Anti-gunners believe that all gun owners are, at the very least, potentially stupid. They believe a gun is an accident waiting to happen (save guns in the hands of the police but don’t get me started). Because people are stupid. Emotionally unstable. Psychologically incapable of judicious application of lethal force. Let’s face it: some gun owners answer to that description.
That’s no excuse for violating the Second Amendment’s prohibition against government infringement on anyone’s right to keep and bear arms. People are stupid about voting, too. The question here: is it true, as Comedian Ron White told us, “you can’t fix stupid”? If, for example, we taught gun safety in school, could we prevent at least some firearms stupidity?
Whatever happened to fathers teaching sons and daughters? The great American tradition of coming of age when dad first breaks out that .22 rifle seems lost. That is what we need to fix. But, generally no, you cannot fix stupid.
Fathers? What are those?
Exactly… The majority of modern American men are, literally, bastards. It would seem that the left was at least partially successful in creating a generation of males who can only pretend to be men.
I’m a happy camper. My 31 year old daughter asked me to take her shooting after a 10 year break. Day one was fantastic. She remembered all but one of the 4 Cardinal rules.
I had perma grin!
This. My dad never owned any guns, but my grandfather taught me how to shoot, a skill set I will certainly pass on to any kids I have.
Too many fathers are:
• Absent bio-dads
• Too busy ‘getting in touch with their feelings’
• Liberalized wet blankets
• Indoctrinated zombies
• Drinking lattes in their PJs while ‘group thinking’ with others of their ilk
Liberals is what happened.
Yes, because what you are calling stupidity can many times been seen as ignorance. You can’t fix stupid, but you can fix ignorance.
“You can’t fix stupid, but you can fix ignorance.”
*This*
Exactly what I was going to say.
It’s kind of strange how the progressives’ stock answer to almost everything is “education”…unless it involves guns, in which case they’re all in favor of potentially deadly ignorance.
Liberal newspeak for “education” = “brain-washing”.
I argue that willful ignorance = stupidity
I always like to say “ignorance is correctable; stupidity is terminal.”
+1. Beat me to it.
Stupidity with firearms has way of self correcting. That is why we have the IGOTD and the Darwin Awards.
That’s what I was thinking. Let stupid gun-owners have their guns and give them plenty of distance and eventually we won’t have any stupid gun owners.
I was looking for this comment. Glad you made it, now I don’t have to.
very correct. politically correct? nope. There are some things in life that will shit you out dead with zero warning. no way to make a fatal gun handling mistake PC in my opinion.
Every person has to figure out what they can and cannot do. You will not see me trying to drive in Nascar, fly helicopters or scuba diving. Don’t know how, never been trained, no clue what is right or wrong to do.
Education is just about always good. I’m in the most people are stupid camp. That doesn’t really matter though. I still can’t believe American voters chose Trump and Clinton it just boggles my mind… Dems just couldn’t admit to themselves that they are socialist. At least Bernie is a decent human being. I don’t really know what republicans were thinking with Trump. It really should have been Bernie and Kasich IMHO. I’m not saying who I voted for in the primary. I’m in the stupid camp myself.
The issue is that most of the right has woken up and realized that traditional conservatism is all well and good, but cannot exist in the same universe as the radical left. Trump was elected not to beat the radical left, but to annihilate them. To burn them out of this country root and branch.
Wake up kiddo, we’re at war. You don’t win wars by placating your enemy.
Donald Trump won’t do any of those things. He’s a nationalist authoritarian in the European mold, and he’s going to do more damage to conservatism and the idea of limited Constitutional government than he ever will to the progressive left.
Traditional conservatism is dead (not that I was ever in that camp, but still). We’re screwed no matter who wins this election — the only questions are how, and by whom.
Donald Trump, if he can stop acting like an idiot and start campaigning against Hillary, can do one VERY important thing: appoint judges to the court in the mold of Scalia in terms of interpreting the Constitution based on the way it was written and intended for each Article and each Amendment. It appears that ultimately that is the only way the Republic can be retrieved from its current mess. He can also stop the insipid support for Political correctness that has been in place for decades and will now be enshrined forever if Hillary wins. Otherwise the Donald does not appear to have the gravitas and demeanor to be a leader.
Exactly this. Comedian Jim Jefferies has the most accurate take on Trump: he’s like the grade school candidate running for class president – he’s just telling people exactly what they want to hear, with no intention nor abiltiy to keep those promises.
Jean, that’s makes him different than any other politican how exactly?
Leon, that’s a good point. It’s the only thing that can make me consider voting for the Orange One. (That and the certainty of what the pantsuited felon would foist on us.) If he does listen to sane, constitutional-minded advisors on the inevitable Supreme Court appointments, would that outweigh the inevitable damage he’ll do in other ways? I dunno.
“At least Bernie is a decent human being.”
He endorsed Clinton. Where were those principles beyond reproach the Bern fans were touting? He is a politican playing a decent person, do not be fooled.
He likely sold out for a position in her admin.
“Bernie is a decent human being.”
Bwahahaha!!!!
Sure, a guy who thinks its moral to take the hard work of somebody else and give the fruits of that labor to somebody else, who vacationed in the Soviet Union on his honeymoon.
News flash: the Soviet Union tortured and starved to death millions of its own people while Bernie was there. He should have visited a gulag and seen the Soviet equivalent of a Nazi death camp.
The guy is a turd and if I met him in a dark alley, socialized medicine doctors wouldn’t think twice about pulling the plug on what was left.
Ok, he is a decent human compared to Clinton and Trump. Bernie is who he is and he doesn’t lie about it. I will admit I lost a lot of respect for the guy when he endorsed Clinton. She is everything he ran against. A warmonger, globalist, neoconservative Dick Cheney wannabe in Kim Jong Un’s pants suit.
I’m not conservative and haven’t voted for a Republican in the general election since Bush in November 2000. It very hard for me to vote for someone I don’t like. This elections will be the first time I’ve ever voted for someone based on one issue. I’m already sick about it. People need to wake up and start voting for third parties and end our two party system. But no Ron Paul or Gary Johnson for me this time.
“I’m not conservative and haven’t voted for a Republican in the general election since Bush in November 2000”. You’re proud of THAT?
Thanks to POS like you we have Obama, think about THAT every time you look in the mirror.
Don’t be a pu$$y!
Vote Trump!
This would seem to be the perfect time for a third party to rise. Maybe even a replacement for one of the current statist twins.
The vast majority of voters dislike and mistrust the major party nominees, and the Libertarians could position themselves as a more trustworthy alternative — a party where social liberals, constitutional conservatives, classical liberals, and principled voters in general can find common ground. (Or they could be content with protest votes from tax evaders and potheads…either way.)
Johnson & Weld aren’t my favorite pair, but if I thought they had even an outside chance, I’d vote for them. I’d rather see Gary Johnson in office than an unindicted criminal who is openly campaigning against the Bill of Rights or a malignant narcissist who seems to think this whole thing is the biggest Celebrity Apprentice episode ever.
Gary Johnson is a Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist which is to say a Marxist heretic. Faux Libertarians like Johnson expropriated the term Libertarian in the 1980s and use conservative rhetoric in the service of leftists. Ever notice how faux Libertarians always end up supporting and enabling the leftist agenda? The only difference between the socialist utopia and the anarcho-capitalist version is that scarcity problem still exists and markets are required to allocate resources. If you bother look at what the Rothbardian end state it is nothing more than Marx with markets. Don’t take my word for it. Johnson has stated that he is closest to Bernie Sanders on the political spectrum.
Ignorance can be temporary but stupid is forever. ?
Maybe. Sadly, for many, stupid is a way of like. In personal relationships, professional endeavors, firearm ownership, personal finance, etc., many are not mentally mature enough and have no desire to mentally mature. That can’t be fixed in some.
Speaking of temporary stupidity, it’s way of life, not like.
Stupidity itself cannot be fixed.
However, most gun accidents (negligents?) involve bad habits such as not checking the chamber every single time you pick up a gun or failing to keep a boogerflicker off the bang switch. Or they involve ignorance where people think the gun must be empty once the magazine is removed. Sometimes they involve large amounts of stupidity’s force multiplier; giggle water.
All of these things can indeed be fixed.
As for the two guys in this video. What they’re doing is stupid but I don’t really see it as horrendously unsafe. Guys this age do all sorts of dumb things like this with paintball guns, BB guns, airsoft guns… if I have a problem with what they’re doing it’s that they’re not wearing eyepro.
Look, my neighbor across the end of the cul-de-sac is a young fireman. On the 4th he had all of his other young fireman friends over for the holiday. Now you’d think these would be the safest guys with…fire, right?
Nah. They were putting firecrackers in each others pants, and down shirts, shooting roman candles and bottle rockets at each other, etc. My family and I had a huge laugh at the great entertainment these guys were providing, but I was just waiting for one them to go up in flames, get an eye blown out from a roman candle, or have a small crater made in a fleshy part of their body. Oh, they came away with some minor burns, but nothing more serious. Don’t get me wrong, my neighbor is a great person, but think running into burning buildings has unhinged the lot of them 😀
If fireman get up to these type of antics, how can anyone be surprise about stupid pet tricks committed by the rest of the Darwin Award seekers out there? Posting up ‘I did something really stupid and survived’ on youtube seems to be almost a right of passage for some folks nowadays. 😉
Fireman playing with fireworks? Hell with what they have to deal with on a daily basis ie. walking and crawling into burning buildings with only a f***ing hose, axe, or bar in their hands fireworks are the least of their problems.
Would I engage in plinkin someone with a bb gun…NO…however I see no problem with two adults with no kids present doing this. I can object to posting on the internet because kids are gonna kid and someone will get hurt and the one doing the hurting gets time in a juvy detention center.
I believe that was an airsoft pistol and as such was desinged to be fired at people.
Why fix stupid? I prefer George Carlin to Ron White:
“What ever happened to natural selection? Survival of the fittest? The kid who swallows too many marbles doesn’t grow up to have kids of his own. Simple stuff. Nature knows best!” ~GC
The government cannot. Parents can to some degree, but on the whole, no. Stupid is as stupid does, and there will always be at least a few people who genuinely like doing stupid things.
Public schools are a great place to teach firearms safety to all the kids. At graduation from middle school they each get a rifle or shotgun and at graduation from high school they each get a revolver or semi.
And think of the strokes this plan would cause in the anti camp.
Not a bad plan IMHO, but I’d go farther and say that upon graduation from high school they get 2-4 years of mandatory military service.
I know, I know. There’s a lot of benefits to a professional and all volunteer force in terms of weeding out the shitbirds but the program seems to work just fine in South Korea, Switzerland, Israel, Norway, Ukraine etc.
How about we draft all the graduates into the militia? Regular forces can still be all volunteer.
All who pass the requirements for militia service can be issued whatever is standard service rifle for the regulars and a supply of ammo.
Let the militia members that live on the borders patrol there and let the big city militia members augment the police in gang interactions.
Universal military service is not practical. We would have a military bigger than the one we had in WWII. That’s not affordable. I do like JWMs suggestion about compulsory firearms training and militia service. Lets put the unorganized militia to work.
Not much different than cars. Look at how people drive.
I think if we just have the right government policies, we can fix stupid. This is America, after all, and we can do anything.
You can fix ignorance, but you can’t fix stupid.
Anonymous for the win! Nothing to add…
“You can lead a person to knowledge, but you can’t make him think.”
Why would anyone want to fix stupid? Being smart is an important genetic advantage — revel in it! Smart people own the wheelbarrow factories; stupid people push the wheelbarrows. It’s the nature of things.
Ignorance among smart people can be overcome through the application of good teaching by smart, knowledgeable people. Which doesn’t happen in the public education system as often as it should, for obvious reasons.
I seem to remember a couple of months ago, the idea of training as being of any use (not to mention also being an infringement on RTKBA) was considered laughable, if not treasonous. Certainly, training was scorned as unnecessary, useless, unimportant, ineffective and intolerable.
My old sergeant used to ask, “What is the lethal radius of stupid?”. His other favorite was, “If you don’t think you need training, you need training.”
But that was then.
All of us have the potential to be stupid. It can happen when we are using a microwave oven, automobile, gun, or any other object. Every day there are thousands of “accidents” with autos but very few with guns yet society is only concerned about gun accidents.
Best way to prevent stupid is follow rules and think about the rights of others. Gun owners are taught 4 rules that if followed will prevent all accidents. I can’t think of any other object that has precise safety rules that are universally taught.
I was a Navy officer who did a shore tour at the Naval Safety Center. The Navy operates what is arguably some of the most potentially dangerous engineered environments in the world. There was a saying in the Navy, that “There is no way to sailor-proof a system.” However, at the Naval Safety Center we proved, time and time again, that while you can’t fix stupid, you can mitigate it to a significant degree. The key is to looking at safety issues in terms of complete systems and not single points of failure. You have to look at all aspects of mishaps: equipment design, training, standardization, rules of use and consequences for bad judgement and bad action. All those have to work together.
So yes we could fix a significant level of firearms stupidity, BUT I think in the civilian community there may be 2A challenges to that the Navy did not have to worry about. For that reason, I’m not suggesting we necessarily do any of the following, but just explaining what it might look like if we did:
1. Guns themselves would need to be as safe as possible, while still being ready for use.. “Keeping your booger hook off the bang switch” is not a mature approach to systematic safety. I personally think system safety favors DA or DA/SA guns, I would want research to support that.
2. People would need to be extensively trained and qual’ed before handling firearms.
3. There would need to be rules for firearms handling and storage, with penalties attached for violation, whether the violation caused a major mishap or not.
4. There would need to be a systematic continuous improvement program in place that improved all of the above on an ongoing basis.
5. There would need to be a concerted effort to create and strengthen a “safety culture” among gun handlers. It would be difficult with the general public, but it could be done.
Like I said, this would probably not be popular with a lot of people and I am not actually recommending it. I am just saying this is what it would take. How successful could it be? The Navy experienced an average reduction in mishaps of just over 1/3 every 10 years they ran these programs on specific systems. So it would not be an overnight cure. However, I think small arms would tend to do better than average, because the system is less complex than most of the ones the Navy was working on.
Hhhhmmmm. Sound general quarters; rig for collision!
Merely surveying actions that are considered 2A infringements (safety protocols) will tag you with endorsing same. It’s just the nature of the beast.
You’re probably right. That’s why I caveated it. But the question was asked and I gave an honest answer. The truth will out.
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