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One of the central tenets underlying gun ownership for self-defense: there are bad people out there. Seriously bad people. People with no respect for civilized norms, who’d happily rape, torture, injure and/or kill innocent people without any moral qualms. President Trump has a name for these people, some of whom are illegal immigrants: “animals.”

Vox science reporter Brian Resnick is unhappy with that term. The case that Trump’s language “justifies or even mandates violence,” the article’s sub-head proposes.

On Friday, Donald Trump stood before law enforcement officers in Long Island, New York, and warned them about the “animals” they were up against.

Trump’s speech to the Long Island police officers was long and chilling. Throughout his remarks, the president repeatedly advocated for violent policing. He also greatly exaggerated the threat of crime in the New York City suburbs, lamenting how Long Island’s parks have become “bloodstained killing fields.”

But most chilling was Trump’s description of the Latino gang members he singled out as the culprits: “I was reading one of these animals was caught and explaining they like to knife them and cut them and let them die slowly because that way it’s more painful. And they enjoy watching that much more.”

And that’s a problem because . . .

When we refer to people as “animals” or anything other than “people” it flips a mental switch in our minds. It allows us to deny empathy to other people, makes us feel numb to their pain, and lets us forgive ourselves from causing them harm.

At best, the dehumanizing language in Trump’s Long Island speech tells law enforcement they’re superior to these “animals,” which “justifies or even mandates violence,” Nour Ktiely, who studies the psychology of dehumanization and its consequences at Northwestern, told Vox in an email.

At worst,” Kteily said, “it communicates that message more broadly to the most fervent of the white supremacists who number among the president’s supporters.” These are people who — like Trump — may often conflate the words “immigrant” and “criminal.”

Oy vey. Here’s a story about the Latin Kings [via nydailynews.com] that makes one wonder how much empathy these gang members deserve, and what Mr. Resnick would consider an appropriate adjective to describe them. (Picture of perps above.)

Fueled by hate for homosexuals, a sick crew of Bronx gang members went on a wave of sadistic violence that included forcing a teen to burn his gay lover with cigarettes, cops said Friday.

The cowardly creeps then made the 17-year-old watch as they sodomized the (sic) tortured man with a miniature baseball bat.

I would have thought that the left-leaning Mr. Resnick would have some empathy for the LGBTQ community. Keeping in mind that this is hardly the first time these, well, animals attacked LGBTQ members (Latin Kings gang member gets life term for killing trans teen with hammer).

There is considerable irony here.

Not only does Mr. Resnick fail to understand that it’s in society’s best interest to marginalize, indeed vilify those who fail to respect the sanctity of human life, but he can’t see his comrades’ constant dehumanization of their conservative opponents. And where that would lead.

Inside all of us is the same mental machinery that fueled the atrocities of the past century. “We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them,” writes the philosopher Sam Keen.

That’s why we can’t kid ourselves into believing that dehumanizing language is harmless.

Dehumanization, and increasing acceptance of prejudice, won’t immediately lead to atrocities — but it will make it easier to make life worse for the marginalized.

And yet liberals like Mr. Resnick believe “marginalized” Americans — all Americans, save the police — should remain disarmed in the face of attacks by animals. Go figure.

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76 COMMENTS

    • This shows the sick mind of the left and the cultural marxists leaders.

      Murdering Invaders are the victims and their victims are some how the bad guys for wanting them removed from this nation.

      Deport these invaders, deport all invaders, and above all deport the people who aid, abide, hire, defend, rent, or advocate for them, citizen or not. If you defend them enemy, YOUR ARE THE ENEMY.

    • I’d prefer to offer them a one way trip to Guatemala. Them drop them off at about 30,000 ft sans parachute.

  1. The use of “animals” is clearly intended to show that their behavior is outside or human norms. It’s not hard to understand, unless one is a hyper partisan liberal seeking political advantage in the face of a brutal, gang-related threat.

  2. Some groups fear being held to the higher standards of Western Civilization. They should be afraid. Coming to America has consequences.

    • John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter 2. Of The State of Nature (c. 1675)

      6. But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions…And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

      7. And that all men may be restrained from invading others’ rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of Nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of Nature is in that state put into every man’s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree as may hinder its violation. For the law of Nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain if there were nobody that in the state of Nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders; and if any one in the state of Nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every one may do so. For in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do.

      • Did your Senator vote for this “Law of Nature”. The only Universal Laws are the Ten Commandments, and God has His own plan for those who flout them. As far as gang bangers of any ethnic origin is concerned, those who repudiate the Laws of Man do not deserve the protection of those laws. They dismiss the duties of humanity to be good citizens to their fellow men, therefore they have earned the title of subhuman, or animal. This liberal journalist has yet to experience the tender mercies of this bunch of thugs, and has no idea at all what he is talking about.

        In my not so humble opinion, the only appropriate response to this public menace is to destroy them with all the power of the State. They are spreading like a virus, financing their path with deadly drugs, murdering whomever they like. In effect, they are a foreign invasion, and should be expelled with military force. That this is not an immediate priority of the State shows how divorced from reality the leaders of the State actually are.

  3. Ask him about abortion… “It’s just a group of cells, just tissue scientifically speaking”. Yup we can brutally dismember babies, perform partial birth abortions, or leave newborns to die alone in a stainless steel tray because they somehow managed to live through what was supposed to be an abortion procedure. Because they dehumanized babies. So no, I have no sympathy for criminals and gang bangers. I am somewhat appalled though, it’s a huge insult to animals to compare them to the Latin Kings, or MS-13, or the Bloods or Crips…. Animals typically only kill to eat, for self defense, or to protect their young or another member of their herd/pack/etc.

    • You (the collective you) really need to throttle back on the abortion issue. I understand your feelings, but the VAST majority of people seeking abortion are those who put ABSOLUTELY NO THOUGHT into their actions for what ever reason, nor the outcome (so to speak).

      What is worse? Elimination of a small collection of dividing cells, or condemning a child to a life with an uncaring R-strategy reproduction “family?”

      Poverty, absent fathers (read: genetic donors), lack of a family life, no interest in education, a HUGE F’IN DRAIN on the social commons that YOU are paying for. All this is better? If YES…why? Seriously, I know this is a gun forum, and I won’t change your mind…but please think about it. Remember, THINK not FEELZ. You have ALL THE PREPS YOU CAN POSSIBLY AFFORD because YOU can think ahead. Instead of welfare, what if someone came to your door and said, “you have more ammo than me. Give me some.” What would you do?

      Most of the people you are preparing to protect yourself from are likely people who weren’t aborted, and those in Washington who enable them. Think about that.

      Thanks. Flame on if you feel the need. I welcome differing opinions.

      • No flames, just a couple responses…. first, once you excuse murder, no matter how much the media and PP dehumanize it, it opens the door to eugenics, assisted suicide, forced euthanasia, etc. For example see: CHINA. Second, making it easy makes it more. If you want to reduce births, reduce pregnancies, there are ways, though again to the liberals, socially unacceptable. The answer lies in restoring the real family unit, affordable housing, food, medical care, and realistic living wage jobs. I don’t harp on abortion typically, but in so many cases the obvious hypocrisy cries out for using it as a comparison. The liberals demand an end to the death penalty for criminals, yet demand it on the taxpayers’ dime for the merely unwanted.

      • Generally speaking, I would assume that a person at my door asking for ammunition was either a close friend, to whom I would give some freely, or a dire enemy, to whom I also would give some freely but in an entirely different manner.

        Are you implying, in a sort of tantalizing ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach, that we should have a CHOICE in whom we choose to allow to be aborted, and who not? Speaking with GREAT sardonicism, that is something that I could support, but I fear that many are just not ready for state-sponsored eugenics in this country. That is not to say that we don’t already HAVE some state-sponsored eugenics programs afoot (Planned Parenthood being one, a group that kills more black children every year than do OTHER black children, or anyone else for that matter, a rather impressive feat in itself), but it’s not commonly spoken of in polite circles, and generally, those who DO get aborted nowadays are not uniformly exactly the ones I would select for such treatment.
        If you are reminding us that many of the ‘Others’ who prey upon the good people of the country would have far better been aborted than born, I heartily agree. Some are even ripe candidates for retroactive abortion, and the sooner, the better.
        But that’s not the way this works. That’s not how ANY of this works.

      • You certainly are lost, whether you’re down south or not.

        I’ll type this slowly because I don’t think you read very fast:

        Murdering. Children. For. Convenience. Is. Not. Acceptable.

        A child has its own DNA distinct from the mother. Any time you want to make a bullsh*t argument to justify murder, read my last and shut up.

        • > Murdering. Children. For. Convenience. Is. Not. Acceptable.

          Creating. A. Life. Doomed. To. Suffering. Because. You. Decided. To. F. Without. Thinking. Of. Anything. Except. Orgasmic. Moments. Of. Pleasure. Is. Pure. EVIL.

          The Dalai Lama (supreme boss of compassion) once said at a talk I attended that (paraphrased) ‘the ONLY way to prevent suffering in a life it to NOT CREATE ONE.’

          If you are intoxicated or just pleasure addicted, and can’t or won’t think ahead a couple of minutes and be willing to invest in the 18+ years of responsibility to your child, yourself, and society…you are evil. Pure and simple.

          Do I WANT people to get abortions? Heck no. I want rational, responsible thought and actions.

          We have the 4 rules of gun safety. Why don’t we have ‘4 rules of junk safety?’ Careful, that thing might go off.

        • > Murdering. Children. For. Convenience. Is. Not. Acceptable.

          Creating. A. Life. Doomed. To. Suffering. Because. You. Decided. To. F. Without. Thinking. Of. Anything. Except. Orgasmic. Moments. Of. Pleasure. Is. Pure. EVIL.

          The Dalai Lama (supreme boss of compassion) once said at a talk I attended that (paraphrased) ‘the ONLY way to prevent suffering in a life it to NOT CREATE ONE.’

          If you are intoxicated or just pleasure addicted, and can’t or won’t thnik ahead a couple of minutes be willing to invest in the 18+ years of responsibility to your child, yourself, and society…you are evil.

          Do I WANT people to get abortions? Heck no. I want rational, responsible thought.

          We have the 4 rules of gun safety. Why don’t we have ‘4 rules of junk safety?’ Careful, that thing might go off.

        • Creating. A. Life. Doomed. To. Suffering. Because. You. Decided. To. F. Without. Thinking. Of. Anything. Except. Orgasmic. Moments. Of. Pleasure. Is. Pure. EVIL.

          The Dalai Lama (supreme boss of compassion) once said at a talk I attended that (paraphrased) ‘the ONLY way to prevent suffering in a life it to NOT CREATE ONE.’

          If you are intoxicated or just pleasure addicted, and can’t or won’t thnik ahead a couple of minutes be willing to invest in the 18+ years of responsibility to your child, yourself, and society…you are evil.

          All of that very well may be true (except the Dalai Lama being the “supreme boss of compassion”; that role belongs to Jesus of Nazareth). Even so: the appropriate remedy for one evil is not to commit another/further evil – especially against innocent life that had no say in the matter.

        • You are correct, you simply choose the wrong solution. Punishing the unborn child for the sins of the biological parents. Free and/or forced sterilization possibly prior to puberty is the solution, since reversing the process is a standard procedure now. Or the Depo shots. I know most people think I’m a nut, but I have advised several young men to make some sperm bank deposits for freezing and have a vasectomy, that way there’s a 90+% chance they will get to choose when and with whom they have a child, not Vatican roulette. Making abortion free and easily accessible gives people license to procreate indiscriminately since there’s an easy if vile and immoral get out of parenthood free card on every corner.

  4. Trump was wrong to call them “animals”. That unfairly impugns the animal kingdom. Unlike street gang members, most animals serve a useful purpose in their ecosystem.

    • Rotting gangbangers serve all sorts of useful purposes.

      Every major city in the country has at least two coyote packs living in it and flies gotta eat too.

      • “… and flies gotta eat too.”

        I believe the right line here is, “Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.”

    • Should have called them Japanese Beatles. Those bastards are destroying a lot of my garden this year!

  5. One wonders how he feels about calling one’s political opposition “a basket of deplorables” who are “beyond redemption”….

    I’m going to go out on a limb and guess he finds such a statement acceptable because he ain’t real fond of people who are not costal liberals with what he seems acceptable views and voting patterns.

    • I freely confess that I am a proud occupant of the Basket of Deplorables, am completely irredeemable, and am further a practicing Ammosexual.

      I even have the T-shirt.

      There is a great deal of personal satisfaction in being everything that a Liberal despises. Wear your badge with honor, my man!

  6. Was going to leave a long, caustic comment, but thought better of it. The stupidity of the progressive left speaks for itself.

  7. All people are “Animals” the tree of life splits into two branches, one for animals one for plants. We fall on the animal side. The question then is, how high on the tree do they fall, do those animals qualify as “People”?

    The SOP for MS-13 inductees is that you HAVE TO KILL SOMEONE to be admitted to the gang, and that YOU HAVE TO KILL A COP to be made a lieutenant or captain in the gang.

    So, no, if they are people, then you’re not.

    https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2008/january/ms13_011408

    • Hmmm… the other group of bad guys that required killing to join was Al Qaida in Iraq under Zarqawi. Zarqawi beheaded enough women to easily qualify for whatever adjective you have for heinous murderer

    • I came to post the same exact thing. As an avid hunter i have the utmost respect for the animals i kill to feed my family. Gang members not so much.

  8. Weird that lefties would have a problem about using terms to dehumanize people… terms like “bundle of cells” or “choice” or “woman’s body” come to mind as ways to deny humanity.

      • Murder is murder, that’s everybody’s business… or at least it should be. You don’t get off easy because you don’t have a uterus, men are required to think about it and take a position, even if it’s to remain undecided.

      • “No man is an island,
        Entire of itself,
        Every man is a piece of the continent,
        A part of the main.
        If a clod be washed away by the sea,
        Europe is the less.
        As well as if a promontory were.
        As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
        Or of thine own were:
        Any man’s death diminishes me,
        Because I am involved in mankind,
        And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
        It tolls for thee.”

        Not too shabby for the late 17th Century, what? Methinks he was ON to something . . .
        This may be the best response to abortion that I can summon, and it’s not even mine.

      • “My guess is you’re not a woman. Thus, not your business, nor mine. What’s it to ya?”

        While I am not a woman, I am a member of this society. Of which, women make up about half.
        What affects women, then, affects me, as well as most other men.
        When we, as a society, make a decision, and then tell half of that society that it doesn’t concern them, said society needs to look and see if that’s really true.
        In the case of abortion, that’s clearly not true.
        First, to say the father has no rights (said rights being allocated to the woman), but still has responsibilities is absurd. On its very face.
        Second, to claim (as abortion rights activist do) that a fetus isn’t human flies in the face of science. (This, from the party of science!)
        Just two reasons why abortion affects the entirety of our society.
        Not to mention either the potential loss to humanity of the achievements of the aborted person, or the slippery slope of the ‘elimination’ of unwanted people.
        So it is our business. That you see otherwise is, unfortunately, your loss, as well as that of society.

  9. If libtards feel some much “empathy” for these animals, I encourage them, nay, I insist that they let them stay at their homes for 6 months. Then we’ll see how righteous they feel about this.

  10. Then Resnick should prove his commitment to The Cause and invite some of the MS-13 gang members into his household. He can both provide them with a sanctuary from the ICE agents and the means to help them turn their lives around by sending them to trade schools or college on his dime.

  11. Who in their right mind gives a damn about that lying leftist rag VOX? I don’t! Their fracking opinions don’t matter in the real world where people are killed, raped, robbed or assaulted by illegal immigrants and refugees everyday. VOX doesn’t live in this world. Their employees live in concrete and steel forts protected from any danger of the outside world.

  12. Would Vox prefer we call MS-13 targets; because MS-13 are the targets of investigation, prosecution and sentencing.

    • Nope. ‘Barbarians’ were pretty normal folks, and just got labeled that by the Romans, who thought that everyone who wasn’t a Roman WAS a ‘barbarian.’ The name was coined by Romans, of course, who couldn’t understand ‘those people,’ and characterized what they were saying as sounding like ‘Barabarabara!’. Thus, ‘Barbarians.’
      Also, Vandals were pretty normal folks, too.

  13. They are animals, rabid animals that should be removed from the face of the earth by any means possible.

  14. “When we refer to people as “animals” or anything other than “people” it flips a mental switch in our minds.”

    They are being 100% honest and consistent.

    That’s why you can’t slip up and refer to the unwilling participants in an abortion as “babies” and only as “fetuses”.

  15. The cowardly creeps then made the 17-year-old watch as they sodomized the (sic) tortured man with a miniature baseball bat.

    The gang got the idea from the NYC cop who sometime in the late 90’s sodomized a Haitian immigrant with a broomstick in the police station.

  16. “It allows us to deny empathy to other people, makes us feel numb to their pain” Why would any _normal_ person feel ’empathy’ for MS-13 fiends, or wish to ‘feel the pain’ of the Latin Kings predators? How could any well-adjusted law-abiding adult give a rat’s @ss about them? This is another example of the War On Normalcy that got Trump elected. The cultural damage of even only the last ten years is breathtaking. Goodness, we normal people are getting so very tired of being lectured about how awful we are.

  17. The real “animals” aren’t MS-13. They’re just stupid, ignorant thugs. The real animals are writers for Vox.

  18. Justifying self defense against a violent attack requires placing the victim’s welfare above that of the assailant. Resnick and his ilk refuse to do that. They would rather leave the decision to the assailant and complain about it later.

    I do object to Trump’s advocating abuse of arrestees. That happens too often as it is.

  19. They are animals in a predator class that is not part of the endangered species act but SHOULD be! They need more to be harmed than their hurt feelings.

    • But, are they SUPER predators? heeheh I do believe a witch said that some years ago, sadly not enough years for me to have forgotten her name.

  20. Any self-righteous, brain damaged, snot nosed retard worth it’s salt would condemn President Trump if the sun were to rise in the east and set in the west.

  21. According to Vox and what few readers they have, gun owning tax payers are all a basket of deplorable, bitter clingers. Hardcore gang members on the other hand are ‘people’ and we should respect their ‘humanity’.

    I don’t know how much Brian Resnick paid for the college degree he probably has. All I know is that he paid too much.

  22. MS-13 and the Latin Kings are animals… as are those who make excuses for them.

    These nitwits are to hyper-violent gangs what Ezra Pound was to Mussolini and Hitler.

  23. on Resnick’s socio-eonomic ladder, LGBTQ occupies a lower wrung than homophobic violent immigrant. Resnick doesn’t know it, but this is where his prog base splinters.

  24. Every MS-13 gang member as well as any other illegal caught (Not Arrested) Should be nailed to a pole at the Mexican border facing south. As Josey Wales said “Hell boy the buzzards gotta eat same as the worms”.

  25. How about showing some empathy for the victims of the mass murderers who torture people to death. When people turn into monsters by embracing evil, they’re no longer people. People have worth, and those that become evil lose that. The evil are human animals, and they’re nothing but a danger to people whose lives have value. Was this idiot against Operation Anthropoid? The important thing is not what happens to the evil, but that they’re stopped from committing further evil.

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