“John Lott was originally supposed to be on C-SPAN for an hour to discuss these issues with Ted Alcorn, the research director for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown,” Lott’s crimeresearchcenter.org reports. “But Alcorn would not appear at the same time and insisted that he be allowed to appear after Lott.” When pressed on the issue by a caller [as above], Alcorn dismissed his detractors as unworthy due to their lack of credibility. Incredible, eh? We won’t deign to debate because our opponents aren’t concerned about “gun violence.” If you believe that, I have an assault weapons ban I’d like you to consider.
Well, if that isn’t the mother of all logical fallacies.
Not that I would expect anything different from Everytown.
Well we know as matter of fact, that Everytown, MAIG, Moms Demand Action do not want a debate. They see no point in discussion or use of logic.
But what is even more blatant is that Mr. Alcorn demand that he go after Lott. Surely this was to allow his teleprompter to be filled with the anti civilian freedom agitprop that we normally hear. Of course Lott isn’t there to defend hos position, so by default the appearance of winning takes place.
The 2nd amendment protects the uniquely American Human right Self defense which allows all Americans to defend self from rape/murder which are violations of self.
No. There’s nothing uniquely American about that right. It is inherent in all people by virtue of Natural Law.
What IS uniquely Americanis the extent to which our governing principles recognize and affirm that right.
Standard Operating Procedure for people of the leftist mindset.
Taught throughout the American university indoctrination centers now days.
Disgusting, Un-American, and worthy of scorn.
Let me guess. You don’t have a degree and you feel threatened by people that do?
Either that or your money got knocked up at one of those phony “indoctrination centers.”
that’s the same bull crap malarkey they’ve been saying the whole time never want to have a debate in front of a camera! and this just goes to prove what I’ve been saying all along with all the fellas here writing for the truth about guns, the facts are on our side we’re going to win this battle its going to be a long and drawn out one, but we will win and overcome. remember We the People mean something do most Americans in this country!
The only “debate” I wish to have with any MDA lackey involves a bar of soap and a sock. They should consider themselves lucky that we no longer use stocks or tar and feathers.
Yes, and if we (pro-liberty/pro-2A types) did likewise we would be lambasted and scorned for our “inability and fear” to justify our rationale.
TL;DR same crap, different day.
That is all part-and-parcel of the same package. Gun grabbers who are Hell-bent on denying our right to keep and bear arms are just as eager to deny our right to have an opinion and openly debate issues in public. All of that is easy for them because they have de-humanized us. Once you de-humanize a group, you can deny all of their rights.
And that is why they are and will always be losing 😀
We are winning now, but they won’t necessarily always be losing. They had a pretty good 30-year run starting around 1968.
Keep fighting, because they won’t ever stop.
The Antis won’t stop until we popularize the RKBA to the point where infringement becomes the 3’rd rail of American politics. We are a very long way to achieving that result.
The best we can hope for is to recognize that no parchment protection of any liberty will survive unless at least a simple majority supports that liberty. Think through all the ravages of American history where a Constitutional right was infringed upon. Only when at least a simple majority concluded that that right was worth defending did that liberty begin to earn some respect. There is nothing different about the 2A.
Sometimes SCOTUS took the lead; e.g., the right against self-incrimination was protected by Miranda. Sometimes SCOTUS did nothing; e.g., the right to be secure against lynching. Not until the American people decided that due-processs in a court was a prerequisite to execution did the practice end.
The people who always tell us they want to have “a dialog” or “discussion” on guns are the first ones who also what to have a one sided conversation — awesome!
Nailed it. The “we want an honest debate” crowd really should be dubbed the “we only want to converse with those which we agree” crowd. It’s nice to see this windbag getting called out on the double good newspeak.
Funny how the antis are all about “an open conversation about guns and gun violence” until faced with the actual opportunity to do just that. Then the cockroaches all scatter and head back to their holes – the light of truth tends to do that.
Cockroaches are survivors, par excellence.
I know the feeling. Shannon won’t take me up on the dinner date thing. 🙁
Your curse for packing a large bore weapon, my friend…
She’s just worried she will enjoy the time on the range shooting afterwards a bit too much.
Umm…I’m under the impression that’s not quite what he meant. 🙂
Fascists.
Well, if your opponent lacks credibility, then that sounds like an easy debate to win. I guess Mr. Alcorn didn’t really see it that way.
No, that is exactly the way he saw it, he just figured being shown to be clueless might negatively affect his well paid position as a Judas Goat.
We need to hammer-home this hypocrisy. The Antis’ web-sites claim they want a “discussion” and then censor any comments they don’t like. They won’t debate credible opponents.
They can not like the NRA or Lott all they like; but, they are stuck with them. The NRA is THE gun organization in the US and has a resume going back to 1871. Who would be more credible to represent the opposition? Lott is an established researcher and academic. Pick away all you like about any point he has written or spoken; you can’t impeach his credibility to speak on the topic.
We need to get the uncommitted voter to understand that they are being sold a bill-of-goods by the Antis and awaken them to the suspicion that they need to hear the other side.
I’d say 5 million members gives them some credibility as well…. everyone should join. discount link here from Ruger. http://www.nra.org/ruger
The NRA is NOT a gun organization, it’s a Rights organization. Everytown fails to understand this simple fact, that every person has the right of lawful self protection. As long as Mr. Bloomberg continues to use ET as a tax write off, ET will control its narrative.
“The NRA is NOT a gun organization . . . ” We need not quibble about whether the NRA is – in part – a “gun” organization. If there were a “National Golf Association” we wouldn’t quibble about whether it is an organization concerned with the lawful use of golf clubs.
“Everytown fails to understand this simple fact, that every person has the right of lawful self protection. As long as Mr. Bloomberg continues to use ET as a tax write off, ET will control its narrative.”
I doubt that the NRA and its members are powerless to articulate the NRA’s narrative. In fact, I think it makes sense to emphasize that NRA is a “gun” organization inasmuch as it’s objective has been to serve the community of gun users in their use of guns; including gun safety. Gun rights became an important addition only since the 1990s. If anyone is expert on guns, gun use and gun safety it is the NRA. No one else holds a candle to NRA in these areas. NRA’s competition is – if anything – only in the arena of gun rights.
We’re practically BEGGING for debates with these people, they dodge, avoid, juke, feint, or outright tuck-tail and run every single time, and yet we’re the ones with no credibility. Whoo, boy!
I wish I could listen to the video, but if I’m on your site for more than a couple minutes I’m berated 2 or 3 autoplay video ads with sound enabled. About halfway through the video I couldn’t even here what he was saying because of them. I used to come to TTAG, multiple times a day, sometimes leaving a tab open in the background. Now I sometimes visit once or twice a week, and it’s because I’m growing tired of these video ads.
How does anyone use the internet without Adblock Plus installed?
https://adblockplus.org/
Install it, use it, love it. You’ll wonder how you ever got anything done on the internet without it. Seriously, I’m wondering how you get anything done right now.
Yeah I know. What’s a “video ad”?
I use ABP (or uBlock), but I choose to support some sites I visit by letting them get their ad dollars. No other site I choose to do this for is as ANNOYING with their ad network as TTAG.
So I can’t support TTAG’s advertising.
No advertising $$$, no TTAG.
FIX IT.
good luck, we’ve been telling them for over a year and no dice
Like any propaganda campaign, it’s based on appearances, not substance. And for that, they need to consistently push their message out, without interference.
Did Goebbels debate? Of course not. Stalin? No. Mao? Yeah, right.
Stalin debated, he’d send them to wait in Siberia then forget until someone else came along who wanted to debate.
HA! I LIKE YOU! YOU FUNNY! GO TO GULAG!!
Alcorn’s position is perfectly logical. Who would want to debate someone who could hand them their a$$?
He apparently is quite comfortable letting the folks know that he’s a pu$$y since no thinking, rational person would accept the excuse that someone of Lott’s stature isn’t “credible”.
Big man saying Lott isn’t credible when he insists on following him on the show and is adamant about preventing all chance of Lott rebuking any of his statements on the air.
Such a profound statement.
Projecting much, Acorn…err…Alcorn? Kinda Squirrelly are you?
Well, it’s not April first, so his statement must be the laugh of the day!
If your opponent has no credibility, you let them self destruct and expose them, not run away and hide. This is the same rigid intolerant type of thinking that brought us the Nazis, Communists, Fascists, ISIS, Boko Haram and the Inquisition.
What single group has convinced the most average-joe non-gun owning Americans to become first time owners this year? MDA? ISIS? NRA? NSA? BLM? Everytown? TTAG?
Democrats.
You said group, but I’d have the say the current Obama administration.
and this is why the two sides will never be able to come together to do something constructive.
I’m pretty sure that the Antis aren’t the least bit interested in accomplishing anything that could be marginally productive. E.g., possibly tweeting the mental-health or convictions criteria to make them slightly more effective. Or improving the enforcement of laws against transferring to a prohibited person.
The Antis’ goal is to incrementally approach a state monopoly on guns. That requires wringing the gun-culture out of American society.
The tragedy is that gun-culture is too large a part of American society; it can’t ever be entirely wrung-out. As long as guns are available to those who are qualified, guns can’t be wrung-out of the criminals in society.
What could achieve a mutual goal would be to enforce felon-in-posession to the point where it becomes prohibitively “expensive” to keep or use a gun for criminal purposes. That could have an impact in driving the demand for weapons to sharp/blunt objects. However, harsh sentences that are actually served are unpalatable to the Progressives. Moreover, taking guns from criminals really isn’t an important Progressive goal.
The pro-gun side can’t allow that either. Once a law is passed it is abused and used against the side you want harmed. Bad idea for minor mistakes to become a life sentence or prohibition on self-defense.
“The pro-gun side can’t allow that either.” The difficulty is that the pro-gun side is not 100% in-control of the political agenda. If we were, then we wouldn’t be discussing how to fight gun control. Sometimes we are in a stronger position; sometimes in a weaker position. In the latter case, gun control laws get passed or amendments that impose tighter control pass. How do we deal with such a political situation?
One approach would be to block all bills in any legislative session that do not repeal whole existing gun-control laws. No negotiations. No new gun control laws. No revisions to existing laws. If we can roll-back a law, that’s fine. The difficulty here is that it’s mighty difficulty to stop all bills except those which are complete repeals. Sometimes enough momentum builds for doing something with an existing new issue or an alleged weakness in an existing law that something is going to pass.
In any such situation we have to decide whether to make the best of the fact that a bill will pass and try to dilute it or try to trade X for Y. Should we try to negotiate? Or, stand pat and let the Antis write the bill that we will have to live with when it passes?
“Once a law is passed it is abused and used against the side you want harmed. Bad idea for minor mistakes to become a life sentence or prohibition on self-defense.” Absolutely correct. Now, what can we do about it. Unless and until we can gain 100% control over the political process we have to deal in the arena where political forces are in-play.
We lost gun rights in the early 20th century incrementally; we gained some of them back in the last quarter of the 20th century incrementally as well. For the past 14 years we have gained more back incrementally. Is there any lesson to be learned here?
There are plenty of objections aspects of the Federal and many State prohibited-persons laws. Shall we live with them exactly as they stand (until we can get them entirely repealed)? Or, should we trade off the most egregious infringements in exchange for concessions that might make more sense. E.g., suppose you have a 21 year old with multiple disorderly conduct convictions. Under present law, they don’t disqualify him for life. Would it make some sense to disqualify him for a few years? I.e., until he can achieve 5 consecutive years without a disorderly conduct conviction he could be disqualified? I’d be willing to trade restoring a hundred thousand veterans who need help balancing their check-books on the backs of young hot-heads who can’t stay out of bar brawls.
Let’s take another example. Suppose we get a law change allowing the sponsors of “gun shows” to get access to NICS so they could run BCs and print a BC certificate good for shows. Suppose we get a change requiring a seller to see a BC certificate or a CWP for any sale discussed at a gun show. We could gut the phrase of “gun-show loophole” without doing any inconvenience to gun-show traders (who are not FFLs) and without touching on any other non-dealer transactions outside the gun-show venue. Why not take that trade?
Personally, I think we ought to open NICS widely; e.g., gun clubs/ranges, sporting goods stores, notaries public. Then any seller could run a BC on a buyer he doesn’t know well without setting foot in an FFL (where there is a box of blank 4473 forms waiting to be filled out.) Were that in place, I wouldn’t mind a law prohibiting the sale of a gun to a prohibited person whether the seller knew/had-reason-to-beleive the buyer were a prohibited person. Such a prohibition wouldn’t touch on the overwhelming majority of transactions between friends and family where the seller knows the buyer. It would only impact on the occasional case where buyer and seller don’t know one another well and they meet at a gun-range, bar, barn, etc. In any such case, the seller would be well advised to have the range, bar-tender, or a nearby notary public run the BC. Such a law would take almost all the wind out of the Antis cries for UBC.
The Antis will, of course, insist on FFLs running the BCs and filling out the 4473 forms. The general public doesn’t care about the FFLs’ revenue stream. Nor does the genera public really care about 4473 forms. If-and-to-the-extent that the public cares about BCs at all, what they care about is applying a penalty to anyone who sells a gun to a criminal/crazy. OK, we could do that by penalizing anyone who sells a gun to a criminal/crazy without running a BC.
Basically, we have a choice: We write the gun laws under which WE will live; or, leave Bloomberg to write the gun laws he would like to impose on US.
The same Everytown that’s been caught in bold-faced lies in nearly every big press release they make, called out even by the mainstream media, example their school shootings since Newtown list. And THEY’RE saying WE aren’t credible?
Lies? Those aren’t lies, they are “alternative views of the facts”
“research director”
I do not think that word means what they think it means.
Inconceivable.
Research Director in Alcorn’s case means Commissar of Propaganda. Debate or alternative views will not be tolerated.
Fake numbers vs Real Numbers. Guess who is going to win.
Alcorn is a big pus.
Fake Numbers will win.
…When said first and loudest…
All the best, James
Gun control activists wont debate. They want a one sided conversation where they can lie and nobody is allowed to call them on it. Just like their social media pages where anyone who corrects their lies is immediately banned.
That explains why the comments are closed on everything they post on the internet.
That’s nothing more than ” I win, you lose” Indeed, ETFGS sends the clear message that they are incapable of a debate and it is Everytowns credibility which is in question.
Debating gun control against people like Lott, doesn’t usually work well.
Ask Piers Morgan.
Gov. Jesse Ventura handed Piers’s backside to him as well, on the very same subject. Piers didn’t have any sort of response.
Folks, I grew up in California. I was raised to believe the “guns bad!” narrative. But facts ended up changing my mind. So why don’t the antis like Shannon Watts also change their minds, given the facts? Same for people like Alcorn; why?
Because…it is very difficult to get a person to understand something when his or her salary depends upon him/her not understanding it.
Always remember that.
– T
They don’t want to debate, compromise or negotiate. They want to make demands and they should be met, regardless of the possible consequence to innocent life as they believe their ideology is supreme.
I can think of a few groups that fit that description, Everytown is just one of the only ones I can think of that is (prominently) within our borders.
Wait, what? Ted Alcorn refused to debate John Lott because Lott doesn’t know about guns and crime? That’s like your high school physics teacher refusing to talk with Niels Bohr because your teacher (who graduated from Eastern Podunk State) thinks he knows more about atomic physics.
Get ahold of yourself, Teddy boy. You look like a fool.
Have you checked out his LinkedIn profile? Because it’s hilarious. His best qualification is an M.A. in health policy. His longest job has been as a documentary producer. Followed by a freelance reporter for The Lancet concurrent with working for NY’s mayor’s office. Compare that to Lott, who’s held professorial positions at some of the most prestigious universities in the country. If Lott isn’t qualified to speak on the issue, Alcorn isn’t qualified to serve me a burrito.
Maybe he was confusled… I think he was talking about himself. He doesn’t want a debate or talk with anyone because he isn’t credible and knows it!
MDA doesn’t want a discussion, they only have demands: it’s in their name for crying out loud!
Don’t confuse the folks over at everytown with facts. They just can’t handle them.
“Alcorn dismissed his detractors as unworthy due to their lack of credibility.”
Ahahahahaahaaaaaahahahahaa!
*Snort* Wait, does he actually expect anyone but the most gullible to believe that statement?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAA!
What, what rubbish is this? Did I wake up in the twilight zone? Or did a speaker for one of the most dishonest groups ever just call the…
AAAAAHAHAAAAAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAAHA!
I think I’m going to vomit now to clean my mouth out, and look for some bleach for my ears.
Remember that for Progressives, credibility is based on reaching the correct conclusion.
It seems they’ve crafted a sort of win-win situation wherein they define “credible” as “people who agree with us”. See, if you’re credible, then you already agree with them and there’s no reason to debate! If you don’t agree with them, then you’re CLEARLY not credible, so why bother with a debate?
Alcorn dismissed his detractors as unworthy due to their lack of credibility. In other words, he is saying, they will not understand and make fun of his “feelings”.
Alcorn is an idiot. But he is correct that Lott lacks credibility. After it was proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he made up the so-called studies, POTD can’t use Lott as a spokesman. Time to move on and find someone who doesn’t pull numbers out of his butt.
Really? I just finished reading one of Lott’s books. Every last boring detail and source that led to his conclusions is in the book. It is a statistician’s dream with every source spelled out. Boring read, absolutely; lies, I highly doubt it; different conclusion on the collected data, conceivable. Can you provide a source for your accusation, because quite frankly, I am not seeing anything that supports your accusation outside what the Bloomberg crowd or the leftist media claims?
After a little research, I can say that my opinion of Bill’s claim is this — it is BS.
[Citation Needed]
Google “john lott guns discredit”. As much as you hate those sources, some of them have done their homework. Keep looking. The Lott data totally sucks. He could have been a great friend of POTG but instead has become a talking point against us.
No, I’m not doing your work for you. If you make a claim, you back it up with sources.
To my knowledge he won part of a defamation case against somebody who made exactly the claim you’re making. He did make up an online personality to defend himself in some online forum, but that’s about it as far as I am aware. If there is something out there, I’m with Chip and would like a citation.
These Michael Bloomberg supported groups are an embarrassment! They are proponents of socialism and are anti-American. Any group that aligns itself with Bloomberg is a group that is going to be irrational, unethical, and is guided by the agenda of infringing on your Constitutional Rights! It is good to see that they have been getting their *sses handed to them by the Courts, the State Legislators, and the 2nd Amendment supporting groups like the NRA. As most of the people that make up these small gun control groups are completely ignorant of the fact they are being manipulated by the progressive/liberal left, it is good to see that people are shunning their left wing radical stance.
This is the same tactic they use on climate change. If you come up with a different proposal/answer, you aren’t credible.
My fantasy:
John Lott and Bruce Krafft together on CNN/MSNBC tag teaming every single Guns-R-Bad-Whatever libtard scum disarmament group into oblivion.
In my experience, people who know they’re right thanks to facts always look forward to debating and educating.
Any surprise the antis never want to debate and always close comments?
Translation:
We won’t debate because we always get our asses kicked.
Pretty much all the left has left, is ad hominem’s, since their facts have never held up, and the invented ones are getting pretty thin…
Boringly despicable, and its becoming obvious to all but the true believers…
But, hey, dont stop Bloomberg when he is burning his cash, shooting himself in the foot, repeatedly…
speaking of ad hominems, does this guys looks just scream “weasel” to anyone but me?
Everytown has lost it.They are way past delusional..Maybe,the following slipped their minds,smh:
Everytown for Gun Safety facing lawsuit, admits to bogus claims against gun dealers
I’m not sure what frosts me more, how dishonest they are, or how cowardly.
Without any actual science or data or constitutional authority, they have no recourse but to lie. So debates become very uncomfortable.
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