In a recent New York Times editorial — Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals — columnist Nicholas Kristof says a number of things that would make pro-gun rights folks fairly happy. For example, “liberals often inadvertently antagonize gun owners and empower the National Rifle Association by coming across as supercilious, condescending and spectacularly uninformed about the guns they propose to regulate.” That’s way too accurate for the anti-gun rights NYT. And so they wheeled in Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser . . .
Nicholas Kristof’s call for a “new strategy” to combat gun violence is both necessary and compelling, but the solutions he advances — in particular changing how gun control advocates explain and justify their positions to gun owners — I think need a different approach.
And what, pray tell, is MTDoubleGW’s better idea? Recognize the fact that gun owners like guns because . . . guns. What he calls “toys.”
Why do I call these lethal items toys? Because that’s how guns are used by the people who buy them. Unlike the good old days, fewer than 5 percent of America’s population now lives in areas where hunting is part of everyday life. Guns are also not generally used for defense against crime and violence, except occasionally in random, unplanned ways. The latest research covering more than 14,000 criminal events indicates that victims used guns to defend themselves less than 1 percent of the time. And notwithstanding overblown National Rifle Association claims that the 2nd Amendment is a fundamental shield in the Age of Terror, the country’s ability to defend itself doesn’t depend on a self-styled militia holed up at Malheur Refuge.
So Mr. Weisser, an actual gun dealer, doesn’t believe that people buy guns for self-defense or a bulwark against tyranny? Apparently not. So why do they buy guns?
Despite what the N.R.A. says about people, not guns killing other people, there is no consumer product as lethal as a gun. But walk up to a guy (and it’s still almost always a guy) who is lovingly caressing the gun he just bought and tell him that what he’s holding is a lethal weapon and he’ll stare at you in disbelief. Ask him why he just plunked down $600 and he’ll stare at you again. He bought that gun because he likes buying guns — it’s as simple as that. He may mumble something about the 2nd Amendment because that’s what he’s been told, but if you think picking up a gun is any less impulsive than buying any other nonessential consumer item, think again.
Sigh. So, how does Mr. Weisser reckon gun control advocates should talk to us impulsive buyers?
Rather than considering them as participants in a modern morality play, they need to be engaged as consumers who, above all, don’t want to lose their ability to quickly and easily purchase guns. The trick is to convince gun owners that by helping to find ways to protect us from gun violence they won’t lose what they love. But that’s a conversation of a very different kind.
In other words, tell gun owners they’ll be able to buy guns easily to get them to support laws that make it more difficult for them to buy guns. That, friends, is what passes for logic from a man who sells guns while arguing for civilian disarmament.
Does this idiot actually make money selling guns? Wow…
How is it that this nut is not on the psycho list (prohibited)?
What kind if idiot would buy a gun from him?
Nope, he’s lost his FFL. He still has a storefront that’s used for basic pistol classes, although he doesn’t do much business since those of us in MA have spoken out for years against him. There’s more info on this in the General Discussion board at Northeastshooters.com.
My response would probably be “And….?”
I might even go so far as to say, “And I hope DiFi cried.”
“he’ll stare at you in disbelief”
More like “Are you really that stupid?” A gun wouldn’t be very useful in self defense if it wasn’t a lethal weapon.
And they’re not even the most lethal consumer products available (despite his unsupported claim to the contrary).
Fast food, automobiles, alcohol, and tobacco all surpass guns in annual deaths.
IIRC 1 in 5 chance dying of heart disease
Exactly what I was going to say. I believe “it better be” or staring in disbelief at the stupidity would be an appropriate response. For a minute i considered trying an experiment and seeing what people’s real response would be next time I am at a gun shop but I am sure I couldn’t bring myself to say such stupid things.
Pretty damn ironic.
Calls out his unstable liberal ilk for being condescending, then abruptly begins to be an unstable, condescending liberal.
The taste of victory boys. They’ve got precious little left in their anti American arsenal.
My response would be “no $#!t Sherlock”.
Reminds me of the mid 90’s Dennis Leary bit about cigarette packaging. “You could make it a black pack, with a skull and crossbones on the front, called Tumors, and smokers would be lined up around the block to get them”.
Keep on failing up Mike. Your arrogance, smugness, and condescension fit right in at the NYT.
^ This, or, “thank you captain obvious.”
Why are we quoting the puppy paper / bird cage liner again? Those people receive/spend a lot of money to spread type under animal feces.
NY’rs – especially (D)head NY’rs need to get the f out of their piss ant little state sometime and see the real world. If they could look at NY from a map (or better, from here) they would stop trying to dictate to the rest of us, and enjoy some space, and a few firearms.
Hi Joe, I’m a NYer. From New York state that is. NY is full of mountains, forests, lakes, and rich farmland. You can walk 4 miles off my porch till you get to the next dirt road. New York state is as gun friendly as it gets. Our local sherrifs own ARs and fully support the locals who do as well. The city however is home to the most evil anti gun people out there. Please check your map again before you get us mixed up the the city. We hate that.
Secede from NYC. Not-Chicago, Illinois and non-coastal California should do the same.
Western PA, Western MD, Most of Central, Southern and Western VA and a bunch of places in other states should do the same. In fact, it’s mostly the democrat-controlled coastal cities that think they can solve their violent crime problems by crippling their law-abiding citizens.
I say: let’s have a peaceful solution. Leave the coastal cities to self-govern and let everyone else do their thing without being force-fed gun control nonsense that really isn’t a problem other than in city gangland. If cities think disarming honest, law-abiding citizens in the face of gang violence is the smart thing to do, let them reap what they sow while everyone else enjoys their freedom.
@Caderyn: It’s not just Western PA. It’s the vast majority of the state outside of the Pitts and Philahellphia. I’m in Central PA and I’ll tell you the reason PA sometimes goes Blue has nothing to do with being conservative or liberal, it’s all about the unions. Unions vote Dem even when 90% of their membership own multiple guns, carry concealed, and are very pro-2A. It’s one more reason why unions are bad for America.
@Gurney Halleck, as a former New Yorker I agree with you to a point. However, the hoplophobic areas aren’t confined to NYC. All of Long Island, many towns and cities like Albany, Schenectady and Rochester — when you add them all up, New York State is an anti-gun sh!thole with small pockets of free people clinging to their guns and ammo.
Hillary was a (D)head senator from the un-great-now state of NY. She couldn’t protect herself and her family from her own husband (because it might preclude a later WH run) but she was damn fine for (D)umbass upstate NY.
IF YOU LIVE IN A BLUE STATE, YOU MAY BE PART OF THE PROBLEM. IF YOU HAVE A (D) AFTER YOUR NAME, ARE A LIBERAL OR A RINO, THE PROBLEM IS
PART
OF
YOU
YOU ARE
PERMANENTLY
BROKEN AND YOUR MOM OWES US AN ABORTION.
As an unfortunate NYer, I have to agree with Gurney Halleck. NYS is very much a “Tale of Two Cities” – in the last Gubernatorial election, the vast majority of the counties (46 out of 62) voted Republican…unfortunately, Cuomo still won, even though he carried only 16 counties because of NYC, Long Island and a few liberal enclaves upstate. The entire rest of the state voted Republican. Upstate NY is particularly pro-gun. Sherrif’s in upstate NY are publicly encouraging people to carry a firearm to protect themselves and their families (wait, what? In NY?) yes indeed. It is just unfortunatte that we have a giant “liberal wart” on our collective upstate asses, that is NYC and Long Island. Unfortunately, between those 7 counties, is nearly half of the state’s entire population, but if it wasn’t for them, NY might actually be a Red state…
Halleck,
I’m a NY’r, born/raised, got the F out. I do look at the map, and I see (deep in my wake) a piss ant small state that doesn’t make the top 50 in terms of Area in America. And it’s mf-trying to dictate to the rest of us. You [it] could pack another Trillion illegal aliens within your border, and NY still wouldn’t represent another square inch of America, nor its values. NY is YOUR PROBLEM, fix your problem, until then, you only ALL look like just a little triangle with a tail on a map.
you know how the world (humankind) eventually deals with the “they are not us” crowds?
Dresden, WWII – 13–15 February 1945
Hiroshima. . .
Nagasaki . . .
Classic too, how she skips the main point of my argument, re: the dictating part. OK isn’t attempting to dictate sh_t to anyone. If you even get a “toe the line” out of us, it’s in the way we demand you uphold the Constitution, right-to-life (you know, the basic sh_t of how we all get along that you (D)bags f with daily, like it doesn’t matter). Without that agreement, we can have at right the F now, because, from here, it looks like you’re trying to do it sheepishly and piecemeal. If you (D) openly stated what you want, it would recite as the definition of communism and some of satanism. The US has erected monuments around the world to how bad we know those should be worked at eliminating (e.g. Arlington National Cemetary has many of those solemn monuments). F NY in its goat a_ _.
Wow, how much more of a fudd could this guy be? I mean this guy has it bad I just wonder how much longer it will be before that guy closes up shop and goes full retard.
Fudd is too kind for this guy. Fudds are people who mostly understand guns but generally can’t see the civil-rights forest beyond the walnut trees their gun stocks are made of.
This guy on the other hand, purposefully exploits his status as a self-proclaimed “Gun Guy” to actively undermine the Bill of Rights and remove Constitutionally protected civil rights from millions of other people. He plans to be one of the privileged, connected few when ordinary people like you and me are hung out to dry.
Quisling and kapo fit him better.
And Quisling was EXECUTED. Ahem…
That hit the nail on the head. My ex-wife’s dad was a staunch Democrat, a hunter, and shooter. He owned hunting guns, but also had an SKS that was tricked out and a couple of 9mm pistols. He was also a good gubmint union member (teacher). He would vote for who ever the union told him to, not matter how putrid their
position was on the second amendment. Ironically the guy was a huge closet racist, as are many democrats.
I now have a brother in law, also a retired government worker (53) who gets 80% of his salary for the rest of his life who isn’t as much of a gun guy, more of a fudd, but still a gun owner. My point is that both of these guys believe in PARTY first. Very much like communists. They feel that they will ultimately not be subject to the loss of their rights like the rest of us, but that there will always be a carve out for the new “politburo” members.
Just remember, somebody has to sell guns to the new ruling class.
What kind of talk is that? The nature of crime is such that any measure taken to defend against it does so in “a random, unplanned way”. Criminals intend to take their victims by surprise, they don’t set up appointments.
That’s why cops don’t carry them!
DaveL’s comment and yours pretty much encapsulates what I was going to say.
As someone who has pulled a gun on a bunch of occasions to (be prepared to) defend myself against criminals I am not sure how acts being ‘unplanned’ or ‘random’ makes his point.
How unplanned is working and saving up to buy a firearm, and ammunition, then subjecting yourself to a fing non-appealable burned NICS check?
More planned than an accident, less planned than the evil (D)head blue-state bs gun-grab homegrown terrorism being foisted upon us by the NYT/Bloomberg/and satan’s evil blue house of communist progressive liberal (D).
I have told all the criminals out there that they may only attack me between the hours of 8AM and 4PM on Thursdays with even numbered days. So far they’ve been very accommodating, and waited around patiently as I planned out every detail of my self defense strategy.
did you tell them ‘please – no rain days’
?
But walk up to a guy (and it’s still almost always a guy) who is lovingly caressing the gun he just bought and tell him that what he’s holding is a lethal weapon and he’ll stare at you in disbelief.
It’s not disbelief that the gun is a lethal weapon, it’s disbelief that anyone would walk up to them and make such an idiotic comment.
If this condescending a-hole owned a gun store around me, I’d promptly find another store with which to do business.
Google his name. He has a horrid reputation. He’s likely a hobbyist rather than a dealer who needs to make a living.
His back-drop in the picture looks like the pics of those fake gun-grabber “bait” -and- sting stores set up by local cops. Average Joe walks in off the street, hey, nice. These are legal? NOPE, you get to make license plates for the state.
The latest research covering more than 14,000 criminal events indicates that victims used guns to defend themselves less than 1 percent of the time.
This is counter to every research I’ve ever heard of.
And isn’t 14,000 criminal events a very small sample? What kind of “criminal events?”
less than 1%…. soooo lets see
11 million crimes committed, 110000 times guns were used to defend yourself…
Seems a tad low, but still… 14,000 murders,
last I checked 110,000 is more than 14,000 sooooo seems to me that it’s still a better idea to have a gun.
Ummmm, ahhhh — let’s not forget that over-zealot arm-chair warriors are also charged with murder when the use of their legal firearm is used when it did not need to be — or over penetration caused the death of an innocent by-stander. THIS is why I constantly warn people away from the shoot first school of thought, and point out that if your intent is to kill someone, you ARE guilty of Murder– period. So I try to emphasize the SLOW ESCALATION of any event from before confrontation, to confrontation and hopefully no one will ever pull the trigger too soon, or without REAL (as in legal) cause. Somewhere I read about a guy (LEO) who saw a shadow in his house, and accidentally shot his son who was home early from college. The LEO did not ID his ‘intruder’ by verbal command or light before opening fire — and the consequence was tragic. And unnecessary.
So, while many may point to ‘murderers’ as ‘bad guy’s’ — remember many well trained, legal side or long gun owners become ‘murderers’ because they followed their thought-out-before-hand scenarios. They acted exactly like they have told themselves they would act – and that thought process becomes so ingrained, that the movement from thought to reality is so subtle, they forget that they, too, have laws to follow – and that yes, shoot to kill is an overused axiom — as is don’t point a gun at anything you don’t want to kill — sometimes just pointing a gun is enough — SLOW ESCALATION – don’t just jump to ‘pull the trigger and empty the mag into the bad guy’ — that’s murder.
So I would try to avoid killing someone as long and in as many ways as I could — So don’t forget that some of those ‘murders’ were likely committed by some well-meaning people with very poor judgement skills. Some, not many, but even one is too many. And you can bet that there will be less than a lot, but more than a ‘very few’ ‘responsible gun owners’ on that list.
And as far as ‘guns are toys’ – I agree – guns ARE **Adult ** toys – I can go out plinking with a .22lr and be happy, and happier with a .223 because the range is more of a challenge – but then I don’t have a .17 cal, and I’d bet that would be a kick in the pants to go out plinking with — it’s got the range to be fun – and the accuracy and power to puff up dust or move an old can around up and down a slope. I don’t see anyone saying guns are not ‘adult toys’ — we all know that they are.
Just be careful you don’t become another number on the list of people who are ‘murderers’ — because I can read here that many of you are VERY likely to be on that list if you walk your talk.
In my jurisdiction, one cannot escalate gun use. That is, once the gun is brought out of the case or holster, someone must be shot. Otherwise, you are not justified in bringing the gun out. Only imminent danger can justify pulling a gun. Anything else is brandishing at the least, and maybe an additional charge of “menacing”. There is discussion about whether displaying a gun in hopes of diffusing a confrontation is actually an element of attempted murder.
But I get what you are saying.
East Slope is only talking about a problem with the Jurisdictional Regulations and enforcing personnel. Some (D)bag asks why you shot someone threatening you, tell them, the court, the local tv, that the dead perp said they were working for the DA and Judge in question before you shot them. Tell everyone the dead perp said he was going to go kill then rape some nuns and kids and collect his check from the DA and Court.
Is the dead perp working for the DA and Judge, or is the DA and Judge working for the (nefarious purposes of) the dead perp. THEY SURE AS F AIN’T WORKIN FOR YOU AT THAT POINT.
Yeah, without a lot more context, that statistic (assuming that it’s legitimate, which is a big assumption) is less than meaningless. Where where these “criminal events”? If they were all in NYC, it’s not a very representative sample. What kind of “criminal events” were they? Attempted murders, muggings, rapes, vandalism, what?
There is absolutely no information in that statistic, which is typical for Mike Weisser.
“liberals often inadvertently antagonize gun owners and empower the National Rifle Association by coming across as supercilious, condescending and spectacularly uninformed about the guns they propose to regulate.”
To put it another way, they gunsplain to us.
The fact that the principal use of guns in our society is recreational is not a bug. It’s a feature.
Would he rather it be some other way?
If it weren’t we could stop being compared to other “developed” nations I’m sure!
One percent of 14,000 is 140. If we assume that the sample gives an accurate percentage of defense to crime, apply that to the total number of crimes per the fbi crime report (1,165,383 violent crimes in 2014), and you have 11,653 defensive uses compared to 14,249 murders. Not that rare, unless murder is rare too.
“But walk up to a guy (and it’s still almost always a guy) who is lovingly caressing the gun he just bought and tell him that what he’s holding is a lethal weapon and he’ll stare at you in disbelief. Ask him why he just plunked down $600 and he’ll stare at you again. He bought that gun because he likes buying guns — it’s as simple as that. He may mumble something about the 2nd Amendment because that’s what he’s been told, but if you think picking up a gun is any less impulsive than buying any other nonessential consumer item, think again.”
There’s that supercilious and condescending behavior…
Precisely
And spectacularly uninformed. Sorry, couldn’t resist, the word “spectacularly” leaped off the page at me, made the whole article.
If Bloomberg enters the race and successfully divides and conquers… we can expect his NYC tainted view of the 2nd Amendment (that gun owners are scum and “regulation” means 100’s of NYC styled regulations) to go national by way of executive action.
Anybody else notice his name attached to the Cosmo “gun talk flow chart” yesterday? Because when young, insecure 20 somethings need advice on guns, they think of Mike the OFWG.
Only 5% of the population lives in areas where hunting is part of every day life so he says. Heah Mikey ever hear of this thing call a motor vehicle?
I live in Milwaukee. Every year I drive some 200+ miles north to supplement my diet with some very delicious and healthy venison. If Wisconsin had a wider selection of medium and large game to hunt, I would hunt those too for additional meat. Thousands more from Wisconsin and the surrounding states venture forth into the wilderness as well. Most live in cities. Obviously he never took the time to really research his argument.
My wife has roots in Marinette County so I have probably walked the same ground.
You hunt from your motor vehicle?
You’re a rebel. I like you.
: )
“Lovingly caressing” a just-purchased firearm? What kind of gun shops this guy hang out at?
I think that he confused our guns with his vibrator.
Those who confuse guns with sex toys shouldn’t handle either.
Why are we still quoting this fire kindling?
What a joke, this man has the moral compass of a snake oil salesmen… So basically he’s telling the gun grabbing, bubble-headed sheeple crowd how to more effectively lie to people… I’m sure this makes his ilk all warm and fuzzy (in a petulant kind of way) but the truth is on our side…
Judas goats like this need to be made irrelevant like they were before all this nonsense started here… Talking people out of their natural right to self-defense is lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut…
This putz looks like Bloomb*tch’s brother… Hey Mikey!!! >>> Is that you???
I fully agree, Nicholas Kristof is one of the most condescending anti-gun zealots I have heard in a long time; his statements are designed to show gun buyers/ owners as brainless trend following idiots (based on his description of his gun buyers, it really sounds like the only people that buy guns from him are know nothing liberals that have no idea why they are buying a firearm, it’s just seemed a cool thing to do). I for one have never heard a gun owner mumble when asked why he owns a gun(s), be it for self defense, hunting or target (milk jugs included) shooting. I can surely agree that if you “walk up to a (conservative) guy (and it’s still almost always a guy) who is lovingly caressing the gun he just bought and tell him that what he’s holding is a lethal weapon and he’ll stare at you in disbelief,” as the conservative will think the woman asking the question (and it’s still almost always a woman) must be a liberal tune; the fact that a firearm is a lethal weapon is the very reason it was bought for gods sake!! Further one wonders what liberal socioeconomic circles the author runs in where one would have the money to impulse buy a $600 gun, they way most of us pickup a key chain flashlight while waiting at a checkout line. In the final analysis, when you hear a liberal say they believe in the 2nd Amendment (like it’s alien spacecrafts) and they only believe in common sense gun safety (like banning assault weapons when it is pretty much agreed the use of any rifle in a crime is so rare as to be an anomaly). The truth behind all this appears to be liberals continually trying to drum up a gun emergency where none exists; fortunately it has become common knowledge that gun crimes/homicides have been steadily falling for over 20 years, which is why the majority of Americans put gun control near the bottom of their list. But liberals still want to make it a decisive issue so they can try to use guns to discredit conservatives in elections.
My bad, I used the wrong name, the person I meant to be excoriating is Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser not Nicholas Kristof.
I think Mr. Weisser is no longer personally in the gun business. Not sure, though.
I have heard the same also.
I have seen the enemy… and he is totally ignorant.
This guy has no clue what my purchasing process is like. Anything with a three digit price tag will be agonized over, considered carefully, pondered for weeks, months… I’ve been mulling getting a CZ75B-SA for at least a year now, probably longer. It’s not an expensive gun by any means, but itit’s not a casual expenditure either.
Indeed. I’ve bought exactly two guns on the spur of the moment, and both were used bargains under $150. Everything else in my safe was researched to death for weeks or months before purchase.
Does anyone have a link to the actual editorial in question? I don’t see one here on TTAG, nor is it obvious on the NYT website.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/some-inconvenient-gun-facts-for-liberals.html?_r=0
That’s Kristof’s editorial, yes, but where is Weisser’s? Weisser’sis the one that RF is quoting and referencing.
He used to own the Ware Gun Shop in Ware, MA. MA POTG hate this guy with a passion, but then again, so does everyone else.
http://www.ammoland.com/2013/11/deadbeat-mike-weisser-ware-gun-shops/#axzz400M7dnS8
People actually bought something from this guy?
You want to curb the mass shooting that have made the news? How about the president stop inducing radical racism and culture. Lets go back through what I can think of off the top of my head.
Ft. Hood-Workplace violence. Years later terrorism.
Oklahoma meat packing beheading-Workplace violence. Years later terrorism
Trayvon Martin-innocent black child killed by vigilante white dude. Mexican guy was about to get curb stomped for being a homosexual.
Charleston Church Kid killed black people because the confederate flag told him to j/k. Screwed up and admitted to being racist radical because of the actions of this administration.
Roanoak TV reporter-Workplacee violence because he was picked on for being black. Racist homosexual that hated white people.
Boston Bombers-Islamic terrorist
Chattanooga Marines-Islamic terrorist
I know there is more but between Islamic Terrorist and I’m gonna kill so and so because of race that is the majority of these media murders. All of which go back to an administration that would rather stoke fires than put them out.
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
…
Among others, you left out the San Bernardino attack and
yesterday’s machete attack in Columbus, Ohio.
Somali Man Launches Machete Attack in Columbus, Ohio
““Police identified the suspected attacker as Mohamed Barry, 30 … reports the suspected attacker has a Somali background, and officials believe he may have traveled to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2012.”
The Columbus Dispatch reports that “The owner of the Nazareth Restaurant and Deli said he believes his business was targeted because of his Israeli descent.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/12/somali-man-launches-machete-attack-columbus-ohio/
…
If someone asked me if I realized that my gun is a lethal weapon, my reply would be, “I certainly hope so. Otherwise, I could have bought a length of 2×4 at Home Depot for much less. All lethal means is that I need to be very careful about using my gun.”
If Weisser thinks guns are impulse purchases, he has never dealt with a customer like me. After 30 years with a Gold Cup, I am considering the switch to 9 mm. I started the selection process a few months ago and don’t expect to make a decision for another 6 months. It may come down to buying a couple of likely prospects, shooting them for a while, selling the less desirable one, buying a third prospect, and continuing until I have tried all of them. Probably, Weisser wouldn’t like to deal with a customer like me since my research process makes me high maintenance.
A conversation about reducing violence in general could start with (1) acknowledging that shooting a violent criminal in self defense does not constitute “gun violence” any more than busting his head with a 2×4 constitutes “lumber violence” and (2) incarcerating violent criminals for a long time may not rehabilitate them but it does deny them access to future victims.
Boy, if I followed your process, my house would be a lot less cluttered. Most recent impulse purchase was a Mossy 590 for Christmas because I liked the finish (looks like snakeskin) and my son was after me to buy a shotgun. Yesterday was our first trip to the range for our first round of skeet in 30 years, and we had so damn much fun I’m already thinking of the Mossy over/under next, Son says we should shoot our way through the case of skeet ammo I bought, see if we’re still getting that much fun out of it before another purchase. When we finished our round, we shared another, just shooting doubles, with a pump. My son managed to actually hit one double, and I sorta did, killing both with one shot. The screaming was epic. With only one bird and two shells remaining, son loaded both and I hit the “double” button, so where the bird came from was a surprise, he busted it with the first shot, then shot one of the falling pieces with the second. Some shooting is even more fun than other shooting.
ken doll,
skip the process and buy that cz75b sa before car lost does.
RF, privately held guns as a “bulwark against tyranny” is a shop-worn myth that has degenerated into an outright falsehood. There is no evidence the US government has ever been intimidated by guns held by citizens. As I have demonstrated several times, based on the writings of pro-gun advocates who are also rigid constitutionalists, the amount of government involvement in our daily lives is way beyond what the founders went to war over. Yet, there has not been a war against the central government since 1865. The firepower disparities between the US military and private gun owners is now so stark, that it is beyond foolish, it is dangerous to promote the idea that somehow thousands of gun owners (most of whom will likely obey laws) represent a “bulwark against tyranny”.
At the danger of repeating myself only to be ridiculed, the US government ran a test of the resolve of the gun-owning populace when, according to pro-gun, anti-government sources, federal forces lacking any legal justification invaded and killed American citizens in Waco. Citizens who had violated not laws. The founding fathers would have never tolerated such. As a citizen I was outraged, buy my colleagues and congressional representatives did nothing, so I assumed they were right, and I did not grasp the facts properly. I was joined, apparently, by the vast majority of citizens in acquiescing to government abuse of power and citizens. The point is, if such a thing was tolerated with such anemic response by the press, congress and citizens, it is dementia to believe somehow all the guns in America keep such things from happening; they didn’t.
Pro-gun, anti-government factions cannot have it both ways. If you tolerate Waco (and you did), you cannot simultaneously proclaim that having a gun makes an iota of difference between a benign and tyrannical government. equivocation is the hallmark of the un-serious; the flim-flam man.
“At the danger of repeating myself only to be ridiculous”
FWIW, Waco was an isolated incident; the theoretical ‘tyranny’ is of the systemic variety. The backlash was huge, even at the time, and no fed would dare perform a similar raid ever again without far better precautions. WACO is again scared shitless over their jackbooted cops’ massacre of bikers for the same reason. There have been numerous historical examples of townships rising up to depose & deliver to federal authorities their corrupt local political machines, there have been numerous examples of the feds giving great consideration in their activities for fear of provoking an armed response. I agree that most of the conditions under which many gunowners think they will be instrumental are fictitious exaggeration; I also think that your faith in our government to ruthlessly put down a significant insurgency of natural-born Americans is exceedingly naiive. They can’t even do that to faceless brown people on the other side of the planet who don’t pay taxes or have family scattered all over the US.
I agree that the average gun owner is likely a coward when push comes to shove; but EVERY anti-gunner most certainly is. The real question is why you expect armed soldiers to fight and die on your behalf, with your best interests at heart, when you would throw them into harms way to have gunowners like myself disarmed by force? Why would their leaders not depose your unarmed civilian politicians after defeating their only viable enemy to seize the reigns of power? This is why the first thing tyrants do is disarm the opposition, and the second to put on a silly military uniform.
The “faceless brown people” are our future voters. Why discourage them? It is not a matter of competence of the central government to control the flow, it is a matter of putting more votes on the ground. It is votes that determine the future, gun owners not so much.
My point about the original Waco operation is that the pro-gun side did nothing to stop the activity, did nothing to penalize the people involved, did nothing to stop other agencies from adopting SWAT-style forces. Waco was not a failure, but a proof-of-concept. A toe in the water to test the resolve of the general public, constitutionalists, anti-government types. The lessons were analyzed, plans updated and shared. We who believe in making gun ownership as little threatening to society as possible do not want to really get to a shooting contest with those who believe society should accept reckless endangerment by gun owners. We want to convince honest and reasonable people that guns are not responsible for securing much of anything (yes, there are defensive uses of private guns). But if we ever get to the place where the majority of the populace wants gun confiscation, we need to know the government can enforce compliance.
“We who believe in making gun ownership as little threatening to society as possible do not want to really get to a shooting contest with those who believe society should accept reckless endangerment by gun owners.”
Did you learn how to expound on false choices from Obama? Only a moron or a liberal (BIRM) could accept your ridiculous argument.
“The firepower disparities between the US military and private gun owners is now so stark, that it is beyond foolish, it is dangerous to promote the idea that somehow thousands of gun owners (most of whom will likely obey laws) represent a “bulwark against tyranny”.”
Why do idiot liberals (BIRMA) assume that the military would side with the government if it ever went that far?
“Waco was not a failure, but a proof-of-concept.”
I am constantly amazed by your determined blindness. Those “federal forces” you’re on about were the ATF and the FBI, not the military. The military at Ft Hood were ordered to take their tanks down to Waco and clean up the mess made by ATF and FBI, responded with a very loud “Kiss my ass!” So the commanding general was ordered to allow the FBI to run off with a couple of their tanks, which he had no way to refuse (they’re just big trucks, after all), and send drivers and ammo for the main gun and the coax .50 cal, and *HE* then told them to kiss his ass, so the FBI drove the trucks, unloaded the tanks, and used them as battering rams to murder a few hundred crazies. You are correct only in that the populace should have showed up and put an end to it, which would undoubtedly have happened if the populace had been allowed to find out what was going on. That’s why we went through a few weeks when nothing on the evening news was the truth, government flat-out lied to us over and over until they had managed to kill all those who failed to kneel. And now we have morons like yourself who think that is a demonstration that we should disarm ourselves before our rulers. Good luck with that.
And the majority does not control RIGHTS. If they become too troublesome in that regard, we can simply shoot enough that they are not the majority any more. Try thinking.
This guy is either a paid plant of Bloomberg, a college professor with nothing but docile leftist students in front of him or an investor in “smart” guns. Basically your average afraid of his shadow leftist. He seems to think that everyone is like him and is willing to obey the government master. He also is a racist who believes that a persons skin automatically determines their future. Fellas, there well be alot more of this type over the next 8 months. Believe it.
“There is no evidence the US government has ever been intimidated by guns held by citizens.”
Two off the top of my head, The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, and The Battle of Athens, Tennessee in 1946.
Any others I’ve missed, folks?
Branch Dividians come to mind.
The Japanese government in the 40’s certainly was intimidated, and that’s good enough for me.
The Americans in 1940 were so very different, there is no comparison. “The Greatest Generation” were still very agrarian (a tough life), they endured the Great Depression. That generation did not live in a world where hardship was rare, and to be avoided at all costs. What hardship life have the majority of Americans today suffered? You do not learn to cope when you have had no inconvenience with which to cope. One of the benefits to the people arriving from lesser developed nations is they have not known a life of luxury where work was four-letter word. They accept hardship, and just might bring something useful to this country (in addition to their votes).
Yep, Ms. 2ASux is not from here. Go play National Geographic someplace else.
Food and drug Administration food inspectors are issued firearms.
Secret Service wears body armor.
If you’s scared, say you’s scared.
“At the danger of repeating myself only to be ridiculed,”
Like that has ever stopped you before.
“My point about the original Waco operation is that the pro-gun side did nothing to stop the activity, did nothing to penalize the people involved”
This is like rationalizing doing nothing about the British attempt at seizing the arms stockpiles at Lexington and Concord because no one was punished for the Boston Massacre that happened five years earlier.
The British were punished by the revolt. Nothing was done about Waco 25 years ago. The vast majority of the populace is not opposed to law enforcement executing orders. And won’t be.The people who proclaim that guns keep them free of tyranny wilt when forced to live their beliefs.
didn’t somebody just get shot in OR?
Something like, BLM and wall street rape-in, get to haul in porta-johns without a permit (FUNY). But we gotta kill a dude after running him off the road (he didn’t feel threatened by all the gov’t threats).
“There is no evidence the US government has ever been intimidated by guns held by citizens.”
The Bundy Ranch Standoff- 2015.
The BLM was backed down in Nevada by an armed citizen militia :gasp: possessing nothing but rifles and vehicles.
There is evidence, you just choose to ignore it or dismiss it because it does not fit your idealogy and correlating narrative.
The federal agents were not intimidated, they were removed. It is curious that the government did not follow the success of Waco.
“At the danger of repeating myself only to be ridiculous”
Way past that, child.
Like most gun control proponents, you confuse the right to resist a tyranny with being the equivalent as a right to insurrection. The two are not one and the same and the difference was well-understood by the Founders. For example, the Federalist Papers speak multiple times about how the militia could be used to check a tyranny or to check an insurrection. The two historical bans to republics have been groups of people who felt that they had been shorted by the political process and who decided that they were going to try and overturn the whole system and ambitious princes and generals who decided that they wanted to make themselves dictator.
An insurrection can be anybody. It could be a group of communists, radical Muslims, Nazis, etc…and if such a group formed that was literally too large for the military and law enforcement to deal with, the militia could be called up to stop it. That plane headed to Washington, D.C. on 9/11 was an example of citizens doing their duty as militia to check a form of attack on the country. No one would claim that even if U.S. citizens hijacked planes and were crashing them into major buildings in the U.S., that they had a right to do so just because they claimed the U.S. government was a tyranny. And because that particular plane seemed to be headed for the White House or the Capitol Building, and the military wasn’t able to stop it, militia itself stopped it.
If there was a force of say 200,000 radical Muslims trying to stage an insurrection and storm Washington, Congress could call up the militia (ordinary citizens capable of bearing arms in possession of arms) to surround Washington to stop them. And the government could say to the terrorists, “Even if you get through the military and law enforcement blocking you, there’s about 10 million U.S. citizens armed with rifles blocking you as well and fully willing to shoot at you,” well that has a major deterrent effect.
Now, on the other hand, if the U.S. government itself was to convert into a tyranny, where the system of liberal democracy that we have with checks and balances and all that was done away with, where it was just a dictatorship now that decided to imprison and slaughter people who criticized it, then the militia can also check the government. And if you think an armed populace can’t check a modern military, then why is one of the reasons cited for why invading Iran would be nuts is that the country is 80 million people? Why was ISIS at just 40,000 so difficult for us to take out? Why was the idea of putting in ground troops to fight this 40,000 man force considered a potential bloodbath?
The militia is not a creation of the government, it is a creation of American society, and American society exists independent of the American government. American society first lived under English rule and the Colonial governments, then the Articles of Confederation government which didn’t work, and currently the government of the Constitution.
It seems like this place used to attract a better grade of troll. Get back to us after your “Dear Leader” has disarmed the US populace and still survives unscathed.
“The firepower disparities between the US military and private gun owners”
And every member of the military has been trained and informed repeatedly that use of the military against American citizens is absolutely forbidden, all those weapons will not be available to a tyrannical government, and if they order its use anyway, those military members will use it against the government. Your whole point is simply wrong.
someone snuck a woofer and tweeter into the echo chamber.
Thanks, I’m sitting in a quiet office at work and you made me laugh out loud! 🙂
Don’t give the dipsh– a venue. If TTAG has 3,000,000 page views a month, then don’t give any of it to that slime-ball.
It’s bad enough seeing Bloombag or his mouth Shannon Watts. I cringe every time I see them here when TTAGs gives them bandwidth.
+1. Mike is the NYTs “token” reasonable gun guy they bribe to say a new set of talking points, when the old talking points dont work, outside of the NYC elite bubble.
When your enemy is shooting themselves in the head, dont stop them.
“Guns are also not generally used for defense against crime and violence, except occasionally in random, unplanned ways”
For most people, being the victim of a crime usually occurs in random, unplanned ways. That is why we buy and carry weapons, to plan for the unplanned.
I know — like, does he expect people to make appointments to get mugged or robbed or raped?
Now, there would be a great law to pass: require criminals to make appointments with their victims! Then prosecutors would have another crime to charge them with — “failure to make appointment”.
“Pillaging without required 10-day notice”.
Oh my gosh, I laughed harder than I should have at this…
Kristoff is a gun grabbing jihadi lover.
The way he tries to brainwash his readers into preemptively disregarding anything a pro gun person says and helping to condition them to lecture from ignorance is sickening.
“Despite what the N.R.A. says about people, not guns killing other people, there is no consumer product as lethal as a gun.”
Not even the consumer products that kill more people than guns.
This guy is fucking Looney toons!
“there is no consumer product as lethal as a gun.”
Wrong. Try over the counter medication. Or alcohol. Or prescription drugs. Combine those together and you get a number that is much higher than gun related deaths – even when suicide by gun is factored in. Does anyone really think that drugs (legal & illegal) kill fewer people than guns?
Hospitals are multiples of gun deaths.
Or corn syrup laden foods.
Tell a gun owner that what he is holding is a lethal weapon….and they look at you like you are an idiot. /corrected.
“Guns are also not generally used for defense against crime and violence, except occasionally in random, unplanned ways. The latest research covering more than 14,000 criminal events indicates that victims used guns to defend themselves less than 1 percent of the time.”
Is the author unable to read, or simply unwilling?
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cdc-study-use-firearms-self-defense-important-crime-deterrent
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/16/the-study-that-gun-rights-activists-keep-citing-but-completely-misunderstand/
http://www.gunsandammo.com/politics/cdc-gun-research-backfires-on-obama/
And liberals claim to be “the best and brightest”. More like “the slowest and stupidest”.
Such sneering arrogance on his part, and ignorance. Imagine a police officer speaking about how to legally get into someone’s home saying about the owner, “They may mumble something about the 4th Amendment because that’s what they’ve been told…” Or the same with regards to the 1st Amendment. Note also the implication: that gun rights people are just brainwashed imbeciles who only hold the thoughts that they do because they’ve been brainwashed and told by higher evil powers how to think. Because surely such people could never arrive at the views gun rights people hold based on critical thought and logic.
It’s only 27 words. How could it have been worded to make it any easier to understand?
Make is playing both sides on this one. He founded and operates an outfit called National Medical Council on Gun Violence. His ‘Avisory Board’ lists names like Hemenway, Teret, Wintemute, and the usual list of professional gun control researchers.
What kind of an idiot goes to the trouble of becoming an FFL dealer.. then proceeds to undermine his own business?…
When did people.doing what they want, because they want to, become a bad thing?
It’s like these wet blankets can’t stand the notion that somebody, somewhere is having a good time.
It’s like the Calvinists came back n took over. (Not “Calvin & Hobbes” Calvinists. The other kind – kind of the opposite.)
I mean, he’s got one iota of truth there; defense against a tyrannical government was exactly 0 part of my reasons for any of my guns.
If victims used guns more then the claimed 1% wouldnt there be less victims? His logic not mine.
“Spare tires are also not generally used for roadside emergencies, except occasionally in random, unplanned ways.”
Well, that’s equally true, innit. Cuz if I’d known where and when I was “planning” to have that kind of grief, I wooda stayed home, woodni?
I would so much like it if his gun shop went out of business. A-hole sells guns but is for insidiously disarming Americans. A-hole,D-bag!
I guess fire extinguishers and seat belts are toys, too. I mean they are only needed in random unplanned rare events. Heck, in our blame the law-abiding guy game, only arsonists and insurance fraudsters needs these things!
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