I’ve heard some stupid sh*t in my life, but this is truly amazing. I know: I should be a bit more decorous leading into this post, so that readers of a more gentle disposition than your humble correspondent can watch Mr. Uygur hoist himself by his own rhetorical petard. But The Young Turks host’s “thought experiment” on guns is all but completely incoherent. He asks us to imagine someone in a room with three guns. And . . . that’s it. In his opinion, that person is in more danger than he would be if he was in the room with no guns. Which tells us . . .
That Mr. Uygur is batsh*t crazy. Clearly, he believes that guns have some kind of magical, evil property. (Lord of the Rings much?) That they can shoot themselves or somehow seduce non-violent folks into going crazy shooting themselves or someone else. Not to go all anecdotal, but I’ve been alone in a room with dozens of guns and walked away without injuring myself or anyone else. Same goes for a closet filled with poisonous cleaning materials. And a Ferrari Enzo.
After listening to his experimental protocol, Mr. Uygur’s fellow panelist rushes to his aid, trying to make sense out of nonsense. He suggests that it’s crazy to be in a room with three guns because it’s crazy to think someone might come into that room and shoot you. It’s a borderline rational thought. Of which Mr. Uygur’s having none. He clings to his original assertion: it’s “almost inescapable” that guns are more dangerous than no-guns. Unless, as his pal suggests, you need a gun.
Mr. Uygur’s insanity will not be denied. He insists that a pro-gun person alone in a hermetically sealed room with one gun would feel safer if there were three guns in the room. No mention of the “one is none, two is one and three is two” philosophy of tacticool operators operating. They just would.
Now I could go on about the female panelists’ condescending conclusion that average people are incapable of using a gun defensively – despite estimates of tens of thousands of successful defensive gun uses per year. And the fact that the bearded one completely contradicts her in the guise of agreeing with her. But in the land of the blind Cenk Uygur is king.
“If they’re four of us, there’s probably three guns in the room already,” Mr. Uygur opines, returning to his thought experiment like a paranoid schizophrenic returning to his delusion. “And the fourth guy is thinking, I’ve got to get one,” Uygur says. Weird isn’t it? His “analogy” has no context whatsoever. None. We don’t know who’s in the room or what they’re doing. Just a room, four guys and three guns.
In some ways, this “gun room” thought experiment is the perfect representation of Uygur’s views on firearms. There’s no rhyme or reason for its existence. The only point it makes: there isn’t any point. Despite the assumption that something bad’s going to happen, that something is going to happen, nothing does. It’s Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – with guns!
And then the girl completely contradicts herself again, calling non-gun owners paranoid, proving herself wrong without any help. What do you expect in a fact-free zone (kinda like that Uygur’s metaphorical room) where the host can say that the overwhelming majority of NRA members support [expanded] background checks without fear of contradiction. And his pal can say that both Fort Hood shooters are dead.
Like so many gun control advocates, Mr. Uygur lives and works in an echo chamber. More than that, his “room” is completely sealed from outside influence. As a result, his voice is now so important to him, so loud, that the echo is doubling back on itself, driving him nuts. And I don’t mean metaphorically.
There’s only one cure: range time! Cenk you’re invited. Ping guntruth@me.com. Question: is it OK if we bring more than one gun? ‘Cause then you won’t have to beware. It’s a gun joke, we’ll explain it later.