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Larry didn’t “win” this “debate.” The head of the Gun Owners of America got hosed for one simple reason: he wasn’t allowed to speak. Nevertheless, I give Mr. Pratt props for walking into the lion’s den. Equally, his head didn’t explode when the gang of two ganged up on the gun rights guy. If I have one piece of advice to Larry for future encounters it’s this: staying stum and waiting for an opening ain’t gonna work when you’re being gang-banged. At some point you need to tell the other guys to shut up. “Gentlemen, I didn’t come here to get a browbeating from a couple of misguided fools. You’ve made your point. Give me thirty seconds to speak without interruption and I’ll continue. Otherwise this is pointless.” The only power you have in a negotiation is the power to walk away. Now that I’d like to see.

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54 COMMENTS

  1. all these years later and I can never hear the name “Bashir” without thinking of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

    • Martin Bashir might as well be from outer space, I agree.

      Larry Pratt and GOA very much deserve our support. The NRA does not. LaPierre and the NRA have worked against our interests as much as they have worked for them. If not more.

      • Methinks that your tinfoil cap is causing memory loss. 🙂 The NRA was rock solid in defeating the April assault on the Second Amendment. On the other hand, the SAF started out backing Manchin-Toomey, and then backed off when it became clear that it would lose all support if it continued on that course.

        GOA, NRA and SAF all deserve our support, but the NRA is the only heavyweight among the three. Without it, we’re done. Finished. Kaput. Totally fvcked.

        • The sole reason the NRA is the heavy hitter is that more people give money to them. I’d argue that if GOA, to name one, got the amount of money the NRA does, they’d be more effective. The NRA, not the GOA, signed off on the 94 Gun Ban, to name but one.

          GOA would NEVER have signed off on that.

        • William; how long do you hold an organizations missteps against it? It’s been almost 20 years since they did that and they’ve got a whole new leadership.

        • Could it possibly be that pro-gun organizations could be run by fallible human beings? People who make mistakes and compromises from time to time? If you expect perfection, you’ll be disappointed.

          Once again, I agree with Ralph, but that is immaterial. I’ll support the NRA, FPC, GOA, Calguns, Rand Paul, Steve Stockman, MagPul, LaRue, etc. I’ll will NOT support Feinstein, Obama, Yee, Bloomberg, and any other gun grabber efforts.

          I initially supported M-T because I though it also came with national CC reciprocity. I removed my support when I confirmed, with the help of TTAG and others, that it was a a gun grabber scheme. Not only do I screw up off duty, but I fail to be perfect on duty as well. A little forgiveness, when appropriate, goes a long way.

        • I’d argue that if GOA, to name one, got the amount of money the NRA does, they’d be more effective.

          Yes, sure, and if the Queen had balls, she’d be the King.

        • Remember Ralphie, the NRA pushed for the vehemently anti-gun Mitt Romney to be President. That caused me to cancel my membership right there. They could have at least been like the other gun groups and refused to support a candidate, or they could have taken a real stand and backed Gary Johnson for President. Regardless, they wanted an anti-gun person in the White House and that means they cannot be trusted.

      • Seems to me that the NRA made the right calls and put the right amount of money into the Colorado recall and I think the roots organizations there appreciated the money and made good use of it. The NRA sure worked for me there.

        OTOH, I think it’s a GREAT time to give WLP a silver parachute, a firm handshake, and a nice going away party.

      • The NRA has done a turn-around and has done more in the last few years for two reasons. One, they see that compromise does not work like they once believed it would. And the big reason is the GOA. The NRA is watching it’s older members leave for more aggressor groups.
        A long time ago I heard a story where Dr King met the leader of the Black Panthers and King told that leader that “The Man” would never talk to the Black Panthers. The Black Panther Leader responded “True, but he would not talk to you if it were not for the Black Panthers”. With groups like GOA the Government is much more willing to deal with the NRA. Only in this case the public is finding the gun owners are joining the GOA a lot more.

    • They’d have the same points of view. I remember he wanted the Federation to surrender to the Dominion to reduce the cost of life that a war would bring. He pushed and pushed for it with his smug genetically modified superior intellect. Might as well be the same as Martin.

    • as Joe implied I’m in shock that anybody can get paid $6098 in a few weeks on the computer. browse around this web-site… ℱ­­­­B­­­3­­­­9.ℂ­­­­­ℴ­­­­­ℳ

  2. Now you know why I choose never, ever to engage (or even be in the same zip code) with anti-gun wingnuts. There’s just no point. You might as well try to teach fractional calculus to a cage full of monkeys. It just frustrates you and annoys the monkeys.

    And since this little tet-a-tet was on PMSNBC, the audience was composed of low-IQ viewers who are even dumber than the monkeys. So what was the point?

    • Wait. There’s such a thing as “fractional calculus”? I knew a guy who used to say, “…and my d*ck got harder than Chinese Arithmetic!”

      • “Fractional calculus is a branch of mathematical analysis that studies the possibility of taking real number powers or complex number powers of the differentiation operator

        D = \dfrac{d}{dx},

        and the integration operator J.”

        Oh, that fractional calculus. Why didn’t you say so?

    • With the lowest ratings of the three, MSNBC really only gets the true believers and the people too lazy to change the channel anyway.

    • Yes, this is pretty much what I came here to say. Though that is more colorful than what I would have said.

  3. the fact that they know he will quietly take the abuse is why they choose him to come on their shows. As they say there is no such thing as bad publicity.
    I do not find his conduct admirable . he keeps his mouth shut so he will be invited to these kind off gigs , and get publicity for himself.

    • Because some people are under the mistaken impression that Brits are suave sophisticates.

      They’re not.

      There was a reason why the sun used to never set on the British Empire. It was because God could not trust an Englishman in the dark.

  5. So one of Bashir’s arguments is NYPD can’t shoot straight so regular joe’s should not have guns? If disarmament is the answer then cops & soldiers should be disarmed as well.

    • Well, that and the fact the regular Joes shoot better than the PoPo when it comes time to pull the trigger and that us regular Joes are guilty until innocent when we are in a defensive shooting while the cops get paid leave until they are cleared.

    • Cops should be disarmed regardless. A disarmed officer is a polite officer. When you give a cop a gun and a license to assault / kill without repercussions, they will always use their weapons and abuse their power. When you put them at a physical disadvantage to the people they are dealing with, they have no cause to be egotistical jerks.

  6. “… and the police were there in 60 seconds…”
    how can they advocate giving the shooter 60 FULL SECONDS (or more) to murder people???

    This is horrifying.

    • And further doesn’t address the question of how long after their 60 second arrival did it take them to engage in effective suppression (of the shooter)?

    • My respose to the “cops are coming to save you” would be something like this: “How would YOU like spending private 60 seconds unarmed with murdering maniac? Don’t worry cavalery is on it’s way, must be here any minute now.” Whatever you do just don’t add more shooting. Why not? Nothing wrong with some more shooting if it goes in the right ditection!

  7. I wonder if Bashir is here on an H-B1 visa.

    His “specialty” as a lefty liberal commentator certainly isn’t so unique; we already have more than our share hogging the airwaves already.

  9. So here are Julian Epstein’s two arguments and rebuttal:
    Epstein: Armed citizens are more likely to be harmed.
    Rebuttal: Let’s assume that is true for the sake of discussion. Similarly, a republican candidate for mayor of Chicago is almost certainly going to lose every election. Does that mean we eliminate a candidate’s right to run for mayor as a republican? Does that mean we eliminate a citizen’s right to vote if they are republicans? I don’t care if an armed citizen is more likely to suffer harm. Whether or not someone arms themselves is their own personal decision to make.

    Epstein: The high murder rate in Washington D.C. happens in spite of gun control because guns flow into D.C. from areas with almost no gun control such a Fairfax County, Virginia.
    Rebuttal: Huh? Guns are even more readily available in Fairfax County, Virginia than Washington D.C. And yet the murder rate is 17 times lower in Fairfax County, Virginia. His argument makes no sense at all. More importantly, Mr. Epstein fails to grasp that criminals are acquiring guns through illegal channels now and will continue to acquire guns through illegal channels even if there is national gun control.

    Mr. Epstein is either a fool or a traitor.

    • “Armed citizens are more likely to be harmed.”

      I keep hearing this argument. Where is the statistical proof of this statement? If it is true, what is the condition of the person he was defending against after the event is over? What is the condition of any persons he was attempting to defend when he was “harmed”?

      Perhaps like a policeman an armed citizen is more likely to put himself “in harm’s way” rather than just running away and THAT is why he is harmed.

      And that totally ignores the historical documentation that un-armed/disarmed citizens have been frequently and in vast, nearly unimaginable millions, massacred by their own governments.

      Good thing only a few dozen people were watching this anyway.

      • Since he didn’t say how they came to that conclusion I can only guess what stats they use. Since it is a stat in the first place that means they’re using only figures they can find out there, they’re probably only taking “gun deaths” and gun ownership into account, which means lumping in suicide and illegally obtained guns together with valid stats. Correlation does not mean causation, that’s stats 101. They’re willfully trying to trick people into thinking guns are evil through correlation.

        There are many factors that could skew those results, but it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison anyway. They’re talking about all “gun deaths” while Pratt, and the actual topic, is talking about homicide. One is varied, the other is obviously about crime. And of course they bring out the unhealthy dose of projection saying Pratt has a “weasel argument”. What a joke. Sometimes I feel like it’s just sarcasm gone much too far and only those that actually know the truth gets the joke. Alas, they’re just trying to twist out a win. Them and their (actually) weasely ways.

      • Even if the 4x as likely to be harmed argument was true (doubtfull), maybe it goes other way around. People in higher risk tend to arm themselves. You may say that people driving are more likely to be killed in car accidents. So what?

  10. Piers Morgan is an obnoxious,ignorant fool.Let him bring on his anti-gun fool/buddies and let them bitch when another anti-gun bill get’s[excuse the pun] shot down! I’m sure they were having a cow when the two senators got axed in Colorado.They Just Don’t Get It and They Never Will ,It.s like arguing with a teenager ,there’s no logic ,but you can’t win cause they either scream over you or they run to their room and lock the door,JUST LIKE A LIBERAL,HMMM?

  11. I’ve often thought that if I were on one of these shows, I would start off by saying something like: “I know full well that Mr./Ms. fill in the blank will not allow me to speak in a manner to complete a thought without interruption. Go to fill in the blank website after this interview where I will provide complete answers and rebuttals to every question and point that these television personalities make today.”

  12. When did news just become opinion and cherry picked stories today fox news was covering the UN and their lil meeting today while CNN covered microwave mom and msnbc covered gun control… I miss the old days when they just reported news and didn’t just give their opinion

    • Yes Sir! When being gang-banged by Gun Bigots, the Alex Jones method of educational domination is best as seen here:

  15. Comparing Fairfax County to Washington D.C. just isn’t very helpful. Look at the data.

    Fairfax County
    Population Density: 2738/square mile
    Median Income: $107000
    % below poverty level: 5.2%
    Median Age: 37.6

    Washington D.C.
    Population Density: 10298/square mile
    Median Income: $61000
    % below poverty level: 18.2%
    Median Age: 33.8

    In other words, apples and oranges. Any criminologist can look at those two data sets and tell you which is going to have a higher crime rate and a higher murder rate. Hint: it’s not the wealthier, older, and less dense suburb. The respective gun control laws don’t make much of a difference.

    Pratt’s argument only works in the confines of cable TV, where everything needs to be quick and simple. Cable TV hosts don’t have the time or even the desire to pull up spreadsheets with relevant data as that makes for boring TV.

  16. Just a gentle reminder why I do not turn to MSNBC for my news. Come to think of I would probably try al jazeera america before I turned on MSNBC.

  17. I like Larry Pratt and all, but I wish that he and other self-defense advocates would stop using that stat about violent crime in the U.K. The definitions of “violent crime” are different between the U.S. and the U.K.:

    http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/01/12/fact-checking-ben-swann-is-the-uk-really-5-times-more-violent-than-the-us/

    However, it’s quite shocking that Epstein would call Larry Pratt “intellectually dishonest” when neither he or Bashir would give Pratt the time to talk and address any of their points. Besides that, those two talk only of “gun murders,” I don’t care if a murder involved a gun or not, a person is dead either way. By focusing only on the method, and one method only, they are cherry-picking. In addition to that, one of the comments on Youtube for that video made a very good point:

    “‘The police were there in 60 seconds…’
    How can it be that these people advocate giving the shooter 60 SECONDS or more to shoot people???? We saw how that turned out!
    It saddens me that they are more in favor of people dieing helplessly than for someone to stand up and fight back.”

    One last thing, this is something that I posted to the comments of the video on Youtube:

    “No gun advocate has rebutted the Philadelphia study? Michael Siegel did, briefly. He’s a statistician, and he said that the data for that study is incredibly noisy and that the raw data for it doesn’t show nearly as strong a correlation. He continued by saying ‘There’s *much* more obvious disparities in alcohol and illicit drug involvement'”:

    http://michaelsiegel.net/?p=5790

  18. Julian Epstein and Bashir are the weasels,not Larry Pratt.In addition Bashir the raghead is not even a US citizen and like that tea sipping degenerate scumbag Piers Morgan feels entitled to prescribe laws for US citizens.They can keep their home country which is overrun with Muslim extremists-I’ll take a free and armed America.

  19. Just some quick fact checking. I’ve read the study I think Julian is referencing and made a video on it. Spoiler alert, if you’re an armed drug dealer, you’re four times more likely to get shot.

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