“As I’ve written before, as a nation we seemed to be consumed by this romanticized narrative of reaching for a gun to defend home and hearth from a bad guy. The reality is, an armed society is a dangerous society — to itself, above all others. Homicide, suicide, accidental shootings — is that an acceptable social cost for the rights of gun enthusiasts to pursue a hobby? – Scott Martelle, For women, guns in the home prove especially deadly [at latimes.com]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

122 COMMENTS

  2. More people are killed in car crashes every year but you never hear these bleeding hearts ask if their lives are worth the “car enthusiasts” hobby. Leave it to a liberal to equate a Constitutional right with a “hobby.”

    • Car ownership doesn’t threaten the statists’ control over the masses, or give the masses a way to throw off Tyranny. Gun Ownership DOES. its not about saving lives, or making others safer. never was, never will be. its the LIE they tell to confuse simple minds and to try to sell their cause to low information and low education people, to pursue their Statist agenda.

      • That isn’t true at all. Mobility is the enemy of the state. It allows you freedom of movement, i.e., a way out of their controlled urban environment. The Progressive seeks to disarm, immobilize and impovrish the population and force people into very high density urban environments where they can create a society based on dependency with social discipline enforced by criminal elements.

        • “Listen. Get this: nobody with a good car needs to worry about nothin’.

          You understand me?

          Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.

          And I’ll tell you why: Where you come from… is gone. Where you thought you were going weren’t never there. And where you are ain’t no good unless you can get away from it.”

        • The government is seeking to add on the fly vehicular shutdown capabilities to all new vehicles. It’s for your “safety.” It has not yet taken effect, but look to it as an upcoming “safety feature.”

        • tdiinva, what planet are you living on? When Paulus stated the purpose that firearms had in our Constitution and our history, he was spot on. On the other hand, your comment about Progressives is about as naive as anyone can get.

          Progressive agendas are what is ruining this country.

      • Car ownership is actually a big threat, they just know they can’t do anything about it.

        Cars allow people to go wherever they want, whenever they want. The constant drumbeat for ever-tightening safety regulations, fuel economy regulations and programs like Cash for Clunkers (as well as other laws they’ve tried to pass to get old cars off the road) are attempts to get Americans out of cars and onto government-run mass transit. Once everyone is taking the train or the bus, the government gets to decide where and when you go, and how you get there.

        • Car ownership is actually a big threat, they just know they can’t do anything about it.

          I’ve often seen posters on far left message boards lamenting the (relatively) low cost of gasoline in the United States, and wishing with all their hearts that the price would go to at least $10 a gallon to discourage people from driving.

        • They had car ownership in the Soviet Union too, and there was no such thing as freedom of movement. Four Words: Papers and Check Points.

        • They can’t do anything about it, except make it expensive. Much like the ‘solution to the gun problem’ is to make bullets expensive the ‘solution to the car problem’ is to make gas expensive.

      • A few commenters below have it correct too, but I’ll add a point they didn’t. YES, car ownership is a threat to the statists desire to control the people. I’ll sum up their whole strategic approach in two words: Global Warming. They seem to be losing there too.

    • He has a particle of truth in his statement–otherwise it wouldn’t be so deceptive. For many of us it is indeed a hobby. It’s one thing to own a tool, it’s quite another to collect different samples of it and spend a lot of time thinking about using it and more time actually using it. Unless that’s directly related to your job (security, military, police), it IS a hobby.

      That doesn’t change the fact that it is also a specifically-enumerated right to own and keep with us the tools of that hobby (as there is a right (though unenumerated) to procure, own, and use power tools for the workshop), and of course for others to keep them as well even if their interest in them is much less than ours. That’s the fact he is covering up with his emphasis on the “hobby” aspect, as of course many people have pointed out. I just quibble with those who seem to think it isn’t also a hobby.

      Now the car analogy is one they’ve heard before and they “demolish” it by simply pointing out that the car’s primary purpose is not to cause injury or death to others. So you’d best already have the response to this ready for them, it will be needed if you make the car analogy.

      • I have a wide variety of hands tools in my mechanics “toolbox”. In order to solve a wide variety of problems or needs. Similarily a citzen should have a wide variety of firearms in that “toolbox” in order to solve a wide variety of constitutionally protected “problems” (in aggregate, quickly constitutes a libtard’s arsenal).

        for example
        12ga for birds
        12ga for home defense (for each member of the household)
        12ga for breaching
        20ga for wife/child birds
        20ga for wife/child home defense
        .410 for varmint control/training
        AR in 5.56 for home defense/”civil protection” (for each member of the household)
        AR or other in 7.62 for serious business
        AR in 22LR for training of offspring
        Bolt 22LR for marksmanship training of offspring
        45. for personal protection (until can get to a rifle) (for each member of the household)
        9mm for Concealed carry (for each member of the household)
        .380 for hideaway
        22LR automatic for training of offspring
        .50 or .338 for longrange varmint control (I wish)
        etc etc etc
        copious quantity of ammunition for each to meet expected need.

        That’s a minimum list so doesn’t even start on firearms as a “hobby”.

        I doesn’t even have a start on being equipped with hand tools for the garage without 3x socket sets, 2x combination wrench sets, torque wrench or two, dozne screwdrivers, adjustable spanners, vicegrips, several hammer, punches/chisels, files, saws, aircompressor, hyd jack and jack stands. Is that a “cache of tools”? A horde?

    • And we only learn the bad parts of our history in school.

      It’s by design. The leftists have succeeded in instilling apathy in a large number of people.

      If you don’t care about your country and/or dislike it then you won’t stand up for the rights enumerated in your country’s Constitution.

      • Because history is written by the victors. And rewritten periodically to fit the narrative. Compare a garage-sale history book with a current one.

  6. The exercise of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not a “hobby” and it is not negotiable.

  7. So we are guilty before proven innocent? Hmm, thats interesting…I’ve always thought it was the other way around.

    Also: Good morning TTAG

  8. FTA: “It concludes that women living in homes in which guns are present are at much higher risk of being shot — most often by a spouse or partner — than women in homes without gun access.”

    The same is true of kitchen knives. The risk of being stabbed in a home where there are knives is much higher than in a place with no knives.

    Its true of any object actually. People that live in homes with statues of Buddha are more likely to be brained with a Buddha statues than homes without Buddha statues.

      • It’s weird that they never point out that “boyfriends” and “baby’s daddies” are much more likely to be abusive than “husbands”.

        And does “pimp” count as an “intimate partner”?

      • Yes, indeed. That is a key fact that is never discussed. And the FBI statistics on violent attacks against women lump together husbands and boyfriends. There is such hostility to marriage that it cannot be revealed that boyfriends are much more likely to attack a woman. And boyfriends are even more likely to abuse a woman’s children.

    • Manimal,

      While your statements are true, it actually gets much more interesting. Mr. Martelle’s statement simply reveals that domestic violence causes more harm to women than armed home invaders at this time. What Mr. Martelle fails to tell anyone is why armed home invaders and the harm that they cause to women are relatively uncommon: many armed home invasions never happen because there are so many armed home owners!

      The “hot” home burglary (when homeowners are home) rate in the U.S. is something like 8%. The “hot” home burglary rate in England is around 50%. Why the difference? Would-be burglars in the U.S. know that just about any home they attempt to invade will have armed homeowners. That is bad for their business so they wait until a home is vacant to break in. On the other hand, would-be burglars in England know that just about every home they attempt to invade will have unarmed homeowners. That is good for their business so they often march right into a home even if the owners are home.

      There is another important dimension to this. A significant source of harm to women is domestic violence. Let me tell you something. As long as the woman lives in the same home as the violent man, the woman is totally vulnerable even if the man has no firearms. When the woman lives in the same home, the man could easily use a knife, hammer, or poison at any time to injure or kill the woman, especially when she is sleeping. Eliminating firearms will do nothing to reduce domestic violence to women.

      Just as firearms are not a magic talisman that guarantee that armed citizens will always prevail over violent criminals, eliminating firearms is no magic talisman that will eliminate domestic violence, suicides, nor homicides.

      • Indeed. In some ways we are victims of our own success. The fact that home invasions are relatively rare is used against us… even though a case can be (and has been, no doubt) made that the *reason* they are so rare is because of all the guns out there.

        Of course they are rare *even though* we hear about them a lot–a few incidents a week in a country of over 300 million people is practically nonexistent. They’ll point that out. Somehow, though, that exact same logic doesn’t apply to mass shootings in schools, even though they are much less common than even home invasions.

      • Said victim of domestic violence, with firearms not in the picture, and with blunt and edged objects out of the picture still face asphyxiation (suffocation/choking/smothering) and beatings completed with body parts (fists, feet. et al.) Both can be just as fatal as being stabbed, ran down, shot, or clubbed. Yes, it may take more “work” and “time” to be fatal on average, unless a pre-existing condition speeds things up, but still fatal.

  10. I had my Brother-in-law refer to his and my Rights were a Hobby one day. I about wanted to slap the liberal mindset right out of him. Had he not been on the other end of a phone, I probably would have.

    “The Right to Keep in Bear Arms, as a fundamental need for liberty, is no less important than the need to breathe is to Living.” Was my repsonse.

    He has not used the term again, atleast in my presence.

  11. I’ve heard from the people in the feminist movement that women are just as capable as a man in taking on the world; cool, level headed, able to multi task better then a man, better able to work together in a group. Run a business, be a fire fighter, cop, soldier, mother and have a career.

    But when it comes to a gun and self-defense; they say a woman completely disintegrates; emotionally unstable, angry, murderous and will shoot a man for simply looking in a way she feels is even slightly threatening; that the solution to being raped is not to pull a gun to defend themselves, but to pee, vomit, defecate on themselves to try stop the attacker.

    So it sounds to me that the feminists think a woman is capable as a man; except when it come to self-defense with a gun; then she should just completely debase and humiliate herself rather than carry a weapon for self-defense.

    Like I’ve said before; statist/liberal/ progressives really hate themselves; and as a consequence, everyone else. They have such contempt for all human beings that they can’t even imagine what a mature responsible adult actually looks like beyond being some pitiful and pathetic retch that needs to be controlled by themselves; the “intellectual elite”.

    • You are pretty much right. Of course,the leaders of that movement have a vested interested in women being victimized.

      The more broken women out there, the more the ranks of the shrill cat lady harpies will swell.

    • Thomas: correct the NAACP and NOW share a common trait. They have become professional victimhood proponents forced to extend their original charters into ever more extreme and unrealistic interpretations to maintain power and funding at the ultimate expense of those they pretend to serve.

  12. “Homicide, suicide, accidental shootings — is that an acceptable social cost for the rights of gun enthusiasts to pursue a hobby?”

    So. much. fail.

    Accidental deaths have been steadily falling forever, literally. Accidental deaths last year were around or less than 600. And drowning is a leading cause of death for children. Shall we ban buckets, pools, ponds, lakes, and rivers?

    Suicides? Anyone who is serious about suicide will succeed. Japan is as gun-free as any nation could ever be and their suicide rate is higher than the U.S.

    Homicides? Criminals by their very nature operate outside of the law. They illegally acquire money from banks, convenience stores, and individuals and they will illegally acquire firearms no matter what laws we pass.

    Apparently, Mr. Martelle is too cowardly to protect his own life or his family’s lives and seeks to put the rest of us at the same disadvantage that he chooses for his life. FLAME DELETED I am not willing to sacrifice our wives and daughters to rapists to assuage your fear of firearms. I am not willing to sacrifice our fellow citizens to violent criminals who are more than happy to kill someone for their designer athletic shoes.

    We are NOT lemmings. If civilian disarmament advocates like Mr. Martelle want to follow his kind over a cliff, that is his choice. When Mr. Martelle insists that I follow him over the cliff, he is the same as a violent criminal who kills someone to steal their shoes.

  15. I agree with his point that an armed society is a dangerous society. However, this danger is aimed at robbers, rapists, tyrants, and other such miscreants. That is the whole point of the second amendment.

    I just don’t get this fixation with assuming guns somehow making you more likely to kill somebody in a non defensive situation. Again, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. If you want somebody dead for no reason, you will find a way gun or no gun. As pointed out before, kitchen knives, budda statues, heck even your bare hands are pretty efficient at depriving others of life.

    • I just don’t get this fixation with assuming guns somehow making you more likely to kill somebody in a non defensive situation.
      For a complete explanation, I suggest that you turn on your TV for about three hours during “prime time.” The carnage and violence exceeds that found in any war zone. THAT is where people like Mr. Martelle get their education about guns. Fantasy, pure and simple.

  17. The following may be hard to understand for the rural American with a Glock on his hip from dawn to nightfall.

    In big cities , there are no four legged work animals, no livestock , and no outdoors to speak of. Just parking tickets, oppressive taxes, and traffic. The city resident wakes up, travels to work in a train or a bus with thousands of strangers, works in an anonymous building with thousands of different strangers, and repeats the process going home.A man alone in the field working with his hands knows he’s the final agent in his own self defense. The city dweller , on the flip side, knows their survival depends on the whims of strangers.If even half the folks on an El line decide to ‘go native’, the other half are in for an unpleasent time . It makes for a paranoid way of life, one few rural folks thankfully ever experience. In the country , one can leave their car running in the driveway in minus ten weather. In the city you cant trust anything. Not the government, not your neighbor, not even the pizza man.

    That paranoia creates the problems we see with cities passing dumb laws. “OMG, if everyone on the Red Line had a gun…The train would turn into a shooting gallery!!!Must ban guns on trains!!!”. City dweller paranoia.

    It also creates a byproduct- the intellectuals think the way out of this sense of collective fear is to ban everything, everywhere. If Montanans can’t get guns, the LA resident can go about their day unafraid of being shot- theoretically. Hence the authors tract about stats and safety.

    It also cycles back to why leftists always classify the RKBA as a trivial hobby. In the city, you can’t exactly walk out the front door Hickock45 style and start blasting.There’s no animals to hunt, and the police presence is oppressive and thick . As an aside when I returned to Chicago, I once counted six police cars from five different agencies on one 30 minute drive through three suburbs -on the SAME street!.A free man calls that a problem. A paranoid city dweller welcomes the Survelliance State.

    Not exactly an environment which makes it easy to justify owning a firearm to a paranoid resident. Since fear usually trumps logic in the uninitiated,here we stand.

    • Thank you for the explanation ST.

      While the urban dweller’s paradigm is somewhat logical, it is nevertheless WRONG. Look at Houston, Tampa, Philadelphia or any other large city where concealed carry is “shall issue” and prolific. How often do legally armed citizens go berserk and shoot up a bus, subway, or train? Answer: maybe once in all of those cities combined in the last 20 years.

      Civilian disarmament advocates always make the same hysterical claim: there will be blood in the streets! Because guns! And that never plays out. This is what we have to drill into the urban types who are stuck in that rut. Just ask them. If millions of legally armed citizens have NOT shot up the buses, subways, or trains in all the cities and states across the U.S., why would they be any different in the next urban area about to decriminalize armed citizens?

    • Awesome, ST. Thanks!

      This reminds of the ole r/K Selection stuff, too. The urban dweller sees safety in the herd. They think like prey. There are a lot of parallels.

    • I think you’ve left out a key issue with people living in large cities.

      They suffer from sensory overload. Because there are so many people, they never develop the skill set to determine a threat.

      People who grew up in more rural areas, subconsciously constantly scan for threats. You have to take care of yourself to some extent, you are responsible for the welfare of animals and other people.

      In a large city, they are both paranoid and oblivious. They simply lack the skill set to determine safe for unsafe. They don’t even have the ability to know the difference.

      It’s why on a subway, a person could take out a firearm, wave it around for minutes, nobody notice, then he walks up and shots someone. They tune out everything around them, so they support laws that limit the ability of others, so as to not have to worry about it.

      It’s why if I saw a person with an AR-15 walking down the street, the AR-15 wouldn’t bother me at all. I’d immediately key on how the person was reacting. Many people in the city can’t read people at all. Ironically, they lack any real street smarts.

      • I think you’re partially correct. The “gentrifiers/intellectuals” can definitely be classed as prey. This is because they have been coddled and swaddled since birth in a “cocoon of specialness” that never allows risk or fear to intrude and always reinforces how unique and wonderful they are. Their parents did this, their teachers did this, their co-workers and friends do this, and their spouses/partners do this. Constantly. These people tend to become nervous when they are alone; they have really never had to depend on themself for anything.

        On the other hand, “ghetto dwellers” have an entirely different outlook on life. They learn to identify threats at an early age so that they can survive to become older. They travel in groups when it’s advantageous, but are perfectly comfortable with being by themselves. Home is where they are at the moment. And they believe in their abilities. These folks are who the intellectuals fear, because they cannot understand living without a safety net.

        Think about it. THAT is how Scott Martelle’s Los Angeles is structured. And I’ll also bet the LA Times’ Management could be described as “ghetto dwellers.” Because being a “ghetto dweller” is a state of mind, not an accident of residence or location.

  18. See, scott’s the kind of guy that would check for a loaded gun by looking down the barrel & pulling the trigger. So therefore everyone else must be inept too, certainly no one could be more intelligent than he. Thousands of people in Wis. didn’t have a gun hobby, they’re all dead now.

  19. Did he try to directly contradict the great Robert Heinlein? Sacrilege! Blasphemy! Heresy! Boo, Hiss.

    • I find it interesting the Heinlein’s greatest impact on the popular culture may well be a single quote from an obscure, early novel (“Beyond This Horizon”, 1942), with his later novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” running a distant second. Personally, neither of these novels had nearly the impact on me growing up as did reading his “juvenile” novels that he wrote in the 1950’s (“Tunnel in the Sky”, “Starship Troopers”, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel”, etc.).

      Also, the quote in question is almost always truncated to bumper sticker length. The full quote reads:

      “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”

      In context, this is about a society in which dueling and the carrying of arms is a socially accepted way of maintaining civility in public (a man can wear distinctive clothing to show his unwillingness to duel, but this results in a lower social status). RKBA aside, the novel isn’t nearly as Libertarian-leaning as most of his later works.

      • Beyond this Horizon is downright Keynesian if not socialist, true.

        And the quote does make a lot more sense in the context of a society where people were able and willing to duel over rudeness. In our actual society of course we can be put in jail for killing someone just for being a raging jerk. In fact the armed among us are often expected to show *more* restraint dealing with them than would be expected of an unarmed person.

      • Personally, I think Heinlein’s greatest contribution (though too often overlooked) is the idea of Rational Anarchy from “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”

        That, too, is a highly quotable book, with some real zingers on the topic of freedom and taxation.

        The ending kind of depressed me, though; all they fought for just to see history repeat itself. This is much like the Great American Experiment in my observation.

        Whatever your favorite, Heinlein merits deep study.

        • The ending kind of depressed me, though; all they fought for just to see history repeat itself.

          For what it’s worth, the future of Luna (and the rest of the Solar System) is shown in his earlier novel, “The Rolling Stones”…and it’s not horrible by any means. It’s just not a Libertopia.

        • Cool. That’s one I have not read. I’ll have to check it out.

          Thanks.

          Though…not to go all “book club” here, but what (if anything) does it say that a later novel provided the darker ending? Hm. Maybe just reading too much into it. 😉

        • @Hal

          Even further in the future of the Loonies is “Cat Who Walks Through Walls,” It’s filled with more political commentary on the changes than is Rolling Stones

      • Well, that is the quote (incomplete as those of us who have read him know) that is most recognizable to the average person who has had little to no exposure to Heinlein’s works. It also seems to be the one that is most often quoted on TTAG. I think some of his best quotes can be attributed to the character Lazarus Long.

        I haven’t read every single one of his books, but I totally agree with all of the above comments. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is fantastic. Time Enough for Love is also one of my favorites.

        +1 to JR, Heinlein definitely merits deep study. He is one of the few SF writers whose stories I’m willing to read more than once.

        • “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long” is a compendium of quotes by Heinlein as attributed to his character Lazarus Long. It is quite complete, however, it uses the “bumper sticker” version of the “Armed society is a polite society” quote. The full paragraph quote from “Beyond This Horizon” is:

          “Well, in the first place, an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is the sine qua non of civilization. That’s a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things that kill off the weak and stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It’s a good thing.”

          By the way, Heinlein was an inveterate student and loved to attend university classes in order to expand his knowledge base for his speculative fiction. Early in his career he took some questionable economics theory classes and Heinlein was briefly taken in by the utopian concepts promoted by his professor. These show up strongly in his early works such as “For We the Living” and “Beyond This Horizon.”

          As for “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” I think if you look up the definition of anarchy, as I posted in a comment yesterday, you will see that if there is in fact such a thing as “rational anarchy” it is not what was being proposed or practiced on Luna. The whole point of the story was to win their liberty from their fascist masters on Earth and to create their own government. Anarchy is NOT liberty, it is license (look that up too). I think the intended end goal was more Libertarian than Anarchist.

        • Indeed. Heinlein is fantastic reading for the most part (I found some of the earlier stuff to be so so). If I am not mistaken though, in either “Methuselah’s Children or “Time Enough for Love” Lazarus Long at one point makes the same statement. It’s been a little while since I read either. I never got around to reading “The Notebooks” I figured that it was just a list of quotes attributed to the character, and if you’ve read “Time Enough for Love” They pretty much already do that.

          Anyways, it is heartening to know that so many of the regulars here are fans. My father turned me on to his books when I was a teenager and I’ve always had a soft spot for Heinlein. I just wish Amazon would hurry up and Kindle-ize some more of his stuff.

        • Cliff H, I don’t equate Heinlein’s notion of “Rational Anarchy” with general anarchy at all. Not even a little bit.

          He stated the point quite clearly: In a system of laws, freewill (to obey or disobey) those laws exists. A man’s good, moral behavior comes from his heart, not the laws. Likewise evil.

          I think this shows our modern legal system, the parts of it built around attempts to legislate behavior, for the lie that it is. It is an extension of the idea of “consent of the governed.”

          “Rational Anarchy” is poorly named. For those not familiar with the book and the context in which the term is used, it has nothing to do with a system of “no government.” Quite the contrary, it is a statement of a philosophy built around personal morality no matter what the rules of government and laws say.

  20. From the article… “According to the study, there is a pronounced risk for a woman being the victim of a firearm homicide if she lives in a home in which guns are present.” What the hell is a pronounced risk? Do you say it differently? ie Riske?

  21. Still waiting one of the guns i own to work up the cojones and take a shot at me, they dont seem very much inclined, contrary to their reputation as evil s.o.b.s

  23. “The reality is, an armed society is a dangerous society — to itself, above all others. Homicide, suicide, accidental shootings — is that an acceptable social cost for the rights of gun enthusiasts to pursue a hobby?”

    It isn’t acceptable, but neither is oppression, corruption, and fear mongering. Ask all the other people in other countries that can’t persue this hobby if all these things still happen.

  24. Amazing how ignorance and self-righteousness go hand in hand with these people. He begins a sentence with “The reality is…” and then presents his opinion, devoid of any factual support. Typical.

  25. I’ll take my chances with having guns in the house. Properly secured of course. And when my children get old enough they will be going to the range with dad

  26. Another one of those studies where they draft a conclusion and then back into the data :D. I love this garbage because the back into data doesn’t even lead to the conclusion they already arrived at. My personal favorite was the one that linked gun ownership to suicide and then left the BEAUTIFUL footnote of “We had no data to find each states level of gun ownership SO WE TIED THE SUICIDE LEVEL TO THE LEVEL OF GUN OWNERSHIP.” I swear to god they just do this crap so that liberal news sites can post “studies” saying they’re right. There could be pencil drawings of shetland ponies on the inside of the study and it wouldn’t matter.

  27. I’ve never met a liberal who understood the basic concepts of accounting. In every thing there is a debit side, a credit side and a balance. Liberals ALWAYS cherry pick either the debit or the credit side, whichever suits their argument, and ignore the other two columns. Thousands of people have died from carbon monoxide poisoning and gas leaks, yet modern furnaces are far safer and healthier than fireplaces. Thousands of people die every year in car accidents, but nobody is arguing that we should go back to riding horses. In these cases the credit side overwhelmingly outweighs the debit side.

    But liberals are constantly touting (for example) that taking money from one person and giving it to another person so that the second person doesn’t have to work anymore as ‘good for the economy’. It should be obvious that the only thing you’re accomplishing is taking one man’s labor out of the GDP, but if you ignore the debit side of the column you can go around saying that now this man will buy food and pay rent, etc. The man would have done all those things if he simply held down a job, and then the first guy would still have his money to spend or invest. Confront a liberal with this and you might as well be talking Swahili.

    ‘…is that an acceptable social cost for the rights of gun enthusiasts to pursue a hobby?’ This guy assumes that NOBODY has ever used a firearm in self defense. There is no credit column here. There is no balance column. I hope for his sake he doesn’t do his own taxes.

  28. There are fundamental problem with the studies that show guns in the house are dangerous (a flaw that I think was intentional).

    Most of the studies do not differentiate between homes in which there are felons and ongoing criminal activity and homes in which there are the rest of us. Think the atmosphere of a crack house and my home in suburbia are the same? Think it might be worthwhile to control for that in an objective study?

    They also like to “stretch” the definition of children. Think about what the data looks like if you compare the firearm injury rate if you define “child” up to age 16 or you stretch it to 20 and then don’t control for environment.

    Well, don’t imagine, play with the numbers yourself. CDC has a website, WISQARS, which lets you examine their data almost any way you want (http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html).

    Useful when you are discussing “issues” with friends. Often good for a “Wow” or two.

    • The fundamental flaw is the statistics he quote are just plain made up lies.. Once you remove these, the basis for his arguments is removed.

    • You make a good point. Maybe the numbers for gun crime and child murder would fit the narrative better if we just expanded the definition of “child” to include everyone who has not retired.

      • Hahahahahahaha!

        Er, actually, our entitlement programs already treat everyone as a child from birth to death, so classifying every murder as a child murder would only reflect the growing reality…

    • Didn’t they used to just erase the whole message? I liked that system more. It’s a little embarrassing seeing the comments section pock-marked with a bunch of “Comment moderated” messages, because that might as well say “Shh! Don’t say that or else Shannon Watts will get mad!”

      If you’re so worried about upsetting her, why not go full Orwell and remove the evidence that anything offensive was ever even said?

        • I was referring to TTAG’s justification for the new stringent policy, where the wonderful Ms. Watts cherry-picked some choice remarks here and published them in an article nobody read, which freaked out TTAG’s head honchos even though in the absence of such comments the lovely, intelligent and pleasantly fresh-breathed Mizz Watts would have happily made something up to smear us anyway.

          So when you see them making lofty statements about taking the high road or improving the quality of discourse, know that what they’re really doing is desperately trying not to piss her off again.

  31. You mean a left leaning journalist in LA wants me to give up my guns, be still my beating heart.

  32. Why don’t try telling that to the woman in Detroit when she had 3 guys try to break into her home and all she had was a Hi Point Carbine to protect her and her children that it’s a romanticized narrative.

  33. Martelle is the typical baby boomer American “progressive,” someone who has already reached a conclusion before asking any questions, never mind receiving answers.

    These people have the intellectual heft of a piece of balsa wood.

  34. Well no surprise given the panic induced on the left by the 9th Courts decision….we will start to see these “reasonable” seeming or slightly superior viewpoints flated by non-threatening teddy bears and various other “urban cool” roll models for the Hollywood set…like pjboy on Obamacare.
    Expect to see coordination in the StateRunMedia in the linkage and navel gazing on same and then “horrified” reaction when someone at some gunsite dares to make a comment they can seize upon as proof…

    We need to start a list of these ridiculous appeals….
    1. gun shooting is a hobby thus not 2a… with a fact or two and a choice pithy comment based on truth…that mocks them for their illogic…not ad hominems.

    Then we’ll see

    • a pattern of whose on the ant 2A journolist as thr Talking Points emerge and are fluffed by others…

      The LA Slimes has the same problem as NYT: independent news readers get their schtick and are taking their eyeballs and consumer buyng power and ad dollars that follow them…elsewhere…as Dyspeptic and others so aptly pointed out on Pierced Organs firing….

      tell the truth and Mock Them! for their lies and agitprop.

      • I agree that we should laugh at them, to not do that is to legitimize their views. We are trying to win the fence sitters & I don’t think we are going to do that by propping up the likes of shannon.

  35. PS: we get that some feel butthurt for being singled out or stepping over some imaginary line of good vs bad taste. And forgetting that feelings aren’t facts…

    But at some point one hopes that you will be able to Move On! It would be a typical cheap proglibtard troll trick to keep trying to inflame this old news into something OT to distract from a bigger point like in the subject at hand rather than ones own ego…

  36. What is it with feminists, and you know that this grown man wearing short pants will proudly declare that he is a feminist, and a paternalist state? They are completely blind to the fact that preaching that women need the government involved in their lives is exactly the same as believing that they need to stay in the kitchen.

    • I completely agree with the sentiment, but the analogy is not quite correct.

      A woman who takes care of a household is independent in a way that few are today. She runs the household and, unlike her husband, does not report to some corporate or government overseer.

      A woman who relies on the government to protect her and support her is dependent more than independent, and, furthermore, is likely not to have the strong connections to family that the homemaker has.

      • Not gonna lie. I wasn’t completely happy with the analogy either, but as long as i got my point across i suppose.

  37. According to “men” like this, rapists and home invaders have the moral high ground and defenders are the problem. Crazy? No. Just another emasculated pseudo-man lecturing people on how to be as defenseless and morally superior as he is.

  38. What has to happen to the human mind for it to cling so dearly to falsehoods and assumptions? The romanticized notion that this nation has a problem with is the notion that government restrictions on peoples behavior, and dependence on government to provide for the people is healthy for society.

    Just another pile of ignorance produced by a mind damaged by progressive cognitive dissonance. A pure product of ignoring the number of successful defensive gun uses, many of which actually negate the need for violence purely because a firearm was present.

    I take comfort in the knowledge that they seem to be losing, but the fact that a human mind can function that way will always worry me.

  39. Scott, I would like to commend you on your most studious observation. You are correct. It is more than acceptable.

  40. My wife’s ex was a violent, abusive douchebag. Somehow, he didn’t need a gun to leave her in terror. It took years to deal with some of the issues he inflicted on her.

    Sometime after the restraining order against him expired, he was discovered to be stalking her. She was extremely frightened, so I tracked him down for a polite chat. This convinced him that in the future such behavior would have serious consequences. There was no need for me to resort to violence once he understood that he would not like the results of any attempt to intimidate either of us.

    Anyone who thinks women deal better with abuse when they are disarmed has never lived in an abusive relationship.

  42. So there were no armed societies, homicides, suicides, accidental deaths, or other atrocities before guns were invented? Then yes, by all means, let’s get rid of these terrible guns! Oh, what’s that you say? Humans have been killing and raping each other since the dawn of our species? Well, maybe it’s not the guns, then…

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