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Peter Beilenson (courtesy baltimoresun.com)

“One would hope that this most recent tragedy would lead to widespread, bipartisan calls to ban the sale of all automatic weapons and handguns and virtually every other type of gun (except maybe rifles for hunting or whatever you use for that activity). However, I am not naïve. If that wasn’t accomplished after the murder of over 20 little children and their teachers at Newtown, or after the murder of more than a dozen students and their teachers at Columbine, or after the murder of a dozen people simply watching a movie in Aurora, or after the murder of five little girls in rural Pennsylvania, or after more than 200 gun-related murders in Baltimore, or thousands of gun-related murders and suicides across the country each year, I am sadly confident that it will not happen after this despicable crime as well.” – Peter Beilenson, America and guns: ‘utter lunacy’ [via baltimoresun.com]

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68 COMMENTS

  1. obviously this guy has done no research on any of the percentages of mass shootings in the last 50 years. Banning a firearm is like being a hammer hits a tool you have crazy people going out and committing these crimes. That’s what needs to be looked at. you don’t blame the car manufacturer when a guy gets plastered drunk and runs over 15 people at a crosswalk or a bus stop do you?? Of course you don’t you erase the moron that did it! Just another way that they’re trying to take away our constitutional wright in a free country. you do not punish the many for the acts of a very very very small for you!

    • sorry, that last post a little garbled, & I tried to edit it, and it did not work. What I was trying to say was banning firearms is like banning a hammer, it’s a tool. and when I was saying you don’t blame the car manufacturer when a young man or older gentleman or lady goes out and gets plastered drunk man crashes into 15 people at a crosswalk, or a bus stop. it was supposed to say you do not blame the manufacturer you arest him. The man driving the car. the fact of the matter is mass shootings make up for a very very very small amount of homicides in the United States and when President Obama said we were the worst country with this problem PolitiFact found that he was majority of what he said was false. Other countries have mass shootings and stabbings with katana swords and everything else you can think of from screwdrivers two handguns the ball peen hammers the baseball bats, which by the way that’s the leading weapon and homicide used in the USA is death by blunt force trauma. Posted on the Center for Disease Control is website. these people are full of crap!

      • So you say. But there are people who believe a firearm is a living biological entity which rises up and unleashed itself. When you run into one, walk away. Talking to a rock will be as effective.

        • True but a rock can’t vote and a rock can’t spread lunacy in the form of flawed ideas. As infuriating as it may be (and trust me I know that it is INFURIATING) I believe it is our job to debate gun control with even the most rabid liberal. While they probably will just stick with there lunacy it is beneficial to the uninformed hearing the argument to at least hear the other side and maybe realize that crazed liberals are not heroes trying to save humanity and instead recognize them as the under informed emotional thinking attention seekers they most likely are. And even though that liberal will probably not change his mind he might become gun shy (pun intended) the next time he thinks about spreading his insane ideas for fear of someone calling him on his bull. Also pro-tip it’s always best to remain fact based and look professional when arguing in a public space such as on the internet or at a get together. As you are arguing for the minds of the uninformed reading or listening not to change the mind of a gun control nut job. Show statistics and make them insult you but don’t insult back and instead prove their argument wrong politely. This will hopefully make readers and listeners realize which side is arguing with facts and which side is arguing with flawed emotional response. We’ve seen the beginnings of a renewed and wide spread gun culture sprouting these last couple years. I say we do our best and everything we can to help that culture grow. Even if that means *shudders*… having extended conversations with anti-gun liberals.

  2. Remember that is the goal of these people. Eventually ban basically all guns. The will exploit whatever tragedy necessary to do so. It isn’t about gun control, it is about people control.

    • If one were to get their gun knowledge from “The Walking Dead” everyone in America had fully-automatic M16A1’s. Not to mention revolvers that require the sound of ejected brass hitting the ground or Glocks that require cocking the hammer while being drawn.

  3. ha ha. Sometimes these are funny, sometimes they are mean spirited . This one is insane.

    I know almost nothing about NASA. Lets say I was going to make an argument to ban the space program. I suppose the result would be about the same.

    What strikes me, who purposely argues from a position of extreme ignorance? No its not an oversight. Its willful.

    • Nobody argues from a position of ignorance if they know or believe they are ignorant. Or a teenager.

      In this case, as with most intellectual antis, I rather strongly suspect he isn’t really aware of his ignorance. He thinks he knows all he needs to know, and he’s smart, so he must be right.

      • But with five minutes (or less) of google, you get you a world of information.

        Does he not have an editor?

        Its hard to imagine that someone could be so pigheaded and arrogant. And then that a paper would publish their ramblings.

        I know exactly what the arguments from the gun grabbers are. And I reject them. But I know what they are.

        wow he’s a doctor too…

        • You obviously have never met an intellectual left wing liberal. Not only do they know whats best for them they know what’s best for everyone. And that’s socialism. Just go study history the first objective ov EVERY totalitarian government in History is to take away free speech ( hate speech, political correctness, CHECK) , removal of property and income without due process ( Just google it) Check, disarm the population! (underway.)..Not to mention Marginalize, ostracize, demonize and target anyone who disagree’s with you. … Just look at Gay rights, Anyone who doesn’t agree is a Nethanderal. Just check you r face book feed how many rainbows do you see… its social pressure to get you to join in no matter how you feel about it.

        • I second in large part what Christopher said.

          I got into it once with a Kiwi in a chat room. She was convinced that the Columbine Shooters had legally purchased full-auto Uzis off the shelf, swore up and down that she had seen their guns and there were Uzis.

          No amount of explaining the tax stamp rigamarole to this woman would convince her, and my pointing out that I live here and buy guns from time to time and damn well know what must be done to obtain them, would not convince her.

          I didn’t even get around to researching the weapons used by the Columbine shooters, which included one each TEC 9 (not two), which not only isn’t an Uzi and isn’t full auto, I’m not even sure it really qualifies as semi-auto as it’s such a jam prone piece of shit.

    • Brenton: You hit my thoughts pretty well exactly: nothing like revealing your near-total ignorance of the subject (“automatic weapons”; “whatever you use for that activity”) right off the bat to lay the foundation for a compelling argument, is there? What is with these people? They don’t know, they don’t want to know, and then they wonder why people aren’t listening to them. Of course, the other side of the coin are the folks that do know but intentionally spread false info anyway ( “40% of gun sales are done with no background check”; “a bazillion school shootings since Newtown”). But the effect is the same: they are lying, they know they have been caught at lying, they keep lying anyway, and then they wonder why folks aren’t listening to them.

    • Where indeed are those readily available “automatic handguns & rifles” Mr. Beilenson is blathering about? I’d like to buy a few for my collection.

      As for Baltimore, Mr. Beilenson, you live there so do something about it. Obviously the ubber restrictive gun control laws you likely voted for are worth jack sh!t so maybe you need to go into the ‘hood and sing kumbaya? Go on, we’ll wait.

    • Try your luck at various train stations around Brussels. But, “these things never happen in Europe…” or something

    • especially given our government’s “success” in prohibiting…anything.

      “Oh hey a bunch of unarmed people just got shot, moar lawz will totally disarm the guy doing the shooting!”

    • I’ll never understand how watching unarmed people get shot is supposed to make me not want a gun.

      Bingo, indeed.

      If someone looks like they need the last millimeter of the line connecting the dots drawn for them, you could continue, “It makes me think unarmed people are more likely to get shot.”

  4. Once all the scary black rifles are gone, what’s to stop them calling our hunting rifles “Sniper rifles?” Or our lever-action guns “new and emerging technology” capable of rapid fire?

    Don’t believe me? Look at Australia.

    Thoughts? Leave a comment to That Effect.

  5. They don’t like those pesky things called facts, they get in the way of their feelings .Btw ,can I marry my gun now ?

  6. I’m quietly confident that this liberal progressive couldn’t effectively defend himself in a violent confrontation.

    • He doesn’t want to lawfully protect himself. He wants other people to protect him. He fails to understand evil exist, and as long as evil happens to others, it ok by him.

    • Ever since Carl Rowan, I think every one of these mendacious shit bags are armed and have the “guns for me, but not for thee” mentality.

      • Maybe not all of them (Shannon lets someone else be armed for her), but certainly a number of them.

    • Add emotionally immature and childish. An emotionally mature human can deal with the facts that you are never safe….ever. Tunisia, strongest gun control laws, 22 and at least 27 dead in 2 attacks in the last 6 months.

      Human are animals and only those of us choosing to develop and exercise our ability to control our emotions are above that animal mentality. This is human nature. Grow up and start to deal with it.

    • Exactly.

      “One would hope that this most recent tragedy would lead to widespread, bipartisan calls to ban the sale of all automatic weapons and handguns and virtually every other type of gun (except maybe rifles for hunting or whatever you use for that activity). However, I am not naïve.

      “Except maybe rifles for hunting or whatever…?”

      What about rifles/pistols for 3Gun? IDPA, IPSC, USPSA, etc? Semiautos and pistols are used?? There are more sports than just “hunting.”

      And he calls himself not “naive.” Hilarious.

  7. Baltimore sun?….sorry but banning guns won’t do a damn thing when your city can’t even control its population. Try respecting the cops a little more anf they might be willing to help.

  8. Should have been titled: “Peter Beilenson, Utter Lunacy”

    We have spent the time looking at the facts and know Peter is living a fantasy. We know his “solutions” won’t “save lives” because they vilify and persecute millions of people that are not the problem. And worse, would disarm those that need to have the means to protect themselves. His idea doesn’t address root causes, or even perceive the concept of problem solving. It is the worst kind of bandage, a neck tourniquet might be a analogy, suffocating the victim yet having the superficiality of a medical solution.

    Peter’s opinions merit pity more than contempt. To think that “really, really caring” is more important than facts or logic only compounds the tragedies. In the last few years I have made to point to talk to people that hold opinions similar to Peter’s and the sad truth is that they operate in a world where they believe that “really, really caring” and jumping on the feeblest of causes will make the world a better place. The sad truth is that they are so distanced from facts and reality that they are the sheep lost in the woods filled with wolves yet think they are the Shepard.

    • Great Comment: “The sad truth is that they are so distanced from facts and reality that they are the sheep lost in the woods filled with wolves yet think they are the Shepard.”

    • Great comment.

      “Peter’s opinions merit pity more than contempt. To think that “really, really caring” is more important than facts or logic only compounds the tragedies.”

      In my opinion though, this makes Dr. Beilenson not pitiful but evil, mentally disturbed, or possibly both. Since he’s a successful man, I’d tend to say that he is simply evil rather than mentally disturbed for believing that caring = fixing the problem, though none of us can know what it in his heart.

      Our society seems to be celebrating mentally disturbed (Jenner) and evil (Tsarnaev) people these days, so when people see people behaving in evil or irrational ways, we don’t say anything for fear of being called an intolerant bigot.

  9. Asking Peter Beilenson to comment on guns, is like asking Bernie sanders to comment on the virtues of the bill of rights.

  10. Hmm. Utter lunacy?

    I agree. This guy is utterly crazy. Denying fact, history, experience, and repeated government studies showing crime of all types at a historic low, with tens of millions of legally carried guns in public at a historic high.

    Yep. Having a bunch of edumacayshun don’t make you wiser.

    • Just to make this guy feel his “lunacy” a little more intensely.

      I’ve been carrying a pistol for the last seventeen years. I’ve OC’d for the last seven in a large metropolitan area and I’ve just recently, over the last year, have seen six other people OC’ing!

      The acceptance of carrying a gun in public, Open Carrying, is starting to be accepted by more people!

      The sound of freedom is ringing more loudly across the land.

      I know this terrifies you Pete, but really, it’s better for people like yourself. People like us will protect you from bad people like the statists that would kill you if they decide you no longer are useful in your “idiocy”. As Stalin said about people people like yourself.

  11. “elect principled leaders who will stop groveling to the cynical gun lobby and start protecting our citizens from the level of violence”

    Lacking political acumen and an expectation our government fails to deliver.

    • On your excerpt from the article Mk10108: Amazing that the author does not realize that the police do not have a legal obligation to protect us and that they rarely arrive in time to do so. Who is going to protect us in this imaginary world he lives in if we don’t have the tools to protect ourselves? Certainly not him or his colleagues. Another guy with an education that ignores the facts and does not have a clue about the real world. But he is certain that he is smarter than us lowly gun owners.

    • As opposed to the millions of non cynical people that died waiting for the government to protect them. Or worse still, died after the government actively set out to kill them.

  12. I think we should ban doctors.

    It’s a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year.

    • OMG, send in the SWAT teams. Seriously, thanks for sharing that as it does impart a perspective not often looked at or thought about. However, it also makes me rather hesitant to go visit my doctor…..;-) !

      • Don’t be afraid of the Doctor, the deaths from medical errors mostly occur in hospitals. Treat a hospital as a “No Lone Zone” and you should be ok. Have someone with you who can get help immediately if you have an adverse reaction. Make sure any planned surgical sites are marked with a sharpie before surgery. As evidenced by this Doctor’s BS, Doctor’s are egotistic SOB’s who cannot admit fallibility and hate the idea of accepting responsibility for their mistakes. Try to find reliable data on adverse outcomes for a particular Doctor. If they were so damned good, why hide it?

  13. He mentions 3 prominent shootings but he never once mentions the MILLIONS of shootings that occurred over the past five years that resulted in zero deaths.

  14. Wait…I thought the anti-gunners weren’t looking to take away our guns…okay, how do I dissolve the superglue from between my tongue and cheek?

  15. What an astounding idiot.

    it is not ‘victim blaming’ to say that an armed churchmenber could have stopped the shooter, when state law prohibits such an animal from legally existing.

  16. To all of these gun grabbing overly intellectual self absorbed pricks who demand everyone be disarmed I say, “MOVE. TO. THE. HOOD!”

    You want to ban guns to get rid of gun violence, move to where the gun violence is and study it up close. And when you realize that the gun violence is simply violence, MAYBE you can work to fix THAT instead of going after the tool of their violence.

    It’s odd really. They want the COPS to be the only ones armed, and yet, hate cops and call them racists…

  17. These people are freedom hating statists. They are “there should be a law…” people, who don’t think twice about the consequences of their actions. Furthermore, killing anyone with anything (gun or otherwise) is a criminal action. It has nothing to do with public safety. The criminal acts of criminals is not any kind of justification whatsoever to reduce the freedoms of 300 million individuals. These naive economists who do nothing but look at people as a collective, have forgotten that those numbers on their graphs, pages, and equations, are actual people – with rights. The freedoms of the individual (all individuals) is far more important than reducing some numbers on a chart representing the collective. Furthermore the free people, not hurting anyone, with no intent to harm anyone, should not be punished for the criminal actions of a few. Collectivist laws offset responsibility of the criminal and places it firmly on the law abiding gun owner. This is not just.

    (Example: A gun owner performing a background check and registration on his neighbor for a selling him a firearm because that firearm “might” eventually make its way to a criminal.)

    Instead of the criminal being prosecuted for his crimes (victim involved), the gun owner is prosecuted if he doesn’t do a background check (no victim). Offsetting responsibility – the methodology of the freedom hating collectivists.

    Why? Because numbers on a paper are more important than justice and freedom?

  18. Baltimore Sun? Is Baltimore taking Chiraq’s place as the crime and murder capital of “Murica? But but but the gun laws protect ’em…and totally off the subject-just saw John Wick on cable tv-WOW! Chock full of cool guns! How about a “guns of John Wick” thing(already an IMBD thing)?

  19. I wold like to see EVERYONE stop calling things ‘mass shootings’ and call them what they really are… ‘multiple victims’. It has a better connotation

  20. calls to ban the sale of all automatic weapons and handguns and virtually every other type of gun For most people automatic weapons are already effectively banned. Maybe not de jure but most certainly de facto.

  21. “If that wasn’t accomplished after the murder of over 20 little children and their teachers at Newtown, or after the murder of more than a dozen students and their teachers at Columbine, or after the murder of a dozen people simply watching a movie in Aurora, or after the murder of five little girls in rural Pennsylvania, or after more than 200 gun-related murders in Baltimore, or thousands of gun-related murders and suicides across the country each year”

    So, after all this, you still can’t figure out that helplessness is the opposite of safety… Hmm, who’s the one having a hard time learning, really?

    You disarmed them, they died. You disarmed them again, they died. So, you disarmed them again and they died. So, obviously, the solution is to disarm them, but damn, they all died again…

    You really can’t spot the pattern here? Simple cause and effect still escape your mental grasp? Figure it out, dumbshit! How many have to die before you manage to pull your head out of your butt?!

  22. They will never get it . Like Rush often says , you can not argue logic to an emotion based person . They will never get it and it’s really costing me a small fortune .
    Every time some academic comes out with another ;
    dim witted . whining , emotional , nonsensical , illogical , nonfactual , politically correctness driven waste of my time article like the regurgitated crap in this one , I have to buy another gun and at this rate I’ll have to build an additional room onto my abode to store everything . When will they understand that the more they cry about more gun control the more people buy guns . If we could get these progressive hacks to shut up for awhile the cost of guns and ammo might start to trickle back down . OOPS , I hope the don’t read this . No worry , they can’t understand logic and they can’t stop yakking anyway . Good luck libs . I think Barry will try some phone and pen stuff soon but all you’re really doing is fast tracking the coming insurrection in which you are not armed for . Sweet dreams .

  23. “except maybe rifles for hunting or whatever you use for that activity”

    You mean my auto loading AR15?

  24. Another Anti-American Hack, maybe this person will have an Epiphany needing a fire arm and not having one!
    Himself being in such a dangerous profession, and living on the edge only wants to feel safe! but he wants my freedom to accomplish his!
    At TEOTWAWKI himself would be the biggest backslider or easiest prey, with this kind of mind set it may be the latter!
    I want to live in a perfect Utopia also, unfortunately can never happen! so get real Dude!

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