What Gun Use Looks Like in the Real World, the headline proclaims. Well there’s a conversation stopper. A post with that header could go any number of ways, from gory pictures of gunshot wounds to, uh, gory pictures of gunshot wounds. In this case, the headline lingers over a piece written by Newsweek and CNN contributor David Frum at thedailybeast.com. So all we get is a terse anti-gun anecdote. “School shootings are rare. Gun use against violent intruders is also rare. The real world of American gun use looks more like this: You buy the gun to protect your home and family. But one day, your wife gets sassy. Maybe you’ve had a drink or two. And then … bang.” After that Frum blockquotes a story about Randall Floyd Lovett, a man who shot himself in the knee during a domestic dispute. What does that tell you? I tell you what it tells me . . .
Like the vast majority of civilian disarmament proponents, Frum is an elitist. A man who believes that there are three groups of people: college-educated white-collar professionals, middle class conformists and trailer trash. Frum clearly believes that the latter group forms the “base” for American firearms ownership.
Notice the language. “A drink or two.” It’s British understatement, a way of speaking perpetuated by the Ivy League schools supplying the East Coast mainstream media with eggheads intent on maintaining the statist status quo. Which doesn’t include gun rights.
Yalie Frum also uses the word “sassy,” indicating both his ignorance of street culture (the urban dictionary defines sassy as “possessing the attitude of someone endowed with an ungodly amount of cool”) and his disdain for southerners.
Yes there is that.
Liberal gun grabbers on both coasts reserve their greatest disdain for “redneck” gun owners. You know; Americans who “cling to their guns and their bibles.” Is it any coincidence Frum chooses a man from Tennessee for his “real world” gun use example? It is not.
This is what gun grabbers look like in the real word . . .
They’re people who consider themselves intellectually superior to, and a whole lot better educated than, the rabble. They pity and — let’s face it — fear the great unwashed. Gun grabbers believe the public needs to be guided (i.e. controlled) by their betters—whether they like it or not.
At the same time, gun grabbers couldn’t imagine using a firearm to defend themselves or their family. To justify their own cowardice, for that’s what it is, they’ve convinced themselves that firearms are too dangerous for the average American.
It’s a twisted philosophy that makes a virtue of a vice. Like any inherently selfish, elitist belief system it puts decent, responsible people at risk of disenfranchisement—and worse.
Bottom line: you gotta be crazy to support gun control. But I guess you already knew that.
Frum is the idiot who gave us the “Axis of Evil”. It is a shame he was even allowed into the country.
Great. Good argument. This reasoning proves background checks don’t work because this line of thinking says most murders do not happen by someone with a criminal record. Perfect, I am glad we defeated the background check bill because it would clearly not have helped anyway.
Next.
So in Frum’s mind, lawful, defensive use of a firearm is as rare as a school shooting, but people are shooting their spouses (or themselves while trying to shoot their spouses) all the time. Remind me not to visit where he’s frum. From, rather.
According to the ideologically driven research of the VPC, there are 60-70k defensive gun uses per year. Thus, even according to the liberals own ideologically driven research firearms save 5x as many lives as they cost (in terms of homicides, assuming each DGU saves one life).
Montgomery County, just outside DC in Maryland – one of the most leftist counties in the country. And I agree – don’t go. Stick to western Maryland, or (most of) Virginia.
I have some family there, and although they are nice people, they are pure emotion driven liberals. I mentioned to them that I had a CHL, and they looked like their heads were about to explode. I know they mean well, but they just don’t have a clue, and they think the government is wonderful. I might mention that pretty much all of them work in the beltway for government contractors.
i live in howard county. people with guns in Maryland dont talk about their guns. Chances are they live near people with guns, and don’t know it.
Just as we want the gun grabbers to house-train their own, we can do better, too.
Everyone on TTAG is engaged and prolly helpful in the cause. But there’s work to be done: http://guardamerican.com/index.php/blog/147-negligent-discharges/618-ky-5-year-old-shoots-2-year-old
Rule # 1: You can’t legislate “stupid”
Actually, “stupid” gets legislated all the time (cf., California).
Legislating *against* stupid…maybe. But I think you meant that.
Absolutely right Kirk!
BTW, great article RF.
Frum looks like he could use a hug, but JEEZ, he looks like he’s ready to bite. GET BACK!!!
He looks like the last kid I had to pick for my football team.
I get so tired of being preached at by the inside-the-Beltway “experts,” who don’t own guns, have never read about guns, and don’t know anyone who owns guns (or think they don’t know anyone who owns guns). Even the Special Report panel, which is usually fairly insightful, is chock full of these types. Not one of them – Krauthammer, Powers, Hayes – owns or knows anything about guns, and only Hayes is remotely sympathetic to gun ownership. The rest either grudgingly tolerate it – or don’t.
This is one of the ways in which the gun issue is a microcosm of almost everything that’s wrong with the political situation of this country.
Well said, sir.
This strikes me as being auto biographical more than a true description of gun use. I think the author needs professional help.
Frum’s “argument by anecdote” betrays a mistaken viewpoint common to “gun grabbers”. He infers that a typical firearm assault is an act of passion, carried out in a drunken rage. In fact, the vast majority of violent crimes (with or without guns present) are conducted by a small subgroup of the population. These violent offenders typically have a substantial history of violence (whether they were convicted or not). Normal human beings lack the urge to violence that fills these people.
This violent population is the reason that most anti-gun measures fail so miserably. The rules envision criminals intimidated by the obstacles placed before them, not realizing that the criminals responsible for most violent crime see weapons as necessary for their lifestyle and go to great lengths to arm themselves.
Really, really good points.
Extraordinary lengths. In support of your argument, look at the weapons confiscated within our prisons and jails.
How would David react to Duck Dynasty’s Willie Bobblehead, who has an MBA and is worth millions.
He’d deny Willie’s existence end OR simply label him an exception to the rule.
Look up irrevlent in the dictionary and there’s a picture of Frum.
Sounds like someone who desperately needs to extricate his cranium ‘Frum’ the confinement of his hindparts.
Unfortunately, after such long-term oxygen deprivation the brain damage is likely irreversible.
I remember learning about the “file-drawer problem” in school, and it applies often in regard to shootings. The reports of a gun owner snapping and committing murder, or of a child finding a gun and shooting himself or someone else, stick in people’s minds, whereas reports of people using a gun to defend themselves against violent attack are quickly forgotten or are underreported.
I would love to know the statistics on how many shootings are “crimes of passion” or negligence versus gang activity and robbery–and self-defense. We keep hearing that owning a gun is a liability because you’re more likely to use it against yourself (or having someone else use it against you) than use it in self-defense. We keep hearing that home invasions are so improbable that they’re a “straw-man argument.”
So what are the stats?
Not to mention that crimes of passion don’t require a gun. Being crimes of passion, they are likely to occur with whatever weapon is closest at hand: knife, frying pan, bowling ball, etc.
I don’t have the statistics, but I know that home invasions happen much more often than spree-killings. Therefore, if the gun-grabbers say that we should stop using home-invasions to prove some of our points, then they should stop using spree killings to further their gun control arguments. But that requires logical thinking and honesty – two things lacking in most gun-grabbers.
“Frum is an elitist.”
RF, I think you misspelled schmuck.
I would have said “elitist douchebag,” but this is his website and not mine.
Let them hate us as long as they fear us.
Probably sounds better in the original Latin.
Oderint dum metuant. Although I’m not sure if Caligula makes the best PR consultant.
Frum is a great example of how 2A is really divided between “elite” (or “wannabe elite”) and “everyone else” rather than “left” and “right”. Frum is undeniably “the right” and also “the elite”. Even Bill O’Reilly is not so into pro-2A. He’s “the right” and also “the elite”.
The national media and therefore the national narrative regarding 2A is set by “the elite”, usually out of NYC. These people are usually “the left” and “the elite”. Notice though that the “right elite” don’t do a whole lot to stop them.
This is a tale as old as civilization, way older than the notion of “left” and “right” or even democracy. The elite don’t like “everyone else” armed.
Very true.
One should take notice of how much “gun control” is actually the elite’s attempt to keep guns out of the hands of THEM, i.e. the masses.
How often are the guns being banned, the kinds the monied elite own?
How often are “gun control” laws just ways of making firearms ownership harder for those of limited means, both financially and in terms of access to and favoritism from government?
When concealed carry permits change from “shall issue” to “may issue”, the elite are always in the favored category. Who gets concealed permits in urban California? The elite, who contribute to politicians’ and sheriffs’ re-election funds.
This partly explains the bans and attempted bans on Scary Black Rifles. The elites don’t buy those.
He says those things are rare? I wish someone could show the rarity of a legally purchased weapon being used by its rightful owner to commit a crime of the nature he described or any crime for that matter. This should not include the mentally ill ones which seem to garner the headlines of late.
Liberal, leftist
Mr David Frum
A man who wanna
take away my gun
A guy who clearly
talks out his @$$
says I’ll shoot my wife
’cause she gave me sass
he says people fall
into three types
Well, screw him
don’t believe the hype
the folks in this country
just fall into two
those who don’t wanna be subjects
and the suckers who do
I know what side I’m on
and hope you do too
as far as Frum is concerned
he can scream till he’s blue
Andres ‘Pantera’ Vazquez 2013
Eh, screw Frum-Job, what does he know?
Y’know, I’ve a measured I.Q. of 167 – or did back when I was in my mid 20s and likely possessed more “little grey cells” than now. I’ve also two Masters degrees in engineering disciplines.
While nothing is going to make me ashamed of my brain or what I wired houses, chopped wood and shoveled mud for the moolah to have installed in it, this guy almost could.
He is a blight and a blemish on all intelligentsia, armed and otherwise.
From Mr. Frum’s article:
“School shootings are rare.”
Yes, that is true.
“Gun use against violent intruders is also rare.”
Not so. According to the Kleck-Gertz study from the early 1990s there are between 2.1 and 2.5 million DGUs annually. Source: http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html
Or if you prefer, then this: Dr.s Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig (very strong proponents of very strict gun control) concluded that there were 1.46 million DGUs per year. Source: http://www.tscm.com/165476.pdf
Hardly “very rare”.
No, he’s just a tiny little man with a little tiny brain, which does not compute the possibility of being required, ever, to use physical force to protect his own life or the lives of those for whom he is responsible. He has obviously not encountered the rough and tumble of everyday life that most of us have, nor met the kind of person who has a fierce need to do us harm. He does not understand the history of the United States, that it fought to come into existence, and had to keep fighting to exist. He is actually handicapped in a way, and deserves our sympathy. We should not credit him with having an opinion worthy of our attention.
Ever noticed that these guys always live in safe neighborhoods? He should be forced to spend a year on the SE side of Washington, DC. Then let’s see how he feels about the utility of guns for self-defense.
“What does that tell you? I’ll tell you what it tells me”… That David Frum reads TTAG!
I anxiously away David’s next article on trigger happy cops who discharge 40 rounds into suspects, hitting everything else around them. Or cops popping dogs in cages. And a follow up with justification for a police army in every neighborhood armed with tanks.
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