Or not. Congresswoman McCarthy may have provided a specific rationale for her decision to introduce a bill banning high capacity magazines, but it ain’t on this tape. All we hear: her credentials as a survivor of gun violence and the Congresswoman’s now-familiar ignorance of firearms. (Yes, words matter, especially when you’re writing laws.) Which tells you something: the video’s editors clearly believe that no such explanation is necessary. And am I wrong to wonder why the event’s organizer’s didn’t offer the high school students an alternative perspective?
I listened very respectfully for, oh, an entire minute before my hair caught fire.
Too bad I wasn’t there. I’d have pissed in her Wheaties.
“Since 75% of all murderers have adult felony records, why aren’t you, Ms. District Attorney, doing more to keep violent people in jail where they belong? Why are you blaming me for the violence committed by a small fraction of society, mostly those involved in the drug trade?”
Because she’s a single-issue representative, that’s why.
I think one reason pro-gun groups are not invited to these events is the perception that they are nut jobs. Granted, the perception might not be totally fair, but it is deserved, as the pro-gun culture often goes out of its way to cultivate this image. If the principal of the school reviewed this website, what impression would he or she take away?
I don’t think the common misuse of the term “clip” in place of “magazine” is terribly significant. Half the Viet Nam vets I know do this.
WHAT? The gun culture goes out of its way to cultivate the perception that they are nut jobs? Reality check. There are “nut jobs” on both sides of this debate. Assuming of course, you mean people who are insensitive to matters of established fact, rather than say Travis Bickle wanna-bes. And if we’re going by the former definition, I humbly suggest there are more anti-gun rights nut jobs than pro. More on this later . . .
None of that matters. If folks see you fetishizing firearms while glorifying and trivializing gun violence, they are going to fear and distrust you. You are not countering the anti-gun culture with that stuff. You’re playing right into them.
So how should gun rights advocates play it?
Glorifying violence?
Every time you call the cops, you glorify violence. Violence against another human being. You want violence done in YOUR name to “feel safe.” You LET it happen. Screw the fact that the burglar may have had someone that cared about him, he needs to be taken care of, right away!
Every time you pass some insane law pertaining to firearms, or to some ass-backwards regulation that creates more red tape, you glorify violence, because in essence, you are telling that person (that may or MAY NOT have the mind of harming someone else) that “you are worth shooting in the face if you do not do exactly as I say.”
Society as a whole has glorified violence, by allowing The State to do violence to control the masses. Why else do the anarchists refrain, “War [and violence] are the health of the state?”
And to be honest, the antigunners aren’t doing a good job countering either when they’ve been playing right into our hands as well!
To be honest, I have no idea what you are talking about and doubt if we could have a sensible conversation. We live in two different worlds. I’m not an anarchist and I subscribe to no anarchist theories. The state doesn’t employ any violence to keep me in line. As a citizen in a participatory democracy I pretty much govern and police myself. I pay my taxes gladly, relish my freedoms, and vote with pride, because I don’t live in a police state; I live in the United States of America. In what totalitarian regime do you live? It must be horrible.
I also live without fear and in complete confidence for my personal safety without carrying a gun or other weapon, martial arts, etc. I do so simply by using my head. I own and enjoy firearms, but not for self-defense. Guns are a very poor substitute for common sense and worse than no help at all without it. I will always cooperate with law enforcement to the fullest extent, but I don’t rely on the police as my first line of defense, as it were. If I wanted police protection, I would open a donut shop and hire some cute divorcees. That should cover it.
I feel sorry for the ordinary citizens not at extraordinary risk who think they need a gun simply to walk the streets. It must be a terribly fearful existence. There are people here who seriously ponder how to best keep a firearm available when showering or mowing the lawn. I can hardly imagine that level of perpetual fear. For any normal person, this can only result in PTSD before one shot is ever fired. Maybe they’re not really that paranoid and simply have a gun fetish. That’s my best guess.
I am not an anarchist either.
I just bring theories and phrases from all over to argue.
Think about it.
All governmental legislation, laws, regulations, limitations, fees, and fines are backed up by the barrel of a gun. A law without the threat of violent physical force is merely a suggestion. And you consent to it every time.
It’s not a totalitarian regime. It’s the reality of government. It’s people like you who want to keep whitewashing that fact over.
You’ve never even told us why you personally think guns are a poor choice for self-defense – but even then, I haven’t seen any sort of credentials from you in ANY OTHER form of self defense. And by your logic, cops shouldn’t even HAVE firearms for self-defense.
Sure, you SHOULD use your head all the time. But the human mind is still fallible and we are not omniscient, otherwise we’d have advance knowledge of where criminals are at ANY moment. Maybe then if our brains were that evolved we wouldn’t need firearms. But sometimes you read a situation wrong and now you’re behind on the reactionary curve and now you must fight.
It is also disingenuous for you to say that there is too much violence in society but at the same time say essentially that “you don’t need a gun.” Can you EVEN PROVE PTSD would even result from even thinking about things like this?
“As a citizen in a participatory democracy I pretty much govern and police myself. I pay my taxes gladly, relish my freedoms, and vote with pride, because I don’t live in a police state; I live in the United States of America.”
America is supposed to be a republic, not a “participatory democracy”.
And it is a police state. The state controls every facet of our lives. What parts of our human lives are not taxed, regulated, permitted, prohibited, licensed, registered, codified, etc?
Well, strictly speaking, we don’t live in a pure democracy or republic but a hybrid of the two, mainly democratic. Take the bicameral legislative branch for example. We can’t have a republic in any classic sense as we have but one class of citizen. By participatory democracy I mean that as an ordinary citizen I have the right to vote and hold office, unlike in a republic.
I don’t live in a police state because: Among other things, I have the right to free speech and free assembly and to practice whatever religion I choose. I have the right to keep and bear arms and to own property, guarantee of due process, reasonable bail, legal counsel, and a speedy trial by my peers. And so on. See what I did there? I simply started repeating the Bill of Rights. I can also live wherever I can afford, take whatever kind of work I like, and associate with whom I please. As a practical matter, I also have freedom of economic opportunity not found in many places on earth, and with fewer regulations and lower taxes than most of them. However, none of our rights, including those in the Bill of Rights, are unbounded or absolute, and they never were. All are subject to regulations and limits, as they always have been from our country’s inception. This includes the Second Amendment, which the framers expressly designed to be subject to restrictions as well. Did 2A grant slaves or indentured persons the right to keep and bear arms? This is not a trick question.
Do these restrictions and regulations mean we live in a police state? No. Go visit Cuba or Iran. These are real police states. Here, a handful have the right to do as they choose, and the rest have the right to like it. Without reasonable restrictions on liberty for all, nobody has any rights or true freedom — except those with the power to take them by force.
Once again, it goes over your head.
The US is most certainly not a police state, BUT…
How exactly can you enforce a law?
This is not a trick question either.
A free society requires the consent of the governed. A police state relies upon force.
http://www.democracyweb.org/consent/principles.php
I hope you didn’t miss the “right of rebellion” in there too.
Let’s try again.
Many libertarians believe that taxation is a form of governmental force and theft. I don’t actually believe that but let’s go with it.
They probably pay their taxes because if they don’t, other than the slightly more obvious fact of the government running out of money, is that men with GUNS from the IRS are going to haul off their asses to jail at GUNPOINT. And if they try and resist, they’re as good as DEAD.
Is this statement about the state’s use of force ANY more clear now?
Or let’s go with this one –
your home is burglarized. Since you don’t want to use your gun for self-defense, the first thing you do is…?
Even better!
Drug possession laws are unjust. Let’s say my friend wants to have some weed. He’s got to be real careful about it though because possession can get you arrested. Arrested and thrown in the slammer. So he just waits it out until weed becomes legal, because he’s afraid of losing his liberty at GUNPOINT.
“your home is burglarized. Since you don’t want to use your gun for self-defense, the first thing you do is…?”
I’m assuming I’m in the house in your scenario, which is highly unlikely in the general case, and nearly impossible in my specific case, as my home is adequately protected. But in that incredibly unlikely event, my plan is to leave and then call the police once I have obtained a safe distance, which I figure is about two clicks.
Believe me when I tell you: The absolute best way to win a gunfight is to not be there for it. Call me a coward. God willing, call me on my 110th birthday and call me a coward again. I have no personal possessions worth dying for, and they’re all insured anyway.
In my opinion, you gun nuts exaggerate the risk of home invasion to a hysterical degree. Near as I can tell you are all drama queens. There is no rational or statistical basis for your over-the-top obsession. When is the last time you checked the smoke detectors? Assess your real threats, not the ones that fascinate or frighten you the most.
You called the police because you KNOW they will use the implied or real FORCE of VIOLENCE to deal with the threat.
You lose. You had SOMEONE ELSE do the violence in your name. Right there, you ALLOWED it to happen.
If not helping a drowning man is just as bad as actually pushing him under, then you just did that. If that police officer shows up, and arrests the bad guy, or even kills him/her, the deed is on your hands, too, because you called the cop to you in the first place.
See what I mean now about glorifying violence? If you do not want to glorify violence in any way, don’t even let it happen. Go and campaign to disarm the police if you will, or better yet, deprive the state of the military and police force because then no one will have a monopoly on violence.
I personally don’t care about whether I get called a drama queen over the worry of a home invasion – I might as well call you the same for worrying about all of us. Far as I can tell, I still attend medical school, go out dancing, get good grades, hang out with my classmates, and still find time to train on my weapons. Several people in our class also have permits and they too are doing well. All of the carriers in the city I know of that have shown up at various training courses and IDPA events have stable jobs and a close-knit group of friends and they don’t seem to be causing any trouble. Your response to the home invasion question was equally valid (leaving the home) until you decided to call the police.
“And am I wrong to wonder why the event’s organizer’s didn’t offer the high school students an alternative perspective?”
Wrong, no. Foolish, yes, but not as much as the people who organized this event. I wonder how many kids in the audience had a gun in their backpack, school locker, or closet back home?
While such an event makes for a good photo/video op, it’s a waste of time for McCarthy – only a handful of kids at most might Tweet about it and then that will accomplish nothing. I’m glad her strategy to prohibit magazines is to talk to non-voting teens who won’t give a rats ass about the boring presentation they were forced to go to.
Robert asks, “So how should gun rights advocates play it?”
Well, for one thing they should stop resisting every single gun control initiative. You lose credibility when you do that. Background checks on private sales and registering particular guns to particular buyers at the time of purchase would go a long way towards reducing gun flow into the criminal world. By all means, continue ridiculing people who make magazine capacity their chief concern, and the suppressor laws and the 1000-foot bubble law, but acquiesce to the more sensible and practicle ideas which would help, even if that means you’d be inconvenienced.
Another thing, you can stop doing what Sean does in this very thread, stop pretending it’s EITHER gun control OR keeping violent offenders in jail. We can and should do both. In fact it’s our failure to do both that increases the problem. Violent people who shouldn’t be out on the street have easy access to guns. This is because we fail to do the first things I mentioned, background checks and proper registration.
And finally, stop with the excessive blustering talk. All that crap about molon labe and the rest of it is just that, crap. Very few people are that die-hard about it and the ones who are don’t need to boast about it on the internet. The only result is you sound like a bunch of nuts, and for what? No one is coming for you guns anyway, why keep saying “I’ll never give them up” and “just come and get them, I dare ya.”
I think Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell has been proposing excellent background check solutions that you seem to have been ignoring for quite some time now, and registration carries WAY too much risk of abuse by the government.
A Massachusetts blogger just recently had his guns taken away from him all because he dared to criticize a senator, or at least seemed to toe the line to near threat. His property was taken from him WITHOUT DUE PROCESS.
You want to stop the bluster talk?
Stop proposing silly things like the AWB, magazine bans, unworkable registration schemes, outrageous licensing training requirements, etc.
Molon Labe is just a form of cheerleading, like it or not.