“The core of the gun lobby’s argument — whether the assault weapons are real or replicas — is that guns already are over-regulated. No amount of laws will ever stop killings. Nonsense. They can be reduced. That’s like saying death is inevitable so why get doctors checkups.” – George Skelton, Governor, Californians split on gun legislation [via latimes.com]
Pretty sure someone will be along to twist that silly metaphor in a moment… may I suggest specifying a proctologist?
Death is inevitable, check ups or not, all we can do is postpone it. If people were not dying, from whatever cause, we would all be dying from starvation in one generation.
If the diagnosis and prescriptions are bad, doctors can kill many. It is an axiom among gun controllers that all control is good.
It is a false axiom. Too much gun control can kill. We are well past that point, as noted by the falling murder rates as gun control is relaxed.
2012 in the US there were 98,000 deaths and 280,000 critically injured by medical malpractice.
Don’t see too much on healthcare control or healthcare safety. Pretty sure this is one of those things where the vast majority of these incidents could have been actually prevented.
Hmm, wonder what happens to those numbers with Obamacare.
Yeah, the government definitely knows what’s best for ya.
Specifically, and not to belabor the point, because “gun control” (actually 2A Control) does not and cannot ever control in any significant way the people who are most likely to shoot people: criminals and suicides. Even a total ban on firearms of any kind cannot be any more effective than a ban on drugs or alcohol, it just drives the trade underground, massively increases the economic incentives for criminal activity, and inevitably results in more deaths by guns and other violence.
This is getting boring.
“Such military-style assault rifles, after all, are the weapons of choice for mass killers.” [Referring to the LAX shooter and his choice of an AR-15.]
That’s because they’re the #1 selling rifle in the country, which makes them the weapon of choice for well, everybody, you screaming ninny.
+1 for “ninny”
Hey, ninny is a term of endearment for me. That’s what we called my grandmother. And she was wayyyyy tougher than this guy.
Also like saying .22 caliber bullets have killed more people than any other caliber. Being a man killer, should be banned. Nope, it’s because it’s the most commonly used caliber. Already stocking up on .22lr ammo, come Christmas with all the .22 pistols/revolvers purchased, likely to become scarce again.
Scarce again!? I still can’t find it in stores!
Check the Walmart in West Bend, WI. It’s there for 15 minutes every other Thursday. Good luck. I got three 555 round boxes for $78.97 out the door. They sold out fast!
Unless I’m mistaken the 5.56 NATO is also .22, or pretty durn close (.223), as is the round for the AK-74. Kinda gives .22 the edge over everything else.
They are (may be) the weapon of choice for mass killers for several reasons, number one of which is that just because you are crazy does not mean you are stupid. The reason such rifles are the most popular over-all is because they are the best tool for the job so far extant. If (in your mind) the “job” is to kill as many innocent people as you can in the shortest amount of time (excepting of course flying airplanes into buildings) you will of course choose the very best tool available for that job.
Because a significant number of people are bludgeoned to death every year by claw hammers do we propose legislation to require the sale only of hammers without claws? Once again to belabor the boring point ad nauseum: A tool is a tool. It is chosen for its suitability for the job at hand. A less than desirable result is ALWAYS the fault of the person wielding the tool.
Another nonsensical comparison by the antis.
“No amount of laws will ever stop killings. Nonsense. They can be reduced.”
You kinda proved our point there bucko.
Reduced (if it saves one life!!!!1!1!one) =\= stopped.
Replicas? You mean like airsoft??? For a man so against the very idea of firearms, you should at least attempt to use the correct terminology to give yourself some credibility. Geez…..
And if he did get the complete bans on modern firearms which I’m sure is his goal then California would soon be in the grip of a Britain-esque crime wave and soon he would need to ban kitchen knives as they have done in that utopian, tea-guzzling country. But of course as long as there is one free state left in this country then he can point the blame at them.
Well, he did say “amount of laws”, and not “number of laws”, so the language, to him, is just like everything else – something to be bent by his will towards his purposes.
Doctors check-ups are a good preventative measure and I agree with the gentlemen’s premise that everyone should (at their choosing) have a doctor and use them as often as they feel necessary in order to ensure their health and well being. By extension then firearms ownership is a good preventative measure and everyone should (at their choosing) have one and use them as often as necessary to ensure their health and well being.
False analogy. A more accurate one would be “everyone dies, so it’s stupid to pass legislation making death a crime”.
Furthermore, his comparison:
1) “guns already are over-regulated. No amount of laws will ever stop killings”
to
2) “That’s like saying death is inevitable so why get doctors checkups.”
is a textbook strawman argument/fallacy. Statist progressives love to drop these on low information voters who can be easily swayed at the voting box.
Lets break it apart. Statement #2 makes perfect sense right? For preventative action, we need to have a lot of checkups. So we can catch things early… right? Sure. These statements were made to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar (to statement #1) yet unequivalent proposition (statement #2), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
He didn’t address why that guns are over-regulated, he didn’t address why that laws are not stopping the killings.
If we were to actually make statement 2 comparable to statement 1 we would say:
There are too many doctor’s checkups. No amount of doctor’s checkups will ever stop death.
Doesn’t make sense does it? That’s because they are not equivalent, comparable arguments. Furthermore if he would like to compare laws to checkups then we can play that same game:
“That’s like saying death is inevitable so why get doctors checkups.” — >
That’s like saying death is inevitable so we are going to mandate doctor’s checkups by law, along with all required fees and paperwork. Medical records will be provided to the US gov without patient approval or consent. All visitis will be registered and fees paid, Patients will be issued licenses indicating are receiving their periodic checkups.
I think there’s a whole lot of people who would be perfectly OK with, nay, encourage even, that last paragraph.
And I bet they voted for Obama.
Excerpt:
“Incidentally, this apparently was another example of a “law-abiding” citizen going berserk with his firearm — further punching holes in the gun worshipers’ argument that all gun control does is harass law-abiding citizens.
Problem is, too many citizens are law-abiding until they aren’t anymore. And at that point, they shouldn’t be slinking around with a high-capacity, semiautomatic. Like Ciancia was.”
*************
And there you have it…
I don’t always slink, but when I do I prefer to carry a high-capacity, semiautomatic.
Funny to me that sounds like a line I would hear on those “most interesting man in the world” commercials
All rapists weren’t rapists, until they were… do we preemptively mandate chastity belts and castration?
All thieves weren’t thieves, until they were… do we preemptively throw everyone in jail or cut off their hands?
All racketeers weren’t racketeers, until they were… do we ban money and financial markets from everyone?
I thought we were innocent until proven guilty in this country… not innocent but eventually guilty.
Sadly there are some in this country who see that as merely a semantic argument.
All gun control laws are based on the premise that if you have a gun you may commit a crime in the future. Still another reason I consider gun control laws to be civil rights violations.
Is he advocating the formation of the Department of Pre-Crime? Maybe all cars should be fitted with breath alcohol detectors and all bedrooms should have cameras in them. Statist jerk. Anyway, Ciancia could have caused just as much damage with a good Khukri.
As can be attested in many places with severe gun control laws. I seem to recall mass knife attacks in China, Australia and maybe England? my list is not complete nor recently researched. The point being that in any society where ALL of the law-abiding citizens are completely disarmed ( they can’t even legally carry their own Kukri knife) ANYONE with a reasonably effective weapon can wreak havoc at will. And if they are concerned about 3-D printing of guns, how much should they be concerned about the ability to make pretty deadly knives or swords in your basement out of just about anything?
Based on that logic the next step is to impose the death penalty on everyone because they have the potential of murdering. Problem solved.
Oooh! I love this particular argument!
Why have laws if the criminals are going do criminal things? We already have laws that make those things criminal or you wouldn’t be identifying them as criminal activities. The debate is why are you suggesting we add *more* laws on top of something that is already illegal? Which additional law is going to be the one the criminals comply with?
The idea is the harsh penalties of multiple overlapping laws would be a deterrence to committing the crime. The more laws the more the deterrence there is, which of course is hypocritical because the anti-gunners refuse to acknowledge the deterrence effect of legal guns because it can’t be objectively measured. Just another trip down the rabbit hole.
“The idea is the harsh penalties of multiple overlapping laws would be a deterrence to committing the crime.”
Which is a crazy idea in itself. It’s proof that legislators aren’t even logically thinking about what laws they are proposing.
If a person is going to kill another person with risk of life imprisonment or death penalty, do they really care about laws regarding “possession?”
Now the left can make the argument that availability of “guns” will diminish (say in a world with complete confiscation), But again, is death by knife, syringe, poison, or explosion, any better? Also, if he really prefers a gun over the aforementioned objects, he could steal one from any number of places. Moreover the man who is the victim may have been able to save himself if he could have had a deterrent (gun) which would put him on equal or better advantage against the perpetrator of the crime.
Well, since the government is taking away my ability to see my doctor, I will probably die faster by not wanting to see somone with whom I do not have complete trust. So much for the notion that government regulation is a good thing…dumbass.
The Omamacare train wreck is kinda casting into doubt the idea that additional government is a good thing.
I am sure glad we have someone who can straw man talk for us “gun lobby” people.
Well he is right about one thing, killings can be reduced. One of the best ways to accomplish that goal is to stop hindering the good guys with laws that don’t affect the bad guys.
How many people are killed by medical malpractice each year again?
The number killed every WEEK still makes AR’s look like a non-issue.
The next LA Times headline? “Let’s be honest. Reducing highway fatalities is as simple as removing the tires.”
Well as it turns out negligent physicians and nurses kill 100s of thousands of people every year. That’s dangerous so I am going to demand that the state abolish nurses and physicians and punish all people who practice medicine. Or I am going to demand that nurses and physicians are limited to using alcohol wipes, bandages, and aspirin to limit how much damage a negligent nurse of physician can cause.
The only way to reduce gun deaths is to ban all guns. Background checks, and magazine capacity reduction will do absolutely nothing. Just train a little more on reloads.
I recognize that banning all guns will reduce “gun deaths”, but it won’t stop murder in most cases, crime will also go up, home invasions will increase dramatically, especially in the suburbs and border cities. The people will also lose all hope of fighting against a tyrannical government in the future(100, 200 300 years from now).
Yesterday, North Korea brought in thousands of people against their will to watch executions throughout their country. The people’s crimes???? Watching bootlegged south korean movies and owning bibles. The north koreans fight freedom right at the source, by crushing any means of hope, any outside influence of even thinking about freedom, equality, and uprising.
Will America, ever go that far??? No, we have way to many checks and balances in our government to prevent that. What our government will do to control it’s people is over regulate. Make seemingly normal things seem bad and turn people into criminals for small crimes, not being able to pay fines etc….. They can still scare people by making laws that have people walking on eggshells. They can make it so intimidating to own a gun, that people won’t want to. They’ll be too afraid of screwing something up, missing their paperwork, not paying a fee etc… Not to mention tax the crap out of ammo and firearms that only the wealthy can afford them. That’s how they’ll do it, that’s how they’ll get rid of firearms in america.
Nah. Anything that reduces the number of guns (in public or private hands, doesn’t really matter) will reduce the number of “gun deaths”, mostly from suicides. That’s a trick that works equally well with automobiles, razor blades, prescription pills, etc.
The real question is: “What’s so damned special about ‘gun’ deaths?”
George,
Bans require compliance, and it’s the latter of my statement that you will never get from the American gun owner.
Since he’s so fond of doctor analogies, then how about he keep the Hippocratic Oath in mind? Very generally and popularly understood to mean a doctor’s first priority is to do no harm. Well.
Gun grabbers never acknowledge defensive uses of guns. In their zeal to repeal the Second Amendmentand the God given right to self defense which it enshrines, they neglect to account for the increase in deaths and injuries among now-disarmed and vulnerable victims.
By blindly controlling guns among law abiders, they’re only exposing more victims to armed criminals who already operate outside of the law and are not impacted by these measures. His analogy, properly applied, is actually tantamount to banning vaccines as a countermeasure to viral illnesses!
His thinking is as unscientific, counterproductive and dangerously outdated as 19th century barbers performing bloodlettings. Today’s anti-liberty, unconstitutional gun grabbers hold similarly primitive views that only lead to more bloodshed.
Well, you know their argument. If you didn’t want to get in a fight don’t talk trash and quit picking fights with bigger guys. Only get in fair fights and just walk away when it’s not fair or just talk about the situation to come to an understanding. Never mind we may be talking about a 70-year-old grandmother who is being robbed in her home by multiple 20-something males. Apparently she had it coming in the minds of the anti-gunners, or maybe they want her to just talk to the robbers about how they feel.
This guy,Skelton ,is a BOZO,not a journalist .He is spouting his biased OPINION ,not reporting any facts( oh that’s right liberals could care less about facts especially when they quote Phony Polls with no source and minimal participants,which always get voted off the planet when the voting process takes affect)even the commenters to this article from Stupid California are knocking him!
Let’s see now,hmmm two million gang members in Los Angeles alone?,Boy sounds like your expansive ,federally Illegal,gun control is working just fine in favor of gang bangers and killers.
This is why we always need to focus on Liberty. Our goal is not safety, our goal is freedom.
The animal in the zoo is safe. Safe from predators, from the environment. He won’t go hungry. He never has to exert himself, they even bring mates to him. He’s really got it made.
But no one would ever think he was free.
lol, apples and buicks…
Mr. Skelton is aware, I assume, that medical experts have recently scaled back recommendations for certain screenings, such as for prostate cancer and mammograms? They found that excessive early screening caused more harm than good, not only by reducing resources available to treat actual cancer cases, but also from side effects of unnecessary procedures performed for false positives.
So to take Mr. Skelton’s analogy, this is not about eliminating all doctor’s visits, but rather about recognizing that a tipping point has been reached and breached where current restrictions do more harm than good.
I’m convinced! My greatest safety will be achieved when I unload my guns and lock them away. I’m going to plug up all my mags so that they only hold 10 no wait, 7, nope 5 rounds! That’s the magical number of peace. Wait – three rounds. Oops Joe Biden says two. Attention law-abiding gun owners – drop all your guns into the pacific except your double barrels and single shots. Dust off your muzzleloaders, and lock them away. World peace is in our hands! This man is a genius.
/sarc
That is because doctors kill 10x more a year than guns.
This guy completely misunderstands the nature of criminal laws. Laws are not passed to prevent crimes. Laws are passed to punish crimes.
Surely, we want to punish murderers. But since murder is already a crime, and the penalty for murder is the most harsh allowable in American jurisprudence, what exactly are gun laws trying to punish?
People may be under the delusion that outlawing guns would reduce the supply and make it difficult or impossible to procure them. Utter nonsense. People will not be dissuaded from possessing things that they want no matter how illegal. Think heroin and child pornography as two examples. And if a wackjob’s preferred means of mass murder becomes unavailable, there are always pressure cookers and bottles of gasoline.
Right. If Adam Lanza was intent on killing children and had no gun, what would have stopped him from plowing his car into a herd of kids as they got off the bus? Killers will kill and the insane will do the insane. They’ll just get more creative.
In China, 47 people were killed on a loaded bus by a single man carrying a firebomb. That incident wasn’t the first time such a thing happened, and that tragedy had a greater death toll than Sandy Hook. That event recieved very little coverage in the US. It seems as if there is some macabre competition to kill the most people in a single incident, and bombs have proven to be the most effective in taking multiple lives.
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324299104578531291556100864?mobile=y
Next up: An intoxicated driver with a history of mental illness and drug abuse was killed when his car left a winding road at an estimated 90 mph. The current posted speed limit is 35mph. A recent poll taken since the tragic accident suggests 90% of participants agree the speed limit should be reduced to 25 mph.
Wow. He just literally can’t say the other side’s argument without twisting it into an unrecognizable strawman, eh?
I met that fellow in a dream, once. He either told me he was from Memphis, or that his name was Mephisto… “Please allow me to introduce myself…”
Stupid libturd. Firearms are indeed over regulated.
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