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“If the world is a better place without guns, the first thing I’d have to acknowledge would be that this better world would be a place without me. Without my guns, I would have starved, been killed by wild animals, or human predators. Is it so wrong that I’m glad to be alive? Can you not see the difficulty of such an abstraction for a person who lived when he might not have because he had a gun and knew how to use it?” – Edd Jennings in A World Without Guns [via goodmenproject.com]

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45 COMMENTS

  1. “….this better world would be a place without me.”

    Pretty sure that describes the goals & worldview of progressives everywhere.

    • Pretty sure that describes the goals & worldview of progressives everywhere.

      “….this better world would be a place without YOU.” FIFY

      • Pretty much describes a D- essay. Why are so many pro gun writers incapable of maintaining a line of reasoning for more than one sentence. The only reason stories like this perpetuate is that they make so little sense that the reader must project their own beliefs and wishes on the writers words and then agree with themselves.

        Of course pointing this out will make me a target because the twisted logic will continue beyond the essay.

        I’m led to believe that the more intelligent and articulate gun owners prefer to not wade into shark infested literary waters. Sad.

        • Well, if I were writing a literary critique, I’d make sure I ended questions with a question mark instead of a period. I certainly would be aware of verb agreement. I just think that a literary critic should display signs of literacy.

        • In this age of self proclaimed ‘experts'(almost always as dumb as a box full of rocks), you think that literary critics should be literate? What’s your next pipe dream, PhDs in journalism at MSNBC or CNN that know how to spell “the”?
          Dream on. Lies and their more neutral sounding cousin; “spin”, are all that exist in the world of today. Tomorrow, however, could be a different story…

    • Exactly. As far as Progressives are concerned, the world really IS a better place without the sort of people who want to exercise their right to be armed.

      • I’d propose uncommon_sense, that in fact, at a deep subconscious level, most progressives want all human beings dead, including themselves. The constant drum beat of self hate and self loathing. The constant rant that human beings are a plague upon the earth. They fight for the “right” to murder the human unborn, but then turn around and spew outrage at the harvesting of baby seals. This to me are obvious signs of a pathological suicidal societal death wish.

        The progressives, as a group, will not be satisfied until the human race is extinct, and the only inhabitants of the ruined cities are plants, birds and four legged beasts.

        • I’m pretty sure the terrorist cell in Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six” had this exact same attitude; that human beings are a virus or some such nonsense. I need to pick up some of his books, heard many good things from fellow military history nerds.

        • Rainbow Six is great. The final line is fantastic. You’ll know what I mean when you get to it.

          You are exactly correct on the motivations of the eco-terrorists, by the way.

        • Clancy is well-worth the read. His first two, ‘Hunt for Red October’ and ‘Red Storm Rising’ are a great introduction to his ‘style’.

          Other writers have been inspired by his stuff, like Larry Bond’s ‘Phoenix Rising’.

          ‘Phoenix Rising’ reads like ‘Red Storm Rising’, it’s a tale of a North Korea invasion of South Korea…

      • There are actually a surprising number of anti-gun people who are convinced they would not use a gun, even if threatened with imminent death. They will cower, they will hide, they will plead, they will hope it isn’t really happening, they will sink deep into denial, but they would not protect themselves or even their children through use of a gun. Some admit this sheepishly, some are quite happy to die as a morally superior person.

        • There ya’ go.

          I would be tempted to tell that woman, “Then lay back and enjoy the ride”.

        • I spoke with a young single woman, mother to a very small daughter. She lived along.

          I asked about what she had to defend herself and after some discussion I suggested she get a firearm.

          She said, “I could never shoot someone.”

          When I asked if she would stand there a let some man molest/rape her daughter and do nothing she had no reply. Apparently never thought about something like that…and didn’t want to think about it.

          An example that some people are in fact clueless and don’t intend to change.

    • Correct. Because their entire platform depends on the victimhood of their constituency. Progressivism does not apply to self-sufficient individualists, period. Without victims, they have no raison d’etre.

    • It’s very simple.

      Conservatives see a problem and want to fix it.

      Progressives see a problem and just want to whine about it and create a platform to scream their injustice to the world to make them feel better about being affected by a problem.

      That’s why the public are increasingly getting tired of progressives — because they are incapable of recognizing and solving actual problems.

      They don’t want problems solved because they love whining and getting attention more.

  2. The writer makes a very good argument. It is one we should become very familiar with, and use it to our advantage. But be careful reading his article, it is subtle. Along with being subtle, it can be very easy to completely misunderstand (which is why I noted we should become very familiar with it).

  3. “If the world is a better place without guns, the first thing I’d have to acknowledge would be . . .”

    You don’t tell enough people to STFU. Start with that. If people don’t like guns they need to suck it up. If they come after your guns, they need to be similarly aggressed in a manner that makes them have other priorities.

  4. One would argue that the firearm is the technology that allowed the freedom we enjoy today. The longbow gave the common man close military parity with career soldiers or the time, but still required years of training. The firearm achieves the same goal is a massive reduction in the training. Once the common man can take up arms against the government, there is motivation on the part of the ruling group serve the people, and not the other way around.

    • Your analogy likely would work better with crossbow rather than longbow. Replacing years of training (sword/lance or longbow with machinery/investment. The crossbow then being replace by the firearm.

      • No, Crossbows were not the deciding factor the long bow was. The crossbow had a shitty rate of fire that makes a musket look like a speed loader. The ones that could actually penetrate armor were very heavy and the range sucked compared to a longbow. Putting crossbows up against longbows is like putting muskets against M1 Garands.

        • Putting peasants armed with crossbows up against armored knights with lands titles and years of training on a muddy field seems to have worked pretty well… Think that would be the first example of what you’re getting at.

        • Not until a later period in history.
          In its heyday the English Longbow was THE weapon. The French only turned to the crossbow by default, as they did not have Longbowmen to put up against the English on the battlefield.
          They employed the crossbow mostly as a single harassing volley at the outset, and then a charge to close the range to mitigate the power of the Longbow. Any time the French were caught in the open against the Longbow, they were largely slaughtered.
          Crossbows were more useful in defending against a siege or in the guarding of something. Nevertheless, an army in the field must have some type of distance weapon and, lacking hundreds or thousands of trained archers, crossbows were it.
          Still, there is a reason that crossbows were replaced by muskets.

      • Ah yes, if it wasn’t for the Harley riders all dressed up like Nazi cowboys with their ‘loud pipes save lives’ t-shirts, who would normal motorcyclists have to make fun of?

        • The Japanese make the highest performing motorcycles on earth. They also for some reason make motorcycles for people who want Harleys but don’t like having to clean up the oil off the floor of their garage.

        • My father was a hard core BMW fan who usually owned at least two bikes and rode for 30+ years. Died at age 72 going fast on a R1150RT.

        • ‘My father was a hard core BMW fan…’

          Is there any other kind?

        • Yes, there is. I had a friend — we lost track of each other — who was a BMW fan because those were his initials.

      • Gov, I love Japanese machinery and have owned Yamahas exclusively but I prefer the dirt. My personal car is a Honda Accord.

        The build quality of Japanese cruisers is not the issue. They’re great bikes. For some purists the Honda-Davidsons have a strong old man / FUDD quality.

        They’re safe, sanitized, civilized Japanese versions of American made bikes that were primitive, air cooled, mechanically dubious and were never really about sophistication. That’s all.

        As far as high performance motorcycles go MV Agusta, Aprillia, Ducati ( Italy ) and BMW ( Germany ) and even KTM ( Austria ) all support factory riders racing in the Super Bike racing series.

        The race bikes are based on production bikes sold to the public and they come off the show room floor with most in the 190+ horse power and weighing incredibly light for 1000cc bikes.

        • The issue with Harleys for me isn’t the fact that they make nostalgic bikes but the riders who buy them. Somehow they’ve been duped into thinking they’re expressing their individuality by joining the herd. They wear shirts that say ‘loud pipes save lives’ then ride around with a plastic pickelhaube on their head. They rip the baffles out of their mufflers so they can draw as much attention to themselves as possible. The fact that they lost 10hp in the process doesn’t seem to matter.

          Personally, I gave up my R1 a couple years ago for a Speed Triple which is my ‘getting old’ bike, I guess. Maybe when I’m 90 I’ll ride a Harley. Probably not.

  5. While I understand the author’s point, no one is suggesting that a world without guns is desirable or even possible.

    It’s a ludacris idea on its face; Nothing more than a child’s wish, really. People advocating for civilian disarmament have no intention of giving up THEIR guns or disarming the state. Their only goal is to disarm the common folks so that we are easier to kill should they determine that this is necessary.

    All other stated goals of civilian disarmament are rhetorical, fanciful or as us commoners might say, BS.

    • Do you see/read the article as another anti-gun sales pitch? Or are you launching from the actual intent in order to re-enforce the pro-gun message, using familiar reasoning?

  6. “If the world is a better place without THE MISUSE OF guns…”
    That’s more accurate

    “If the world is a better place without guns…” were a real aspirational statement, the reductio ad absurdum argument would be that hands are “generally” required to operate guns, so the world would be a better place if people had no hands. Lop’em off people. For the chillenz and the safetz.

  7. And don’t forget the rise in violent crime and homicides in Australia and the U.K.following their gun control laws vs. Uninterrupted declines for any nation not increasing gun control in the same period.

  8. “If the world is a better place without guns, the first thing I’d have to acknowledge would be that this better world would be a place without me. Without my guns, I would have starved, been killed by wild animals, or human predators. Is it so wrong that I’m glad to be alive? Can you not see the difficulty of such an abstraction for a person who lived when he might not have because he had a gun and knew how to use it?”

    That comes close to the fundamental point(*) behind the drive to disarm citizens: Who are you to value or decide for yourself? The folks who want to disarm citizens really want to decide who lives and dies, not individually, but in groups. What happens to any individual is a side effect. If it comes to it, you are supposed to peacefully let yourself be eaten.(***)

    So, The Man Who Would Not Be’s argument is a non sequitur from their POV. That is the fundamental, underlying, driving point to make about disarming citizens, again, and again, and again. You valuing yourself and deciding for yourself simply aren’t part of what they want.(**) If you want to decide anything at all for yourself, even about your own life, you are fundamentally at odds with these people’s world view.

    I need to work that into my litany of where these people are coming from on disarming citizens:
    – You are too stupid, damaged, and reactive to use this (or any effective) power responsibly.
    – You aren’t worth saving anyhow. You are an acceptable loss, because you just don’t matter.
    – That’s not how we do things: everything not compulsory is forbidden.
    – (*)Who are you to decide, anyway?

    What they do is not just described, but can be predicted in advance, if you only realize that for them, government is not an association of people, to do some things together for their mutual and individual benefit, but a means to orchestrate large shoals of others toward some good that the maestros value, because they know better, whatever that takes.

    (**) It’s no accident that so many “great leader” founding CEOs start having political opinions about what “we”, meaning “everybody” should do, that they have decided. Within their companies, they got to decide and impose … and people could opt out if the deal didn’t fit for them.

    It’s not a terrible deal for an individual to emerge 10 years out of school as a “Micro$oft millionaire”, perhaps having suffered along the way some over-work and psychological abuse, but no physical damage, an easy life outside of work, and great benefits. It is a very different, terrible idea to have this, or any, kind of “deal” imposed by force, with nowhere else to go.

    I’m looking at you, Bloomie. Also MicroBill, and Bezos. At least Jobs was blatant about being a megalomaniac control freak, and LPOD actually revels in it. Also, that jackhole who flew his family & nanny to Davos, where he delivered his talk on how “everybody” was going to have to reduce the scope of their lives, to reduce the strain on the planet, or something. Or 1 out of every 5 TED talkers.

  9. It’s a good point, and an argument that I use when I run into people who think all guns should go away — I tell them that they’re saying to my face that the country/world would be better with me dead or crippled, with kids molested, with women raped. When they insist that’s twisting things, I point out to them that I am not making a nebulous claim, that if it were not for the possession of a gun, real people I know, including myself, would have been dead or crippled, molested, or raped.

    So far I’ve never gotten anything but blank stares or stammering nonsense in response, save for the occasional, “Whoa” or “Wow” followed by actual thought.

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