TTAG reader CM writes:

I’ve got a friend that believes in the 2nd amendment…but….she thinks people only “need” revolvers and bolt action rifles. To make matters worse, she spent a semester abroad in Australia and thinks that we should do everything they have done because there is no more “gun violence” down under. You’ve probably guessed by now on Facebook she likes to “share” and “Like” propaganda from the Moms demanding action, along with other pro gun control posts . . .

She has a lot of pro gun friends, all of which respond to her in respectful, informed ways. I’ve offered to give her an education on guns (not politics or opinions, just an intro to guns, maybe I can get her to the range), which she hasn’t taken me up on yet, but says she might.

Anyway, the other day she shared a post on Facebook that seems even more relevant today given the shoot-out on bourbon street this morning. All I saw was the title: “Remembering the Upstairs Lounge: The U.S.A.’s largest LGBT massacre happened 40 years ago today.” I wasn’t familiar with the incident, and my first thought was, “oh boy, here we go. More commentary for gun control”. So to educate myself I clicked on the link. You can read the article here.

Thirty-two people killed in New Orleans in 1973 for no other reason than they were gay. And they were killed by…..fire. Not gun fire, plain old fire. Ignited by a lighter or match and a whole lot of lighter fluid. With the possible exception of better fire codes, it would be just as easy to do this today as it was 41 years ago. Lighters and matches are easy to buy anywhere, with no background checks. Lighter fluid is everywhere, as is gasoline and other fuels. And nobody cares. Nobody blames the tools. It was a crazy, hateful person who wanted to kill a bunch of people.

If you changed one simple detail, the tool, the narrative would have been completely different. Because she doesn’t fear fire or perceive it as a threat, she has no comment other than how horrible the tragedy was. Had it been a gun that was used, she would have had another 52 comment thread on her hands about gun control.

It’s been stated and restated a bunch of times on TTAG. A lot of the people that support gun control fear guns because they don’t have any knowledge about them. And this is no different. Matches and lighter fluid are different. People need that stuff so what are you going to do? But guns, those are only for killing innocent people. Especially the evil semi-auto ones.

And so it goes. A pro gun control person that needs an education. And a pro gun person that is politely, and gently, offering one. I will keep at it, carefully. Move to quickly and you scare them off. But I know there are cracks. She was appalled recently at an article where it took the police an hour to show up to a home invasion robbery. Suddenly, the police were no longer seconds away in her mind. And her pro gun friends pointed out that she and her husband were on their own for protecting themselves and their daughter. Yeah, there is that.

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56 COMMENTS

  1. Very good point. That reminds of the real worst school mass murder in US history. Happened in the 1920s in Michigan and it was done by some psychopathic old man who used homemade bombs and kerosene to blow up and burn down an elementary school full of children. 45 people killed, and not a shot out of a firearm occurred.

    • It’s debatable whether or not shots were fired, since reporting from the scene was so chaotic. It seems unlikely, and I don’t think most modern accounts consider it a possibility.

      That said, Kehoe would still have most likely been labeled a “shooter” by modern media if it were to happen today, merely by the presence of a rifle.

    • 87 killed at the Happy Land Social Club, Bronx New York March 25, 1990.

      One Dollar of gasoline and two matches.

    • Don’t forget the Hartford Circus fire that killed 167+ people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_circus_fire) and is widely believe to have been arson. And don’t forget the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 with diesel fuel and fertilizer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing). Or the worst mass murder in the country’s history that was carried out with box cutters and plane tickets. I believe that if you could take the guns away the mass murderers would be forced to find even more destructive means.

      • “I believe that if you could take the guns away the mass murderers would be forced to find even more destructive means.”

        This is absolutely correct. Furthermore, once a spree killer starts a fire or the fuse to a bomb, there is nothing anyone can do to reduce the number of casualties. However, we can reduce the number of casualties if a spree killer starts their rampage with a firearm IF THERE ARE ARMED PEOPLE ON SITE READY TO OPPOSE THE SPREE KILLER.

        • Of course the only way to take the guns out of the hands of the mass murderers is to take them out of everyone else’s hands as well.

  2. Ask her about the “Texas Tower” sniper, who in 1967 killed 16 people using a bolt action hunting rifle with a fixed four shot box magazine.

      • Wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if he had been using a Ruger No.1. Other than the fact that he would have had to wait a year for Ruger to come out with it, of course.

      • A 0-round Magazine capacity ban would fix that. He’d risk going to jail for….wait sorry my mistake.

  3. You’ve probably guessed by now on Facebook she likes to “share” and “Like” propaganda from the Moms demanding action, along with other pro gun control posts . . .

    Yeah, TTAG likes to spread that Moms Demand Action propaganda too. Without TTAG (and the gift that keeps on giving, Open Carry Texas), MDA would be a nobody.

    • So, that $50 million from Bloomberg to MDA doesn’t mean a thing. It’s all TTAG’s fault.

      Got it.

      • $50 million can’t buy the kind of publicity TTAG and OCT give MDA. But in all seriousness, TTAG’s constant promotion of MDA is about as helpful as OCT’s constant attempts to give them better and better propaganda material.

        • $50 million can’t buy the kind of publicity TTAG and OCT give MDA.

          So TTAG has more reach than, say, CNN? Good to know. Hey, RF — charge more for the advertising, ‘kay? You’re bigger that CNN!

        • Know thine enemy. If the distortions being peddled by MDA are not challenged and just repeated then they will be treated as gospel.

        • Honestly, it doesn’t matter if it helps them at all or not. Censoring information from the other side of the room is worse, although it seems to be working for them.

  4. And where did Whitman learn to shoot. So if he had not been drafted no brain tumor or learning how to shoot. The ant 2A circular logic.

  5. Drive-bys in Sydney are a nightly occurrence, gun violence has gone up as a result of the ban: only criminals and police are armed. And limited to bolt action rifles and revolvers? Make sure the government is the first to adopt this policy, followed by criminals. Oh wait, you can’t guarantee either of those things. Civilians should have access to machine guns and destructive devices as far as I’m concerned on account of the fact that organised criminals as well as overzealous governments have all these and more at their disposal. There’s nothing violent about having deterrent armament. Civilians aren’t the issue. Those who abide by the law and live peacefully will continue to do so even if they have a machine gun or RPG in their basements. The idea is if you are going to go and trample on said persons rights to exist peacefully and enjoy liberty of living their life they way they want you aren’t going to have an easy time doing it. The ones who use force against those who disagree with them are always *criminal* no matter if they are doing it for religious, financial, illicit or governmental positions.

    • Exactly!
      I owned my first SMG (S&W M-76) when I turned 21, the youngest age you could get a license for one. Now I am near 60. I haven’t hurt or bothered anyone with a gun in all that time since, nor will I ever.
      The idea of “gun control” is as absurd as the idea of drug control. The people that want them will always have them no matter what the law says.

        • Used by Charelton Heston in The Omega Man, and by Lee Marvin in Prime Cut.
          Pretty good gun, same magazine as Swedish K.

        • Charlton Heston of course. Old fingers and eyes. Basically a cheaper Swedish K. Full auto only on both, but you could tap off single shots on them with little practice and I hit soda cans at 100 yards with mine several times, full and semi.

  8. Some “Pro gun control” people are really just on the fence. You have to treat them like little bunnies. You can’t just run at them screaming “Muricah!” Challenge them, gently. Put actual facts out there to counter the crazy mom yelling, suggestively. Use what if scenarios where the proposed laws are in place and how they would fail, and how a 150lb mother could defend her children against a 250lb man.

    There’s a reason why controllers need tragedies and control of all news media to move forward, none of their ideas are based on facts or history.

    • The problem is that none of these people study history. They don’t know what happend to tens of millions of unarmed people in the past when the bad guys came for them.

    • I scream ‘MURICA at the half dozen bunnies in my development every morning. They just sit there in the grass and stare at me.

  9. Glad you are so patient RF. I’m not. The most telling part of your post is her being “appalled” it took cops an hour to “rescue”someone. I gave up trying to convert anyone. The ultimate “common sense solution” is have a gun.

    • You might want to inform her that there are several court decisions that cops are not under any obligation to protect individual citizens, only the “collective”.
      A few years ago there were two women that were raped and sued the local police for failing to protect them. The court ruled against them,

    • It’s not RF’s story. He posted it for a reader named “CM.” It’s in the lede: “TTAG reader CM writes . . .”

      RF would probably not be so patient.

  10. tell her if she is so confident, post her address on FB and leave the front door unlocked. . . . . well, I am sure she will change her mind

  11. I always find it a bit funny when gun-control advocates go to another country and “witness” the success of gun-control laws. I live in the sub-burbs in a pretty low crime area. No gun violence to speak of. Go 5 miles to the east and you are not to be seen past dark walking around.

    Actually, a better example is my wifes home country: Trinidad and Tobago. Tobago is very safe. Of the two it is the touristy side. Lots of security. She would like to take me there someday. “gun control must be working there”.
    The other island of Trinidad? Very unsafe. She will never take me there as I would stand out. Lots of killings and kidnappings. Not safe at all. People cannot defend themselves! Same country, but two very different cultures separated by water.

    • Indeed so.
      Kenya during the Mau-Mau uprising or the Rwanda genocide are other prime examples where most of the killing was done with edged weapons.

    • Same deal in pretty much any large city here in the US – different neighborhoods separated by a handful of blocks; night and day.

  12. On Friday night Barbara Walters had a special on the Santa Barbara massacre and of course they had Martinez and other gun control bozos screaming for more ” sensible and reasonable ” regulations and laws for gun owners. As I recall, some of the injuries and deaths were from a knife and car as well as the California compliant gun that was used. I suppose I should not call Martinez a bozo, as he lost his child, but he becomes a bozo in that the gun was just one tool of several used by the killer and of course that becomes the entire problem.

    • What makes Martinez a bozo is the fact that, within 24 hour of his son’s murder, he was using the fact of that murder to advance a political goal – in this case, civilian disarmament – and to court personal fame. When a parent uses the death of their child in a callous grab for fame and political influence he loses any sympathy I would otherwise have had.

  13. “But guns, those are only for killing innocent people. Especially the evil semi-auto ones.”

    Semi-auto people aren’t always themselves; if they are evil, I say shoot them.

  14. Wouldn’t they all love you to believe that the banning of semi auto rifles (including 10-22’s) and shotguns and also pump action shotguns (but not pump rifles?) solved all of the horrible, horrible gun related violence in Australia. Of course like all anti propaganda it is a complete lie. Sure we have not had a mass killing with a semi auto since the ban but we haven’t needed one have we, they already got our auto’s ( well off those who handed them in). As stated by another, drive by shootings in Sydney are now an epidemic, gang and drug related and not going away no matter what is banned. Also stated by another on TTAG in another story’s comments is the fact that we have had mass murders since the gun ban but with the use of fire.

  15. I made this analogy 100 posts ago regarding open carry. I stated something to the fact that people’s minds have to be changed to not seeing a man walking down the street with a rifle as any more of a threat as a man walking down the street carrying a gas can. We assume the man with the gas can ran out of gas, not that he is on his way to burn down the office that he was fired from. But maybe the guy with the rifle ran out of gas too and he doesn’t want to leave it in his abandoned car.

  16. There was one mass shooting after Australia’s new gun laws.

    Australian’s murder rate went up in addition (but, but i thought only guns constituted murder!)

    New Zealand, despite having more lenient laws, didn’t have such a mass murder in that timeframe.

    Correlation, causation kids.

  17. Largest mass murder in US was committed by airplanes. Damn Boeing and all the other airliner manufacturers for selling murder machines!

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