(courtesy theusconstitution.org)

“America is adrift on a sea of preventable misery caused by gunfire. It is the poisoned water that surrounds all of us. Though occasionally tossed by the wave of a mass shooting, the Sirens of the gun lobby sing in our ears, ‘There’s nothing you can do’ as the faces of thousands of gunshot victims float past our gaze without a ripple. Enough. We must shake ourselves out of this national trance of resignation to slaughter. Next year’s children stand on the shore, and the tide is coming in.” – Former Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence staffer Doug Pennington (currently at The Constitutional Accountability Center) in ‘What Will It Take to Get Americans to Care About Our Shooting Epidemic?’ [via politico.com]

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88 COMMENTS

  1. “America is adrift on a sea of preventable misery caused by gunfire” as far as I know gunfire is only caused when a human depresses the trigger; the antis are so intent on completely ignoring all facts even the most basic principle that a gun is AN INANIMATE OBJECT!

  2. I agree. The Government should pass laws that all law abiding citizens take firearm training classes (the Government makes us now buy insurance, no different). After completing the safety class in gun training, all persons who are law abiding should be required to be armed while in public.

    That kind of law would put a quick end to the mass shootings. Don’t tread on me because of a few who commit crimes. In other words: Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

    • Or, realistically, schools could actually train children in gun safety. They already have health classes, sex-ed, driver’s ed, home-ec and shop. Why not a gun safety class?

      • In Phys-Ed, they taught us how to throw a javelin, discus, and shot put. Why not how to shoot a gun?

        • The Red Chinese start training their children how to fight and shoot from the time they are kindergarden age. I have seen some photos of them in their PLA uniforms packing plastic heat AKM’s and they are so cute! They won’t be when they are in their teens and up going to fight the running dog Amerikans…

    • It is as wrong to require people to carry as it is to require them not to carry. Sorry, but I cannot go with your suggestion. If you made it seriously (as opposed to just trying to make the very legitimate point that if most people were armed it would end these shootings), you are just as much of a tinpot tyrant as they are.

      • Agreed. The last thing we need is more laws. In fact, if history is a guide, more laws = more lawlessness.

      • I actually looked into that out of sheer morbid curiosity to discover that, no, they are not.

  3. “What Will It Take to Get Americans to Care About Our Shooting Epidemic?” What kind of epidemic decreases year after year?

    • First we have to find the shooting “epidemic.” It’s sort of like the polio “epidemic” in that way.

      • Well, there were significant numbers of polio victims; “gun violence,” not so much. Vaccination essentially wiped it out. This is why I don’t understand why people resist vaccination, unless the vaccines have suddenly become poison or turned into some kind of Mr. Hyde potion or something. Or do they just believe that they have?

        And the vaccine for “gun violence” is more armed law-abiding citizens.

  4. I think they’re right. We need to arm those children now, before it’s too late!

    • The only thing that can stop the bullet murder ocean is another ocean, filled with kids and guns!

  5. More importantly, violent crime has a more than 50% reduction in the last twenty years while the population has expanded by more than 25%.

    The FBI’s yearly Uniform Crime Report confirms that 75% of the shootings in America are performed by thugs and criminals. Not lawfully armed citizens, but criminals shooting other criminals or missing and hitting innocent bystanders.

    The best way to stop this is to have a lawfully armed citizen (and even better yet a group of lawfully armed citizens) turn and open fire whenever one of these events happens.

    Reacting with emotional knee jerk liberalism instead of coldly logical thinking only prolongs the agony.

    • FAR better we find out whom is actually responsible for creating and directing these events to begin with and take them down hard. Problem solved.
      Bear in mind none of these mass shootings happened prior to 1967 and the Texas Tower Sniper.

  8. “We need a whole system of laws that work together to cut the obscene number of dead and wounded in half”

    Isn’t that exactly what’s happened over the last 25 years or so?

    • Over the last 50 I believe the murder rate has been cut in half. We need to stay the course as far as Im concerned. What ever we are doing, we need to keep doing it. Crime levels were I live in LA are down to near where they were when my dad was a kid here and it shows. I mean I can see a huge difference city wide from the bad bad old days of the riots.

      I doubt LA’s retarded gun policies have anything to do with it.

      I suspect guns and gun laws have almost no effect except in in extreme cases and on the margins. We know more guns doesn’t equal more crime. That is fact. Not even the most cynical gun grabber on the bloomberg payroll can or do dispute it. Not directly.

      Do more guns equal less crime? I don’t think so.

        • I doubt the explosion of gun sales and carry permit holders explains the dramatic drop in crime over the last couple decades. Perhaps on the margins like I said earlier, but something else is going on.

          • “I doubt the explosion of gun sales and carry permit holders explains the dramatic drop in crime over the last couple decades. Perhaps on the margins like I said earlier, but something else is going on.”

            Well, Mr. Lott backs up his hypothesis with facts and figures. What’s your hypothesis, and what’s it based on?

        • As much as I’d like to believe Lott, his work has been effectively discredited – as I’m sure you’ve seen.

          • Yes, it’s true, one out of at least 29 peer reviews, specifically just “one” done by liberal professor John Donohue, showed any negative correlation. The problem is that Donohue refuses to allow any debate to take place against Lott and yet he continues to spew his twisted liberal vitriol.

      • That’s not to say that restoring the peoples natural right to self defense doesn’t have impact, and a huge impact on an individual. But its just one factor. Crime is down across the board. Even in a gun free utopia like Los Angeles. Would allowing people to exercise their right to bear arms lower it even further? I hope we get to find out.

        • Ask the people who live down in Mexico, I know a bunch of them. They finally got fed up with the Cartels and the Federalis and quit obeying the “laws” and armed themselves to protect their families.

  10. Goebbels would be proud. The government control crowd and their media mouthpieces have learned their propaganda lessons well. It used to make me angry when I read propaganda nonsense like this, but now I just find it amusing. Share and debunk this junk !

    • I dunno, considering how much actual legislative success they have had lately, and also considering the rhetorical quality of their responses, Goebbels might just sneer contemptuously and spit, “Amateurs…”

    • I think Goebbels said something to the effect that the media is a keyboard on which we play. The fascist propaganda above is a masterpiece of manipulation.

      • When George Orwell first submitted his classic manuscript to the publisher it was titled “1948”; because he wanted to show that the “future” control mechanism was already in place and functioning. The publisher was uncomfortable with that, and changed it to 1984.

  11. Wow those are some serious metaphors…methinks the king does proclimate. Shame they describe a bunch of things that are already illegal (murder, negligent discharges) performed with a legal object.

    These guys would have more cred if they talked more about violence and not just gun violence.

    They have nearly as much conspiracy paranoia of the gun lobby as the tin foilers do over the govt.

  12. What Will It Take to Get Americans to Care About Our Shooting Epidemic?

    As per the usual proggie playbook the very title insults those who disagree with his planned solution. Disagree with my freedom-crushing plan to solve Problem X [which people like me probably created in the first place]? Well you just don’t care then, do you?

    Fact of the matter is I am pretty sure 99% of the readers of TTAG do care. Those of us readers who are POTG have a different solution to the problem in mind, one whose effectiveness is demonstrated by the fact that the proggies have to define success away in order to deny it. (A school shooting that is stopped is defined away by statistics as not a school shooting after all.) It’s also hard to point out the ones that didn’t happen at all due to deterrence, of course. They are the dog that didn’t bark.

  14. You can say this for Dougie, he knows how to work a metaphor to death.

    The quality of the propaganda generated by the civilian disarmament complex is rapidly deteriorating. They do not appear to even be trying to maintain a semblance of plausibility in their daily servings of distortions and fabrications. Instead, they insulate themselves in sealed echo chambers where no dissenting voices are allowed. I blame people like Mr. Farago who insist on dismantling their efforts using underhanded tactics like printing factual, truthful statements.

  15. “There’s nothing you can do’ as the faces of thousands of gunshot victims float past our gaze without a ripple. Enough. We must shake ourselves out of this national trance of resignation to slaughter. Next year’s children stand on the shore, and the tide is coming in.”

    Have mercy! He is laying on the melodrama thick in this one…

    It’s like a cheesy, daytime soap opera.

    • Do you think it is an accident that math education in the US public schools is a laughable farce?

      Math is a weapon. It is used to manipulate.

      Data analysis, critical thinking and logical thought are (attempted to be) tightly guarded secrets lest ‘the masses’ see data and actually understand it.

      It bothers me less that “they” lie about the statistics and data than it bothers me how many people believe the manipulated presentations…without question.

      Cue reminder of Shannon’s “guns are not used in SD” and Bloomberg’s 70+ school shootings as recent examples.

  18. Really sad that y’all missed an important aspect of this blurb…

    *hint* look at where he works, and then realize just how messed up our society truly is…

    • Good grief, look at the cases they take and the stance they take on “Constitutional” issues.

      Statism on display.

      For extra fun, read the “re-defining Federalism” blurb.

  19. Odes are OK I guess. But the stuff the anti’s say is just the same old regurgitated stuff. I don’t know, it just lacks a certain panache. Now, a haiku – now that is something that could make an anti-gun diatribe fun again, if only for a little while.

  20. America is adrift on a sea of preventable misery caused by statist gun grabbers.

    Fixed it for them.

  21. “Doug is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a degree in linguistics (high honors).”
    And here I thought that gem had been penned by a 15 year old Goth chick.

    • The Progressive Mindset on display: get your way no matter what you have to say to get it.

      Interesting that a degree in Linguistics gives him authority (in their minds, anyway) to comment on matters of social theory, criminology statistics and historical legal matters, but a terminal degree in a hard science somehow disqualifies me from discussing matters of ‘data analysis’ in the Climate Change debate because I’m not a “climatologist” (which is nothing but a composite of several of the hard sciences).

      Double standards are always fun, and especially so if they are ridiculous in the nature of their very premise.

    • Twenty seven boxes of Nato Spec 9mm and seven boxes of blazer brass–which I would have skipped if I had known I was going to trip over that NATO spec less than an hour later.

  23. “Constitutional Accountability Center.”

    Is that the new meme? To rephrase the anti debate in terms of Constitutional Accountability? It’s been happening a lot lately in some of these QotD posts.

    CAC was founded in 2008, so their think tank is does not have a lot of depth.

    Smacks of an Alinsky-esque tactic to steal the language…we say things like “Constitutional Carry” and suchlike, and now this CAC pops up on the board with drivel like this.

    It can’t be coincidence.

  24. You won’t see this on state run media.
    What will it take to get America to stop feral black yoots from attacking innocent white people at will? Disarming whites (and law abiding blacks) will not stop the insane racial hate crimes. This is not a racist statement. Just a fact.

  25. Americans like their constitution, so let’s put “Constitutional” in the name of our anti-2nd amendment organization. We picked it up from that guide, “How to make enemies and not influence anybody”.

  26. Mr. Pennington so accurately represents the panty-wetting responses of, not just the left, but irresponsible voters in general, too many of whom just happen to be on the left. In his asinine statement. “America is adrift on a sea of preventable misery caused by gunfire,” he fails to address the intentional disenfranchisement of US voters by secure and well placed political elites, who have made a career of keeping the “have-nots” in their proper station in life by dashing the hopes of many of ever realizing the American Dream.

    Yes, the misery is preventable, but not for the reasons Pennington suggests. Mr. Pennington takes the typically allopathic approach to the problem by waiting for the wound to fester and threaten the life of the host, before even considering any methods at prevention in the first place. And then, once he is made aware of the problem, he chooses the quick way out, a pill, if you will, to hopefully erase the months and years of ignorance and abuse that created the mess. If nothing else, it is flat out irresponsible.

    Mr. Pennington also fails to recognize the contribution by the parasitic bankers and their corruptive influence on all levels of our governmental system. So, when these shooters, our societal “miners’ canaries”, finally show us that the system is failing not only them but everyone, it’s like the mine owners blaming the pile of canary carcasses on the birds’ inferior health instead of addressing why the company executives had continually voted down the installation of adequate ventilation measures.

    Unfortunately, in this day of the quick fix, the limited mind of the libtard can only grasp so much at one time so it’s only understandable why they continue to go after the low-hanging fruit.

    • “well placed political elites, who have made a career of keeping the “have-nots” in their proper station in life by dashing the hopes of many of ever realizing the American Dream.”

      Well said.

      It’s always saddened me that so many people miss this. Those well placed elites are the problems, not fixing them as they often claim.

      That’s not an anti-rich, class warfare comment; it’s a comment against the extra-Constitutional ruling class.

      • JR,
        To elaborate on my point, I’ll use the example of a shoe manufacturer about ten years ago or so, who did everything he could to avoid laying people off. He was one of the select few in the corporate arena who saw his social obligation, not in providing benefits so much as providing opportunity to his employees. When the economy took a tumble, he figured it was time for him to trim his own salary. The employees knew about it, loved him, and were that much more loyal as a result.

        Counter that today with the likes of the VA execs who had all their own performance evaluations done in house and then gave themselves enormous bonuses, while thousands of vets were literally dying in the streets. That’s the type of battle we are dealing with; one of personal and moral responsibility; some people have it and some people don’t …… and others you can’t even shame them into compliance, like the IRS’ Lois Lerner and its current head, douchebag John Koskinen.

        The bottom line is that some people still feel connected to the rest of humanity …….. and some people, like most of Congress and the Supreme Court, have become rogue cancer cells, consuming their surroundings and replicating more of the same mindset in the form of larger and larger government. It really is a cancer.

        The Constitution is like a diet, really. It takes discipline to keep one from destroying oneself due to the indulgences of an errant free will, yet where is the discipline? The founding fathers set up this “dietary plan” over 200 years ago, yet this country, through its ethically conflicted decision makers, has continued to rationalize ordering off the desert cart instead of the salad bar. And well, here we are, about ready for a massive stroke.

        • “That’s the type of battle we are dealing with; one of personal and moral responsibility; some people have it and some people don’t”

          Friend, you are hitting it out of the park today. Another “well said,” and thanks.

          On this issue of personal and moral responsibility, look at the comments in the ‘cop kills unarmed man’ story where the rationalization is made for the shooting because the cop may have been meaning to reach for taser rather than his gun.

          There’s the attitude of personal and moral responsibility on display. “If I can make an excuse, I will.”

          Of course, the guy is still dead, so there’s that.

  27. Hey, I can be lyrical too. Look, here’s a haiku:

    Demanding mommies,
    Flush with cash and short on brains.
    Look at this baby!

  29. “Constitutional Accountability Center”–rather like “People’s Democratic Republic of [insert name of Stalinist dictatorship nation here]”. Nice to see this twit isn’t getting much love from the commenters, at Politico no less. Everything from literary smackdowns to fact-and-logic based refutations. BTW, why is it that so many of these gun policy experts turn out to be “communications professionals”, i.e PR hacks like Shannon and this guy?

      • Maybe–but didn’t Shannon give up a “real” job at Monsanto to become an “accidental ” stay-at-home-Susie- Homemaker-cum-gun-policy-expert? Maybe she wasn’t doing that great at Monsanto…

        • There are any number of suggestions as to how she might have made her living at Monsanto, but from what I’ve seen of her in this arena, she doesn’t appear to be the brightest bulb on the tree.

          • “The cow always wanders to where the grass is greener, so mend your fences well”.

            Old German farmer’s proverb

            JAK

  31. We need to ban alcohol, sports cars, and swimming pools, as lots of children drown in those each year.

  33. ‘There’s nothing you can do’ Weeeellll, there’s things that can be done but you’re not going to like them.

  34. Ya know, if all those kids are standing on the shore with the tide coming in, I hope their parents are with them. Since many times over more children die from drowning than from shootings.

  36. All I’m seeing is him awash in purple prose with his head in the sand, in a mixed metaphor befitting this mixed up gun grabber.

  37. Huh.

    No article on the felon in possession of a firearm who picked up his piece by the trigger and caused a discharge which travelled 200 feet and into his brand new daddy neighbor’s brain in Florida…..

    Weird Huh?

  38. “Generations of Americans have improved the Constitution by amending it to better fulfill its promise. Those who want to ignore this progress need to hear from supporters of the whole Constitution, including amendments.”

    Prohibition? The Income Tax? These are people who want to SHRED the constitution.

  39. Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) is a think tank, law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of our Constitution’s text and history……

    progressive is all you need to know. = Radical marxist.

  40. just noticed–if you look at their logo you can see the word “caca”– which is a Spanish euphemism for the word “mierda”–which translates into the “S” part of “BS”. Pretty apropos, I think.

  41. Wow. That was some gay ass shit. That’s about all I got to say about that. And this, I bet the guy who wrote that cries while he masturbates, then apologizes to his pet cats til he falls asleep. That’s what I got from that POS poem.

  42. Argh! Just read this after that WaPo piece about guns protecting the Constitution. My head now wants to explode. The article was a serial list of non sequiturs (of the logical fallacy variety, not the literary device) and fallacies of relevance.

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