Washington state house (courtesy knkx.org)
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Banning guns in state Senate, House galleries is common sense the headline at seattletimes.com proclaims. Hello Seattle? How is stopping Washingtonians from exercising their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms in their grandiose (not to say bellicose) legislative chambers “common sense”? For that “logic” the Times turns to an “expert” . . .

Christopher Hurst is a retired veteran law enforcement detective and commander of a 15-city homicide/violent crimes task force. He also served seven terms in the state House of Representatives between 1999 and 2017.

Turns out that when it comes to the Constitution, Mr. Hurst is a shifter . . .

The most conservative Supreme Court Justices have affirmed that the Second Amendment is subject to reasonable regulation. And even if it were not, how does the Second Amendment supersede or surpass the Constitutional protection for anyone’s own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?

Don’t senators and House members have a Constitutional right not to be killed by high-power military assault weapons? Are their rights somehow less than those of the Las Vegas shooter who legally bought and transported his high-powered military assault weapons, with which he shot 546 people?

So “common sense” means making sh*t up and pretending like it’s as plain as the nose on your face. In this case, a police pensioner turned politician fabricated not one but two Constitutional rights: the right to life and the right to mass murder.

Am I right? What does “common sense” on guns mean to the antis? What does it mean to you?

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63 COMMENTS

    • “A careful definition of words would destroy half the agenda of the political left and scrutinizing evidence would destroy the other half.” Clarence Thomas

      This comment system is abominable.

      • I have given up trying to tell TTAG about the fact that clicking on “Notify me of follow-up comments by email” doesn’t work.
        I was told very few people used Firefox. I switched to Chrome; same result: no emails with responses.
        I even switched from Windows 7 to 10. Still not working.
        Sometimes the cookie works, most of the time it doesn’t. (It’s not for this comment.)
        I have no idea why TTAG can’t get a system that seems to work with other blogs to work here.

    • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

  1. The gun grabbers use of the term “common sense” makes as much sense as calling the murderous absolute monarchy on the northern half of the Korean Peninsula as a “Democratic Republic”!

    • Gun controllers’ claims for “common sense” gun controls always reminds me of The National Man-Boy Love Association’s (NAMBLA) claims that the special love they feel for young boys requires some “commonsense understanding” on the part of the rest of the country. No thanks.

  2. The term “Common Sense” is used to shut down any attempt at an opposing argument. How can you refute Common Sense?

    • Common Sense says the earth is flat… I mean, just look at it.

      Common Sense says you can’t stick your fingers in molten lead and suffer no damage — but you can; the Mythbusters demonstrated it.

      Common Sense says a lot of things that are actually dead wrong.

  3. …”the Constitutional protection for anyone’s own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?”

    That’s from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, jackwipe.

    As for what the most conservative justices believe, that sometimes takes a temporary backseat to a scaled back majority decision palatable to a cobbled-together, five-vote coalition.

    Aa for what constitutes “common sense” to these people, why that would just be anything that moves the ball toward their goal of complete civil disarmament. The proof? Look at anything they call a “compromise.” Their idea of compromise is ALWAYS something worse than the current state; something that lessens our firearm freedom.

    There is never a compromise where we actually gain any ground on any front or they give up something real. It is always a loss for us. Sure, it might be less of a loss than they originally sought, but that’s just them “anchoring” so as to get what they want.

    They set up phony initial conditions, like a new car’s MSRP, then procees to strip you of your rights and send you away thinking you got a good deal. Common sense to them means we give up some real that we already have, while they reduce the size of the infringement they’re demanding this time around.

    Net effect is always in their favor. Next time, they do it all again and get ever closer to their goal of complete disarmament.

    • Nancy Pelosi even said so this past year. Quoting form memory (so a little inaccurate) she said “This is a compromise. We are asking for less than we want.”

    • To a grabber, “compromise” means “We won’t take everything you have, even though that’s what we want. And you get to keep some of what you have. See how fair we are? You get to keep some of what you have, and we get more than we have. Compromise.”
      Except the grabbers never concede anything.

  4. It means they work from the end they really want and extrapolate backward.

    It means they have no real justification.

    So basically it means the exact opposite of the way they are using it.

  5. “What does “common sense” on guns mean to the antis?”
    Any restriction, any criminal penalty, any tax, any fee, any regulation that will suppress the free exercise of second amendment rights is “common sense” to them.
    “What does it mean to you?”
    Full repeal of all local, state and federal gun laws that do not meet strict scrutiny is common sense to me.

  6. It means: Do what I say you prehistoric neanderthalic caveman, redneck, bible thumping, deplorable, subhuman loser! So I can “feel” safe and I can control the lesser beings while not contemplating how I would defend myself if necessary. Or some such drivel. Feel free to add on! 😉

  7. It’s in the eye of the speaker. The truth is that, generally speaking, grabbers ain’t that smart.

    Devious and manipulative yes. Smart and we’ll educated… not so much.

    Besides, as a former LEO he probably expects a carve out for himself. Cause he’s super well trained and shit.

  8. Always remember that common sense is just that, common. That in no way, shape, or form equates to good sense. Modern medicine makes the consequences of being stupid less severe and stupid people tend to have a lot of kids. At some point, “Idiocracy” will be reality.

    The reality is common sense advocates tend to oversimplify things based on ignorance and the human tendency to oversimplify things. That’s why we see magazine limits and “assault” weapon bans. I don’t know for certain, but I suspect most shootings involve less than 10 rounds being fired a and most shootings don’t involve carbines, rifles or shotguns. Kind of makes the common sense solutions pointless, doesn’t it…

  9. The bills being considered have carve-outs for police. They also include retired officers, so he can keep all his toys. He’ll be able to carry greater than 10 round magazines in his firearms. I’ll be able to keep mine, but only at home. My only exclusion is if I’m camping, fishing, etc. I’ve been carrying 15 rd. magazines for close to 30 yrs. and the state that I love no longer trusts me. It’s bullshit!

  10. It’s an emotional appeal. So-called “weasel words” to make the speaker seem like they’re reaching out or searching for common ground; at the same time it’s an underhanded attack on the opposing viewpoint’s character/”poisoning the well”.
    It used to be thought that weasels suck the yolks from bird’s eggs, leaving only the empty shell. This belief is the basis of the term ‘weasel words’, used to describe statements that have had the life sucked out of them. The expression refers to words that are added to make a statement sound more legitimate and impressive but which are in fact unsubstantiated and meaningless. Examples of weasel words are ‘people say that…’, ‘studies show that…’, ‘up to 50% or more…’.
    You know, the common bludgeon of leftists in America when discussing anything remotely political, the mainstream media whenever they’re passing off some puff opinion piece as news, etc. Like Farago pointed out, generally it means making shit up and being a smarmy sonuvabitch about it, especially so if the words that follow “common sense” happen to be “gun control”.

    • ‘up to 50% or more…” I like that one. It means “a percentage.” “Up to” means less than and including. “More” means more than 50%. So “up to 50% or more…” means any percentage.

  11. “Common Sense”, means the same thing as, “Your a racist if you don’t immediately give me what I want!”

    It’s just a very thinly veiled ad-hominem argument. When someone says their proposal is “Common Sense” , I hear, “You’re just too stupid to understand my reasoning, so I’m not going to offer any.”

  12. “Question of the Day: What Do Gun Control Advocates Mean by “Common Sense”?”

    It means, “BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, I’m a dirty rotten whore”,

    IN WHATEVER THE Fv<K THE EVIL SH_T IS TRANSLATED TO.

  13. I have a sneaking suspension that this idea is being floated to prevent another armed protest like the one that appeared in the wake of I-594 from back in ’14.

  14. It has no substantive meaning. At most, it is meant to denote ideas that the speaker favors, which was already understood from their promotion thereof.

  15. It is anything they can get that will “progressively” get them closer to their goal of confiscation; hence the name Progressive. They are progressing to their ultimate goal of total control; socialism, communism, marxism or just plane dictatorship.

    They will use any weasel words, lies and ultimately bloodshed to get there.

    Be Prepared !

  16. Mr Hurst may have been a ‘cop’ at one time–but most ‘cops’ I have met–DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT GUNS!

    then add this to his resume–he is now a ‘politician’ and that means his brain died years ago and even faster in LIB hell Seattle…

    when a person says this about a AR15 — high-powered military assault weapons—Then you darn well know they are very “Common’ and have NO SENSE!

    An AR 15 is not “high powered’ nor a “military assault weapon’ —and never was!

    • For the sake of accuracy in argument, a .223/5.56mm cartridge IS ‘high powered’ in comparison to a broad spectrum of other cartridges. Put alongside the ballistic accomplishments of a .22LR, a .38 Special, a 9mm Parabellum, or pretty much everything available for rifles prior to 1886 and the 8mm Lebel, a 5.56 round is remarkably ‘high-powered’ in terms of velocity and energy. If it’s good enough to be acceptable to major military forces as sufficient to disable and kill man-sized organisms at reasonable range, that’s ‘high-power’ enough for anybody’s rule book.
      Traditionally, the line between ‘small-bore’ and ‘high power’ was the difference between .22LR and .30-’06; That line no longer exists.
      We can pedantically state that .223 is not as powerful as .308, nor any of the WWI-era rifle cartridges; Saying so is moot, as that’s not going to convince anybody on the Other side. Nobody could rationally argue that a military service rifle cartridge isn’t ‘high-powered.’

      • You missed the point. When it comes to military weapons the little 5.56 the LOWEST-powered round used. High-powered would have to refer to something like a crew-serviced heavy machine gun, at least .50 belt fed. If when they use the mythical political term “Assault Weapon” they are trying to refer to an assault rifle (like an M-16, M4 or AK-47) that is a selective-fire rifle that uses an intermediate in power cartridge between sub-machine gun (handgun caliber) and rifle cartridges, not high powered by any military standard. In this case, they are ignorantly referring to AR-15 sporting rifles as being “high-powered military assault weapons”. They would change their position quickly if they were sent into battle with any semi-auto 5.56 rifle with a 5-round magazine.

        • It’s not ME that you have to convince; It’s all of those people out there that have enough common sense (yeah, I know) to understand that a military cartridge used to kill other countries’ soldiers by our own military isn’t some innocuous pipsqueak, and that 30 rounds of any cartridge is more lethal than one (or five) of the same round.
          SOMEtimes, Disarmists and the uniformed understand that a .223 is less powerful overall than a .30-30 WCF used for hunting deer; Unfortunately, if they figure out that the same .223 will kill the same deer most of the time, they rapidly figure out that, not only is a .223 pretty dag blag powerful, but so is a .30-30 WCF. The smart ones quickly realize that, for their purposes, it’d be ‘better’ to outlaw BOTH, not just the one. . . if only for The Children.
          With Disarmists, parsing words and quoting gun scripture isn’t going to work, because they don’t CARE.

  17. This way, only the criminals will be armed.

    While we all know that “Assault Weapon” is a leftist political term, high-powered military weapons would have to refer to something like a .50 belt fed machine gun. Obviously, a little 5.56 is not high-powered.

  18. When I used to do accident investigation and safety training as part of my job one of myvpet hates was when someone said something was just “common sense”.

    My usual reply was then why did you do “x” without being safe injuring yourself or others.

    “Common sense” seems to mean I am too lazy to be able to think.

  19. “High-power military assault weapons.” Exactly and specifically how many have been brought into the “galleries” of the capital building. Comparing his fantasy to Las Vegas, the killer there had several days to bring weapons and ammunition in. Then still more time to set up his attack.
    Can you see this in Olympia: carry in a “High-power militaty assault weapon.” Then you’ll likely need a rolling cart of some type to carry the ammunition. That’s going to take up a couple of seats in a crowded, but open area of the galleries. Then time to set up….. You think nobody will notice?
    I couldn’t find out but expect the outside doors are either locked or have metal detectors, or have the security people checking things. Now about the “common sense” remark. Does he have any?

  20. “Common sense” is a co-opted term that actually used to mean something based in reality. It was common sense not to drive in the snow with bald tires. As an eight-year old, if you went jumping in mud puddles with your new school shoes, your Mom would whack you and admonish, “Don’t you have any common sense?”

    The new, PC version has completely been gutted of any real, survive and get along in this world meaning. Since the snowflakes touting “common sense” have little of that in the traditional sense, it’s basically an emotional plea to suspend the application of any logical analysis of their proposition. Look at this baby!

  21. Unfortunately, WA state (where I live) is in the throes of a very severe anti-gun push. This is just one of several anti-gun laws that are being proposed, that will make life here much more difficult for law-abiding gun owners.

  22. This from Wikipedia:

    “Common sense is sound practical judgment concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge that is shared by (“common to”) nearly all people.[1] The first type of common sense, good sense, can be described as “the knack for seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.” The second type is sometimes described as folk wisdom, “signifying unreflective knowledge not reliant on specialized training or deliberative thought.” The two types are intertwined, as the person who has common sense is in touch with common-sense ideas, which emerge from the lived experiences of those commonsensical enough to perceive them.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense

    The problem is that there is no “sense” on these issues that is “common to” nearly all people. The perceptions, understanding, and judgments of those favoring more gun control are entirely different from those opposing it. There is a good deal of unreflective faux knowledge that feeds the perceptions and judgments, and detracts from the understanding, of those who favor more gun control.

  23. They mean only morons would disagree with them, with the “you’re not a moron, are you implied.” They also mean that they aren’t advancing anything ridiculous; pay no attention to the actual proposal behind the curtain.

  24. RINOs/Globalists/Liberal Pro-Aggressive DemoCRAPS, I can understand their apprehension…Their “common sense ” reasoning away” of civil liberties, or by saying that government can reasonably regulate constitutional rights…It’s because they ALL know that traitors are usually lined up against the wall and shot….

  25. “Common sense” gun control is of a kind with “common sense”:

    * slavery
    * Jim Crow
    * anti-sodomy laws
    * Sharia

  26. I’ve often said that when if common sense is the standard, then all gun control laws should be repealed since they make no sense at all.

    • Soccerchainsaw, you are 100% correct. Good and true common sense (as definedin Porkchop’s post above) would dictate that we need to eliminate the entire US Code that constitutes the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 (which was originally created to prevent black people from having handguns, even though handguns were removed from the legislation before the bill passed).

      Moreover, if you really want to bring about a reduction of violent crime, we need to repeal the racist Gun Control Act of 1968 (that was intended to keep guns from inner-city black people, but failed miserably).

      We also need to do away with the Firearm Owners Protection Act (specifically the Hughes Amendment) of 1986, the Brady Act of 1993, and abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives, none of which have ever prevented a single violent crime, in fact quite the contrary.

      Disarming law-abiding citizens has allowed criminals to flourish. For this very reason, we need to ban the deadly “gun-free” killing zones and pass constitutional carry nationwide.

      The most dedicated and vociferous proponents of strict gun controls are urban, upper-middle-class, pro-big-government liberals, most of whom know nothing about firearms and the wide range of legitimate uses to which they are regularly put to use.

  27. “how does the Second Amendment supersede or surpass the Constitutional protection for anyone’s own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?”

    Hate this, “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” is in the declaration of independence, NOT the Constitution.

  28. Careful, “common sense” can be dangerous. Its a quick way to get sued. Anywhere from, you should’ve know that a 20ft pool fence was needed to keep that punk kid, out to, knowing not to shoot that methhead while he wants to rob your home.

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