According to the “About” bit next to the editorial Another Idiot with a Gun, Andrew Rosenthal has been “The Times’s editorial page editor since January 2007, oversees the editorial board, the letters and Op-Ed departments, and Sunday Review. He has held numerous positions . . . including assistant managing editor for news, foreign editor, national editor and Washington editor.” While the paper is the family business – his father was New York Times executive editor – Andrew’s success is not due to nepotism. It’s down to his ability to hew to the paper’s political perspective/prerogative. When it comes to guns . . .
The Times is against them. Well, it’s against them for civilians. Well, some civilians. Along with a long list of New York’s glitterati, unlike any average schmo living in one of the City’s five boroughs, Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. has a New York City concealed carry permit. This is no small point.
It leaves The Times’ star writer unable to come right out and say that he believes that no one other than police and other government officials – oh, and his boss – should be “allowed” to exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Which leaves Andrew Rosenthal in a rather peculiar position: he’s got to support gun rights for the elite while condemning it for everyone else (save the aforementioned government agents).
Hence the title of this editorial: Another Idiot with a Gun. See how that works? Guns are not for idiots. Most people are idiots. Most people shouldn’t have guns. Done. Only selling that concept isn’t as easy as it seems . . .
One of the many problems with the growing normalization of gun ownership is that a growing number of idiots will want to buy and keep guns for no particularly good reason, and a subset of those idiots will go on to kill people.
Witness the latest horror story, in which an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy, Hunter Pederson, was shot dead by his uncle, Chad Olm.
Mr. Olm said Hunter and Mr. Olm’s son asked to see his collection of firearms. So he obligingly whipped out three guns, including a Glock 27 .40-caliber pistol with a laser sight. (Why Mr. Olm felt he needed such a weapon, or such an attachment, has not been explained, probably because there is no satisfying answer.)
Interesting. Mr. Rosenthal links to the story of Mr. Olm’s egregious actions in the UK’s distinctly down-market paper The Daily Mail, rather than his own rag. But not as interesting as the pretzel logic he uses to belittle gun ownership for the masses.
Like many anti-gunners Rosenthal makes no secret of his contempt for the common man. What’s an idiot, exactly? No definition necessary (although one suspects that he means anyone without a college education). Other than someone who buys a gun “for no particularly good reason.”
Note the qualifier “particularly.” A gun buyer may have a reason to exercise their gun rights. It may seem like a good reason – say, self-defense. But it’s not “particularly” good. In other words, it’s not up to the gun buyer to decide whether or not he needs/wants a gun. It’s up to men of reason like Rosenthal to measure the validity of their reasoning.
And even if aspiring or existing gun owners can explain their reasoning to Mr. Rosenthal and his ilk, who have no time to school themselves in the finer points of personal defense or firearms capabilities, it won’t be “satisfying.” You can almost hear him saying “I’m listening” as he stares out the window of his corner office, bounces gently on his chair and wonders whether he should have eaten garlicky escargot for lunch.
Anyone with the slightest shred of sense knows that you check weapons for chambered rounds before you put them away — not when you’re showing them off — and that you should never point a gun at anyone unless you think you might need to shoot.
Wow. That’s impressive. Like so many antis, Rosenthal displays his ignorance even as he deploys his arrogance. Hey Andrew, anyone familiar with the Four Rules of Gun Safety (as taught by the NRA to tens of millions of Americans BTW) knows you check your weapons [guns but let’s not get picky] before you put them away AND when you take them out. In fact, ANY TIME you take possession of a firearm, even for a moment, you check to see it’s unloaded.
Also, check out the assertion that “you should never point a gun at anyone you think you might need to shoot.” I call it the Progressive Uncertainty Principle: They simply can’t get their minds around the fact that there are times when a person must defend their life, the lives of their loved ones and/or innocent life with lethal force – and can do so without any moral qualms or hesitation.
That kind of black-and-white thinking runs counter to their intellectual education, where everything is open for debate. Well, that’s what they think they believe. In fact, very little is open to debate. Especially the “right” to infringe on the Constitutionally protected rights of idiotic gun owners for [what they define as] the common good.
(My wife comes from a gun-owning family. When she was growing up her father would become enraged if any of his kids pointed so much as a plastic toy pistol at someone.)
Before the comments start piling up from the anti-gun control crowd, I am not saying that all guns should be outlawed or that a better background-check system would necessarily have prevented this senseless death.
But the killing of Hunter is a sign of how out-of-control the gun-owning fetish has become, and how little it has to do with anything the writers of the Constitution envisioned.
The parenthetical aside about She Who Must Be Obeyed reveals that his better half has [partially] schooled him in the ways of the gun – leaving Rosenthal with the entirely justifiable suspicion that he’s both dead wrong and pig-ignorant about guns. Hence his qualifier-laden preemptive strike against the “anti-gun control crowd” (i.e. “mob”). Not “all” guns should be outlawed (just “some”). A “better” background-check system wouldn’t have “necessarily” prevented Hunter’s death (but it might have).
Clearly, Rosenthal has no point to make here, other than “guns are bad” and “gun owners are sick.” Evoking the framers of the Constitution to defend this baseless, meandering, ad hominem attack is laughable. But not as laughable as a man who married a woman whose family valued their gun rights who feels free to piss on them from a great height. Only I’m not laughing.
The “I know someone who has guns” way of saying they are informed enough to make a ruling on the matter rings as hollow as the “no, its OK, I work with a black guy” said right after a racist joke.
Exactly.
I have told way too many people that saying you “come from ____ with a lot of gun owners” is like saying you have a college degree because you lived in a college town.
The stupidity need not be explained, because if they don’t see the point immediately they never will.
We are talking about the New York times which ran quite a few editorials predicting a massive increase in gun murder should the assault rifle ban lapse. When it did lapse murder plummeted
>Also, check out the assertion that “you should never point a gun at anyone you think you might need to shoot.”
You actually quoted that wrong. :p
Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem too concerned about it.
What we have at hand- exaggerations by the press aside- is an image problem.
A man who owns ten thousand guns and appropriate ammo isn’t the problem, factually speaking. It is the pond scum with one gun which should concern us all. Unfortunately, factually speaking, pond scum will always get guns before everyone else:because in principle the police and citizenry must abide by the law. Pond scum don’t.
That’s a problem, because the leftists value the pond scum over the police and the law abiding combined. The poor pond scum was oppressed by the police and the upper class citizenry said lawman protects, so goes the leftist mantra. (I do realize police have no legal obligation to protect anyone,but that’s beside the point here.)
Those facts are terra incognita to “90%” of Americans. We even have gun owners who say you don’t “need” certain weapons and accessories . As such, it’s easy to chalk all of this up to anti gun agitprop or media polemics.
In reality, what we have is a shortage of facts and a surplus of bull. If the average person understood that you can only legislate against acts and not hardware, guys like this Times commentator would be unemployed. And the pond scum would be duly cleaned from the national shower stall of American society.
“That’s a problem, because the leftists value the pond scum over the police and the law abiding combined.”
I agree, but stipulate they don’t ACTUALLY value them beyond being something that can be used, and discarded when someone becomes more usable.
They don’t care about anyone, at least not in the way you or I would define “care”. The scum are just tools.
I think it’s interesting to compare the top-down structure of statism with the fact that the scum floats to the top…
A minor hair-split: the NRA’s rules do not exactly match Cooper’s Four Rules.
The NRA teaches three rules, not four: 1) point in a safe direction, 2) finger off trigger, 3) don’t load a firearm until you are going to use it.
http://training.nra.org/nra-gun-safety-rules.aspx
That’s because the NRA’s rules are directed at hunters and target shooters, not self-defense. They also don’t allow the use of the word “weapon” in their classes.
-NRA Life Member, Basic Pistol Instructor, and RSO
It was made clear by the instructor in my NRA Basic Pistol class that “load only when using it” applied directly to concealed carry. When you are carrying, you are using it.
“According to the “About” bit next to the editorial Another Idiot with a Gun, Andrew Rosenthal”
We’re even then, because I think of him as just Another Idiot with a Keyboard.
And the pen is mightier than the sword. Who’s worse for society on the whole: the irresponsible “journalist” or the irresponsible gun owner?
Rosenthal. Bloomberg. Schumer. Lautenberg. Feinstein. Sugarmann. I’m seeing a pattern here, and as a member of the Tribe myself, it doesn’t make me happy. Unless I misread The Book, my life is God’s greatest gift. And my failing to protect that life would be like to saying that the gift is of no value. Given our history, Jews especially should be ardent supporters of the Second Amendment. What the hell is the matter with these people?!
Yeah that’s one thing I’ve always wondered, though I think it comes down to those who truly consider themselves Jewish. Every Jewish person Ive ever met, (none of tem being particularly famous or in politics) has been very pro 2A. I think the famous types, like most famous people, drift to the left, because the left is “cool” and in being famous they must remain “cool” and follow in lock step with the left.
Not necessarily “cool.” I think it is more cliquish. If you want to stay in the clique, you have to parrot the clique’s group-think opinions.
Example:
Clique leader: “Sally is such a whore. She slept with Danny. She knew I wanted to sleep with Danny.”
Clique follower: “Sally is a whore! You are so right! How dare she sleep with the same guy you want to sleep with!”
If the clique follower happens to point out that the leader is criticizing another person for the exact same action/habit/behavior in which the leader was going to partake, the follower will be ridiculed by the clique for daring to highlight the hypocrisy. Being that a lot of high society social circles are really just an extension of the high school popularity mindset, their “toe the line or be ridiculed/cast out” attitudes are easily comparative to the majority of Progressive political doctrine.
Nice post, that is entirely what they are.
Yep. Reminds me of this: http://theredpillroom.blogspot.com/2012/05/female-social-matrix-introduction.html. Read it and see if it doesn’t describe the social behavior of the liberal/progressive left just about perfectly.
@Ing:
I think I read that a while back. Someone (Mina?) posted it. Interesting read.
McCarthy. Malloy. Cuomo. O’Malley. Durbin. Markey. Pelosi. Casey. Gillibrand. Kerry. Biden. Leahy. Menendez. Reed. Brady. I’m seeing a pattern here too, just not the same one you’re seeing. Given their history, Catholics especially should be ardent supporters of the Second Amendment. What the hell is the matter with these people?!
Catholics love guns… just not the ones in this country.
Thank you for this comment, it’s just what needed to be said. The best predictor of being anti-weapon is being raised in a heavily anti-weapon environment and having these messages drilled into you. Today I’m disgusted that my New York City public middle school made my class watch Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine, but in the ignorance of childhood I had no objection. I’m not surprised that people growing up around firearms in Arizona are less anti-gun. Most people are not going to seek the truth out for themselves, but will make an assumption based on their personal experience, what they’ve been told, and what they read. Living in New York City, it seemed like almost everyone was anti-weapon, with no regard to ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Anyone of any group raised in that environment and provided that education will be indoctrinated to deny the right of self-defense and even the necessity of self-defense.
The problem has nothing to do with race or religion. Politics and Ideology are your issues.
A lot of Jewish families are liberal. *shrug*
“But the killing of Hunter is a sign of how out-of-control the gun-owning fetish has become….”
Only if by “out of control” he’s referring to the decline in the rate of accidental shootings. These clowns don’t have any stats so they have to rely on anecdote.
That smug smirk says, “I just broke bread with the Rothschilds!”
And in using the word “fetish” he’s let his true feelings be known. Using that word in particular, and in such a negative connotation, lets us know what his real thoughts are behind what he’s saying. He truly feels that guns are only for the elite, and they should be confiscated from the rest of us proles.
Fetishism: the attribution of religious or mystical qualities to inanimate objects, known as fetishes.
If this is the meaning Mr. Rosenthal intends it’s an interesting bit of projection for a proponent of civilian disarmament. If there are two sides to this debate it’s most certainly the anti’s who imbue firearms with mystical qualities. Variously leading voices on the anti side have suggested that mere possession of a gun increases aggression, can make an otherwise normal person become homicidal over mundane inconveniences and petty disagreements, that guns somehow kill independent of human action or intention, that common small caliber rifles can shoot down airliners and derail locomotives, that guns cause crime, and can be maliciously operated by the completely untrained to kill so many that they are sometimes referred to as WMDs but conversely cannot be used effectively to stop a single attacker.
This list isn’t even a complete airing of the glaring contradictions and absurd claims made by prominent members of the gun control movement and yet it must be we, the POTG who have a twisted view of guns because. . .
And that’s the problem with every argument for civilian disarmament; there is never anything beyond empty assertions; no facts, no compelling evidence, no reputable study or statistics, not even a convincing rebuttal to all the evidence that indicates that at worst guns have no effect on rates of violence, or to those studies that indicate the lawful defensive use of firearms exceeds their criminal use by wide margins, no address to the real problem of personal defense faced by real people daily, not even an offer to explain why a cherished natural right ought to be curtailed or surrendered.
It seems that the rational for disarmament must be accepted on faith alone, faith that somehow, in the absence of or against all evidence we’ll all somehow be safer if only we gave up our guns. I believe this sort of faith; accepting things as true against compelling evidence otherwise, falls firmly in the realm of religious belief which demonstrates the anti’s attribution of religious significance to guns, or at least to the control thereof.
I think there is a strong case to be made that there are fetishistic behaviors at play in the debate over gun rights, and that these behaviors are an intrinsic part of the argument for gun control. The magical thinking demonstrated by those on the civilian disarmament side ever reaffirm one leg of the triad of illogical belief systems: mental disorder. Barring woeful ignorance or base dishonesty, a touch of madness is the only explanation for the bizarre projection found in Mr. Rosenthal’s assertion.
“But the killing of Hunter is a sign of how out-of-control the gun-owning fetish has become, and how little it has to do with anything the writers of the Constitution envisioned.”
Wow what a stretch. All this tragedy is a sign of is the importance of the Four Gun Safety Rules. The Uncle broke all four that resulted in the death of Hunter. Had he adhered to even one of the rules, Hunter would most likely still be alive.
1. He didn’t check to see if the gun was loaded.
2. He aimed his gun at Hunter.
3. He put his finger on the trigger.
4. And then he pulled the trigger without regard of what he was aiming at or what was beyond it.
Gross negligence. When it comes to gun safety, you can take a horse to water, but can’t make them drink.
I’m pretty sure all firearm manuals list the Four Safety rules (or a variation of them). So what is really going on here? Some people are idiots and are irresponsible? Well duh. But does that overshadow everyone else’s natural right to self-defense?
Nope.
NDs happen all the time in the military and police, do we now disband those organizations? Of course not. Because armed police and soldiers serve a greater good.
It’s the same with armed civilians. Deal with it.
“… including a Glock 27 .40-caliber pistol with a laser sight. (Why Mr. Olm felt he needed such a weapon, or such an attachment, has not been explained…”
He had what?!?! That’s like 10 whole bullets!
And a laser!?!? Like the one’s on laser pointers?!?!
Oh, the humanity!
Next up, SAFE Act II, Outlaw Lasers Edition… forz teh childrenz!(TM)
The fact that a laser sight could be used to improve accuracy and thus safety, improving shoot/no-shoot decisions in low-light conditions, never enters the author’s mind. Laser sights improve safety a vast majority of the time but if only one bad event is caused by them it’s reason enough to question their use.
It’s like arguing that automobile headlights should be disallowed because an occasional deer will stop in the roadway, fixated on the headlamps, causing massive vehicular damage, and possibly passenger injury or death. The gun-controllers never argue a fair cost-benefit analysis.
And he spanks my beloved companion, the Glock 27. Why would I possibly need such a weapon? It’s lightweight (26.5 ounces loaded), reasonably comfy, and in a sudden lethal emergency would stop whatever I need stopped.
Once again the post image should be substituted with an avatar of a medical douchebag with Rosenthals name on it. This would relive quite a bit of consternation from your loyal readers.
When’s that avatar selection post for Hildebeast coming?
It’s amazing reading through the comment section of the NY article how those people are living in a world of pure fantasy, where if guns were illegal all crime and bad things would magically vanish. They believe there is nothing that the police can’t save them from. As a police officer I can tell you firsthand that’s a load of crap. Even if a cop is right around the corner, you MUST be able to defend yourself and your loved ones yourself or risk losing everything.
And every single commenter on that site missed the fact that the 2A helps protect us from the tyranny from our own government. It just amazes me the irrational fear that gun grabbers have. I was staying up with my buddy’s family for a week in Wisconsin and his aunt and uncle refused to sleep in th same room we had our guns stored in (unloaded and locked up, mind you).
It’s just unreal.
Another smug, self-righteous article by a liberal New Yorker.
Yawn.
I have a tough time reading that much about some moron. Honestly, I’d rather clean a gun or go outside in the sun with the dogs. Some blowhards rants bore the shit out of me.
Thanks but no thanks.
“… including a Glock 27 .40-caliber pistol with a laser sight. (Why Mr. Olm felt he needed such a weapon, or such an attachment, has not been explained…”
Umm… no. That doesn’t need explaining but let me take a stab at it: He had a compact pistol because it was compact, chambered in .40 cause thats what he chose, with a laser for assisted aiming.
The confusion might be understandable if he had a .300 win mag carbine with a UBGL, but not a pocket rocket with a laser.
I’ve always loved how firearms-ignorant folks are appalled at the thought that a mere citizen would have a laser sight. How curious: they want a person with a firearm to be LESS accurate.
Only the bed wetting liberals seem to know what everybody else is thinking and how they feel.
Another product of the anti critical thinking New York elitist clique.
Not much to say about this liberal, most press, teachers and union shits they are of the same breed. Don’t much care about these short minded animals. Life itself is too short, no need to give them more of my time.
Mr. Rosenthal, while Mr. Olm is clearly an Irresponsible Gun Owner, he doesn’t need to explain why he had that weapon…you f*ucking schmuck…
Sure he does, and I for one would like to hear that explanation! He’s in the UK, not the US, and they do not HAVE any guns, how is it that he is an exception?
The shooting occurred in PA, not the UK. Google “olm uncle shooting Pennsylvania”. Only thing that keeps me from ragging on you is the article was a little vague.
So this POS carries a gun. Someone should “out” him. BTW laser sights are banned in Chicago( as far as I know) & in several Cook County,Illinois towns. I haven’t read the NY Times in years.
It may seem like a good reason – say, self-defense.
I recently purchased a Ruger Super Redhawk.
It is a massive hand-cannon that is pretty much impractical for any reasonable purpose other than having fun at the range.
Note to Mr. Rosenthal: It’s called the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of If I Think You Have A Good Reason.
It’s in the middle of the market (and “The” isn’t part of its name, and so shouldn’t have a capital letter or emphasis in a quotation). The Sun and the Daily Mirror are the UK’s distinctly down-market papers with national circulation (I may have missed one or two).
“(Why Mr. Olm felt he needed such a weapon, or such an attachment, has not been explained, probably because there is no satisfying answer.)”
Actually, your request for an explanation is unsatisfactory, so no answer is required. The Second Amendment protects his and my right to own that weapon. Therefore, Mr. Olm can, and probably did, buy it just because he wanted it, not because he needed it. There is no more requirement for him to explain his desire to own a particular gun, than there is for the commentator to explain a need for his Rolex watch.
Freedom means that the government does not infringe on what we want to do or own, unless there is some strong overriding reason. You have not shown such a reason, so just leave him alone. This is what was meant in “the pursuit of happiness” clause in the Declaration of Independence.
“some strong overriding reason”
That’s the thing. There is none. There is no “overriding reason” for anyone to infringe anyone’s rights. If it’s not OK for one person to do something to you, at what number does it become OK for a mob to do that thing to you? Infinity?
Ultimately, government is a crime against Nature.
Makes you wonder if this “intellectual” believes that the laser is a weapon on its own. If that is the case then it is likely that everything he knows about weapons, he learned from Austin Powers. “Stop humping the laser”.
Clarke’s third law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Another idiot with a pen.
Another idiot with a press computer!
wow. I wonder what he’d say after he found out my “demographic”, my background (east coast and liberal – currently more uh. nuanced.) under 40, and college educated. (Summa cum laude even.)
I wonder even more, as to what he’d say, after he looked in my gun closet. “What reason do you have, for owning this? And this? Give me a justifiable reason?”
I just wish I could go into his house and do the same with whatever weird-ass knick knacks he may enjoy.
“Give me a justifiable reason?”
To protect your unalienable right to be an obnoxious pain in the ass!
Given the anti’s odd fixation with type and style of guns and their absolute inability to distinguish between what constitutes a moderate and large amount of guns, I’d be interested in seeing the correlation between number of guns owned and incidence of guns from that collection being used unlawfully.
I’d be very shocked if their weren’t a negative correlation so that the more guns in a collection the less likely they were to be used unlawfully with that correlation becoming increasingly more pronounced as the number of guns goes up. I also predict that in the cohort with a single gun lies the vast majority of unlawful use while at the other end of the spectrum, say somewhere upwards of 30 guns the rate of unlawful use it statistically so insignificant that increasing the number beyond that has little to no effect on rate of unlawful use with the rate of unlawful use near absolute zero in the 100+ guns in collection cohort.
I also predict that the higher number of the guns anti’s seem particularly concerned about that are included in a collection the higher the negative correlation to unlawful use. That is, if one has only perhaps 5 guns, but these are a Street Sweeper, an AR-15, an AK-47, a .50BMG rifle, and an FN 5.7 handgun there would be a larger negative correlation for unlawful that if a 5 gun collection contained none of the guns of most concern to the anti’s.
I said that to get to this: I wonder if a rigorous study proving my predictions would in time lead to anti’s screaming in panic whenever it’s revealed that someone has fewer than a certain number of guns or didn’t own enough from a group of specific guns? Given their irrational reaction to all things gun, and their repeated and nearly complete inability to comprehend the difference between correlation and causation, perhaps we could get a few on board for subsidies or tax breaks to purchase more guns for those who have too few, and nicer guns for those who don’t own anything particularly scary.
Consider this, I believe we’d also find that the annual number of rounds fired has a strong negative correlation to unlawful use so that those who shoot the most commit the fewest crimes. Perhaps in the name of safety we could convince the anti’s to repeal ammo taxes and offer subsidies to move more gun owners into the high annual round count cohort that commits a statistically insignificant number of crimes and out of the low round count cohort that commits a super majority of gun crime.
I’m really just having fun with ways to make the idiots more useful but it does raise some interesting ideas.
I suspect that we would also find that those who have higher lifetime rounds fired counts commit less crimes of all types than those with lower lifetime round counts. There is probably even a ‘break over’ point where once you’re firing a certain number of rounds annually your statistical risk of committing any crime drops off to virtually nothing. Of course there would be other ‘counts’ one could use that would like work the same way, number of books read per year or number of hours volunteered. However that in no way detracts from the rounds fired theory of being a good citizen but rather tends to indicate that shooting is at least as wholesome as reading and volunteering.
On the reverse, a count of something like number of doses of street drugs consumed per annum or number of hours spent socializing after midnight might tend to predict an increase in criminality. I’d bet that the increase of the positive behaviors directly correlates to a decrease in negative ones (those most linked to criminality) with little overlap.
Of course such findings would tend to indicate that ones behaviors and habits have a direct impact on ones rate of criminality, which might suggest that criminality is largely a matter of personal behaviors which might be extrapolated to mean that one is responsible for ones behavior. I don’t think that is a road one could lead most anti’s down very far. It might be a bridge too far for their mindset to accept.
I have grown tired of the “need” argument. I don’t have to justify my need for anything to anyone.
Neither need nor desire requires justification. That’s why people have ‘collections’ of anything.
Guns for government have killed millions of unarmed citizens only after idiots like Rosenthal supported citizen disarmament. Russia, Germany, China, multi- African nations, Cuba, Central America, Cambodia, etc. way over 100,000,000 in the last century and continues today. They have killed exponetially more people than criminalm acts by citizens. Where you have the strictist gun control you have the highest violent gun crime. Where you have the least gun control you have the the least gun crime. Per Chicago, Mexico, Wash DC, etc. Lets take Switzrland where ever family must have an automatic weapon in their home with ammo. Never have the Swiss been invaded. With the political climate in the US it is quite evident we must own arms. Our government is picking and choosing which laws to obey and which to ignore. If they want to do something the make up a rule via executive order and do it. We have a lawless government. We the people should own weapons at least as powerfull as an infantry soldier. To say we can’t fight the government is simply to ignore history. Taliban, Viet Cong, & Iraq,
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