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“If my myth reveals an all-powerful God and a world where ‘everything happens for a reason’ then of course human agency is limited. People are either good or bad and God is mostly in control. But if God doesn’t exist or exists but is instead imagined as a mystery, a being who works through creative processes and loving engagement rather than overt control, then human agency is maximized and the hard divisions between the ‘good people’ and the ‘bad people’ will be blurred . . .

BFG-Long-Logo-Blue-JPG-220x39A mostly good person in a state of rage or despair might choose to a terrible thing on a particular afternoon, and limiting his access to guns will limit the damage he can do.” –  Karen E. Park, What We Think About Guns Reveals What We Think About God [via sojo.net]

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130 COMMENTS

      • You can sure see the sickness of leftist communism in this loons face. We have to watch these liberal monsters, as they attempt to squeeze humanity out of man…in the name of humanity.

    • Pure projection.

      He/she/it doesnt trust itself not to go postal and believes everybody else is equally psychotic.

    • Go ahead and delete.. Doesn’t change the fact that that is on futt-buck ugly he/she!!!

    • One might think that TTAG puts these ‘offenders’ pictures up to elicit such responses to then delete them.
      Or perhaps this is just how we call out our opposition.
      But know this, hell will rain down on us all if someone acts out based on such a post.

        • Controlled rage is restraint. It’s an indicator of a civilized person, able to peacefully coexist with others, i.e. a “good guy”.

    • We can expand that even further, if we’re to accept her premise.

      The fact is that if someone died within the past 100 years by unnatural causes, the chances are that their death occurred at the hands of a government, either theirbown or someone else’s.

      So if she’s serious about limiting the evil that people do, then she should start with disarming governments, not with disarming the innocents who typically comprise a government’s favorite targets.

      That means police, military, TSA, everyone.

  4. “Where there’s a will, there’s ALWAYS a way”.

    When loonies start driving gasoline tanker trucks into schools because they cannot buy a gun, people will long for the days of guns. Humans are vicious dangerous critters.

  5. Because, gosh… nobody in a sudden mindless rage would ever even dream of taking something else in hand to express that badness… or even use his/her bare hands in the process… Right?

    Dumb ass… having a gun, or not, makes no difference, of course, and I’d like to know how many times someone sitting next to her “goes postal” – or what her qualifications might be to make such a pronouncement.

    • In 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright’s butler murdered 7 people (including 2 children) with a hatchet and a can of gasoline. Brutal violence does not require a gun.

      • But to defend against a lethal attack in progress, a victim needs lethal force options. One thing the liberals never get.

        • The liberals do get it. They just don’t want victims to have lethal force options. In their minds, if you can’t save yourself without harming your assailant, you should take your lumps. Your life is no more precious than his. In contrast, people of the gun believe that victims’ welfare takes precedence over their assailants’ welfare. That principle justifies the use of force in self defense.

      • In 216 a man in France used a delivery truck o massacre 84 innocnt people. Damn good thing he couldn’t get his hands on a gun.

  6. Straw men all over. No major religion teaches that if there is a God, then people are either all good or all bad. Rather each addresses the human condition that we should choose good over evil, and each acknowledges that no one always successfully does so.

    It would seem she only revealed that she understands neither faith nor guns.

    • Well said, I would add to that list that she has no understanding of human nature. Good people are good and would never just decide in the middle of an afternoon to go murder the family next door; that is the provence of the sociopath.

    • To expand on the point of human nature: The simple truth that most of her ilk have to avoid is that killing other humans is anathema to everyone but the mentally deranged. It is impossible for these type of people to understand that most of us have thought about the possibility of ending another life in order to preserve life (self defense), and while horrifying, we acknowledge that survival is a preferred result.

      edited after reading RC comment (idea collision)

    • Look at that face. Does that look like a face that is attached to reality?

      Not a chance.

  7. The good thing about the Internet and access to virtually limitless on-demand media is that anyone can express their opinions to the world. The bad thing about the Internet and access to virtually limitless on-demand media is that anyone can express their opinions to the world, no matter how…misguided.

    • It is better to sit at home reading about the Kardashians and be thought a fool than to attempt to post what you consider a profound thought on the Internet and remove the doubt – Mark Twain

  8. I literally completely did not understand what was said in the first paragraph.

    Anyway, do they even read the news?

    Gun control works because somebody opened fire in Germany.

    Gun control works because somebody stabbed people.

    Gun control works because somebody drove a truck into a crowd.

    Gun control works only in your liberal BS.

  9. Here’s a quote from Prof. Parks’ article that tells you all you need to know about her views on guns:
    It matters little to point out that there is actually no such thing as a “good guy” with a gun or a “law-abiding gun owner.”

    Per Ms. Parks, I’m just a figment of someone’s imagination. As are you and millions of other Americans who believe in the 2nd Amendment and the rule of law.

  10. The mental gymnastics anti-gunners perform to rationalize their untenable position is worthy of a gold medal in Rio….

    • Most of these people could not pass a drug test, methinks. Most of them walk around in a haze, legally. I’d say 50% of Americans are on some type of drug prescribed for their “condition”. We wonder where all these loony tirades come from? A bottle.

  11. First time I’ve heard of Sojo.
    It has to be a cointelpro op. The whole thing is hyper christian and hyper left and the left has taught me that hyper christian things are evil and right wing.

  12. Or, how about option #3, where God exists, but humans are guided by their own free will?

    As an editorial, I have never seen a more “wordy” article. The author’s mind must be so incongruous that, if it were a physical space, it would likely resemble a hoarder’s house.

    • That’s the problem with the church of liberalism. They can’t accept human agency. For their world to work, they have to assign agency to anything other than humans. This is why God doesn’t work for them. As the perfect agent, God should have stopped the senseless incident beforenot happened. So they turn to government in the hope of creating their own omnipotent/omniscient agent to ‘fix it all’. They scream ‘God is a construct of man’ little realizing the irony as they enshrine the State as the new God. This is why they hate conservatives and can’t find common ground with us. Whether we believe or don’t, we all share the belief that there is no outside force causing men and women to commit evil acts. It’s not God or the gun or a voice from the darkness. The problem starts and ends inside each of us. If they had to stop and admit that fact, it would devastate their weakened/emotion-driven psyches, because they would have to accept responsibility for all the evil they themselves produced, and they can’t handle that.

  13. “A mostly good person in a state of rage or despair might choose to a terrible thing on a particular afternoon, and limiting his access to guns will limit the damage he can do.”

    Her argument is self defeating. If everything does not happen for a reason, then this is all the more reason for a person to have a gun to protect themselves.

    • I agree. While it is true that a person who chooses to do a terrible thing some afternoon should have his firearms removed, who does she think is going to do that? All those people not so inclined (to do a terrible thing), hopefully, have been heavily incentivized for years to purchase and train with large-caliber firearms so as to dissuade him, permanently, from doing that terrible thing. God or not.

    • And on “another afternoon”, in a start of emergency, another individual will chose to defend the lives and property of his family from thugs (of one variety or another).

    • Most of the mass murderers, whether they used a gun, or other means like gasolIne, a semi-truck, or propane tanks; have planned their attacks for, weeks, months or even years.

    • Is it just me, or does she look like she could be Adam Lanza’s sister? Striking resemblance, especially the eyes.

  15. And what exactly, pray tell, does it take to meet the standard of ‘mostly good person’?

  16. Her “If-Then” proposition is so theologically simplistic that it is beneath contempt. Since she phrases it as a myth, she’s operating in the realm of pure fantasy, and does not need to be answered seriously.
    For a serious discussion of the Bible and self defense, see my book “A Time To Kill: The Myth of Christian Pacifism.”

        • Anonymous and Nieowa, Thank you for your interest.
          You can pull up pages on the Amazon page, I think the intro is available as a teaser. The Kindle version is high because we’re trying to get on the shelves with B&N and Books a Million. One of the other authors with my publisher dropped his Kindle price $3 below that of the hardback. Barnes& Noble sent back all his books. They said that if he was going to undercut the retail on them, then they wouldn’t sell his books.
          And yes, it is my firm belief that Christianity is not a suicide pact.
          It’s a Christian/Gun nut/Lawyer’s view of Biblical self defense.
          I’ve spent 40 years teaching the Bible. I used to train the Huntsville, AL, PD in use of force law. Now I train CCP holders and armed church security teams. I also do expert witnessing in firearms and self defense cases.

  17. The reason the right to keep and bear arms is a natural human right is in part due to the fact that I can’t control whether someone else will choose to be good or bad.

  18. Folks, read the whole article. It’s a gas; nothing but fantasizing and philosophy about human nature. It ends with the notion that we should try to understand one another’s truths to “let light into the conversation”. How has that helped anybody who has ever been a victim of crime? Why do we need to try and understand the personal “truths” of evil men?

    At one point she says we should step away from objective truths and focus on assumptions about human nature. Objectively speaking, bad people who do bad things are bad, and good people who make a mistake and do a bad thing, should be punished the same as bad people. What is not to get? Oh yea, she doesn’t want to speak/think objectively. She wants to go based on assumptions and feelings. “Murders committed by law-abiding citizens who buy guns legally and use them to kill.” As long as we’re philosophizing, murder is not legal, ergo when a citizen commits murder they are no longer “law-abiding”.

    I know I shouldn’t expect more from people like this. The continuous onslaught of addressing violence and criminal activity through the application of feelings and appealing to the “wisdom” of people who have never stepped foot off of a college campus is just mind-numbing.

    • I read the whole thing.

      By the time I got done, I went back and read it again, slowly, with a critical eye.

      When I was done with the second reading, I was more certain then ever that my calls for the repeal of the 19th Amendment are well-founded and based upon solid factual evidence that women are incapable of the sort of thinking and analysis necessary to possess the right to vote, never mind run for POTUS and have access to strategic nuclear weapons.

  19. I am an atheist. Don’t think about god. I do, however, think about the next gun I’m going to buy. And, BTW, in spite of or because of my beliefs I do not infringe on the rights of others to talk about, believe in or whatever it is they want to do with whatever god they believe in. So god folks should leave me and my guns alone.

    • You haven’t been keeping up. A current fad of, formerly, religious colleges is to “diversify” their faculty of religious studies by hiring your atheist. They “study” the “myths” of the religious.

      If you miss it, the critical word in her bilge is “myth”.

  20. Her understanding of free will is sophomoric at best. Why do so many leftists believe that they are the first person in history to think about a topic?

  21. When a deep dive into ones faith yields your good until you snap, therefore remove guns from society; it becomes a logic fail of biblical proportions.

  22. Ain’t that special… a crunchie, liberal fascist talking about guns and God like she has a clue about either. Perhaps she didn’t hear about the Catholic priest who had his throat slit simply because he did not believe in what Obama called the religion of peace and did not have the means to protect himself.

    • Precisely. Apparently, the strategy our current administration is employing to defeat ISIS is to simply get them to like us more. If they would just like us, everything would be OK and we could all live a wondrous sugar plum fairy tale life just like John Lennon’s “Imagine” or a “COEXIST” bumper sticker. If we can just get them to like us more, they probably won’t cut our throat or behead us. I’m beginning to suspect that liberalism is actually a diagnosable mental illness that renders the subject incapable of deductive acumen; replacing it instead with deranged, episodic hysterics.

      • I think Osama also sees another possibility of peace in our time, if ISIS kills all non-muslims in the world, they would have no one left to kill and all would be unicorns and rainbows again, as it was in his youth, when he was continuously so stoned he doesn’t remember it.

        • That’s their stated goal. Of course, history shows that if they are not mass murdering infidels, they are busy mass murdering fellow Muslims that are practicing the “wrong” version of Islam, ie Sunni versus Shia.

          If their hoped for day ever became reality, (yuck), I’ll take a WAG, (Wild-Ass Guess) that the mass murdering ways won’t end.

    • The violence of a 19 year old, slashing through a 84 year old priests throat, drowning him with the same blood that moments ago sustained life is horrific. What’s worst is the depravity of a government preventing its citizens the opportunity to protect against it.

  23. Wow, projection much?

    The human brain is the most complex computing mechanism ever created. An almost infinite number of variables affect its operation. The reason “arguments” like “there are no good or bad people” seem valid is because we have absolutely no idea which one of those infinite inputs affects a certain decision.

    There ARE good and bad people. There are people who, no matter their state of distress, won’t be driving a truck through a crowd. Or beheading a priest. Or shooting up a school.

    If Eduard Bloch had been a Lutheran there may not have been a holocaust. Or it may not have made a difference. One variable in an INFINITE number that input into the mind of a psychopath.

  25. “Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.”

  27. I’m an atheist, and I’m more pro-gun rights than about 99% of the population.

    Now what?

  28. I think it’s ironic that anyone goes to the trouble to write a piece about getting past a calcified debate, but falls back on pernicious stereotypes. So, the pro-gun side imagines a binary world filled with people who are entirely good or else entirely bad, etc.

    Basically: Let’s talk about underlying assumptions of both sides; the pro-gun side’s underlying assumptions are stupid.

    Not helpful.

  29. the hard divisions between the ‘good people’ and the ‘bad people’ will be blurred .

    Now imagine one of them is shooting at you. Still blurry?

    • Progressives don’t differentiate between good and bad people. They don’t mind rubbing elbows with sick, mad, evil people. So long as they don’t hold a weapon “that puts them over the edge”.
      They oppose the death penalty. They want to free prisoners, sorry, “inmates” in Gitmo. They complain about the incarceration rate and want to parole everybody. They want to erase any evidence that evil exists so that they can feel comfortable in their fantasy world. The sight of guns and orange jumpsuits take them to a place they never wanted to be.
      The Progs believe all nations are good. They have just been victims of our capitalist greed or military imperialism. “If we leave the Middle East alone, they will stop killing us”.
      I once said that the main difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Conservative believes that man is inherently evil and without proper nurturing, he has little chance of being good. And left unchecked, power will corrupt the once good man as he defaults to the inherent state of man. The Liberal believes that man is is either good or at least, a blank slate and is only influenced by one’s environment. Change the environment and that person defaults to good. For example: Let him out of jail. Raise his wages. Keep guns away from him. How often have you heard Liberals blame poverty for the crime rate in an area.
      I still believe this is the fundamental difference but the Liberal may not actually think in terms of good and evil. The difference may be that we believe in inherent evil that learns good and they believe in neither good nor evil, just opportunity to act either way.

  30. WE ALL have the capacity for good or evil.
    GOOD has been done by pepole with guns.
    BAD has been done by people with guns.
    CHOICES make the difference.

    The “mystical” nature of guns to the uninitiated baffles me. Cars, knives, heavy equipment, and potent chemicals are no different… but does how you drive reveal how you think about God? Or the way you trim your nails?

  31. Piffle! Who is she to set up a false dilemma, that God controls all and no one is either good or bad, or that God controls nothing and that everyone’s evil and goodness blends to produce seemingly civil timebombs just waiting to go off?

    Why can’t one embrace Deism, accepting a divine creator, but one who thereafter leaves humans to their own devices? In that way, through free will, the lines between good guys and bad guys wouldn’t so much be blurrred as they would be revealed.

  32. A mostly good person in a state of rage or despair might choose to a terrible thing on a particular afternoon, and limiting his access to guns will limit the damage he can do.” – Karl E. Park, What I Think About Guns Reveals What I Don’t Think About God

    • The whole “he was a good guy until he wasn’t” problem is, in fact, a real problem. Unfortunately, it’s also an infinite regress. How, after all, are we going to enforce gun control laws? With unarmed government agents? Clearly not. So what’s going to keep those agents from going bad? There’s nothing about wearing a government nametag that elevates a human being to infallibility.

      • @ DaveL — Except that the whole “he was a good guy until he wasn’t” isn’t, in fact, a real problem. Well over 99% of bad people that fly off the rails people were, in fact, actually bad guys either with a long history of criminality or deep, deep mental illness that are clear signals of impending violence (or had already expressed gratuitous violence towards animals etc.) that everyone around them ignored or were ignored even when they did try to get help for them.

  33. Tell that to Japan. 60 people with a knife, 25% of them killed outright. Guns don’t increase damage, if anything it’s harder to kill someone deliberately at close range with a gun than a knife. Guns make it loud enough to let people know there’s stuff happening.

    • “Guns make it loud enough to let people know there’s stuff happening.”

      Please don’t share that opinion in public ever again. Suppressors are not evil.

  34. Without God, there is no right or wrong, making the ability to protect oneself even that much more important.

    • If people can create the concept of a God, they can certainly create the concept of right and wrong…

      • People can create any concept they want. That doesn’t change that a moral compass becomes meaningless without God. We see that today, everywhere. The state has replaced God, or is replacing God around the globe, youth look to the state for it’s moral compass.

        • My brother told me that once, because he was attending a Baptist church and I do not profess any religion. He named a friend as his children’s guardian because he didn’t think I would raise them with sufficient morality. In essence, he called me immoral because I did not profess a belief in a god. Such B.S. I was insulted to the core. Needless to say, we don’t talk much.

        • @sad, your moral compass may or may be fine…whats becoming apparent is that the younger generations have no moral compass. And why do you write “your” God….whether a God exists or not..it is certainly does not belong to me.

    • Go read Robert Heinlein’s book, Starship Troopers. Heinlein begins with an individual person’s instinct to survive and extends that to survival of the species.

      • Heinlein has/had more wisdom than a Corps of modern college humanities professors armed with all their collective “wits”.

        A GREAT book which then provides a shining illustration of what the Hollyweird morons can do with even the best of ideas. Apparently the Obuma admin has watched it an believed the chicks in combat BS.

  35. Religion or abortion. Need to up the clicks?

    Now if concernedamerican troll will jump in this post can go to 200 comments, easy.

    • You want “him” to show up jwm? IT hasn’t delved into religion or Christian apologetics-not in the Bloomie/Soros playbook. We’re all responsible for our decisions. Oh wait not the “born this way” bunch…

      • OMG! I did! I guess the liberals have advanced Human cloning beyond what I ever imagined….except they keep getting clones with defective brains where logic and reason are generated. But if they ever get it right…that would be the demise of liberal progressivism, so maybe there’s no motivation to correct the flaws.

  38. “Stewardess, I speak gibberish!”

    To call her “statement” incoherent doesn’t do it justice. I’ve seen people high on acid make no LESS sense, and one of them was having an argument with the lettuce in a salad cart.

    I’m an agnostic. I’m not going to let somebody SLAUGHTER me on the basis of somebody ELSE’S religion… nevermind somebody else’s INCOHERENT interpretation of their religion.

  39. So, if I understand her argument correctly…

    If I have a ‘discussion’ with her and it impels me to give up strike-anywhere matches, then the incidence of arson fires will go down. Have I got that right?

  40. A good person with a truck might decide to drive it over a crowd of people.

    A good person with knife might decide to “euthanize” a bunch of disabled people in a home.

    A good person with some fertilizer and diesel fuel might decide to blow up a building full of federal employees and their children.

    A good person with an airplane full of people might decide to crash it into the Alps or tall buildings.

    A good person with a car might decide to get drunk and drive it, then end up crashing and killing somebody.

    A good person with a toaster might decide to plug it in and toss it in a bathtub with somebody.

    There! I have just made compelling arguments to outlaw trucks, knives, nursing homes, fertilizer, diesel fuel, passenger aircraft, mountains, tall buildings, cars, alcohol, toasters, electricity, and bathtubs. Let’s get started. We need to get rid of a lot of things to make the world a safe place.

  41. We are all born with the capacity for good and evil, it’s what we do with those capacities that matter.

  43. I don’t know what this professor professes to teach, but it certainly isn’t history. Or logic.

    • This Professor professed what professional professors proactively profess. That the profession of professor provides professional professorial proof that protection is prudent provided the protective person is professional.

  44. So human agency is maximized…unless said humans want to own an item you don’t like, then agency is bad and wrong. Got it.

    • He probably would have been less effective if he had just used a rifle. The truck quite possibly enabled him to kill more people faster.

  46. “A mostly good person in a state of rage or despair might choose to a terrible thing…” That isn’t a good person, that is a bad person who is ‘”mostly good” at covering it up. A person’s character is most important (and revealed) when they are under stress. If you get into a state of rage and try to murder or harm another, you are the reason I carry a gun.

  48. You guys are kidding me, you actually think you *UNDERSTOOD* that? Reads like pure nonsense mixed with liberal/superstitious gibberish. No meaning whatsoever.

    And If that photo is of the author, she appears seriously crazy.

  49. Yes…except “good people in a state of rage” are not a significant source of murders. Black on black violence is the primary cause of death and incarceration and sorrow in the USA.

    See DOJ stats http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5366

    This is happening cause democratic urban policies drive victimization, horrible schools, single parent families and entitlement mentality. These are the policies that destroyed the American Indian family and now they are destroying the black family.

    The USA was the shining city on the hill when it was the beacon of self reliance and “if you work hard you can succeed” mentality to all people everywhere. Democrats are taking self reliance away from the neediest in our society to turn them into voting zombies at the expense of their dreams and lives.

  51. A perfect example of contemporary theology: (1) begin with “god” – any vague concept will do, and (2) end with any conclusion you want.

  52. Leftists treat religion like the fascists treated democracy. A way to gain power and something to do away with once they achieve power.

  53. Except that limiting guns in both the U.K.and Australia led to an increase in total homicides and violent crime, in other words the damage was NOT limited.

    But no, the hypothetical scenarios thought up based on incomplete understanding always seem to trump real world data.

  55. You can’t handle the truth. This good guy – bad guy dichotomy is Kindergarten-level ethics reduced to a slogan. Epic Fail.

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