According to his website, Craig Phillips is a Hollywood script doctor. According to his Twitter page, Mr. Phillips is a “wannabe screenwriter.” What’s wrong with this picture? (So to speak.) It’s the same problem bedeviling many if not most gun control advocates (a group to which Mr. Phillips belongs): they speak authoritatively from a position of profound indeed willful ignorance. Saying that, in a previous Tweet, Phillips writes . . .

I admit some bias. When I was 9, next door neighbor kid accidentally shot his younger bro playing with gun. I was home when it happened.

See how that works? Emotion trumps intellect. Rational analysis simply doesn’t get a look in. Hence the obscene outburst above, which connects carefully selected dots without addressing the facts of the matter. For those we turn to reuters.com:

Police were called to Forum Roller World in Grand Prairie, about 20 miles west of Dallas, at 7:10 p.m. following reports of a shooting, Grand Prairie Police Department spokesman John Brimmer said.

The incident began when an unidentified man drew a gun during an argument at a birthday party at the rink. He opened fire, shooting five people dead and wounding four others, and then shot himself, Brimmer said.

“This was a domestic situation that went south in a hurry.” Brimmer told Reuters. “The shooting lasted only seconds.”

Five police officers were on the scene within a minute, Brimmer said. The wounded were taken to a local hospital for treatment, although their condition was not immediately known.

A private family group had rented the entire skate rink for the evening to celebrate a child’s birthday, Brimmer said. All the dead and wounded were teenagers and adults attending the gathering.

The police department has made crisis counselors available to treat victims and others who witnessed the shooting.

“There are going to be a lot of hurting families,” Brimmer said.

“Thankfully we don’t have things like this happen with any kind of regularity. We are a community of give or take 160,000 people and it’s a great city and for something like this to happen is just horrible.”

It’s an anomaly. In other words, gun companies and legislators (with their “lax” gun laws) could not have predicted or prevented this tragedy. Unless they could . . .

Establishing how a mentally unhinged person gains access to a firearm may help society prevent future attacks. May. Lest we forget, the local sheriff’s office and the ATF ignored a heads-up on Jared Lee Loughner and guns long before he unleashed his heinous killing spree.

It’s also true that murders can come from “out of nowhere.” As Frank Readick Jr. once reminded Americans, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” The idea that you can stop an evil man from getting a hold of a gun in a world filled with guns is ludicrous.

And so people like emotion-drive crusaders like Craig Phillips seize on the only possible answer: remove guns from the world. A pointless not to say Sisyphusian task, to be sure. In fact, it’s such a patently stupid idea that the vast majority of its adherents recognize the futility of suggesting it to sane people. But not all of them. Mr. Phillips Tweets:

I am so sick of gun violence. There are responsible gun owners who hate it, too. But a world without guns entirely, wouldn’t that be nice?

For me, this is by far the most galling aspect of calls for gun control. My father was tortured and his parents murdered in “a world without guns entirely.” In gun-free labor and concentration camps.

Those who lobby for a gun-free existence singularly fail to appreciate the unfathomably horrific consequences whenever a society realizes their ideal. Equally, they are completely oblivious to the good that guns do, for both individuals and society.

There’s a reason why the right to keep and bear arms was the Second Amendment to the United State Constitution. Mr. Phillips freedom to Tweet depends on it. But he will never, ever connect those dots.

Phillips’ pig-ignorant irony would be delicious, if not for the damage that his failure to eat from the tree of knowledge inflicts on our gun rights. Or would do were we not vigilant, and steadfast in our faith in, and defense of, the right to armed self-defense.

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39 COMMENTS

  1. In the duel between the emotional and the rational the visible always trumps the invisible. When we bailed out GM and Chrysler to “save” jobs those who lost jobs because resources were diverted away from more productive activities remained faceless. In the same way crimes deterred or aborted by firearms remain unseen while we read about the kinds of murder and mayhem reported in this post.

    I will stipulate that banning handguns outright will probably drop the murder rate. At the same time more women will be raped, more citizens will be mugged, more home invasions will happen and the streets will become less safe.

  2. RF says: “Establishing how a mentally unhinged person gains access to a firearm may help society prevent future attacks. May. Lest we forget, the local sheriff’s office and the ATF ignored a heads-up on Jared Lee Loughner and guns long before he unleashed his heinous killing spree.”

    The BATFE and local sheriffs are not tasked with identifying the Loughners of the world and keeping/taking firearms away from them. They do not have the authority nor the resources. Would you like to make it their responsibility, and how would you enable them?

    • Actually, Mageek, the local sherrifs had multiple complaints about Loughner and did nothing.

      • There is also the case of the Virginia Tech shootings ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre ). The authorities ignored that one, too, until it exploded. I may be remembering incorrectly, but it seems I’ve heard that law enforcement is more or less legally prohibited from preventing crime, but they are there to stop it once in motion or after the fact to catch the perp. Am I wrong on that?

    • They didn’t have to identify Loughner, all they had to do was heed the multiple, repeated warnings of those who did.

      But to me this begs the question: why do you advocate we pass laws that, by your own admission, we can’t enforce? Or are you suggesting we expand law enforcement in this country wide enough so we could enforce them?

  3. Don’t be too hard on Phillips; he’s just thinking the way his widdle bwain has been trained to think. Bad man shoots people? Bwame the lax gun laws. Poor kid has an accident? Blwame the gun. People have no wesposibility for their actions. It’s all the fault of the evil gun manufacturers who are not people, just corporations and we hate corporations. The bad people are absolved. Say two Hail Marys and call me in the morning.

    No wonder our country is going to sh!t.

    • “6 dead, 4 injured in Texas roller rink shooting. Fuck guns, man, fuck them. Fuck gun companies, fuck lax gun laws, fuck their existence”

      That sounds like a well thought out and reasoned argument, I’d like to hear more.

      • The community knew that Lochner was mentally unbalanced, engaged in threatening behavior and was known to be fixated on his member of Congress. When expelled from Community College the administration contemplated getting a restraining order but failed to follow through. When Lochner’s behavior came to the attention of the Sheriff’s Department they shrugged it off perhaps because the Lochners were friends of the Sheriff. Any single action by Sheriff Dupnik or the Dean of students would have prevented Lochner from getting a legal firearm. He still probably would have obtained a weapon from an illegal source. I am sure that his drug dealer could have come up with one for him.

        You cannot construct a legal regime that prevents the insane or the criminal from getting their hands on a weapon short of a Stasi style police state. Even there non official thugs got their hands on guns and used them for anti-social purposes.

        Your problem is that you are a first order thinker and never think out the complete consequences of your proposals. While you think of yourself as oh so rational and mentally superior to us gun nuts, you are in fact driven by emotion and not rational thought.

        • It seems to me the gun owners who knew him might have intervened. In fact I would think you’d have a responsibility to do so. If you won’t police your own, how can you complain about the government doing it for you?

          I’ve heard gun enthusiasts insist they don’t know one single person who owns guns and has problems serious enough to be concerned about. I don’t believe it. Each one of you knows dozens if not hundreds of other gun owners. Among them there are many who have anger problems or alcohol and drug problems, some who are so dumb you wonder how come they haven’t shot their foot off yet.

          But what do you do about it? Nothing that’s what. Why is a good question. I suppose some of you are so insecure you’re afraid if you participated in disarming someone, someday it might happen to you. So you close your eyes. Others of you have a totally distorted idea of the 2A.

          Your response to this very comment, let me predict, will be to lie through your teeth and deny that you know anyone like that.

          Did you ever go to a cop bar? Every city has ’em and they’re full of dangerous people who drink too much. Are civilian gun owners different? No.

          And that’s just the drinking disqualifier. You guys suffer from all the rest too, but let’s hear how many of you will admit it.

      • Committed him for evaluation.

        It’s rather amazing how you approach that case — you lie about it, then when the lie is pointed out, declare ignorance as to what could have been done. But that’s the gun-grabber mentality — lies and ignorance.

        • But that’s the gun-grabber mentality — lies and ignorance.

          You’re not actually surprised by this, are you?

        • I’m not a “gun grabber.” I am a lifelong gun enthusiast. You have trouble handling opinions that differ from your own, that’s all. Zzzzzzz.

          • Riiiiight. You seem to have no interest in any conversation on here except those of a controversial nature, and then you always take the anti stance. I doubt you could point to one post where you are “enthusiastic” about anything gun related. Take your carefully crafted back story somewhere else. No one is buying it here.

            • No, your views are controversial and extreme. I am a mainstream gun enthusiast with very conventional opinions. I speak up only so the crackpots don’t monopolize the discourse. I’d just as soon avoid the politics, and you can find plenty of posts from me on non-political topics… if you care to look for them. Try the blog items on long-distance shooting (600+ yards) or black powder.

              • I recognize this is a waste of time since you refused to answer me the last few times I asked but:

                1) please point out a couple of examples of commonly held opinions here that are “extreme”. Please offer some rational basis for that label.

                2) Please point out some positions you have on gun control that you think are held by “mainstream gun owners”. Please offer some rational basis for that belief.

                Failing that, I’d ask that…
                3) please stop asserting things that have been proven untrue pretty much every single time you’ve asserted them.

              • Start here: NFA 1934. I support it. How many examples do you require? I believe we have been through all this before. You know, rudeness is no substitute for an argument.

      • Loughner failed a pre-enlistment drug test. It should have disqualified him from purchasing a gun. But, under Federal regulations, the Army could not notify anyone about the failed drug test because — this’ll kill ya — notification would have violated Loughner’s right to privacy under HIPAA. You cannot make up sh!t like this.

      • What do you suggest the BATFE or the Sheriff could have done?

        If one or another government agency in fact can’t even help keep us safe from a sociopath what are we supposed to do?

        Plan-A: rely on the glare from our halo to blind and disable any potential adversary;

        Plan-B: take responsibility for our personal safety and develop self defense skills (CCW or whatever you can handle).

        • Well since this has come I feel I should say something as a born and raised Tucsonan and having been an avid shooter since before I could read (although I did learn to read at 16(Ba-ziiiiing!)). I have grown more and more displeased with the state of the county law enforcement ship as helmed by Sheriff Dupnik and Attorney Barbera LaWall. Not only as a result of the Giffords shooting but also as a result of this:

          “And the Pima County sheriff, whose team conducted the raid, scolded the media for “questioning the legality” of the shooting.

          Jose Guerena, 26, died the morning of May 5. He was asleep in his Tucson home after working a night shift at the Asarco copper mine when his wife, Vanessa, saw the armed SWAT team outside her youngest son’s bedroom window. ”

          And the Hickey trial. The details are too long to list here (do read up on it however) suffice it to say it was a pretty clear justifiable self-defense case that LaWall decided to try TWICE and was littered with prosecutorial incompetence.

          Law Enforcement can’t save except in the most fortunate of situations. People need to save themselves. And the right to salvation is no man’s right to take away.

  6. “I am so sick of gun violence. There are responsible gun owners who hate it, too. But a world without guns entirely, wouldn’t that be nice?”

    Man do stupid people piss me off sometimes. You want a gun free world? Look back to feudal Europe. Not too bad a life as long as you are in the top 1/2% or so collecting “taxes” from your serfs, enjoying a little droit de seigneur with any comely peasant lass who catches your fancy. Or, to put it in less fancy terms, stealing food from farmers and raping their daughters and wives because you have a gang to back you up and one man can’t fight back effectively without firearms.

    • Not to mention homicide rates that, by historians’ best estimates, made Detroit look like Bedford Falls by comparison; the lowest regional homicide rates in 14th century Germany were around 20/100,000, going up to 80 in nastier areas.

  8. If a real Magoo did not volunteer to join the discussions at this site one would have to be invented.

  9. I’m as guilty as anyone of emotional responses to things. Just this morning a forum “friend” was posting story after story of kids shooting each other, both accidentally and on purpose. After finding CDC data that refuted him and posting images of the causes of death:

    http://www.llantup.com/unintentional-injuries-1-4.gif
    http://www.llantup.com/unintentional-injuries-5-9.gif
    http://www.llantup.com/unintentional-injuries-10-14.gif
    http://www.llantup.com/unintentional-injuries-15-19.gif

    I got mad and posted an article on the 2nd Amendment (including exerpts of DC v Heller) and flounced. I went back there this afternoon and apologized for my bad behaviour in flouncing. But the data is real, and I will not apologize for wanting to keep and bear arms.

    As for this event that turned so ugly so quickly, I believe someone here has already called it: an anomaly. A tragic day, and people’s lives have been changed. I don’t know that anyone else carrying could have made a difference because it was over “in seconds”. I am saddened for these folks’ losses, and I hope they get the emotional, psychological, and physical assistance they need.

    • Don’t apologize for flouncing. Stupidity is infuriating. When you get to my age, you’ll treasure the moments when you told an idiot to eat sh!t and die.

      • I don’t care if he is so old he has to take a viagra to be able to take a piss, he still nailed it.

      • I have enjoyed telling someone to ESAD. In this case, Margaret reminded me that while I’m arguing with the idiot, I’m also educating the ones who are reading but not commenting. That’s important to continue doing!

  10. Rebecca’s right on target with her statement about “I’m as guilty as anyone of emotional responses to things.” I’ve been in that boat several times because I let the TROLLS piss me off, and I’d flame a little here and there (sometimes a lot) but I do my best to be nice (I’m still mean to those silly blue helmet wearing UN morons because they’re useless and I don’t like them). The thing I like most about Rebecca is that she makes some excellent points and sticks to her guns, and won’t back down to any TROLL.

  12. What pinheads like this seem to forget is that an awful lot of horrific violence predates the invention guns. If we were able to wave a magic wand and un-invent gunpowder it wouldn’t make the world any less violent, all it would do is shift the balance of power back to whomever has the strongest arm.

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