Image via University of Oregon
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“Ask Amy,” a syndicated advice column for the dead tree press, gained a degree of infamy among gun owners last month. A father who was distraught over his hard-working, responsible adult daughter’s gun ownership wrote to column author Amy Dickinson [not pictured above] asking for her help in dealing with the dire situation.

The advice maven didn’t urge empathy, tolerance or understanding, though, as she so commonly does with other issues in her columns. Instead, Dickinson recommended that dear old dad give his daughter an ultimatum before administering the heave-ho and kicking her out of the house.

Dickinson’s advice to the father featured plenty of misinformation about firearms, not to mention outright bigotry against gun owners. We covered it when it happened.

Since then, Ask Amy and Dickinson have suffered weeks of pounding on social media. Now the author has returned to “explain” things to her readers and critics.

Once more, instead of graciously urging tolerance and understanding of people who choose to avail themselves of their Second Amendment rights, Dickinson has her shovel out and digs furiously, doubling down on the bigotry.

From The Mercury News (but it’s available in plenty of other outlets as well):

DEAR READERS: I recently ran a question from “Dumbfounded Father” in my column. This man had a 24-year-old daughter who was living with him. She had recently disclosed that she possessed a .40-caliber semi-automatic weapon, with hollow-point bullets. This father did not want to have guns in his home.

In my response, I incorrectly stated that hollow point bullets “explode.” I stated that this ammunition is illegal in 11 states.

I take responsibility for this error and apologize to readers who were misinformed, confused or furious about it…

Many angry readers also suggested that my ignorance of firearms and ammunition disqualifies me from commenting on gun ownership or gun violence.

Obviously, I disagree. I don’t have to know the intricacies of a car engine to advocate for commonsense driving and licensing laws.

In other words, Dickinson feels perfectly fine giving advice regarding and advocating for “commonsense” laws regulating something about which she admits she knows virtually nothing.

In fact, she doesn’t have to know about guns. All she really knows is that she hates them. Just as racial bigots in times past have discriminated against black people. Or other hated the Irish, Italians, Chinese or gays.

And then Dickinson dug deeper.

I definitely have a bias against the people who use guns to terrorize and kill one another. I also have a bias against the gun lobby that gaslights Americans into believing that gun ownership is not only a right, but also — these days — a necessity, as many readers have suggested.

Gaslighting Americans about their right to keep and bear arms and the proven benefits of firearm ownership?  Reading is fundamental, Amy. Twenty-seven words. You should read them sometime.

Dear Amy,

Put down the shovel and go back to offering advice to men who can’t get a date or women whose husbands leave the seat up. You’re far better suited to writing about things you know and have first-hand experience with than those yucky guns you won’t allow in your house.

Thanks,
America’s Lawful, Responsible Gun Owners

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90 COMMENTS

    • I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you probably know a lot more about a woman’s uterus than she does about firearms.

      • According to Julian Castro, everyone has a uterus – because we need to protect the rights of drag queens to get abortions.
        If they’re going to support abortions through and even after the pregnancy, why stop there? I now support abortions through at least the 375th trimester, I self-identify as the mother of all the democrats, and I would like to exercise my rights thank you very much.

    • Oh sure you can voice your opinion. May not be very meaningful, maybe no one will listen or will even throw opposing opinions back at ya, but who’s going to physically stop you from typing into (anti-)social media?

      • Whoa, kind of a blanket statement. I happen to be someone who believes in smaller government, less regulation, fiscal responsibility. I also believe that people should be able to believe in whatever fairy tales they want. A woman should be able to do whatever with her own body. Global warming is happening. We need a new immigration system. The welfare system needs to be dismantled and restructured. I’m also a responsible gun owner. (From AR’s to pistols and shotguns) I’m pretty liberal and a firm believer in the 2nd Amendment.

        Not all liberals are anti-2nd anti-gun. Just like not all Conservatives are racist Trump supporting idiots.

        BTW, Trump has shit on my 2nd Amendment rights than Obama ever did.

        • “I happen to be someone who believes in smaller government”

          Blew the “liberal” cred on the very first point.

    • “Admitting she was wrong…”

      Here’s the thing – She’s not wrong (as far as she and other like her are concerned) about guns.

      Wasn’t it Justice Stevens who wrote that the 2A (as seen by the current conservative Court) is an outright fraud? A right made up of whole cloth? A right, for all practical purposes that was just pulled out of someone’s ass? With no basis in historical fact whatsoever?

      They fucking believe that. They will *never* accept that American citizens have a constitutional right to carry a gun on their person, and if needed, use it with lethal effect to fend off a physical attack.

      Here, she admits to it –

      “I also have a bias against the gun lobby that gaslights Americans into believing that gun ownership is not only a right, but also — these days — a necessity, as many readers have suggested.”

      “Gaslights” – There is no convincing or persuading her, or others like her. They will never give up, never quit, until there is total civil disarmament. They will come and take your guns, and they don’t care how long it will take.

      They have just declared war…

      • Agree with everything you say, with one exception: “They will come and take your guns, and they don’t care how long it will take.”

        Actually, they won’t come and take them… they’ll order state-sanctioned men with guns to do their dirty work. We all know that her and others like her will never be the ones coming after our guns.

      • And once we are disarmed, they will start arresting people for their posts on twitter and facebook because it is somehow hate speech to someone

        • Eric while I tend to agree with you for reasons including Lowe’s/Home Depot Brian absolutely has the right of the logical plan.

        • IF we are disarmed, that will be just a start. Unfortunately, lots of people swallowed gun grabber’s BS narrative about “gun violence” and “commonsense safety measures” used as a pretense for civilian disarmament.

    • “she hates an awful lot of people…”

      Roughly 50 percent of the American people. It’s one thing for someone to hate a few people, but when it gets to be one-half of the total population…

  1. Oh woe is foolish me for having been gaslit into believing I have rights.
    What a horrible, angry person she is. Imagine getting advice from someone who hates everyone.

    • I definitely have a bias against the people who use guns to terrorize and kill one another.

      So this is interesting. What would she rather people terrorize and kill one another with? Kinda goes along with the psychotic fixation on “gun violence” as if violence sans gun is a-o-k. Hacking back vines (gun violence) is a futile exercise if you never go for the root. But that wouldn’t be politically expedient with a side of authoritarianism so they’ll never bother. Just keep hacking vines until you tire and are overwhelmed by the plant.

      • I don’t have guns to terrorize or kill anyone, I have guns to keep from being terrorized or killed by others with guns.

        • I don’t have guns to terrorize or kill anyone, I have guns to keep from being terrorized or killed by others with guns.

          The only people that I will terrorize with my firearms are people who attempt to deny my family’s and my right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

      • Who doesn’t have a bias against “the people who use guns to terrorize and kill one another.”???

        All the gun owners I know share Amy’s bias. That’s why we train regularly and carry daily.

        • The point is to stigmatize lawful firearm owners by associating them with the unlawful 3%. It’s an old Communist propaganda trick – over-generalize the language to include the target group along with the criminal group.

          To quote the lie, “I definitely have a bias against the people who use guns to terrorize and kill one another.”

          Upon re-reading this, the informed POTG would see that the Communist used the word “people” when she actually meant “criminal.”

      • And then she “cites” a contemporaneous road-rage shooting between two men “who both had carry permits.” Anybody have a REAL cite for this incident? Because I’ve seen this sort of claim a dozen times before, and every time, the citer was LYING.

    • She has been so thoroughly gaslighted that she thinks the lights have *always* been this way; she’s not crazy, YOU are for even thinking that gaslighting might exist.

  2. Where did the daughter get her brains? Not daddy for sure. He sounds like the proto-typical lefty sh-t for brains.
    I would wager that if the founders had a Mustang, GTO or any muscle car, driving WOULD be a right, not a privilege, subject to rules and taxes. Hi speed buggies just weren’t seen as a right, when armies walked into battle.

    • Excellent point sir. The antis want us to believe that the founders couldn’t have conceived of greater things. “Where is the prince who can afford to cover his country with troops for its defense as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds, might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought to repel them?”

      –Benjamin Franklin, 1784–

    • I assumed Daddy was a troll, like Ann Landers used to claim that all the idiot letter from New Haven were from Yale students trolling her.

      • I assumed that Daddy was actually Amy. Written specifically so she could lecture her readers on how the simple act of owning a gun will turn an “intelligent, hard-working, responsible 24-year-old daughter” into a crazed killer.

    • The daughter is most likely made up by the “journalist”, just like her dumb father. Only a vehicke for some good anti rights propaganda.

  3. Dear Amy,

    We must ban the online sale of high-powered home abortion kits. Already this year, ten thousand women have ultrasounded their kerginas and permanently damaged their womb-holders.

    Make no mistake, these tools of surgery were designed to do one thing, and one thing only – abort as many babies as possible at once. In fact, they’re already illegal in 15 states.

    Won’t you think of the children?

    • “We must ban the online sale of high-powered home abortion kits.”

      Hell-fucking *no*. I believe abortion is murder. I also fully support a Leftist’s right to get an abortion, hell, the government should provide it for free if it reduces their numbers who will show up and vote to destroy this country…

  4. I don’t have to know the intricacies of a car engine to advocate for commonsense driving and licensing laws.

    But you do need to know that cars are used for things beside crashing. It would probably help if you didn’t think airbags were illegal in 11 states, and that you didn’t freak out at gasoline engines as “the kind of car most criminals use.”

    I definitely have a bias against the people who use guns to terrorize and kill one another.

    This is a lie. The young woman referred to in the letter was described as a decent, reliable person, not someone who used guns to terrorize and kill others. Yet you spoke of her as if she were a criminal, and encouraged her own father to think of her in those terms.

  5. The Second Amendment – Gaslighting Americans about their right to keep and bear arms since 1791!

  6. That woman in the photo is engaging in an extremely dangerous activity. If that bank collapses she will almost certainly be suffocated to death.

    • That was my same thought just from seeing the image on the main page.
      I didn’t even read the headline, I just clicked to see wtf was going on. People die like that all the time.
      What we need is commonsense pit digging control. Mandatory training and licensing before people can buy shovels. State inspectors…
      And, comically, this would probably save more lives than “commonsense gun control”.

      • Dan in Detroit,

        What we need is commonsense pit digging control.

        I love your comment!

        By the way, for people who do not know: there actually are formal guidelines for digging and excavating to reduce/eliminate the risk of injury from cave-ins. A professional/commercial builder/excavator who violates the guidelines will be civilly and possibly even criminally liable if they violate the guidelines and a cave-in injures or kills someone.

    • SSSssh! There is precious little real dangers that can kill you for being stupid left in this world. Give the natural selection a chance!

  7. Interesting that she, like her fellow travelers in the media, uses the manipulative techniques she accuses us of using. Much like Antifa accuses everyone they hate of being a Nazi, when the only fascists at their protests are Antifa themselves.

  8. What if the dads daughter is gay and feared for her life and decided to get a gun permit and carry? Would Amy be okay with throwing a gay daughter out of the house? What if she were a transman (transitioning to a male) and had heightened concerns about physical attacks? Is that okay too? How far down the rat hole do we want to take this?

    • Even if they were already assaulted, this idiot giving “advice” would never advocate self defense. They would expect someone else or a piece of paper to protect them. Possibly non lethal methods like a taser or pepper spray, which we all know are prone to failure, and probably kept off body in a hard to reach place.

  9. Funny how she said “angry readers” and tried casting the blame for her mistakes by using words like “furious”. Yet she advocates for a father to kick her daughter out of his life for owning a gun? an object. What if the father had wrote that her daughter had a dildo, and he didn’t allow that kind of pleasure giver in his house? Wanna bet the advice would be different? About her being a woman, and how she has privacy and deserves to be treated with respect? #equality

      • You have some serious issues don’t you. Nothing better to do than troll? Sorry if I pissed in your cereal one day, and you cannot man the fuck up and get over it, but fuck you kid. I hope someone as angry as you does not own a gun. A headline just waiting to happen because someone flipped you off.

  10. You do need a modicum of knowledge when you speak on a subject. If I start ranting that, “No one should drive a car on the road that can go 1500mph and makes farting noises as it passes you!!!!”, that would be pretty fucking stupid to say because there are no cars that go 1500mph that you can drive on the road that make farting noises as it passes you….

    You’re basing your argument on a faulty premise. Its null and void from the start.

    • Perhaps not the 1500mph part, but there’s plenty that make farting noises. Look up “ricer”.

    • Actually, on second thought, don’t. I don’t know if your eyes or ears can handle it.

      Awful abominations they are.

  11. Typical liberal mind set. Facts have no business in their emotional based thought process. This person is giving advice? Kind of like asking a fat person on how to lose weight. Facts matter, decisions made based on facts usually end up with a positive outcome. As an example, Liberals would make a house foundation because it looks right, Sorry I will use a tape measure. I wonder which will turn out better.

  12. She could have simply said “your house, your rules” and there wouldn’t have been any issue. But she needed to start blabbering on about things she doesn’t understand.

    • If she did that, the whole point of her article would be wasted. It was specifically written to babble about guns and gun owners being bad and best kept away from you.

  13. The original article she wrote was hilarious. I just thought it was sad that the daughter was more of a man than her sniveling father.

    • Pretty sure all her articles are fabricated stories. She just writes them herself to give advice she wants to give.

  14. Let’s stop calling it anti-gun and call it what it really is, anti-Constitutional. Make them defend themselves.

  15. It was an obvious scam from the beginning. How the heck would DUMFOUNDED FATHER even know that a semiautomatic pistol was loaded with hollowpoints? I can not imagine that he would know how to remove the magazine much less clear the chamber.

    • And how did he know it was a .40? He would have had to pick up the gun which would have instantly turned him into a psycho killer like it did his daughter.

      • Well they do engrave the chambering on the side of the slide. Perhaps he looked at the loaded spare mag?

  16. Fortunately I don’t rely on newspaper advice columnists and you shouldn’t too. The glaringly obvious fiction which is the Dumbfounded letter pits her column squarely on the level of the horoscopes in the back of the paper.

  17. What an arrogant Twunt. (yes, that is a contraction of two other words that usually don’t make it past the word filters)

    To think that gun owners are stupid idiots being led around by the fear simply because they don’t think the way she thinks….

    There used to be a time in this country, and recently too, when people would see that kind of willful ignorance displayed and would shake their head while saying ‘bless her heart, the poor dear just isn’t right in the head.’

  18. The trend these days is to ‘Stand Up To Hate,’ which I am sure has a hashtag campaign attached to it but I’m not going to use it. The core tenant of that idea is summed up on one of the websites that has that omitted hashtag as “Speaking up against hate crime and speech is about challenging them from becoming the norm. If you say or do nothing, then you might feel bad about it.”

    The lovely and talented (/s) Amy seems to be a perfect example of a modern bigot who is spreading hate into the world by saying law abiding adults are worse than criminals because they own something she doesn’t think you should own (and she admits to knowing nothing about that particular thing you own). We can’t have someone spreading that kind of hate and using the internet to do so. We need to start a campaign to have her removed and her bigotry silenced!

    Her boss is a Mr Barry, who is VP of Operations at the Tribune Content Agency, and he has both an email and a phone number listed on their website. I strongly encourage you to reach out to Mr Barry and let him know that his company is promoting hatred and bigotry and it has to stop. Now.

    Jack Barry, VP/Operations, [email protected], 312-222-2193

    These are the rules they wanted to play by, so lets beat them at their game using their rules against them.

    • “We need to start a campaign to have her removed and her bigotry silenced!”

      For that, you need big tech and her employer on your side. I don’t think that’s going to be the case here. But I like the idea.

      • “.. I don’t think that’s going to be the case here. ”

        Larger movements have started with smaller ideas.

        Yes, I may be dreaming but if I want to chase waterfalls or however that song goes…..

    • “I strongly encourage you to reach out to Mr Barry and let him know that his company is promoting hatred and bigotry”

      He’ll be gratified you noticed, and double down.

  19. “Most importantly, I don’t want to own a gun, and so I will exercise my right not to own one or allow one in my home.”

    Translation: Please rob me. My address is readily available, I have money, I have jewelry, I don’t have any weapons in the house and I can’t defend myself against you.

  20. Yes, when we have politicians threatening lethal force (including nuclear weapons) for noncompliance with laws in violation of constitutionally guaranteed rights, what is not only a right, does become a necessity.

  21. Hate to say it, but if the father owns the house or is paying the rent, he has a right to not have a gun under his roof if he doesn’t want a gun under his roof. The fact that he lets his infantile fears outweigh the concern for his daughter being able to protect herself buys him my contempt. But he has the right.

    • You are completely right and if she said this, she would be right too. But that would get her nowhere – she had to push the anti rights propaganda.

  22. If you’re such a loser that you believe it’s a good idea to ask for help from some random bum penning an ‘advice column’…

    • You know those random bums make their questions up as necessary for stuff they want to write about, right?

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