Suicides account for the majority (about two thirds) of firearms-related deaths in America each year. So if you’re looking to “disarm hate” to prevent “gun violence,” self-hatred should be at the top of your agenda. Next up: gang-related homicides.

While gang bangers may not have a whole lot of love in their hearts, I’d say they suffer from “depraved indifference,” rather than outright hate. But you can’t fault members of the LGBTQ community for focusing on armed citizens who hate them.

As the Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor, I know hatred can lead to murder. But the idea that gun control can disarm murderous haters is dangerously preposterous. First, haters are really motivated and they live in a country with more than 300 million guns. Second, haters have rights, too. Strip them of their right to keep and bear arms without proof of criminality and everyone’s gun rights go bye-bye.

Leaving LGBTQ Americans (and the rest of us) disarmed against armed, motivated haters…how’s that working out?

But the question that The Human Rights Campaign is really asking — though they don’t realize it — is a good one. How do you stop people hating? Is that even possible? Do you know any reformed haters? And how do you deal with hate like, say, antis who consider gun owners knuckle-dragging homophobic racist insurrectionists?

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49 COMMENTS

  2. The MDA and anti-gun folks in general are the most hateful bunch in our society, but I would still rather not shoot them.

    • Rusty, I’ve found the most effective method is to appeal to the only thing they understand: feelings.
      Q: Is bigotry wrong?
      A: (reflexively) Yes.
      Q: Is judging the worth of someones character based on arbitrary factors like skin color, social status, economic status, gender, age, etc. a form of bigotry?
      A: (again, reflexively) Yes.
      Q: Is declaring all people who choose to own guns as being of less moral worth than yourself – without knowing anything else about them – a form of bigotry?
      A: (stunned silence….)

      Enjoy your next conversation with a gun bigot!

  4. Someone help me name an instance where pacifism against an enemy actually works? I’d like to study more on it.

      • If you don’t count him being shot. And the Indians that were resisting British rule with violence. And you don’t count the recent violence of ww2 that ruined England and their ability to clamp down on India.

        Then yes, non violence works.

        • Or the fact that Gandhi was pretty much unnecessary as all of the other former British colonies got independence about the same time. Commonwealth nations enjoy roughly the same system of law and governance and they got it without a Gandhi.

          The guy’s personal behavior was so bad that some Hindu Indians left his inner circle out of decency.I am heading off cultural cop-outs at the past as screwing your niece is never ok.

          He viewed Sikhism as a type of Hinduism and it is one of the reasons that it is not an officially recognized religion in India to this day. He did not like the untouchable class which makes up close to a 1/5 of India.

          There is actually a push in India by some to erect a temple in Nathuram Godse’s name. He is the guy who shot Gandhi.

          While in South Africa he petitioned to have a separate class for asiatics. At the time they were lumped in with the blacks and Gandhi found that loathsome. So rather that fight segregation outright, and identify with black Africans, he chose to complicate and validate S.A. racism.

          Last, and certainly not least (I cannot let this one go) . . . even though he did eventually stop in his lifetime: Gandhi beat his wife. Yes, Gandhi beat his wife! Google it.

          So yeah, I would not call that brand of pacifism “working”.

      • Only because he was lucky enough to be under British colonial rule. How far would he have gotten if India had been a colony of Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany?

    • It worked pretty well for Martin Luther King. Even though he was murdered by a bigot, who was hired by another bigot, King’s non-violence movement helped do away with restrictions on black people simple because they were black. (That it’s been co-opted by hucksters and professional victims is a separate issue.) King’s success depended on the consciences of generally decent people. In their absence, nothing would have changed. Ad Astra’s reference to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is right on.

      • I believe that MLK went the route he did in part because he knew that during the cold war a black insurgency would have been met with genocidal levels of force. Look at how much force was brought with his peaceful marches.

        However, things were getting better for blacks in America before the civil rights movement. The armed forces integrated, blacks were gaining greater levels of wealth and education (as was the entire nation), the media and entertainment were hiring and depicting people of color, and many blacks (again as was the entire nation) were heading out west to states that never knew Jim Crow.

        The civil rights movement did alot but gains were made prior to it.

  5. Should we blame rocks when people throw those through windows? Maybe we should blame windows for being too fragile.

  7. In general, I think the only way to overcome hate is for people to have something righteous to be proud of. Even though that’s commonly a religious word, it doesn’t have to be faith in a deity. It could be any meaningful accomplishment or association with positive value that brings self worth. When you’re deservedly proud of yourself or your fellows, it’s much harder to feel like a victim.

  9. How do you get the activists to tealize that nobody hired or asked them to mitigate anything. Despite the fact that hey are sucking down millions of tax dollars in grants to try to “mitigate” or “increase awareness”. It’s all activist crap from people who do it for a living-only. F all that and them, they can STFU, the rest of us can’t trust them to swallow a fart.

    How do you stop the hate?

    F U STUPID

    You aren’t even interested in not starting any.

    How do you protect against hate?
    AGAIN, nobody hired you to do that, stay the F out of the way of the people who are happy to try to do it for themselves.

  11. Provide big Parma billions of tax dollars to develop a vaccine against free will? Maybe just mandatory behavior modification meds? How about genetic engineering to weed out those same undesired traits and government run indoctrination from birth to age 20?

    I’m just spit balling here.

  13. You can’t disarm haters. They will get wepons or improvise then regardless. The only solution is to arm the hated. That’s why we have the 2nd amendment. It protects every ones right to bear arms, not just throws how can aford to pay licensing fees, ccw classes and the time off work to take them or to by guns only off of gov approved lists.

    • While you can’t disarm haters, you can certainly nullify their sense of moral imperative. With respect to gun-control issues, we should understand that most activists (the Mom’s are a good example) are driven by a sociological-psychological phenomenon called “status discontent”. Basically, these are people who are uncomfortable with who they are, how they are perceived by others, and they have decided that gun-ownership and gun-owners are the cause. And because of that, they really, really don’t like us.

      If you have the misfortune to find yourself in a conversation with one of these people you can expect to be told about “scientific” studies that show how dangerous guns are. These are almost always highly questionable if not completely made-up claims. The best way to counter them—although you aren’t going to win any converts by doing this—is to simply point out that the “science” is based on correlational research. At best, correlational research is methodologically weak science for the simple reason that anything can be correlated with anything else.

      Attaching scientific causality to correlated findings is more politics than science. Telling an activist that they’re “scientific” justifications are fake instantly removes their claim of moral superiority in the argument. They’ll still hate you for it, but questioning the methodological validity of their claim is something they can’t argue against.

  14. A question occurs to me: How many NRA members have been convicted of murder? OK, so let’s suppose for the sake of argument that there are lots of law-abiding gun owners who “hate” according to whatever definition one might choose. How many of such “haters” commit acts of violence? Conversely, how many of those convicted of acts of violence are NOT law-abiding gun-owners? How ironic it would be if the data would reveal a strong correlation of NON-violence with lawful gun-ownership and a strong correlation of violence with a personal’s criminal history? If the data showed this irony, it would call into question the informative value of “hate”; or, at least, the definition chosen for debate. To advance knowledge in this arena, we might need to refine the working definition of “hate”.

  15. You have to admit, the Hysterical Mothers have a keen and ironic sense of humor. They preach a dark gospel of anti-civil rights bigotry and intolerance. Their hatred for those who would defend the 2nd amendment is always on display.

  17. Yeah you can say that again. Anti-gunners are some of the most hateful and emotionally damaged people I have ever come in contact with. Look I don’t care that they have their opinion and live their life the way they want to I mean come on that’s what America is all about. Just don’t try to cram down my throat your way of life and the way you do things is the way I should do things that’s just un American and ridiculous. It’s like telling a straight man that it’s Politically Incorrect to be heterosexual. If that isn’t a form of hate I don’t know what is. I mean 50 years ago maybe forty years ago rather they would take homosexual young men and try to get the evil demons out in some church organizations all over the country they even had mental health facilities for trying to get homosexual to become straight men. So if you find that ridiculous why are you trying to force your way of life down our throats you don’t like guns fine don’t buy a gun period but don’t tell me that I can’t have them just because a few people criminal people and mentally Disturbed people use them incorrectly and cause harm.

  18. Without getting into a really, really long post about theories on how our brain works and develops the short answer is: a carefully crafted educational system.

    A system where people are taught actual facts, that truth has value (jettisoning post modernism as a basis for teaching), critical thinking skills, how to do some actual research along with math, science, history etc will go a long way.

    IMHO, a lot of what you see these days is the result of people who’ve been taught not to think but rather to react and basically programmed with a lot of unrealistic nonsense.

    We’ll never completely eliminate “the problem” but we can make great inroads on it. It will take decades though, just as it took decades to come to this point.

    Rome. Day. Built. All that. I could (and have considered) writing a book on this topic (not hate specifically, the general topic of education and society) but, really, it’s not worth it. Publishing it would be almost impossible in the current climate and I don’t have the patience for the shit storm it would create if it was published. That dust up would make the Evergreen thing look like two ants fighting over a crumb.

  19. Let’s start with I don’t hate liberals. i don’t even anti hate 2A people. I feel pity for them. It must be hard to live your life mad and unhappy all the time. Hoping that someone else will protect you and care for all your needs Only to know deep down inside yourself that everything you stand for is failing and being taken away. Violence is on the rise. More people are failing in their life pursuits after a college education you couldn’t afford. Finding out everything you really learned is worthless in today’s society. Being told everyone was equal and the world was ready to give you everything you wanted. Then real life comes along and F@#K. Where’s my free stuff. Why am I not treated like that person. They have all those cool thing. Where’s my trophy. When you’ve never been taught real life skills or been expected to work hard for what you want. The world crumbles before your eyes. Fear becomes anger. You can’t understand it why the world isn’t what you were told it was. Just a hard life where it takes hard work and determination to get anywhere. THERE IS NO TROPHY!!! I truly feel sad for these people.

  21. It involves a bunch of sharpened machetes, a bunch of Democrats, and a tub for all the removed arms.

  22. How do you stop hate? Here is a pretty simple formula:
    (a) hammer home the value of truth and facts
    (b) don’t escalate simple insults
    (c) defend human liberty, property, and life
    (d) expel people who do not add value to society
    (e) remove Almighty God status from government

    That last element is the most important in the list.

  23. The simple answer is no. You cannot stop people from hating. If their hatred makes them take action against you, there are only 2 choices. Curl up and die, or fight back.

  26. A DIRECT QUOTE from that ad:

    “This is not the America we want to live in.”

    ^^^^So much THIS.

    Are you gun haters mentally ill masochists that want to be where you aren’t wanted?

    Guns were here first. Guns are woven to very fabric of this great country.

    If you don’t like it, get the fuck out of MY country and start your own country where citizen gun ownership is banned…

  27. The word hate has been overused so much it almost has no meaning anymore. Everything to the leftists that disagrees with their world view is hate in their eyes.

  28. Trying to thwart hate crimes by depriving the haters of a specific weapons is an exercise in futility. If they are that determined, they will find a way. What will work is to promote the idea that you don’t have to like other people. You just have to leave them alone. When a hater refuses to accept that restriction, side with the person he attacks including the ones who successfully defend themselves.

  29. I hate these marches etc against hate. What the heck is “hate” anyways? Am I not allowed to hate Hitler for instance? It’s very difficult to be against something so nebulous. I know – I will be against bad things! In the end, I know “hate” really means “things I don’t like.”
    But we all know what hate means – it means bitter clingers!

  30. The only person(s) that can stop “hate” are the “haters” themselves, but their “hatespeak” is driven by political agenda, so inevitably it comes down to a kill fest, as history has demonstrated time and again.

  31. Blow it out the blowhole with all that hate nonsense. The Left is going to scream about who the Right chooses to elect, the Right is going to howl about the ACTIONS of who the Left has elected, and the pendulum swings back and forth in a game that the true powers of this nation want.
    The Left is going to bring about irrevocable change for the worse with laws meant to stop their violence and it will affect us all, it can lead to check points, contraband lists, etc, etc, the mind reels at the possibilities, the probabilities.

    How about we leave each other alone, starting with the Left deescalating their call to violence on us, their political opponents. Once that is well in hand, then we can begin breaking up media conglomerates stranglehold on public discourse and move it away from division and car commercials to well researched, thoughtful prose about issues OTHER than Russia, collusion, high capacity/power, military style/assault weapons/rifles/pistols; and move it towards CONSTANTLY talking about our SIMILARITIES versus our differences. That can have a massive impact. Media rebuilding is not THE answer, but a dam good starting point.

  32. “When gun control comes out of my mouth, it’s deadly”.
    I wager gun control has killed more law abiding citizens than criminals.

  33. Third, government is also a home for haters — and these haters can direct the actions of thousands of other people who have both guns and badges. More than 200 million people were killed — murdered — by their own governments in the last century alone.

    These “disarm hate” idiots are merely handing more power to the deadliest haters of all.

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