“There have been enough mass shootings in this country that it’s become possible to divide the Republican response into established sub-genre. The provocateurs get the most attention for saying that the victims could have saved themselves if only they’d been armed. But there’s a subtler conservative approach that refuses to acknowledge any connection between the weapon and the crime, as if disturbed individuals could wreak the save havoc with slingshots and butter knives as they do with legally purchased semi-automatic weapons.” – Alex Halperin

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46 COMMENTS

  2. Britain, Finland, Germany, Norway.

    Clearly stricter gun control laws stop mass murder. Oh wait, they don’t.

  3. You can’t stop evil people from carrying out their evil acts, and no new or old laws will ever change this fact. I also wonder what they’re going to do when these killers start using homemade bombs. You just have to look at the Middle East to see how many people get blown up by IED’s everyday.

    • If the crazies start using bombs routinely, the outcome will be worse than any crime perpetuated with a gun.

      • Fortunately for us, the kind of explosives you can make at home are complicated and touchy, and crazies tend to be bad at chemistry and electrical engineering.

        That guy who wrote the Anarchist’s Cookbook might be responsible for taking more crazies out of the gene pool than the cops.

  4. Maybe the disturbed wouldnt attack with butter knives and slingshots, but how about cars, planes, toxins, bombs, etc? You cant regulate away evil; no law will eliminate crime. Evil people will find a way to do evil things, regardless of what laws you pass.

  5. No substitute for terrible “logic” when making a bogus argument…

    We may take this moment to recall the 9/11 attacks when airplanes and box-cutters where quite effective as terrorist weapons. I don’t believe an assault rifle or any other firearm was used.

  6. Prime example of leftist arguments: take the other side’s argument and twist it.

    No one ever said butter knives and slingshots. We said cars and bombs, poison and planes, any number of things. I know you can’t win the argument by actually looking at the facts, but at least man up and admit it.

  7. This isn’t about guns, by the way. This is about control. Removing the ability of citizens to defend themselves from the worst and most severe kinds of government coercion is one of the final steps in their plan. People who don’t want their lives micromanaged by sadistic, insane totalitarians will be stamped out. They’ll tell you what you can eat, what you can drink, how much, what you need, what you don’t need and you’ll be powerless to do anything to stop them. You disagree with them? That’s fine, because it won’t make a damn bit of difference whether you like it or not. Your kids will be raised knowing nothing else but their tyranny and they’ll be conditioned to accept it.

    They’re going to try to bring about their vision of utopia by any means necessary and, hey, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, right?

    They’re not gonna let these tragedies go to waste.

    • Lets look at examples of countries where the government had/has total and absolute control shall we: Cuba, Soviet-era Russia/USSR, Nazi Germany, Iraq (under Saddam), North Korea, Iran, etc.

      These places all definitely turned into utopias once the government was able to control everything right?

      • Excuse me, but we’re so much more enlightened than they were/are. We are smart enough to make it work.

        /sarc

  8. Another thing we do not do is give inanimate objects human traits, outside of a pixar flick.

    The problem with these people is that they do not consider, nor have any understanding whatsoever, of the nature of evil. Therefore they are constantly shocked, and taken aback. Their indignation is very personalized, and their interest is very self centered, as if nobody cares more than they do.

    They are basically accusing the firearms community of being heartless, soulless automatons, while they corner the market on ‘caring’, even as there are no small number of us willing to risk our live to stop such an event in progress.

    Yet they lay claim to moral superiority, a claim that when you really drill down into it, is pretty hollow and baseless.

  9. I’m pretty sure he could have killed more than 6 people if he walked into that temple with a backpack full of Molotov cocktails.

    What if he blocked the exit doors(not difficult), walked in the front door, tossed the firebombs in, then block the main entrance? Doors are easy to block. How many die that way?

  10. Was reading an article yesterday about a crime wave in Camden, NJ which is being blamed on severe budget cuts in local law enforcement. Buried on page 3 or so, the prior record murder rate in Camden dates back to 1948 when someone killed 13 people in a mass shooting. Imagine, that was back before Reagan and everything!

  12. Timothy McVeigh used diesel fuel and fertilizer. The 9/11 terrorists used box cutters. The cultists who attacked the Tokyo subways used sarin gas. What we see here is that there are evil people with the brains to pull off outrages. The answer is for good people of equal intelligence to fight against it, not for the weak-minded to bleat about how no one should be able to stand out from the crowd.

  13. Maybe I am a bit too worried but I wonder if one day, were the gun grabbers and power hungry elected officials in our country, to get their way, if we would end up like say Modern Day Syria or as mentioned above pre Glastnost Russia/USSR??!!!
    What would all the gun control advocates and supporters have to say then when they, or us, or the police couldn’t Protect their little Utopian life in their little Utopian world????!!! Just a sobering thought!!!!

  14. China does not allow gun ownership, yet this teen killed 8 with a knife
    http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-teen-kills-eight-knife-attack-reports-102629246.html

    7 more hacked to death, again, no gun required
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/world/asia/12china.html

    6 killed in the UK using only a knife
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXRvoQZ6-XE

    3 killed in baseball bat attack
    http://news.yahoo.com/son-charged-baseball-bat-attack-mich-family-184738292.html

    I could go on and on because google returned 2.9 million hits on “knife attacks”

    The difference between the guns and these other senseless attackes, is matter of what the media whats to hype. And we are such a media driven nation that unless it is on every news station, radio station or news website, it clearly never happened and this how the gun grabbers assisted by the left leaning mass media is hoping to achieve their goal of banning all guns. Because the other stuff just did not happen because it was not widly reported!

  15. “…as if disturbed individuals could wreak the save havoc with slingshots and butter knives…”

    Uhh no smart ass. It’s as if disturbed individuals could wreak the same, IF NOT MORE, havoc with simple homemade bombs, incendiaries, poisons, or toxins. Not to mention just plowing their car through a crowded crosswalk.

    • Amen!!! Taking away guns will only turn us into more or less defenseless sheep!!! All the bad guys are going to do is find another way to accomplish their goals!!!!
      Drive by fire bombings, IEDs, gang assaults on people who have some small something they want!!! Murders because they know the Vic is unarmed and somewhat defenseless, we could go on and On!!! The Constitution guarantees our right to keep and bear arms!!! Period!!!! Let those who can legally own and carry do so without being hung out to dry, taxed into the poorhouse and hassled and discriminated against, and who knows, the life they save one day may be your own!!!!

    • I agree – if I hear “but cars and planes can kill people too, and we don’t ban them” one more time my head will explode! It’s a false equivalency, a logical fallacy. It’s EXACTLY like saying “children can kill themselves with a plug socket, so we should let them do heroin”.

      These things are not related, and it shows how near the bottom of the barrel pro gun folks are when they use such obviously ridiculous arguments.

      • Cars and planes kill people, but we don’t ban them.

        Did it work?

        No, all right then, let’s address your comment:

        1. Electric outlets do kill people, and we don’t ban them.

        2. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re an adult and want to bomb your brain on heroin, be my guest.

        3. The general point is that life is filled with risk. We can mitigate that to some degree, but we can’t eliminate it. You argue for the illusion of safety by taking away the rights of others. What will happen when someone comes after rights that you care about, just to make us all safer?

      • “I agree – if I hear “but cars and planes can kill people too, and we don’t ban them” one more time my head will explode!”
        — That would be an interesting video to watch.

        Have you ever considered how far higher numbers of people would be killed, raped, (homes/businesses/people) robbed after banning guns?

        “such obviously ridiculous arguments”
        — If you feel like those are ridiculous then consider the arguments by those who want to ban all or most types of guns.

      • Hmmmm….you made a straw man argument.

        You set out the argument you hear from pro-gunners:

        “but cars and planes can kill people too, and we don’t ban them” (assuming the completing thought, “so we shouldn’t ban guns”)

        And then laid out what you claim is an equivalent argument:

        “children can kill themselves with a plug socket, so we should let them do heroin”

        Since legal firearm ownership is already limited to adults, they would be the only people affected by such a ban (on the legal ownership of firearms, yes?)

        Therefore, you are equating and argument favoring gun possession by adults with one made for allowing children to use a dangerous drug.

        Adults and children are demonstrably different, both literally and legally.

  17. The media is corrupted by money and ratings, and those who have the money are the crazed anti-gun people and a knife wouldn’t get much ratings, not as much as a gun will… I saw on CNN last night a debate between a delusional anti-gun gentleman (who looked and acted like he was about to loose it) with a professor of demographics that was pro-guns. The anti-gun kept quoting these studies and by his rudeness and how forceful he was on his own words that, I don’t think he was even listening to himself, you could tell that he had taken all of his statements out of context based on studies I am quite sure he took out of context also… He barely gave the pro-guns gentlemen a chance to talk and was obviously not listening to any thing that was said, even what he said… what made it worst is the reporter cut the debate off just after the Professor was able to start talking…
    I am applaud at the media and these anti-anything people who always com-pair the US to England, the Netherlands, etc… for what ever topic they are ranting about as the zealots they tend to be… As if we where the only 3 countries in the world, at how they ALWAYS take there info. from studies/books/media out of context and spout half truths like a wail does water all over everyone then try to violently force there believes down others thoughts while not once hearing reason… I believe those are the people that should be restricted from weapons and only allowed to speak on the open air ways one time… They can still talk all they want but just not using any form of mass transmitting device IE, TV, Internet, Radio, etc… They are the ones who tend to cause more problems and trouble then the people/things they are preaching against.

  18. from the linked story:
    “This species of argument — it might be called “Guns-don’t kill people, they do” — conveniently exonerates gun rights types from any responsibility for, or even connection to, massacres carried out with guns.”

    Alex Halperin’s Salon story reaction was typical of anti-gun media types. He blames ‘gun rights types’ which are literally ALL owners of civilian guns (and others that support the 2A without owning guns) with the responsibility for, and connection to, the recent shooting and massacres when guns were used.

    • Are all drivers and drinkers collectively responsible and accountable for drunk drivers’ murdering innocents (like my stepbrother)? It never occurred to me to blame someone else.

      • Excellent comment. After a three hour bike ride, I ate some ice cream last night since it was another hot day. Am I responsible for America’s obesity epidemic and out of control health care costs?

  20. A man in China killed 9 people with a knife. I think this happened last week.

    Thank goodness gun laws stopped him from killing.

  21. Timothy McVeigh killed or wounded 1000 people with a load of chemical fertilizer. Politicians and gungrabbers can kill more people than that with a load of bovine fertilizer.

  22. In one classic All in The Family episode, Archie Bunker responds to an impassioned anti gun plea with “would you feel better if they were pushed out a window”

  23. Uhm, butter knives are already banned from most public schools there Alex. Just search for butter knife and suspened student or some variation to read many stories of zero tolerance equal zero intelligence.

    I recall a story from a few years ago where a senior girl was suspended from her graduation ceremony for having one. All because the school security guards caught a glimpse of a butter knife sticking out from under the passenger seat in her car. This dangerous weapon could’ve been stolen from the car and used in an attack. It was there because she’d been moving with her family to a new house and it fell out the silverware box.

    How well has that British campaign of “get a life, bin that knife” been working eh?

    • How about the seven year old boy scout a few years ago who was expelled for trying to eat lunch with his newly acquired camping silverware multi tool because it had a knife.

  24. There was an incident back in the late 1950’s in Chicago where a woman was murdered by being stabbed under the left breast with an icicle in the middle of Winter. The “weapon” pierced her heart then proceeded to melt away leaving no obvious trace until the autopsy was performed and cause of death determined.

    Humans are physically fragile and the ways they can be killed are numerically far greater than the number of ways and tools used to save lives and heal injuries.

    Guns are just the low-hanging fruit in the eye of Society. However, if the Utopians can take guns away from the People, the path to controlling us is greatly facilitated. Hence, the relentless assault on the Second Amendment will go on and on despite the number of deaths by any other type of arms.

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