Michael Gregory writes:
“Gun Violence? What exactly is “gun violence”? It is obviously a Liberal political term similar to “assault weapon.” Neither one exists as such, but both induce lots of fear and no real facts. When someone poisons someone else we don’t say “poison violence”, and if a person is killed by a car we don’t say “car violence”. When doctors kill with their medical mistakes, which by the way kill millions of people every year, far beyond any use of weapons, we don’t say “medical violence”. We don’t even consider it as murder! I can think of hundreds of death causing items, and yet there is no “baseball bat violence” or even “knife violence”. The word usage is not even correct . . .
It applies to persons only, not objects. PEOPLE CAUSE VIOLENCE period. They do not need any help from objects. There is NO logic to suggest that any particular object causes violence. It, violence, is within human nature and has been there long before guns were ever invented. Just read the Bible, starting with Abel and Cain.
Yes, I get “gang violence” as I have experienced that growing up in New York and being harassed and beat up by gang pledges. I learned one important thing from that experience. If you FIGHT BACK they will leave you alone. Nothing else works. The cops are never there in time. The reason is gangs are comprised of people, not weapons. So they in fact can be very violent.
Frankly guns are getting a bad rap. They are not “violent” ever. They are not alive so they are simply not capable of violence. They in fact can be used for simple target practice and some people just like to collect them. They are also are quite reliable for hunting, personal defense and at worst war, I will admit.
Do some people misuse them? Of course they do. If people are involved there will be problems and accidents. They use guns to commit crimes, hence we call those people violent criminals. It is an appropriate term as they are people. The gun however is just a tool for them.
Some people even commit suicide. If they do it with a gun it becomes “gun violence” if they jump off a bridge however we don’t make it “bridge violence”. We don’t start talking about banning bridges or “regulating” them. We actually make them higher and more dangerous for jumpers! At best we put up a sign “do not jump from bridge” or build a fence along the sides.
Yet somehow we think that the gun begins beckoning the depressed guy to shoot himself! Bridges however are just innocent of this type of negative reputation because “they can be used for something other than killing”.
There is no logic to the current anti-gun movement but they will never admit it. It is all about getting votes and taking control. Many will read this and criticize my comments but deep inside you know, there is no such thing as gun violence! It’s just bad grammar!
“Gravity Violence”
I’ve been a victim of it many times. REGULATE GRAVITY. GRAVITY FREE ZONES!! (Oh those would be fun!)
We must set our top men to work on this RIGHT NOW!
Who?
Top… Men.
Sorry, all our best scientists are currently tied up working on reversing hair loss, and prolonging erections.
Whyscome you don’t have a tattoo?
I’m down with that! Damn gravity violence broke my ankle!
(making my sign)
+1 Haha gravity kills.
Gravity sucks.
Gravity blows.
Keeps me down man.
“Help Help, I’m being repressed!”
Gravity. It’s the law.
“Gun violence” is a term used with great frequency these days here in Chicago to describe what’s happening. A frequency that has increased greatly in the last few months. The point is to emphasize an object, gun in this case, and associated it with something bad, like violence. Whereas gang violence is a much better description of what’s happening on the streets of Chicago, gangs can be tied to decimated neighborhoods and family structures which can then be tied back to decades of progressive policies, politicians and politics. And that my friends, can never, ever happen.
Illustrating Chicago’s Murders, Homicides, Violence and Idiocy at heyjackass.com
The estimate for deaths in the U.S. for deaths due to medical mistakes is around 100,000 per year. Still high; not “millions.”
I missed the part where he said, “in the U.S. for deaths due to medical mistakes”. I still can’t find it. Ironic that the post is about being verbally precise.
First paragraph, sixth sentence, thirteenth word.
I did a double take on that number, too.
Considering the fact that the gun violence conversation is currently raging mostly in the United States, and the only geographical reference in this article is to New York, it seems fitting to point out that there aren’t millions dying of ‘medical violence’ here in the good ol’ US of A. Just sayin’.
I smell the disarmament comeback already: “That is a bogus argument as cars, bridges, etc. have a purpose other than killing – guns are made to kill.”
First, not all guns are designed for killing. Even of the ones that are, many are not designed for killing human beings.
Second, there are other objects designed for killing that are largely off the radar – tactical knives are an example.
The real crux of the issue is a thing’s intended purpose does not take away from its utility. Cars are great for travel, but they make great weapons; you can blow them up, you can run stuff over w/ them, etc. The fact that the car can be used for another purpose does not take away from the fact that it makes a great weapon. Almost every object can, and has been, weaponized. The fact that someone somewhere declared the object to have such a purpose does not take away from the object’s capabilities and potential.
As I’m fond of pointing out. A firearm is one thing and one thing only; a long distance hole punch. That is it, no mystery, no magic.
Heh, I’ll have to remember that one, Dale.
As in so many other things, intentions do not count for everything when you are the one getting run over by a car.
Here’s one take on it: Let’s imagine the gun control fantasy come true. Let’s imagine for a minute that we could wave a magic wand and make every gun in America disappear. Let’s also imagine that this same magic could keep guns from coming into the country from outside, from being illegally manufactured, etc – a 100% foolproof way of making America completely gun-free. Let’s also imagine that everyone who would otherwise have murdered someone with a firearm while this spell was in effect completely lost the urge to kill, and decided not to pursue any alternate means. Let’s imagine that somehow this same magic also prevented any crime that would otherwise have been prevented by defensive gun use.
What would we be left with? A murder rate STILL four times that of Japan, and twice that of Germany. How are we to account for such a discrepancy?
It is doubtful that Japan’s murder rate is as low as reported. Murder-suicides are generally classified as all suicides. Whenever you see a “multiple” suicide in Japan rest assured that their was only one victim who made the choice. It is a matter of their honor culture. It would be an offense against family honor to acknowledge that a family member murdered his family. I have never looked up statistics for multiple suicides in Japan. It would not surprise me if the actual Japanese murder rate is comparable or higher than it is here.
I love it when I can agree with you, which is not that often. I’ve been fighting against the Japan suicide argument for a long time.
About the post, I think Robert’s got it completely wrong. Most murders are committed with guns. “Gun violence” is perfectly understandable to everyone. There’s no reason to disparage it as an expression of communication. It works.
Same thing I’ve been saying since Sandy Hook: We do not have a “gun violence” problem, we have a violence problem. Removing guns from the equation will not change the fact of violence in our inner cities. It will not change the poor schools, the failed parenting, the lack of opportunity. Violence is rooted in the culture of the streets, not in tgun.
Anyone who says guns are not the problem is clearly lying to himself. We lock gang members up in prison all the time and none of these decent folks are ever involved in any sort of stabbing, shanking, beating or generally violent behavior. As soon as we take away the guns they become beacons of societal goodness.
Why, prisons are practical utopias! Why, that’s it! That’s how we can save everyone! We have to lock them up! For their own good!
Guns are the greatest evolutionary step ever for mankind. They allow weaker, moral human beings to survive onslaughts of violence from those how would otherwise prey upon them because of their weaknesses. The weaker ones are then able to contribute to the rest of society, sometimes with extremely important contributions.
Things start to go wrong is when governments get involved. First, governments are the supreme predators, responsible for millions upon millions of deaths just on their own. Second, when government disarms their weaker law abiding citizens, those citizens lose the equality that guns provided them and make them again vulnerable to the stronger human predators.
It is that simple.
Well said.
please don’t confuse me with facts and arguments that make sense.
A good description of language manipulation used by statist media members and politicians to support gun control.
“I learned one important thing from that experience. If you FIGHT BACK they will leave you alone. Nothing else works.”
I remember a buddy of mine explaining this to his 10 year old when the 10 year old was being bullied by his older brother.
10 year old to Dad: “He keeps pushing me around.”
Dad: Punch him in the nose every time he does it.”
10 year old: “He’ll kick my ass”
Dad: “He’ll kick your ass a few times. But after a while he’ll get sick of getting punched in the nose.”
Obviously this was a while ago–the seventies, before the comple and total attempt to pussify our children.
Also do it before the pressure gets so bad you wheel on a bully and repeatedly introduce his mouth to a hydrant valve cover. Sage advice.
My father told me that you don’t have to win the fight. Just make it painful enough that the bully will pick on someone else.
My firearms aren’t violent; they just lie where I put them, same as my other tools.
Same as my ex-gf.
Violence does not require a firearm, those of us amongst the people of the gun know this. The anti-2a proponents have created a number of terms whose sole purpose is to inflict fear. Amazing what a motivator fear can be.
Good job, great logic.
I think the whole “technology is neutral” meme has always been rather weak. Are nuclear weapons “neutral?” Is government—”methods of organization” fall under the rubric of technology—neutral?
Technology is designed with a certain goal or purpose in mind, and guns are purposely designed to effect violence, i.e., the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against a person.
Therefore, the Leftist disarmament brigade isn’t being dishonest in using the term “gun violence;” however, they are dishonest in using “gun violence” only selectively and dishonestly.
Do they use “gun violence” to describe the police raiding the drug house across the street? Do they use “gun violence” to describe the impetus behind collecting taxes to fund public schools? Or truant officers to enforce compulsory education? (I got a school administrator raging mad when I said “gun violence” is what keeps kids going to public schools. They literally denied that truant officers will use violence, even though a child in Philadelphia was shot by a truant officer for being truant.)
Of course not. The Leftists are in love with gun violence when it suits their purpose.
I don’t have a problem with “assault weapon” either, since “assault” in the context of a scary black rifle simply means “a military attack usually involving direct combat.” Thus, nearly all firearms are “assault weapons,” as most are either directly or indirectly designed from combat applications.
But the Leftist disarmament brigade uses “assault weapon” only—again—dishonestly and selectively, because when they suit their purpose, again, the nomenclature for a scary black rifle gets changed to “personal defense weapon.”
In summary, I myself am ready to use “gun violence” to protect my life and my family’s, but if the Leftist get to use terms like “personal defense” for their “gun violence” applications, then they should be fair in applying the same terminology to everybody.
But they’re not all that much into being fair, right?
And, do we really have a violence problem at all?
Seems to me we might have a violence-in-very-specific-inner-city-areas problem. But America is the safest it’s been in decades. I think we have a politician problem and a bankster problem.
Do you want to look at the real violence problem that all of this civilian disarmament stuff is covering for? It’s our civilian military leadership. Not the soldiers, not the generals, they are mostly excellent people.
It’s the politics of corporate war. They use civilian disarmament to cover the issue.
Stop telling our soldiers we’re fighting for freedom, it’s obnoxious. We’re fighting for profit. Our soldiers don’t understand their mission and come back feeling guilty.
Stop bombing brown kids in Africa and the Middle East so you can steal their resources.
Obama got votes for saying he’d end the wars overseas, not start a war with legal, gun owning American patriots at home. Oh, the hypocrisy!
When we invaded Iraq based upon a pack of lies, the original mission designation was “Operation Iraqi Liberation.” They changed it when someone pointed out what the acronym spelled.
The weapons compliance people in Iraq asked inspectors how they were to prove a negative, an impossibility, and now John Kerry is saying that Iran should be easily able to do so.
Are we to invade Persia next?
On 911, one of the first calls to the U.S. was from Iraq, offering condolences and any intelligence that might be of help in catching the responsible parties.
A couple days later Rumsfeld wanted to bomb Iraq, because “there are no good targets in Afghanistan.”
Why do I mention all this? Because we, the land of the free lunch, are not getting better. The change is, for the most part, for the worse.
I despair for my descendants.
Hmmm…. Never quite made that grammatical connexion.
About the only other class word would be blunt trauma.
Point well taken.
And just WHO exactly is gonna stop it? I think some bear somewhere said something to the effect of.. “Only YOU can prevent gun violence.”
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