“The national debate over firearms regulation is often presented as a battle of extremes: those who view any effort to tighten gun laws as an infringement of rights versus those who see guns as a menace to society,” writer Susan Saulny writes at nytimes.com. “But gun owners like Michael Kundu come from a largely unexplored middle ground — a place of nuance and contradiction.” Unexplored because you can’t count on one hand the kind of people Ms. Saulny has somehow managed to unearth for her expose. To wit: “Mr. Kundu is a master marksman from rural Washington who owns pistols and assault rifles for self-defense, all while claiming to detest the presence of guns in his life and in the broader American culture. ‘I’d love to see all guns destroyed,’ he said. “But I’m not giving up mine first.” It gets worse . . .
Other gun owners interviewed for this article expressed similar reservations, citing their enjoyment of hunting or of introducing family members to the sport while expressing support for stricter gun control legislation. Mr. Kundu, for instance, supports a ban on the kind of assault weapon that he owns, a rifle manufactured by Panther Arms.
OK then. Anyone else?
Kay H. Wilson, a blogger in Waco, Tex., who recently wrote a post about her “love-hate relationship with guns,” said, “We need people to speak up.” Ms. Wilson describes herself as “a pretty good dang shot” when she practices her aim at a family farm in West Texas, but also said, “I’m no lover of the personal handgun.”
While she and her husband, Richard, have a gun in their suburban home for personal protection, they store it and the bullets in separate rooms. And Ms. Wilson acknowledges that she would sooner throw her cat at an intruder than shoot someone. The gun does not make her feel safer.
Ban assault cats! But seriously, where did Susan find these people? And yes, there are more.
Sonia Wolff, a novelist in Los Angeles, felt compelled to buy a pistol a few years ago for self-defense, a decision she wrote about in The Los Angeles Times. “I had never wanted a gun,” the introduction states. “Now I own a Smith & Wesson revolver. Why?”
The short answer, she said in an interview, was, “When push comes to shove, I’d rather have one.”
But she added, “If I had my way in the best of all worlds, nobody would have a gun.”
Any more? All done. Nope.
John Flores and Patricia Speed, a married couple in San Francisco, own two 9-millimeter handguns and a Winchester Model 70 rifle because they have recently come to enjoy shooting at ranges. They say they enjoy the concentration it takes to be a good marksman and find the practice relaxing.
But as first-time gun owners, they say they were shocked by how easily they bought the guns and feel uncomfortable about storing them — even unloaded in a locked safe — in their home.
“It freaked me out how easy it was to buy a gun,” said Ms. Speed, 30, a graphic designer. “I think it’s harder to get an iPhone than it is a gun. Now I’m a gun owner who believes there needs to be way more regulation.”
This fear and self-loathing reminds of nothing so much as the members of my tribe who’d dressed Preppy and spoke like Thurston Howell III to hide their Jewish roots.
Anyway, if I may sum this up: I want a gun but people like me shouldn’t have one. And that includes you. Is that really what we’re up against?
You have to consider their intended audience, liberals just love that kind of garbage.
Liberals love to explore their contradictions through reading and writing this garbage. Overheard the two lost children at the next table in the Chinese joint evaluating whether to eat free-range chicken or regular chicken. The drama. I just don’t see these contradictions in non-liberals. I’ll eat em both.
You are so right, Joke. It is indeed fear and loathing in libtard land. You have to give a grudging respect for the Goebbels like manipulation of the subject matter for the sheeple by the liberal media elite. Sick, evil, treasonous bastards who should be….’held accountable’…..if things get much worse.
They write these articles so liberals feel justified hijacking the voice of “responsible gun owners” and can say “See! Reasonable people who own guns agree with us, it’s the terrorist fringe that’s the problem”. It’s creating the narrative-adjusting reality to the meme. This is becoming a street fight with the progressives conducting an ever intensifying display of deception and an image of danger from anyone pro 2A, or even netural for that matter.
Notice how the article is framed, between those oppose “any effort to tighten gun laws” and those who “see guns as a menace to society” thus eliminating from the conversation all of us who see that the current gun laws are unnecessary, far to restrictive, counterproductive and likely unconstitutional.
That view is not allowed, though it is quite common.
What rocks did these people come out from under?
Easy answer to their lack of comfort around guns: Get.Rid.Of.Them.
Also, in regards to the iPhone being harder to get, I’d rather buy guns/ammo than waste my money on a over designed waste of energy.
You’d feel different if you got one. You can read TTAG on it, and post too! Among many other things.
Can you read “Lord of the Flies” on it?……
Yes
I miss phones with a rotary dial–those things did one job well without all the fuss.
I miss “party lines”. They were the original reality TV.
I have an Android phone. It has better performance than an iPhone 5 except it entered the market over a year before. iPhones are like Glocks. All the “cool” people have them even though there are better products out there.
We have our disagreements, but apparently gear is a common ground. I share your appreciation of Android and if I remember correctly, you also enjoy the XDm.
I can read TTAG on my ebook reader. Which still cost me less than a subsidized iphone(assuming contract – they’re like 600-800 bucks normally).
No, NO! You point the small end at your face and push the little crescent thingy away from you!
This.
On a serious note, I work VERY hard for a living. However, I one day aspire to have the work ethic that that guy’s belt has. That thing is REALLY working…
And that blonde looks like M Moore in drag.
Kay H. Wilson, a blogger in Waco, Tex. “While she and her husband, Richard, have a gun in their suburban home for personal protection, they store it and the bullets in separate rooms. And Ms. Wilson acknowledges that she would sooner throw her cat at an intruder than shoot someone.”
-Are you freaking kidding me? These people vote?
“It freaked me out how easy it was to buy a gun,” said Ms. Speed, 30, a graphic designer. “I think it’s harder to get an iPhone than it is a gun. Now I’m a gun owner who believes there needs to be way more regulation.”
-How easy it was…. to get a gun in CA? wow….just..wow.
-What planted are these people from? I would love to go there for a visit…
“Are you freaking kidding me? These people vote?”
And breed
meant *what planet*
“Are you freaking kidding me? These people vote?”
I’m going to amend that to reflect the first thing I say whenever anyone says that “voting doesn’t matter.” Here goes:
These people vote.
Expanded: You know that guy at work with the crazy ideas, that bends your ear at the water cooler when you need to get work done? Everyone has one. That guy votes, so you should too, if for no other reason than to nullify his crazy.
Of course we can always take a page out of the liberal
playbook by bringing out our dead and having them
vote twice.
I’m usually for shooting zombies, but maybe we should rethink this and train them to vote? We can use what we learn to re-train the antis.
Doesn’t matter who votes; only who counts them.
Once you have put in checks and processes to insure a fair vote, then voting does matter.
Those who count the votes only matter if you have a corrupt system.
There are many, many examples of where voting counts in history.
Unadulterated, unfathomable, incoherent babble!
We are up against the irrational fear of people with limited self control. They can’t control their emotions around a handgun etc, so how could anyone else? What is a good motivator is deadly crime, tends to force a choice, Randy
Yup, one of my co-workers used this exact same argument. He likes shooting at the range to let off steam, but doesn’t trust himself on the street with one. Therefore everyone else must be the same and shouldn’t have guns either.
JFC, no mention of kids in this crap, lets hope the creepies didn’t produce more like them…why buy the damn things if you dont want them?
Ask Mark Kelly.
Considering the state of journalism, I can’t take this at face value. They are either lying, severely misrepresented, or fictional. To find that many gross outliers would take more effort looking that would be worth.
In this vein consider RF’s question, “But seriously, where did Susan find these people?” That’s easy. All you have to do is look at the steady stream of Jerry Springer & other similar shows and you can see that there is a seemingly endless supply of persons eager to be in the media in some way or another, even if it means appearing to be a blooming idiot.
looks like they tried to find the two fattest people possible to ensure that even self-hating gun owners fit the stereotype as bumbling lardasses
Unfortunately, they will both be dead of heart disease before they see their disarmed utopian society.
In my line of work, I have noted a very strong correlation between obesity and emotional personality basis. In fact I have come to conclude that people who are significantly overweight are always so because they either fear loss of self control (the resistant/stubborn type) or they fear everything (the irrationally over-emotional type).
It doesn’t surprise me that the two pictured above have the body type that goes with the latter; that personality type tends to see nothing wrong with complete contradictions because they think with their feelings, and feelings are, by nature, mutually exclusive with logic.
In other words, this type of person makes no sense, and they never will – because they literally just cannot think that way. Their brains are wired wrong for it. But they’ll swear up and down till they’re blue in the face that they make perfect sense, and think logically and rationally.
I used to have a job trying to help people like his lose weight. I stopped trying to help them lose weight a long time ago. It’s hopeless, because they cannot think, and they cannot control themselves. (At least the stubborn ones have self control, even if they do take it too far and turn it into stubborn.)
For the record, I have noted that overweight people who are roundish tend to be emotional thinkers, and the ones who are stocky and squarish tend to be the stubborn types. They have more logical capacity, but are still ultimately driven by fear.
So yes, sadly… this type of person not only exists, they are rather common in the United States these days. You might have noticed.
After personally being misrepresented by my own local media, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a few pissed off families in that rags market right now.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a few fictitious families in that article.
The folks in the photo should have bought a treadmill instead of guns.
Why buy a treadmill when you get the ground for free?
You notice that other non-contradiction that the media does not want to touch: people who do not own firearms but are against disarmament. A very large group to be sure.
That is a curious thing, because they don’t touch that, but they lurv them some heteros who are in favor of gay rights, don’t they?
“But gun owners like Michael Kundu come from a largely unexplored middle ground — a place of nuance and contradiction.”
That’s not where the Kundu’s are from. They clearly still live there. And, hey, they’ve got a new neighbor, Mark Kelly! He’s a block down at the corner of Contradiction and Hypocrit’s Way. Of course Mr. Kundu is a Master Marksman. He’s a human bench rest. From the clothes and the decor, these two want peace and freedom…and secret guns, a double life, since they’ve got double everything else. What’s their alternative to a gun? Running away? No. The Wilsons? Sure they keep the ammo in a separate room….when they’re in Tahiti. These guys’ gun opinions are even more confused than my high-school girl-friend’s thoughts about going all the way. Glad they’ve got guns, nonetheless.
This is a standard liberal argument. A pro gun position is “simplistic” while a “I have guns but hate them” position is “nuanced.” “Neurotic” is a better word. If you don’t like guns, aren’t comfortable around them then get rid of the damned things.
And with your gun and ammo stored separate, I hope that cat is close at hand if anyone comes kicking the door in late at night.
Yes. If we all said “I’m so ambivalent about my guns. They have a menacing quality and dark karma, and yet how else will I defend myself against the methabillies? I have two guns but only because sometimes I feel a blue gun would compliment my mood, other times I feel light beige and at peace.”
The fact is (and I should know because I live in among them) that many more liberals own a gun or two than will ever fess up to it. They’re afraid they’ll lose play dates for their kids or O’bama points in the electronic world. The reputable non-Chicago based polls have been showing a 46-52% rough estimate of households with guns. However, many of those households would rather surrender their pensions than openly politic for the 2nd Amendment. No one actually keeps their gun and ammo separate at night. No one.
Bulldookey, I keep my AR’s in the safe and the thousands of rounds of 5.56 in boxes and ammo cans beside it (because there’s no more room in the safe).
Of course the two compact .45s that I’m wearing right now sleep next to my bed at night. Loaded & Chambered.
I’m glad they don’t live in Iowa. What a bunch of creeps, but I bet they didn’t look too far to find “suitable” gun owners.
Sounds trite but it’s true…..Liberalism is a mental disorder. How can any sane person feel these people are thinking clearly?
Well, I’ll cop to the idea that in a perfect world, nobody would ever need a gun. I should also mention that in this perfect world, topless supermodels would patrol the streets on unicorns and all public libraries would have 70 different beers on tap.
Sadly, we don’t live anywhere close to a perfect world. In the real world, evil exists. There are people out there who want what you have, see nothing wrong with hurting you to get it, and don’t care whether or not your pacifistic worldview acommodates them. People who choose not to live by the sword can still die by it. If they’re okay with that arrangement, fine by me, but they’d best keep their personal values the hell off of my God-given rights.
Your perfect world is pretty alright by me.
No kidding, right? And the bartender at the library? Sasquatch [pictured above with the missus, holding a rifle]. All bartenders will be Sasquatch!
Yep, too bad harsh, nasty reality has to keep coming in and throwing ice water on the groin of utopian fantasy.
If I could destroy all guns, knives, weapons, and inertia, while still maintaining a high quality of life, providing plenty of food, and preventing all aggressive action while not removing free will, I would do it.
When I read “I’d love to see all guns destroyed … But I’m not giving up mine first” the above sentiment is what I imagined, and I agree with that.
Of course, people will always misunderstand, and interpret his words as “I don’t care if they come for Bob’s guns, as long as they don’t take mine.”
Destroying all weapons on Earth will fail, because it’s not the weapons that are the issue, it’s the humans who make and use them. Weapons are inanimate objects. And if you were to destroy all of them, the most important thing in the world would be… making more!
Until ALL humans outgrow the desire to harm one another, there will be a need for self defense, and if the defender isn’t equally or better armed than the attacker, they’ll probably end up regretting it.
Weapons will not be going away any time soon, guns or otherwise, because humans still haven’t figured out how to be reasonable to one another as a rule of thumb.
So let’s not delude ourselves here with the idea of destroying all guns, or even weapons, being effective for a split second. Take away all weapons, and it’ll be 0.5 seconds until someone “invents” a rock to attack someone else with.
…and the point is, the day will never come when all people chooses to respect life over personal greed, avarice, self-sustainment. Genesis 6:5 not only describes to absolute depravity of all people of that era, it serves as a reminder of the base nature of mankind.
There will never be a “shining moment” for humanity, only the illusion of it. Those who would try to eliminate all firearms simply do not understand that Sime truth and are seeking Gene Rodennberry’s perfect alliance. It doesn’t and will not exist. If any country on earth ever had that opportunity, it was this one and could not approach it much less sustain it.
This battle to protect the second amendment is indeed a battle of ideals and vision, neither if which are ever realized in their maturity. We may once again revisit events memorialized on April 19th if folks don’t lose the unrealistic image of who they seem to think they are…and can be.
Perhaps I would not need a gun, but I would certainly want one. Just love target shooting too much.
Good point. However, he wo lives by the sword dies by the sword refers to those who make their living through violence. By owning a gun and having the mindset of using it in an emergency, that is not technically living by the sword.
An article like this should be a surprise to none of us.
I , without a trace of sarcasm, genuinely believe people like Kay Wilson are the new mainstream American gun owner. People who own guns, enjoy them, and yet have not one iota of hesitation in supporting more regulations.
Evidence? I bring you the 2012 Election for Exhibit 1.Between 2008 and 2012 Obama sold more guns in Americas heartland then even the ATF could manage to pitch to drug cartels. Millions of guns, millions of boxes of ammo, and a resurgent interest in CCW and firearms training are the immediate result.
One would think that Obama would be unilaterally crushed by an army of gun owning voters come Nov 2012. Naturally, that didnt happen; because a majority of those record gun buyers are people like Kay.
Exhibit 2 ; the membership stats.The NRA boasts a 4 million member roll. The estimated number of gun owners in America is 90 million. Not even 10% of gun owners can be bothered to join the NRA; or more accurately, the organizations principles are in direct opposition to the “New Mainstream Gun Owners” desire for increased gun control.
The Prosecution Rests.
Get the Kleenex and drain the wine bottle gents and gals of TTAG. Lord knows I will be.
It was the nearly 2:1 vote for Obama by the millenials that elected him. An equally unfathomable result given how badly Obama is screwing them over.
For people who are shocked at how easy it is, I think it is because these people come from states with over bearing, inefficient bureaucracies. They want gun purchasers to under go a background check, but cannot fathom that such a check can be run in 30 seconds. When it takes 18 months to get a pistol permit in NY, how can it be that a computerized background check is practically instant?
Being a refugee from NJ, I was shocked how easy it was to buy a gun in PA when I moved there. But since I’m a normal, logical, rational, self-reliant and confident American, I was thrilled with how easy it was. As it should be.
My Westchester county, New York target shooting only permit took 18 months and cost 400 bucks. My Pennsylvania CCW permit cost 26 bucks and I had it in my hand in five days, including the time it took to snail mail it in and for them to snail mail it back!
God bless PA!
What is that “heirloom rifle that has not been fired since he was a boy” (from the source) that he’s holding in that photo? There’s a closeup here.
I can’t help but think there was either some creative writing/interviewing going on for this, or there were a few people that somehow were networked together that made it easy on the writer. It’d be like me griping that it just bothers me to no end to have a bottle of Macallan sitting in my house. It is a delicious whisky, but I’m troubled by how much I enjoy the flavor. And I’m shocked how easy it was to purchase. I’m so troubled, I keep it and the glasses in separate rooms.
Looks like one of the cheapo rifles made to sell for $1.99 back around 1910. It will probably remove most of his face if he shoots it.
That might actually be an improvement.
A company named Quackenbush made 22s and air rifles and other cheap stuff. This one may be a Quackenbush. A lot of them were given as prizes for selling Cloverine Salve and other patent snake oil products. The rifle is worth a few bucks to a collector but it isn’t a shooter.
The NYT finds insane, mentally and emotionally unstable people to support their irrational and morally bankrupt agenda. And touts it as normal. Business as usual.
To the people in this NYT article, do this nation a favor and shoot yourselves with the guns you hate owning so much.
Sloth is just one symptom of a weak mind. But, a big one.
Critical thinking skills sadly are missing in the people interviewed for this article. They hate guns that much, but own them. The job ahead for those of us who think clearly is sometimes staggering to contemplate.
Where to start, how to begin, deprogramming in the land of double speak?
For more information on the master marksman /end sarc/ see this hilarious takedown
http://www.pagunblog.com/2013/03/10/the-new-hope-of-gun-control-advocates/
Heh, if true, that makes this even sillier.
Shall not be Questioned! FTW.
RF this is part of the Bloomberg Obama pact trying to divide gun owners this is NOT really happening BUT they are trying to forge a rift. We must stand united.
I can’t have been the only one who read “… have a gun in their suburban home for personal protection, they store it and the bullets in separate rooms” … and thought I hope she’s got a great arm, because the unloaded gun with the ammo ACROSS THE HOUSE is an overpriced rock/blunt object.
I guess that explains why I don’t have an I-phone. They might be really cool but I don’t feel comfortable around them. I don’t think you should have one either.
“While she and her husband, Richard, have a gun in their suburban home for personal protection, they store it and the bullets in separate rooms.”
WAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I had a good, hearty, real-life laugh at that one. Hopefully you are able to safely hide and barricade yourself in the bedroom when the home invasion happens. Of course, it’s more likely that you’re going to have to watch poor Richard get beaten to death by an unloaded gun while you struggle in futility against the rape.
Hey, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
[The short answer, she said in an interview, was, “When push comes to shove, I’d rather have one.”
But she added, “If I had my way in the best of all worlds, nobody would have a gun.”]
Selfishness and a misplaced idealism is the root of this group of folks.
Would it be great to live in a world free of violence, with no need of guns? Sure, but given the reality of human nature, and our propensity to hurt/kill each other in pursuit of what we want, regular people like me are always going to need a weapon, including a gun, to protect ourselves from bad guy/girl X.
The other prevailing attitude of people in the article seems to be, “It’s OK for me to own it, but those OTHER people… no.” Common sense regulation against the mentally ill and felons already exist, people. We don’t get to sort out people’s gun ownership based upon their religion, political preference, or God forbid, race / ethnicity.
Would I have a gun even if they weren’t useful for self-defense? Yes. Guns have a lot of legitimate uses, some of which are just plain fun.
+1. But even if guns were to vanish tomorrow that afternoon I’d be shopping for a cross bow, spear and war hammer. I need the security blanket that personal arms create. Does that make me a bad person? Or simply a realistic person?
Realistic. Humans have been toting swords, knives, clubs, and hefty rocks since the dawn of time.
Poor ol’ Abel himself probably wouldn’t have been the world’s first murder victim if he would have used one of his farming implements to defend himself against Cain.
Amazing how fast people become hypocrites when it comes to their own well-being isn’t it? “I need to fully protect myself but everyone else should do something less violent.”
All the news that makes me spit.
I don’t want to have any guns taken away from anyone (within reason, my reason) but there is a solution to this. Take all the guns away from the criminals, every one of them, then we can talk about taking my guns. Oh, take their knives, bats, and any other weapon the criminals have as well. In fact, lets not have any criminals at all, then we can talk about my guns.
you’re looking at this the wrong way: they found gun owner s among their readership. that must have been a shock to the editor s.
Self-loathing morons are imposing their will on us normal people. This must stop.
Kandu is a plant!
http://www.pagunblog.com/2013/03/10/the-new-hope-of-gun-control-advocates/
“This is not the first time Kundu has been in the media pitching himself as a self-hating, anti-hunting gun owner. CNN has taken the bait too. So who is Michael Kundu? Well, he was School Board President for Marysville School District who ended up in hot water in the past for writing a racist e-mail as a school board president. Also, as School Board President, he attempted to censor dissenting viewpoints on global warming from being discussed in schools.”
Read the whole thing.
Charlie
‘I do not care to belong to any club that would have me as a member.’ – Groucho Marx
“I am a bad person and i need government to tell me what’s best for myself. Please help me, Obama.”
The new white guilt?
“The gun does not make her feel safer.”
Of course not, she stores the bullets in a separate room!
This is a good example of why education for inexperienced gun owners is so important.
Maybe I missed something… So they fear an inanimate object and does not take personal responsibility for owning one but feels that because of their own fears, no one else should be allowed to own firearms. So how much did NYTIMES paid for these first hand experiences? Excuse me, but buying a firearm is bit more daunting than buying an iPhone here in CA, so um yah, I call your bullshite and raise you with how easy it is for 16 year olds to get their driver’s license.
Bah, these people aren’t so surprising as that. They’re just hypocrites. The NYT can try to dress is up as complexity, nuance, and contradiction, but hypocrisy is what it is. They own guns but they wish nobody else did. Freedom for me but not for thee. A shockingly common attitude, unfortunately.
I wish for once the liberal media would go talk to some CRIMINALS and see what THEY think about background checks. If you think it’s easy to get a gun legally, how easy is it to get an ILLEGAL gun. Then ask them, when legal gun owners have been stripped of their rights and there are no more legal guns, do the criminals just say “Wow – guess I need to start working at Burger King now”. My guess is they’ll probably not change professions, and instead of buying guns stolen from legal owners, they will need to get guns from the only legal gun owners that are left; the police.
Of course, that will never happen because it does not fir the liberal agenda and their need to construct what they think is a “perfect” society.
They can’t even properly identify the “extreme” position of pro-gun people: a total elimination of gun laws. They are claiming the “extreme” pro-gun position is where we’re at now, which of course was the extreme anti-gun position of the 1960s.
Let’s see now…people with mental disorders publishing articles about….people with mental disorders (along with eating disorders judging by the picture), to a target audience of….people with mental disorders.
Just thinking about this kinda makes me dizzy.
People who keep guns for personal defense would be retarded to keep the guns and ammunition in two separate locations. That would be more of a psychological security blanket. Thats like saying cops keep their guns on their sides but bullets in their patrol cars. Also saying I own a gun but hate all guns is like saying, I own cats for personal comfort and pleasure but I hate cats and wish all cats were dead. This is so damn retarded its hard to believe someone wrote this article with a straight face.
This article actually makes perfect sense to me. These people are elitists in every sense of the word. They believe that they have the maturity, knowledge self discipline to own a firearm, but you slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging plebians out there in red-state ‘merica don’t.
They also favor more restrictive gun laws to keep guns out of the hands of lowbrow “undesirables” and because they are close enough to the levers of power to know (or to believe, rightly or wrongly) that said laws will never be applied to them.
What’s missing from these people is what is missing from liberals everywhere, logic and reason.
When causing ones thoughts to conform to logic is no longer required, magical thinking is the inevitable result, thus people who are so frightened of an inanimate object that they believe a gun, locked in a safe, with its ammo stored in another room is still somehow dangerous. I’d submit that logically such a weapon is not only safe for the homeowner, but also safe for any intruder as well. Once one is adept at the Newspeak concept of seamlessly accepting what would ordinarily be a glaring logical error (also known as embracing liberalism) such paradoxes as purchasing a firearm for personal protection while simultaneously being consciously aware of one’s refusal to use it as such are easy things to accept.
Further illustration of this essential failure of reason is found in the arguments of the woman who wants a gun ‘when push comes to shove’ but who would happily disarm if only everyone else would’. She apparently assumes a force on force encounter in which her attacker will be armed with a gun thus requiring her to likewise be armed in order to adequately resist, evidenced by her willingness for universal disarmament. Her argument can only be valid if the existence of firearms were the only vector by which violence can be committed, something she seems to accept without qualification. However, one must wonder what becomes of her when she’s is beset by a powerful and athletic man determined to harm her, or one with a bat or knife, or two of them, or five of them. The logical fallacy is that of the straw man; she sets up an argument in which the only potential hazard is attack by gun, thus if others didn’t have them she wouldn’t be ‘forced’ to have one as well. The machinations behind such positions are usually emotional , in this case likely ‘liberal guilt’, in which one’s desires (owning a gun for defense) is undesirable to ones liberal tendencies and those of one’s social circle. This results in apologetics and rationalizations that never hold up to logical scrutiny.
Also at work behind such blatant logical fallacies are concepts of elitism as seen in the couple who couldn’t believe how easy it was to purchase a firearm . . . so easy they in fact bought two. Being from California, we know a few things about their path to gun ownership. We also know that the filing of extraneous forms, the excessive limitations on their liberties, restrictions on the types of firearms they could purchase and etc were of no concern to them. We also know that the taxes and fees weren’t a financial deterrent, that they don’t live in public housing and don’t have other legal disabilities, such as convictions or accusations of domestic violence, a spiteful ex who has sought the often routinely requested protection order or etc.
Logic and psychology can inform us to the motives and machinations of such people, but only assuming a fact that is in no way represented here, to whit; they aren’t lying. I’m surely not the only person who finds it incredible that a reporter was able to find someone to demonstrate each of these bizarre points that seem to come from a liberal guide to gun control debate.
Forgive my cynicism; surely the likelihood of rapidly locating people who espouses just the right sentiment to illustrate each of these points is far greater than that of a reporter for the NY Times coaching sources to lie? Right? Everyone?
Where did she find these people?
Ten will get you fifty it was either inside her pill crazed head, or her bosses hired them.