By Gregg H.
Remember when we were at lunch and you said how if there had been anyone carrying firearms at the Aurora theatre shooting that the body count would have been doubled? You couldn’t be more condescending when I objected, throwing the old argument “I’ve never needed a gun yet, and I never will” in my face. That was the last time we went to lunch together, though not of my choosing. Who’s the enlightened one here? . . .
I live in a “shall issue” state, but you felt the need to question me for half an hour about my level of experience with firearms before signing my license to carry application. Unless I suddenly started talking to imaginary people in your office, you were required by law to sign it. Who’s afraid of whom?
You post comments suggesting my children should be shot, that I deserve to suffer some horrible fate because I disagree with you about firearm ownership. If it’s a web site that you own, either the comments are disabled or the pro-gun comments are deleted as soon as they appear. Is this what’s known as progressive thought? Why do you hate me so much?
A Million Moms became Mothers Demand Action who became Everytown for Gun Safety. Your organization can’t get more than a dozen protesters plus a few paid bodies to show up at your events. The NRA has been around for more than 140 years and has millions of members. You are a professional public relations manager who is bought and paid for by Michael Bloomberg. But somehow the NRA is the big evil corporation?
All gun owners are supposedly racists (white latino anyone?). But Trayvon could have been your son based on…what? The only thing you had in common is your skin color. Just who is the racist here?
Your NPR segment showed how hunting in America is on the decline and how the few remaining hunters are just plain crazy. They smear blood on their hands and eat the still beating heart of their kills. I suppose my extended family must have missed this report because they still hunt every chance they get. They have yet to offer me a raw heart to eat. Has that practice not reached my state yet?
How can I have only two political parties to choose from when neither respects all of my rights? You both cherry-pick from the Bill of Rights, choosing only the sections that suit you. One of you believes government shouldn’t be involved in issues such as marriage, reproduction or women’s health. But firearm ownership is different…how? How do I choose a candidate for political office when you’re all corrupt and unaccountable?
These things are real and they make me feel like a second class citizen. None of these would be acceptable if they were based on sex, race or religion.
Maybe I’m just confused.
You are not confused. I try to be polite but more and more I feel like uttering a line from Hard To Kill starring the “great” Steve Seagal…”f##k you & die”. We are waaaay too civil.
Bravo, good sir.
No! Don’t give into your anger. That leads to the dark side! And also people thinking we’re jerks, which is not fun.
I am coming around to this idea more and more as time goes by. I haven’t come to the point where I will swear at gun grabbers yet. However, I will no longer mince words. When gun grabbers demand that I give up my firearms, I convey two things to them:
(1) How dare gun grabbers tell me what personal property I can own and possess. That is highly offensive on it face and demeaning. It is an insult to my humanity.
(2) Gun grabbers are monsters for insisting that violent criminals can freely rape our daughters, wives, and mothers with confidence. They are obscene for insisting that violent criminals can severely beat or kill our sons, husbands, and fathers.
You poor, confused creature. A 6-month stint in a college town will fix you right up.
And then you’ll wish you could walk around with full body armor and a GPMG at all times. Colleges have a nasty habit of placing themselves in ghettos…real nasty ghettos where students get mugged, raped, and sometimes killed on an almost-daily basis.
Ghettos have a nasty habit of placing themselves adjacent to college campuses.
It’s amazing how fast college student renters will degrade a neighborhood so quickly, isn’t it? Must be the bongs, beer and other raucous behaviors.
Back in the days of satellite TV my father had an illegal decoder that rendered raw news feeds up from the affiliates to the networks visible. There were many feeds that stuck in my mind but the best one was this:
It was two young black men talking about a community center complete with activities and such being built with funding by a pair of Jewish men who had lived through the holocaust. The young men in question bristled about ‘old white guys’ knowing what living in the ‘ghetto’ was about and generally denouncing them.
One way of looking at it was that the education system had failed these young men. However, I suspect that neither had graduated from high school, which was both free and compulsory.
You can’t fix stupid, you can only mitigate it’s effect.
I think he was making a parody about how colleges are essentially re education camps now. Which they are. And I will now proceed to rant about them, not directed at you, but at colleges, because I need to rant about it. I know they are because I’m currently attending one. Your basically paying to get yelled at by extremist liberals all day about how America is bad, and Europe is good. America is bad, the American system of government is stupid, and evil. The constitution is irrelevant because it was written a long time ago. And anything that’s considered “American”, (cars/trucks, guns, beer, grilling, rock/country music, farming, working for a living, being productive in general and being patriotic) is all considered a sin worth the death penalty. Anything European, and anything socialist is hailed as the greatest achievement to humanity that’s ever occurred. This is out of the mouths of professors themselves.
Now I must say- not all professors. But enough to seriously scare me. Interestingly I have never, ever met a math professor that is in favor of socialism in the least bit.
I’m pretty sure that college English departments are solely responsible for keeping Marxism on life support in the US.
Come to Hillsdale, bro. That’s definitely not how we do things.
Your comment reminds me exactly why I chose to go to college in the south, I knew at least some sanity would prevail. I’ve had one soapboxing Marxist professor but even he showed some restraint. The others have been abnormally balanced compared to any of my friends’ back in the north-east.
Is MDA a hate group? I read an article to that effect today.
The Muscular Dystrophy Association would probably say NO.
Maybe it’s me, but could a more confusing article be written? Are you addressing one person? Are you addressing a multitude of people?
Are you serious or just trolling?
Why is this trolling?
I agree with him… the sentiment may be good, but the rhetorical questions from different angles just isn’t clear writing.
I kind of got this long internal monologue sort of vibe, wasnt too hard to read, but i did RE read some parts.
It’s written as a vignette.
“But Trayvon could have been your son…” Remember, after the trial Trayvon got upgraded. The President said that could have been him 35 years ago. Y’know, going to private schools in Hawai’i and being raised by his white grandparents. Boy, some folks just got it rough.
Brainwashing by a flaming Stalinist followed by indoctrination in the radical mythology of the Muslim Brotherhood has to be child abuse.
If the president was so like Trayvon, does that mean that Barry was bashing people’s heads into the sidewalks of Hawaii or was it Kenya?
Everyone in that theater needed a gun. And you know what, so what if the body count would have been higher(which it wouldn’t have been) soldiers die all the time protecting our freedoms. Maybe a few of us ought to be willing to do the same thing.
You’re not confused, you’re angry. Hold onto that anger. While half of America is watching The Bachelorette as their brains turn to mush, you are thinking and getting p1ssed off. Good. Don’t let that go, ever. Until we win.
Exactly. And we WILL WIN.
Ralph, were you trying to channel your inner Emperor Palpatine? (Still love the comment.)
The alliance… will die. As will your friends. Good, I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
OMINIPOTENT POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes. If you’re not angry about all of this (or at least a little conflicted), you’re not thinking.
Yesssss. Use your aggressive feelings. Let the hate flow through you.
Except don’t though please.
Renegade for life.
Keep it going after we win too. We must always remain vigilant, just as our adversaries do.
Mr. H,
Allow me to attempt to clear the air. You are the target of well paid propagandists and the useful idiots they have succeeded in manipulating. Well paid propagandists and their useful idiots (with an iron clad belief in their own moral superiority) care nothing for truth, honesty, fairness or any other virtue.
oh yes +1
“Well paid propagandists and their useful idiots (with an iron clad belief in their own moral superiority) care nothing for truth, honesty, fairness or any other virtue.”
that sounds like any legislative body in the country. from the most modest local council to the US Govt
A few weeks ago I was listening to a program on npr that had a psychologist on. His name was Jonathan Haidt. He was talking about the psychology behind morality and mentioned something interesting to me. Liberals have a hard time being empathetic, they just can’t understand another point of view.
…and they’re willing to impose their will upon everyone else.
…… with force if need be (Waco, TX and Osage Ave, Philadelphia, PA for example)
Well, I’ll say it–I’m confused by one thing myself. How does the author figure that the political party that believes in government control of guns is the party that believes government shouldn’t be involved in issues like marriage and reproduction and women’s health (I guess gov’t involvement in men’s health is not a problem?) I see the party that wants gov’t to control guns also making my health care decisions for me (making me, for example, buy pediatric health care insurance even though I don’t have any minor children, and buy pre-natal health care insurance even though my wife is past childbearing), involving me in “reproduction”, or lack thereof, by making me fund Sandra Fluke’s contraceptives, and telling me, if I am a baker or photographer or wedding coordinator, whose marriages I have to help celebrate. I don’t recognize any party that fits the author’s description.
These could have been my own words and thoughts. Very well done.
Honestly, none of this made a bit of sense. Maybe the MDA paragraph, but that’s being generous.
I wish you would have put this near the top of your article so I could have stop reading sooner.
“How can I have only two political parties to choose from when neither respects all of my rights? You both cherry-pick from the Bill of Rights, choosing only the sections that suit you.”
You Sir are part of the problem.
How is that “part of the problem”?
He agrees with neither party, and refuses to compromise his beliefs in order to choose the lesser of two evils.
To me, those who do compromise their beliefs are the problem.
“Choosing the lesser of two evils is making the best of a lousy situation. Abstaining is allowing the lousy situation to run completely out of control, out of a misguided desire not to get one’s hands dirty. Pontius Pilate abstained.”
Man up! You must choose the lesser of two evils, because not choosing is allowing the worse of two evils to prevail.
riiiight…. how’s that worked out for us the last 20 years?
I agree with you to an extent Bob. I think people need to try to get their ideologically pure candidate of their choice elected in their party of choice’s election. Then, come time for the parties to go head to head, compromises may need to be made if unfortunately their 100% ideal candidate isn’t running. It could be, the kind of people that disagreed with you, voted for Sarvis the “libertarian” in an effort to “wash their hands” of the matter, and helped get the Bloomberg funded McAuliffe elected in Virginina. It ticked me off that some people calling themselves libertarians voted for Sarvis despite the fact that this “libertarian” was open to support for a “vehicle-miles-driven-tax” and to expanding medicaid. http://video.msnbc.msn.com/daily-rundown/53145353#53145353
“riiiight…. how’s that worked out for us the last 20 years?”
Well, over the last twenty years, one party has definitely moved in a more freedom and small-L libertarian direction, while the other has moved in a more controlling and statist direction. Changes are smaller or larger varying on location, but these are the trends.
So, while both parties have a significant percentage that likes to control others, one is less likely to do so and moving in the more open direction, whereas the other is becoming worse.
One can support the trend or ignore it, but there won’t be any magical fairy dust to make an instant change.
“Man up”?
I MUST choose the lesser?
You ARE part of the problem.
Supporting a candidate or party based on “Mostly” is the problem. Giving up one thing, in order to get another is the problem. Having to make concessions or the other side shuts it all down is the problem.
We shouldn’t have “Sides”, especially not sides that are “All or nothing”. The party system is how this nation got so screwed to begin with. Good laws get canned because they have stupid riders tacked onto them. Bad laws get passed because they are attached to better, yet unrelated, laws. The system we have is not based off of what is good for, or the will of the people. It’s about going against the other side.
And on top of that, we have one side that is determined to win, and another side that is determined to “not lose”. And BOTH sides are content to ignore anything and everything the other side puts forth, based on nothing more than the party affiliation of the presenter.
So yeah, tell me why I should support the lesser of two evils? Evil is evil.
‘I hate these two people, but I’m gonna go ahead and pick one anyway.’ How moronic can you get? If you don’t like the Republican or the Democrat then vote third party or don’t vote. Keeping up with the status quo does nothing but perpetuate the status quo.
No, the OP is right. Both major parties cherry-pick the BoR to suit their whims. The Democratic Party would gut 2A while protecting voting rights and women’s rights and advancing the rights of gender and sexual minorities. The Republican Party would protect 2A and the free exercise clause of 1A while pushing gender and sexual minorities back into the closet and making it harder for women to exercise our rights. And both parties have pretty much raped 4A and 5A and left them to die. (O hai NSA!)
Gender and sexual minorities offer no contributions to society. Conservatives make no laws against being queer. Conservatives just refuse to subsidize queers. All of your human rights are in tact. I see it as such an insignificant issue that why even compare it to what the progressives want? That is foolish.
Gay people don’t contribute to society, huh? People like you make me ashamed to be a gun owner. Gay people have the same rights as straight people. The government needs to stop oppressing the rights of gay people.
That’s right! Because they are people not because they are homosexual. What do you mean people like me? People like me that don’t see skin color as a reason to have preferential treatment? People like me that don’t think that gay people should have preferential treatment? People like me that think Mother, Father, children as a family is the overwhelming norm that should be encouraged for a healthy growth of a society? I have no problem with alternative lifestyles. But they are and should remain alternative. When a 5 year old boy says he wants to wear a dress and put on makeup like mommy, he needs to be discouraged from that. If he still wants to do that when he is a man, then let him do what ever he wants but his queer ass aint going to be working for me or leading my kid’s Cub Scout troop. If you don’t like my stance then you are the intolerable one.
I just voted in the Primary election. When most families are away on vacation. In a one party state. After a gerrymandering redistricting. November is going to be VERY interesting to watch.
We have the finest state government that money can buy.
I followed what you are saying all the way through. Your thoughts reflect my own and I applaud the clever and interesting way you presented them without ranting. Me, I tend to rant now and again. I hate what is being done to my country and my people. You should be feeling confused and a bit angry, too.
The American Constitutional Republic is the greatest form of Government ever devised by Humankind. No, it has not been perfect and has made some egregious mistakes, corrected some, still has some to be corrected, will probably make a few more, and, hopefully, correct most of those. On balance, though, it has given more people more freedom, prosperity, hope, better lives and enabled more people to achieve their fullest potential than any other. To throw away all that accomplishment and potential would be the greatest failing of Humankind in all of History. That’s pretty much how I feel. Hope it resonates with you, too.
Nice write up. I’d only add to one thing:
“A Million Moms became Mothers Demand Action who became Everytown for Gun Safety.”
You forgot were MDA was absorbed by MAIG, who then became Everytown.
I rarely Comment. But that sir was Awesome. Love the cherry picking Comment. That’s one Problem our country has.
You can’t argue with an insane person, no matter the validity of your argument, they regurgitate insanity. Sanity is not statistical.
What do we do? What can we do? I ask myself this everyday. I’m a millennial, and people my age call me insane and negative all the time.
They say, so what if the government reads my email? So what, I don’t need a gun? As Reagan once said, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” This is the generation.
“How do I choose a candidate for political office when you’re all corrupt and unaccountable?”
This
They really should be required to name their group what it is, “Slavemasters for Obedient Slaves”
You are confoosed if you think enlightenment for either of you should come out of that conversation. Here’s a nice acronym NOIGTAWY. It stands for No One Is Going To Argue With You.
Let opponents of guns know (every day) that they’re entitled to their opinion, but no one asked them for it. The conversation were ~ having here ~ they started, not us.
It’s “already been decided”. 2nd Amend stands until abolished, at which time we chuck the rest.
Unfortunately it’s a win-win for gun grabbers. They won’t leave us alone, ever. If we roll over and play nice (as we have) they will continue to erode ALL our rights. If we snap and become jerks threatening violence then we’re another Tim McVeigh or domestic terrorist. I don’t think we can ever win the national debate because the country has changed so much. But we can take one new person at a time to the range and convert them to the real free-thinkers. We won’t end the argument, but if we can change one mind at a time and siphon off voters we can at least survive.