“When the NRA sells T-shirts depicting a rifle-wielding eagle above the slogan ‘Because you can’t fist fight tyranny,’ the implication is that you can fight tyranny (however you perceive it) with guns. It should be no surprise that someone would shoot democratically elected representatives when we’ve been told for decades that that’s the patriotic redress to political grievances.” – Matt Valentine, University of Texas Lecturer in How the NRA conquered Washington and abandoned gun owners like me [via washingtonpost.com]

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56 COMMENTS

  1. Sorry. I refuse to he held responsible for someone’s deliberate misinterpretations.

    • Deliberate misinterpretations? I’m not aware of this guy ever associating with the NRA, and his political affiliations should have him opposed to any influences by the NRA

      And we shouldn’t ignore that political assainations by these types of people and to fight tyranny pre dates the NRA and the invention of the gun itself.

      This comment is blinding ignorance at its finest

      • I don’t know whether or not Marcus was referring to the shooter. He could have been referring to Matt Valentine’s deliberate misinterpretation.

    • No, its the fault of NRA-1, a 747-400 air-dropping ‘evil guns’ at night into the hands of prohibited people all throughout the land…

  3. Right. Because nobody ever took up arms in anger or to make a political point in the whole history of humanity before 1871.

    It’s not like hauling off and clocking an asshole for being an asshole is natural across all levels of life since the dawn of time itself or anything. It’s all the NRA’s fault.

  6. I googled Matt Valentine and ‘gun control’. Gun Control is one of his favorite topics for the columns he pens for all sorts of liberal rags. He’s even a regular contributer to Salon. You know THE Salon that published an article that was Pro Pedophilia. Seriously!
    Despite the headline that he was a gun owner, not once did he say what kind of gun(s) or specific gun related activiites he kept them for. The best he could do was going to the gun range to target practice. Renting a gun at the range a few times a year doesn’t really make one a gun owner.

  7. Yeah, well freedom’s a bitch. How about we take the entire Bill of Rights seriously and punish ruthlessly those who transgress? Nah, that entire “freedom” thing and personal responsibility concept is anathema to leftist.

    • “Yeah, well freedom’s a bitch.”
      *Rewind 226 years*
      “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”

      You sir, have modernized the essence of Jefferson. Perhaps a bit too concise, but props for making me chuckle at the comparison.

  8. Fighting tyranny with guns is easier than fighting it without!

    More twisted logic on display here, all of the incitement to resist democratically elected authority (including violently), has come from the left. This comes from the very top and has been repeated by their propaganda arm (the media).

    Anyway, I’m sure the good professor is a FUDD (‘the NRA moved away from gun owners like me’). What he fails to understand is that if the NRA and all of the other pro 2A organizations didn’t focus on the meaning of the 2A (which is to put power into the hands of the people), then over time, as sure as eggs are eggs, the government would be removing all arms, including their trust bolt action deer rifles!

  9. That’s why you saw so many NRA shirts at all those Bernie rallies.

    • These Progressive Liberal fvcks have a million political “organizations”. Gun owners have one gorilla and some smaller ones. These fvcks blame everything on the NRA. Liberalism, a true mental disorder.

      • Leftist regimes have to have a boogie man otherwise the people won’t give them the control they want if everything is going along just great. They want gun control so they have to demonize someone. They’d like to (and sometimes do) demonize all of us, but there’s just too many of us. They can’t convince 55% of the people that the other 45% are evil, so the NRA is their primary boogie man.

  10. I don’t think the NRA has ever tried to represent people like Mr. Valentine. They represent “normal” gun owners who think rationally.

  11. When anti-2A people go on assassination sprees, while pro-2A do not, I suspect My Funny Valentine there is missing some “nuance.”

    To start, the anti’s seem more soft-headed and suggestible. Maybe he meant “Don’t discuss subtle distinctions with the simple-minded?” That seems a tad judgmental, does it not?

    • “Don’t discuss subtle distinctions with the simple-minded?”

      It may be judgmental, but as far as assumptions are concerned this is pretty sound advice.

  12. Funny (as in weird.)

    I blame the guy who made a list, tracked them down, pointed his gun, and pulled the trigger. Repeatedly. While moving to close with people who ran, n get better angles to shoot along. Until he was stopped by force. Force enough to put him down.

  13. I don’t recall anyone in this incident being upgraded to “serious” condition after being flailed with a t-shirt.

    Maybe I missed something in the doctor’s press briefing.

  14. Well, with logic like that, No Valentine there just demonstrated why he’ll never be in charge of anything people care about.

  15. That is as intelligent statement as saying I blame Disney World for the pirate guns they cause all this trouble. Absolutely ridiculous but what else would you expect from an anti Gunner.

  16. WaPo has zero proof the shooter ever listened to a word the NRA has said. If he had they would have found investment gold and three pocket copies of the Constitution on him

  17. Why blame the left’s constant villianization of anyone who disagrees with them when you can blame people you disagree with? Maybe violent rhetoric has consequences when your base is so mentally unstable?

  18. /meta

    Looking at the blackboard, Not Anybody’s Valentine there has some well-crafted sound bites, labels and a simple structure.

    They’re memes, built to propagate. (Which is why they’ve taken over his soft brain.)

    Dancing with ourselves among the like-minded is refreshing. Everyone needs to recharge. BUT maybe we can look to craft responses: pithy, memorable, hard to refute. We’re happy to have actual debates with facts n reasoning. BUT The Meme War is its own front, too.

    I’m thinking maybe we add to the portfolio. Facts n reasoning. Study your Akynsku (They certainly have.) Meme up the zeitgeist, too.

    For example, when Valentine’s Present there says “castle doctrine” (on the board in the pic), respond with something like “The radical notion that your place is more yours than anybody else’s.” Never (never, never, never) accept their framing, or their terminology.

    • A gun safety advocacy group that doesn’t advocate guns, safety, or gun safety, so an advocacy group.

      Gun Free Zones = The Mass Shooter Loophole.

    • Yep. The main reason I haven’t referred to a leftist as “liberal” for quite some time. Now, the only problem with planting quick pithy phrases is that, if they are at all clever and effective, one tends to get the post deleted on most pages, assuming comments are allowed in the first place. If you are consistently effective, they’ll ban you.

      Of course, we should still try, even if there is a thick thumb on the scales in the marketplace of ideas.

        • Not a phrase (and not original with me), but this has gotten more of my posts deleted than any other thought:

          Fact 1: Police are not responsible for protecting you (consistent court ruling)

          Fact 2: Even if they were, they don’t have the resources

          Thus: Anyone who insists that you should depend on police is either stupid or a liar. Could be both, has to be at least one.

  20. So he’s trying to say that because of a t-shirt people were shot by a radical liberal? That’s like saying a Muslim would attack people over a French cartoon drawing.

    Please, if any rhetoric is responsible for creating the atmosphere in which this nut case thought it okay to shoot people it’s the ones literally calling for violence, resistance, blood and upheaval because the democratic process didn’t go their way. Ultimately however this comes down to a sick individual that could have had 100 reasons or none at all.

  21. Well, I know it’s now politically correct…In an Orwellian kind of way…To avoid “Hate-speach”. Even some notable characters from Texas are say’en their turning the other cheek…But, me….I only have one thing to say to an Anti-American, Anti-Freedom Leftist Lecturer…”Go F#!k Yourself !!!”

  22. I didn’t realize that not taking other people’s money to pay for liberal’s pet causes constituted ‘tyranny’. Who knew that the NRA espoused murdering people in cold blood for the crime of protecting their constituents from being robbed by their own government to support foreign invaders (‘migrants’) and freeloaders (‘the disadvantaged’)?

    • Yep, the vast conspiracy of people plotting to let you keep more of your own money so you can make your own financial decisions, let you keep your personal arms, let you live how you want as best you can, and basically leave you the hell alone. Filthy fascists.

  23. One of them outed themselves very recently, when he admitted the problem was “There are too many guns on the street.”

    A-ha! Now we are getting somewhere!

    Exactly how many guns are too many? How do you propose those guns to be removed?

    I wait with baited breath for their reply…

    • Yeah… I’ve walked a lot of miles looking for these guns just lying on the streets that leftists insist that the gods of fortune have seen fit to cast among us and I have yet to find one.

      I’m starting to think that these people may be full of it. /;-)

  24. Does he blame Piggly Wiggly supermarkets cause he;s fat too? Consider being fat kills more people then weapons.

  25. I blame Bernie. And the state of Illinois for not taking away the shooter’s FOID. And the the Belleville bastard was too short…and his momma for having him?

  26. Taxation is theft and theft is violence. Socialism by default is a political theory that relies on large amounts of taxation to operate so it is not surprising that the left is becoming the new violent wing in American politics. All these little goodies that the socialist say they want to hand out can only be created through the theft, suppression, and eventual violence against anyone that opposes the State.

  27. Well the principle has held true. I imagine that without the second amendment, many of us wouldn’t be alive today. And those unfortunate enough to still be alive would be suffering under a lot worse than the progressives can dish out.
    So is he saying that what the VA shooter did was a successful act against tyranny?
    Well he was killed so I call that a success.

  29. Thanks, Valentine, for underscoring the point that crazy people should not own guns. Turn in yours immediately or prepare to be shot by the G you’re brown-nosing.

  31. What a moron! The Left and their violent rhetoric and riots are what caused a Bernie Sanders loon to create a Republican hit list!

  33. Seems as if the left is in full blown “blame the victim” mode. It is the congressman’s fault that he was shot because he is a Republican. It is the NRA’s fault because they promote gun ownership and resistance to tyranny. It is the conservatives fault that the Antifa shut down free speech in Berkeley and Portland. And it is his own fault and “white privilege” that a 22 year old college student got a death sentence for trying to “steal” a propaganda poster: https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/876907936194473984/photo/1

    • A stupid adult went to a country well-known for locking it’s own citizens up for disagreeing with the boss, not smiling enough at rallies, complaining about being hungry, or being disloyal. That openly hates America.

      Acting like an immature 12 year old, he attempted to steal a propaganda poster, so he could Instagram his badassery ( YT, FB, whatever). ‘Cuz when you’re doing it for the lulz (or internet fame) the rules and laws of dictatorships magically don’t apply.

      If there is any causality here it’s bad parenting, making really stupid choices, and the corrosive effects of social media on the simple-minded. I feel a little bad for his family, but the guy would have eventually died petting a bear for a selfie.

  34. This is going to be an unpopular thing to say, but he has a point there. The NRA has kept alive the message that, when the government goes too far and becomes tyrannical, that the people have a duty to oppose that government, and that the second amendment is essential in doing so.

    Now… has the government gone that far? Is Trump honestly as tyrranical as Hodgkinson thought that he was? Are the GOP congressmembers actually as evil as portrayed by politicians like Elizabeth Warren, or talking heads like Jimmy Kimmel, or has-beens like Kathy Griffin?

    Does that make the shooting the NRA’s fault? No. Does it make it Warren’s/Kimmel’s/Griffin’s faults? No. Did the professor reach way too far in an attempt to demonize a group he disagrees with? Yes.

    But there is something there. The question is whether the “something” in question is actually a bad thing.

    • “Does that make the shooting the NRA’s fault? No. Does it make it Warren’s/Kimmel’s/Griffin’s faults? No.” Excellent points (especially the quoted ones).

      I know he was exposed much more to the second type than he was to the first. If speech did indeed cause the shooter to act, then it would have been the second group to do it. If speech causing his actions equates to fault on the speaker, then it would be the second group who was at fault.

      The point being that Matt Valentine lives in a glass house with a few holes in it.

  35. Fight back in every way possible – Bernie Sanders
    The quote was made post-shooting, but this kind of rhetoric from the shooter’s side is more influential than a shirt from the opposition that there’s no evidence the shooter ever saw.

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