“The thing responsible gun owners often can’t grasp is that it is impossible to separate the negligent or homicidal gun owners from the responsible ones. We can’t follow everyone home and ensure they aren’t leaving their guns in the reach of children and we can’t determine who is a hot head and will lose it and shoot someone in the future. Murder is a future action. Same thing with mental illness. The only solution that will work is disarming.”—Robert McAbee, Seattle P-I.com reader
Want to start a different discussion or ask a question on another topic? Click here to go to TTAG’s Free Fire Zone.
It occurs to me that argument applies to a lot more than guns. It’s a recipe for justifying any abrogation of personal freedom whatsoever.
Absolutely. the slimiest and most disgusting form of a invalid argument is that of “Debasing”. It certainly defeats the concept of “Pursuit of Happiness” through capitulation and rationalization.
However, remember the motto of the liberal progressive: “It is not how you play the game, it is whether you win or lose”
That’s the motto of the trial lawyer.
Are there any trial lawyers who are not liberal progressives???
Let the flaming begin! (It’s a good thing I am wearing my asbestos suit today.)
Lots of them Uncommon. Usually the more successful ones.
Most attorneys specializing in civil defense (eg insurance defense attorneys) are conservative and Republican. The liberals become Plaintiffs attorneys. Business/corporate lawyers tend to be a rather conservative bunch also. Criminal defense attorneys are a very mixed bag.
I agree it can be applied to just about anything but that is what the radical leftist anti gunners want. They want an excuse one day to say “Well, your 60, you have a history of mental illness and you need a new kidney. Better for the sake of society that we just let you die a natural death”
At least one of the antis has the balls to speak up and say what they are all really thinking. Make no mistake the likes of Obama, Bloomberg, Rham, Feinstein, etc any anti gun politician their ultimate end game is you turning in all of your firearms for destruction.
Robert McAbee: Hey Big Mouth, I hereby appoint you as the designated gun confiscator. Come and get them. You can start at my house.
ha my thoughts exactly, I have a .40 cent solution for Mr. Disarmament. I love obliviousness of those who are calling for disarmament and the fact that armed humans are needed to disarm other armed humans.
Mr. McAbee is calling for a civil war. Good luck with that. “Hey, all you government employees with guns, go take away guns from everybody else”.
My exact same thought after reading the article.
In fact, it’s a recipe for justifying any abrogation of personal BODIES. Who can be trusted with hands? Some people use hands for grilling; other people use hands for killing. The only solution that will work is dis-handing.
In fact, let’s just murder all human beings, and then there will be no more injustice. As Stalin said, “No man, no problem.”
No, I think ‘dis-arming’ still applies. Heh.
“The thing responsible car owners often can’t grasp is that it is impossible to separate the negligent or homicidal drivers from the responsible ones. We can’t follow everyone home and ensure they aren’t leaving their keys in the reach of children and we can’t determine who is a alcoholic and will lose it and DUI kill someone in the future. Drunk driving is a future action. Same thing with mental illness. The only solution that will work is walking.”
Yeah, there is no way they’d agree with such blanket statements about car owner’s, but they’re ready to lump all gun owners together…..
great minds think alike.
That’s almost scary how much we think alike, plus our timing.
“The thing responsible minorities often can’t grasp is that it is impossible to separate the negligent or homicidal racial subgroups from the responsible ones. We can’t follow everyone home and ensure they aren’t leaving their drugs in the reach of children and we can’t determine who is a gang member and will lose it and shoot someone in the future. Murder is a future action. Same thing with going on welfare for life. The only solution that will work is deportation or internment.”
Attention, Progressives: you can’t have it both ways. Either the above statement and the original one about gun owners are both commonsense and reasonable, or they’re both abhorrent. You pick.
+1
Great analogy, but I’ve been trying to avoid making car analogies in gun rights debates because the natural followup/rebuttal is: “yeah, but we LICENSE drivers and REGISTER cars!”
Better (though slightly clumsier) to build an analogy around free speech (“we can’t tell who will use their printing press for hate speech or child porn, s0…”) because it’s an equally-recognized right in the Bill of Rights.
“The thing that responsible drivers can’t understand is that you can’t seperate the irresponsible and drunk drivers from the rest of the population. We can’t follow them around to see if they text while driving, speed or go to a bar before getting in the car. Reckless driving and vehicular homicide are future action. The only solution that will work is banning private motor vehicles.”
The one think I impressed on my son when he was learning drive was that a automobile is a deadly weapon when used irresponsibly. There are 1000 ways things can wrong and get you or someone else killed. I bet all the gun grabbers out their have never thought of the simple act of driving in that way.
The problem with this comparison is that the car has a much greater perceived utility than a gun. So the response to your argument is that there are risks worth having for the benefit of being able to drive to different places.
So we must also be prepared to show the utility to society of gun ownership.
Bad drivers killing people is not the only problem with private automobiles. They cause congestion, pollution and put enormous amounts of global warming gasses into the atmosphere. As our fearless Messiah ALGORE has told us the invention of the internal combustion engine has been a disaster for humankind and the planet. We would be better off by banning the private ownership of cars and making a new Manhattan project that gives us better public transportation and high speed rail.
While I am being somewhat sarcastic this is a real argument made by the same Progressives who want to disarm the people. Why do you think the Obama administration is committed to redefining the automobile in such a way that it becomes unaffordable by anybody accept the Nomenklatura?
The Progressives agenda is designed to impoverish, immobilize and disarm the population and create a society with the sole aim of satisfying the needs of the Nomenklatura.
Very well said
Fabulous Mr. McAbee, we can’t tell when you are going to run over a bunch of kids with your car so we’ll need to take your keys from you immediately. It is for the children.
+1 (for the last line especially)
We can’t tell when he’s gonna use a lungful of air to spew some ridiculous bull$hit either, so we’re gonna need all of his oxygen too.
“The only solution that will work is disarming”
Why should I disarm?
I don’t do these stupid things.
It would solve nothing.
Obviously, voluntary individual disarmament does nothing to solve the problem, because it is the irresponsible and dangerous who will be the least likely to choose to disarm. So Mr. McAbee must be talking about mandatory universal disarmament. If he wants to live in that kind of country, he has dozens to choose from. But here in the United States, we have the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
If Mr. McAbee is advocating repealing the Second Amendment, I invite him to try.
The same argument can be made for any product or living thing. From power tools, to cranes as of late, to cars, dogs, children…the list goes on.
The bottom line is the antis end game and a bigger part of their agenda is they want the ability to arbitrarily decide who can do what and who can own what.
Only when the government successfully gets all of the illegal guns off the streets and out of the hands of criminals and straw-owners will I even begin to entertain the idea of turning in my guns. Until such a time arrives, gun grabbers [read: ignorant politicians] can continue to suck a fat one.
Ill still need my hunting guns, which includes my AR-15’s. The 6.8 SPC piston AR makes a handy deer hunting carbine. So my 6.8 AR is not available for reappropriation even if liberal progressives did actually manage to disarm all of the world’s criminals.
Same thing with alcohol…we can’t determine who will drink and drive, or drink and beat their wife, or drink and hit their kids, or drink and do something stupid…so the only solution is no more booze….
Same thing with cars. We can’t determine who will drive safe, who won’t have road rage, who won’t wear their seatbelt and who may lose it and drive on the sidewalk.
We can say this about a lot of things. The logic is stupid. We can’t trust some, so we will trust no one? We’d all be living in plastic bubbles…
As a side note, we’ve already tried the banning alcohol thing. I don’t think it worked as planned.
Prohibition and the War on Drugs are the poster children for why government restrictions do not work and always give rise to criminal enterprises, hungry to exploit the lucrative black market that the government artificially created. Prohibition gave rise to many of the early gangsters and thugs, leading to hundreds of murders and a spike in street violence. It also played a major contributing factor in the corruption of officials in major cities that were bribed or directly profited from the illegal production, importation, and sale of alcohol…and many of them never shook that status quo (i.e. Chicago). When prohibition was repealed, the gangs and thugs lost a lot of their power as legitimate, free enterprise moved in to meet the demand for alcohol. The war on drugs has proved more costly in lives, resources, and tax dollars than any of the perceived benefits could ever amount to. If drugs were to be legalized, businesses would swoop in to devour the market and take advantage of the billions of dollars that are to be made there. With their expansive resources and no need to run covert operations, those companies would eliminate the drug cartels and dealers in short order through market forces. Those that so choose, can simply go to the local alcohol or tobacco shop to pick up what the want. There would be almost non-existent demand for the product peddled by the cartels. We could get rid of a bloated drug enforcement network, saving millions, if not billions of dollars. Moreover, as a legal product, drugs would produce substantial tax revenue.
For those of you that think legalizing drugs is a bad idea because of all the negative effects on the users, I counter with who are you to tell someone how to live their lives? If they want to take drugs and trash their bodies and destroy their lives, that is their choice and they should be left to it, with the full weight of the responsibility of their actions resting on their shoulders alone.
Charles5,
Legalizing drugs should be a good thing for the cartels. First, they could compete legitimately with other entities and still make loads of money. (Heck, they might even be more profitable because many expenses — losses, “security”, bribes, disposable smuggling vehicles, etc. — would go away.) Second, if the cartels did not want to compete with large pharma companies, those large pharma companies still need the raw ingredients and the cartels already have the “farms” producing those raw ingredients … which means they could make a boatload of cash legitimately selling the raw ingredients.
Either way, I think the cartels would do well and it would eliminate the motive for most if not all of the violence.
The irony: if progressives legalized narcotics and most if not all violence went away as we all expect, they would have an easier time trying to sell disarmament in a much “safer” society. At the same time, the Armed Intelligentsia would have an easier time trying to sell unfettered rights to bear arms because there would be almost zero violence and people would no longer fear armed citizens.
I know that the cartels would probably still hang around and make a lot of money, but I couldn’t care less about that. A lot of the street violence associated with drugs here in the U.S. would go away as many customers would simply go to the store to purchase their product, rather than deal with the shady guy in the ally. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but eventually the legitimate businesses would force a lot of the local dealers into other lines of work. Sure, the product might still come from the cartels, but you are going to have very little left in the way of turf wars over who supplies what part of the hood. Granted, the criminal class that runs the drug industry now will just find something else illegal to proffer from, which will in turn lead violence, so overall there won’t be a drastic decrease in crime. However, there will be a lot less spent on drug enforcement and there will be a lot of tax revenue coming down the line. If the criminal classes want to kill each other off, fine by me, that’s true natural selection. What I am tired of, though, are my tax dollars going to the war on drugs and barely making a scratch, much less a dent in the industry.
You’d still have destitute meth heads and crack addicts stealing to feed their fix, but I’d be alright with legalizing a host of drugs.
It wouldn’t bother me at all if the cartels went legit and made a ton of money. It isn’t the “making a ton of money” part that bothers me about the cartels. It’s the “killing people” part.
His argument can be applied to every single item, person, behavior, race, creed in the world. This is the argument that justifies every from of oppression. This is why we now live under a philosophy that a person can only be punished for what they actually do, not just what they have the potential to do.
“This is why we now live under a philosophy that a person can only be punished for what they actually do …”
Well we are supposed to be living under that philosophy but our government strayed decades ago. I will argue that citizens are punished every day for actions that are not their own. That is why you and I cannot purchase a modern Thompson sub-machine gun — because a handful of gangsters used them to attack people during Prohibition 80 years ago.
Caveat: yes, I could beg our illustrious ATF for permission to own a Thompson sub-machine gun manufactured before 1986 — and pay the $200 tax stamp and the $10,000 or whatever wildly inflated price tag because our government artificially limited the supply. That is punishment in my book, not “respecting the 2nd Amendment”.
Too bad we didnt apply that principle to the expansion of executive power under Bush, because we should have anticipated the abuse/misuse of that power by the leftist leaders to follow…
Hear hear
That’s an argument for anyone of any political persuasion: any powers you give to the government are powers you are eventually giving to your political enemies. If not this year, then next, or the one after that.
A mistake the blind supporters of either major political party tend to forget.
Of course, the true cynical operators support any expansion of government powers because it gives their kind more of a stranglehold over everything. There are plenty such, some of whom wear red ties and some blue. They don’t care about principles. They care about the game and the power. More politicians are part of this group than the public tends to want to believe.
And when some of these individuals become members of a government they will magically become more noble. When they have access to weapon stockpiles paid for by public funds they will never misuse that power. Presidents, PM’s, cops, & soldiers have only used their weapons in the right way. None have ever flipped out or pursued personal vendettas. Only private citizens kill people w/ weapons they purchased with their own money.
“We can’t follow everyone home and ensure they aren’t leaving their guns in the reach of children …” (Robert McAbee)
Nor can we follow everyone home and ensure they aren’t leaving household chemicals in unlocked cabinets or pool gates open and unlocked. And yet far fewer children will find unsecured firearms and harm someone than children who will ingest chemicals/poison or drown.
People like Robert McAbee of Seattle need to be publicly humiliated for this kind of thinking. I’m talking the classic pointing and laughing in public, maybe even that big pointy dunce cap the school master always used in those paintings. Nothing physical like tar or feathers, just a simple and to the point reminders that that trying to use the “pre-crime” idea as an excuse for anything is wrong thinking and we as a nation and society should be better than that.
The problem with humiliation is that in order to work the
individual has to be capable of feeling shame. Look at how
many people and movements from the anti-rights crowd
have been completely discredited and debunked. These
same people quickly come back with the exact same
nonsense. They are impervious to shame (along with facts
and logic). Instead, if questioned many antis act like
cultists. They shut down, defy reason, defy facts, go into
denial and lash out at those questioning their belief system.
I fixed it:
“The thing responsible commentators often can’t grasp is that it is impossible to separate simple-minded, intellectually lazy, or factually incorrect writers from the responsible ones. We can’t follow everyone home and ensure they aren’t writing unsubstantiated and improper opinions and we can’t determine who has a bias or phobia and will lose it and slander or libel someone in the future ruining the lives of innocents. Editorializing is a future action. The only solution that will work is censoring.”
If you have been reading some of the things coming out of the Justice Department lately they are already working on that.
Actually, we do realize that but the logic here is backwards. This is the reason disarmament is not a solution. I havea natural and basic human right to own a firearm and the fact that someone else will use a firearm in a criminal manner dies not justify denying me that right.
Why are people throwing away so many Ruger Mark IIs and IIIs?
Let my take a shot, er, try at this…
“The thing that responsible citizens often can’t grasp is that it is impossible to separate the deviant or criminal citizens from the responsible ones. We can’t follow everyone home and ensure that they aren’t planning to commit a crime and we can’t determine who is a hothead and will lose it and hurt someone in the future. Crime is a future action. Same thing with government tyranny. The only solution that will work is people being prepared and able to defend themselves when the time comes.”
The thing gun-grabbers don’t get is that we know life isn’t perfect, there are no guarantees, and a utopia cannot be created. Life is about trade-offs. We also know that when you pick up one end of a stick so too then the other side moves which is not the case with the gun-grabbers. Said another way, we recognize the law of unintended consequences.
That is a key difference… We want to make life as perfect as we can possibly make it, but realize that there is no such thing so we act accordingly. They, on the other hand, believe that utopia can be achieved, and are prepared to say and do irrational things in pursuit of that unreachable goal. We are ‘hope for the best, plan for the worst’, and they are ‘hope for the best, whine about the rest’. It’s a difference of mindset that is difficult to reconcile.
All we need is a Department of Pre-Crime like in ‘Minority Report’.
“In Soviet Russia Guns confiscate you!”
Whoa whoa whoa, what did he just say?? I thought they promised that nobody wanted to take my guns away! What the hell is going on here?
Is it possible that the “gun control” cabal has been dishonest about their real goals?
OK. Gimme your car keys.
You heard me. A car is a dangerous piece of machinery. How am I supposed to trust you to not get loaded one night and drive down the sidewalk? Or T-bone a minivan full of children? Since SOME of you can’t be trusted with a motor vehicle, then obviously NONE of you can. So gimme your effing car keys. Take the bus.
I’d be more than glad to disarm myself. Really.
Right after all the criminals, L.E.O.s, militaries, and politicians in the world do so first.
I’ll be waiting…..
This McAbee guy doesn’t have the courage to do anything other than spew this garbage into public discussion to gain approval from like-minded Statists, but he’d never actually do any of the dirty work himself. He’s an example of the internal rot that will destroy the American Republic and a true enemy of Liberty and Freedom. Despicable beyond civil words.
I like Jeff Snyder’s view:
First, recognize that only laws that criminalize behavior malum in se and impose restrictions on liberty (punishment) after the fact, when it is too late, accord with the presumption of innocence — the principle that government honors the liberty of its citizens until their deeds convict them.
. . .
Second, laws that criminalize conduct not wrong in itself to prevent crime before it occurs make the behavior of criminals the measure of the rights and scope of liberty that the law will permit to the innocent. Assault weapons are dangerous in the hands of criminals, therefore, no one shall have them.
Such laws tell the law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the lawless. That the law will permit the innocent to have only such rights and liberties as criminals will allow.
A law which restricts the liberty of the innocent because of the behavior of the guilty, that rests on the principle that the conduct of criminals dictates the scope of liberty for the rest of society, in no sense “fights” crime.
—– Jeff Snyder
A further thought, Mr. McAbee is an archtype of modern moral coward. He will sit passively waiting for someone else to come protect him from harm or evil. In other words, he demands that some stranger come and lay his life on the line for him because he refuse to defend himself.
I actually don’t blame LEOs for taking their time to get the crime scene. Why should he/she get shot when some damn fool could have taken steps to protect himself and didn’t
In some cases you can blame LEO’s. If they are enforcing disarmament laws & gun free zones, then they were aiding the murderer(s). If I and or my buddies threaten you with force to remain defenseless and someone else beats you to a pulp, then I’m part of the problem.
But McAbee’s argument could be used to declare why we should all be born and prison and only those who meet some vague criteria are allowed out. Cause we can’t follow everyone home to make sure they aren’t abusing someone or something, or that they are not arsonist, serial killers and the like. A small fraction of the public can’t be trusted with (whatever item here) therefore no one shall have it.
I hope Mr McAbee has already removed his dick, lest he turn into a rapist in the future.
We can’t follow everyone home and ensure they aren’t leaving their guns in the reach of children and we can’t determine who is a hot head and will lose it and shoot someone in the future. Murder is a future action. Same thing with mental illness.
Right. You can’t know because you are not omniscient gods. So stop trying to play like meddling Greek gods “helping” from on high?
“Same thing for mental illness”.
So the only solution is to lock everyone up before “mental illness strikes”. Usually that takes a couple jumps and assumptions to get to such a parallel, but Mr McAbee makes it easy.
Am I the only one that sees Colts, Lugers and Walthers along with all those other pistols in that barrel and thinks that this is a crime against humanity?
I could say the same for the Smith revolvers, and what looks like a Nambu.
I was just too lazy to list them all. Even if they were all ravens it would be a crime. Poor people have a right to protect themselves also.
My reply: The thing that gun control proponents always, always, ALWAYS miss is this: guns are used to save more lives than they take. So to “disarm” would be to allow a HIGHER murder rate. Numbers don’t lie, and no matter which ones you use, the Clinton DOJ said that guns arre used 700,000 times a year, and the Mustart/Kleck study cited by the pro-gun community says 2.5 million times a year, putting a cost-to-benefit ratio at somewhere between 22 and 80 to 1 to the good. Oh, and here’s another tidbit: less than 4% of all “crime guns” ever came from a gun show. They’ll be fixing a knothole in the wall while the barn door is wide open.
Well… lets remove any possibility of anyone ever using an instrument of any kind to harm another by “disarming” for the sake of Mr. McAbee “feeling” safe. Lets throw away all personal freedom so we can feel warm and fuzzy safe. What a total coward. Sheer cowardice. He should have just said, “Please take away my personal responsibilities because I am too much of a coward to endure them.”
It’s not hard to winnow the murderers and negligent idiots from the responsible gun owner. We make a habit of trying to distance ourselves from those chumps.
Wonderful logic!
There is a rabid squirrel loose in Yellowstone. Quick, gag and bag any critter that walks or crawls within 60 miles.
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjUZmWvwlwv_zukuMjHhhK-s3FIc9Bq6AbvpoJEpAnAm78SsH4
Mr. McAbee is probably in favor of the Eugenics movement as well. It’s his way of disarming society as a whole from people he perceives to be mentally defective, are physical, intellectual and emotional special needs individuals, or just don’t agree with him.
I think the last time someone thought that way, the proper response for agreement would have been a resounding, “Sieg Heil!”
Richtig, Herr Scheissekopf?
All the rhetoric aside, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Anyone who would infringe your god-given inalienable right to keep and bear arms is a traitor, plain and simple.
Lets give the magic editor engine a try
“The thing responsible car owners often can’t grasp is that it is impossible to separate the negligent or homicidal car owners from the responsible ones. We can’t follow everyone home and ensure they aren’t leaving their keys in the reach of children and we can’t determine who is a hot head and will lose it and run over someone in the future. Murder is a future action. Same thing with mental illness. The only solution that will work is walking.”—Robert McAbee,
Try that on for size there, Robert.
The only solution is disarming…….or making ‘showers’ that release gas.
Stupid, evil libtards (democrats).
Comments are closed.