Yesterday, I debunked a Huffington Post article that claimed that the existence of a gun in an abusive relationship enabled domestic violence. In that case, as in so many others, gun control proponents used fear to sell their anti-gun rights agenda. Of course it’s also true . . .
that pro-gun rights campaigners use fear to motivate Americans to defend their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.
And why not? Gun owners should be afraid of what happens to a disarmed populace. History — past and present — is littered with the lost lives and liberties of disarmed civilians.
So what’s wrong with gun rights groups and gun makers stoking public fear of criminals, crazies, terrorists and fascist politicians/government to increase both support for firearms freedom and the number of guns in civilian hands?
The antis argue (if that’s the right word) that fear leads to paranoia that leads to political extremism that leads to “lax gun laws” that leads to “gun violence.”
What’s your take? Is there “appropriate fear” and “inappropriate fear”? Politically, commercially and personally, where do you draw the line?
I always say, It’s not about fear, it’s about responsibility: for self-defense and for safeguarding the nation’s liberty.
Slavery was reintroduced within 8 years (Feb 19th 1942) of the first federal gun control law (June 26 1934).
Interment of American citizens of Japanese heritage, right?
The amount of people who dont know about this causes me great sadness.
+1 to you, good sir!
That is a sad, sad chapter in American history. One of many.
Slavery? Umm, not quite. Unjust? Incarceration without proper due process? Violation of due process and a violation of civil rights? Seizure of property, homes and businesses without fair market reimbursement? Sure. It was also war, and great atrocities have usually been the norm towards the minority “others” during such times.
So considering what the Japanese did to the Chinese during the rape of Nanking, the Germans did to the Jews, Gypsies and mentally handicapped in their death camps and what the Russians did to their own citizens before during and after the the war, among many other examples: I actually feel proud that despite the tendency of tribalism and the ability of people to dehumanize the “other” and the brutalization, rape and mass slaughter that generally ensues; the American people actually showed relative restraint towards those American citizen “others”, at a time in our history when segregation based on race, bigotry and a preference for ones own race was an accepted cultural and legal norm.
But that has been the American character and spirit. We have many of the inherent short comings that all human beings are prone to. Racism, sexism, tribalism, etc. But we have generally been less brutal and homicidal in the expression of those tendencies compared to most other cultures at any time in history and we have been generally the first in addressing and correcting those injustices and intolerant tribal tendencies, by our societal and cultural ability for self-examination, and correction.
I recently read that the .gov knew that the incarceration would not do a thing for the safety of the country and told bald face lies to the judges who allowed the slavery to begin. I hold the US to a higher standard. I am disgusted that the US government did it. I’m disgusted because German Americans and Japanese anywhere but the West Coast were not subjected to the same standard and that proved the .gov had no basis for it’s slavery. I’m incredibly proud that the 442nd Infantry was one of the hardest fighting and most decorated units of the war. I’m also proud that those Americans refused to allow themselves to continue to be victims unlike the African American community that allows itself to be victimized by its own black leaders.
How would the POS FDR “KNOW” any such thing? Crystal balls did not yet exist in 1942.
The American government has been less brutal and oppressive? I know a native tribe or two who would respectfully disagree. But your point is taken.
Well, Bloving, Maybe talk to some of the tens of thousands of American Indians sacrificed on the Aztec pyramids, when their beating hearts were cut out of their chests. See what they thought about brutality and oppression. And this was during just one sun ritual.
The same way, talk to some of the Pueblo peoples here in New Mexico, when they were the recipient of the raids by Navajo, Apache and Comanche to gather slaves; during which rape, pillage and plunder was the norm, before and after the arrival of the Europeans. Think the American Indian version of the Viking raids that terrorized the British and European coasts for centuries. One of the complaints by the Pueblo Peoples, after they had given allegiance to the Spanish government, was that they weren’t being effectively protected from the ongoing raids by these tribes.
Most people now adays have this “noble savage” version of the life of the tribes prior to the arrival of the Europeans. In reality, it was a brutal life, of raid and counter raid for slaves, women, goods and war to control prime hunting ground. The closest approximation would be to think of the current outlaw motor cycle gangs. They control territory for drug sales, and “prime hunting ground” like the Banditios controlling New Mexico, by being the fiercest and most brutal “warriors”, that bring terror into the hearts of any rival gang that might look with avarice, upon their “home territory”.
Like I said, we have our brutal past, but other peoples, in their history, have as bad, and generally worse.
I agree barnbwt. It was a great injustice. But to call them slaves is not correct. They did get their rights back when they were released, and those that did serve in the 442nd during the war brought great honor to them as a people, and as Americans.
Reagan did do something by acknowledging the injustice, with some more symbolic monetary reparations, but in the end, but a lot to little and too late. But in the end, by demographic and by census, those same Japanese Americans made themselves middle to upper middle class American dream, generally with greater accomplishment than the general American population. So if you were to ask those people if in the end, they were glad that they came to America in the first place, the vast majority would probably say they were glad they immigrated to America.
Then what exactly do you call rounding up people who have commited no crime, putting them in a cage (with barbed wire!) until the government says they can leave?
Slavery? That to me means that by law, a person is considered property, to be owned and sold like any other piece of property.
That was not the case of those incarcerated during WW II. Unjust imprisonment? Imprisonment without normal procedures of being individually judged based on evidence presented before a jury of your peers?
But in the end, once they were released, they still were considered American citizens, with all the rights accorded them by law and statute .They weren’t lined up out side the gates of the camps at the end of the war and sold to the highest bidder.
ThomasR, those interned did indeed perform farm labor, and were indeed rented out to perform physical labor elsewhere, and after the war, the land they had improved with their labor was distributed to returning (white) vets for free, meanwhile many/most had their own assets seized without due process while they were locked up.
“You know the worst part about slavery? They make you work for free, and they don’t let you go.”
Sounds like slavery to me.
Fun fact; Roosevelt not only banned guns & interned Japanese, but ordered small-time agriculture produce seized & destroyed to prop up prices for his wealthy connected large commercial farm supporters, expropriated Americans of their gold assets by executive order alone, threatened to pack the supreme court with sycophants that would defend his abuse of power, and had reporters arrested throughout WWII who dared to speak the truth about his tyrannical rule, the heavy (if defensible) losses being sustained overseas and tremendous expense being paid with debt, and waste & corruption among the military industrial complex exploding with little oversight all the while. Truly evil man who had a lot more in common with the Axis leaders than we’ll ever realize.
FDR was the worst president we ever had.
…then 2008 rolled around.
Then anyone that was jailed , justified or not, would be considered a slave. You could call the chain gangs in the south, or inmates picking up trash along side the roads, as slave labor. But that still does not fit the definition, because once they were released, they got their rights back.
Now I will agree, once the Congress passed the law in the sixties, that.convicts lost their voting and gun rights for life, that was the reintroduction of at least a subclass of peasants and peons, if not out right slavery.
I need to emphasize, while the incarceration of the Japanese Americans was completely wrong, once they were released, they got their rights back. The current situation of convicts losing their gun and voting rights for life, making a permanent subclass of a second class peons, forever denied the dignity and self-respect of carrying a firearm for self-defense and never to participate in their community by voting, is an absolute abomination!
That is worthy of my outrage!
Properly adjudicated convict prisoners are not slaves because –wait for it– they were actually tried and convicted, and their labor is considered part of their punishment. No debts left unpaid.
The Japanese were incarcerated becuz feelz (and so people could steal their shit in the name of patriotism) and their labor was neither compensated nor ordered as part of punitive damages. Considering that farm labor is it’s own kind of toll on the body, in addition to the lost time, and stolen property, a large portion of the wealth these Americans possessed or ever would possess was taken from them for no reason at all.
Internment could have theoretically been justifiable to some extent as a (stupid/pointless) emergency measure if they were compensated in any way for their ordeal during & after. But they weren’t. In a time when FDR’s profligate deficit spending was enriching damn near everyone else and he was holding a torch for socialism and the downtrodden little guy.
There are aspects of the modern world that are legitimately frightening. Uncontrolled govt is at the top of a long list of things I might well need to protect myself, my family, and property from. So, no, it is not wrong to use fear to sell firearms of any kind.
Also, turnabout is fair play. The anti-gun nuts use fear to sell their anti-gun agenda every day.
Given that the Dems are using fear to sell guns, it can’t be all that bad.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38297345
“The antis argue (if that’s the right word) that fear leads to paranoia that leads to political extremism that leads to “lax gun laws” that leads to “gun violence.”
Hmmm…I always thought it was:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
Oh wait…I must be thinking of something else.
“The antis argue (if that’s the right word) that fear leads to paranoia that leads to political extremism…”
They should know – we’ve seen an awful lot of just that on the left ever since Trump won the election.
“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.”
As long as the ‘fear selling’ isn’t trying to use fear to get you to only buy Glocks.
(Appropriate vs inappropriate fear sounds too politics-laden and mutable to me, so I won’t use those terms.)
It seems to me that the main characteristic distinguishing rational vs irrational fear, is plausibility (or probability), convolved with consequence. Being afraid of Martian invasions is rational if Mars has, in fact, attacked in the past or there is substantial evidence that Mars can do so at any time. Since there’s no such evidence, it’s not a rational fear.
Being afraid of giant meteors wiping out life as we know it, in contrast, is rational. We know it’s almost happened at least once or twice in Earth’s history; we’ve seen recent “near misses” of high-fractional extinction-level asteroids; and while the probability of such an impact during one’s lifetime is low, the consequences are Egon Spengler-class “bad.”
So then let’s call a rational fear one which passes the giggle test for plausibility/probability, and for which the product of probability and impact is at least mother-in-law class “pretty bad.”
In that case, fears – or concerns if you prefer – that a handgun are usually described as addressing pass the plausibility test (people get mugged / raped / killed both at home and when out in the world), the probability test (not too likely for most people, but definitely well above fractional percentages for the average person), and the consequences test.
Basically, in the same general regime as fire extinguishers and smoke alarms.
So I’d say that the manufacturers aren’t marketing to an irrational fear, and therefore don’t really represent scamming or other unethical behavior.
I don’t like how reasonable concern is conflated with irrational out-of-control fear.
Here’s a good example of reasonable concern- violent crime perpetrated by a group of young, strong men. Another good example- the potential for a mass disorder that requires force of arms to suppress. Another is when you’re far up north enough in Canada and wild animals are a real threat.
I’ll give an example of mass disorder- the Zanzibar Revolution.
A quick summary: A disarmed population had a police force that was supposed to protect it. A rebel group from the mainland arrived on the island of Zanzibar, and the police ran away. In addition to the arms they carried, they added to them the arms of the police force. They then proceeded to slaughter around 20,000 of the disarmed civilians.
An Italian film crew flew over the island the next day, and filmed the bodies. I’ve seen claims of as few as 800 killed, but the film (Africa Addio) shows how wrong that claim was.
You can read a bit more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_Revolution
Some people might want to say at this point, “oh, but that’s what happens in third world countries”. This overlooks that Zanzibar had only received independence a year or so earlier from the British. It was, for all intents and purposes, governed and policed as a modern state, with a multiethnic composition much like many modern nations. It was no different than many other states at the time. Things can go bad very quickly.
With enough of the populace armed- with a gun, any gun, really- these sorts of slaughters are exponentially harder to achieve. With a disarmed populace, they are merely a matter of logistics- getting the people to the slaughter sites in time before outside pressure or a lack of funds stops the attempt.
While this is a seemingly rare event, it’s not that rare if you look at history. People focus a lot on the idea of a government gone mad, but we can see that frequently a danger arises when a government just goes away (like with the Rodney King riots). Call him/her a citizen or a subject, this is when the average person must fend for themselves and for their community as a whole.
Inappropriate fear is mainly the purview of antigunners. In Canada, time and time again, we see that licensed gun owners are the most law-abiding and least violent segment of the population. And yet, it’s not the criminal gang member or the revolutionary extremist who arouses the most fear from the antigunners. No, it’s the average, ordinary man or woman with a firearm that they have this irrational panic over. Then they project their paranoia onto gun owners, which acts as a convenient excuse to further their demands to disarm.
Prudence dictates that we consider our safety and arm ourselves for what is hopefully an eventuality that never occurs, much as we place smoke detectors in our houses or check our mirrors and over our shoulder before changing lanes.
I don’t really use fear to sell it, myself. I use the opposite and explain why you shouldn’t be afraid.
I’m the type of person who supports the original purpose of the second amendment, that is overthrowing a tyrannical government, of course, but I recognize that isn’t in the foreseeable future. Instead I focus on how remarkably safe the United States is even with guns everywhere and make the argument that you can’t go passing whatever arbitrary law you want in the name of safety.
“licensed gun owners are the most law-abiding and least violent segment of the population. ”
I get soooo tired of this. There are a large number of us… growing daily, who don’t have or never had any sort of “license” to own or carry a gun. We are no more violent or unlawful than the happy “permit” holders.
The statement in and of itself is absolutely correct. What is non-quantifiable and so seldom discussed, is how generally law-abiding most gun owners are. Otherwise, in a nation of over 300 MILLION privately owned guns there would be utter chaos.
My apologies- I can only speak to the Canadian position, so I try not to speak for the US posters. What I should have added was that even if those licensed Canadian gun owners were not licensed, they would still be the most law abiding/least-violent segment of the population. My reasoning is that we see the same gun owners in America being similar in behavior. As with Canada, the vast majority of violent crime is perpetrated by gang members mostly killing each other (and regrettably harming innocents).
Thanks, Cliff and ColdNorth. It’s just that this comes out all wrong so often. Far too many people see the “LICENSE” as the important factor. So many “news” accounts of self defense and other incidents where the person is identified as having a “licensed” gun, or being a CCW holder… And the implication is clear that if that person didn’t have a “license” they’d be an automatic criminal themselves.
Just chaps my hide….
mamaliberty, your point is well taken, but the advantage of citing ‘licensees’ is the availability of hard information to make a more convincing case.
ccw databases like Texas’, which compile convictions of permit holders, leave no wiggle room to dispute that these gun owners break the law at a fraction of the rate of the general population. the numbers involve no guesswork or extrapolation and so can’t be twisted or explained away so easily.
the problem with citing gun owners in general is that includes the career criminals. that lumps in all the people who couldn’t pass a background check with all the people who could, which opens the door for anti-gunners to conflate the two. narrowing the sample to the ‘licensees’ prevents this tactic.
The thing I don’t like about marketing with fear is that there are so many people who don’t know anything about guns but have learned to be afraid of them because every time the topic is guns the discussion is couched in fear.
It’s a lot easier to bring new people into the fold when you can help them to see a gun is only a chunk of metal and plastic (or wood) that they can control and operate safely by paying attention to and few simple rules.
Marketing fear gets in the way of that. People will hear “you need a gun for home invasions, rapists, riots, whatever…” and they dismiss the idea because, whether they’re right or not, “it could never happen to me.”
IMO, a much better marketing tactic would simply be: “Did you know that the Second Amendment protects your right to own a firearm, etc. Why not exercise that right? Buy a Glock-Brand-Glock or try one at your local shooting range today….”
Simple, honest, no fearmongering necessary. And what they don’t tell anyone (and don’t need to tell us) is that you only need to sell someone one gun. That one sells the rest. 😉
Take a moment and look around at the commenters here.
Now, a quick show of hands: who here owns only one gun? Who owns five or more? Ten or more?
It’s a pretty safe bet that anyone who frequents this site can be safely considered a gun hobbyist. We have more than one gun because we LIKE them. That is not at all a criticism – but we need to be aware that this forum is very much a “hall of mirrors”. We do not accurately represent the vast majority of gun owners in America; the people who own perhaps a single iinexpensive handgun, perhaps one they inherited.
If it wasn’t for the (quite realistic) fear of being a victim of a violent crime, most of my customers would never darken the door of my store. Fact is, most folks really don’t see the utility of spending many hundreds or thousands of dollars on objects they do not genuinely care about – that makes us, well, kinda weird in their eyes.
So is fear a legitimate tool to get people to buy a gun? For most folks, it’s the only reason at all. That’s neither a good nor a bad thing, it’s a simple statement of fact.
Just keep it somewhat tasteful, shall we?
In and of itself nothing. But the NRA isn’t trying to win, they don’t want to abolish background checks for instance. They want to squabble for all eternity so they can remain important. So when they sound a warning it’s BS, it just translates to “give us more attention, money and political capitol, plz, kthxbye.”
Really don’t know diddly about the various activities of the NRA (and ILA) do you?
Fear sells guns and the left accuses men of carrying a gun to make up for shortcomings.
What would they say if, like cheeseburgers, sex was used to sell guns?
Did you read the ‘gun bunny’ piece that was featured a couple days ago? It really doesn’t make look the 2A community look great. And it furthers the stereotype of the ‘ammosexual’. On top of that, it can most definitely be twisted into the phallic substitute narrative. “See this beautiful woman? She’s fondling 8 inches of solid American steel. Which you don’t have. But you could if you buy a gun.”
I’m not against sexy adds. I’m not against scary adds. I’m against the opposition using irrational arguments. But I am not afraid of that criticism to the point that I would tailor my marketing to suit those who would never buy my product to begin with.
So bring on the gun bunnies. It’s just fun.
Like the Left doesn’t use Fear (of everything) to sell their BS Socialist agenda? Friggin hypocrites on everything.
hey – If I act really scared, will they give me a discount??? 🙂
“Yesterday, I debunked a Huffington Post article . . .”
I fear you shot too low, you could’ve just said the whole magazine, and i don’t mean the singular issue, I mean the WHOLE MAGAZINE (or clip as they like to call them).
FEAR is used to sell all kinds of stuff. Fear of loss(insurance which I used to sell),life(medical alarms-also sold by yours truly),fear of eternity in hell,fear of being uncool,fear of impotence…and it goes on and on. Honestly I’ve been at the gun thing about 6 years. Getting old and decrepit changes your outlook. So does an evil gubmint. There has been and will continue to be a very real threat to health and freedom especially living near Chicago. So be it…
Fear is used to sell insurance. Fear was used to defeat hillary.
Fear is a healthy and useful thing.
Fear sells deodorant, dish detergent, toothpaste, laundry detergent, soap, diet products, acne products — and it also sells #BLM, Everyclown for Gun Safety, MAIG and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Sex sells the rest.
Gun selling is at the confluence of both fear and sex. Frankly, at my age I don’t have an overabundance of either.
“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.”
How you Dune these days?
That’s true of irrational or disproportional fears, but ordinary reasonable fear keeps me from putting my hand on a hot stove, makes me careful with things like knives and how I drive a car. A person who is not able to feel ordinary fear, or who refuses to deal with it logically, probably won’t live too long. I had to shoot a man to save my life, and that fearful memory – even though muted now by time – comes to mind each time I’m tempted to leave home unarmed.
I know someone who’s cat was outside cat, found it seriously mauled but lived due to sharp claws. Guess cayote was counting on a disarmed kitty. Anti’s are a hungry cayote.
Just like rural and suburban areas foxes and cayote are everywhere just like human predators. Tool up folks!
Yeah fear sells.
Only the brainwashed sheep need gun and do what their false messiah the gun manufactures tell them to do.
We the real freethinkers don’t want them and don’t need them.
A gun is just security theater, Useless and more statistically likely be used on yourself or loved one in a murder or suicide than stopping a criminal threat.
Again, Time and Again, DGUs are nothing but an urban myth.
I’m going to borrow a you-tuber’s comment and post it here which is ironically 100% truth.
“Between 2007 and 2011, 29,618,300 people experienced a violent crime, but only 235,700–0.8 percent — of victims used or threatened to use a gun in self-defense. 74℅ of gun owners are male. Guns are rarely used in self defense. The idea you one day will be the knight is shining armor is a highly romanticized ideal devoid of reality. If you are a responsible gun owner who has proper training, then I have no problem with you owning a weapon. People act as though gun control supporters want to take all guns. All we want is to make sure only responsible people have access to deadly weapons, to ensure that you are safe and properly trained to maximize your safety, and to ensure the safety of everyone around you. ”
You own a gun, that means you’re afraid. That’s the opposite of freedom.
A freeman has no use for weapons of oppression.
It’s easier to run or fight back against someone with a knife, brick, baseball bat or a section of pipe than a nutbar with a weapon.
Most people who carry guns falsely become tough guys. The NRA is making a killing off the purchase of guns, ammunition and accessories. They have no concern for anyone who’s life is affected by gun violence. Their only concern is making as much money as they can to become more powerful.
And that is because 98% of violent crime occurs in urban settings where 98% of the population (that would actually report a violent crime to police) is unarmed!
Here is a fun statistical fact:
Between 2007 and 2011 a whopping 100% of people who carry a self-defense firearm every day and were victims of violent crime used or threatened to use their firearm to defend themselves.
Do not feed the trolls.
They will learn to associate humans with affirmation and will begin pawing at your windows when you drive through their habitat.
The_Resistance? More like the liar or the fool.
A simple Google search will show multiple successful defensive gun use by regular citizens. A web site, one of many, http://www.keepandbeararms.com that lists news reports from around the country documents these every day.
Finally, Google the Center for Disease Control study commissioned by Obama that shows that defensive gun use is an important crime deterrent. Oops.
Either way, you have nothing of consequence, but especially of truth, to share here.
When “selling fear” is discussed it’s usually in a negative light because the “selling” of fear usually uses an irrational basis for fear and then stokes that basis to create some level of paranoia.
However, not all fear is bad and not every fear is irrationally overblown. Fear of legitimately dangerous things is, in fact, quite healthy though we may not see it as “fear” because the topic at hand is something we quite rationally see as a legitimate possibility. No one trashes Home Depot, Ace or Lowe’s for selling “fear” when they carry smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, hard hats or other safety devices. The same is true of car companies for putting seatbelts and airbags in their products.
The difference is that those things don’t evoke a negative emotional reaction in a large number of people whereas guns do.
Some of it is also life experiences. Pretty much everyone was warned about fire as a child, the same of cars. In my own personal case, I didn’t much see the point in handguns, other than target pistols (which I owned) when I was younger. My dad told me that one day I’d figure it out, and sure enough, I lived in a bad neighborhood for all of a week before I bought a 9mm.
So, I don’t see a problem with selling any safety device via a rational warning. It’s not like manufacturers are selling them as a device to ward off the soul stealing aliens that may or may not live across the street from you. You could have a fire, you could have a car accident, you could find yourself in a situation where you need to defend yourself.
If you’re not a dumbass the chances you’ll ever “need” a cop, firefighter or EMS are low which is the same as the rest of these items but that doesn’t mean the chances are 0 or that you shouldn’t be prepared to handle your business until help arrives with heavier equipment. So, are the antis going to claim that Fire/Police Departments and EMS “sell fear”? That the local and other governments that demand a portion of our income to finance these things are robbing is blind and using fear to justify their actions?
Its all just marketing. Noi different than when car commercials make it look like if you don’t buy their car your kid is going to die. Volvo and Suburu are pretty bad with this tactic.
Politicians use it too. Gotta raise your taxes or your kid will die from an oiverdose. Gotta hire more cops or your wifde will be raped. Gotta build a bigger prison or we’ll have to empty the one we have.
Because anyone who ever complains about using the fear tactic very likely uses that tactic themselves they can go get bent.
The anti-rights crowd is always on about ‘why are you so afraid of being unarmed?’ They are always on about how the NRA is stoking our fears of gun control. They are always on about how their right to not be afraid of us (insert derogatory term of choice here) gun owners having guns in their safespaces, which by way of reverse explanation means they are afraid.
All the fear seems to be from them or about them…… I want to say projection but I think it is nothing more than just a double-standard where they want all the cake and all the eating too.
“Why are you so afraid of being unarmed?”
“Say, do you have a smoke detector? How do you SLEEP at night, if you’re so afraid your house is going to burn down?”
“Do you really think you have to be armed to go to that place?”
“If I thought I needed a gun to go there, I wouldn’t go there.”
Granted, these responses will not advance the cause, or the conversation. But people who ask those questions generally have some pretty closed minds anyway.
It’s only wrong to use fear to sell handguns if it’s also wrong to use fear to ban handguns.
I don’t think there is appropriate fear-mongering. Unfortunately fear-mongering is in the eye of the beholder. Pointing out that a democrat election may mean less guns in the future is a straight up fact to many, but to others it’s “rofl you dumb scare mongering”. So I say no, but antis would probably categorize many of my thoughts that way. *shrug*
There is a big difference between rational and irrational fear. Give people examples from history instead of speculation about Black UN Helicopters and other such conspiracy nonsense, and it’s all good.
I disagree. I put equal value on historians and visionaries.
Pro gunners push fear? That’s hilarious.
Note the nonstop coverage of a terrorist attack by any network. The Boston Marathon bombing was a great example. Wall to wall coverage for days. The media drove fear into the populace to keep them glued to their television screens.
And then they wonder why some take the action of buying a gun.
Fear pushes people towards authority. Psychology 101. That’s why we are fed fear 24/7 by the mainstream media.
I do not like to feed the trolls
I would like to point out that
the NRA is an organization of gun owners
The gun and ammunition companies have their own, separate organization
So the NRA is not making money selling guns and ammunition
Insanity leads to liberal political thoughts, which leads to victimization, which leads to the fear of everything, which leads to the fear of other people, which leads to the fear of other people with guns, which leads to restricting other people’s freedom to protect themselves by enacting gun control legislation, which leads to the confiscation of all personal ownership of firearms, which leads to the enslaving of the population and the victimization of the entire population and realization of the the goal of the liberalism.
So history shows.
cognitive dissonance. if you says its ok for gun sellers to do, then its ok for anti-gunners to do as well. if not and you practice this type of logical fallacy, you are exactly what you preach to hate.
I have no problem with anti gun people using fear tactics.
I come to the same conclusion no matter which side blows the whistle. Time to arm up.
I would somewhat disagree with a premise in the statements…unnatural fear/phobia versus legitimate fears.
“In that case, as in so many others, gun control proponents used fear to sell their anti-gun rights agenda.”
In the anti-gunners PHOBIA of all things “assault rifle” – you’re more likely to be struck my lightning than be killed by an assault rifle. Seriously….
“According to the NOAA, over the last 20 years, the United States averaged 51 annual lightning strike fatalities, placing it in the second position, just behind floods for deadly weather. In the US, between 9% and 10% of those struck die, for an average of 40 to 50 deaths per year (28 in 2008).”
However, looking at mankind’s history there is a RATIONAL fear of things that people have done to each other since recorded history and before.
Granted they are both still FEAR but one is rational, one isn’t.
Fear – people calmly tool up when they’ve gone past fear to what they can do for themselves. Past fear of harm. Past fear of the tools. Past fear of their own responsibility and agency.
Legislators – I have no problem with legislatures tooling theselves up, too. It’ll maybe protect the sane and thin the crazies a bit. It’ll maybe ground them a bit in what their speeches n diktats mean when tbey play out. It’ll maybe remind them a bit of how the other 99% live – without “large men with guns” to secure our children for us.
We live with people next to us, maybe armed, as crazy, and as sane as any legislator. Maybe they should figure out what they’d prefer when they aren’t guaranteed a safe space.
Besides, if they’re armed they can take point when they dispatch govt force to some distant desert, to some riot, to brace some modern-day Don Vito, or just to take the land n lifestyle from some wrong-liver, encroached finally into nothing left at all by the legislated “greater good.”
Internment – the U S, for its flaws and past is aspirational. Rarely is a nation organized “to better.” Rarer still “to better” as an ongoing project. Rarest that “better” is explicitly small-l liberal, small-r republican government.
The U S is an ongoing project in people governing themselves, to their own advantage. Because of this, we argue not that past wrongs were right, but that they weren’t seen soon enough, or corrected well enough. We argue for advantages extended to all, each in their own terms.
It is typical that the U S after Jim Crow, after Japanese internment, after anti-German leagues (WW I – look it up), will wonder how to protect ourselves right when there are Muslims as American as anyone, and Muslims who infiltrated and killed Americans as part of their multi-generation program to bring death to The Great Satan.
Gunny people – Think and talk deeply about such things, because they are deeply responsible people. Maybe some of that would rub off if legicritters carried.
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