In the video above, the highly caffeinated host of the PBS Idea Channel wonders if anti-gun gamers are morally bankrupt because their money’s going to real-world gunmakers. Hang on. An anti-gun gamer? “I love COD but I support common sense gun controls.” I suppose it’s possible. It’s also possible that Mila Kunis will stop by later this afternoon to see if my living room wall’s paint job resists fingerprints. Not likely, though. Still, the rapid fire rant above raises an interesting question: are all gun control advocates hypocrites? They argue that disarming civilians will make society safety. Yet their safety is protected by  armed civilians (e.g., armed police). Your thoughts?

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51 COMMENTS

  1. No. Many are ignorant or illogical, but that doesn’t make them hypocrites.

    The ones that have concealed carry permits in jurisdictions like NYC all while fighting to deny the same right to the everyday citizen, they’re the hypocrites.

    • I know a guy with a carry permit in Dallas, who is severly anti gun. It makes no sense and he makes no objectively logical argument for why he has a permit if he hates firearms so much. He has also stated that it is not my job to defend myself, and I am defying the natural order if things if I don’t wait until the cops show up to save me. Aren’t we so lucky that he wants to go into politics.

      • He’d fit right in. The only arguments I’ve seen that were close to reasonable is they carry but they don’t trust anyone else, therefore we shouldn’t.

        An anti-gunner would have a hell of a time not being a hypocrite. If they call the police, or would advocate military fighting against invading nations, they are a hypocrite. So unless they take the Ozma approach in life where taking a life is wrong no matter if it saves innocent lives, they are hypocrites.

        I’ve come to the conclusion most anti-gun people think the world is too stupid to have any kind of weapon, they like people suffering, or they just don’t think.

      • Well, how does he square his position on it not being your job to defend yourself with the actual law in this country saying it is your responsibility? As well as it is legally not the job of the police to defend you?
        Riss vs City of New York
        Warren vs DC
        Castle Rock vs Gonzalez
        etc. etc. etc.

        Is it his position we should just ask the bad guy to go away?
        Worked really well here…
        http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2013/05/23/911-dispatcher-tells-woman-about-to-be-sexually-assaulted-there-are-no-cops-to-help-her-due-to-budget-cuts/

      • HA the natural order of things involves the police? I used to have a few friends like that as well.

    • @armchair.
      The ones in NY that have body guards carrying guns for them.

      There fixed

    • And all of the politicians [including Obama, Bloomberg, Emmanuel, Pelosi, Feinstein …], media types and celebrities who have armed bodyguards but support civilian disarmament are hypocritical pieces of excrement.

  3. I like the Idea Channel. While some of the host’s opinions seep through, it tries to be an impartial thought-generator.

    • Just remember – your tax dollars are subsidizing his ability to broadcast his opinion.

      All federal funding for public broadcasting needs to go away. It’s become nothing more than a propaganda appendage of the Democratic Party.

  4. This guy certainly is.

    And the Mila Kunis link doesn’t work. Please fix it with the maxim-um amount of tittage possible.

  5. Is it hypocritical for one to claim you’re being targeted by anti-GLBT rednecks when it is actually you who is the perpetrator of a criminal hoax?
    Is it hypocritical to arrange for poisoned mail to be sent to yourself knowing it will be intercepted to generate political good will for your ongoing plan to enslave a nation?
    If your a member of the Totalitarian-America-as Victimizer-Left everything is allowable

    • “Is it hypocritical to arrange for poisoned mail to be sent to yourself knowing it will be intercepted to generate political good will for your ongoing plan to enslave a nation?”
      +1000 I’ve been saying this all day today since I saw it on the news this morning.

      • Anyone who doubts the possibility of this scenario is seriously naive.

        “The ends justify the means”if the liberal progressive/ socialist is willing to murder 25 million Americans as Bill Ayers as part of the leadership of the Weather Underground planned to do once they achieved their overthrow of our elected government; mailing ricin to yourself to generate sympathy for your losing position is small potatoes.

  6. I think you’re way overestimating the effects of video games on one’s opinion of real guns. Also, in cod, they’re playing as military, whom the grabbers actually want to have guns. So there really isn’t a problem there.

    • It depends. Do they actually viscerally hate guns or are they just pro-civilian disarmament?

      Both types of antigunners are useful idiots, and some of them are legitimately evil, but I’m not sure about hypocrites.

      Edit: Oops, shouldn’t have been a response to you.

  7. This video is what I would kindly call malarkey shit. There are three main levels of realism in my mind. 1. Videogames, 2. Airsoft/Paintball, 3. Real Steel. It’s funny to me to even see people go from level 1 to 2 and have a difficult time, that being the differences between handling a physical object in the form of a firearm and a firearm in a videogame. I’ve seen some guys that are really good at FPS games that are terrible in the field playing Airsoft, probably something to do with body placement, aiming, and coordinating with others in real life. There’s also the handling factor. “Yeah man! I love the M240” until you have to carry a 26lb, 50 inch M240 replica for hours. Then you have level 3, real ammunition kicks or kicks more and weighs more, is definitely louder, there are more safety considerations, there are malfunctions, and generally much more to keep track of at all times. Each level is a totally different ball park.

    The stats on guns in games are also nonsensical and fit the balance of the game, so I disagree games give the stats of guns regularly. For example, an 870 usually does more damage than a semi-auto Saiga even though they’re shooting the same rounds due to the rate of fire.

    I don’t know how many anti-gun FPS players there are out there. In some way gamers must have some kind of interest in guns to play those games. I don’t like Barbie and I don’t play Barbie games (without my niece present). There is some kind of appeal there, but an anti-gunner playing a “gun game” is hypocritical until you get into their natural categorization. The human mind is all about making up little files and categorizing them, a gun in the entertainment sphere (like a movie) is perfectly fine because they aren’t really using it and it isn’t real, but a gun in real life is evil and dangerous, partly because of a lack of faith in themselves and a lack of education.

    All-in-all, BS video, flawed premise, waste of bandwidth.

    • In the first modern warfare, three of the five sniper rifles were chambered in .308. Two of which were Remington 700 variants. All of them dealt different amounts of damage. And my friends wondered why I hated the game.

      • I have a couple of friends who, every time a new CoD game comes out (since they came off of their WWII shtick) demo all the weapons for me just to watch me slowly loose my mind.

  8. Of course not. One needn’t espouse a double standard in order to be tragically mistaken.

  9. No, some are simply very earnest and have either not thought through things enough, or have very consistent principles re: banning objects which can harm. I actually have some modicum of respect for the latter, and used to be the former.

    As far as relying on armed civilians (police), I don’t think that is hypocritical. It is unwise, counterproductive, dangerous, and demonstrative of either high levels of naïveté, or low levels of ‘reality immersion’.

  10. All wingnuts (fans of civilian disarmament) aren’t hypocrites. There’s a hierarchy among wingnuts. Some are ignorant, some are well-meaning idiots and others are just flaming @ssh0les.

    Now, if you’re talking about gungrabbers — people who are actually in a position to violate 2A — yes, they are all hypocrites. Every damn one of them.

  12. “Highly-caffeinated”? I swear the guy’s on Crank. MY GOD! His words are stepping on each other.

    I think the “hypocrite” argument is flawed. Sorry, not today.

  13. Uninformed. Delusional. Dreaming.
    Not all hypocritical, though. Some sincerely believe in the cause. Sadly, the ones who have a personal objection to guns, and therefore want no part of them, are not the ones trying to legislate mine out of existence. The ones that are do so with the benefit of armed security, law enforcement, and even the military carrying the guns for them.
    For those guys, it’s never actually been about the guns, though.

  14. I think one significant issue is that many Antis don’t consider police to be civilians. They think of them as an in between…not a civvie, not military…like a militia perhaps. I feel like a lot of the cops who are jerks also feel this way; they’re not civilians, we are. They’re cops. In this way, many antis aren’t hypocritical according to their own logic/reasoning. They just have different logic.

  16. I met a kid about 11 over the weekend, we were shooting the pellet gun. great shot. Where’d he learn to shoot? His dad? He claims, Call of Duty- which he says even taught him to get prone for long distance shots. I did everything in real life before appreciating a video game. How many people will grow up doing something on a simulator (i mean, video game) before real life.

    • How many people will grow up doing something on a simulator (i mean, video game) before real life.

      Does p0rn count?

  17. Of course they are. They want your guns taken away – by men with guns.

    They want to be protected – by men with guns.

    Ultimately, they want to control anyone who offends their world view, and they are willing to use men with guns to do it.

    What is the point of passing any legislation if ultimately it is not backed by – men with guns.

    Working from memory here, wasn’t it Mao who said, “All power comes from the muzzle of a gun.”?

    So when they pass any law regulating your behavior, between the lines lies the phrase, “Do this or we will kill you.”

    Sound too radical? I shoplift something. Police come to apprehend me. I fight them. They use nightsticks. I pull a knife. They shoot me.

    The threat of deadly force is the ONLY way the state can control the behavior of it’s citizens. Otherwise in the above example the police would have to say, “Uh oh, he’s going to fight. Guess we should ignore the shoplifting stuff.” And you KNOW that ain’t happening. The pinnacle of the use of force tree is deadly force.

  18. The Mila Kunis link is now working, I couldn’t care less about this crackpot , but I have a lot of walls that need her inspection.

    • I’ve personally got doubts about the leather on my den couch. Not even sure carpet in the den would pass a very close-up inspection.

  19. I think COD is great ‘training’ for the anti’s. So long as they keep thinking a typical shotgun isn’t effective along the distance of a residential hallway I have the advantage!

    • In MW2 you can stand at just the right distance and watch the buck shot coming at you vanish. I bet thousands of deer wish that was real.

  21. I gotta say, I think his posit is correct. Considering the licensing aspect (which I have to admit as a former gamer I was completely unaware of), I’d have to say that yes, if you’re anti-gun and you play these first person shooters, then you’re a hypocrite.

  23. Is the GTA4 player who is pro-law & order a hypocrite or are they all just real life mafiaso & gangbangers? Same question, same answer

    • Listening comprehension, n00b.

      The point was gun manufacturers are making money directly off the games via licensing agreements. Since I doubt the Mafia has moved into the video games industry and are making money off GTA, it’s a bad comparison and you should feel bad.

      Although that would explain EA…

  24. Lots of guys who play video games are anti-fun. Virulently at that. They’re mostly from my generation, though, so what can you expect? We were raised by women to be understanding, caring, non-violent and above all else: a bunch of effing p*****s.

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