Gun nuts target one of their own the chicagotribune.com headline proclaims. First, the term “gun nuts” is patently offensive. It’s the firearms equivalent of “fag,” Kike” and “nigger.” Second, the pun on the word “target” is, you guessed it, patently offensive. It suggests that gun owners want to kill former Guns & Ammo contributor Dick Metcalf. For it is he that Pulitzer Prize-winning editorialist Leonard Pitts seeks to defend. By painting gun rights advocates as intransigent thugs who oppose “simple, common-sense ideas to take weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of those who should not have them.” WMD? WTF? Aside from Lenny’s disingenuous effort to portray civilian disarmament advocates as reasonable people seeking a “debate” on guns, I want to know: who pissed in his cornflakes? Underpinning this supposed call for civility is hatred, pure and simple. Why? Why do these people [sic] hate us?
http://www.gunnuts.net
Its the way its used, its intended to be derogatory when the anti crowd uses it to refer to gun owners.
So let me get this straight, it’s bad if they use it, but ok if we use it?
Is it “our word”?
Apparently “gun nut” is the firearm enthusiast’s “nigger” or “nigga”?
I call shenanigans.
If we don’t want them to use it, we gotta stop using it ourselves.
This. I don’t care if they call me a gun nut. I like guns. I consider myself a gun nut. When I call someone a car nut, I mean them no disrespect. When I call them a rink rat, I mean them no disrespect. When someone calls me a gun nut, I really don’t care. I figure if I am going to call myself by any term, I have no right to be pissed when someone else does, regardless of if they mean it in a derogatory way or not. I feel the same way about black people who want to call themselves “niggas”, but get pissed when someone else calls them the same term. If you don’t want someone to call you something, make the first step by not calling yourself by that term.
Every time I hear someone refer to himself as “African-American,” I want to ask, “So, which country in Africa did you immigrate from?”
“A wise man is never insulted, because the truth will increase his wisdom and an untruth is not worthy of note.”
Dang. I wanted to be part of a group that had an “our word.” Why I gotta be male, middle class and white?
Marcus Aurelius: You’re welcome to join the Radical Libertarian Loons. 😀
Liberty is for everyone, after all.
Nice try, moron.
That’s our word. I’m offended when they use it.
…not sure if you’re being ironic.
Sarcasm doesn’t come over well on the internet I know. I’m of the opinion if you say a words offensive, then it has to be offensive no matter who uses it for whatever reason. You don’t get to pick and choose ‘favorites’…
You just made me laugh hard enough that I think I’m bleeding internally…
I like the way you think.
I just saw this after I posted above lol.
That’s our word. I’m offended when they use it.
Would you prefer if they said “gun n-word”?
Well done my nigga! Oh wait, I’m white so that means I’m not allowed to say that because it’s not ok if you’re not black.
Im black…and I found that extremely funny for some reason.
That’s probably because you are a mature adult with a sense of humor, and you sense the writer bore you no malice. Welcome to the club. 🙂
That reminds me of the movie “Rush Hour” when Jackie Chan said “Wassup my Nigga?” to the black bar tender which started the sequence of attacks on him but right before Chris Tucker said the same thing to another black man which was known between themselves to be accepted. Regarding the “Gun Nuts” it depends who and how the word is delivered, but I would just categorize this sheep in my mind as just another anti-2A libtard.
The hate I think is born out of fear. They don’t understand so they fear – they don’t know how to handle that fear, so it translates to hate.
All they know about guns is they make noise & people die. They can’t look beyond the object to the malicious will that is the actual cause of violence. So they fixate on the tool.
Agreed.
I swear I’ve heard that before. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. As true today as it was then.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
Yoda from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
Fear leads to Anger: Because anger can only exist when you fear something you don’t have the control of (like in an argument or a politic/social situation)
Anger leads to Hate: By being angry all the time eventually your will be in the Hate state… Eventually what Yoda says is so true: FEAR LEADS TO SUFFERING!
Gee, I forgot Yoda was such a good philosopher.
Actually, that first came from The Empire Strikes Back, and was later said in Attack of The Clones. =S
Fear is your friend. Fear is the early warning portion of your sensory system. In one of my metaphysics textbooks, the author claims that Spirit said, “Your fear is the Divine Protection I have given you.”
The most fundamental fear is fear of the unknown. This is a good thing, because it kept our ancestors out of the dark scary forest where they would be eaten. But fear is not to be dismissed, denied, disparaged, or judged against. Fear means, “What’s that!?!” The “proper” response to fear of the unknown is investigation, to make the unknown known. Bring it the light of understanding, and learn to understand its message.
In other words, Yoda was wrong. =:-O
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
It works better to learn to understand your fear and receive its message – that’s what the mind is for – to figure out what your senses are telling you. In Metaphysics, Fear is your Divine Protection.
I love that “Dune” [q]
Rich Grise says:
January 11, 2014 at 14:32
Fear is your friend. Fear is the early warning portion of your sensory system. In one of my metaphysics textbooks, the author claims that Spirit said, “Your fear is the Divine Protection I have given you.”
The most fundamental fear is fear of the unknown. This is a good thing, because it kept our ancestors out of the dark scary forest where they would be eaten. But fear is not to be dismissed, denied, disparaged, or judged against. Fear means, “What’s that!?!” The “proper” response to fear of the unknown is investigation, to make the unknown known. Bring it the light of understanding, and learn to understand its message.
In other words, Yoda was wrong. =:-O”
In the Star Wars films, the bad guys “the Sith” often use fear to enrage the the good guys to turn them to the dark side (to do what the Sith wants them to do). Such as Vader threatining to turn Leia pisses off Luke causing him to almost turn. As in real life, fear can be used to manipulate you if you let it. What Yoda means is to let go of your fear, not to let it control you. Fear is a double edge sword that can cause people to do very irrational things. Such as giving up certain rights to magically make them more safe like the antis claim. The antis use fear to try to enrage people to hate guns and their owners and make the people to want to push for more gun control which will only lead to more suffering, not to end it like that antis claim. So what Yoda says does hold true, from a certain point of view.
Heck Palps uses the promise of the unknown knowledge (darkside) to lure Anakin over. Alot of the stuff you said can easily be twisted against you
Fear is never causal.
RLM is the biggist bullshiter besides the antis. There have been a many counterarguments showing what a crappy and dishonest reviewer he is.
“I’m writing this lengthy response to Stoklasa’s review because it’s massively overrated, and simply wrong and even dishonest on numerous points. Episode I detractors have rallied around the review, with numerous people praising it as a devastatingly intelligent and insightful critique of the movie. I’ve even seen URL links to the video being posted on internet forums, as a way to silence Episode I supporters and end debate on the movie. All this despite the fact that Stoklasa’s review is full of shoddy work and awful analysis, which I will explain in the course of my response.
Stupidity, exaggeration, getting overrated by sheep-like followers…the RLM review of TPM basically covers all of my pet peeves. It’s not even hard to show why it’s dumb, because some of the things in that review are just really dumb. But still, many people think that it’s the greatest and smartest fanboy work ever. I’ve seen it being said that videos, especially long ones, are a lousy medium for online discussion. That’s because someone often has to watch large parts of a video just to find the few moments that he’s looking for. While a written response such as this one can also be long, it is far easier to skim and quote from using search functions. That increases transparency and makes the truth easier to see. So I guess I’ll have to be the one who points out that the emperor has no clothes, and that Stoklasa’s review isn’t as smart as a lot of people think it is.
Yes, it is. It’s very geeky. So is making numerous video reviews of scifi movies, many of them well over an hour long. So is arguing about decades-old movies on internet forums. So is investing so much emotion and expectations into a movie series that you regard a new installment as a major life event, and cry about how it “raped your childhood” if it so much as underwhelmed you. I just want it to be known that I didn’t obsessively work on this response nonstop. It was written intermittently, over the course of more than half a year. I stopped numerous times, either because I had something better to do or because I just didn’t feel like working on this. Listening to Mr. Plinkett over and over again wasn’t my idea of a fun night or weekend afternoon. There were entire weeks or months when I didn’t touch this at all. So if any RLM-lover says that I’ve gone too far by doing this, he’s full of crap. Especially if he’s posting from a scifi, fantasy, or comic book forum.
Throughout his review, Stoklasa relies on the same few tricks again and again. He asks stupid questions which the movie has already answered. He denies simple truths that were made clear to everyone. He repeatedly makes false or unsupported claims that increase the amount of negativity in his review, which will stick in people’s minds even if he carefully retracts his statements later.
Too many people have been swayed by his lousy arguments and deceptive tricks. I believe that the monstrous length of his review has protected it from criticism. At seventy minutes long, it at once appears daunting and authoritative. Any counterpoints to it appear selective and incomplete in comparison; RLM supporters can and have claimed that its detractors “haven’t looked at the big picture” of what Stoklasa is saying. Well now, you have a rather complete “big picture” summary of the whole damn thing. Now, almost all of his points have been laid bare for everyone to see.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/49516899/Red-Letter-Media-s-Episode-I-Review-A-Study-in-Fanboy-Stupidity
http://www.examiner.com/article/rebuttal-to-the-70-minute-phantom-menace-review-part-1
Stoklasa/RLM is no better than Michel Moore, just a good bullshiter who can fool uneducated well.
“Rich Grise says:
January 11, 2014 at 14:32
Fear is your friend. Fear is the early warning portion of your sensory system. In one of my metaphysics textbooks, the author claims that Spirit said, “Your fear is the Divine Protection I have given you.”
The most fundamental fear is fear of the unknown. This is a good thing, because it kept our ancestors out of the dark scary forest where they would be eaten. But fear is not to be dismissed, denied, disparaged, or judged against. Fear means, “What’s that!?!” The “proper” response to fear of the unknown is investigation, to make the unknown known. Bring it the light of understanding, and learn to understand its message.
In other words, Yoda was wrong. =:-O”
In the Star Wars films, the bad guys “the Sith” often use fear to enrage the the good guys to turn them to the dark side (to do what the Sith wants them to do). Such as Vader threatining to turn Leia pisses off Luke causing him to almost turn. As in real life, fear can be used to manipulate you if you let it. What Yoda means is to let go of your fear, not to let it control you. Fear is a double edge sword that can cause people to do very irrational things. Such as giving up certain rights to magically make them more safe like the antis claim. The antis use fear to try to enrage people to push for more gun control which will only lead to more suffering, not to end it.
VERY well said.
Because some people choose to exist with cultural/ethnic/racial/religious stereotypes. It’s been going on forever, and only recently have people begun to learn to treat people based on what’s inside them, which in turn influences appropriate/inappropriate behavior.
It’s just the easy way out by being stereotypical and prejudicial.
They hate us because they see us as a major obstacle to their progressive goal of eliminating the Constitution. They know that a dictatorship is always preceded by gun confiscation.
We cannot compromise with people who want to destroy our constitutional republic. We have seen what “reasonable gun laws” are like since at least 1968. Anyone who fails to understand what these statists want is either ignorant of history or an idiot. They want to put us on the road to serfdom, with themselves as the aristocracy. “Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Perfectly stated.
Nope, it’s this kind of talk from gun owners is why they hate you. Some times the simplest reason is the answer. Most of them think guns are the cause of gun crime and seek to eliminate them. Right or wrong that’s their logic. There’s no left wing grand conspiracy to wipe out the entire Constitution and repeating that crap is the reason why they call folks gun nuts.
“We won’t take your guns.” Ask CA, CT, and NY residents how that’s going, then tell me if all the derogatory tin-hat accusations were just a bit outside. we keep losing freedom, “they” keep taking it. Who is “they” and why in hell should I trust them? It most certainly is a progressive leftist conspiracy.
One of my former roommates was a minority and had grown up in an urban home.
He explained that his uncles, who had all been involved in criminal activity, used guns as a way to communicate with others. They’d wave them around or stick them in someone’s face to make a point. He also saw other young black men, as he put it “people who looked like me,” being killed with them. We got into some very heated discussions, but it at least exposed me to that point of view.
More anger, aggression, and open or veiled threats from POTG aren’t going to help us with that. You don’t fix scared people by trying to scare them to think like you.
The Conspiracy word is just rhetorical rubbish. There certainly is a very popular leftist meme, a popular notion that remaking the US in the mold they desire requires rewriting the Constitution. There are various targets, which include the “takings” clause, the 2nd Amendment, and others. If you want a premier left-wing example by a reputable legal scholar, just Google Louis Michae Seidman, professor at Georgetown Law. He often co-writes with Cass Sunstein. He sells tons of law books and articles pushing the notion that our Constitution is out of date. He isn’t a fan of amendment because the views he considers enlightened won’t get through the process. Surprise. Conspiracy isn’t the point. Like-minded people encouraging each others’ anti-constitutional views is the point…a cabal, if you will.
You think that’s creepy and scary. Sit through his Crim Pro class where every hypothetical starts with him being naked in the shower.
Hogwash. The left is hellbent on removing individual freedoms that threaten federal supremacy. Whether the reason is what you state- because they think guns cause crime – or because Dr Claw is really behind it all, doesn’t matter. The results are the same in both cases.
What closet have you been hiding in ? Check what has been going on since the 68 gun law. Thanks so far they have been held off!
I think he’s saying something like, individually, they’re just tools. They say, “I want to keep our kids safe,” and the conspirators tell them that that’s what they’re doing and oh, by the way, here’s how you do it.
I will agree with Rich, but I prefer the more accurate term “useful idiots”.
They’ll hate us regardless. The statists like Obama, Bloomberg, and Feinstein want control. That can’t happen with armed independent thinkers. Realize the human desire for power and domination that has existed throughout history, and that firearms in the hands of the masses decentralizes that power. With an armed citizenry the IRS / ATF / NSA / Government machine can go only so far and no further. If we allow ourselves to be disarmed – like the native Americans – we invite our own servitude and destruction. The way is paved for the next Stalin, Mao, or Hitler.
The Bill of Rights, and the 2nd Amendment in particular, remains our nations best hope for freedom and security. The 2nd Amendment was specifically designed against government tyranny. Those who wish to control us hate the freedom that the 2A recognizes, and they hate it for that reason. We don’t have to depend upon the stupid speeches of the politicians of this administration for guidance.
Those who blame the 2A for the violence in our nation are just useful idiots who willingly votes for the aforementioned statists.
Yes there is. I don’t know how influential those folks are, but it is undeniable that there are folks who believe that the federal government can literally do anything it feels necessary. They say so, openly. A close friend of mind has stated that he thinks privacy is “dangerous” and that simply interpreting the constitution is an acceptable way to expand government authority, no amendment necessary.
Have you forgotten the recent chatter about regulating talk radio? Or the the proposal this last year in California to regulate who was and was not “the press?”
I don’t claim that everyone who wants gun control wants to toss out the constitution entirely, but they are certainly useful to those who do.
To Dooty, the simplest explanation is that nobody ever really said what they said. He thinks that sometimes a cigar is just a wooden box.
As a “progressive”, by comparison to most gun owners, your statement is full of fail. I know of no liberal that wants to get rid of the constitution.
If by “get rid of the Constitution” you mean “go through the steps and procedures to appeal or amend portions you disagree with”, then that does not describe most liberals and leftists — tough it does describe a few.
If by “get rid of the Constitution” you instead mean something like “arrogate to the federal government and its bureaucracies numerous powers and authorities over people in the U.S.”, then that *does* describe the leftist/progressive (called “liberal”, but really not liberal at all) history and goals.
When everybody has Freedom limited only by everyone’s unwillingness to do any harm, the Constitution will be unnecessary. Until then, it stands inviolate except that amendment thing.
Well said. Well said indeed.
Obama, Biden, Feinstein, Yee, Deleon, Bloomberg, and Pelosi. All want to “regulate” your rights down to a size they can manage. Open your eyes and the list gets a whole lot bigger.
100 things to hate about Government
That about sums it up.
Some politicians, maybe. But the average soccer mom–or my anti-gun wife for that matter–does not think in these terms. The vast majority of haters (a) have no experience with guns, (b) are quite literally terrified of guns, and (c) don’t see that guns, particularly handguns and EBRs, have any legitimate use. They’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. There reaction is emotional, not conspiratorial. My wife was raised in a democrat and liberal household where there were no guns. Although her father was a veteran of WWII, he never touched a firearm after he left the Army; he’d seen enough. My wife has only touched two of my guns, and has never fired either of those, having consistently refused to do so. She doesn’t understand why my daughter likes to shoot, and accepts it only because she has no say in it. Her fear is deep seated, irrational, and not subject to rational dissertation. Any attempts to explore the subject are quickly shut down. THIS is what gunnies have to overcome, as it is THESE people who vote for the anti-gun politicians.
The article is behind a pay wall. Can’t read it without paying. Never mind. Pitts is an idiot any way. Our local rag carries his scurrilous screeds now and then.
I have no trouble getting to it, and I don’t pay for anything, nor am I logged in to the Trib site.
Ok, how?
I had the same problem. Just stop the page from loading before the “give me money” box pops up and you’ll be able to read the article.
Thanks.
Um, I don’t know. I guess maybe my adblocker was catching the “give us money” box? Or maybe I haven’t exceed the allowed number of visits this month. It just opened for me, like any other page.
There are many of these newspaper sites, including my local Indianapolis paper now owned (ruined) by Gannett, that will allow you to hit the site a small number of times and then apparently the site drops a browser cookie on you to mark the number of times you have visited. Once that number is exceeded the site then requires you to pay for their content.
Or find your news elsewhere for free as I do.
Or erase your cookies from time to time … or every time you close your Internet browser.
If you search for the article via google, the google link usually comes up without the paywall block. Great for WSJ and NYT articles, well, WSJ articles.
Found it reprinted by the Baltimore Sun.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-01-09/news/bal-gun-nuts-target-one-of-their-own-20140108_1_gun-rights-gun-enthusiasts-mass-shooting
I guess if that’s how we’re defining “weapons of mass destruction” then Saddam must’ve really had a huge stockpile in March 2003.
Nice.
Well, if this guy wants to play games with names, then I suppose we could just as easily regard household firearms as weapons of mass protection. After all, I remember seeing AK-armed, Korean rooftop shopkeepers keeping entire mobs at bay during the 1992 L.A. Rodney King verdict riots.
I was new to firearms back then, with zero experience whatsoever with semi-automatic rifles, so much so that I actually believed for at least a year or so around then that the “AK” in AK-47 meant “Ass Kicker.” It sounded reasonable enough at the time.
“Ass Kicker” … I love it … I am still laughing!!!
From this point forward I will always think of that whenever I see an AK and will have a little smile on my face.
A man I took a shooting lesson from told me that the AR in AR-15 stands for anti-rape.
Not very politically correct, but then, the truth often isn’t.
If AK stands for “Ass-Kicker” than AR can stand for “Ass-Ripper”.
The irony is that before Metcalf shot off his mouth about ‘sensible regulations,’ Pitts and his ilk were labeling him the same way – as a ‘gun nut.’ Metcalf has only recently risen to the rank of human in their eyes because he’s been booted from our ranks and looks like a convenient victim of the scary black rifle people.
As an aside, can anyone name an incident when one of these so-called ‘gun nuts’ has been involved in a mass shooting? I can think of several regular nutbags who have used guns to do some awful things, but not a single one of them would be considered one of the people of the gun by our own.
That’s part of their frustration: Lots of activist dems are somewhat loony, obsessive. If we defend 2nd Amendment rights the senior anti-gun politicians know that, sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, some of their nuts will get a gun and go crazy, a la Loughner or Holmes et al. Guns really are a test for those who possess them. Power, as Mao said, really does come from the barrel of a gun, or taser, or RPGs, and prisons. Left dems and statists want their easily-persuaded minions empowered, but, uh, not THAT empowered.
Because we are more powerful then they are.
Committed anti gunners are unable or unwilling to control their emotional state, and assume that because they cannot , no one can.So it’s best to disarm everyone except designated agents of the state , who presumably are trained to disregard their emotions.
The idea of an armed and peaceful population represents a major problem, because that means we can do something they cannot-that is , hold a weapon without the slightest temptation to use it violently.
Because more and more the evidence is so clear that we’re right and they’ve been advocating positions that end up causing more of the bad results. The evidence is so very clear that even they can see it even all the while not wanting to believe it and their guilt is so great and so bitter that they strike out anyway they can…
Hate them back twice as hard.
Yeah, a true discussion about violence will reveal some ugly truths (for example, compare crime rates among CCW permit holders vs. African-Americans), but if that’s what they want, let’s give it to them.
For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that the U.S. population between from 2000 to 2010 was 300,000,000, * and that
• 63% of the population was non-Hispanic white
• 13% of the population was black
• 15% – 30% of the population owned guns **
From 2000 – 2010, there were 165,068 murders. *** The annual murder rate was 5.0 per 100,000 people
The annual murder rate in the English speaking countries of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom was about 1.0 to 1.5 per 100,000 people.
Non-Hispanic whites committed at least 30% of homicides. ****
Blacks committed at least 42% of homicides.
Gun owners committed 67% of homicides.
The overall homicide-offender rate among non-Hispanic whites was at least 2.5 per 100,000 non-Hispanic whites per year.
The overall homicide-offender rate among blacks was at least 15.5 per 100,000 blacks per year.
The overall homicide-offender rate among gun-owners was 11.2 per 100,000 gun owners to 22.5 per 100,000 gun owners per year.
A non-Hispanic white person was ½ as likely as a member of the overall population to commit murder (0.5 x – ? x).
A black person was at least 3 times as likely as a member of the overall population to commit murder (3.2 x – ? x).
A gun owner was 2 to 4 ½ times as likely as a member of the overall population to commit murder (2.2 x – 4.5 x).
* 282,000,000 in 2000 to 309,000,000 in 2010.
** “Gun Counts Can Be Hit-or-Miss” Wall Street Journal. March 23, 2013
*** http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata
**** The race of 51,735/165,068 (31%) murderers is unknown.
I make no claim that these “back-of-the-envelope” style calculations are any type of rigorous analysis. I leave that as an exercise for others more qualified than I.
“Hate them back twice as hard.”
Absolutely not. Escalation will never solve anything. Use all your stats and fight with logic and knowledge. Even then, stats are hard to fight with. They can ALWAYS be misrepresented for whatever you (they) want.
Always take the high road. We need to prove them wrong so their arguments fail.
Exactly right on the “hate them back” comment. Gun haters blame a huge social failing (income and social inequality, not to mention appalling race discrimition and hate) on an inanimate object. Well, that’s easier to do than taking action to make all people equal, or admitting that they are not. Take the high road!
It doesn’t matter how failed their arguments are.
Colorado state representive Claire Levy (D-Boulder), the sponsor of a bill to ban CCW on college campuses, admitted that “I don’t know how on Earth they can draw a causal relationship. I make no assertion that this bill either increase or reduce violent crime. That is not the premise of the bill.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHautaGGocI
But that didn’t stop her from putting the following clause in HB13-1226:
Nor did it stop the Colorado House from passing that bill (TTAG 2/28/2013), which the main sponsor admitted had nothing to do with crime. It was simply the Democrats codifying their bigotry into law.
How are you supposed to deal with people like that?
The only reason the ban did not pass the Senate was the backlast that resulted from the Democrats’ disgraceful treatment of rape victim Amanda Collins, who testified against the bill. (“We support a woman’s right to choose, unless we disagree with her choice” should be the Democrats’ motto). Shame worked where logic and reason failed to do so.
Having failed to pass the campus CCW ban in the legislature, they’re now petitioning to put it on the ballot this year. And I suspect it will pass, because logic and reason will have nothing to do with it.
Your hypothesized homicide rate for people owning guns is silly, because it does not break out the gun-owners with a prior record or prior serious loss of mental health. Many people own large kitchen knives. Large kitchen knives are used in murders, because it’s an item people about to commit murder often take in hand. Therefor “owners of large kitchen knives” have a much higher murder rate? No. Murderous people with a kitchen knife have a higher murder rate.
The game in gun control is the focusing of the press on “mass murders.” These are rare. What is special about them? They mainly are carried out with guns, sometimes with vehicles, occasionally via arson. They don’t constitute a big fraction of murders, eliminating these rare incidents would not change the murder rates much, but they make the argument that without guns these would not occur. To some extent that is true. This rare crime probably would not occur with guns or fires. But that is a silly focus. The vast majority of murders are one-on-one. Without a gun a knife would be the tool. Without a knife a blunt object or rope would be the tool. And lo, an enormous number of would-be-murders by knife or blunt object are stopped by the presence of a gun in the hands of law-abiding people. In other words, to stop a few 4+-person homicides by grabbing guns, we’d enable a large number of murders and brutal beatings by unopposed thugs. The puzzle is not so difficult to put together.
That was a fine argument, with which I agree entirely. Although there has been a recent study purporting to show a spike in mass shootings recently, the United States has typically averaged about 6-10 mass shootings/year over the past 50 years or so, with very little fluctuation. Now, you could argue that restricting access to “assault rifles” or, as a friend of mine puts it, “anti-assault rifles” might make the scale balance insofar as these types of guns are the preferred weapon in about half the instances of mass shootings by crazies who sign up for the “suicide by cop, after making my statement” plan. But that argument would be false, not so much because a search for instances of self-defense with an AR-15 might balance the scale in favor of those citizens who lived as a result. but because, as my friend also put it, “the AR-15 in .223 configuration is not, strictly speaking, an “assault” weapon – the Garand M1 is, however. due to its higher stopping power.” I should think that, in this vein, we;d see a spike in crazies using shotguns to prosecute their dementias if the AR-15 were to be banned wholesale – with a consequential rise in fatalities since the shotgun is such an up close and personal weapon. In other words, since the AR-15 needs to be aimed, the rate of survival is probably higher overall. What might seem to make a difference, however, to those in a large crowd with no real way of escape from someone who seems to think that he is above it all, is the availability of 30 round magazines for whatever weapon might come to hand – although it is not really that hard to change 10 round magazines twice if you really think about it. I’d argue that the 30 round magazine is a first choice among many who see themselves as the misbegotten hero of their own movie because, well, it really doesn’t take that much effort to spray a room of innocents that way, and why bother to take the time to switch out a mag? Of course, if they had to, they would – with very little drop in the death toll.
Ban the AR and you won’t stop mass killings. Especially when you consider how idiotic the bans are. They don’t ban anything other than features. You can still buy a Sagia Sporter in New York. It’s basically an AK-47 without the pistol grip.
The worst mass shooting in the US was perpetrated with two pistols.
The five worst incidents of mass murder in the US did not involve guns.
Dynamite at the Bath School Massacre (48 dead including 38 kids)
Arson at The Happyland Disco (87 killed.)
Fire of unknown origin at Waco. (74 killed, including a bunch of kids.)
Fertilizer, diesel, a truck. (Oklahoma City. 168 dead.)
Box cutters, modeling clay and airplanes. (9/11. 3,000 dead.)
Anyone who wants to ban a behavior by trying to ban the tools used to carry out that behavior is a fool. Seem the world is full of fools at the moment.
In the typical mass shooting a pump or semi 12guage is plenty effective. That the AR is chosen more often is meaningless. As long as there are defenseless people trapped in shooting galleries abiding by shelter in place policies someone like Lanza could have taken as many lives with a single shot shotgun and a modicum of skill.
If only he had been strong enough to hoist one.
So what?
I simply hypothesized an overall homicide rate committed by gun owners; regardless of how legally or illegally they obtained their firearm, regardless of their prior criminal records, and regardless of their mental health.
If you have data that shows my “hypothesized homicide rate for people owning guns is silly”, please post it.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, about 3% of Canadians are black, 3% of Britons are black, and about 5% of Australians (2% “African Australians” plus 3% aborigones) — compared to 13% of the U.S. population.
Lest anyone says that its racist to point out that African-Americans commit homicide at a per-capita rate greater than the general population (and probably at a greater per-capita rate than gun owners), remember the lack of outrage from the politically correct crowd 20 years ago.
Come to think of it, Australia, Canada, and the UK don’t have a lot of white American southern males, either. Which may explain the lower homicide rates in those countries.
I make no claim that these “back-of-the-envelope” style calculations are any type of rigorous analysis. I leave that as an exercise for others more qualified than I.
So your argument is that we can eliminate 67% of the murders if we eliminate guns? Who are we supposed to hate back harder against? Liberal, progressive gun grabbers or black people? Do we hate back against blacks cause the guy making this statement was black?
* sigh * I thought it was obvious, but I guess the stats I used failed to get the point across.
My argument is that as a group, gun owners are (probably) less violent than blacks.
If you pick an American gun owner at random and an American black person at random, the black person is more likely to be a violent criminal. And I’d wager that, if you concentrated on young black males rather than the overall black population, those numbers would get a lot worse.
Which is why the antis always say they want to do something (or talk) “about gun violence”, instead of “about violence”. Because if we were have a true national dialogue about violence, or whatever they want to call it, the results would probably be very ugly, and lead to places that really do not want to see this country go.
But if the Democrats/liberals/media/academia/etc. are going to alienate me, demonize me, marginalize me, and continue to s**t all over my rights, then I will hate back twice as hard — if that’s what I have to do to protect my rights. I’m through in giving a crap about anybody else’s rights, because what happens to them does not really affect me. And logic and reason do not work with those people.
Or, as somebody else said:
What confused me was your use of the term “gun owner.” This term implies legal gun owner who jumped through all the hoops to obtain his or her weapon. I doubt these sorts of gun owners do not commit murder at a rate of 11 to 22 per hundred thousand.
What you meant to say is that 67% of murders were committed with guns. I would hazard to guess that most of those were committed with illegal guns.
A “gun owner” is, by definition, somebody who owns a gun, however (legally or illegally) it was obtained. I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand about that.
Whether or not, or to what extent, the group of homicide offenders using a firearm includes the “legal gun owner who jumped through all the hoops” is unkown to me. If you have that information, or how it affects the total number of gun owners, please post it.
Again the disclaimer: I make no claim that these “back-of-the-envelope” style calculations are any type of rigorous analysis. I leave that as an exercise for others more qualified than I. I made some assumptions (for example, one offender per one victim), and took some short cuts, for the sake simplicity. If the comments section allowed me to post charts and graphs, I would, because maybe that would make it more clear.
“I would hazard to guess that most of those were committed with illegal guns.”
There is no such thing as an illegal gun. Those murderers were all criminals. Don’t be blaming the tool for its own misuse.
‘Tis true.
Wrong. The term “gun nut” is not remotely close to being the equivalent of “fag,” “kike,” or “nigger”. Being gay, Jewish, or black isn’t a choice, it’s a condition of birth. Owning a gun is a choice, like owning a car. As a gun owner, and hispanic, the idea that equate the two as the same is pretty goddamn ignorant.
I’ve been called a gun nut. I respond to the same way I respond to being called a dork, a jerkoff, or a prick: I laugh it off, and flip them the bird. I’ve also been called a spic, a wetback, and beaner, and my reaction is a bit different: I’m enraged, hurt, and come close to punching them in the twat.
The author obviously has no experiences facing bigotry, by attempting to equate “gun nut” with a bigoted epithet.
Alex, you nailed it. RF frequently pleads that the “gun rights movement” be more inclusive of people of color, women, LGBT, etc but has no clue about his own privilege. “People of the Gun” is not a legitimate social group/class/religion. It’s not a civil rights movement; it’s a gun rights movement. Not being a civil rights movement doesn’t make it invalid or unnecessary, by any means. However saying that “gun owner” should be considered a protected group or legitimate social identity alongside gender, race, sexual orientation is the OPPOSITE of something that would actually make people who have suffered REAL discrimination sympathetic to gun rights activism.
Not a civil rights movement?
I believe that our Second Amendment IS a civil right.
“I believe that our Second Amendment IS a civil right.”
Not according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Hmmm…I guess I need to research the difference between “civil” rights and “Constitutional” rights.
Point taken. But still…
“I guess I need to research the difference between ‘civil’ rights and ‘Constitutional’ rights.”
The difference is whatever the ACLU wants it to be, in order to advance whatever their partisan agenda is.
It’s cognitive dissonance that allows the ACLU to support rights not enumerated in the Constitution (eg, unrestricted abortion, illegal immigration, gay marriage), but ignore rights that are explicitly mentioned (gun ownership), whenever it’s convenient for them to do so.
And there you have it – Anonymous arguing with Anonymous. I need to drink. Heavily…
This is why I go with “basic, human right.” It should never be denied to your basic human, right?
I am Black and I find being called a gun nut to be as offensive as being called a Nigger, which interestingly was done by someone who professes their liberalism
different Alex. Gun rights are a civil right. Every bit as much as the right to vote or to not be anothers property. Supporting 2a is supporting civil rights.
“anonymous” above disagrees. I still believe the 2A is a “right” however you label it. It is after all, from the “Bill of Rights”.
Dave, the 2A documents a right that already exists, with or without being written down.
The large problem is that some, including you judging by your
statement, would rather marginalize an ideal and instead focus
on the insignificant. How often is the gun-rights movement
openly condemned for a “lack” of diversity. Such concerns can
only come from the minds of small, petty individuals. I, like many
here, have been subjected to “REAL” discrimination. Such
discrimination can only come from those incapable of accepting
themselves let alone differences; and not those seeking
intellectual truth and honesty. The people-of-the-gun know that
the movement has absolutely nothing to do with skin color,
gender etc… Instead it has everything to do with the ideal of
personal responsibility for self-protection. 500 years ago we’d
be People-of-the-crossbow; 1000 years ago we’d be People-of-
the-Sword. A gun is simply a tool nothing more. What does not
change is the belief that the individual alone possesses the rights
and responsibilities for self-preservation. What is at stake is not
a simple firearm but our individual freedom. Indeed we should not
lump ourselves in with the various social-rights groups. We are
greater. Our cause encompasses all. Everyone from every creed,
color and nationality are folded in. If each of the other social
groups you mention were to completely disappear, the People-of-
the-Gun would still exist. Skin color, sex or whatever are just a
diversion from the true ideal of self-reliance.
The author is Jewish I’m willing to bet he’s experienced some form of bigotry.
And he is the child of a concentration camp survivor. I think he is qualified to make such statements. That doesn’t mean anyone has to agree with what he says, but any child of a Holocaust survivor, most especially a Jew, and one that had most of his family from Hungary exterminated, has paid for the opinion.
As have many of us of European or Asian ancestry. Or pretty much of any ancestry, if you trace back far enough. Name calling is still demeaning and mean-spirited, no matter who does it.
And, just as plausibly, committed some act or form of bigotry.
I disagree Alex. The term “gun nut” is a derogatory/hate term because gun grabbers assign this term to citizens based on their personal view of firearms ownership, not their actions.
I have never used firearms to harm anyone. Nor have I ever expressed animosity toward anyone for not owning firearms themselves. Since I have not harmed anyone nor expressed animosity toward anyone, there is no justifiable reason for another person to hate me. Gun grabbers hate me because of who I am, plain and simple, not because of what I have done.
I am sure you would agree that your faith that you practice is your choice. Does that mean it is okay for someone to assign a derogatory title to you based on your faith because you chose your faith?
Agreed.
‘It’s the firearms equivalent of “fag,” Kike” and “nigger.”’
Ridiculous. And people wonder why the RKBA community has a reputation for being a OFWG group.
So you’re saying that “gun nut” is actually a term of endearment?
I’m pretty sure that the most modern scholarship on the subject regards sexuality as a spectrum, not a binary either/or proposition. Beyond that, it’s understood as a three component condition consisting of attraction, behavior and self-identification. If that’s true and assuming equal weight among the three components of “homosexuality”, then two thirds of what we regard as sexuality is based on individual choice, with only attraction left up to other causes such as genetics, environment, or whatever else.
Nevertheless, I think what the anti’s really mean when they say gun nut isn’t simply someone who’s into guns; but someone who is fundamentally mentally off kilter such that they are susceptible to getting involved with guns in the first place. If that’s accurate, then being a gun nut isn’t a choice, but rather a symptom of whatever drove you nutty in the first place.
Finally, aren’t we all supposed to recognize each other’s individuality and celebrate our diversity? I’m sure I’ve heard that from liberals before. Being a gun nut then, even if a personal choice, is just another manifestation of one’s individuality; regardless whether born into it like race, gender or other such traits. How dare he disparage diversity by ridiculing individuality.
” I think what the anti’s really mean when they say gun nut isn’t simply someone who’s into guns; but someone who is fundamentally mentally off kilter such that they are susceptible to getting involved with guns in the first place. ”
Yes. In the Universe of the anti-gun psychos, Love of Liberty is “fundamentally mentally off kilter.” We love Liberty, they fear and hate it.
Most of the really aggressive anti-gun people (some I’ve known, most I’ve only heard second-hand reports about) are, surprise, very aggressive people. They feel cheated by the presence of guns, feel artificially forced to be more polite, circumspect, until they know there are no guns in the room that aren’t theirs. This goes in spades for Rahm Emmanuel and Michael Blumberg, and there isn’t a person on earth who can honestly argue otherwise.
As for the mass of anti-gun left-liberal hangers-on, the columnists, TV talking heads, ‘non-profit’ profiteers, they’re just running with a good thing, pleasing their hire-ups, and making the cities safe for mobs of loud mouthed bullies, be they union heads, politicos, or the impossible-to-fire professors who got tenure based on their English Lit or Sociology papers, after which they use their tenure as a shield for life-style advocacy (for theirs, against yours), keeping their actual academic work tamely and trivially within PC-in-their-specialty boundaries. I’d like if Bloomberg Financial News and Chicago city employees could gain the same right to speak out without retaliation, the one tenured faculty have. But they don’t have it, and they will absolutely be punished financially if they speak out against the boss’ key political values.
If you read back a week or so you will see a post by Robert about his experience with anti-semitic and homophobic taunting.
Obviously the comparison between racism and hoplophobia is inexact. Thats not the point of the article so attempting to distract from it by raising a strawman argument is either poor comprehension or willful misdirection. The latter is the typical cheap trick used by those who dont hsve the facts
Robert is gay? News to me. I gives a d*mn.
See how easy it is?
Gay and Jewish? Oy.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
At a university library I once worked at, we had a student assistant who was Puerto Rican and Jewish. He claimed he was hired because it allowed them to check off two minority affirmative-action groups with a single hire.
https://scontent-b-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/q71/1554414_10152147862636753_1984766994_n.jpg
They hate us because we are evil, we spread evil and, as such, are the source of all evil in the world. They don’t “demonize” us, they see us as actual demons.
Cuz haters gotta hate.
In Mr Pitts case, its his day job.
Look at that face. He is in pain.
Pitts is paid handsomely to spew the hate. I’ve been reading his drek for years in the Miami Herald. Gun owners, Tea Partiers, rural residents, devout Christians….you name it and he’ll hate it in print for a price.
DOn’t forget, Lenny (is the) Pitts was one of the first in the media to annoint the great St. Trayvon Martin, but only b/c he was Black. He has demanded patience and rule of law when a Black is accused of a crime, but he cannot give it back. I have written to him about how offensive his rhetoric is to a member of the tribe, and he fails to respond.
Why would he? You’re just getting in the way with your … ideas….
Thanks Dirk. Like I said that is the face of a man in pain and unless he is a true sociopath he knows he is wrong. I suspect thats the source of a lot of the raging projection going on with those who make it personal rather that factual.
I do believe a feature of sociopathy is that the sociopath indeed knows when he is wrong. He just doesn’t give a flying eff, because the entire world (with the possible exception of other sociopaths) exists for his benefit. The same would be true for psychopaths, which is merely sociopathy taken to a physically dangerous level.
I hate it when they say “military grade weapon”. I have two things to say about that…
1. Do they all want us to have firearms that are of inferior quality and will break upon operation? Therefor endangering the lives of the shooter?
2. There are also many firearms made for civilian use that are built to higher standards than the military. The military is looking for cost savings, part interchangeability and mass production. Some civilian firearms are made to tighter tolerances, use more expensive materials and are made using more technology.
So what do they really want? Simply, it is just a buzz word. After all, at one time single shot muskets were “military grade”.
“Do they all want us to have firearms that are of inferior quality and will break upon operation? Therefor endangering the lives of the shooter?”
Yes, yes they do!
oderint dum metuant – Lucius Accius
Let them hate so long as they fear. nice
If I had gun nuts, I would go shooting more often.
I’m out.
Why do civilian disarmament proponents hate us? Because they are evil. It is only because of Stockholm Syndrome that we (good citizens) fail to recognize and act upon it.
It really is that simple. Civilian disarmament proponents hate us because of our worldview. They actively harass us verbally and sometimes even physically because of our worldview. They actively attack us (through proxy via our criminal justice system) when we are simply living our lives in a peaceful manner and have not harmed them in any way. They look down upon us with disdain and resentment and want us banished, imprisoned, or dead because we do not think the same way they do. Stated simply, civilian disarmament proponents are not willing to “live and let live”.
That, my friends, is the definition of evil … and all because we “gun nuts” are different, NOT because we are actively infringing on their rights to life, liberty, and property.
Thats right. Its all about control. Submit or be demonized, made sub-human, or some form of the ” other” just as totalitarians throughout history have justified their oppression.
Pitts would love to be thought of as Thokas Sowell but in truth he is a Walter Duranty type. And I think he knows it…
“Why do these people [sic] hate us?”
It’s the primary, root construct of all propaganda; “Hate the other guy.” Hate is powerful and it shuts off higher brain functions. It’s why Democrats/Liberals/Progressives/Neo-Soviets all seem brain-dead.
They’re really not, but when it comes to the primary roots of their agendas, it’s all based on hate and they aren’t thinking it through.
It’s why they use hate speech to promote their ideal sets without even realizing they’re doing it. It’s considered acceptable to hate the other guy, and since it’s acceptable, it doesn’t set off the red flags like sexism and racism do. It is, however, NOT acceptable. That’s the second tier of using hate successfully in your propaganda; advertise it as acceptable. If you make “the other guy” the problem for everything that is wrong in the world, it only makes sense to hate him… Hate becomes acceptable and a self-justifying paradox.
This is why they always talk about hate as being a Republican idea. Racism and Sexism are not necessarily hate-based. But they have to inflate it to distract. It’s another primary function of the Neo-Soviet platform’s Propaganda. They ALWAYS accuse the opponent of the very thing that they are doing themselves. I know plenty of people who believe that Women are inferior (I’m personally beginning to believe it might just be true). Or, that Blacks are inferior. None of these people hate women, or hate black people. They just view them as a tier below. There’s no hate at all. I view dogs and cats as a tier below… I kinda like dogs and cats. Is it not ironic that the Neo-Soviets portray their human pet keeping practices (welfare) as compassion, instead of the true, brutal racism that it is? I don’t believe genetics automatically imbues a living thing with inferiority within the same species, but some people do. It’s not hate.
Refusing to think rationally while children die, all to push for the subjugation of “the other guy” is the deepest hate I’ve ever heard of, and it’s why we hate them right back. Seriously, willing to let their own children be slaughtered just to give politicians more power to “get other other guy.” I don’t know any political faction that goes that far except for the died-in-the-wool Democrats. Pretty much every other Political Party says “woah, hold up, no political agenda is worth killing my kids!” But, Democrats are perfectly willing… And even when their very own children have been killed, they still advocate more slaughter with tears in their eyes… There is no such thing as a greater evil than that. So, the cycle continues as we hate them right back for being so amazingly fucking evil and stupid at the same time.
This is why I dislike all Political Factions (I believe the only acceptable government is no government at all), but I have a special place for hating Democrats; they kill their own kids for political gain! Even suicide bombers and child molesters aren’t that sick! This is why we should apply mental health standards to voting, not gun buying.
“It’s the primary, root construct of all propaganda; “Hate the other guy.” Hate is powerful and it shuts off higher brain functions. It’s why Democrats/Liberals/Progressives/Neo-Soviets all seem brain-dead.”
I like this. And greetings, fellow anarchist! However, though I agree that the only acceptable form of government is no government whatsoever, I accept the Constitution and Bill of Rights as a legitimate and workable compromise. I recognize that to most people, that seems incongruous, but it’s how I genuinely feel about the matter.
As it’s unfolded in my time, however, I feel I may have been wrong about the acceptability part. It hasn’t turned out very well in the past 100 years, since the Federal Reserve Act. That’s the waypoint where everything seems to have turned in the wrong direction.
And that is about the time that our government began massive violation of our Constitution in earnest and in the open (around 1913).
Those events immediately follow the rise of unfathomably wealthy industrialists. It is my personal opinion that those unfathomably wealthy industrialists bought off our government at that time. Sure, there were wealthy and successful business operators in the early to middle 1800s. But it wasn’t until the late 1800s to the early 1900s that multiple people amassed fortunes that would total hundreds of billions of dollars today. When a single person sits on top of that much cash and answers to no one, some very awful results are not only possible but probable. And when you consider that a dozen or so people/families were sitting on fortunes like that around the turn of the century, at least one of them had to use their fortunes in a way that was not beneficial to society in general.
For a recent example, consider Bloomberg. He is sitting on a modest fortune in comparison to unfathomably wealthy industrialists. And look at all the havoc that his “modest” fortune has enabled him to peddle. Now imagine how much more havoc Bloomberg could create with his modest fortune in a world with the almost non-existent press and communications in the early 1900s. There would be absolutely no organized push back whatsoever from grass roots organizations. And probably no opposition from any other entity because no one else would know what he was doing.
For the record this is NOT a rant against capitalism or wealth. It is a simple recognition of what happens when a single individual yields a huge amount of power and answers to no one. Make no mistake: a person sitting on a 200 billion dollar fortune (in today’s dollars) would wield a lot of power.
Really? Because you sound like one of those smelly “Occupy Wall Street” hippies.
You sound like someone too chicken-sh*t to use his real name.
They hate us cause we’re stopping them. They also hate us cause we actually care about the issue so much that we can get thousands of us to show up to a state capitol at a moments notice and we’re fine with the media not taking notice. Meanwhile, they do weeks of preparation and planning for a “protest” and end up having more journalists than “protestors” at their events. This hatred will continue as we will continue to deny all compromise to them until they stop dealing in absolute bad faith. If you’re an anti reading this comment, please understand that as long as your goals include banning any firearm, magazine, accessory or making the process for owning a firearm more difficult and expensive there will be no compromise whatsoever.
WMD? Holy crap! They can have my ICBM when they pry the launch codes from my cold, dead hands!
If it says “Minuteman”, I’m sort of partial to it!
The people who don’t understand gun rights people don’t get it, may not agree with it, and operate more out of fear. These are the people with whom we must actively pursue in dialog and to whom we should be more kindly disposed.
Conversely, those who hate gun rights people do so because their demands for disarmament are stubbornly resisted. Gun people are not controlled by them, so therefore they must be neutralized. So they go Alinsky on us…demonizing and marginalizing in order to weed out our ranks, discredit the ones who are left, and then have their way with us through the thus-manufactured “common-sense” approach.
They hate us because we are the unmovable obstacle in their road to a brave new world. Because we strive for freedom while they strive for control. Because they want a society free of gun violence and we are in the way. Because common sense says that if they could just get rid of the guns, everything would be okay. And we won’t let them do it.
Because when they say, just imagine, they think of John Lennon. When we say just imagine, we think of the Bill of Rights. They say, do it for the common good, do it for the children. We say, molon labe, because we know that common good out of their mouths means the death of individual liberty and freedom itself.
The hatred is well caused, and well earned. We should wear that badge with pride.
Why do these people [sic] hate us?
I don’t care why. And since I’m beginning to hate them, maybe they should be the ones asking the question.
It would never occur to them to ask.
You can hate me now. But I won’t stop now. Cuz I can’t stop now. You can hate me nooooow.-
P Diddy
“Why? Why do these people [sic] hate us?”
Because a liberal is a liberal is a liberal…and that’s “Why? Why do these people [sic] hate us?”…
“Gun nuts” isn’t anywhere near as bad as a racial slur. Just…….no. No.
I’ve heard folks comparing people who carry AR15’s around to Rosa Parks. I’ve heard somebody say that a “No firearms allowed” sign on a business is the same as a “No colored people” sign.
Just stop.
“the term ‘gun nuts’ is patently offensive”
I help moderate a relatively large internet forum, and my jurisdiction is specifically over the subforum dedicated to discussing politics. The threads about gun policy tend to be amongst the most inflammatory, and we’ve had to limit the use of such pejoratives.
Of course we also apply the same standard to “gun grabbers”, which TTAG seems quite fine with.
Because the ARE gun-grabbers. Of the would-be sort, anyway.
And because we GRAB and hold on to our guns.
The reason people hate others is always the same: because they are not like them, they don’t understand them, and it frightens them.
So they like cops? It could be true, but I think it might need a bit of parsing.
A couple of weeks ago I was called a “nut job” on this forum for daring to suggest an opinion contrary to the poster’s beliefs. I’d rather be called a “gun nut.”
“And if one consequence is that some New York state gun owners feel exposed, the larger consequence for all of us is a further chipping away of private spaces, a further compromise of the increasingly quaint idea that one has a right to live peacefully and an expectation to not be bothered in so doing.”
I did a little Googling (it tickles but I kinda like it) and found this quote by an op-ed writer who said it was wrong of that New York State newspaper to publish names and address of gun owners. It seems he was defending gun owners’ rights to live peacefully and unbothered – in this case by the press, one could also make an argument about Big Brother whether it be press, the government, you name it.
The writer? Leonard Pitts. He says he had some experience with this when white supremacists posted his phone number and address online. That he felt vulnerable, much like gun owners did.
Further quotes from his op-ed: “The folks at the Journal News newspaper in New York state would doubtless say it was not their intention to do anything like that when they published online maps of gun ownership in their area. But intention and effect are two completely different things.”
All of which makes me wonder:
1) Does he not see the irony at best, hypocrisy at worst, calling for government intrusion and control over firearms rights when he says people just want to live peacefully and unbothered?
2) Does he not see that firearms legislation regardless of intent has no real effect on crime and only serves to punish the law abiding?
3) Did he think about arming himself to protect himself, his family, when he felt vulnerable to white supremacists? Or perhaps did he?
They hate us because we stand as examples that their delusion of a 100% controlled and safe society is wishful thinking. You will never find a more energetic enemy than someone who has been denied their preferred delusion because of the example of your existence.
A combo of fear, projection, and a faulty perspective on reality. They just see guns as artificially intelligent killing machines not accountable to the user’s intent because gun grabbers have no sense of agency. They’re also ignorant to how guns work and the ways of the world in general. Case in point, I had no idea what the AWB was until it expired. At first concerned over its implications, I soon learned they were just scary-looking semiautomatics used in only a bare fraction of crimes. Then I wanted one.
Gun ownership also requires a sense of responsibility gun grabbers ceded to the state long ago. It runs counter to their view that the state is responsible for everything they want and need, hence their patently offensive view that the police are their to help you always, and when bad stuff happens, to lie down and take it.
And of course, they project those fears and that lack of responsibility onto all of us.
They also live in a la la land where violence is only bad, and not a fact of life that’s sometimes justified. Defense of self is unthinkable. Literally fighting for what’s right or even survival is simply unthinkable to these people. They also fail to understand the true dynamics of crime for various, often politically correct reasons too numerous to analyze in a post.
TL;DR, they hate us because they hate reality.
Great post. And thank you for bringing in “projection”, because I believe it is an important factor in understanding their motives. If understanding their motives is important to you. And I do think it’s very important to know what makes them tick, if only because this makes them more easy to counteract.
Why, thank you. It is important to know what the Other is thinking, especially with regard to my legal education, which taught and requires being able to argue both sides. Personally, I think it’s a great avenue for personal and intellectual growth.
They’re showing a reflection of yourself in a very fractal, 4D fun-house mirror sort of way.
In other words, there are only two things: you and not you. 😉
So the secret to eternal life is to put all the death on the not-you side.
Sounds like good life advice. I want to borrow that from you.
I’ve read Mr. Pitts’ for years. Even wrote him once. His reply was one of the most insulting things letters I’ve ever read. I read folks like him in an effort to try and understand how and why they think the way they do. They, being liberal, communist, marxist, whacked out idiots. They seem to permeate our society and have voices that ring louder and louder.
It saddens me greatly that our morals, values and entire way of life are being ‘hoped and changed’ away.
Being called or referred to as a ‘gun nut’ at first, made me chuckle. The more I think about it, the more offensive I find it.
Collecting firearms is as much of a hobby to me as collecting Hummel figurines to some.
The beauty of firearms is that they are a functional thing. I can hunt, gather food, target practice, or just set them aside to become more valuable as time goes by.
I pity Mr. Pitts.
Why did another man coming on to you insult you? You should’ve been flattered?
They hate anything and everything that smacks of self-sufficiency. They love their fellow boot-lickers, though….
They hate us because we hate those that would disarm/neuter the general population. We can’t beat them in the polls, headlines or common-sense debates because they refuse to be honest or logical. Solution: take somebody new to the gun range. Be informative, patient and encouraging. Every person you turn dispels the myth, and some will even join our ranks. I’m hoping to introduce a Brit/Am in the next few weeks.
The only reason that they hate us us that they see what we see as rights and responsibilities as privilege and reckless endangerment at best. For any of us to own the ubiquitous EBR with a 30 round magazine of Lake City Green Tips is something we feel is a god given right. We are responsible for our own lives. They view it as privileged excess that endangers everyone in the country in theory and try to use extreme cases of isolated violence by illegitimate “gun owners” to slander us all like spree killers waiting for a shot at the spotlight.
The fact is that people who are anti gun are anti personal responsibility despite facts that continually prove that to be a dangerous and stupid idea. Cops don’t jump in front of gunfire. Only family and friends do and even then, a select group. You are in the line of fire it is your job to fix these things. The time between dialing 911 and dialing 9mm from a holster is the difference in the “good guy with a gun” response time. But by denying an inherent responsibility for your own safety and assigning such a right to “privileged” status of badge or permit holder only you create the fallacy your typical gun control advocate lives in. Fear of guns and love of badges despite the fact that the combination will not panacea the world’s woes.
If we train people to be more willing victims there will be less crime; our definition of it will shift to reflect the mindset change. It will not be less violence, we just will care less. But thus is the luxury of not taking responsibility for your own safety or those you hold dear.
I do believe the word “panacea” cannot be used as a verb. Because it’s a noun.
If the term gun nut offends you…grow a backbone.
I’m kind of proud of it, like Radical Libertarian Loon. 😉 I don’t find it offensive because I’m already a nut anyway. ;-D
And it’s fun to tell people I’m a pothead gun nut and watch their heads explode. 😉
Well, I tried to see this article, but was told “Premium content is only available to US residents”, as if there is anything premium about this prick except the price on his hide.
The source of his dislike of gun owners is fear, both of gun owners themselves, and of guns in general, because he doesn’t know how they work, and especially fears that if he picks one up he might start spraying the area with bullets. He mistrusts his own level of self control, therefore he cannot understand that people are allowed such ferocious killing power.
He has no experience of gun owners on a range or discussing weapons among themselves, he only sees us as primitive artifacts of a bygone era, but lethal and pestilential. The concept of training and self control is only dimly understood by him and those of his chattering classmates.
The ACLU’s indifference to the Constitution is because they fail to understand that without the RTKBA, there are no other rights. Just because you have a vote now doesn’t mean any politician respects that or isn’t willing to remove it you vote inconveniently.
The propensity of inner city US blacks to engage in the drug trade and resultant illegal gunplay, is largely due to the failures of the education and economic systems to provide full employment. This is down to the financial geniuses who have off shored most manufacturing to increase the shareholders’ bottom line at the expense of the future of your society. And the Devil finds work for idle hands.
I feel privileged to have earned a gun license, which is not easy in New Zealand, and requires a lifetime of temperate conduct beforehand. I don’t feel demonized, but I am lucky enough to have born in the majority and not subject to any minority discrimination. My father and grandfathers were farmers, and having rifles and shotguns was a necessity, to shoot injured stock, and keep down the rabbits. I feel pride in continuing a family tradition, so Mr Pitts can go fornicate himself.
“He mistrusts his own level of self control, therefore he cannot understand that people are allowed such ferocious killing power.”
I was hoping someone would bring up the self-control issue! This is another example of “projection”: “I’m terrified of such firepower, because I know I’d go kill me some right-wing “nuts”, anti-abortionists, Christians, etc., etc….”
” This is down to the financial geniuses who have off shored most manufacturing to increase the shareholders’ bottom line at the expense of the future of your society. And the Devil finds work for idle hands.”
this, a thousand times.
Manufacturing offshoring has reduced the American economy to rubble, and is a leading factor in joblessness and crime rates in these major cities that were once thriving manufacturing hubs.
the media will simply NOT address this fact, because they are owned by the same companies responsible for it.
They KNOW they are morally, physically, spiritually and intellectually superior to you; if you don’t agree with their position(s), you are an idiot. Oh, and most of them are fine with using any scheme or tactic to ge their way. There is no reasoning with the overwhelming majority of them.
When I was growing up in Chicago, a liberal Democrat was for the working people, pro union, wanted to help immigrants, and the poor. Then a lot of things changed after McGovern ran (and lost) against Nixon. The “old guard” took their eye off the ball and let a lot of people, very liberal people, redefine what the word “power” meant in the democratic party. The result: people who think government makes better decisions that you and I do.
Guns are very symbolic to these people. Let me say that again: GUNS ARE VERY SYMBOLIC TO THESE PEOPLE.
Symbolic….that’s why arguments framed in logic don’t work in this debate. Stopping gun nuts from owning firearms is not going to change the homicides by firearms in Chicago not one iota. You would have to be a drooling idiot to believe that. But the liberals do not really care about violent (gang related) shootings. They desperately care about people like us that say “Screw you. I don’t trust you or the government.” OUCH!
Insolence cannot be tolerated.
They also do not like religion. Religion and “the state” have always been at odds, since before the time of Jesus Christ. Same goes for “the family.” Mommy and Daddy are authority figures…..hmmmm, wait a minute, that can’t be a good thing! Watch what “they” are teaching our kids in school…they are teaching “values” instead of math, science, and history.
The supreme irony is that liberals also preach a Gospel of diversity and tolerance! They are, without doubt, the most intolerant people I have ever met. And they cannot abide people who are diverse…especially if that diversity is expressed in terms of religion, family or, as in this discussion, guns.
My advice…and nobody asked for it and it probably isn’t worth much at that, is to conduct ourselves as civilized ladies and gentlemen, no profanity, no aggression….don’t give them the satisfaction. For what its worth…
NO! Giving up on the concept of aggression is like agreeing to eradicate Testosterone; it’s there for a good reason.
“NO! Giving up on the concept of aggression is like agreeing to eradicate Testosterone; it’s there for a good reason.”
No, you’re wring. The reason “aggression” is there is because you have aggression in you. It’s caused by bouncing back from having been aggressed against in the past. But revenge doesn’t repair the damage to you, only you can do that by letting yourself heal.
You only need to use as much force as is needed to defend/protect yourself. Any more than that, and you are infringing on HIS rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, IOW, aggressing..
“You only need to use as much force as is needed to defend/protect yourself.”
Thank you; hence aggression is necessary and useful, but only sometimes.
You’re still not getting it. Aggression is NOT defense, period. You need strength, you need courage, you need the power to think as well as feel, you need integrity, you might even need some toughness, but none of those things is aggression. Aggression is the violation of someone else’s right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. You only have moral authority to prevent actual harm to yourself, not to commit aggression in any way, shape, or form.
You have a right to stop them at your door, but not to chase them out into the street and shoot them in the back, or sneak over to their house at night and murder them in their sleep.
Ah yes. The moral high ground. I suppose that in the end we’ll at least be able to keep it, even though we’ll have lost our liberty. Hollow victory anyone.
I get it, Rishi. Martial Arts doesn’t really exist.
Your advice is highly valuable and much appreciated. You make an interesting point about religion. The only science currently able to be taught in schools these days is Darwinism. Yet this is fraught with difficulties: Darwin was wrong, and were he alive today he would admit it. He estimated to world to be 4.5 billion years old. Yet the moon is moving 30 mm per year away from Earth (as proven by NASA laser testing since the Apollo landings). At that rate, it would be touching Earth 1.5 billion years ago. Rock taken from Mt Ngaruahoe in New Zealand of known ages were sent for assessment by a US lab. Age estimates were given between 800,000 years to 1.5 million years old. And yet none of those rocks hardened from lava earlier than 1954. Geological time cannot be substantiated by current Potassium Argon and Carbon 14 testing methods, and yet these are given as dating tools to establish the age of various life forms. Darwin said that if any of life’s structures were shown to be irreducibly complex (i.e. that they couldn’t have “evolved”) then his theory would be disproven. All life forms are irreducibly complex. He didn’t have the tools for the job.
So if not Darwin, our guide to life must surely be the Bible, and its Creator. A belief in God and His Son illuminates the life and and mind, and provides certainty in an uncertain world.
As you say, our Lords and masters would rather we believe in Darwin, and see ourselves as competing ants on the dunghill of the world. Not me. Nor anyone with sense and an ability to read the Word of God.
I think your point about the Moon is a very good one. It is my belief (and that of an increasing number of actual scientists, when they are in position to admit it) that the Moon has not always been there.
Everything has “always been there,” it simply hasn’t always been at its current location in its present form 😉
so what is your point? that the earth is 6,000 years old because Jesus?
And here I thought they also taught chemistry. It must be “Darwinistic Chemistry”!
“Remember that tyranny has many sides and freedom but one.” (Airey Neave)
I was describing Mr Pitts’ PERSONAL reasons for disliking gun owners, but I neglected to mention his POLITICAL reasons, which are myriad. Also it was time for me to shut up.
Anyway, like all Communist Agitators (vice: your Supreme Commander – how could you vote for a man with his politics??? Oh right we did, Helen Clark) his method is to target particular enemies of the State, individualists who refuse to toe the State line, who are self sufficient for self protection and who do not rely on the State to protect their very lives.
The tactics are: isolate, ridicule, belittle, demonize, vilify, then punish with all the resources of the State once power is fully consolidated. This will happen, as the antis are in the majority, and urban sprawl is ensuring the reduction of rural firearms owners.
So Mr Pitts is using his own built in prejudices to further his preferred political aim: To make America safe for Democrat dweebs to spout nonsense without fear of reprisal from the honest citizens he insults.
In particular he wants to normalise supine reliance on the State for all things. This has largely been achieved.
You Americans need to relegate moral cowards of this ilk back to the fringes of society rather than giving them air to breathe and propagate. Ignore them at your peril.
And he is profoundly unAmerican.
“Ignore them at your peril.”
This ties in nicely with my earlier comment about Stockholm Syndrome. We are extending courtesy to these people who would have us banished, imprisoned, or killed because we are “different” from them. They are not interested in the “live and let live” thing that was once universal in our society. Ignore them at our peril indeed.
I could not agree more. Recognize those who would imprison or kill us, or perish from the failure.
Why does Leonard Pitts hate the POTG? I am thinking it is because he developed abnormally from an early age. Maybe he was never allowed to go squirrel hunting with an uncle. Maybe he had no rural relatives that insisted he kill one of the chickens they fried up for dinner one evening. I cannot see this guy going to a shooting range, ever, with any buddies. Assuming he has any buddies. I doubt Leonard watched many Saturday western television shows where there was always a moral taught and the good guys faced off against the bad guys whether it be a farmer protecting his farm, a sheriff protecting a town, or a bunch of folks holed up in a church facing off against the Mexican army. Leonard does not know what it means to be someone of principle who chooses right over wrong. Right and wrong are variable to Leonard.
Leonard’s imagined wrongs that the POTG have visited upon Dick Metcalf are juvenile. I have not seen this kind of high school level peer pressure since, well, high school. Note to Leonard: The POTG are not silencing Dick. Dick can still say and write whatever he chooses. The fact that some businesses do not agree with him and withdrew their contributions to his employers is part of living in the real world. None of us are guaranteed employment no matter what we do — we are responsible for every word we say or write — and so is Dick.
There have always been people in this country who have tried to disarm the other people in this country and I suspect it will always be this way. You would think that a subject as serious as gun rights would give one pause before making idiotic statements publicly but the senators from Kalifornistan shot that idea all to hell.
So we are stuck with Leonard. Just another useful idiot. Leonard, we disagree with you now please go write a piece on quantum entanglement and give guns a rest.
Hey Leonard, FU & your crazy eye!!!
Using deliberately offensive words and phrases, like “gun nut(s)”, is just a propagandist’s ploy to marginalize and stereotype the person(s) you use it to refer to. It is a form of verbal feces throwing. Its aim is to shape the “listener’s” opinion in a negative way and cause him/her to accept the humiliation of the target person(s), the denial of their rights as a human being, and make them appear deserving of whatever evil the propagandist wishes to inflict upon them.
We have come to a time where this kind of behavior is thought to be acceptable and even necessary by those who want to disarm us. In the larger picture you see more of this type of verbal assault used in regard to many subjects in this country today beyond Second Amendment Rights.
If I have to hate something, it would be that reasonable, civil discussion is no longer possible in this country. Partly, that is due to the fact that a faction in this country believes that they, and they alone, have a vision of how everything “should be”, and intend to impose that vision on everyone whether they like it or not. It is a type of Western, secular “Sharia Law” and the antithesis of our traditional ideas of Human Freedom and Liberty.
I don’t really believe there’s any rational resolution to this situation because it has gone too far and is now too pervasive. These people are not going to “wake-up” one day and repent of their errant thinking, just as none of us are going to “wake-up” one day rejecting the idea that we are naturally free and “endowed…with certain inalienable Rights,…”, suddenly accept the Nanny State vision of our present adversaries, surrender our guns, and offer to pay more and more taxes to give to the indolent and shiftless suckling at the teat of Big Government.
The assault on our Second Amendment Rights is just a symptom of a much more fundamental assault, the outcome of which will determine every aspect of the quality of life of our children, grandchildren and unborn generations. We have called our parents and grandparents, who fought and won World War II, “The Greatest Generation”, but, I think, we face a greater fight and I wonder what our generation will be called.
I hope not “the Last Generation”.
Sadly, what crossed my mind was “The Biggest Losers”….
Not about who hates, just a hilarious thing about CA vs. TX. It’s OK, it’s got guns in it. 🙂
“California Reporter Comes To Texas!”
“This guy comes to Texas and is amazed!”
http://www.youtube.com/embed/4CDFxeB7Y-s
They get mad if you disagree with them. That makes you a liar, bigot, ECT. I’m white and southern but the problem lies in drugs. They’re expensive and druggies don’t like to work.
” but the problem lies in drugs. ”
That’s it! Blame the object! That’s the ticket!
</sarc>
News flash, he hates People of the Gun because you are white, because owning a gun is implicitly white, because owning a gun is a symbol of whiteness. Basically he and his ilk are the racists they complain about so much. In psychology it is called displacement. There is nothing you can do, short of giving up your guns, to make him happy. The sooner you realize this the happier you will be. There will be no rainbow defense of the Second Amendment. It will be whites or nobody.
HATE is a four letter word. We must ban it (making hatred go away) for the sake of the children. Do you hear me? Ban it for the sake of the children!
Thanks for the sage advice! I did some self-surgery, and turned all my hate into a hat! 😉
Y’know the coolest thing of all? When I quit hating people, everybody stopped hating me back.
My local birdcage-liner occasionally carries Leonard Pitts’ op-eds.
Like Bob Herbert or Eugene Robinson, I have yet to see him write anything that wasn’t an utterly banal regurgitation of the currently-fashionable conventional wisdom among the people who make up the Democratic establishment. Not saying it didn’t happen, but if it did I missed it. Feel free to post links if you think there’s something he wrote that’s worth reading.
Maybe he was writing insightful and informative columns three decades ago. He’s not doing it now, and hasn’t been for a long time.
People like him should be called what they actually are: operatives.
“Why do these people [sic] hate us?”
Farago, I find this completely reprehensible. You’re complaining about a lack of civility and respectful discourse, and yet you close your post with an implication that our political opponents are less than people. They may be ignorant or misguided, but that does not call into question their humanity.
For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, “[sic]” is used to acknowledge a known error. In the context of this sentence, it means that the use of the word “people” is erroneous. Frankly, I like Farago less having read this vitriol. It’s just as hateful and accusatory as the writing he’s attacking.
The really disgusting and derogatory word today is “honorable”. Since it usually precedes the name of a judge or member of the US Congress, as in, the Honorable Carolyn McCarthy, D-NY. We’ll soon hear phrases like, “Go the hell, you honorable sonofabitch”.
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