“During his Presidency, (Obama’s) gone from a kind of rote acknowledgment of the (gun) issue to a deeply felt recognition of its centrality, if only because it represents not a problem that is insoluble in its nature but something stupidly simple and easy to fix. In any sane polity, gun killings would be a horror, not a habitual event. Seeing the President’s metamorphosis suggests that, as another old song had it, a change is going to come.” – Adam Gopnik in Obama’s Evolving Outrage on Guns [at newyorker.com]
“Too many of my sons are um dying um when they try to um engage armed citizens in um cross-cultural wealth transfers.”
Now that’s letting him be clear!
Funny. I’ve met some toddlers who react the same way – outrage, aka temper tantrums – when the adults in the room don’t give them what they want, too.
As easy and simple as telling the Middle East to just stop being dicks to each other right?
Simple for the simple minded Obama. On Iran, it’s either “I be nice to you, you be nice back?” with fingers crossed. Or it’s “you can have nuclear weapons, you can use them on Isreal, just wait until I’m out of office for a few years”. Blame current president, legacy protected, progressive goal of Isreal destroyed, all checked.
You’ve been watching too much Sean Hannity (by which I mean any Sean Hannity). According to every intelligence agency on earth, including the CIA and the Mossad, Iran has no nuclear weapons program, lacks the technology to enrich uranium to weapons grade, and has no program to make the equipment to do so. They’re a signatory to the NPT (unlike Israel) and have never restricted nuclear inspectors’ access to any of their R&D facilities.
The Iranians (who are Persian, not Arab) have never been involved in any of the Arab wars with Israel (unlike the US Arab “allies” of the gulf region). The last time they started a war, there was a guy named Xerces involved. Even their support for Shia militias like Hezbollah has been primarily about supporting defensive rebels who wanted to push Israeli occupational forces out of Lebanon (unlike the US Arab “allies” who support the PLO).
The Iranians have relatively free elections for the region (a somewhat distant second to Israel, but getting freer with time), they have a history of political stability that doesn’t require secret police torturing and murdering the opposition (unlike all of the US Arab “allies”), and they have a far less repressive religious regime than US “allies” like Saudi Arabia, with its police of vice and virtue beating women in the street for talking to men, driving cars, or showing more than their eyes.
Ironically, Iran would make a far better US ally culturally than any of the existing gulf region allies, but AIPAC won’t allow that, because Israel’s ego can’t allow any equals. Unfortunately that’s driving them into friendship of necessity with the Chinese and Russians.
For the first few lines, you had me. Then the joke became obvious.
Ah yes, the old ‘you’re not as dead if you’re hacked to death with a machete’ theory.
“Well, little girl, would ya feel any better if they was pushed outta windas?” -AB
Hahaha! Non-PC Archie Bunker telling Gloria gun-control wouldn’t work in 1975.
Remember his remedy for the hijackings that were occurring at the time?:-)
Lets hOpe he knows better than to even try…..
I’m kinda hopin’ that Hillary will make this a central issue of her campaign… so it will work as well as it did for Gore. 🙂
And still no outrage with the continued unbranded killings in Chicago, Baltimore, New York…
These sorts of articles are becoming normal.
I think we’re seeing a full-court press designed to increase public acceptance of more “reasonable restrictions” on gun ownership.
Except not many people follow, or trust, the main stream media that utters this nonsense.
What these hoplophobes fail to get is that almost everything they support increases violence and crime in either the short term or medium term. What percentage of illegal aliens are criminals vs the general population? Just don’t ask them that question, because if they know the real answer they will lie to your face and if they don’t they will make one up or try to change the subject.
A bit off-topic but this one is an easy answer.
100% of illegal aliens are criminals, because they’re in the country illegally evennif they’ve committed no other crime.
Whether you’re for or against immigration in any of its many forms, this one isn’t a debatable point.
They may or may not be villians, but they are assuredly outlaws, with everything that entails
Anytime someone points to the gun in a killing, we all should have this response:
“You don’t care the person was murdered, you only care the killer used a gun to do it.”
Nice, that is an awesome response!
Good, I’m sure gun and ammo manufacturers would love to increase profits, some more.
I thought the New Yorker was supposed to feature intelligent prose?
‘The gun massacre in Louisiana yesterday was one of those; a man with a handgun that was designed only to kill, killing helpless people in a movie theatre.’ – So the gun manufacturer specifically designed that weapon to kill only helpless people? Does it not function if the person you’re trying to shoot is himself armed? If you shoot someone and he survives the wound would you be able to sue the manufacturer for selling you a defective handgun?
‘Of course, we hear, If only they had been heavily armed, with loaded guns not just in their purses, but ready in their laps, they all could have fired back at the assailant, aiming and shooting their guns, too, in that dark, crowded space.’ – What constitutes ‘heavily armed’ as opposed to just ‘armed’? Does carrying a .38 J frame and a speed strip with an extra 5 rounds make you ‘heavily armed’? Also, do they not have flashlights in New York? They make them pretty small these days. So small you can even mount them directly to your weapon.
This is the kind of tripe you’d expect from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
It is.
The New Yorker is a magazine that I’ve found to be read (adored, actually) by the urban “sophisticated” types. Reading through the New Yorker is like poking your head into their precious little thought bubbles, and seeing just how insulated from reality the residents of urban enclaves are.
I actually went to the New Yorker and read the guy’s entire article. My very first though as I was about half way thru was that he has been drinking the Kool-Aid a very long time. At the bottom it lists his accomplishments and it seems he has worked for the New Yorker since the mid 1980’s so has enjoyed a comfortable insulated upper middle class lifestyle in New York City, Paris and apparently Canada. I’d love to plop this guy in the southside of Chicago, or Jerusalem, any of a thousand places where he would be 100% unprepared to deal with personal safety.
Yawn. Another one of Obama’s infamous red lines.
What is outrageous is that the anti-gun crowd has no interest in dealing with the gang problem that is responsible for most murder and violence. Far too often they celebrate gang culture instead of condemNing it.
That’s because they, themselves, are victims of gun violence, you see….If they couldn’t obtain guns at all, then they’d be upstanding citizens. Oh, and hugs, too. Hugs make everything better.
I’d like to ask this guy: where has gun control worked?
And I’d like to see this guy stand face to face with a South Central gangbanger in a dark alley with his laws and fancy words.
When I see statements about “gun deaths”, I emulate Gertrude Stein — “A corpse is a corpse is a corpse”.
@LongPurple: Exactly right. And when we see statistics about “gun deaths” we need to look at all deaths vs violent deaths vs suicides etc.. The gun grabbers like to focus on “gun deaths” but seem to ignore the rest of the statistics that don’t suit their agenda.
I’ve spent the last few days in an interminable argument with somone who can’t see how a study that (purports to) show that gun ownerhsip rate correlates with an increase in gun related deaths (mind you, not gun related murders, but all gun related deaths), can’t be used to draw a conclusion about how all murders (including those without a gun) would increase with gun ownership.
Because free people with guns can use them effectively against statists and tyrants like these elitists. Baseball bats, machetes, rocks, etc., are not effective against a tyrannical government intent on denying your natural, civil and Constitutionally protected rights.
Does anyone still read this magazine?
Does anyone still read any magazine? “Ooh! A story about what I read on the internet last week!”
When I read a magazine, it’s to verify that it’s the correct caliber. But I don’t think that’s the same type of magazine.
“Does anyone still read any magazine?”
I do, usually at the library.
Reading the printed word on a screen is drastically (and unpleasantly) different than in your hands.
I’ve read plenty of magazines on my ‘puter and it is a very frustrating and non-intuitive experience. I can navigate far faster with it in my hands.
It just doesn’t feel right.
I also own a Nook, and as long as it deals with just text it’s barely a tolerable experience.
And the Wall Street Journal should only be read on newsprint, dammit.
A crude but accurate equivalence is that reading on a screen is like having sex with two rubbers on.
There it is again: “gun killings”. As if people are less dead when they’re killed with knives, poison, blunt objects, cars, rope, hands, or feet…
And just when the gun was about to turn it’s life around. 🙂
Trying again, due to blockquote fail:
Indeed it is: arm more law-abiding people, and keep violent offenders locked up behind bars, where they can’t perpetuate their violence on the law-abiding. That will take care of the murder issue (with guns or otherwise).
As for suicide: guns aren’t the problem; suicidal people are the problem. If you want to solve that problem, start tackling the difficult issues regarding why so many people are suicidal, rather than focusing on the easy-target tool they use to commit suicide.
For one: “gun killings” are, in fact, a horror and a non-habitual event – with numbers continuing to decline.
For another: why are “gun killings” so particularly heinous to these people? Why are all other kinds of “killings” not equally horrendous?
(P.S. has the comment-editing thing not worked for weeks for everyone else, too?)
Comment editing times out too fast and usually the site is SO slow that I have to wait for it to catch up on almost every word. Sometimes on every letter of each word.
Noscript or scriptsafe (depending on your browser) should fix the slowness issue. TTAG is not a good browser citizen, sadly.
It’s been acting up for me too. I have to close the window, go back to my mailbox, click on the e-mail and re-open the window, find my comment, and then I can edit–usually
That sounds like it might be a browser cache issue. I’ll test, the next time it happens.
Its good for Adam Gopnik that he didn’t live in Erup 75 years ago, He would have been one of those calmly wandering off to the gas chambers. Too evolved to object or fight.
Gopnik would have turned in his own sister so that he could cower, escape, and flee. I agree – People like him don’t fight. Ever. They sit behind some computer lavishing in pride of their style and class while pushing their opinion on others to get what they want from afar.
Do these people actually believe this nonsense? “[S]omething stupidly simple and easy to fix.” Oh really, and what is that solution? Outlawing and confiscation? Do he really think everyone will just comply? He lives in NY state no? The SAFE Act numbers are out. Not even 5% registered. I swear, these people are the liberal equivalent to the anti-evolution movement in the religious right.
Every complicated problem has one simple, obvious and wrong solution.
When someone uses a word like “polity” you just know he/she is full of crap. Why the focus on guns as they are certainly not the only method of killing another person. OTOH, they are a very useful tool to use for protecting yourself from many other tools in the hands of idiots, crazy people and bad guys.
This Gopnik person is just another Obama sycophant in denial of the abject failure of the Democratic Socialists’ “Great Dear Leader”. The only outrage the Democratic Socialists ought to be concerned about is the growing outrage of the American People against their failed policies and Marxist doctrines. Their failure is being demonstrated clearly in places like Chicago, New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles and everywhere else “:the stain of” its “infected, corroding fingers” have adversely affected the American People.
The intra-community and inter-community violence amongst American Minorities will never be stopped by any conceivable “gun control laws” and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong or deliberately deceitful.
In other news, Bernie Sanders only wants to “ban gun used for killing people, exclusively, not for hunting”
#FuddsForBernie
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/07/26/sanders-says-he-could-support-banning-some-weapons-universal-background-checks/
A politician with no principles. Sanders seeks the majority of voters and appeals to the center of the bell curve – the moderate. How he gets it – doesn’t matter. This is why all the politicians ever elected are lukewarm tasteless beverages that beg to be spewed from the mouth.
Man, that’s a scary picture. Dude looks like a rabid hamster. Get some sun. Get some fresh air. Eat a sammich.
My guess is that Adam Gopnik, who has been working as a staff writer for the New Yorker since the 80’s, is one of those insulated over-educated upscale sophisticates from New York City who hasn’t been out of town in the last ten or twenty years, but believes in the progressive (i.e., marxism light) screed sufficiently to think that he (and others of his ilk – like Obama) can look down his long elitist blue nose at those of us in “flyover country” and decide what’s good for us stupid people, whether we like it or not. My thought is that if Mr. Gopnik and his fellow progressives really want social utopia, they need to get a law enacted that will force “the rest of us” to get a frontal lobotomy – that will make us all peaceful, guidable citizens and the progressives can then have their way with us. Or build a wall around NYC to keep the rest of us out. Short of that, human nature will continue to have its way with society and the occasional killing(s) will continue to happen in spite of all laws that are passed. Which makes me ask: What have progressives done to ensure that ALL of those who do unlawfully kill people are permanently removed from society, instead of just giving them a slap on the wrist? Not much that I can see.
Nobody can be overeducated. The problem here is that the “education” he has is more of the Soviet indoctrination type, than the nearly extinct technique of learning history, math, science, and most important: critical thinking.
“Or build a wall around NYC to keep the rest of us out.”
Will this wall also function to keep them in? If so, I’ll contribute to the project. Hell, I’ll drive up and volunteer some weekends helping to build the damn thing.
Snake Plissken can escape.
Gopnik is correct; the solution is easy — allow the good people to defend themselves.
“One cannot legislate the maniacs off the street … these maniacs can only be shut down by an armed citizenry. Indeed bad things can happen in nations where the citizenry is armed, but not as bad as those which seem to be threatening our disarmed citizenry in this country at this time.”
Jeff Cooper
“The New Yorker”? I won’t even bother..
Okay, another person who is much better/smarter who knows what’s best for us, got it.
…”In any sane polity, gun killings would be a horror, not a habitual event.”
Gun killings are a horror.
“…if only because it represents not a problem that is insoluble in its nature but something stupidly simple and easy to fix.”
What’s insane is thinking it’s simple and easy to fix.
Some people think otherwise peaceful people able to protect themselves, sometimes through the horror of gun killing, is less bad than peaceful people able only to lay down and die, or worse. One wonders why this guy isn’t bothered by gun killings, or other killings, of peaceful people. Apparently criminals killing people is not so horrible.
While everyone goes on “Nationally” about these 2 people who were killed with a gun. Pretty much no one at all noticed the death of 5 people by stabbing from this kid:
http://www.fox23.com/news/news/local/court-date-set-oldest-brother-broken-arrow-stabbin/nm66X/
…also – around July 23rd. I guess that story isn’t as profitable – main stream media wise?
It’s not simple. We don’t blame John for what Paul did. We don’t take things from both John and Paul because Paul used that thing to hurt someone. This concept clashes with the concept of justice and aligns themselves with the concepts of Marxism. We are not children to be nannied by the state. It’s a very complex issue if decided an issue at all and to a great many people it is not an issue. 4.7 homicides per 100,000 is very low. Could it be lower? Sure. But it’s not “just” to take or limit everyone’s freedoms because of the actions of the few.
Why focus on just “gun” killings. Why not killings in general? Why is the focus taken from the action of killing and placed on the method of the killing?? Focusing on the method, which isn’t important at all, rather than the root causes and the action itself makes me immediately suspect an underlying agenda.
Since when did a president getting frustrated become a metamorphosis? Poetic and sensational words, but certainly not accurate. What we do know is change already came and went. “Hope and change” (whatever that mean’t and with no clarification) won’t be in office much longer.
It used to be called murder – but now they call it a “mini-massacre”. When a person kills 1 to 3 people – a “Mini – Massacre.” What will he think of next. In order to make it look like the US has a mass shooting at regular short intervals, they keep lowering the standard. Now it’s 1-3 = mini massacre. Whatever brainwashing and misinformation he can push out. Manipulation of the people at work.
Yep, simple solution.
Destroy second Ammendment.
Seize and destroy all guns.
Imprison anyone holding out or hiding any guns or ammo.
Make penalties so severe for non compliance you ruin lives forever,
Criminals? Their guns are too hard to get so never mind.
Yep, simple.
Seeing the President’s metamorphosis suggests that, as another old song had it, a change is going to come.
Not a metamorphosis into a butterfly of course, but more like the Kafka short story. There’s going to be a change, but the New Yorker is not going to like it.
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