally unarmed … are you “safe.” Really, they should start counting state violence in their equations. Including threats, and limitations due to threats.
Every time you restrict what other people can do, you are taking from them a piece of their life; the life they would have, at any rate.
– It’s at least an open question whether more guns makes people more or less safe. Much depends on your definitions. Besides, living will kill you, so it’s “unsafe”. Even so, I intend to keep eating bacon, because I like bacon.
They really should include the costs of threats in their equations, too, and the reductions in life lived because of them.
– In a republic this isn’t a question regarding citizens. Perhaps as regarding agents of the state.
In a republic it isn’t the state’s business to be “taking” autonomy away from the people they work for. They are our agents, delegated to secure a bit more autonomy for us. “We must destroy your ownership of your life to save it.” has some unfortunate echos.
I’ll note that it is reported earlier this week that yet another non-law-enforcement agency has secured themselves full-auto actual assault rifles, flash-bangs, and all manner of other military occupation gear. (Google is your friend. I think it was via Instapundit.)
So, here’s the offer. Sure, they can make “safety” a “gun rights” issue, if, and only if:
1) Taking the tacti-cool toys away from the gendarmes, and the bureaucrats with size issues is also on the table.
and
2) What’s *enabled* by having a disarmed population is considered as part of the consequence.
and
3) By what theory is this concern for abstract “safety” elevated above individual preference? And who appointed you arbiters of “safety”, and how to achieve it? Make your case.
My hunch is the net citizens’ lives saved vs. lost plays out a lot better for guns in citizens’ hands than in the hands of the enforcers. It’s pretty much a slam-dunk when you bake in limitations on what you can do, when threats run around freely.
But, if you wanna have that conversation, let’s have that conversation. (For example, every time you mention “military-style arms” in a citizen’s hands, mention the “military style” of the arms brought to bear against them. Like in every cop car patrolling everywhere these days.) Or just account casualties to the occupying army when they pull the trigger. For extra credit, when they escalate vs. defuse the situation.
The utilitarian argument is the wrong basis, as Our Dear Overlords point out. But really, in the end, the grabbers have a problem with the notion of a republic, and the associated notion that people who aren’t them … should be left alone to do what they want, not what you think they should want. The don’t get that people who aren’t them… aren’t them. This is a 2-year-old’s approach to the world, but there you go. (They’d also fail the (in)famous “veil of ignorance” test as well.)
I have family members who use that line “we still have laws against murder even though people do it”
Yeah, but murder hurts someone. The harmful act is the crime the law is prohibiting. Whereas with stupid gun laws, the law either:
A) Sanctions people who are not hurting anyone. Stupid.
B) Sanctions people who are already guilty of much worse crimes. Redundant.
The funny thing is, most of them will in fact claim right off the bat that they are proposing new gun laws to “keep guns out of the hands of criminals”–i.e. people, who by definition, will not obey the laws they are proposing. The oxymoronic nature of the whole thing completely fails to register with them, apparently. have you ever asked them if the object of the controls they espouse is to keep guns away from law-abiding folks? Would be interesting to hear the response.
Better yet skip the facts and ask under what conditions can a citizen lawfully protect themselves. There will be a long silence. If they say none, then they condone rape, assault & murder.
I’m thinking there will be something along the lines of “call 911” “don’t resist and you won’t be hurt” “pee in your pants”–you know, that kind of thing.
SSDD.
Every time someone attempts to justify “gun-free zones”, you have three simple responses:
(1) Why would gun grabbers trust “otherwise law-abiding” people to leave their guns at home … and yet NOT trust those very same “otherwise law-abiding” people to refrain from using their firearm criminally in the “gun-free zone”?
(2) All arguments for “gun-free zones” are pure speculation contrary to actual experience and history and are thus bogus. Remember, there are no statutorily defined “gun-free zones” in Utah and the events used to argue for “gun-free zones” have NOT happened even once in the 9 years since Utah eliminated “gun-free zones”.
(3) Every fit male between the ages of 15 and 65 have the anatomy necessary to be a pedophile/rapist and every “otherwise law-abiding” male could lose their cool and assault a child or woman. Is that sufficient reason to establish “male-free zones” (like schools, bars, churches, parks) to ensure that “otherwise law-abiding” males do not assault women and children? If not, then how is the EXACT same rationale okay for banning armed people in “gun-free zones”?
” Is that sufficient reason to establish “male-free zones” (like schools, bars, churches, parks) to ensure that “otherwise law-abiding” males do not assault women and children? ”
Careful, you might not like the answer to that…
i never assaulted a woman in a bar; the girls all get prettier at closing time.
Is the scarecrow buying guns? Straw man purchases?…
I absolutely cannot understand the “severe mentally ill” check. Just how do you do this? Until they started shooting these killers were “odd”,”strange”, “on medication” and so on. Dylan Roof, the mass shooter at Charleston Church, never did anything the suggested that he was “severe mentally ill.” Then there is Senator Fienstien. When was proposed to add military veterans gun exemptions given police she stated:”The problem with expanding this is that, you know, with the advent of PTSD…it’s not clear how the seller or transferrer of a firearm covered by this bill would verify that an individual was a member, or a veteran, and that there was no impairment of that individual with respect to having a weapon…” Notice she never stated what “no impairment” was.
I remember many years ago when the Cincinnati police chief told his officers not to answer calls for help from black neighborhoods since the black residents did not trust the police. After about 60 days of double and sometimes triple murders and about 300 shootings the black leadership was demanding police enforcement return to their areas.
I think the editorial writer has forgotten this. At the time the same news paper also was demanding the police start to enforce the laws again.
“Gun-free zones keep accidental shootings away from large groups of people.”
Ah yes the infamous multiple victim negligent discharge, happens sooo often right?
Public safety does not ewual half a wet tick-turd when it comes to Constitutional rights.
F your safety to death, FU for (what should be) illegally saying that you can provide safety.
Hmm, would you prefer a sub-par responder who is on-sight the moment a shooting commences, OR a “police-caliber” responder who is 10-20 minutes away?
Hey neat picture. First time I’ve seen a Lusa outside of CGN. (Irunguns brought a bunch, the entire available supply I believe, up to Canada to balm the wound of no MP5s.)