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Australian "mandatory gun buyback" (courtesy csmonitor.com)

My September 9 article, “This Is Why I Carry A Handgun,” provoked substantial commentary, lively as always. Most interesting, perhaps were the comments of “1735099,” an Australian who often comments at my home blog, usually to inform me of my backward and uncivilized ways–and those of my country and countrymen–particularly where the Second Amendment is involved . . .
My Australian correspondent was kind enough to address my article essentially point for point, and in so doing, revealed the mindset of gun banners not only in Australia, but everywhere, for the impulse to control one’s fellow citizens for the good of the state is everywhere the same. All that differs is the degree of their fervor. Are they willing to work within the existing political framework, or are they more communistic, “socialists in a hurry,” as was a common cold war understanding. Are they willing, even eager, to imprison, torture, or kill those that oppose them? There is, of course, a great deal of distance between those poles, but the urgent moral necessity of depriving the law-abiding of the means to defend their very lives and their liberty is always the ultimate goal.

Let’s examine some representative samples. I’ll include my original points, the replies of 1735099, and my responses, indented thereafter.

* Evil exists and may confront anyone at any time and any place.

Yep – he usually has a tail and horns. But then, he’s a supernatural being and a gun would be useless.

For the statist the primary true evil is failure to obey the government with all one’s heart and soul. Anyone that would deny the existence of evil can count themselves fortunate indeed they’ve never experienced it. I have–many times. Were I unarmed and obviously unprepared, I would not have survived, as many have not. Whether one believes evil to be inspired by Satan or merely an unfortunate quirk of human nature makes little difference to its victims.

* Self-defense is a God-given, natural, unalienable right.

That’s funny – my God talks about “turning the other cheek”. Your God must be a different one.

No. He is the same God that makes clear in the scripture that there is a clear moral and legal difference between murder and justifiable killing. The same God that makes clear that self-defense is not only allowable, but in many circumstances, the only reasonable response to deadly violence.

* There is no gift so precious as God’s gift of life.

Absolutely. That’s why shooting someone to death is an affront to that gift.

Here’s a common statist contradiction: the denial of the natural right of self-defense. With such denial comes the inevitable consequence that one’s life is forfeit to anyone cruel and brutal enough to take it. Surely, some statists imagine themselves immune to criminal violence. the odds, generally speaking, are with them, but the odds are always against someone. Perhaps they think the police can protect them. They can’t, and have no responsibility to do so.

*My life is worth far more to me, those that love me, and to a just society than the lives of vicious brutes that would take it.

These same “vicious brutes” are also loved. Many of them would claim that you are “vicious”. What gives you the right to judge?

What gives me the right to judge? What right do I need to preserve my life from criminals intent on killing me? Ultimately, our right is enshrined in the law, based on millennia of human experience.  We really want criminal predators to survive rather than their law-abiding victims?

* The lives of the innocent—friend or stranger—are worth far more to me and to a just society than the lives of vicious brutes that would take them.

Yes – I wonder how the families of the innocents killed by firearms (eg the children killed at Sandy Hook) feel about this.

I’m sure they feel no differently than the victims of any evil killer, whether their loved ones died by gunfire, being stabbed to death, being run over by a car, were bludgeoned or strangled. I’m equally sure at least some of them wished there had been armed teachers present that day, for they would have had every advantage and could have saved many lives, lives no police officer available that day could have saved.

* The Constitution is only paper, a statement of principles and intentions. When the will wavers and when some wish to change, ignore or destroy those principles and intentions for light and transient reasons, only the threat and force of arms will suffice to preserve liberty.

I think Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse Tung and Josef Stalin had much the same idea.

Another hallmark of the statist is the revision of history. All dictators, including Hitler, Mao and Stalin, subverted individual liberty and disarmed their populations, just as modern statists never cease trying to do.

*By carrying my handgun, I honor the foresight and wisdom of the Founders in writing the Second Amendment.

As far as I know, in 1791, effective rapid-fire handguns weren’t invented yet. The most advanced weapon at that time would probably have been either the Kentucky long rifle, capable of firing two or three .60 balls per minute out to an accurate range of 300 yards. The Founders had no idea about modern weaponry.

A common statist argument: if only the founders had known about modern pornography, they wouldn’t have written the First Amendment. If only they had known about AR-15s, they wouldn’t have written the Second Amendment, etc. They were among the most brilliant and far-sighted men of any age. They wrote the Constitution based on fundamental principles of liberty, not on available, or even imaginable, technology. They were content Americans have the most powerful military weapons of their day. We do not enjoy such freedom. In fact, a number of the founders were accomplished inventors. They foresaw more advanced firearms technology, but they lacked the manufacturing capacity to make it.

*
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
 [Thomas Jefferson]

That may have been acceptable in his time. We have progressed since then. I doubt that anyone wants to go back to the savagery that existed then – except perhaps ISIL – that’s how they operate.

We have progressed since then? ISIL is the only threat to humanity? I was under the impression that Australia had television and telephones. Apparently not.

“It sorely vexes those who would enslave me—all of us—through tyranny, soft or hard.

Not really. I couldn’t give a colonial. The only thing that vexes me is Americans telling me what to believe in my own country.

I don’t recall any American demanding that any other nation adopt a Second Amendment. I do recall many nations, including the United Nations, trying to require America to abandon it. Statism transcends national boundaries.

* Most politicians care about the welfare and continuing existence of individual citizens only in the abstract. Even honorable politicians can do little more than those who only pretend to care.

You must have crap politicians in your country.

On that we may agree.

* Even in our democracy, tyrants are always present and always waiting their chance.
With this in mind, Hubert Humphrey, one of the most famous and orthodox Democrats of the last century was right–and refreshingly honest and non-partisan–when he said:
“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”

The NRA got to him.

Ah yes, the NRA: to the statist mind, the other source of evil. The NRA’s political power comes from its more than five million members, and its dogged defense of an unalienable, natural right. But to statists, no rational being could possibly oppose their desires, so those that do are either fools, evil, or corrupted, bitter God and gun clingers all. 

* I am old-fashioned enough to think it my duty to protect those who have less ability than mine to protect themselves.

Me too – but I’ve never needed a gun to do that.

For mere mortals, life is a bit different. I’m no longer 25, extraordinarily fit and strong and practiced in the martial arts. Even then, I understood that movie fighting is choreography, not actual fighting. In the real world, people die from single blows. Everyone fighting with edged weapons gets cut, and badly. In the real world, predators attack in packs. In the real world, predators carry weapons. In the real world, we get older every day, but most predators are always 18-25.

* I could not live with myself for failing to protect a woman in danger. Call it sexist if you must, but if you’re unarmed and under attack, would you really want to call an unarmed, untrained statist? Would Pajama Boy save you?

Carrying a gun doesn’t make you a man – it actually brands you as a coward.

Perhaps that worked for Andy Griffith, but that too was television. Cowardice and responsible preparation for the real world aren’t related. Cowards hide from responsibility. Real men recognize and accept reality and prepare accordingly.

* I know that some people really like hurting others. Rarely does one need to engage in psychological navel gazing to understand the actions of predators. They do it because they want to do it, because they like to do it, and some, because it is an intense sexual thrill.

I wonder what this has to do with concealed carry?

You’re kidding, right?

* I know that such people are everywhere, and are for most, impossible to pick out from the mass of humankind.

And you want them to be able to carry concealed firearms?

No. I want law-abiding people to carry concealed firearms if they choose. Criminals, particularly sociopaths, will do what they please regardless of the law. That’s why they’re called “criminals.”

* I know that such people can be stopped only by the presence of overwhelming and imminent force: the gun.

Not necessarily. If they’re carrying all bets are off.

If they’re carrying, all bets are off unless their victims are also carrying.  See “criminals” above.

* I know that only bullets will stop some predators. Using reason or empathy on such “people” is like the cries of a wounded bird to a carnivore.

You’re full of hyperbole.

No. I’m full of experience with predators, particularly those predators full of the bullets of their intended victims.

* The predators that would carry that battlefield into our homes are usually the most dangerous of all.

More hyperbole.

Really? Burglars breaking into people’s homes, particularly when they’re present, are there to sell Avon products? Amway? Again, experience.

* The police have no legal obligation to protect me—or anyone.

You have a very strange police force.

No, we have very rational and necessary laws. Try suing the police in Australia for failing to protect you. The same is true everywhere.

* It [carrying a handgun] gives me the ability to deter those younger, stronger or more numerous than myself.

I haven’t found it necessary.

You’re very fortunate. Around the world, millions have.

* It gives me the ability to defeat those younger, stronger or more numerous than myself if they are too stupid, too drugged, or too predatory to be deterred.

I don’t “defeat” them, I avoid them. Works for me.

Good for you. That doesn’t always work. Ask the aforementioned millions.

* I know that criminals fear the guns of armed citizens far more than the guns of the police. They should.

I haven’t had this conversation with a criminal lately.

I have, and so have many other police officers and not a few researchers.

* In virtually every school shooting in recent American history, the police played virtually no role in stopping the killers. Armed citizens did.

Yep – worked out well, didn’t it?

In virtually every case where armed citizens or police officers were present, lives were saved and the attacks were immediately ended.

* Firearms are like fire extinguishers. When one is needed, it’s needed right now, badly, and nothing else will do.

I dunno. I’ve extinguished fire successfully with a wet sugar bag.

For the statist without an argument, mocking one’s opponent or employing absurdity is a common response.

* Thomas Jefferson was also right when, in 1785, he advised his 15 year old nephew and ward:
“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind.”

Probably true in 1785. In 2014 not so much.

Human nature has fundamentally changed since 1785?

* Everyone that carries a handgun, without incident, every day, makes a stronger legal and political case for fully honoring the intent of the Founders and expanding Second American freedoms.

Everyone that carries a handgun exhibits paranoia and cowardice.

For the statist without an argument, the ad hominem response is equally common.

* The mark of civilization is not what a man or a people are willing to say about it, but what they are willing and able to do to defend it.

The mark of civilization is the freedom to move about freely daily without fear. Shame you don’t have it in your country.

Tyrants always sell “freedom from fear” as their ultimate, utopian goal. In order to secure such “freedom’” the people need only surrender their liberties, little by little, one by one. The founders knew this too. Benjamin Franklin, in 1759, said:   “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

*As an American, I do it for no reason other than I want to.

That’s the kind of statement I’ve heard from your typical five year old. Most grow out of it. What other people want is important unless you’re a hermit.

To the statist, the freedom to be let alone, to do as one pleases so long as it does not intrude on the freedoms of others, is abhorrent.

It would seem that some of our Australian cousins are not so different than our domestic gun banners. Statism really knows no national boundaries, and never, ever, gives up.

Mike’s Home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.

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77 COMMENTS

    • No, he fled to Australia and changed his name, thinking we wouldn’t recognize him. But it was his big mouth that gave him away…

      • I don’ no. They all sound alike to me. Use the same worn out, over-used excuses for their ignorance and personal shortcomings, are afraid of pictures, half-eaten fruit tarts, little boys finger-pointing, and cannot maintain a logical train of thought.
        .
        In short, they have not intellectually or emotionally progressed beyond the human mid-adolescent development stage which identifies them as a member of the primitive species “Liberal-us Progress-EVIL-us”
        .

  1. I would also add that Australia is a separate country from Great Britain largely because of the backlash they got from a bunch of armed Colonialists and French allies during the Revolutionary War. After losing their grip on the American colonies, Great Britain realized it couldn’t fight to force the remaining colonial possessions in it’s sphere, so introduced reforms and paths to self rule among, one of many places, Australia.

  2. To our Aussie cousin:

    If you can’t trust yourself with a gun, get help.

    If you can’t trust other people with a gun, get humble.

    If you can’t trust me with a gun, get bent.

  3. Australia also suppresses freedom of speech. Like their UK cousins they have all encompassing laws banning “hate speech”. In which the government can at anytime decide that criticism of elected officials is hate speech and jail those dissenters. The Aussies have a socialist government so they have little in the way of economic liberty. Why should anyone be shocked if their citizens are anti gun ownership. Their citizens are so conditioned to comply unquestioningly to government edicts that if they were told to report to a labor camp, the vast majority would do so.

    • well…..

      now we are talking about cousins, and cousins of cousins. which brings me to canada where, about three years ago, a british journalist writing commentary on a US blog was tried and convicted of hate speech…in canada. that is, the blog in the US constituted hate speech in canada. the british journalist still has an arrest warrant outstanding on the conviction.

      while the english have lost their empire and most of the colonies, they all maintain the same mind-set we fought off back in the day. history teaches us that these people learn nothing from history.

      cheers, and all that rot.

    • @Tom

      Cosigned. Australia is an unabashed statist plutocracy run by increasingly corrupt and patronizing elites. Their Parliament just passed a law the criminalizes whistle-blowing and legalizes invasive government surveillance with wide bipartisan support.

      Australia’s enduring idea of freedom is living in a well-secured prison colony and while its enduring idea of civilization is to surrender all rights at the first opportunity.

    • “Australia also suppresses freedom of speech. ”

      They don’t even have to. Their constitution lists apprx. zero civil rights – it’s an extraordinarily un-liberal document. “Free speech” is a mere tradition to be governed at will. Funny how the current efforts to extend surveillance are being met with howls of disdain from the technocrats – the shoe being on the other foot.

  4. ISIS may get him, or his kids in front of him. http://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-systematically-beheading-children-in-iraq-they-are-killing-every-christian-they-see-says-chaldean-leader-124594/ http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/australian-leader-warns-planned-random-attack-25585654
    Hindsight will be what he wished he saw his front sight through.

    Save your ammo, and your SF 123’s, keep your powder dry, and pray that you are someday able to forget the sounds of their screaming.

  5. “As far as I know, in 1791, effective rapid-fire handguns weren’t invented yet. The most advanced weapon at that time would probably have been either the Kentucky long rifle, capable of firing two or three .60 balls per minute out to an accurate range of 300 yards. The Founders had no idea about modern weaponry.”

    Ah, yes, the tired old “they didn’t have that back then” argument…

    BULL.

    The Girandoni Air Rifle was a rapid-fire air gun with 20 round magazines that not only fired a .46 caliber ball fast enough to take down large game, it was also the standard rifle of the Austrian army from 1780-1815. Also, they were very quiet and generated no tell-tale puff of smoke.

    Thomas Jefferson and several other Founding Fathers owned them. A few years later a couple were sent west with Lewis and Clark.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_Air_Rifle

    • Another to lay on them is – “What was a musket and a flintlock rifle then? A state-of-the-art battlefield weapon. By your very logic, I should have a full-auto AK-47 if I want.”

      • here you have choices. evanix, eun jin, crosman rogue, and ars all make pre charged pneumatic rifles. .177, .22, .25, .38 can all be had. sam yang and shin sung make .50 cal rifles firing 225, 250 or 275gr pellets upwards of 600fps yielding 190lb ft of energy. search “korean air rifle”.

    • Not only that. but about the only significant difference between pornography back then and pornography now is modern photography. Well, and back then they had some class. 😉

  6. I think the basic problem statists have, other than worship of the state, is that they do not realize humans as a species has not evolved at all in a hundred thousand years. We’re just as brutal and primal as we were when we smeared mud on cave walls.

    • statist view humans as tools to be used and replaced when necessary, or when the tool no loger has economic viability. statsts believe people are most beneficial when properly ruled. anything that does not provide economic value, or becomes unruly is to be eliminated.

      and yes, they always get around to that last bit.

    • Right, plus you don’t need an old copy of National Geographic or a museum to locate such behavior, and people are hacking each other up someplace as we type.

      (loosely paraphrased) “The only thing that kept you from waking up under a tree and, after surviving the elements the night before, possibly resorting to armed conflict to protect the place you slept (for tonight) the proceeds of the day’s forage and hunt, and a desired mate (with possibly resulting offspring), is because someone LET you. You want to surround yourself with people who will continue to let you.

      Let those who would attempt to disarm you know that they need to go pick-out their tree, and you will meet them there.” [TERMS, J.M. Thomas R., 2012]

    • The basic problem that Statists have, is that they are somehow under the delusion that The State has any value without its people.
      Americans should not give up their guns to sate the fear of their Government. The Government has no value except to its people to protect their Liberty. If the Government has grown so large and powerful it can think that it would be safer if Americans’ freedoms were curtailed, then it’s past time for some Government reduction.

  7. He doesn’t speak for all Australians, and least of all this one.

    He sounds like a card-carrying member of The Greens party who are often derided as “idiots, imbeciles, and undergraduates”. Which is also their voting base.

    The Greens are extremely anti-gun to the point they openly state that law abiding firearm owners are a greater danger to the public than criminals. Perhaps the are using too much of the drugs they want to legalize.

  8. “You’re full of hyperbole.”

    That wasn’t hyperbole, that was a metaphor. (Ditto the second case.) As my English teacher mother says, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, hyperbole is for people who can’t think of a good metaphor.”

    I don’t know what she’d say about someone who can’t tell the difference between hyperbole and metaphor.

  9. “I haven’t found it necessary.”

    And neither do the vast majority of people in the country. Nor do their houses burn down, yet they have insurance. You figure out the relationship.

    “I don’t “defeat” them, I avoid them. Works for me.”

    And when you cannot? See above.

    Another of the ‘just because it hasn’t happened to me it cannot happen to anyone’ people.

    Or

    If some have to raped, robbed and murdered, so be it, as long as the thin veneer of civilization is maintained. Right?

    Hope you or your family never have to be one of those victims. And, if so, that you can still spout your beliefs that not being able to defend themselves was worth your belief. But that will never happen, because it hasn’t happened to you, and you can avoid it, right?

    Guess no one is ever raped, robbed, or murdered in Australia.

    • Then you must drink a lot of scotch because our cities are overflowing with domestic idiots.

      For example, handing a CA ID card to an officer and trying to pass it off as a license is risky. When he tells you that he is logged into the DMV database, and can see the DUI arrest and other suspension info on record, it’s just pretty much stupid.

      Ah, well. Job security.

  10. I refuse to accept advice from someone about what “modern countries do”, when they have yet to disabuse themselves of such an antiquated and backward notion as “Royalty”.

    It’s the equivalent of having an outhouse but deigning to advise others on how to do plumbing.

  11. Yeah that was sickening to read. He says American gun owners are trying to him what to do in his Country?. But than tells us what to do in our Country?. It really is sad that this world is full of people like this. I must be wired differently, but I can never wrap my head around people wanting to dictate how other people live their lives. In any subject.

  12. This is not the first time that an anti has called us cowards for carrying a gun. I’ve never actually seen them back this up (nor seen their research concerning the inverse correlation between between barrel length and penis size).

    Why are we cowards for carrying an equalizer, but bullies, who always pick on smaller victims, are somehow more virtuous?!

    • “Why are we cowards for carrying an equalizer, but bullies, who always pick on smaller victims, are somehow more virtuous?!”

      You make the mistake of thinking that antis see a difference between you and the “bullies”.

      • That’s a good point, but it doesn’t explain it all. It’s their fear that makes them think we are bullies, but what is it that makes them think that it’s wrong to defend their own life from someone that threatens it? My life may not be more important than someone else’s, but it certainly isn’t less important. In the animal kingdom their are predators and prey. Humans are animals. Prey animals will try to escape and if they are caught, will defend to the best of their ability. Calling someone defending their life with a gun says to me that they think that the brute force an attacker uses is morally superior to defending it with a gun because now (maybe) the defender has the upper hand. Yet if they found themselves in the position of being attacked or their daughter or wife being raped I bet that they would pick up the nearest implement or rock as a weapon. It’s instinct. If an attacker comes at me with the intent to kill, HE has made the decision that someone is going to die. I get to pick who. They dream about a utopia that doesn’t exist. Until it does, I will carry a gun.

        • “Calling someone defending their life with a gun says to me ”

          Ah, I meant “calling someone defending their life with a gun A COWARD says to me.”

        • That man and people like him are the cowards. They may or may not have the character to be real men, stand up for them selves their families and loved ones. But they will never know due to their cowardice. Though they mock us as fearful they are terrified of the threats all around them. Un willing to face said threats and harsh realities they seek to bring the rest of us down rather than step up them selves. This is not different from a man unsure in his job deriding and suppressing those who would excel. To take up arms and trust himself to both defend himself and to not negligently harm or kill himself is to much to undertake. His answer is to put his trust in a larger entity. The obvious continuation of this is to subjugate others to protect the lie. Imagine the burning self loathing this man must suppress when he is forced to recognize the 11 year old girl who defended her and her mothers life is more of a man than he is.

    • I have called out many of these liberals promoting the small penis narrative. I have challenged many anti gunners to prove themselves in a sanctioned boxing gym against me. Not one has taken me up, even after offering to donate 10K to the charity or political group of their choice if I lost the fight. Not even Lt Colonel Robert “Obese Pig” Bateman would take me up. These anti gunners are a bunch of beta male blowhards.

  13. It never ceases to amaze me that a grown man can publicly state that he is not willing to find at least SOMETHING for which he is willing to fight. This man is proudly proclaiming that he is a weak, cowardly person who is more afraid of the law-abiding man who is willing to defend himself, than he is the criminal.
    His aggressive defense of his own cowardice is stunning. This mindset is rooted in a deep, deep hatred of the knowledge that he is lacking the fundamental, primal male urges that cause real men to take their safety, and the safety of their loved ones, seriously. He just doesn’t feel what free men feel, and he secretly hates himself for it.
    And I’m okay with that. If another man wants to live his life just waiting to be a victim, hoping the odds don’t eventually catch up with him, then I say have at it. But when he tries to FORCE me to live that way as well, then we have a problem. Australia has terrible gun laws, and he’s okay with that. He seems perfectly content to live at the mercy of criminals and The State (same thing). I couldn’t imagine living that way.
    And I believe that’s why the following statement is so shocking to men like him, and statists everywhere around the world, “I will NEVER give up my guns.”

  14. Numbers goes on in his blog about ‘Why I don’t carry a gun’ but TL;DR comes down to this: His government does not trust him, or any of his countryfolk, to act like a responsible adult when given that much power over human life. Instead everyone is assumed to be a potential criminal/enemy of the state, and is treated as such.

    • The last exchange makes my point.

      **As an American, I do it for no reason other than I want to.

      *That’s the kind of statement I’ve heard from your typical five year old. Most grow out of it.
      What other people want is important unless you’re a hermit.

      That’s the different between us and statists. We expect others to behave like adults, who may do what they want so long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others, instead of treating them like irresponsible children that need to be managed and restricted, as children can not make rational decisions on their own.

      • It’s worse than that. Children are imminently rational and logical. Any decent parent understands that their role is not warden but teacher, coach, guide etc. And that growing up is a succession of try’s and re try’s with incremental layers of trust and responsibility hopefully concluding in functional adults who can care for them selves and others. Far from growing out of “it” most children grow into responsibility and rationality. Atleast to an extent. His statement is insulting to five year olds as well. Young children have a very well developed sense of fairness and justice. You would be hard pressed to find one who didn’t already understand the concept of escelation and who has the right of defense at any given point. This BS he spouts is some sort of regressive adult syndrome. A rejection of fundamental concepts that is reminiscent of the worst types of childhood tantrums.

        • – Young children have a very well developed sense of fairness and justice.

          Actually they don’t. Children are greedy and self serving by nature to get attention which results in receiving ood, shelter etc. Talk to an 8 year old who just lost a game fairly won by another kid and the loser will scream HE CHEATED!

          Kids now a days may be more worldly sounding but they are still immature and need to be taught right from wrong and other life skills. If you don’t believe me deal with an only child of any age. They are seldom taught to play well with others because in their world its ME ME and ME!

  15. I hope the day he is victimized and beat to a bloody pulp people allow it to happen so he can be a man of his convictions.

    I love how liberals love to misquote the Bible. The 6th Commandment properly translated is Thou shalt not MURDER. Killing someone in self defense or for the defense of others is not murder.

    This guy is a simple minded idiot.

    • I suppose if you came upon him being attacked you could ask him if he’d like help. However, I would think that two against one would be just as cowardly as using a weapon to save yourself. The attacker should have a fair chance to win, right?

      Have none of these people ever broken down in their car? You don’t usually get a choice where. Have they never been near empty and had to stop at a gas station in a place that didn’t seem so safe? I have.

      • Gary, That guy must live in Lala land because all I read out of down under is how scared people are in their own homes.

        This guy remindes me of Gov Dukakis who was firmly against the death penalty unless it was his family that had been murdered.

  16. “just because it hasn’t happened to me, it can’t happen to anyone”
    I would hope he’s very young because I can’t believe anyone who’s lived to 30 doesn’t know someone who has been the victim of a crime. Or maybe he’s lived a sheltered protected life.
    I lived in Southern CA in the 80s. At the time there was some high statistic that long time residents would be robbed. In one neighborhood I lived in, every home but mine was burglarized by high school boys to get drug money. My friend had his truck(Toyota) stolen three times, once out of my driveway. A supervisor at my work was shot to death at a call box on the freeway while a church bus of kids watched.
    My Supervisor was almost mugged in a parking garage on an inspection of the collection route I drove. A co-worker had a gun stuck in his face, forced to drive to a deserted warehouse area, robbed and locked in his truck.

  17. To a Progressive, “Human nature has fundamentally changed since 1785?”, the answer would be, “YES!!!”

    That is the entire meaning of the Progressive movement. To fundamentally alter human nature resulting in a perfected race. “If only we had this great law…”, “If only we were to give those convicted of violent crimes another chance…”

    Pure utopianism. Pure BS.

    1984 shows us exactly the kind of world they want to create.

    • “You are a slow learner, Winston.”
      “How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
      “Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

      ~ 1984 Common Core

      • Nice one. But in common core if they say 2+2=5, don’t they get an ‘A’ if they explain why they think their answer is correct? Or do they just get a participation award….

  18. The “life is a gift and all lives are equally precious” argument blows my mind. I can’t even imagine how these people arrive at the conclusion that allowing someone else to take your life is morally acceptable.

    If you believe in God, then your life is God’s ultimate gift — given to you in the expectation that you will respect it and use it well. Do you really think that allowing someone else to steal that most precious gift from you will please the God who gave it to you?

    If you don’t believe in God, then there’s still the fact that anyone who threatens your life has violated the “all lives are equally precious” principle by declaring that your life is worth less than his personal desire (whatever that is).

    Just for fun, let’s logic this out:

    I think we can all agree that my life and dignity are worth more than mere property. If I give in to a threat of violence, I keep my life (if the criminal chooses to let me) at the expense of my dignity and my property. The criminal has everything — his life and dignity — against my desire to keep my property. By his own choice, he has made his life worth exactly as much as my wallet. But my life and dignity are worth even more than my property; weigh all these things together, and the criminal aggressor has made his own life worth less than his criminal goal.

    Conclusion: When the choice is forced upon you, it is perfectly justifiable — morally necessary, even — to defend yourself against a criminal aggressor’s immediate threat to your life and property in the most effective way possible. Violence and death aren’t the goal; defending yourself is.

      • You know what? I say let the stupids kill of their own unborn children. That way, 20 years down the line, I won’t have to have this same argument with a new generation of indoctrinated wusses.

  19. Our Aussie friend makes his remarks from the relative safety of his home far from what he perceives as far-away violence and problems. Until he sees it in front of him and wets his pants.
    People are free to have those opinions right up until they get to a place where they can effectively use the law to enforce them on the rest of us. Gun control is not about guns, it’s about controlling others.

  20. The akubra was a welcome sight in 1968 Vietnam. Those guys at least knew how to dress for the tropics. Apparently things have digressed.

  21. My kudos to Mike McDaniel for having the fortitude to wade through that entire pile of male bovine exhaust. I basically lost any desire to do so about a fifth of the way in, jumped down to the end, and informed the guy his post was full of fail.

  22. numbers makes reference to having been in ‘nam at some point. if when confronted by enemies intent on doing him harm he “avoided them” he must have been popular with his mates. “never needed to” and “haven’t felt it necessary” screams that he’s not worth the dingoe’s kidneys.

  23. “* Firearms are like fire extinguishers. When one is needed, it’s needed right now, badly, and nothing else will do.

    I dunno. I’ve extinguished fire successfully with a wet sugar bag.”

    Yes, lots of things COULD be used to extinguish a fire if you had nothing better. Just like you could use a claw hammer or a kitchen knife to kill an attacker bent on killing you. But what kind of sane person would would live in a world where fire extinguishers exist and demand that they be banned so that everyone HAS to rely on wet bags of sugar.
    In America you are far more likely to be killed by Diabetes then a gun. Demanding everyone keeps a wet bag of sugar is like trying to sentence us all to death.

  24. Gun-grabbers take note.

    Gun Free Zones Kill.

    Therefor, lawmakers enacting those laws are killing us.

    Therefor the gun-grabbers who knowingly vote for them, kill.

    Is there more than that? YOU gun-grabbers are the problem!

  25. To my ear, I have argued with the same asswipe on local Connecticut boards. Same assine statements, ignorance of fact and history, ad hominem, ridiculous comparisons, non-sequiturs and juvenile name calling. Same guy or do they all go through the same indoctrination somewhere?

  26. Hilarious.
    The gun wankers are queuing up to make fools of themselves.
    Septics haven’t changed in 44 years.
    They are still ignorant, arrogant, and don’t learn from bitter experience.
    Your country has a gun fatality rate 21 times ours. That is a product of a lunatic gun culture.
    We don’t need it here. Australia is a civilized country.
    By the way, when I served in an infantry battalion in SVN in 1970, we made sure we were nowhere near Yanks. The only time we called in the USAF when we hit a bunker system, they dropped napalm on our position, not the bunkers. After that, we refused to use them, and called in our own light fire teams.
    On another occasion US self propelled artillery put fire on our night defensive position. It was revealed later that the gun crews were smoking hooch. We caught up with them later on R & C in Vung Tau, and they were hospitalized. We didn’t need guns.
    They were a shower of shit, and more risk to themselves and friendlies than the VC.
    One digger was worth 10 GIs.
    American units demonstrated no discipline, no morale, and were trigger happy.
    You could here them coming two klics away.
    As an ex VC I met in Ba Ria (SVN) in 2007 said to me – “You Australians were fighting on the wrong side. You were better soldiers than the Americans and respected prisoners. The Americans were cruel cowards and mistreated our people. If you had been fighting with us, we’d have had them out of our country in 1965, not 1975.”
    I don’t agree with everything he said, but his summation of the performance of the US military, based on my experience in Phuoc Tuy, is accurate.

    • Clearly, you’re happy in your country. Bravo. As a proponent of a live-and-let-live philosophy, I’m genuinely happy for you.

      What do you hope or intend to accomplish by trolling Mike’s blog and TTAG?

  27. Your military experience doesn’t mean squat in this gun debate. Your anti-American military diatribe doesn’t give you any more cache than anyone else. You like being a slave in your own country? Good for you. Stay over there in your own shit country, cowering from the criminals and the State, and we’ll continue to fight our wars without your third-world help. Go to hell.

  28. “You like being a slave in your own country?”
    Australians enjoy a freedom that your country can only dream about.
    We have a healthy disrespect for authority, wankery, dogma and written and binding laws, especially those written centuries ago. We were one of the first countries in the world to have universal suffrage, universal health care, and free and secular education.
    We have a history free of civil war, slavery and racial discrimination.
    I’m not surprised you are envious…………

    • Free of discrimination? Your country has always treated the aborigines like crap. You used to have great country but you’ve handed your freedoms over to Uncle Joe. True gun crimes went down but every other crime went through the roof.

      • “Uncle Joe?” – nobody here by that name.
        Our crime rates (nationally) are actually dropping – check the ABS statistics.
        We haven’t always treated our first inhabitants well – but unlike the good old US of A, we weren’t ever in the habit of lynching them, or burning their churches.

        • Actually when you weren’t stealing their land you were shooting them. And if it wasn’t for the democrats there wouldn’t have been any lynching’s or church burning (there were only a few), All were committed by democrats.

          Serious question – I never was able to find out the background of the story in the papers last week but why did your equivalent to child protective services send in a heavily armored SWAT team to take some kids away from an aboriginal family?

          Uncle Joe was Joseph Stalin. You give up your freedoms for social welfare which bankrupts every country that has tried it.

    • And that comment coming from a “country” that slaughtered 10’s of thousands of aborigines whilst stealing their land in the process of “Pacification by Force”. A nation composed of CONVICTS, rejects and their descendants who can’t even speak proper English.
      .

      .

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