“Despite a long-standing decline in violent crime and recent political victories for gun regulation in Washington State and elsewhere, gun culture in the U.S. continues to grow more aggressive. If the recent Pew survey is correct, it may also be growing more popular. The new surgeon general unquestionably has a public-health menace on his hands. The rest of us are confronting a cultural disconnect. But no matter how you characterize the problem, it’s guaranteed to kill many more people.” – Francis Wilkinson in The NRA is still winning on guns [at post-gazette.com]
“Francis Wilkinson writes about politics and domestic policy for Bloomberg View.”
Kissing the ring on the hand that feeds him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cxNR9ML8k
Finally, a Francis we can use! That never gets old.
More anti-gun bigotry from someone who smears, distorts, and believes that we just need MOAR LAWS. I’m shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you!
How is it a public health menace if one sentence earlier you agreed that gun violence is declining?
It’s not “gun violence” that worries them, it’s gun ownership.
Without “gun violence” the left has nothing to screech about. The real epidemic of violence by blacks against blacks is actively ignored by leftards, because it undermines their political position and exposes the fact that THEIR social engineering is at the root of that very real epidemic.
2H9 nailed it.
It’s not ignored!
It handily pads their statistics. Without it our violent crime rate would be lower than Canada’s and they’d have no argument to manufacture.
That’s by design since the upper echelon of the left wishes to keep african americans poor and destitute since any advancement in their social economic status may encourage them to vote for a different party.
“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.” — Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States 1963-1969
Now, there you go again, using facts and reality in a discussion about Democrats. Bad commenter! No biscuit!
@Sian Yes, they do ignore it, and when it is brought to their attention or mentioned in media they get angry and call you a racist.
Gun ownership is the public health menace??? It’s running rampant in my family and has even spread to the kids. It’s an expensive diease to live with: ammo alone 🙂 But the crime rate around my house is still at 0% so it is a good payoff.
Exactly, he destroyed his own argument in the same paragraph!
He’s just yet another person with an irrational hatred for a particular inanimate mechanical object and the people who own them.
I think there is a book that can clear this up for him. It is called “More Guns, Less Crime” by John Lott.
And the appeals court just put a dagger in the whole public health thing.
Imagine this article in reference to any other group or rights.
Despite their protest and marching black people can now vote. And polls show popular support of this.
Despite their protest and marching homosexuals can get married. And polls show popular support of this.
Despite their protest and marching Jews are no longer 2nd class people. And polls show popular support of this.
It gets old and tiresome to be everyones whipping boy for just wanting to be left alone.
Yes, Francis Wilkinson, you are personally responsible for people being murdered every day in America. Your sick, anti-human ideology is a disease and it needs to be eradicated, like polio was before you leftards brought it back. You are what is wrong with the human race and it is high time your kind were treated as the danger to children and women you are.
I tried to post a comment at Putz-Gazzette and they only allow people who pay them to do so on their site. Isn’t that special.
Why is a “pro gun culture” being more aggressive? Because you collectivist anti’s won’t stop your infringing. Get it through your pea brain, brown nosed, lackey metrosexual head.
You can’t have them.
We’re not registering them.
Go fornicate yourself.
Oh, and Merry Christmas!!!!
When the Surgeon General is picked because of politics and his political stand on an issue that is a menace to public health.
When a Surgeon General wages a campaign against his personal irrational fears, when he should be working for the actual public-health, that is a massive problem.
If the Surgeon General was to work on public health issues the CDC website might be a good start with leading causes of death, maybe with the top 3 for example, but that would not have “earned” him the job. His appointment was corrupt, and the media that portrayed his only failing as the opposition of the NRA is equally corrupt. The fact that his experience, or lack of it, and bias in ignoring other more important problems and questionable circumstances of his appointment should have been enough to pass over him and find a candidate that would actually serve the public.
Notice “Gun Violence” isn’t on the list?
Number of deaths for leading causes of death
Heart disease: 596,577
Cancer: 576,691
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 142,943
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,932
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 126,438
Alzheimer’s disease: 84,974
Diabetes: 73,831
Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,826
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,591
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 39,518
ref:http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
Let’s not forget 90,000+ killed annually and 220,000+ maimed by healthcare due to Medical Malpractice in the U.S.
I wonder if the new surgeon general is going to clean his own house first?
“Despite the heavy handed and devious tactics of our social justice movement stupid conservatives refuse to surrender their rights to us and we’re telling maaaaaaaawm!”
until Shannon gets a pink slip and has to troll elsewhere. . . we won’t stop
TTAG’s (and Dirk’s) undivided attention will ensure this happens.
OK, so Dirk’s attention is likely to be much more focused than TTAG’s, but there you go…
Personally, I think MDA is going to be quiet on the national scene and focus their efforts (and Bloomie’s money) on ballot initiatives like what was passed in Washington state.
I’m pretty sure she’s got a pink slip
Well Dirk won’t believe it till he sees her in it…
Had I been drinking from that toilet, I might have been killed. *SPLOOOSH*
Some hard-of-thinking individual said:
Despite a long-standing decline in violent crime and recent political victories for gun regulation in Washington State and elsewhere, gun culture in the U.S. continues to grow more aggressive. If the recent Pew survey is correct, it may also be growing more popular.
Maybe the decline in violent crime is because, not “despite,” more guns. Did you ever stop spewing your bullcr*p long enough to consider that possibility?
How could he? First he’d have to recognize it as a possibility, and he’s incapable of making that connection. To him, guns = bad and that’s a tenet he clings to. Someone could save his life with a gun and he’d go on and on about how he was saved despite the presence of a firearm.
“In the past month alone, a felon in West Virginia, who had purchased a gun through Facebook, used it to murder four people before killing himself. In Tulsa, Okla., a mother was shot dead by her 3-year-old son.”
A quick Bing search shows three stabbing deaths in the last 24 hours. Pound sand Mr. Wilkinson.
An 86-year-old woman was stabbed to death inside her home in the exclusive Windsor Square neighborhood of Los Angeles.
A man found dead Monday at a residence in Sauk County had been stabbed in the chest, law enforcement officials say….
Police in Moncks Corner have arrested a woman and charged her in the stabbing death of a man.
Don’t worry, they’ll start going after knives after they get the guns, (Not so)Great Britain-style.
a mother was shot dead by her 3-year-old son.”
Let me say this about that. If there was a witness to a 3-year-old shooting its mother to death, I suspect that witness of murder. If there is no witness, I suspect suicide. WTF makes anybody think a 3-year-old successfully shot its mother?
Because some IGOTD leave loaded firearms where three-year-olds can get to them. It would not be difficult to establish forensically if the child fired the gun, e.g., guns shot residue, and that it was not a suicide, e.g., angle of the bullet when it struck the mother.
Assuming a minority mother in a high crime neighborhood, with overworked police just looking to close a case, sure. I doubt they looked to deeply into it.
OMG that’s horrible, you actually use Bing.
Speaking of disconnects…watch these videos of social justice warriors discussing anti-gun brainwashing. starting in pre-school, supported by local ATF in Oregon:
http://www.progressivestoday.com/you-wont-believe-what-these-anti-gun-folks-are-openly-saying/
Is Gabby Giffords drunk in that video ,or does she always sound like that?
Lets not make remarks like that about a woman who is suffering from brain damage. I feel for Ms. Giffords, she got shot in the head and is now being paraded around like a prize horse, who knows how much of anything that she is saying is what she actually believes or is what her handlers are telling her.
I was unaware of her brain damage. Figured she was just another housewife who had too much spare time, and for that, I apologize.
Dick, since no one else has offered, I’ll fill you in quick, you must not be from around here. Giffords was a U.S. Congresswoman from AZ, attacked by a nutjob in a mass shooting at an event for her to meet her constituents. Several were killed and others wounded. It was difficult to miss if you were in the U.S. Her husband and current chief abuser for money is a former astronaut. Together they are bleeding the anti-gun forces for all they can get.
A useful discussion for using technology in the Culture War….for TTAG.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/01/using-cultural-technology-in-culture-war.html
Francis Wilkinson is the typical liberal. He, like all other liberals, consciously or unconsciously, does what psychologists call “projection.” They project who and what they are and believe onto their “enemies” in an effort to discredit them. They also tend to twist facts around (or ignore them and make them up) in order to provide “credibility” to their position.
Al Sharpton, Jesse Jaackson, Eric Holder and the Obamas claim that everyone is a racist with no proof, when in fact – they are the racists.
Obama and the liberals always scream that conservatives are the ones that won’t sit down in good faith and “negotiate” yet they are the ones that demand, “Our way or the highway!”
The Anti-second amendment weenies do the exact same thing. Twist, lie and create “facts” to prove their agenda. Liberals use the tactics of the Nazi, Joseph Goebbels to “educate” the populace. In this case, Francis Wilkinson is doing the same thing.
So we have a problem since gun deaths are in decline?
That’s the opposite of a problem!
Few points, Francis. First, it is not a public health issue, it is a civil rights issue. Second, I and tens of millions of others will fight to our last breath for our freedoms, and that includes the 2nd amendment. Third, only a fool would doubt me on my second point. Forth, even though the Obama Regime still holds the executive branch, its tyrannical ideology led to the Democrat Party losing more political seats across the country than they have in over 60 years. (Sound familiar -> You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. — Lincoln) Francis, from my perspective, there is no possible way you can win this.
His statements are laughable. But then, with “the gun culture in the U.S.” growing in acceptance and popularity, the Left has no choice but to twist facts and logic harder than they already do to create pseudo-arguments for their agenda, which is to control people by disarming them. So, let’s get more “aggressive” (non-violently, of course) and keep flummoxing them with real facts and logical arguments. At this point THEY are the ones calling for “Dead Cops”, murdering gun owners,”Communist Revolution” and other acts of pure violence. Their failing propaganda is exposing itself for what it is. We just need to keep pointing that out and even the least informed persons will get the message. In fact, I would say the ill-informed ARE already getting the message as evidenced by the very facts this guy is crying about.
“The rest of us are confronting a cultural disconnect.” – Francis Wilkinson
Sure there is a cultural disconnect. That isn’t a problem. The problem is people like Mr. Wilkinson who advocate for the state to use force to eliminate “cultural disconnects”. Today, good people who desire to keep and bear arms are the “problem” … tomorrow, good people who practice religion “improperly” are the problem, and so on and so on.
Rather than debate people like Mr. Wilkinson about the “merits” of armed good people, we should inform them emphatically that forcing their culture on us is a heinous crime that will not end well for them.
whats really funny is you can take the last 2 sentences of that quotes and apply it to ANYTHING even remotely dangerous.
“Aggressive?”
No, make no mistake, you have not seen me be aggressive.
Steadfast, yes. Aggressive, no.
NRA, for the win!!
Yeppers. Without exception every anti gun wingnut rails against the NRA. The 800 pound gorilla in the room. Yet only 5 million gun owners support the NRA. Think of what could be achieved if 10 million backed them.
I saw several commenters over at the dailyKOS who blamed the NRA for the guy killing the two NYPD officers. It must be such a simple world to live in with such easy explinations to all of society’s ills.
Well its easier to focus hate onto one particular group or individual rather than attempt any introspection that one’s core beliefs may be incorrect. This is the mark of a feeble man who is intellectually dishonest surrounding himself with like minded groups to validate such dishonesty.
“Gun culture”, he who controls the verbiage used will win the argument, every time. People who support their freedoms, 2A included, better start to understand this and stop playing into the opponents hands by using verbiage like POTG, antis, and many others. Descriptors like gun culture will sink the 2A over time, guaranteed. They are playing the long game.
Which is why the focus should be on giving the movement a heavy undertone of hollywood style cool. If they could do it with “gang culture,” and brainwash whole generations into dressing and acting like violent imbeciles, why can’t we do it with “gun culture?” Who knows, maybe 30 years from now we can have a society where the young men walk around with their pants UP!
Hollywood is not your friend.
“Who knows, maybe 30 years from now we can have a society where the young men walk around with their pants UP!”
Don’t be ridiculous, that could never happen.
On the contrary, the “culture” verbiage works against them in the long run. It makes it clearer that the motive behind the agenda is cultural animus, not public safety, and not public health.
That’s a fail. We are transitioning into a post literate society where the vast majority of people get their “news” from entertainment. Whoever controls the language and verbiage will win the perception, and people who understand the concepts of liberty are losing badly in this. It’s a long term thing, the people whose goal is to disarm this country realize it may take another generation or so.
I understand what you’re saying, it’s just that you’re wrong. Framing it add a cultural issue works against them in the long run, because it’s beginning to become clear to a growing number of people that gun control is essentially about the use of state violence in order to suppress a culture. That’s something that strikes a disturbing chord of cognitive dissonance in the liberal narrative.
Oop, there it is!
I’ve noticed a clear shift to the phrase “gun culture” over the past couple of years, and I’ve always wondered whether it had anything to do with trying to make people think of “gun cult” when they hear it.
The other thing that happens when they use the phrase “gun culture” is that they reframe the argument — i.e., it’s no longer about “gun rights,” it’s simply a disagreement of cultures, and gun culture is on the fringe of “the rest of us.” (Our friend Francis even uses that phrase.) It’s an attempt to minimize the strength of exercising a Constitutionally protected right, and marginalize those who support it.
Don’t get me started on “gun violence.”
Why on earth should a robust gun culture be incongruent with low rates of violent crime? Gun culture is not contingent on a siege mentality, it is premised on one thing only: that the people are competent to exercise self-rule. In that context they may choose to use arms for whatever purpose they deem proper, not just for defense against violent crime.
“Because more guns equals more gun crime. It’s common sense!” (Alan Dershowitz)
“The rest of us are confronting a cultural disconnect.”
There is a cultural disconnect. Huge neighborhoods and multiple generations of children disconnected from their fathers, students disconnected from the concept of education, families disconnected from God, and an entire subculture disconnected from the time-honored virtues of personal responsibility, employment and earning their way through life.
And you’re confronting this? How?
That culture can be reliably counted on to vote for Progressives. Ergo, it needs no kulturkampf. White blue-collar voters stubbornly refuse to be a reliable voting bank for the Progressives. Ergo, the things they hold dear need to be destroyed. Why else do they want to ban tobacco but legalize pot?
“The new surgeon general unquestionably has a public-health menace on his hands. The rest of us are confronting a cultural disconnect.”
You just gotta’ love this. I’m continually amazed at the ignorance of today’s chattering classes. We could take this statement, transport it back in time, and it would align perfectly with the ideology of 19th and early 20th century Prohibition Movement. Like gun-control, National Prohibition sought to link a plethora of social ills to a single cause. In that case: beer and whisky drinking. Prohibitionists were so convinced drinking alcohol was such a scourge on American society that they demanded, and succeeded in getting, a constitutional amendment to insure that “demon rum” would be forever controlled and denied to American society. Didn’t work. National Prohibition ushered in the “Roaring 20’s”. People made gin in bathtubs, smugglers built 40 knot rum-runners, and my grandfather made a good living making copper kettles for boot-leg still operatos. I’m sure Mr.Wilkinson, like our new Surgeon General, likes to think of himself as being on the leading edge of meaningful social change. So did the Prohibitionists.
Excellent summation of the futility of legislating personal behavior! Not to mention the socio-economic consequences of prohibition. Prohibition cost this country a regionally diverse brewing industry, a nascent wine industry, and made millions for those willing to flaunt the oh-so-well-meaning horsewash. War on drugs, trillions to the drug lords, the abrogation of legal government in Colombia, financing the menace known as the Taliban, and costing lives to fight it. As far as firearms are concerned, they have a level of legal protection that neither drugs nor alcohol ever had. In my mind, contravention of the Constitution to serve a psycho-social agenda of fear and kumbayah (spell it however you will, I call it excrement) is far worse than prohibition of mind-altering substances. And guess what Francis? Alcohol was legalized to much acclaim and tax revenue. Marijuana, getting there state by state. The best part of it all, guns are already legal. Sod off.
Fox news this morning some blonde man talking about bullet proof glass in NYPD cars stated that one brand would stop “38 mm” bullets. No joke. Almost spewed java on the rug.
Be one hell of a piece of glass, no?
I don’t know why I’m bothering with this, but here goes anyway:
1. Wilkinson’s premise: “Gun culture in the U.S.” is “a public-health menace[.]”
2. What is gun culture? White men. “[W]hite men account for 61 percent of adult gun owners[.]”
3. What are the symptom’s of this public-health menace? “A felon in West Virginia, who had purchased a gun through Facebook, used it to murder four people before killing himself. In Tulsa, Okla., a mother was shot dead by her 3-year-old son.”
4. What are the appropriate treatments for these symptoms? “[T]he Senate’s failed background check legislation.”
Wilkinson implies the stupidity of the American people stops liberals from curing the public health menace caused by aggressive gun culture. Perhaps the American people are smart enough to understand that requiring more extensive background checks would not have stopped the West Virginia felon from buying a gun or the Oklahoma mother from allowing a toddler to get hers. Perhaps the American people understand that evil and stupidity occasionally result in tragedy no matter what. Perhaps the American people understand that suicide and drug trafficking account for the vast majority of gun-related deaths, and the gun control laws the left advocates for have nothing to do with curtailing the real problems. Perhaps the American people understand OFWGs are not the problem.
If I’m not mistaken, the only groups that commit less crime than old fat white guys are old white women and Asians.
It’s funny he fails to mention the disconnect between medicine being the 3rd leading cause of preventable death in the US and the public which he pretends to care about.
Talk about a disconnect–they rely on raw emotion to play to fickle unthinking and irrational people who will only be motivated to act by keeping such emotions at a fever pitch. In order produce that level of emotion, they are reduced to continuously crying “Wolf!” with long-debunked falsified statistics and mindlessy overwrought nightmare scenarios imparting demonic powers to inanimate objects–none of which Joe Sixpack ever sees in his own life because they have no connection to actual day-to-day reality. And then they wonder why they aren’t getting any traction with the masses that they continue to show such disdain for. Disconnect indeed….
If I had this guy’s address, I’d mail him a brain cell. He needs one desperately.
The NRA is winning as well as the American people-fixed it for you…+100000 JWM . Yep many millions more NRA members,voters and other pro-gun organization would do it.
It blows my mind leftists run to gun control incessantly. After getting blown out in this recent midterm election you’d think they’d get the point.
Now I’m a “menace”, Oy vey.
Another fool who wants to attack us for owning guns. Guess what Francis? We are not the people you are looking for. You might want to look at gang and illegal activities that fuel violence for a small percentage of the population.
Francis also seems to think we need a good reason to own firearms. In his quote he says violence is down like we don’t have good reasons to own guns. This seems to be trotted out to attempt to undermine firearms ownership and paint gun owners as scared white men. The problem with this line of thought is I don’t need a reason to own firearms. I own them because I want to own them. I also am not sitting here in fear of people coming after me or my family. I also don’t have a reason for free speech but I use it on occasion and want to use it. Just like my other natural rights.
People like Francis have a wall in their mind that does not allow them to understand natural rights. I’m sure people like this guy are statists and believe we only get to exercise the privileges granted by the government.
“People like Francis have a wall in their mind that does not allow them to understand natural rights.”
You’re on to something here. Statists don’t believe in natural rights. They believe in human rights. Human rights are bestowed by state-run organizations and states via declaration. Rights exist only by official recognition. I’m getting a little far-afield here, but statists, as a group, don’t believe in natural rights because they believe the state trumps God. Belief in natural rights requires belief in something greater than the state. To acknowledge anything trumps the state admits defeat.
What are the crimes/punishments associated with these weapons?
recent political victories for gun regulation in Washington State
The $10Million worth of continuous TV ads assured us that it wasn’t gun regulation and wouldn’t infringe on our rights. Is it possible they were lying?
But no matter how you characterize the problem, it’s guaranteed to kill many more people.
That is true…civilian disarmament legislation is responsible for many deaths.
There is a culture war being waged in America, but guns aren’t at the heart of it. A gun is only one symbol of a culture despised by the left.
Freedom of thought and expression, America, religion, “flyover country,” guns — these are some the left’s least favorite things. The left needs to eliminate the latter in order to be able to destroy all the former. More people are “getting” this, which is why the Pew poll showed that gun rights are more highly regarded than gun control these days. And that is absolutely killing the left.
“The new surgeon general unquestionably has a public-health menace on his hands.”
Yes, and it isn’t law-abiding gun owners.
The new surgeon general unquestionably has a public-health menace on his hands.
Yup. It’s called ‘the President’
As long as a liberal extremist elite media exists they will amplify anti-firearm propaganda until they are all six feet under. AKA manure spreaders.
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