“To gun control proponents, entrusting the state with the use of force is the best way to ensure force is applied appropriately, individual abuses notwithstanding: Police officers are trained to use firearms, de-escalate conflict, and apply the law, while the Secret Service and private security services specialize in the protection of prominent public figures who are more likely to be the target of violent threats than private citizens. The typical concealed weapon holders and open carriers, by contrast, don’t usually have to go through any such vetting or training. In many states, they just have to pass a background check.” – Alex Yablon, There’s Now a Pro-Gun Petition Trolling the Democratic National Convention [via thetrace.org]
Wait, I thought that police brutality was the Democratic talking point. Now they are the ONLY ones we can trust with arm because of training and vetting? So it’s “trolling” to point out this hypocrisy?
I can has confuse.
The constant double standard is amazing!
“The police routinely target blacks and other minorities for arrest, abuse and outright murder due to racism”
“The police are the only ones that can be trusted with the carry and use of a firearm”.
For any every day sane person, trying to hold these two diametrically opposed “feelings” would cause their head to explode. But for a progressive/statist, this IS their norm.
Indeed, that’s their message. The truth is that a great many ordinary people of all races and creeds are abused, persecuted and murdered. Will Grigg http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/ details the stories of so many people so targeted. Those targeted are, of course, painted as criminals, demons who “got what they deserved” and no honest coverage in the media.
“For any every day sane person, trying to hold these two diametrically opposed “feelings” would cause their head to explode. But for a progressive/statist, this IS their norm.”
Maybe it’s because their heads are empty – they have room for expansion in that space that would in an otherwise sane head result in overpressure and explosion? (/sarc)
But keep in mind that these are exactly the same people who fought tirelessly against cigarettes while smoking marijuana and who oppose capital punishment for criminals while advocating unrestricted access to abortion of innocent babies in the womb. I’m sure other examples could be found.
The message changes depending who they are trying manipulate.
It’s a two step process. First we disarm everybody except the cops and the criminals, then we get rid of the cops and establish a criminal paradise.
You don’t get rid of the cops – you replace them with criminals.
In Stalin’s Russia he did just this. His philosophy was that you could NEVER trust a political opponent to actually convert to your way of thinking – they would always be the opposition. But if you took a criminal and gave him authority while allowing him to indulge his criminality (and Stalin knew all about criminality, being one himself for his entire life), then he would be your greatest ally. As a follow-up to this Stalin regularly found new criminals and allowed them to purge the old guard that had gotten too comfortable.
I immediately thought of the scene in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” where the main character, a former petty thug who has been through brainwashing as part of an experimental rehabilitation scheme led by the progressive faction, is beaten up by some of his former gang partners now employed as Bobbies:
“They couldn’t reform us, so they made us Policemen.”
As much as I respect and thank the vast majority of our fellow citizens who endure daily sacrifices as LEOs, the scheme of doling out power to a selected subset of a population in order to keep the others under control lives on today in many places.
As long as us RTKBA folk continue to believe this is about guns, and not control, we’ll never see the truth behind the anti’s fight.
Both democrats and republicans want to control us. The only difference is that republicans can’t earn votes by going after guns.
The first step in truly controlling someone is to disarm them.
Regarding firearms, while the GOP in not necessarily your friend, many democrats are most certainly your worst enemies.
Australian-Style Gun Control for the USA may well be the democrat’s top legislative agenda in the spring of 2017 if they control Congress.
Spoken like an ignorant child who has never spent any time in the classroom, on the range or around the kitchen table with any cops or security “professionals.”
I can forgive them for not investigating reality on their own but too often they simply refuse the existence of reality when it’s handed to them on a silver platter.
Some people just don’t want to admit Santa doesn’t exist. Especially not when Santa is the foundation for their political ideology and justification for oppression.
True, the second amendment does not require training before a person can exercise the right, but neither does the first amendment. We do not require people to take a course to teach them that yelling fire in a crowded building is dangerous. The US used to require people to take a test in order to vote. It was hoped that blacks did not have the education and money to pass these tests. Thankfully, this was declared unconstitutional, immoral, and racist. The US first created gun control laws to prevent blacks from getting guns. Some of these laws, like what New York had, required expensive classes that only the rich could afford. You know, the rich people that are typically white, left leaning elitists who have the money to grease the right palms. The second amendment did not come with a training requirement, and if someone thinks it should, there is a legal way to amend the constitution.
‘…the rich people that are typically white, left leaning elitists who have the money to grease the right palms.’
TheDonald.
So, he emphasizes the point: statist want firearms restricted to only those they choose and that are under their control.
Nothing new to us at TTAG.
““To gun control proponents, entrusting the state with the use of force is the best way to ensure force is applied appropriately, individual abuses notwithstanding: Police officers are trained to use firearms, de-escalate conflict, and apply the law,”
Tell that to a Mexican citizen whose not cozy with the Mexican cartels/government partnership.
+1 the right to petition government doesn’t matter when the people have lost their ability to dissolve a government which no longer abides by the social contract.
Said simply:
1st amendment, “The people have the freedom of speech.”
2nd amendment, “Because I said so.”
“…entrusting the state with the use of force is the best way to ensure force is applied appropriately…”
Force applied appropriately. You kidding? And thats assuming they show up on time. Hint: they don’t.
“…public figures who are more likely to be the target…”
And what about the ordinary people who are targeted everyday?
Some animals are more equal than others dontcha know?
And it is here necessary once again to point out that in the history of this country ( and quite probably the same elsewhere) that VAST majority of assassinations and assassination attempts have come from the left/Progressive/Liberal/socialist/communist side of the political spectrum. Not to mention the majority of persons killed by their own governments worldwide.
“There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.”
There’s little to be surprised about here, except to note that where Yablon says “…Secret Service and private security services specialize in the protection of prominent public figures who are more likely to be the target of violent threats than private citizens.” he forgot to include “…and the prominent public figures who need that armed protection don’t give a crap how many private citizens get maimed or killed because they cannot defend themselves.”
“The police/military are evil oppressors on behalf of a wealthy elite.”
“Only the police/military should be entrusted with firearms.”
Quite a few people hold both these beliefs simultaneously…
We’re told by these same people that we are in the middle of a “gun violence epidemic”. Just how many victims of this “epidemic” are those “prominent citizens who are more likely to be the target of threats of violence”?
That is a good point. Are there any stats that show how likely a “prominent citizen” is to be attacked versus a regular person?
It seems intuitive (to me) that the better-off one is financially the more likely he is to locate his family in a safe environment. Suburbs, rural areas, gated-community, police station a mile-or-two away. He will have sturdy doors, alarm system.
Conversely, the worse-off one is financially the more likely she is to locate her family in an inner-city environment. A place overrun by drug dealers and un-educated th. . . disadvantaged youths. A place where she and her daughters tread in peril, day or night.
The 14A was intended – largely – to arm illiterate freedmen who had little-to-no tradition in arms or training to defend their families against lawless thugs (whether they wore badges under their sheets or not). Apparently, we learned nothing from Reconstruction.
So basically, they support elitism, and the lack of equal rights – some classes of people are more equal than others? While at the same time they advocate the police state with some freedoms for me but not for thee.
So the usual thing.
Their logic (only the police can be trusted with weapons; the police cannot be trusted with weapons) is contradictory for numerous reasons, but one of the main ones is that is comes from three different sources: liberals (aka the Clintons), who are authoritarian in their prescription of force, crime-prone cultural aliens (aka unassimilable Africans in America, illegal immigrants) who don’t want to be held accountable for their actions, and the (billionaire funded) black communist movement (BLM – black liberation movement; note double meaning) that wants to play the former two against each other to provoke a revolt against the system. BLM whistles past hundreds of black on black and black on white killings in order to agitate over a single incident of a black thug killed while attacking a security guard or cop.
So starting a petition to get Republicans to put up or shut up on their views about guns (started by Dem agitators) is justified, but when the same happens to Dems it’s “trolling”. Got it; one set of rules for the pigs, and another for all the other lesser animals.
So much for the value of background checks.
I was about to post the same thing. Incrementalism and moving the goal posts are the only consistent talking points we hear out of these shitbags.
Of course background checks have value – they allow the government to unconstitutionally decide who may or may not exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.
-Joseph Stalin, 1932
There’s no double standard here. There only appears to be one because you don’t understand what the goal is. The goal is statism. And they don’t just want the states to be more powerful they want the federal government to be more powerful. They’re stirring up the pot with BLM because they want more federal control over local police. Ultimately they want a federal police force to replace local PDs. (Personally I think a good name for this future national police force would be ‘Stasi’.) And of course it’s very hard to enslave an armed populous, so individual access to deadly weapons can’t be allowed. Understand their goals and you understand their logic.
Good points!
(Personally I think a good name for this future national police force would be ‘Stasi’.)
——–
Nah. Since they want to emulate Europe so badly, they would call them the Schutzstaffel- you know, to sound more imposing to the criminals. They would tell us citizens they are the “Protection Squad”, because that is what they are there to do, to protect you.
“Stasi” is a German contraction for “Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit, MfS. Which agency also went by Staatsicherheidienst (State Security, or SSD). Note the near relationship to Sicherheitdienst, or SD, which was the intelligence agency of the SS.
Another good ‘European’ name for their federal police would be ‘Gestapo’. Also, ‘KGB’ would fill the bill. Of course, we already have the ‘ATF’ so they could just expand that and be done with it.
NKVD would work, but I always liked “Cheka”. Has a nice ring to it.
(All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage)
He’s butthurt cause his tactics got used against him.
It brings a smile to my face to watch these d-bags do their “but, but, but REASONS!” routine when the flaws in their beliefs are exposed.
The cops are racist and abuse minorities and need more training to stop these abuses.
Cops are the only ones we can trust with firearms because they have so much training.
Or did I oversimplify it too much?
I’ve taken more training than most police… So, now what? Can I be super a secret squirrel now too?
No! And that is the most glaring point of hypocrisy. If training or talent were the REAL issue then that would imply that the Progressives admit of an entirely different scheme.
1. Shall-Issue would be accompanied by a training or testing requirement that any (adult) could meet. One no more onerous than the equivalent of the gun and use-of-force standard for the least onerous police agency in the State. Take that training or pass that test and you get your permit.
2. Judges, prosecutors, employees of men-of-means would all have to undertake the same training or pass the same test to be eligible to carry.
Would the Progressives entertain such a leveling of the playing field? No! Why not! Because the unwashed masses (of any color) would not be members of the State security forces (i.e., those forces that secure the State). And, because judges, prosecutors and those who protect the assets and persons of men-of-means ARE members of the State security forces.
We PotG are reluctant to raise this line of reasoning. We feel it is not Constitutionally “pure”. Admittedly, it isn’t pristinely pure.
And yet, we meekly accept “licensing” of drivers of motor vehicles. Why? Because there is no 2A for motor vehicles? Ahh, but there is! We have a Constitutional right to travel across State lines. And, not just on foot, or hoof or in a horse-drawn carriage. We have that right to travel – unimpeded – according to the normal mode of transportation. That is – today – the automobile.
Do we need driver’s “licenses” today? It is not for the ostensible purpose of ensuring that a driver is competent when he first gets behind the wheel. We have a scheme for that; it’s the “driver’s permit”. Teenagers get behind the wheel with a parent riding shotgun. The driver’s “license” is almost entirely a scheme to formally suspend/revoke the privilege of driving for bad-behavior.
Sounds a lot like the CWP. It serves almost entirely as a scheme to formally suspend/revoke the privilege of carrying-in-public for bad-behavior.
We PotG ought to think more about how the similarities are greater than the distinctions with the right to operate the predominant mode of transportation (and promotion of commerce and employment) vis-a-vis the right to keep and bear the predominant mode of self-defense (and security of a free state).
When exactly in the Secret Service’s oh so sophisticated and specialized training program do they cover the whoring and boozing, leaving behind of pistols in an Air Force One lavatory, drunk driving & crashing a car into a White House barricade, and leaving White House doors unlocked for knife-wielding maniacs to run through?
I feel safer around Joe Blow concealed carrier. On a daily basis, I’m around several known carriers, and perhaps dozens or scores more unknown strangers who lawfully carry. Nothing has ever happened, not even around important political figures like the Governor or a U.S. Senator.
Only an anti-gunner believes that the average police officer is “well trained” when it comes to firearms.
Hush
We need that 50% hit ratio to justify standard cap mags.
50%hits, 25%hits are on the vital areas. Only 1/8 of a mag if fight stopping. That means 3.75 rounds are effective out of a 30rd mag. That’s not even enough for 2 bad guys.
The Trace: where opinion passes for news.
Along with all the other mainstream “news” outlets across the country
This isn’t even opinion, it’s just rote memorization of talking points.
Much like what passes for education for the past generation or two.
Read a book written by a socialist ‘educator’ and regurgitate the contents up in a test or essay.
Oh yea, and go deep into debt for the privilege of doing so.
With this logic in play couldn’t one counter with a question regarding the danger young, black men are faced with everyday? As a group they are the most likely to be murdered, and have a higher chance of being murdered than any politician, so shouldn’t they also have guns?
“Shouldn’t they also have guns?”
I rather suspect a lot of them do, that’s why so many of them are successfully murdered. What they don’t have is any proper training or any reasonable moral compass. So many young blacks whine and moan about racism – well, what are you doing to make other races not like or trust you?
I am not a racist nor a bigot, but I am for damned sure prejudiced against certain ethnic social groups based entirely on their own actions and mannerisms. Walk like a duck, talk like a duck, shoot like a duck, expect people to treat you like a duck.
Or to quote Raylan from Justified: “If you meet an asshole in the morning, you’ve met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, maybe YOU’RE the asshole.”
Cognitive dissonance of the highest rank, also known to cause headaches. I left leftism and the Democratic Party behind a few years ago just to make them stop (and they had nothing to offer me). Probably explains why most mass killers are leftists too.
Well, finally they are coming straight out with it.
This is a win: the relentless push-back on the whackjobbery, spurious claims, and argument by feels has backed them into finally saying what they believe, and why they want, what they want. This guy isn’t the only one. The mask’s been slipping to the point of falling off completely for a while now.
The take-aways here are:
1) When what they’re pitching makes no sense, there’s something else behind it (that they’d rather not disclose.)
2) Chip away at the nonsense, don’t ever let it slide, and eventually, they’ll have to come clean.
3) When they finally fess up, dunk the ball.
So, dear “anti-gunner”, Tour reasons and the confusion to the point of insanity behind them are exactly why we have a different conclusion. You are sanguine about the notion off monopoly state force, protecting only the right people, because you believe the state will be your personal retained thugs, protecting you, one of the right people. And you care less than noting for what that does to its victims as long as you get yours.
Good do know. That’s the attitude of dumping your garbage into someone else’s lawn.
Specifically:
– Gummint operatives can be trusted with deadly force, while
youuscitizenssubjects cannot.– We people who aren’t among the elite don’t really need, or deserve protection.
– Administering any of that will work as intended, without going sideways. Specifically: monopoly force is never abused(*); certifications and regulations are never used as prohibitions by other means(*); and there’s never one set of rules for the right folks with other rules for the rest of us(*).
– You don’t care about any of this because you profoundly believe that you’ll be one of the protected
We’re moorlocks. You are Eloi. Got it.
The Eloi were (will be) pacifist and child-like, raised to be feed cattle for the Moorlocks. The Moorlocks were boorish Troglodytes who rounded up, butchered and ate the Eloi on a regular basis.
I’m not entirely comfortable being associated with either of those groups.
You can replace “Morlocks & Eloi” with “Sheep & Pigs” if it helps, but that honestly shouldn’t have been your main takeaway from Jim’s point.
The captured paragraph (I read the entire article) presents us with something for which we have little in rebuttal. Yes, there are dumb cops, careless cops, even angry cops. And yes, there are incidents where cops prove themselves poor at gun handling. The problem is, it is difficult to find a cop who has never gone through formal LE training and gun qualification at least once. Can we say the same about POTG? How can we? There are no reliable records of people receiving any formal gun training, and fewer records of the number of people who “qualify” on the range monthly, semi-annually or even once in awhile. Making claims is one thing, countering the ” The typical concealed weapon holders and open carriers, by contrast, don’t usually have to go through any such vetting or training.” argument is quite another. All we seem to have is a lack of wild west gunslingersnon the pro-gun side. Like it or not, the “cops are trained” reasoning is something the public can visualize and internalize, setting a standard against which gun owners are judged. Shouting RTKBA does nothing to address a reasonable conclusion that trained gun handlers are more likely to good gun handlers than gun handlers not held to any recognizable standard. We need something in our magazine of responses to anti-gunners that will even the score, or shut them down altogether.
How about “statistically, the typical concealed gun holder who actually has to use his weapon is less likely to use it unlawfully or mistakenly than the typical police officer who uses his”? How about “statistically, the typical permit holder is more law abiding than the typical police officer”? (Speaking of which, it appears that the Lackland AFB shooter is a former FBI agent; look for that story to drop off the radar sooner rather than later). Given that the majority of states still require some kind of permit to carry concealed, and given that for the most part issuance of a permit requires at least a background check, and more often than not some kind of safe-handling training, I’m not seeing that The Trace’s statement is particularly accurate (surprise). That’s aside from the fact that the typical concealed gun carrier is not out actively looking for trouble, which the typical police officer is supposedly doing; comparing the two is rather like doing the apples-and-oranges thing.
The stats are nice to reinforce our view of ourselves, but the idea that police are better trained, therefore more trustworthy with deadly weapons remains and obstacle we should not ignore. We need to stop talking to ourselves, and fashion some sort of means to present a better picture. The anti-gun crowd are not waiting to be convinced we are right. They are convinced we are dangerous, and need something as powerful as the notion that verifiable, formal training of LE to even cause them to pause in their mindlessness. It is too easy for them to claim that without proof that every gun owner receives the same level of initial and recurring training, we stand convicted of being irresponsible. Truth is (and it is unpleasant), it is up to us to prove our case, not the other way round. With so many outlets for information, why can we not get our story out better? If we were being successful in the info wars, the vast majority of the populace would turn on the anti-gunners and make them prove their case.
I think their Achilles heel on the training issue is former military personnel. There are literally millions of American men and women with military experience, and when they talk about training, the gun control lobby seems to pretend people simply cease to exist upon discharge. They know that the gun-rights camp is heavily populated with such people, and acknowledging their training would mostly destroy their narrative about dangerous, untrained “gun nuts”.
Good to see you approaching the question from the perspective of a voter who is neither a PotG nor a Gun-Controller. We all have to do more of this.
Now, how to address this particular problem? Debunk the myth that cops meet a USEFUL minimum standard for lawful use of deadly force or for hitting their targets. The “qualification” is infrequent, a small number of rounds, a low score to pass and cops regularly fail and have to be given a 2’nd or 3’rd chance. Moreover, this qualification is standing at a “square-range” firing at a stationary paper target with no urgency of a stopping-shot before the paper target starts shooting back. What does this really mean?
When an NRA First Steps Pistol instructor does the range-test, how do “new-bies” perform? That is data we ought to be able to develop – at least for a reasonable sample. How about qualifications in States that require a range test? I suspect that those of us who pass one test or another do reasonably well compared to cops.
Is the comparison a reasonable one? Let’s see, we hire cops to go looking for trouble. When they find it, we expect them to pursue it – running to the sound of gun-fire. We expect them to face-down armed criminals in crowded venues. We expect them to hit their targets while not hitting innocent bystanders. In case of a bad-shoot, they will enjoy qualified immunity. Given their very limited training and generally poor performance in qualifications, we ought to be pleasantly surprised that they don’t hit more bystanders than they do.
Now, how about our mothers, wives and daughters; our sons, brothers and cousins. Conventional wisdom is that they ought not go looking for trouble. If attacked, look for cover/concealment/escape. Shooting back is a last resort. If you draw or shoot the burden of proof is on you to show that you met each and every one of the prerequisites for the lawful use of deadly force. Plan to spend many months in legal jeopardy. Does Jo citizen really need to meet-or-exceed the standards of performance of cops?
To you last para, yes, armed citizens need to meet or exceed performance of police. What we like to herald is the poor performance of some small(?) portion of the police/LE, and compare that to what is an apparent miniscule number of gun owners who face/complete any sort of formal gun handling/proficiency training. The number of gun owners going to proficiency classes cannot be proven to be anywhere near a significant portion of the speculated 100,000,000 gun owners.
The people wholly ignorant of guns, gun culture, gun training, CHP licensing believe, right or wrong, that LE is better trained (hard to argue if a large number of gun owners do not receive more than one gun safety course in their lives). Reality is perception; perception of the unknowing as it regards guns. Being right doesn’t make us right. It is when the public overwhelming accepts a truth that being right is regarded as being right.
So many pro-gun organizations are so consumed with fighting individual laws and ordinances that those organizations cannot fashion an effective pro-gun campaign that wins at the “gut” level, where most people live.
It is almost useless to be able to recommend a strategy, yet have no idea how to focus it and push it effectively. But it is where I am.
“. . . yes, armed citizens need to meet or exceed performance of police. ” Why? Granted, if we could show that we do meet or exceed then that would be a great argument. But, as you point out, it would be very difficult to prove the fact even if it were true. Is it true? It would be hard to construct a statement that would be meaningful, such as the worst civilian is better than the best cop. The average civilian is better than the average cop.
I don’t think a good case can be made for why civilians ought to meet or exceed the performance of police. To the contrary, if the tax payers are paying for professionals to pursue criminals and shoot them in public places then it is the police that ought to demonstrate a higher-than-average-civilian level of proficiency.
I think it serves our argument better to say that civilians have a lower probability of firing in self-defense than police have in firing to stop a criminal from committing another criminal act. According to research on civilian defensive-gun-use, brandishing is the overwhelmingly predominant response. How proficient must a civilian be to brandish?
Yes, whenever anyone – civilian, soldier or cop – unholsters a gun there is some danger of an innocent being hurt. And yet, in precisely such circumstances, if the civilian, soldier or cop doesn’t have a gun the danger is manifestly great. Why does this disparity of risks justify a conclusion that civilians ought to be disarmed?
We all do need to fight gun-control laws. It is on this battlefield that the war on guns plays out; at least, it’s the one where it plays-out without bloodshed. We need to carry on this fight if we are to avoid the one to follow. In this political field numbers-of-voters count. We need to win friends and calm the fears of our detractors. How? Nor do I know what will work. But we all need to be thinking about what is more likely to work and what things we must avoid doing lest they prove self-defeating.
Private gun owners and carriers are faced with the real fact that non-gun people do not trust untrained people with guns, and we have a tough time demonstrating we have legitimate training. It is a bothersome fact, but a fact we should not casually ignore. Many of the things you mentioned are good for talking to ourselves, but we are not the audience needing to be influenced. You cited that the average private gun owner is better than the average cop. Nice to say, but do we have proof that would be presentable (and believable) to the “average” uninformed non gun owner? Has anyone calculated the number on people not accidentally injured by gun owners who deploy their weapons?
we would need multi-year data, and a reliable source (or sources) for the data. With such information (data arrayed so as to identify a result) we (someone with more creds than us on a gun blog) might be able to do the logical comparison (but, given our use would be defensive, only, the comparison might not be really valid). The best outcome would be a public ad campaign noting something like, “You are X.x more likely to be injured or killed by a trained LE than by a private gun owner during a defensive shoot.” We need something that really “sells”, rather than repeating to ourselves that we represent a statistically superior group of people who never present a threat of negligent gun use.
I agree completely. We don’t really have a good way to compare citizen capacity vs. police capacity to carry arms responsibly. And, we don’t need to persuade ourselves. As you have suggested, we need to identify ways to convey the point indirectly.
Translation: These are important people and it would be bad if they got hurt so they need guns to protect them. The cost to government for having regular civilians defend themselves against the progressive voting block is much too high to risk it. What’s a few dead civilians in the grand scheme of things, as long as the politicians and wealthy are protected? Paris and Belgium strong! /sarc
Why in the hell does anyone listen to people like this man-child?
His opinion means jack-crap. His stance means even less.
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