Debunking “A Dummy’s Guide to Winning Gun Control Debates”

1. Boom.

   • I was gonna say that, then I scrolled down to your comment.

     • Sorry wrong spot.

       Reply to ensitue, below:

       Girlie boyz.

   • “I’m also afraid to say that under today’s government — with the nuclear power and military that government possesses — our rifles and pistols don’t stand a chance.”

     One man (Dorner) recently tied up 10,000 LEOs in CA and completely, utterly pwned them pound for pound. This is the typical drivel you hear from someone who has no IDEA what unconventional warfare is capable of.

     “Not to mention the thought of the government becoming a tyrant is a faded memory of the Founding Fathers’ generation.”

     Not keeping up with current events I see.

     “If we hold this amendment to be all-powerful, then we should also give equal weight to the amendment following it: Soldiers cannot be quartered in your homes. I’m sure we all struggle with that problem day to day.”

     Actually the reason we did this was because the damn limes we overthrew abused us in this regard habitually. And they still do the same sh*t to their own. Becuase you seem to think your googlefu is strong, try googling “london rooftop missles.” Do you think that those folks had a CHOICE in that? And frankly, I DO give equal weight to that ammendment. The only reason we don’t see flagrant violations of this amendment is because a) it would be intolerable even to statist voters and b) we have funded billets and bases for our troops, thus eliminating the need.

     • HEY!!! Now just what in the hell do you think you are doing with your head out of the sand?! Bury your head back in the sand…NOW!!!!!

       ^^that is all I can imagine the author saying in regards to your comment.

       Thank you for at least being alert, unlike so many who still have their heads buried as deep as they can in the sand. Have a great day, sir.

     • As an 11B I can tell you right now that if my unit were ordered to attack american citizens defending their right to keep and bear arms due to some sweeping gun “control reform,” everyone would desert. People who use the military technology vs civilians argument don’t realize that the military is comprised of people capable of making their own damned decisions in an extreme case like that

       • Tile Floor – God bless you for your service and your dedication to the Constitution.

         People using the argument of the “almighty” U.S. military vs. militia equipped with only rifles and pistols have not thought very hard about the situation. In the US, if only 10% are active “militia” that’s a force of almost 30 million. Force multipliers, like helicopters and Bradleys are good, but not at a 30:1 ratio.

         Not only would many soldiers legally object to such orders under UCMJ, but several soldiers could risk “mutiny” charges to relieve a commander who issued such orders. Those who don’t go AWOL or refuse orders, will likely not be too keen about aggressively following orders. And doggone it, those prisoners keep escaping too.

         Let’s also consider that the military has some weapons stockpiled, but new weapons need to be replenished. That means civilian workers who make those weapons will not “forget” to wire the rocket motors to fire or find a way to render neutral the primers in 20mm, 25mm and 30mm cartridges to cause stoppages. Or that those trucks carrying munitions to military depots will not accidentally overturn on some offramp. Or get “hijacked” by local “insurgents” in the middle of the night. Fuel still needs to be supplied and there is no guarantee it won’t be “spiked”. Sand, sugar, nitromethane, sodium perchlorate or something just as inspired will certainly annoy pilots and maintenance personnel.

         The number of troops required to protect their own bases, plus government buildings, seaports and military contractors will stretch the remainder very thin. Look at your response to a well hidden sniper. It requires at least a platoon of men for the S&D mission, often times adding air support to locate and remove. Now imagine a sniper willing to discard a single-shot rifle after hitting one of a group of soldiers. Doesn’t matter if it’s fatal. Everyone delays their advance to locate the sniper, who has simply walked away empty handed. Imagine the stress of dealing with that daily. And like Vietnam, our side “blends in” to the crowd without uniforms.

       • Absolutely correct, especially since it is unconstitutional for U.S. Army troops to be used against American citizens within the U.S. I’m a retiree, and I can personally guarantee that those wishing to follow such a command would be disarmed or shot by those who would not.

         You must, however, realize that you first go along with it until you are issued your arms and ammunition, tanks, missiles, aircraft, bombs, etc. THEN you make your intentions known.

         The government realizes this, meaning that would never happen, dipshits like Obama know better than to think the U.S. military will support him against the citizens of the country.

       • One thing people fail to realize about the Revolutionary war is that the Revolutionaries were a small force of people. They comprised 10-15% of the people in the American colonies. A whopping 50% of the American Colonists at the time were loyalists to the British army and the British themselves. Not only did the Revolutuionaries have to worry about the British, they had to worry about snitches in the Colonies who were likely their own friends.

         As others have already stated, Asymmetrical warfare is pretty powerful especially when that force has the ability to blend in with the regulars.

2. I’ve noticed a trend among man-boys named Julian and it is not a good trend. Though many will blame Bush, I blame their mother.

   • My name is Julian. Really and truly.

     Want to talk about my mom?

3. Lets blow up this guys twitter and facebook Opey and Anthony style…he got served!

   https://www.facebook.com/search/results.php?q=Julian+Sarafian&init=public#!/julian.sarafian

   https://twitter.com/jayweezy94

   • Served wat are ya a waita uh sumptin? Tssssss tssssssss….

4. I thought the same thing about the implications of the title. He clearly used Google to search for info on gun violence, clicked on a Brady Campaign or affiliate website and camped there for all of his info.

5. Officer Sean Collier might disagree.

   • Was going to say the same regarding “The Boston Bombers didn’t kill a single person with a firearm”

     Otherwise, great post and takedown.

     • collier’s name was on the tip of my tongue as well, but old Julian never lets the facts get in the way of arguments does he?

   • I thought it came out that all injuries sustained in the shooting between the cops and the bombers were actually friendly fire?

     • That’s what I heard too.

       • collier was the mit cop who they killed point blank on campus.

6. “Look, here’s a list of 30,000 Americans killed by gun violence per year.” And about 2/3’rds of those are from suicides. How many bullets does it take to commit suicide with a gun? Do you need a “high capacity magazine”? No? That’s right, it takes only one. Along with a fair portion of the remaining 1/3.

   “This amendment was added when “arms” meant rifles that took 40 seconds to reload, and “accuracy” didn’t exist”. So what does that mean in a gun-control advocates “unicorn under a double rainbow” world? ALL guns, even those that took 40 seconds to load, will eventually have to somehow be regulated/removed from the public to make their fantasy complete. But yet, we will still have people who will commit suicide or seek to harm others for their own personal gain.

7. I love that part where the gun grabber says that government tyranny is just a hold over from a bygone generation… When Bush was in office, the progressives were screaming about tyranny and their rights being infringed. But now that a democrat is in office, tyranny could never ever happen…

   Just prices this

   • Bet the NSA disagreed with you when they read it as soon as you posted it.

     • +1 I almost fell off my chair!

   • He apparently is ignorant of the 1960s Deacons for Defense. But libtards don’t like to be reminded that blacks defended themselves against a tyrannical government without their betters’ guidance.

     • +1 this is what my MA thesis is on.

8. I love that part where the gun grabber says that government tyranny is just a hold over from a bygone generation… When Bush was in office, the progressives were screaming about tyranny and their rights being infringed. But now that a democrat is in office, tyranny could never ever happen…

   Just proves this little quip I read somewhere:
   “democrats: is not fascism when WE do it!”

9. All this from a UC Berzerkley Sophomore.

   Ah, the all-knowing wisdom of youth.

10. A state is a self-ruled entity. Germany is a state. Isreal is a state. Australia is a ste, etc. Each state in the union is a state as well.

    • at last somebody out there got it right

11. Ugh. Damn reruns. It’ll be nice when the new season of “Indisputable Proof that Gun Control Totally Works!” starts up, because these older episodes have completely lost their charm.

12. I blame man-boy Julian’s mother, his father (present or not, unless of course his parents were deceased while Julian was a child), the education system, and society in general. My fellow Americans. I say, carry wherever and whenever you legally can. Open carry, concealed carry, it doesn’t matter. Just carry and do it responsibly training yourself in its proper and judicious use. Carry for the protection of our free society.

13. ” 1. Gun control doesn’t work.
    Anyone who knows how to use Google can disprove this argument. It’s common knowledge that the states with the most stringent gun control policies hold lower rates of gun violence than states with the least control.”
    I’m really getting tired of people cherry-picking statistics to make this argument. New Hampshire has a lower homicide rate than New York. Texas has a lower homicide than California and Illinois.
    Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and Norway have lower homicide rates than the UK. New Zealand has a lower homicide rate than Australia.

    “Look at Australia: In the aftermath of a mass shooting in 1996, Australia enacted sweeping gun control, including an assault weapons ban and increased background checks. How many mass shootings have occurred since then? You got it. 0.”
    Mass murders have been committed in other countries with guns still legal in Australia (look up Derrick Bird, Ronald Simmons or Patrick Sherill) so it’s probably not that simple.

    • If you want a really stark example, compare the firearm homicide rate of Chicago, Illinois with Houston, Texas. You will be stunned at how much higher the homicide rate is in Chicago.

      Or look at the simple history of “murder capitals of the U.S.” over the last five decades. As far as I can remember, it was always a race between Chicago, Detroit, and Washington D.C. Rumor has it that Memphis, Tennessee has been in the running lately. Well both Chicago and Washington D.C. had utopian gun control laws on the books for decades. Memphis and Detroit enjoyed only slightly better firearm freedom. In the last decade or so, both Detroit and Memphis are now under their state’s “shall issue” concealed carry laws. This tells me that violent criminals will harm people regardless of how “tight” or “lose” gun control laws are.

      But gun control laws do infringe on the rights of citizens who have never harmed anyone. So let’s chuck gun control laws.

      • Philadelphia, Baltimore and also New Orleans are also usually solid contenders for the crown and as far as I know each has in fact held that title within the last two decades.

        I can’t recall straight away if L.A. has ever definitively locked down the title or not but I’m sure it’s been in the running at times.

14. Nice piece. I support getting this out to broader audiences.

    One comment re your rebuttal to point one: Discussing individual countries proves nothing. I’m sure you know this, and there may be value in fighting fire with fire. However, keeping things on the level of qualitative lack-of-analysis lets the antis continue to muddy the water. The best approach is a scatterplot of murder rate vs. private firearm ownership rate (however you want to express those) for all countries. The correlation is around -.10, and remains nill to slighly negative even when you start to regress out various other variables. That’s why you will never see such a plot from any anti, though you will continue to see them cherry picking individual countries for discussion.

15. Mr. Sarafian claimed, “Look, here’s a list of 30,000 Americans killed by gun violence per year. Children, elderly, and most of the time innocent people — you name it.”

    Mr. Sarafian’s statement is incorrect. First of all, criminals used firearms to murder about 10,000 — NOT 30,000 — people last year. Second, most of the attackers and their victims were criminals involved in criminal activity during the attack. (Government sources estimate that about 80% of murder victims were involved in criminal activity when murdered.) Whatever the exact number, the victims were NOT “most of the time innocent people”.

    I have to wonder: is Mr. Sarafian ignorant of the facts or is he purposely trying to mislead people?

    • Both

16. the whole “the founding fathers made the 2nd amendment when it took 40 seconds to reload” argument doesn’t make sense. from the 1700s on new firearm technology was advancing rapidly. im sure they could have predicted far more advanced weaponry in the future, and they still wrote the 2A.

    • When the 2A was put to parchment there already existed firearms capable of relatively rapid fire. And by 1803 the Lewis and Clark expedition carried a Girandoni air rifle with a 22rd magazine and roughly as powerful as 45LC.

      • The constitution also discusses letters of marque and reprisal, showing an assumption that civilians or private individuals would have the equivalent of battleships. (Article 1, section 8.) The quaint “historical context” argument doesn’t seem so appealing to liberals when it is pushed back to them.

17. I noticed at chode talking point #7, he basically abandoned all hope in terms of using logic and straight up pulled out the bloody shirt like a soccer ref pulls a red card. Why is it most people see the Constitution as a pick as choose document?

    Good article Nick

18. “Not to mention the thought of the government becoming a tyrant is a faded memory of the Founding Fathers’ generation.”

    Yo, Julian, have you been reading the news lately? Y’know, the NSA thing? That’s a step in the wrong direction. (I also fully realize that the internet information gathering goes back to Bush 43, if not earlier. I don’t care who started it, I care who stops it.)

    Here’s a neat video relating to the NSA thing. It’s candidate Obama (2007) debating President Obama (2013) on government surveillance. How quickly things change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZf8_Cd6H9k. I’m particularly a fan of the smug, “I know better than you” expression on his face when he mentions Big Brother at around 2:05.

    For the people who say, “It’s not conversations, it’s not wiretapping, it’s just phone numbers,” I offer this: (http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-june-10-2013-seth-rogen)
    Skip to 20:40 for the “Moment of Zen” at the end of the show. It’s Joe Biden arguing against exactly that sort of thing, in 2006, on The Early Show on CBS. I’ll transcribe it for those that don’t want to click through:

    Harry Smith: “Well, the President, though, said yesterday, he said, ‘We’re not listening to the phone calls, we’re just looking for patterns…”
    Biden: “Harry, I don’t have to listen to your phone calls to know what you’re doin’. If I know every single phone call you made, I’m able to determine every single person you talked to, I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive.”

    • “Not to mention the thought of the government becoming a tyrant is a faded memory of the Founding Fathers’ generation.”

      What about (from the NPS.gov website):
      In 1942, the United States government ordered more than 110,000 men, women, and children to leave their homes and detained them in remote, military-style camps. Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II.
      My dad’s fishing buddy in San Pedro, a Japanese-American born in LA, was interned @Manzanar and lost his home and business (small store), everything. My dad looked him up after WWII when he left the Navy and he was working as busboy/diswasher living in flop flat barely making ends meet.

    • Also, this: http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/

19. It strikes me that such people do think that weapons are malum in se, evil in themselves.

    • Hoplophobia… it’s a mental disorder, plain and simple, which leads to the conclusion that if for the safety of others we might do the following, you know based on “grabber-logic,” just ask if someone things guns are evil.

      This cascades to all sorts of interesting mental health problems, personification of objects could indicate dissociative personality disorder, then just take away their right to free speech, since they’re attempting to use it as a weapon. Honestly the kind of crazy-person logic that the anti’s employ might just force them to agree with your assessment…

      we’ll call it “nutter-fu” and voluntarily abrogate their rights to free speech. Which would solve the problem of them harrassing me 🙂

20. anybody saying “anyone who knows how to use google”… loses credibility instantly in my book.

    Google is not a reference. f^cking millenial generation.

    He does realize the puckle gun was conceived BEFORE the american revolution right?

    so suggest that nobody envisioned technological advancements is utterly insulting ben franklin (and the others’) legacy.

    and gun control wouldnt have prevented another sandy hook because:
    1.) its a gun free zone
    2.) adam lanza didnt pass a background check
    3.) students corralled into classrooms defenseless are helpless victims. He would have caused more casualties using a shotgun.

    I’m done arguing with these pseudo-intellectual idiots. If only california would break the f^ck off from the mainland…

    • Umm, no.

      • oh yes.

        nuke from orbit. its the only way to be sure…

    • +1

      not so much on the cali part, but i get it. i feel ya.

21. It’s obvious that the ignorance of youth is still in perfect working order.
    Even with the Internet, the information super-slab, ignorance reigns.
    But then, it really isn’t the ignorance of guns that plagues young Julian.
    What Julian is ignorant of, is he hasn’t been taught to think critically of
    what the liberal-Left is preaching, and that he’s really just another useful
    idiot repeating the propaganda of totalitarian state supremacists. Doh!
    It’s both sad and ironic, but in the past, the slaves knew they were slaves.

    For your future article: Cars are not among the enumerated rights that
    are specifically protected in the Constitution.

22. Soldiers probably won’t be ‘quartered’ in your homes, but I wouldn’t make the same bet about undocumented immigrants.

23. There is absolutely no way for anyone to claim that the government becoming a tyranny is some faded memory. Right now, it seems unlikely, but that to a good degree is due to the constant vigilance on the part of the American people who by their nature distrust government. The Left distrust the police state and the Right with regards to guns and the government’s control over the economy (although the libertarian right distrust the police state as well), but distrust of government is across-the-board, whether it’s a “left-wing” organization like the ACLU or a “right-wing” organization like the NRA. This vigilance helps keep tyranny at bay. No one, however, can predict what will happen over the next 50, 100, 150, 200, etc…years.

    And the Second Amendment was not solely about preventing tyranny, it was also about protecting a person’s individual right to self-defense, which included right to possess arms to also serve as a check on a government. “Arms” are basic tools of war. Where they check governmental power is that while the government has the superior training and weapons, the people have the superior numbers by a vast amount. Their possessing arms serves as a counterweight to the government’s otherwise having a monopoly on force. It changes the calculus of the situation.

    That is why it would be considered nuts for the U.S. military to for example go into Iran. Because Iran has 80 million people who wouldn’t want us there. It would be virtually impossible to control the country as there’s only so many places that a government can put soldiers. In the United States, it’s a country of 300+ million people. It would be difficult for any tyrannical government to control such a population armed. One reason the U.S. avoided sending troops into the former Yugoslav republic during the 1990s was because of the people being armed.

    Look at the trouble Syria’s government ran into in trying to crush the resistance movement there. They are succeeding more now, but because of outside help from Hezbollah and Iran. Also, why does China watch its citizens so closely? It has a nationalized police force and a military that is willing to use force on its citizens, so why does it censor and spy on them so much? They also brainwash the population into having a belief that the government is supposed to play a central role in people’s lives, including in the household. Because the Communist Party knows that if enough of a boiling point was ever reached, they would/could be removed from power.

24. I’ll chime in with my thoughts.

    1. Australia indeed has not had a single mass shooting since 1996. Mass shootings have incredibly low victim counts per capita and are rare and hard to predict, so Australia “protected” their people from a statistically insignificant event that impacts a statistically insignificant portion of the population and in turn impacted the entire population with an increased crime rate in nearly every category. You have to look at the whole picture, to stop mass shootings the quality of life is greatly decreased for everyone. Australia has the highest crime rate per capita of any country, guess why. You don’t have to go so far for an example, though, Mexico is a gun-free state, see how well that works for them.

    2. What good is making something more illegal when criminals don’t follow and enforcers don’t enforce the current laws? According to the reports the Virgina Tech shooter had a court order to seek help that would deny him for a pistol purchase, yet it was ignored by the state. The Sandy Hook shooter was denied for a purchase permit for a pistol, usually that means local LEO knock on your door and have a talk with you, but not in that case. The second part of this is worse, you make it more difficult to own guns for law abiding citizens, multiply that difficulty for the poor in bad neighborhoods that actually need a firearm to protect themselves and their families. Fat-bald-gun-owners can pay the tax stamps or additional fees, but the poor cannot. These proposed measures only seek to fight positive gun culture and keep people from owning and buying guns.

    3. This argument mirrors the one I gave above, so they do understand the logic. “What point is there to stand against the almighty government?” Makes me think of “we the people”. Who is the government fighting against? The responsible, independent, free-thinking individuals of the nation? The government would be fighting for self-preservation to protect welfare recipients. So what happens to a state that is made up entirely of non-productive and skill-less individuals? Complete collapse comes to mind. Second, if technology gives such an advantage why do we continually have such problems with goat herders we don’t care about in other countries with our full force brought to bear? Surely it would be different when it’s brother against brother, son against parents.

    4. I know everyone wants a simple solution, but banning guns isn’t a solution at all, nor is making the process more difficult for law-abiding citizens, because those measures do not impact criminals at all. The author here ignores all the positive uses of a firearm and sets them equal to weapons of mass destruction. That is the aim, to vilify guns and turn them into nothing more than terrorist tools of mass destruction in the eyes of readers. It’s a lowly tactic because it seems he knows he has no real response. I think he needs to look up the term “defensive gun use”.

    5. Here he resorts to simply saying we are stupid when we see actual gun confiscations. “Don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain!” What does he use to back his claim up with? Why, nothing at all of course, probably because he doesn’t know what is going on and certainly hasn’t read any legislation.

    6. How does he say he doesn’t know what the gun regulations are and then try to say there are almost none? He should have just started off the article like that. “I don’t really know anything about this topic, but here’s some words”. Maybe he should try to get a firearm and then pour through how to transport, where you can and can’t take it, and all the other rules and regulations.

    7. According to the CDC it’s almost 32,000 “gun deaths”. 61% is due to suicide, 28% are gang-related, 3% accidents, 2% self-defense, 6% “other”. Suicide studies agree firearms do not make suicide more appealing as other (simpler household) methods are used in the absence of a firearm, so that argument is gone as well. There are about 11,000 “gun homicides” total, 8,800 are gang-related. Gang-related activity usually means that individual is not innocent (although there are killings of the innocent as well), more often than not the user is not a legal owner. The stats don’t back his implied claim innocent women, children, and the elderly are gunned down every day for no reason by law-abiding gun owners that go or are crazy. He doesn’t want to admit it’s a deep-seated crime issue based in economic disparity and racism going back generations. He simply wants to make it look like mass shootings go on all the time, and they do, in the ghettos, but those aren’t white kids so he doesn’t care. What can I say, gun control is racist. Looking at the self-defense stat is important too. 2% of all “gun deaths” is due to self-defense, yet the DOJ estimates DGUs at 108,000 at the low end with a high estimate of 2.5 million. Even with the DOJ’s low estimate there are about 10 times more DGUs than homicides, if you believe the 2.5 million number it’s 227 times more DGUs than homicides. That means hundreds of thousands of lives are saved each year by guns, considering each encounter is counted once and there are at least two people involved, perhaps even an entire group. In many cases the criminal is apprehended shortly after as well, meaning gun owners that carry aid the justice system and take load off police as well.

    So responsible gun owners make us safer, make the job of police easier by helping take criminals off the streets, save the lives of both the criminals and innocents, save taxpayers money, have instant or near-instant response times, statistically have far less collateral damage and deaths than police. So the obvious solution is to get more responsible gun owners. Immediate response would actually stop another Sandy Hook as it does many other crimes.

    • Please post your response somewhere where he can read it!

    • I thinks it’s great when they use the car liscensing/ registration argument. We do all this (liscense registration) and more people are still killed by cars unintentionally each year. And don’t forget injuries from vehicles. Somebody doesn’t have to die for it to be a burden. Serious injury, causing handicaps can cost hundreds of thousands dollars, turn you into a vegetable, or paralyze you for life. Those Boston bombing terrorists may not have killed alot of people but the collateral damage caused as well as the medical bills many will incur are huge, life changing incidents that can be more complicated than just killing someone.

25. Looks like he is already being taken to task over at the dailycalifornian.org.

26. Two points I find us pro-gun folk ignore.

    1) We talk about car regulation and gun regulation… The antis say guns are designed only to kill and have no other purpose. Aside from target shooting, they are correct. The power to kill isn’t always a bad thing. The 110lb woman being attacked by the 250lbs rapist…yes, I want her to have the power to kill. If a nutcase starts to open fire at the mall, the only thing that will stop them is for me or some other responsible citizen to have the power to kill him. It’s why cops carry guns and one of the primary reasons many of us have guns as well. Sometimes the only way to stop evil is to kill it.

    2) Automatic weapons. We say “they’re already severely restricted” or “already illegal”(not true, only making new ones is illegal). Personally I think we should have the freedom to still buy and/or make automatic weapons. I regard the Hughes Amendment as unconstitutional and that the 2nd Amendment protects automatic weapons. Some people would say what do you need that for? I’d say it’s my right to have it… We all know semis can illegally be made into full autos so maybe that nut job shooting up the mall is doing it with a full auto…and maybe you aren’t content with a semiauto to protect yourself and your family…that’s up to you. Me, as a collector, would like to be able to own them. I wouldn’t shoot them often because of the cost of ammo but I’d like to have the ability to own one without having to remortgage my house. I see no problem with the public owning automatics but the Hughes Amendment means only the uber rich can have them…talk about something the Founding Fathers would have disapproved of!

    All rights come with responsibilities… I can’t yell fire in a crowded theater not because the 1st Amendment has restrictions, but because I’d be abusing my right to incite panic and endanger the safety of others. Same reason I should be able to own any firearm, including automatics, but, even with my single shot .22lr, I can’t take it in a city neighborhood and practice in my backyard if I don’t have a safe area to do it in(envision .25 acres where there is no way the bullet doesn’t leave the property vs. 20 acres in the country with a backstop). All rights have responsibilities and it’s not up to the gov’t to infringe on my rights UNTIL I HAVE DEMONSTRATED MY INABILITY TO BE IRRESPONSIBLE…then and ONLY then I can lose my rights.

    So for those of us who are responsible, why do we let automatic weapons be the sacrificial lamb of gun ownership and we let them take those? That’s always been their goal. Automatics…then semis…then handguns…anythign that isn’t single shot…and before you know it we’re like the British with our Joe Biden approved double barrel shotguns…

    • Inability to be irresponsible?

      • My mistake. I meant “Inability to be responsible” as you probably gathered.

    • In regard to #2, I consider the National Firearms Act of 1934 to be unconstitutional by reason of being confiscatory taxation. When a $3 sound suppressor is taxed at $200, the intent is obviously to prevent manufacture and sale, not to raise revenue.

27. You know, I just looked up statistics for mass killings in the UK and in Australia, and it appears, in addition to the fact that there have been mass shootings post Dunblane and Port Arthur, that there have been some significant mass arsons in both countries, so that it may be that the crazies have just switched their MOs.

28. This whole “let’s pass more laws to (finally) stop violence” is beginning to make me really cranky. Frankly, it is not only stupid, but it is scientifically unsound. Does this moron really think that anyone who would gun down his own mother be dissuaded from then murdering 20 children and 6 of their teachers/administrators because there are MORE laws?

    People who commit violent crimes are not dissuaded because laws exist. There is some evidence that they may change certain behaviors – recent trends in NYC and other such cities involving “shared guns” as an example – but that change is only to make it less likely they will be caught, not because they decide to stop the killing.

    My wife has been a public defender for 23 years. She deals with violent criminals every day. She has NEVER encountered a criminal who admitted he didn’t pull a trigger because he was afraid of punishment from the law. It just doesn’t work that way. Her opinion, for what it’s worth, is that the problem on a personal level is impulse control. A lot of bad guys just don’t have it. They see something they want, they take it. Someone looks at them funny, they kick their ass, or worse. Never does it enter the realm of conscious consideration of legal consequence. Mind you, she has seen cases where someone stopped short because of some non-legal consequences, as in “if I kill this guy, his gang is going to retailiate against me or mine”, but even that is rare.

    One thing that I have heard her and her colleagues (even those across the aisle) mutter back and forth when considering some horrendous or nonsensical crime, is that “crime makes you stupid.” Introducing the concept of reason into criminal behavior is likewise stupid.

    And for the law and order crowd, yeah, she’s a PD, and she’s a true believer, and most of the time she actually likes her clients. And she defends them because she thinks the greatest document authored by man is the United States Constituion. She is by no means an apologist nor does she consider her clients poor babies, but she lives and breathes that civil rights are the singularly most important thing to fight for, even when the people facing the revocation of said rights are scumbags (my word, not hers).

29. Libtard hypocrisy is enough to want to tear one’s hair out.

    Libtards say that that capital punishment doesn’t stop people from murdering, so it should be ended. Yet one of the arguments is just that. That we need more gun control laws because it will stop criminals from using guns.

    Hello, anyone there?? The psychopathic mass murderers are the very ones that don’t care about punishment, or they want to go down shooting. And the laws on the books are pled away or reduced so criminals know they don’t have to worry.

    If all laws simply said that having a gun, operable or not, or even a fake gun while committing a crime puts a person away for a minimum of 5 years, additionally, that might, just might, mean something. At the very least it would put that crook out of circulation. And if they get caught again the penalty increases.

30. There is no doubt that if the military, more or less, sided with the government, that any rebellion would be heavily outgunned. But let us consider reality

    1. We are already at a handicap. So the argument is to handicap us more? “The government has X and Y that you do not…so therefore it is alright to take Z and put you at a greater disadvantage” The argument that the government outguns us is an argument for letting us have better weapons, not less.

    2. The point isn’t always to win tactically. Whether it was Grant beating General Lee, or the war in Vietnam, the losing side had more tactical victories. The thing is, the American populace could not stomach a war on our soil. It is easy to ignore or not care about the killing of someone away from you, with no disturbance to your life. The fact that millions of Americans are armed is enough that the government would have to use such great force, against fellow Americans, so as to risk all support.

    3. Could most soldiers, Marine, sailors and airmen stomach such?

    Whereas if we were unarmed, there would not have to be such a brutal use of force for tyranny. It would play the politic game.

    • Great points! I look at Fallujah to remember that a bunch of uneducated nutjobs with AK-47s and RPGs gave our troops a run for the money a few years ago… So imagine our military of, what, is it 1 million soldiers? Against the probably 50 million Americans who would be willing to fight for the 2nd Amendment? Military advantage or not…it’d be a lemming fight…

31. what kills me, figuratively of course, is the gun grabbing idiots actually believe the U.S. military is going to side with a tyrannical government against the people.

    • I absolutely agree with you here.

32. I understand women pushing for gun control.

    But men?

    Hopeless panty-waists and pussies. Not men.

33. “Toomey gun control proposal (the background-check expansion that had approximately 93 percent public approval“

    Is it just me or does the “Public Approval” percentage for the National Gun Registery keep increasing everytime it is brought up?

    Before we know it’ll be 110% “Public Approval”.

    • I think it’s more than they have a sample size of like seven people…easiest way to skew statistics in your favor…

34. In a society without ‘normal’ access to fire arms I’d feel perfectly well heeled with a bandoleer o’pistols, a blunderbuss and a decent rifle all of the front stuffer variety. Whip up a few score paper ‘cartridges’ and load on a few ‘grenades’, top it all off with a dirk and a cutlass and let have. Come to think of it, it a gun free zone I think a determined man with a bit of training could perpetrate quite the massacre with such equipment. What’s worse, one can make such things in the garage from parts and with machines too common to regulate unless we’re going to have lathe registration and background checks for scrap metal and wood, which is perhaps not yet a bridge too far for the anti’s. Such idiocy knowing no bounds, perhaps I should be silent before they come for my scrap plumbing.

    • If you’ve got any automotive exhaust tubing and fender washers in your garage we all know you are making silencers.

35. I like how this guy kind of admits that his precious little AWB is unconstitutional and then goes on to justify it by saying the 2A is just not important so we should forget about it.

36. I see a few other people have already done this, but here’s the response I posted. That’s not really me in the picture, by the way.

    1. The overall murder rate in Australia was unaffected by their gun ban, and our murder rate dropped far more drastically than their since 1997. Regardless, the oft repeated postulation that there haven’t been any mass shootings since then is a lie – the Monash University shooting took place in 2002. Furthermore, it carefully ignores other forms of mass murder that apparently replaced mass shootings, such as these arson fires: the Childer’s Palace Massacre (15 killed, June, 2000), The Churchill Massacre (10 killed, February 2009) or the Quaker’s Hill Nursing Home Massacre (11 killed, November 2011). Funny how you don’t see the same level of outrage when the weapon isn’t a gun.

    2. No one is arguing against laws that only apply to criminals; the argument is that the laws pushed in the wake of Sandy Hook are nothing but a wish list gun control organizations have been pushing for decades. Also, your comparison to rape creates a false dichotomy and false equivalency. We make rape illegal because it’s a crime, but we don’t make sex illegal to prevent rape.

    3. There’s so many issues with this statement it’s difficult to concisely counter, but I’ll simply start by saying, yes, gun laws unduly take away the rights of law abiding people. I’ll throw in there that, with #2 in mind, the same laws are completely ineffectual against fighting crime. You can argue against the 2nd amendment and it’s modern day application all you want, but the fact remains that A) it’s there and isn’t going anywhere for the time being and b) the supreme court affirmed twice in the past 5 years that it’s an individual right. Regardless, your argument that it’s outdated because the technology that exists today didn’t exist then is just another logical fallacy. Does free speech apply to the internet? Does the press only have the freedom to print newpapers? Can police search your computer and mobile device whenever they want?

    4. Again, you’re using logical fallacy after logical fallacy, inserting diversions strawmen while ignoring the base argument – that the people who seek to harm people should be regulated and punished, not guns and the people who don’t. We can see that working right now in Chicago – a gun controllers paradise. After years of relying on gun laws and watching crime escalate the police tried something new – they focused on high crime areas, identified 400 likely repeat offenders and – guess what – 30% reduction in homicides. Of course, this is just an inconvenient truth for folks like you, just like you, just like the the people killed in those 3 cases of arson in Australia. That case of the would be killer in China is a favorite of your group, and the fact that it totally relies on coincidence and a vacuum in context means nothing. Do we know for sure that he was even trying to kill the children? I don’t know if we ever will. I do know this – Chen Shuizong was certainly trying to kill people when he set fire to a bus a week or so ago. And he did. He killed 46 people, and himself. In China. With no guns.

    5. Dianne Feinstein has said repeatedly, as have her cohorts, that if they could they would absolutely, positively confiscate “assault weapons” if they had the votes. The fact that they continue pushing that agenda despite the complete failure of the original AWB to demonstrably reduce crime is more than enough evidence to reasonably assume they’d like to move to confiscation. Furthermore, nearly every other nation that began with ‘common sense’ gun laws eventually moved to confiscation (Canada, UK, Australia, Japan etc).

    6. You’re talking about California, right? I mean, you openly admit that you don’t know what the gun regulations there are, so perhaps do a little research before offering advice on how to argue with dummies… otherwise you may end up looking like one. Tell you what actually – why don’t you go out and try to buy a car and a gun on the same day. Let me know which is easier to acquire in California. Also, see how hard it is to acquire alcohol. That kills 120,000 people a year.

    7. The actual number is somewhere between 50,000 and 2 million defensive gun uses per year in America, and about 8,500 deaths due to gun violence. Your number includes suicides, and while 1 suicide is too many, there is no data aside from a questionable study conducted by the Australian government that indicates the presence of guns increases the chance of suicide. In fact, gun-free South Korea has a suicide rate that is almost twice our murder rate and suicide rate combined. You close this statement with the same old – that we’re making a choice between our guns and other people’s right to live. That’s a false dilemma, and an intentional one since you’ve already admitted (and failed to counter) that our entire argument assumes that gun laws don’t prevent gun crimes.

    I have little faith that you’ll absorb or even read any of this, but I do hope that someone else on the fence reads both your piece and mine and realizes that your flavor of “debate” involves massive doses of mistruths, deceptive statements, hyperbole, false logic and emotional calls to action. It’s too bad for anyone that actually wants to have a conversation or debate about violence in America, because you guys have already copyrighted those phrases, and they’ve been sullied.

    • That was pretty awesome, BP, and it goes in my anti-anti file because although it’s addressed to this yahoo, it neatly summarizes and counters most of the logical fallacies that many followers of the Civilian Disarmament Movement use.

      • Thanks dude… always happy to contribute to that file.

37. When someone starts their gun-control premise by comparing us to an island nation with less than 10% of our population, 1% of the firearms (3M vs. 300M), and no domestic firearms manufacturers, then says “see, it worked for them”… well, I just have to nod and move on.

38. Just sent him the link to this post. Let’s see what happens.

39. thank goodness some people have facebook.

    i thoroughly enjoyed going through the comments and how you guys DESTROYED that article.

    you brought the holy wrath of god down on that pencil necked little shit. and its glorious.

40. “The point of gun control laws is to threaten would-be criminals with penalties if they so choose to break the law.”

    This is soooo beyond ignorant.

    Most spree killers don’t plan to be taken alive when they are done….both Lanza and the mall shooter off’ed themselves at the first sign of resistance.

41. “…Unless you also think that masturbation is rape.”

    That made me laugh so loud!

    Regarding the cars and guns analogy, my response is that car registration has never, to my knowledge, been followed by car confiscation, violation of rights, and/or tyranny. Also, while a car might be useful when you need to GTFO of a place where bad people are doing bad things, it is not an instrument of defense.

42. I have given up point by point rebuttals. Now I just post this link to an article written by a liberal democrat…pretty well obliterate the argument.

    http://kontradictions.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/dear-democratic-gun-control-lobby-how-to-get-better/

    Then I state my standard bearer:

    “There is NO gun control argument that can be logically made without standing on the graves of victims, willfully misrepresenting statistics and facts, or blatantly telling lies. ”

    Then if needed I gladly place every argument made by the writer/speaker into one of those categories.

    That pretty well handles it.

43. Julian is a moron. He reveals it by his abysmal ignorance regarding firearms and violence as well as by his continued incorrect use of the word “incredulous.”

44. Well written.

45. The question isn’t, or shouldn’t be, open to debate. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Period.
    All that stuff about the “well-regulated militia” is actually the reason WHY the right of the people (as in individuals, not collectives) to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

    If they’re not happy with the 2nd Amendment, then they should start a campaign to amend the Constitution. But then, if we’re going to bother with a Constitutional Convention, we should really go after #XVI and fire the IRS!

    But the hoplophobes seem to think the Constitution doesn’t mean what it says, or it’s a work in progress or something.

46. This Julian dude should have his lower jaw powdered by a ball-peen hammer.
    Stupid libtard.

47. The gun control lobby tells malicious lies and the pro gun lobby is inflexible.

    Reality is there are commercial data bases that identify any person that searched for information on guns or gun parts, more so bought something using the internet. Anyone can buy this data for “advertising purposes”.

    We need to campaign for violence prevention. Set a single federal standard for gun ownership and gun carry (universal honoring of carry rights). We also need to extend RICO to organizations that use firearms in the commission of crimes for gain and those who benefit from them. One drive by shooting and every gang member that knew of or reasonably should have known that such acts were to be perpetrated go to jail for ever. Put them to work building more jail cells to house their peers.

48. Nick, good article. I do have a few suggestions regarding arguing with gun-control dummies however.

    Gun Control Doesn’t Work – Instead of using the states comparison between lax and strict laws, let’s look at national statistics. (I have charts!) Between 1963 and 1992 the violent crime and homicide rates tripled in the U.S. This in spite of the 1968 Gun Control Act and thousands of state & local laws. Between 1993 and 2010, the trend for violent crime and homicide has been downward. Today’s homicide rate is about the same as 1964 and violent crime is down about one-third to 1972 levels. Important to note that these downward trends started before the enactment of the Clinton-era gun control laws. Even the lifting of the AWB did not produce a surge in the crime rates. Nor did any gun control laws produce a steeper downward trend.

    But wait! There’s more!

    In the same time period as the declining crime rates, gun production increased by 1-2 million guns/year over 1986 levels. Total gun production rose to 4.1M guns/year until 1990. In 1991, production sagged to 3.5M guns. In 1992, the first year crime started downwards, production surged back with 5.1M guns, followed by 6M in 1993. Production slowed gradually until 2001, then began to rise quickly. From 3.8M guns/yr in 2001 to 7.9M guns in 2009. In the 20 year interval of 1991-2010, slightly more than 100 million new guns were produced (net, including imports, excluding exports).

    In summary, while crime rates were decreasing, firearm production was increasing. The surges of purchases in 2008 and 2012 nearly depleted the entire supply chain. This means the stock of privately owned guns has increased significantly, yet crime rates are falling.

    The point of gun control laws is to threaten would-be criminals with penalties if they so choose to break the law. Once your gun control dummy admits that the purpose of background checks is to deter criminals and mental cases he’s on the hook. In 2009, a review of BATF statistics showed that for the 6 million checks in all of 2009 there were only 32 convictions based on a NICS check outcome. That is about 0.68% of the 4600 cases referred to field offices. Only 140 cases were referred for prosecution with prosecutors declining almost half. If less than 1% are brought up on charges and less than half are convicted, where is the deterrence effect? It simply doesn’t exist.

    I could go on, but this is verbose enough. I’m sure you can get my email address from the webmaster and contact me if desired.

49. Was that a typo or a brain fart in your explAnation of malum prohibitum?

50. Does this character actually believe this nonsense?

51. Wow… The ignorance gods smile upon your puny brain…

52. It’s my understanding, via a couple of Aussie friends, that another question for this snotty dingbat, would be how many mass shootings there were in the 10 years BEFORE their draconian law. To quote him, “you guessed it-zero.” The government responded to a mass killing by shotgun (I think ?) by outlawing rifles and pistols, makes as little sense as a lot of what we hear, but then we hear it because it “has been proven to work” there. “Work”, of course, is about separating people from their guns, the results thereafter are unimportant because that was our only goal, and those who feel that way have no idea WHY!

53. First of all anyone that thinks the military will not follow orders to turn on you take a look at Kent State. Then look at the Boston Marathon bombing. A whole city was under martial law while the military conducted door-to-door searches. One un-armed teenager caused that.

    If you allow the government to take one of your rights then they will not stop till they take the rest. Look up HR347 which restricts free speech. Look at recent events in Nevada where “Free Speech Zones” were set up to coral Americans trying to stand up for their rights. If not for armed militia the the Bundy ranch would have been gone and more than likely the Bundy’s would have been dead.

    All atrocities in history began with disarmament. You think these politicians care about you children? They send their children to private schools with armed guards while you’re forced to send your kids to public schools in “Gun Free Zones” aka killing fields.

    Shannon Watts walks around with armed guards provided by Bloomberg. His armed guards carry fully automatic sub-machine guns. If these hypocrites believe in gun control so much then why don’t they practice what they preach? Because they know the crap don’t work and believe they deserve protection and you don’t.

54. Here is an example of liberal disconnect on the issue of allowing teachers to bring guns in schools.

    Schools post signs that refer to “No Smoking” … yet administrators, teachers and students still bring cigarettes to school on their person. To solve the gun issue in schools … schools should post signs that refer to “No Shooting” .. that way a person bringing a gun to school would know not to shoot. It’s the act that is criminal, not the inanimate object.

    To be consistent, liberals should be advocating the banning of bringing cigarettes to school. They say guns kill people … okay … cigarettes kill people. Otherwise, it is time to recognize that guns and cigarettes don’t kill people … it’s the act of shooting or smoking that kill people.

55. The Afgans humiliated the Brits (the most powerful military in the world at the time) over and over again using just rifles during the 1800s.

    In Vietnam, the US was the most powerful military in the world, plus we had allies and complete air superiority. We got our rears handed to us by a bunch of farmers with AKs and mortars.

    Drones? We’ve got drones in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are very busy, but still haven’t won the war.

    Nukes? Are you kidding? If there was a civil war, would the government nuke ITSELF?

56. The AR-15 is the modern equivalent of the musket. As such, it should be the MOST protected firearm.

    Why do you think the framers said ‘arms’ instead of ‘muskets’ or ‘muzzleloaders’ or ‘flintlocks’? They debated the Constitution for months. They knew that weapons would evolve over time. That’s why they didn’t specify muskets, or even rifles. They left it vague deliberately.

57. The citizens couldn’t overthrow the government if necessary?

    In California, arguably the most liberal state in the country, there are more than 7 million firearms owners. Not 7 million guns, 7 million people who own firearms. That is more than the active duty military of US, Russia, and China COMBINED. And that’s just one state. There are 49 more states with gun owners. Molon Labe, baby.

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