After Gun Control Marches, ‘It’ll Go Away’ vs. ‘We Are Not Cynical Yet’

After Gun Control Marches, ‘It’ll Go Away’ vs. ‘We Are Not Cynical Yet’ – Which group do you think is more likely to vote? . . .

For more than a month now, the questions have ricocheted down this Main Street culled from a Norman Rockwell dreamscape — past the dueling barbershops and the outdoor broom sale and the mural with the horse — quietly at first, when the Florida massacre was still fresh, and then not so quietly.

Why would this time be different? Why should it be?

“Every time something happens, everybody’s hollering,” Garland Ashby, 77, the owner of an estimated 75 guns, said of the recent protests over gun control, rubbing at his cigarette stub from a park bench in this town of 4,200. “A couple of months it’s in the news, and then it’s gone.”

The ‘Nice Girl’ Who Saved the Second Amendment –

(Joyce Lee) Malcolm looks nothing like a hardened veteran of the gun-control wars. Small, slender, and bookish, she’s a wisp of a woman who enjoys plunging into archives and sitting through panel discussions at academic conferences. Her favorite topic is 17th- and 18th-century Anglo-American history, from the causes of the English Civil War to the meaning of the American Revolution. Her latest book, due in May, is The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold, a biography of the infamous general. She doesn’t belong to the National Rifle Association, nor does she hunt. She admits to owning an old shotgun, but she’s unsure about the make or model. “I’ve taken it out a couple of times, but the clay targets fall safely to earth,” she says in an interview at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School in Virginia, where she’s a professor who teaches courses on constitutional history as well as on war and law.

She is also the lady who saved the Second Amendment — a scholar whose work helped make possible the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision, which in 2008 recognized an individual right to possess a firearm. “People used to ask, ‘How did a nice girl like you get into a subject like this?’” she says. “I’m not asked that anymore.” She smiles, a little mischievously. “Maybe they don’t think I’m a nice girl anymore.”

Groupies Shower School Shooter with Love Notes and Sexy Selfies – Why not? No one seems to be blaming him. It was obviously the gun’s fault . . .

Despite his alleged involvement in the massacre — or perhaps because of it, depending on one’s point of view — Cruz has been receiving support in the form of mushy letters, sexy photos, and cold hard cash (in the form of commissary credits) from folks who are probably best described as groupies.

Ghoulish Facebook groups have appeared, rife with folks who want to befriend Cruz romantically or platonically. Some seek to help him avoid the death penalty, as the New York Post has reported.

Dems seize on gun control heading into midterms – Well they don’t have the economy, foreign policy or healthcare as issues and the whole Russia thing is totally played out . . .

Democrats are vowing to embrace gun control on the campaign trail this year, seizing on what they view as a shift in political winds while recognizing that Congress is unlikely to pass any new reforms before November.

Strategists say it’s a smart move given there is more public support for gun reform than ever before following a deadly mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in mid-February that sparked anti-gun violence rallies in cities across the country last weekend.

But gun reform –– which has long been considered the third rail in Washington politics –– also risks alienating certain voters, especially in some of the GOP strongholds that Democrats are targeting this election cycle.

On gun control, when did we start trusting youth instead of experience? – When they presented themselves as useful, telegenic tools with which to forward a dearly held agenda item for the left . . .

In the past month, however, America has decided it would rather steep itself in the nascent wisdom of a bunch of young people who have yet to graduate from high school. TIME Magazine has dubbed them the “school shooting generation,” and they have been lionized with worldwide media coverage before, during and after national demonstrations.

Sure enough, there’s an excitement to seeing a young generation of Americans get so involved in pressing issues of the day. (Although kids the age of the Parkland shooting survivors have been fighting in American wars going back to the nation’s founding, and doing so without the gratification of having a Twitter hashtag named after them.)

The gun control kids are emotional, telegenic, and frequently wrong. But they’re attractive because they represent the promise of new ideas and unexpected possibilities. Like the child rulers from centuries ago, they have been imbued with a magical ability to affect societal change before they’re even allowed to go see “Get Out” in a movie theater.

The Fake Gun Control Debate – A little more intellectual honesty on both sides wouldn’t hurt . . .

If you look at the gun debate through the Persuasion Filter, you see people who are pursuing their own self-interest as they see it at the expense of other people. But humans can’t say that directly. To do so would make us appear to be bad people in the eyes of society.

For example, anti-gun people know that some people would be safer with guns in the house for self-defense. I know a single mom with two teenage daughters who gunned-down a documented sex offender who broke into her home in the middle of the night. No charges were filed. She was safer with a gun, and she knew it. That’s why she had one. So the anti-gun folks (the most extreme of them anyway) would accept a world in which my friend and her daughters were sexually assaulted in their own home so long as it makes their own risk a bit lower. But they can’t say that. So instead, they point to England and say whatever works there would totally work here. That might be true. But it isn’t rational. There are too many differences to be confident we’d have the same outcome.

Many pro-gun folks feel safer owning guns. Or they might simply enjoy guns for sporting purposes. They might also prefer gun ownership to lower the risk of a despot taking over, or simply because gun ownership is a freedom granted in the Constitution. But the unspoken part of those preferences includes the knowledge that some number of innocent people, including children, will die because of current gun laws. To be fair, guns will save some people as well. But no doubt about it, some innocent people will die whenever guns are easy to obtain.

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48 COMMENTS

  1. Isn’t it nice how they couch “intellectual honesty” in a completely dishonest argument. In the cited example both dignity and possibly lives were saved by the affirmative action of the woman who gunned down a sexual predator, however in the same breathe the author would have you believe that same woman is responsible in some way for a crime that might happen across town that she had nothing to do with. What an Ass-hat. Perhaps that same woman is also responsible for old age and cancer, or maybe cancer only exists because we haven’t passed a law banning it yet.

    • As soon as you see the statement “because gun ownership is a freedom granted in the Constitution.” you know they are not interested in an intellectually honest discussion. The constitution does not grant rights, it protects rights we already have.

      • “Isn’t it nice how they couch “intellectual honesty” in a completely dishonest argument”-You nailed it.

      • Came to comment on exactly that “granted” item.

        The govt does not grant you those rights. Wankers.

    • “Isn’t it nice how they couch “intellectual honesty” in a completely dishonest argument”-You nailed it.

    • It was TTAG, probably RF, that put the note about intellectual honesty. Not the author of the quoted article. I also don’t feel the author is saying that woman protecting herself and child is causing the crime across town. The author is saying humanity is selfish and they’re going to make decisions that most benefit themselves and their progeny. I agree with him on that, what I don’t agree with him on is when he’s talking about some being safer with gun control. The only entity that’s safer with control of arms of the free man is government.

      • This exactly. “The only entity that’s safer with control of arms of the free man is government.” Gun control proponents THINK that gun control will make them safer, but in general their risk of exposure to violence wether committed with a gun or not is already close to zero, and harassing legal gun owners won’t change that a bit.

  2. That blue guy up there is a progressive having a reasonable discussion about common sense gun control, right?

    • He’s offering the liberal definition of “compromise:” Give up the rights we don’t want you to have, and we won’t send the government thugs to arrest you.

  4. …I just gotta ask:

    Did that young lady in the lead picture pay full price for those pants?

    • Given today’s fashion, probably paid extra for the ‘distressed’ look. There’s companies out there using acid, lasers, and other tricks to mimic worn in or worn out jeans.

      Some guys do it with their guns too to get that battle scarred and/or worn in look to them.

      • i certainly hope those guys aren’t wearing their jeans when they use guns to impress that distressed, battle worn look onto pants.

      • “Assault pants!?!” One pull with a finger and they’re off! Nobody needs pants that come off that fast! Think of the children!!!!

  5. “..or simply because gun ownership is a freedom granted in the Constitution.”

    umm, I think you might have meant “protected by the Constitution”. You know, that 2nd Amendment thing that gets Corruptocrats panties in a bunch.

  6. “If you look at the gun debate through the Persuasion Filter, you see people who are pursuing their own self-interest as they see it at the expense of other people. But humans can’t say that directly. To do so would make us appear to be bad people in the eyes of society.”

    I see it more simply as one group wants to dictate to another it’s wishes while hypocritically ignoring its own complacency in gun ownership. The left doesn’t hate guns, they just don’t want people they disagree with to be armed while blindly trusting the authorities to tool up.

  7. “But no doubt about it, some innocent people will die whenever guns are easy to obtain”

    And many would die even if all guns magically disappeared. Britain knows this first hand though they’d never admit it. Knife and acid attacks seem to be occurring much more regularly now.

    And this completely ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to “gun deaths”: suicide. It’s rising in the US, particularly among young men, and teens in general. Guns are only used in about half, yet despite the increasing number of occurences, the left tells us it’s not a mental health issue.

    Most of these school shooters fit the pattern for suicide victims, but just chose to take some with them or in their deluded mind, settle scores before punching out. Perhaps if all those groupies Cruz is getting had shown him some attentention prior, he wouldn’t have done what he did (no guarantee but most of these shooters also fit the pattern of severely depressed and, possibly ostracized, loner).

    • “Knife and acid attacks seem to be occurring much more regularly now.”

      There is no “seem” to this. It was reported this morning that has officially London passed NYC for murders this year. First time since 1800.

      • Should someone point out to the gun grabbers here that it is essentially illegal to carry a pocket knife in England except in connection with a profession or job? And that laws have been proposed to outlaw anything sharper than a butter knife? Huh, who would have thought that banning knives in the Land of Hope and Glory did not engender the same result as the banning of guns?

        • It’s illegal to carry just about anything in England, if the police decide you don’t have good reason to be carrying it.

        • It is illegal to carry any thing that is meant to be used for self-defense in England. So carry an umbrella protect against the rain,no problem; if you intend to also use it as a defensive tool, that’s completely illegal.

  8. I have seen the “school shooter” worship for over a decade now. I have seen many kids fall in love with the kids who commit mass murder. The kids who try to destroy American society through violence get high praise. The kids who murder their parents get fan clubs. It’s inspirational to many more people than you think. It’s so wide spread now that non Americans are inspired to commit their own acts of violence following in their heroes’ footsteps.

    Americans are sick, their culture has become demonic. It’s not the black gun that is turning children into murderers. Other countries have the same guns, but they don’t have the same behavior. Adults/parents need to wake up to what they have done to their children, culture and society. Not taking responsibility is one of the reasons why your kids hate you and want to kill you and others.

    • This ‘worship’ of these mass killers has gone to some bizarre extremes –

      I recall years back hearing about the women who want those dirtball’s children arranging through a bribed prison guard to smuggle their semen out of prison so they can get pregnant.

      This is the ‘culture’ the Progressives have been so carefully nurturing for themselves, where to be ‘famous’ for anything is a life ambition…

  9. “But no doubt about it, some innocent people will die whenever guns are easy to obtain.”

    An effective way to out-logic a ‘Grabber’ is to use the ‘saving lives’ angle.

    Example : If you hit ’em with “It’s about saving lives, isn’t it? If we could save ever just a few lives it would be worth it, right?”

    If they say “Yes”, you’ve trapped them.

    30,000 lives a year are lost in car crashes. Since speed actually does kill, if the national speed limit was limited to 40 MPH, *strictly* enforced, thousands of lives would be saved. After all, except for emergency services, there is literally nothing worth the loss of life, that arriving a few minuets later would entail.

    *RIGHT*?

    Dozens die yearly rock climbing. They should have no problem outlawing it outright, since that will save lives.

    *RIGHT*?

    So why don’t we pass those laws? It’s obviously not about saving lives, it’s accepted that cost of the loss of life doing those things is worthwhile.

    Freedom is messy. You can die doing things because you are free to do them. It’s an acceptable loss.

    So is the second amendment.

    Next time you talk to a ‘Grabber’, ask them if it’s about the chance to save even just a few lives.

    We don’t try to firewall the internet to keep people from finding out how ts build bombs or make poisons like Ricin.

    It’s considered an acceptable loss for the freedom to communicate freely…

    • Yep. It’s too soon for hillary to think she’s past prosecution for her russia deal.

      • I read an article today that Paul Manaforte is up to his eyeballs in Russian crocodiles, along with his right hand man Gates–and Mueller wants to hang Manaforte around Trump’s neck. He can hand Manaforte, who was a wheeler dealer and money launderer, but establishing whether Manaforte was a Russian agent or an unwitting dupe (he clearly had good connections with the Russian oligarchs close to Putin), or that Trump knew anything about it, is another thing all together. And even if Manaforte was a spy does not mean that Trump was anything other than a target of attempted Russian influence and not a fellow traveler. Trump’s anti-Russian actions since the election strongly suggest that he was not “had.”

  12. The old dude sitting on that bench eyeballing that hot chick with the cut up jeans reminds me of me( only I don’t look like that)..thinking if only she was holding an AR, pant pant… LGBTQ, ,. and Im discriminated against because I’m a PErv, I demand justice.. LGBTQ&P damnit

  14. ” But the unspoken part of those preferences includes the knowledge that some number of innocent people, including children, will die because of current gun laws. To be fair, guns will save some people as well. But no doubt about it, some innocent people will die whenever guns are easy to obtain.”

    Uh, how so? Name one thing a person can do with a gun that causes harm to another person, aside from justified self defense, that is not already illegal. How are current gun laws (other than those that prevent people from access to a gun when they need it – I’m looking at you NJ) causing people to die?

    Some innocent people will die whether guns are easy to obtain or not and none of these people can point to one concrete piece of evidence that the relative ease of gun access in this country is in any way a causal factor in rates of violent crime – or even all that well correlated. The rates of innocent people dying in this country are NOT proportional to the number of guns. All the time these folks tell us that other countries don’t have as much violent gun related crime as we do (a head fake to throw us off of overall violent crime but I’ll let that go for the moment) Given, however, that our gun ownership rate is an order of magnitude or more higher than the rest of the world, if it were a principle cause of harm to innocents, our number of gun crime related death would be much, much higher than it is.

    As has been said many times: There are 100 million gun owners with over 300 million guns in this country. If we were a problem, you would know it.

  17. Dilbert there didn’t go far enough.

    Indeed, it’s an argument about who gets killed (or not)

    – Net, net, factoring in DGUs and crime reduction, fewer people die with armed self-defense possible. They game the DGU stats hard. Even with that, I have yet to see any “less deaths” anti-citizen advocate address the ~100 million killed creating and maintaining totalitarian states in the 20th century.

    – Yes, people tend to vote for policies under which *I* live, with less concern that you do. Proconsul Cuomo The Younter (sometimes knows as “The Lesser”) is fine disarming the proles citizens, while he wanders around with guards. Indeed, he was instantly incensed when one of his court entourage was clipped by a stray, reverting immediately to his indifference over the many non-persons who live with that every day.

    Armed criminals have a different impact on other people, depending on who the other people are.

    – Ant-arms advocates always talk “gun deaths”, including people who are killed as a last resort stopping them from doing violence to others. People more likely to be victims unless they can fight back are a bit less concerned.

  19. Watch out when you see vague adjectives or nouns used in an argument – like the word “some”. This is someone carefully phrasing his remarks to be truthful, while the same remarks imply something false. If you confront him on his implied falsehood, he will just say that the statements as written are true, and you will be forced to admit that they are true, and you will be made to look like you are the one who is carefully parsing words to discredit your opponent. Great tactic, isn’t it?

    The implied falsehood in this case is that more people are killed with guns than saved with guns, when in fact the exact opposite is true.

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