Leonard Pitts (courtesy savannahbookfestival.org)

“They call Florida the ‘Gunshine State.’ But this madness is not Florida-centric. In Colorado, you can have a gun in class. In Arizona, you can take one to the bar. In Georgia, they’re trying to make it legal to take one to church. So this isn’t just Florida. It’s America. We live in states of insanity.” Leonard Pitts, Even gun owners think Florida needs stronger gun laws [via newsday.com]

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100 COMMENTS

  1. I was going to make a comment about how misleading the title of the original article was, but technically he did get two people’s opinions. So I guess he can legitimately say “gun ownerS”….

    Still, agitprop all the way.

    EDIT: FIRST!

    • After all, he did say “We live in states of insanity.” I’d say he’s speaking for himself & other gun-grabbers & not law-abiding gun owners.

      • This is the M.O. of the media since Obama has been in office. They scream that Obama is a “moderate”. This makes real moderate Dems and Independents look like they are on the right. Then the press calls anyone who doesn’t agree with this “moderate” President (everybody right of center) an extremist. They were rather sucessful in this goal post shifting up until Obamacare turned out to be the steaming pile of shit many “extremists” predicted it to be. I am hopeful that if the media continues this detatched attempt at shifting the goal post, centrist Inds & mod Dems will see what they are buying is BS. One can dream at least.

        • It’s a clever, common and unethical practice. We see it with the gungrabbers, too. They take their extreme de facto confiscation agenda, recast it as “common sense” solutions to crime, then mau-mau firearm owners and dare them to oppose “common sense.”

          The media does this under the pretext of presentin “both sides” of an issue, too. On a given subject, 95% of experts or people in general may agree on something, but they’ll put their lone little expert opposite the one presenting the concensus view, just to suggest that the two sides are equally valid. It gives the crackpot presenter an unearned mantle of legitimacy to share the stage with the legitimate guy.

          Watch, you’ll see this with Obama’s minimum wage hike idea. The overwhelming economic research concludes that min. wage hikes contribute to inflation and higher unemployment, particularly among the low skilled workers ut’s supposedly trying to help. Yet, the media will find the one guy with a Ph.D. who will go on air and claim otherwise, just to make it sound plausible. It’s all so silly, really, but people fall for it.

        • Or they call anyone who doesn’t agree with Obama a racist . They want to try to embarrass someone into submission of the agenda , not gonna work here .Be prepared and ready. Keep your powder dry.

    • To be fair he said stronger not more. I think every state needs stronger. Pitts and I just disagree on the definition of strength.

      • “To be fair he said stronger not more. I think every state needs stronger. Pitts and I just disagree on the definition of strength.”

        “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

        That is the ONLY stronger gun control legislation the states need to agree on, and technically DID agree on when the joined the Union. Now if we could only get Congress, the POTUS and SCOTUS to agree we’d be golden.

  5. It’s been a while since I’ve read the local rag (which used to run his columns), but I remember him not really having much to say outside of prog talking points. Some things never change I suppose.

    • After all you’d have to be insane to want to own guns right? Those things are dangerous!

      This is how the Antis think. They don’t want compromise. They want gun owners to come out and admit who they are in the name of “civilized debate” so they can get a list of what houses to send the stormtroopers too later.

    • Well, that will never happen. These “people’s” bullsh*t comes out and sprays all over the very people who don’t want it, without fail.

  8. When I’m out in public, does it really matter what the configuration of bricks and drywall are? Criminals don’t care if a building is called “school” or “mall” or “church”…

    Not like nobody has ever been assaulted (with or without guns) in any of those locations…

  9. I feel the same way about people like Leonard Pitts; they live in a state of denial, delusion and some ARE down right insane.

  10. Carrying in a church has been legal in Tennessee since it became a shall-issue state in 1994, and there hasn’t been a single criminal homicide inside a church by a law-abiding citizen with a permit.

    Someone needs to ask Leonard how Georgia will be any different.

  12. Well, When old saying stick around it is true.If America is crazy and you stand alone, what is that telling you. He is soo just wanting to be important . Forget him and his BS.

  13. I love how at the end he blames a media-fueled paranoia of crime for the ‘irrational’ need for a gun… falling to connect that the media’s fixation on guns is partly (mostly) driving the hopolophobic gun-grabbers who’s irrational feelings truly aren’t based in reality. Or the stats that HE CITED!

  14. It’s hard to argue with someone who completely fails to understand the concept of self defense. These people believe that the only reason you’d carry a gun to class, church or a bar is that you’re thinking of shooting people there. The whole concept of defending yourself never occurs to them. That’s what we have the police for. In a way they’re like toddlers who haven’t yet learned the concept. When another toddler hits them they run and cry to mommy. To them you wait until you’ve been assaulted and then you run and tell the police. Once you’ve reached the age of 30 and you still haven’t learned that you can stand up for yourself and others, there’s just no changing your thinking. Unless you actually become a victim of crime and realize how impotent the police are to protect you. That has a funny way of getting through to people.

    • Yep. I’m a minister. We were having a youth rally at our church in N. Texas with hundreds in attendance a few days after the shooting at the Baptist church in Ft. Worth in ’99*. Parents, staff, kids…everyone was a bit shaken. As part of our response, we had a couple of local LEOs outside, and some of our deacons who were licensed to carry at the entrances inside. They all played it pretty low key, but they wanted everyone to know safety was a priority. What the left fails to see is that no one brought a gun that night because they planned to shoot anyone. They did it because they were willing to thwart the plans of anyone who would come to harm someone, just as the off duty LEO in the Aurora church shooting was able to stop a killer in his tracks.

      * http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/16/us/gunman-kills-7-and-himself-at-baptist-church-in-fort-worth.html

  16. I have a home in Fl. I am a gun owner and FL CCW permit holder. I don’t think we need any new gun laws. I must have missed Leonard’s call to get my opinion.

  17. I can never understand why people are so scared of law-abiding gun owners who carry. Doesn’t this guy (and others who share his views) realize he’s been walking amongst those who conceal-carry his entire life without incident?

      • If that were true drug dealers and gangbangers would be nonexistent there, or anywhere else for that matter. Wonder why he is opposed to that?

        • Those aren’t drug dealers and gangbangers. They are just trying to survive in this racist land.
          Sarc off. I don’t think there is a shortage of white drug dealers. Drugs are not the exclusive realm of minorities.

        • Absolutely. If what this Pitts leftard writes had any truth to it gangbangers and dealers of ALL colors would have been wiped out years ago. Yet that is not what has happened. Real Americans who carry have NOT wiped out these criminal a%%holes, and yet mr Pitts defends them against “persecution” because Democrats all believe that only blacks are drug dealers and gangbangers and so any law enforcement action against them is racist. Racists are the ones defend criminals by whipping out their perpetual race card to defend criminals. See how that works?

      • Wasn’t it they who tried to breed black and poor people into a subservient second class through eugenics? By kidnapping newborns and secretly sterilizing minorities? Didn’t they pass the first laws restricting marriage? To keep undesirables from corrupting society? The first gun laws to prevent negroes from fighting back?

  18. Karl Pierson Mister Pitts. That name should ring a bell and you Mister Pitts should be proud of your work in Karl. For those in need of a refresher, Karl was a 18 year old student in Arapahoe County Colorado, a ” dedicated socialist” who hated the republican party. When Karl was demoted or kicked off the school debate team, his inflated sense of self esteem helped cause him to act on his emotions so he could feel good and preserve that self esteem. To feel good and prove his point, he decided the best way to satisfy his emotional need was to kill the debate coach and others at the school. Mister Pitts, you and your fellow cohorts in media and activism like Moms Demand Action created Karl Pierson and many like him. The first minor adversity they face, they can’t handle it because they’ve been do sheltered so special that they believe they are always right. So Karl decided to prove he was right by killing the debate coach. The irony is dripping on that sentence. It is not my fault Karl couldn’t handle a taste of real life, nor is it my guns’ fault. Perhaps we need to look at the human instead of the object if we want to bring gun violence under control.

  19. It’s actually pretty simple connection to make if you’ve read Pitts’ works before. He identifies guns with white rural culture, and he doesn’t like white rural culture because he assumes rural whites are racist. Therefore, guns are bad.

  20. “We live in states of insanity”. Gee, thanks for the heads up, Leonard. Maybe that’s why we carry and cringe every time an idiot with a byline regurgitates this crap.

    • A few years back I was having a political debate and a Democrat said something that perfectly sums up the Democrat party’s views – he said “Freedom has no place in the modern world”.

      • I been hearing that from leftards since the 1970s. And they BELIEVE it like a religion, except as applied to them. Of course they deserve individual freedom, they are special and unique.

      • I puked in my mouth a little bit, just now.

        Because that’s not the first time I’ve heard something like that – and I’ve heard it from Republicans too.

        What happened to people valuing their independence?

        Suppressed emotional desires due to Big Pharma pumping them to the gills with pills?

      • Hey Marine 03; The 44 republican senators and the 190 republicans representatives that voted to continue the NDAA-(The indefinite detention with out charge or trial of American citizens) I’d say that would qualify as using the civil rights portion of the constitution as toilet paper and I would call it treason and those that voted to continue the NDAA as traitors.

        • The statements that guns are madness and the states are insane to consider allowing guns into bars, churches, etc. was the subject. Stay on topic. Again, name and quote the Republicans that have said similar things. (please say Mike Bloomberg!!…we need a laugh). You haven’t named them yet or provided quotes I noticed.

      • Sadly, I’ve heard similar, usually backed with some nonsense along the lines of “freedom isn’t the point anymore because there’s no slavery…” I do think they miss the point, but then who could blame most of them; they’ve been spoon-fed a bunch of hooey for over a century now and liberty is like a muscle or sexual prowess – use it or lose it.

  23. Another spin on the classic meme. All he’s trying to reinforce is guns = insanity. If you support, own, or carry a gun you must be insane and everyone should fear and loathe you. What they really fear is shattering their fragile sense of utopia where everyone gets along and crimes *shouldn’t* happen under the omniscient guard of the police.

    The entire article is fraught with fallacies and the classic memes and assumes the reader hates guns as much as terrorism. The mere idea of wanting to fire a gun is “nutty” to them.

  24. I’ve talked to “several” gun control advocates. They told me a vast majority of their comrades feel that gun control has gone entirely too far and the only common sense thing to do is to eliminate all restrictions on firearms. Yea that’s the ticket!.

    • In my state they stress it is unlawful to carry at any church but according to the law you can carry if you have permission from the church. It is common for certain church members to be allowed to carry, especially at special functions where they feel security staff is needed.

    • I think it began in Georgia and other Southern states during Reconstruction. Groups would gather at a local church and then proceed to the homes of undesirables carrying weapons and burning torches, so laws were put in place to try and stop that at churches. They just gathered somewhere else to move along to their burning and lynching, so the laws did not really stop the activity they were aiming at, just moved it around.

  27. I agree, it’s pretty crazy to think that as a carrier I can carry in this place AND that place! By golly, it’s madness; allowing someone to (legally) carry wherever they please.

    • Even if you’re Mormon. Back in my band days half the gigs I played featured devout Mormons who spent every weekend playing rock music (and drinking Diet Coke) in local bars.

  30. I find this a little ironic in that the overwhelming number of firearm related homicides and shooting are perpetrated by BLACK people. Make sure your own house is in order before you go pointing fingers at anyone else, BRUH.

  32. “There are no mandatory safety requirements. Indeed, the language about recklessness and negligence was only added in 2011. Prior to that, apparently, it was even legal to blast at shadows and hallucinations, assuming you did so in your own back yard. Shooting actual people is presumably still illegal, though the family of the late Trayvon Martin might beg to differ.

    “Because he is a responsible gun owner, Varrieur, who has been shooting in his back yard once a week for a month, took precautions, even though, again, he is not required to.”

    First off, Zimmerman was found not guilty. The jury ruled that he was acting in self-defense (rational people usually believe that being beaten by someone who is straddling you is a justifiable circumstance to defend yourself, even with lethal force). So that argument is a non sequitur.

    Second, his argument about safety requirements not being necessary (among many other arguments raised by gun control advocates) remind me of this quote by French economist Frederic Bastiat:

    “Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

    – The Law, par. L. 102.

    As if not being required automatically meant that we won’t be responsible. I must ask, is he saying that his only purpose for acting responsibly and morally is because he’s afraid of being punished for it? Because if so, he is the last person on Earth that should be lecturing anyone about either of those topics.

    In any case, I’m pretty sure that you are legally required to take some precautions. It may not say in that particular law, but I’m pretty sure that if I fire my weapon in my backyard and it goes into the yard or house of one of my neighbors and either does damage to their property or someone gets hurt I would be liable for all damage done. I wouldn’t be able to say “the law didn’t require me to put up a backstop” as a defense. Hell, the guy he spoke with TOOK the necessary precautions. He didn’t speak with anyone that practices shooting in the backyard without a backstop, nor did he provide any empirical evidence that shootings due to this are a common problem.

    One last thing, I LOVE how gun control advocates only acknowledge the declining violent crime/murder rate when it suits their purpose. Any other time, they’ll either completely deny it or act like it’s not important or not relevant.

    • Criminally negligent homicide is already a crime. Reckless endangerment is already a crime. There are already multiple basic statutes that would cover any potential bad outcome of his actions. Just because there isn’t a specific place where it’s written “shooting a gun in your backyard without a back stop is illegal” doesn’t mean the law is impotent.

  33. Clearly he has to go to jail as that imaginary gun in his right hand is loaded with too many bullets. Second only to the other WMD, his big mouth. Next up, the tale of the trajedy of tm….once upon… I better not I’ll spoil it for everybody, Randy

  34. WTF is this guy talking about? I can take a gun into a bar in Arizona? is he completely misinformed or intentionally misleading people? then again, gun control advocates tend to not know a damn thing about guns or gun laws.

    • Yes, you can take you firearm into establishments that serve alcohol unless that establishment has the legal A.R.S 4-229 “No Firearms” sign posted upon entry. In AZ those signs do carry the weight of law.

  35. Just have to say that these people are truly idiots. Their motive is the the more you say the more people will believe so they just keep right on yapping with the bullshit. There were many slam responses to this idiots story though.

  39. Only ghetto scumbags like and use the term “gunshine state”, and it’s the same certain people in the same certain neighborhoods that account for the vast majority of gun violence here in Florida. This shit is getting ridiculous.

  40. Where does Mr. Pitts think is a not-insane place for a civilian-owned firearm to be? Probably hunting, in a locked safe, or perhaps nowhere at all. Certainly nowhere it could be used for self-defense. “Self-defense? Those gun-nuts are far more likely to shoot themselves or their family!”

    It’s not like churches and other houses of worship are ever targeted by violent criminals, right? Do you hear that, synagogues, mosques, Sikh temples, survivors of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, etc.? The world is now a safe place where innocent people need never again be prepared to defend themselves from violence! According to Mr. Pitts, at least. We live in “states of insanity”, Mr. Pitts? Not all of us, but I’ll agree that you do.

  41. In Kansas, the state’s attorney advised the legislature that it might be a violation of state law to speak against a piece of proposed pro-gun legislation.

    Melikes

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