“The Utah gun law that canceled a USU speech is an embarrassment,” deseretnews.com declares. Backstory: feminist videogame reviewer Anita Sarkeesian gets a death threat before a planned speech at Utah State University. USU checks it out and deems it incredible.
Unsatisfied, Sarkeesian demands a no-guns policy at the venue, including pat-downs and a metal detector. USU says “You must be joking son, where did you get those shoes?” State law says we can’t do that “gun-free zone” thing. Ms. Sarkeesian cancels the gig. All of which is grist for deseretnews.com’s anti-gun mill.
“It’s time Utah law stood up for safety,” the editorial opines, “not the empowerment of bullies.” Wait. What? Wasn’t the person issuing the death threat the bully? Isn’t the Utah law designed to protect people against bullies (a.k.a., criminals)? This is so typical.
The gun control crowd have a singular ability to get things exactly backwards. They see guns as the problem. So they believe anything that restricts access to guns is a good thing, not a bad thing (regardless of their claim that they support the Second Amendment). In fact, bad people are the problem. Anything that restricts access to guns, diminishing or eliminating a good person’s ability to use a gun to protect themselves against a bad person, is a bad thing, not a good thing.
You don’t need a flow chart to understand this. Nor do you need to add ancillary arguments to “prove” the statement’s veracity (e.g., you can’t stop bad people from getting guns). It’s common sense! A term the antis use and abuse with Orwellian enthusiasm. Just to be clear, merriam-webster.com defines common sense as “the ability to think and behave in a reasonable way and to make good decisions.” Can we substitute “rational” for “reasonable”? To the antis, even the most irrational leaps of logic seem entirely reasonable. Like this . . .
NEW FACES OF COURAGE PROFILE: Just days after Kimberly Brusk’s ex-husband was arrested for violently assaulting her in front of her young daughter, he ambushed her as she entered her own home. Read Kimberly’s powerful story here: http://bit.ly/1poCabM
“When I flipped light switch I found my ex-husband standing in the doorway with a shotgun pointed at me. He said, I told you not to leave me, don’t move!’ I ran out the door as a shotgun blasted behind me.”
October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. Every month, 48 women are shot to death by current or former intimate partners, yet loopholes in our laws still allow too many abusers and stalkers to access guns. In honor of Kimberly and all survivors of domestic gun violence, please LIKE, SHARE and PLEDGE to vote for candidates who will #ProtectAllWomen:http://every.tw/1lwuzod
The Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America’s Facebook posting above typifies the antis’ ass-backwards definition of “common sense.” It assumes that readers will clock the abuser’s shotgun blast and conclude that society needs new laws to stop psycho-burgers from getting access to guns. MDA’s anti-gun agitprop producers can’t imagine that readers with genuine common sense might think, hmmm, how could a law prevent an abuser from getting access to a shotgun? Those guys are nuts. He should have been locked-up.
Checking out Ms. Brusk’s “Faces of Courage” testimonial, a rational person might also wonder why that poor woman didn’t tool-up and shoot the bastard. Ms. Brusk’s account of her abusive relationship leaves no doubt that she had the motive, means and opportunity to shoot Mr. Brusk on at least one occasion, when he posed an imminent threat of death or bodily harm. Well, maybe not the means. I’m guessing Ms. Brusk didn’t had a gun.
But she could have had a gun. Unless the “physically, sexually, emotionally and financially” abused mother happened to live in a part of the United States like, say, New Jersey; where the chances of an abused woman getting a concealed carry permit are somewhere between slim and none (and Slim just left town). A state whose gun control regime has been celebrated by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. An organization that never met a gun control law they didn’t like. Not one. Ever.
Again, the common sense takeaway from Ms. Brusk’s “courage profile”: if someone’s trying to kill you, you best be killing them first. If you think someone’s going to try to kill you, arm yourself with something more than a law, no matter how many loopholes it may close. [Note to Ms. Brusk: Revealing your desire to disarm and your recent move to Atlanta ahead of your husband’s parole puts you at great risk of violent retaliation. Luckily, you’ve moved to the MDA’s worst nightmare: the “guns everywhere” Peach Tree State..]
In the nearasdammit five years I’ve been writing for TTAG I haven’t come across a single rational argument for gun control. By the same token, I can’t come up with a rational argument for controlling Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech – which enables MDA’s nonsense to spread through the ranks of the anti-gun press and the legions of willingly defenceless women. Common sense says the best way to control gun control is to appeal to voters’ common sense. Yes?