America’s so-called allies hate us. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Foreign nationals look at America’s enormous economic, military and cultural power with equal parts disdain and envy. Make that envy-fueled disdain. Think Scar from Lion King. As someone who lived in the UK for 18 years through the entirety of the Bush years, I endured the bitter bile of Britain’s disarmed intelligentsia. When it came to guns the prevailing – indeed only – opinion: Americans are trigger-happy morons who need to be sent to their room without ammunition. Huffington Post front page editor Joanna Zelman knows of what I speak. Her response to the gross and willful mischaracterization is wildly different from mine . . .
I have been asked about Miley Cyrus a handful of times during my travels abroad. I am often asked if I know someone named “John” who also lives in New York City.
But the only question I have been asked on every coast of every country I’ve visited is: “Why do Americans love guns so much?”
One of my Tasmanian friends wants to travel to the U.S. but told me she is “scared I’ll be shot.” A New Zealander informed me last night that, were she to summarize the U.S. in one word, it would be: “violent.” My Saudi Arabian friend gently suggested, “Every country has its problems. Yours is guns.”
As the U.S. repeatedly fails to prevent gun violence, I find myself often slipping into a disillusioned resignation that perhaps this is just how the world is now. But what is happening in America is not normal.
Disillusioned resignation? When asked the same question (or a variation thereof) my response was simple enough: because guns keep us free. I could have said “because guns” for all the good it did, but I was a young firebrand. In any case, the subject of firearms rarely came up during my travels through Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and a dozen other countries.
But this isn’t about me. It’s about Ms. Zelman’s European experiences relative to guns. Or is it? I call BS on Zelman’s claim that a Tasmanian said he/she wouldn’t travel to America for fear of ballistic ventilation. If nothing else, it’s too damn convenient to her story line.
Tasmania knows what it’s like to have a community brought to its knees as media swarm for quotes, scoops and then disappear as the more fixed pain sets in. But when Australia witnessed dozens of its citizens murdered one weekend afternoon, it did something rather foreign to America: it enacted change. Australians turned in nearly 700,000 guns and laws were tightened. There were 11 mass shootings in Australia the decade before 1996. There have been no mass shootings ever since.
Seems Ms. Zelman couldn’t be bothered to Google “Australian gun crime.” If she had she would’ve quickly found the story New plan unveiled to tackle out-of-control gun violence at ballinadvocate.com.au. And dozens of similar stories revealing that gun control = civilian disarmament = criminal empowerment in Australia, as it does everywhere else in the world. And yes, it gets worse.
Our nation may see itself as a gun-toting “Dirty Harry” hero, but some regard us more as an immature brute unwilling to pry his fingers off deadly toys, drunk on a wildly wealthy gun lobby’s stale elixir mislabeled as American pride.
I do not believe that everyone looks at our country’s gun obsession with bewilderment and ridicule. But the small percentage of the world’s population that I’ve met sure do.
When I try to explain to my baffled new friends that, well, some Americans feel safer with guns, I get blank stares. Maybe because a study last year found that guns do not make a country safer, and “There was a significant correlation between guns per head per country and the rate of firearm-related deaths.” A separate report last year found that many of the states with weak gun laws also saw the greatest levels of gun violence.
I’m not going to debunk Ms. Zelman’s studies and reports, which suffer from the startling lack of scientific rigor that bedevils all the antis’ so-called “research.” Suffice it to say, Ms. Zelman is displaying the self-same “America last” self-hatred I found amongst fellow ex-patriots in the UK. People who bought into the prevailing intellectual conceit that Americans are uncouth, uncultured and, well, stupid. Hence the Clint Eastwood diss.
In fact, the enduring popularity of Eastwood’s Old Testament-style cop character reflects Americans’ profound belief in justice and their entirely realistic view of the presence of evil in our world. (Not to mention a symbol of true grit and moral integrity.) The Euro-snobs and their American sycophants see Inspector Callahan as his [fictional] superiors did: a loose cannon. A threat to the system. Uncivilized. Like America itself. Supposedly.
Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard explained in a New York Times op-ed last year that in his country, “The fundamental problem was the ready availability of high-powered weapons, which enabled people to convert their murderous impulses into mass killing. Certainly, shortcomings in treating mental illness and the harmful influence of violent video games and movies may have played a role. But nothing trumps easy access to a gun.”
Gun Owners of America’s Larry Pratt responded to Australia’s initiative: “We’re not interested in being like Australia. We’re Americans.”
Perhaps that’s the trouble: A hijacking of the word “American.” My passport reads “United States of America,” I’ve voted in every election since turning 18 (and before that I voted in the first three seasons of American Idol.) I grew up on North Carolina hushpuppies, New York bagels, California avocados and Florida orange juice. But I choose life over guns, and it’s time that became “American.”
The Howard quote shows that Zelman’s down with the idea – common amongst people who seek to deny Americans their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms – that average people are too mentally unstable to own firearms. As we pointed out before, that belief stems from a despicable combination of condescending elitism and psychological projection.
The Pratt quote reveals Zelman doesn’t share the gun guy’s belief in American Exceptionalism: the idea that our country’s Constitution sets it apart from countries that don’t share our dedication to individual liberty and limited government. A concept enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Specifically but not exclusively, the Second Amendment.
Does that idea represent a “hijacking” of the word “American”? Hell no. It’s the damn definition! (Coffee’s kicked in.) Well, that’s my opinion; which I don’t hide behind a false dichotomy. In fact, I choose guns to protect innocent life. Oops! That makes me Dirty Harry. I wonder what that makes Ms. Zelman. Whatever it is it isn’t someone I’d want representing my country abroad. Or anywhere else, really. Still, First Amendment and all that.
Things have changed…. Having lived in both Australia and Europe this question was never asked, not once. People had the impression we were somehow sexual prudes and hypocrites maybe, but guns never came up.
My bet is it never came up with her, either, she made it up. Like so much of what the grabbers throw around, all made up.
It is much more likely, Liberal that she is, all or most of the people she interacted with, or was WILIING to interact with, were also liberals. In those circles the topic may in fact have come up more often that it would amongst more intellectually well-rounded individuals.
I agree. I am an American businesswoman who’s lived in various countries in Asia for more than 10 years. No one has ever questioned me about why Americans are crazy about guns. In fact, the opposite, I’ve had many Australians and Asians say they wish they could own guns. I don’t hang around the kind of people that Ms Zelman probably does, so who knows….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNixl0qZShA
If you think about it’s all the NRA Fault Right LOL
LOL. I love when people make fools of themselves and their own stupid misconceptions just by asking them to actually explain their position.
Laugh!!
‘Just read the sign I’m holding, and don’t ask me any more stupid questions”!
That is just priceless.
I think my favorite part (if I had to choose one) is:
MRCTV: There is a scientific connection between honking or lack of honking and gun violence?
Old Man: Well, we’re here. We also protest from 5 to 6 on the second and fourth Mondays.
Let the anti’s talk. Never censor them.
Perhaps we need a “study” on the toxic effects of estrogen on cognitive function.
You, sir, are a genius!
No more so than we need one for the effects of testosterone.
I read somewhere that when a woman behaves violently and irrationally it can be attributed to “pre-menstrual syndrome.” When a man behaves the same way it is “testosterone poisoning.”
PeterC is a jackass. Him mouthing off like this does more to damage gun rights than anything Zelman could ever write.
Dear PeterC. If you love gun rights, shut the f&ck up from now on. Thank you.
-The people who understand that this is a PR fight as much as anything.
PS TTAG, what’s the point of having moderated comments if comments like this are coming through to give ammo to all the people just waiting for the slightest sliver of evidence to paint us as woman haters who need to have our gun rights taken away before we commit domestic violence?
Dear Chicken Little,
STFU
Regards,
Gun Owners
Oh boy, shame she’s such a deluded, America-hating hoplophobe, because she’s a cutie!
That was my first thought too.
Kinda’ looks like a younger version of Watts.
Too bad.
ummm, she has a crazy look in her eyes; or maybe because I already know she is delusional and in denial with a lot of projection of her own mental and emotional instability on the general population.
Get to an opthamologist STAT!
Remember, even if she is a hot Israeli bikini super-model you can be pretty sure there are guys who dropped her because they were “tired of her sheet”.
In this case, due to her thought processes, its proof positive.
@RF, nice post!
It is unfortunate as much as it is true, that the typical regulation regarding civil ownership of guns in most countries is “none”.
We alone stand as an exception. Which means the average person in Saudi Arabia, England, or France will not comprehend our gun culture any more then we comprehend praying five times a day, or driving on the left side of the road.
Difference is, you don’t see us trying to ban afternoon prayer.
Well you just enumerated an element of that “American Exceptionalism” that the left totally refuses to acknowledge and actively tries to dismantle.
I’m calling BS on Zelman’s made-up conversations with unnamed foreigners, simply because no self-respecting foreigner would ever talk to a frizzy-haired, panty-soiling American soccer mom like Zelman.
Only in America would a cretin like Zelman gain any credence. Yes, America has a problem. Zelman and her ilk are it.
I always love the self-supporting fact that guns are related to gun violence.
Did you know that before guns were invented, there were no firearm deaths? Everything was safer then, there was no violence.
This. A Million times this! The Controllers always want to focus on one single tool of violence and refuse to discuss how the overall violence of places that have supposedly banned that one tool never really changed.
Yup. They’re busy talking knife control up in Canada right now.
We need to ban *all* weapons NOW!!! Next week, we should start with hands/fists and feet. Lets just get to the heart of the matter! Cut off everyone’s hands and feet. They are dangerous!
😉
I had a book about violence in Chicago (I grew up there) many years ago, and I cannot remember the title, but it was written by a former CPD detective. His claim was that in the ’70s and ’80s the most common tool used in physical assaults and domestic violence was the ceramic handset of a good old Western Electric dial telephone.
So much for gun violence.
“There was a significant correlation between number of bathrooms per head per country and the rate of bathtub drownings.”
I don’t doubt that she has had these encounters one bit. What kind of people do you think she hangs out with, at home or abroad. Fearful, dithering twits call out to each other, all the world ’round.
Exactly. Birds of a feather.
I confess, I hadn’t thought of that. I just thought she was full of …. uh, HOT AIR!! That’s it, hot air! Whew.
I’m sure she hangs around the “America should emulate Europe” type of folks. You know the types of people who think that America should emulate the continent that gave birth to the 3 most deadliest scourges of the 20th century (Naziasm, Fascism, and Communism). Absolutely F’in brilliant!
Other counrties do not get the full story. They do not understand that our gun statistics are connected to poverty, race issues and the war on drugs.
Actually, they do not get the information that our “gun violence” statistics are intentionally exaggerated by the inclusion of criminals shooting each other and individuals committing suicide. No self-respecting gun grabber were dilute their cause by including truthful statistics.
If you really dig on the government sites, you’ll find out that the vast majority of gun related homicides are committed by those who have a criminal background:
“In one study, the Bureau of Criminal Statistics found that 76.7% of murder arrestees had criminal histories as did 78% of defendants in murder prosecutions nationally. In another FBI data run of murder arrestees over a one year period, 77.9% had prior criminal records”
AND are gang/drug related:
“The most explosively violent periods in twentieth century domestic U.S. history occurred when gangs controlled illegal substances which were in high demand. The recent decline in the crime rate, seen in California and the U.S., has largely been a descent from the violent peak of such a period. By 1999, the effects of the crack epidemic on crime rates had largely disappeared. The period of rapid increases and decreases in violent crime had run its course. “ (oag.ca.gov)
So, deaths per 100,000 were 7.07 in 1993 and dropped to 2.97 in 1999 (US wide).
Gun ownership ownership in that same time span went UP!
Good. Keep the cowards from coming to visit….they might try to stay (think Piers Morgan).
Why are they cowards? Someone who comes to a fight armed with just their fists are far braver than someone packing a pistol.
Actually they are neanderthal, smart folks use modern methods to defend against miscreants.
First if you know there is going to be a fight it is wiser not to show up.
Bravery aside if you are going to a fight you are stupid if you dont bring whatever it takes to win said fight.
fights are not about bravery or honor, they are about winning.
Underestimating your opponent, or bringing the wrong tool for the job is not brave. It is merely foolhardy.
The term I would have used is “stupid”. Coming to the discussion table with a weapon, may or may not be considered prudent, but walking into a dark alley known for its crime rate, without any protection, is just asking for a beating, ……. but then, that’s exactly what low-information voters do.
“Stupid” is accurate as well…
Life is not Olympics. It’s not about bravery. It’s about survival.
“Good. Keep the cowards from coming to visit”
^ this
“(Coffee’s kicked in.)”
And it’s working really, really well, RF!
Born in New Zealand and lived in Australia durning the 96 ban it was always my dream to be an American citizen, gun ownership…… well it’s always been an issue of freedom for me. Now I am an American citizen and I fully intend to stay free. America is still the greatest nation to walk the face of Gods green earth period!
Fecking traitor.
I’m guessing by your response you don’t live in America.
I can never understand the inferiority complex so many liberals have when it come to other nations, especially European ones. It not healthy to self loath yourself, idolizing someone else and fruitlessly trying to be that person when you’re you. Europe is different from the US and the US is different from Europe. Accept it instead of running around all pissed off because you want to be something you can’t.
Leftists (I refuse to call them “liberals” because they are nothing of the sort) have this Epcott’s view of Europe as being a place that is clean, bright, refined, sophisticated, where everyone drives fuel-efficient cars, rides high-speed trains, has free healthcare, etc…they aren’t aware of the Europe where cars are burning and Jews are getting beaten up and Muslims are rioting and so forth.
All that and just more simply…it is not the United States of America.
They are not aware of the lack of economic freedom and suffocating regulations one must jump through just to open up a small business. Nor do they know that in many European nations, the rates of assault and property crimes are much higher than in the USA
It has been my observation that poor, low-information Liberals long for the nanny state that will take care of them cradle to grave, and rich Liberals have a deep-down longing for the European aristocracy they are certain they would be members of and from which positions of privilege they could then wield their power to help the downtrodden and punish the evil conservatives.
It is that historical heritage which seems to compel them to yearn for European politics.
what does it make Ms. Zelman? pre-victimized, and nothing she can do about it.
If America is so violent why is half the world trying to sneak in? I cry BS too.
A saying among `American exceptionalists’ so despised by our POTUS:
“Why should I travel? I’m already here.”
Somebody tell us about the rising expat populations in Pakistan, Yemen, & Saudi Arabia.
We go the States for our holidays,two weeks in the good old US of A makes us appreciate home more.
Stay home, we don’t need your pesos.
Any amount of time spent anywhere else in the world makes me appreciate the United States of America even more when I get back to it.
If conditions in your third world paradise require you to visit the USA to feel better about living in it and not in the USA, fine. As long as you go back there and stay there.
And tell all your buddies back home that there is no reason to visit America.
I call BS Ms. Zelman’s European experiences. I work for a global company and have traveled to some 25 countries and also being of European decent spent many summers in Europe before the Euro made it too expensive. My brother has been to every single Asia Pack country. In both my case and my brothers case we have made friends and many stay with us when they visit. Not once has a conversation like she states has it ever come up. The extent of gun conversation with my foreign friends has been: a) Is Texas like the moves, and b) do you have guns and c) can we go shooting. And when asked why I have guns I explain the history of the country, the 2nd Amendment (I keep a pocket constitution with me) and they state they either don’t like guns or think they are cool. Not a single person has any fear of coming to the USA because guns. Most of them rent a car and are happy to travel around the USA.
My favorite trip in Germany was to watch the son of a co-worker at a shooting competition. They actually stands and you would have thought you where at any other sporting event here in the US.
They love our cars, they love our movies and everyone has been treated to a real “Hamburger” they have always heard about. They think some of the things we do is weird and I comment they have some weird things too. In Italy they do half-and-half Coke and beer which I cannot stand but will have a German Radler all day long although many German’s will tell me that is not real beer.
No, IMHO Ms. Zelman’s European experiences are half true and half lies so should could tell her tail. My experiences and those I know who travel are completely not the same.
Europeans don’t like American cars. They’re nasty uncouth monstrosities. I’d take a Jag, Aston Martin or BMW over an American designed car any day of the week.
Plenty of Americans don’t like our domestic junk cars either. I know I never have for the last 40 years, so what? Despite our likely Orwellian near future, I wouldn’t trade it for the Orwellian present most Euros (esp. in the UK) live under.
Note to moderators…………..
I’d love to have a button by each posters name…. If I click it, it would hide all the comments from that person and all the sub-threads that it spawns. Extra points if you can make it sticky. Be a hero and make it happen.
But I choose life over guns, and it’s time that became “American.”
Which means anyone who owns guns is pro-death for all! Like our founding fathers! America was founded on death! Death to america!
I was born in Hungary, have family there, and visit (along with plenty of other European countries) about twice a year. The only place I have ever heard anyone talk about our second amendment negatively is the UK, where they talk about pretty much everything in America negatively anyway. Obviously, there is a diversity of opinion on it, like with anything else, but the HuffPo writer is being completely misleading by suggesting that the rest of the world is in some unanimous chorus of condemnation.
I think it depicts her Female Social Matrix solipsist way of thinking to believe that everyone is talking about “us” anyway. Don’t those people have lives and concerns of their own? Do they really just sit around and belly-ache about America?
It’s long, but read the whole thing and I think her mindset will be clearer:
http://theredpillroom.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-tangled-chains-on-swing-set-of.html
Ah yes. the willingly disarmed, defenseless, powerless and pathetic subjects, happy in their servitude; think badly of us Americans; about six billion or so.
All I can say is, thank G-d I’m an American.
Don’t you mean God, not g-d?
Many Jews think writing out the word in full is blasphemous (I think it’s because they fear that the written word could be physically destroyed once written). That could be operative here.
“I choose life over guns.”
Heh. Until you need a gun to protect your life, you mean.
That is not actually a choice I’ll be likely to have to make. But if she faces it, keeping her guns and being killed for it, the choice is hers. If that was supposed to mean something else, then it is nonsense.
What these hyper-estrogenated leftards continually try to avoid dealing with is their dysfunctional apples and oranges economic theory. They Assume that the US’ power was a freak of history. They forget that Germany, England, Spain, Greece, Egypt, and the Romans all gained their power through the conquest of other countries which had additional resources unavailable to them except by trade. And in their selective myopia, they fail to understand that the weakness other countries now possess is because they have thrown in the towel to rapacious globalist, who don’t wear any outstanding uniform. They can’t see the enemy, so to them, it must not be there.
This out-of-sight, out-of-mind take on the world is a fairy tale vision of nicey-nice, Kumbaya laden, unicorns and roses that does not exist. As long as globalist leaders continue to rape the populations of this planet, the populations need to keep fighting back. When the day comes that we get responsible, social-minded (not socialist) leaders who are willing to step down in order to allow fresh intellectual blood into the picture, then, we may have a chance at peace.
But since there are so many lily-livered libtards who would rather live with a lie than grow a set of ‘nads and fight back, there will ALWAYS be socially feral, opportunistic individuals, who have become separated from “the system”, and who would be willing to tear the whole system down to save their own sorry asses. These people are like cancer cells; willing to sabotage the host body if only for a brief time of being in power.
Taking on the responsibility of gun ownership, as our forefathers had figured out, is a mandate, not an option. These were not mere old men from an older time; these were men who were far more educated and socially motivated than the vast majority of political sloths we have in office today, yet panty-wetting apologist leftards like Zelman will continue to argue, like a five year old, that they are old enough to decide if they should watch TV till midnight.
Joanna, sweetie, there is a much bigger world out there than you seem to be able to fathom. When you can understand the Federalist Papers arguments or the Kentucky and Virgingia Resolutions of 1798-9, then come back and we’ll talk.
Excellent post.
“One of my Tasmanian friends wants to travel to the U.S. but told me she is “scared I’ll be shot”
I’m afraid that if I travel to Tasmania I’ll be swallowed whole by the Tasmanian Dinosaur.
And what about all those Tasmanian Devils? I’m not a religious man, but I’m not about to risk my convictions (or lack thereof) and my life by visiting a country inhabited by imps of Satan.
I think you are wise not to travel there too since those imps are reputed evil servants of Herr Bloomberg his-self. Then there is also the legendary Tasmanian Dragon to consider. I’ve seen vids on youtube of the Tasmanian Dragon breathing out fire.
The Dinosaur is just like the 2nd Amendment, prehistoric.
Spoken by someone who still hasn’t figured out that they live in slavery. Of course, you’d dutifully hold the Vaseline jar for the Rothschilds while your shorts are down. Stiff upper lip and all that; eh, what?
You see, what the founding fathers here understood all too well, was that parasitic maggots like the Rothschilds had this stench about them that had a nasty habit of proliferating. Rather than look for the best in people, they made a science out of turning men on each other and making money off it in the process. And of course while this process has a trail of death and misery in the millions, there will always be apologists who would rather either kiss up to these people, like begging for crumbs under the table, or instead sit blissfully back in their lounge chair watching some mindless jibberish on the tube.
Our problem here in the states isn’t guns, it’s rampant corruption under the sociopathy of parasitic foreign banking practices that has driven the self esteem of the average citizen to an all time low. We had tariff laws, yet the politicians, at the behest (or threat) from maggots like Kissinger, so eagerly sold our manufacturing base out from underneath us.
Of course, fringe luney-toons who shudder at their own incompetence in handling a weapon will always feel better sleeping at night knowing that all those “nasty toys” have been removed from everyone in their neighborhood, excepting of course the criminals, who don’t give a squat about laws anyway.
Sleep tight, the tooth fairy will be by shortly.
Pablo, Are you really this poorly educated, or are you just trolling? Seriously…
I do agree that no one should give people like Her who
have ideas such as theirs guns
My European experience with regards to guns was this.. In the early 2000s, I lived for about six months with a friend in the Navy who was stationed in Rota. He rented a very nice, large house from an older Spanish man who was in his 60s at the time. He lived nearby and would sometimes be over to repair something on the house, and one day he invited us to his home to have dinner with him and his wife.
Now you could probably guess that this man lived through the years of Franco. What did he show us when we visited? He showed us his small collection of rifles and pistols, mostly Mausers of both the rifle and pistol variety.
He had stories of his family and friends being beaten and jailed by the Guardia Civil for the most minor of infractions. He didn’t care what the new laws of the post-Franco Spanish and EU governments were, he was never going to let those arms go.
Not all Europeans are perplexed by Americans’ love for guns. Some have direct experience with what happens when you’re without them, and they “get it.”
“…our country’s Constitution sets it apart from countries that don’t share our founders’ dedication to individual liberty and limited government.”
Fixed it. It seems that, today, a very large portion of the American public no longer believes very strongly in these things. They may say they do, and lament the ballooning size of the government, but they keep electing any big-government statist who promises them cake and ponies. I think the concept of “liberty” to most modern Americans is vastly different (and more limited) than the liberty proposed by Madison, Jefferson, and their peers. Try discussing true liberty and freedom with the average person on the street, and their responses will contain a lot of “yes, but…” qualifiers.
There does seem to be a rising movement back to Constitutional principles, but I fear it may be too little, too late.
Prager’s motto
” The bigger the Government…the smaller the person”
“…harmful influence of violent video games and movies…”
Oh boy, here we go with that crap again. So I suppose violence only existed after 1992 when Mortal Kombat was first released. I guess the Dark/Middle Ages were so peaceful prior to the inventions of firearms, movies and video games, weren’t they?
Neither Genghis Khan nor Alexander the Great had access to firearms, nor were they Americans. What was their combined body count?
I’ve traveled all over the world and the one question I get all the time is
“why don’t you people all just mock the pathetically dim-witted and reality-challenged people who read HuffPo?”
Dont you see what progressive socialism has done to Europe? The Middle East, to Africa?
To Australia, for gawds-sakes!
Careful, you may find yourself back in England with Piers on your own Denial is Not Just A River Show! I find people who are afraid of and don’t like firearms have never been around them, much less fired them. stick to reviewing food products and clothing, your expertise with firearms is non-existent!
At the range last week in the stall next to me, there was an English couple who just moved here a few months ago. The biggest question to the range officer assisting them was on how to purchase a pistol…
The states seem to get all our shit.
Like Piers Morgan, for example.
I visited Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago and took a noob from CA to do a spot of shooting at The Gun Store. There was a line to get into the range, but it moved fast. There was just enough time to exchange pleasantries with three blokes from Australia, a nice couple from Manchester (England, not New Hampshire) and a Fraulein from Germany (I didn’t get the name of her home town).
They were all excited about getting to shoot some real guns, and none of them seemed to be frightened about visiting a Gold Star Open Carry state.
I have a Nevada CFP and carry everywhere when I’m there. The furriners were amazed by that, but not in a bad way.
I’ve been to The Gun Store, that place always has a line but it’s understandable since they advertise it everywhere in the city and the range is tiny. I assume locals there have another range to frequent.
Las Vegas and environs has lots of ranges, including the utterly magnificent Clerk County Shooting Range. The Gun Store and near-Strip ranges like it are for tourists, but they do have a lot of cool full-autos.
What a tornado of horse crap this lady spews, she’s like a walking, talking agitprop poster.
I strongly encourage everyone to tell people like Ms. Zelman an immensely important, timeless, moral truth: NO ONE, not even government, has any legitimate authority to force a person to accept or give up anything unless that person has first harmed someone, PERIOD.
It doesn’t matter what is at stake, how intense someone’s feelings may be, or how many people approve of the action.
And to drive your point home, just throw an example to the likes of Ms. Zelman. Ask her how intense a man’s feelings for her have to be before it is “okay” for the man to have sex with her against her will. Ask her what size group of people who approve of sex with her is required before it is okay for a man to have sex with her against her will. Ask her what must be at stake before it is okay for a man to have sex with her against her will. And when she responds that there is never a criteria that makes it okay for a man to have sex with her against her will, tell her there is never a criteria that makes it okay for government to disarm someone against their will.
*slow clap*
I just don’t get it. These people think guns are the problems. Not bad guys. Guns. How does the intellect get stuck in that idiotic loop?
Because it’s not REALLY about the guns. That’s just the hook used to make the emotional appeal.
It’s about the “control.” Folks like her buy into the belief that man is meant not to be free but to be governed. And you cannot have that with an armed population.
She’s a parrot of what she’s been TOLD to believe. She may not herself believe that authoritarian control is the One True Way, but she has most certainly bought into what those that do have said to promulgate their philosophy.
Now, enter into the equation all those nasty little boys with guns; they are not disarming themselves. They are not doing what they are TOLD to do.
We represent a threat to a way of life she is defending but may not even know she seeks.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why people, such as Ms. Zelman, dump on our Freedoms but never once suggest moving out of this horrible country? Maybe her fear of being attacked by someone with a gun would be realized, in say, Great Britain, and than what would she do? Call the local bobbies and wait it out? Good luck with that, Sister.
I can understand why other countries could be unhappy with our foreign policies, but why all the time spent complaining about our domestic issues? If you don’t like guns, stay in England… Piers.
I call BS as well. Most likely her travels took her to tourist destinations (usually a strong presence for reputation of country and income) or to liked mined people.
My wife is from the islands of Trinidad & Tobago, which is a great example.
Trinidad: industrial, high crime, lower standard of living.
Tobago: Tourist destination, very clean, lots of enforcement, very low crime as a result. Tourists do NOT go to Trinidad to explore the island lest they be kidnapped for ransom, or just plain stick out.
Hi have a feeling she visited the “Tobago” side of places.
My Saudi Arabian friend gently suggested, “Every country has its problems. Yours is guns.
Way better than having your head chopped off for saying Mohamed was a bad man.
I think the author must have either misinterpreted or mis-quoted her friend. The way it’s written, the Zelman’s friend is suggesting that Zelman, personally, has a problem with guns.
Or sketching his supposed image.
That’s just beyond hilarious. Saudi has a problem with Islam and it’s 8th Century beliefs. Perhaps our enlightened author should go live there – soemwhere other than a Western Compound. I’d give her about a day before she was imprisoned, 2 before being gang raped by the interrogators for her attitude, and 3 before she was stoned to death for tempting those men into raping her.
A couple of foreigners that do not like America and one liberal columnist, that likely also does not like America, thinks I shouldn’t have a gun…
Welp, good enough for me! Where do I turn in my guns? That was easy.
You can’t ignore these people. They have an agenda and will push and push and push. We *must* push back.
I live in a tourist area and guess who I see frequenting nearby gun ranges and renting guns. Lots of Europeans and Canadians.
And the problem in Saudi Arabia is whabbism….
“Islam” or just “religion”. Fixed it for ya…
The tree will be judged by the fruit it bears.
Anybody got an axe?
Since people tend to associate and spend time with people that have similar interests, it is not surprising that she found people who agreed with her view on guns. I’ve lived and worked overseas for the last 12 years and my conversations with Europeans (especially the Brits) have been the polar opposite. With only a few exceptions, they wished they had the same rights we do. Several pointed out the murder of the British soldier in broad daylight my the Muslim extremists as an example of what can result from a disarmed populace.
You’re either a liar Kent or you only mix with gun toting loons like yourself. I guarantee you that most British people would vote against relaxing our firearms laws.
“Several pointed out the murder of the British soldier in broad daylight my the Muslim extremists as an example of what can result from a disarmed populace”
And Sandy Hook is an example of weak gun laws.
Sandy Hook isn’t an example of weak gun laws, it’s an example of stupid gun laws. Right now the law guarantees that the only person who will ever have a gun in a school will be lawless and probably homicidal.
The UK isn’t exempt by virtue of its super-strong gun laws, it has just been lucky; not so long ago, a guy in England shot (if memory serves) 8 people in a cross-country rampage before killing himself in a secluded area. The police can’t be everywhere to stop things like this. Murder — even mass murder — still happens even where the gun laws are most restrictive, and it still is done using guns. That guy could just as easily have gone to a school and started killing children.
Sane gun laws would have allowed the decent, peaceful, law-abiding people who worked at Sandy Hook to exercise their Second Amendment right to defend themselves and the children under their care. (Would they have chosen to, or were they too weak-minded anyway? No way to tell.)
The difference between being as obsessed with guns as america is and a normal, civilly armed (or disarmed) nation might be a fun topic to blog about? 🙂
Jianna Who?
And her quote,
is absolutely on-the-money correct.
Because these are the ‘privileged” people who wander aimlessly around the Welfare Enclaves of any Democrat-run city looking for dope or women, or just to ogle the savages while wearing a great big “MUG ME, I’M A TOURIST” sweatshirt over their $500 designer jeans. And then are absolutely amazed that harm has befallen them. While in their own country they are as average and invisible as they claim not to be at cocktail parties.
I could always tell who were the tourists in Manhattan. They were the only ones looking up.
Whenever a European or Canadian friend criticize me for having guns I simply respond, “the next time you start a war with Germany (or Russia) don’t invite us to clean up your mess for the third time.”
They don’t like this response. To wit, I follow up with, “But first please repay all the money we used to rebuild your countries under the Marshall Plan… plus 70+ years interest”
Honestly, it’s time to call in the debt and rebuild our country.
And after all that time, you still think it was envy?
No. It’s sincere animosity, sure enough, but of a different kind. Envy is “you’ve got what I want and can’t have, even if that’s not your fault”, but the British do not want what the U.S.A. has got, and never did; that wouldn’t square with the genuine disdain at all. No, it’s more “you stop us from being and having what we once were and had, which allowed us to rise above what now drags us down – and that is your fault”. It’s blaming the U.S.A. for pulling out the rug from under the Suez Crisis and so on, and for generally behaving in a dog in the manger way that makes the U.S.A. the “necessary country” by shooting down any attempt to rebuild a capacity to go it alone. Many U.S.A.ians don’t know that that happens and has been going on successfully for around a century, and only ever see Europeans asking for U.S. intervention because they can’t do without it, as if that was an inherent European incapacity.
So envy is the wrong word, but I’m not sure what is the right word for that kind of animosity. Oh, and since I’m sure people will try to shoot me down with ad hominems, I emigrated from the U.K. in 1989, but the U.S.A. was never on my list as desirable and I came to Australia (the others on my short list were Canada and New Zealand).
Thank you for choosing Australia, and not America.
So guns are “toys”? How utterly charming.
Prayer time. I pray Miz Zelman is no relation to the late, great Aaron Zelman. Please.
None so blind as them who will not see.
I protest your misuse of the word “mind”.
I bet her criteria for deciding her vote in the election was ecactly the same as her criteria for deciding her vote on American Idol.
You know I agree with what the author is saying, BUT I can’t help but cringe when us gunners talk about how free we are. America has to be one of the most enslaved countries on the planet, but as long as we have our guns, beer, American Idol and football who cares?
All our decent jobs have been sent overseas by politicians who sold us out years ago, our standard of living gets worse every year, Patriot Act 1 &2, NDAA, endless wars for the globalist that we willing send our sons & daughters to be canon fodder for, and on & on I could go .
America is a fascist country owned by corporations but everyone still believes we are the freest nation on the planet.
I’m as guilty as the next gunner, it seems by owning firearms it gives us the illusion that somehow were actually free.
Am I alone here or has everyone drank the “America is so free” Cool-Aid?
Once the BRIC countries stop using the US Dollar as the reserve currency ( and it’s coming fast folks) America will be 3rd world country all by design.
Having lived in Australia and still having many friends there, most ozzies do not appreciate that their gun ownership rights were severely stricted 15 or so years ago. Don’t buy this nonsense.
qjohny, bullseye, probably the most honest and accurate post this website will ever see.
“Gun Owners of America’s Larry Pratt responded to Australia’s initiative: “We’re not interested in being like Australia. We’re Americans.”
What he said. “And the rest of the world can kiss my ass and bark at the hole.” – IdahoPete
I’ve met a couple from New Zealand, a individual from France, a group of men from Britain and another of Japanese . . .who all loved their time on the range so much that some still send me postcards. All marveled at our free access to firearms and ability to shoot them when we wanted. They admired me and by extension us for our prowess with arms and ability to own them on our terms.
Perhaps I just have a bizarre experience with non-Americans, or perhaps Joanna Zelman is just a liar.
Comments are closed.