A group called Moms Demand Action (“for gun sense in America”) just put out a video marking the one year anniversary of the Newtown massacre. From a from a pro-gun perspective their video invokes some very effective imagery, using the impending sound of a ticking clock to highlight the vulnerability of a classroom full of undefended children.
That’s the story of Newtown, where a psychopathic loser took advantage of the “gun free zone” at Sandy Hook Elementary School to murder two classrooms full of first graders and their teachers without being opposed by anyone equipped to defend against him. When seconds mattered the Newtown police were only 15 minutes away, but the Demanding Moms don’t get it.
Their response to Newtown? They are on a nationwide crusade to create more gun-free zones. Holy cow. Still, for those who actually understand that seconds matter, that ticking clock is very evocative. It just needs the right voice over, which I have tried to provide (100% fair use):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Ls3NxzHkU[/youtube]
If anyone thinks this is not the time to invoke Newtown in the gun-rights debate, tell it to the Demanding Moms. This video is a rebuttal to their ill-conceived manipulation, which should not go unanswered.
Video script
Pro-gun voice-over (by Alec Rawls):
Evil is coming, just as it came to Newtown one year ago.
Part of the original voice-over (from the Moms Demand Action “No More Silence” video):
With 26 more school shootings since that day…
Pro-gun voice-over:
Evil is coming and everyone knows it, but nobody is preparing to confront it. They want to, but they are not allowed. Denied their constitutional right to bear arms, would-be defenders can only sit and wait.
What society in human history ever gathered its children together, then issued a public guarantee that they would be left completely undefended? How much longer will we sit by as this invitation to slaughter the most vulnerable members of our society is repeatedly accepted?
Original voice-over:
Ask yourself, is silence what America needs right now?
No, silence is not what America needs
But it is what our Democrat-controlled media systematically delivers when it comes to gun-rights understanding. A full half of the country had in unison one single immediate response to the news of the Newtown massacre:
Why the Hell wasn’t there anyone on-site who was equipped to defend this entire school full of children?
We all know the reason: because the Democrats have managed to strip whole swaths of their fellow citizens of the Constitutional right to bear arms, but we still can’t help erupting in questioning anger at the sheer unmitigated perversity of it. It screams out of us every time one of these psychopaths is able to go about his evil business unopposed, yet nowhere does our Democrat-controlled media breathe a hint of what a full half of the country is thinking and saying. Our voices are silenced by a relentlessly biased media, yet it is our voices that need to be heard, because it is we who are correct.
Our dissembler in chief
In his Newtown prayer-vigil remarks President Obama artfully misrepresented the pro-gun position:
Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?
But every gun rights advocate in the country knows that this violence, visited on our children “year after year after year,” is not the price of freedom but is the price of our violation of freedom (the Constitutional right to bear arms). It is a price that the Democrats are willing to pay, choosing to leave everyone’s children undefended in the face of repeated mass murder rather than relinquish their opposition to one of our country’s founding liberties.
Conservatives are indeed willing to pay a high price for freedom in those instances where the price of freedom is high but this is not one of those instances. The freedom to bear arms makes us safer, just as all of our liberties contribute to our security and our prosperity. The price we have to pay for liberty is the price of defending it, not some supposed price that liberty itself inflicts!
This is what a moral pervert we have for a president. He sees liberty itself as a negative and strikes at the tree of liberty wherever he has a chance, socializing one sixth of our economy with Obamacare; using the power of the state (in the form of the IRS) to systematically attack his political opposition; even running “assault weapons” to Mexican drug cartels with no plan to track the guns, only a plan to use them, when they are discovered at crime scenes throughout Mexico, to ensnare America’s law abiding gun industry, blaming our right to keep and bear arms for Obama’s own intentional abuse of those rights.
Is there anyone in the whole country who still believes a single word that comes out of this man’s mouth? He spent four years clearing the path for the Muslim Brotherhood to ascend to power in Egypt, advocating for them at every turn, often by name, only to see the Egyptian people, who had always sided with the Islamofascists against Israel and the United States and Europe, turn against the Brothers when, thanks to Obama, it was now they who were facing the Islamofascist hell. That turn against the Muslim Brotherhood (the parent organization of al Qaeda) is a bigger turn of events than Bush’s victory in Iraq. It is a huge victory for liberty, and all because Obama’s unbounded hatred for liberty is so extreme that it stimulates even the Islamic world’s liberty-challenged immune system to vomit him out.
We have to do the same here in America. Vomit out his poisonous Obamacare and vomit out his rottingly sweet attempt to depict gun rights, not as a valuable liberty, providing crucial defense against both common and uncommon crime, but as a negative: not something to fight for but something to fight against. Vomit out this liberty-hating monster. Overthrow his every machination and hope that the low-information Democrat half of our electorate, the willful idiots who seek to curtail their own thoughts as our Democrat-controlled media wants their thoughts to be curtailed, do not stay asleep long enough to carry him over any more finish lines.
In that vein, here’s hoping that the words I so jarringly put in the mouths of the Demanding Moms might be clear enough to pull even their grief-stricken heads out of the sand. After all, it is their ticking clock. Shouldn’t they know better than anyone that seconds count? Come on woman in the video, show us that you have a brain in your head. Show us that a person who comprehends the horror of murderous seconds cannot really be in favor of defender-free zones!
Don’t you DARE try to defend those children!
Yeah, they actually said it. In response to the Newtown massacre Professor Erik Loomis from the University of Rhode Island passed along the following message (originally penned by another angry leftist named Lee Papa, aka Rude Pundit):
“First f**ker to say the solution is for elementary school teachers to carry guns needs to get beaten to death.”
They know that these murders were enabled by the state’s unconstitutional disarming of all would-be defenders but they care more about their disarmament goals than about the murders and are desperate to switch the blame to those who seek to uphold a citizen’s duty to be prepared to defend oneself and others.
Professor David Guth also wants death for those who believe in being prepared to defend themselves and others. More specifically, he wants death for their children:
#NavyYardShooting The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you.
And here is funny-man Jim Carrey’s contempt for the lives of those who would seek to defend children:
“Any1 who would run out to buy an assault rifle after the Newtown massacre has very little left in their body or soul worth protecting.”
I sent him a few responses of my own:
That butt-hole routine was sick but hilarious. Carrey’s latest routine is just sick.
The purpose of liberty is to empower moral agency
The anti-gunners need to learn some moral theory. Illiberal “liberals” always think that they are the sophisticated ones but anyone who doesn’t understand why gun rights make us safer doesn’t understand the first thing about why liberty works.
If human beings did not have moral comprehension it wouldn’t much matter if we were free. Not being cognizant of value we would not be capable of pursuing value and so nothing of value would be lost by our not having the freedom to pursue value (or “happiness” as it is listed in the Declaration of Independence). But moral agency changes everything.
Our open ended faculties of intelligence are able to follow evidence, not just about what is possible in the world, but also about what there is to value in the world. Whether this is a product of godless nature or is because god made us in his image (Genesis 1:27), what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is our capacity to make progress in the discovery and pursuit of value.
What do we see to find value in? In the words of Linnaeus, “know thyself,” (“homo sapiens“). There are vast catalogs of music, humor, drama, dance and sport, all with their unique attractions, discovered and explored and developed by humans questing after value. There is literature and learning. There is love of the natural world and the lesser-minded animals that need our guardianship and our husbandry.
Most basically there is our love for each other: man and woman, parents and children, friends and colleagues. We discern the lovable qualities in each unique individual just by witnessing their spirit in action, and we see their hateful qualities, where instead of acting to preserve and advance what the human mind can see to value some have a perverse desire to trample value, as if it raises them higher to bring other people and things down.
This is the difference between moral rationality and moral irrationality. Moral rationality husbands and follows all evidence of value, then acts for every discovery of value wherever it is enough at stake to be worth accounting. But moral rationality is not the only human mode. We evolved through the process of natural selection where different available human modes compete on the basis of which produces and nurtures the most offspring.
Here two main modes are possible. People can make their way in the world either by producing things that other people find valuable, then trading or selling what they produce, or they can make their way by trying to steal what others have produced. These competing strategies are both broadly present in the human population today, but the stealers are a clear minority, essentially our criminal class, salted away in every race, making up something less than 20% of the total population.
Most people are moral. Their nature is to produce value, and this strategy (for those who follow it) is facilitated by moral rationality. If you have an eye for value, if your tendency is to follow evidence of value and to act for value then you will be better at producing value. You will be more successful in the be-productive reproductive strategy, and this seems to be the course that the bulk of mankind has followed. This is our evolutionary path. This is you, right? Know thyself.
This human nature creates a fundamental fellowship. Why are people all over the world so able to embrace each other as genuine friends, eager for each other’s well being? Because when we look for what there is to value in each other we all see this same thing: that we all share this basic moral rationality that seeks to make progress in the discovery and pursuit of value. This makes us allies in our fundamental nature. We revel in each other’s discovery of value, each other’s talents, each other’s inventiveness. We love each other’s moral agency.
This is why people are willing to undertake even grave risks in defense even of unknown others. Because being morally competent, we know the worth of other people’s lives, that we have this shared ability to recognize and act for value. We risk even for unknown others because we have a rational expectation that others are worth risking for.
The fact of moral agency, that our open ended faculties of intelligence are capable of apprehending value, is the key moral fact of our existence. Lower animals (with some limited exceptions) don’t have moral agency, and they certainly have no capacity for moral rationality. Only the human being can recognize whether he is making a contribution to the world around or is reducing the sum of human attainment by predating upon it. We easily, even automatically, use constructs like Kant’s “categorical imperative” (what if everyone were to behave the way I am behaving?) to magnify our understanding of the implications of our existence for the world around. All of which lead the moral majority to first want to be fair: to not be a cheater, but instead be one of those who makes his way by making a contribution and getting rewarded for it, not by stealing from others.
All progress in the discovery and pursuit of value comes through moral agency. That moral fact demands the empowerment of moral agency, which in turn requires maximum equal liberty rights. The pursuit of value requires freedom of action. If progress in the discovery and pursuit of value is to be maximized then moral agency must be maximally unleashed, limited only where one person’s liberty interferes with similar such freedom for others.
One of the most important things people must be free to do is defend themselves and each other, because the cheaters and the stealers and the predators are still out there. When we identify them we can take away their gun rights, but it is counterproductive in the extreme to disempower the moral agency of the morally competent in this most crucial area, and this is what the anti-gunners want. They don’t want to disarm just the people who have revealed a criminal nature. They explicitly want to disarm everybody except the government, proving that they have zero comprehension of the primacy of moral agency.
Listen up you liberty hating fruitcakes: all value comes through the empowerment of moral agency, which first requires liberty. To be against the empowerment of moral agency in some crucial area like saving lives is to be a wanton destroyer of value of the highest magnitude. You are Godzilla smashing Tokyo. You are a F4 tornado vacuuming up towns in the Midwest. And then to project the most tender concern for innocent life, as you work perfectly overtly to insure that there will be no defenders of the innocent, how is that even possible?
Much can be excused on account of grief but most of those who are trying to use the Newtown massacre to attack gun rights have suffered no personal loss that clouds their understanding. Like President Obama, they are intentionally misusing tragedy to misdirect blame, determined to create more of the defender-free zones that will give them more mass murders that they can use as more fodder to advance their ultimate goal of a government monopoly on power.
Evil is coming, not just in the form of broken losers, but also in the form of usurping tyrants, as regular as any “26 more school shootings,” but looming a million times larger in human history. Evil is coming and half the country is actively trying to pave the way for it, using the demagoguery of misdirected blame to disempower the moral agency of a nation.
Most rational people don’t consider universal background checks to be an attack on the rights of anyone, except those who have no business having easy access to firearms to begin with.
@Greg:
Most rational people are against gun control, which is why it will not be a part of any (but the “safest”) Democratic candidate’s platform in the 2014 elections.
Most rational people know that criminals will always ignore the laws in the committing of their crimes.
Most rational people know that, unless they happen to be on the scene, police usually only arrive in time to count the bodies and make reports.
@Greg:
So federal background checks are not enough for you? You want to make them “universal”? Does that mean that unless we get the OK from the UN we can’t buy a gun to protect our families and ourselves? I’m sure that Mexico will be all for that. Same with Iran. They would love to disarm us.
@Ditto:
When seconds count, the police are minutes away. Unless you live in Detroit, then they may not show up at all. People like Greggie don’t understand the meaning of “first” responder.
No, we dont need to do anything about gun control in this country. We can stand to loose about 100 children a year, can’t we? After all it’s small collateral damage for people with small dicks.
@This one:
So what you’re saying is that you consider it “small collateral damage?” Glad we got that straight.
Are you going to also push to outlaw Vaccinations? Anesthesia? Automobiles? Bicycles? Chemical cleaners? Crosswalks? Stairs? Windows? Create illness free zones to keep children away from the dangers posed by sick people and medical providers? With all the children who die from these and other causes you surely must feel a need to create even more useless laws to save children from anything that could presumably cause them an early demise. Sound’s like you’re quite the fascist This One.
The action that the Moms Demanding Action are demanding is more gun-free zones. The post is pretty clear about that. Does Greg want to try defending that demand?
Of course all CCW permitees undergo background checks. The question here is the unconstitutional withholding of CCW permits (treating the bearing of arms as a privilege instead of as a constitutional right), and the unconstitutional barring of CCW carry from schools and other places where the burden of necessary grounds for such limitation on a constitutional right cannot be met.
it’s clear that if some protector armed there on location, could have turn back the end
to a better alive children and teachers,
there is no doubt about it,
one protector with a gun is a blessing to have in a school full of children,
but is a danger to loose his life so to protect the young and teachers,
that would be a great loss for a whole community yes, with living children,
they made their choice who to lose in case the killer arrive,
of course you where influence by obama’s will to take all the guns of the people,
while he his loaded on guns and loaded on drones, and loaded on informations by the probes looking on everyone’s lives, but the people no way to defend yourselves, your children, your other love one, your treasures, and your neighbors,
protect OBAMA, but you bad guys can kill anyone,
BY THE WAY, THIS YOUNG WOMAN WHICH THE CAPITOL POLICE SHUT DOWN IN HER CAR WITH HER SON 3 YEAR OLD IN THE BACK, IN FRONT OF THE CAPITOL, SHE WAS CONFUSE AND WAS TRYING TO GET HELP, AND SAW IT NOT THE WAY TO GET IT ,TRY TO LEAVE WHEN THEY STOP HER AND SCARED HER,
SHE DESPERATLY TRY TO LEAVE, THE POLICE SHUT HER,
SHE WAS NOT ARMED, THEY SHOOT AT HER CAR WINDOW,
WHICH BROKE AND KILLED HER WHILE HER BABY IS IN THE BACK,
THOSE POLICE ARRIVE AT THE CAPITOL AND RECIEVED A STANDING OVATION BY THE DEMOCRATE,
WHAT HAPPEN TO THEM? WHERE THEY CHARGE OF
IRRESPONSIBILITY ? OR MURDER ? AND DID THEY KILLED HER BECAUSE SHE WAS BLACK?
HER SISTERS WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHY THEY KILLED HER,
….all the while Terrorists are using OUR own LAWS AGAINST US and quietly infiltrating OUR COUNTRY…
…when EVIL COMES? I believe EVIL IS HERE = “Sleeping” … watching…waiting…
Like a Cancer- like Cancer..EVIL doesn’t care whether you are a liberal or a Conservative or Libertarian it hates ALL AMERICANS EQUALLY…
Guess who would all of a sudden “WAKE UP” in minutes “if” (and that’s a big “IF”) our 2nd Amendment rights were somehow wiped out??!?
Who would protect those whiny gun zone free Liberal asses then??? Obama?? – Ha! Surely you jest
…No, he would be cowering with Moochelle, Kids and all their RICH/WEALTHY ELITIST buddies in an unknown bunker because his terrorist buddies have turn on – even him…all the while we are all on the surface being murdered…for not being of the “right” religion…
Knowing there are MILLIONS of LEGAL, Responsible Gun Owners in America…”Evil” wouldn’t even THINK of “waking” up in full force…
When is the rest of America going to wake up from this LIBERAL Stupor they are in and start fighting back…start pushing back and really really defend our Constitutional Rights and fight for our Sovereign American Republic again? Instead of always turning against it??
@Ditto:
Mother Jones?
ROTFLMAO
Children age 14 and under who died in traffic fatalities:
2007 – 1,680
2008 – 1,347
2010 – 1,211
2011 – 1,140
I say we ban all vehicles to save the lives of children.
Tom
GUN DON’T KILL
WHO SAID THAT?
HE OR SHE WAS RIGHT,
@retire05:
I
We would if hundreds of children were killings themselves behind the wheels of cars.
@ilovebeeswarzone:
Good point. Extra credit: what do Americans consider to be classy? Answer: the Sandyhook anniversary pro gun narration blogpost. I just can’t tell you how cool a guy it is that would write one of those.
What is the leading cause of fetal death in the US? 1.37 million abortions in USA. in 2012 alone. It’s almost 3,700 abortions every day. 1/5 of these abortions are performed in Planned Parenthood Clinics:
Abortion is the leading cause of fetal mortality by a ratio of roughly 100:1 compared to the closest contender, Congenital Defects, (of which a total number of yearly fatalities is nearly equal to only two days of US abortions). Were abortions suspended for only one day, it would result in replacing the total number of children lost to firearm deaths by 10 times (1000%).
Seems to me if you really cared about the loss of life you would be calling for abortion control.
retire05
LETS PUNISH THEIR CAREGIVER FOR NEGLECTING THEIR PROTECTION
AND PUT THEM IN DANGER,
@Tom:
The stats I used were for children 14 and under. Your Gramsci loving website did not give age brackets so we can assume that it included those 18 and under (or is it now 26 and under since Obamascare hit the bricks?).
Just how many kids, 16-18 do you think die in traffic fatalities when they are driving the vehicle? Do you really think there were fewer than 194 kids ages 16-18, who were driving, that were killed in traffic fatalities in any of those years? How many of that 194 were over 14? How many were killed in Chicago last year (almost 30), Los Angeles, or all the other blue states with restrictive gun laws? Have you forgotten how strict the gun laws are in Connecticut?
And how vague can you get?
Really? Which was it? By their own hand, or by someone else’s?
Where is MJ getting their stats? From the UN?
Your MJ article is simply hyperbole. Why doesn’t it talk about the kids that are killed from the drugs sold to them, or how many die from simple unintentional accidents, or those killed in a car wreck? Because MJ is a left wing Gramsci loving rag that panders to fools like you.
@Ditto:
A bizzare and clumsy redirect. Any time you want to discuss children being murdered by guns, feel free.
@Ditto:
Tom doesn’t care about children. He’s a leftie. He supports the slaughter of the unborn. But he does care about restricting your rights to the Second Amendment. You see, that is the difference between conservatives and progressive liberals. If a conservative doesn’t want to own a gun, they don’t buy one. If a liberal doesn’t want to own a gun, he wants to remove your rights to own one. Conservatives believe that you have the right to make your own decisions on how you want to lead your life unless it involves the taking of another life; liberals believe they have the right to make those decisions for you.
@retire05:
Blah blah blah. If the article is not true, prove it. That means something you’re not familiar with, facts.
@Tom:
Your article. The onus is on you to prove it is true.
Good luck with that. Mother Jones is just a dirty Socialist rag and knowing that you read it lowers your I.Q. considerably.
And the fact is that more kids die in auto accidents every year than by guns. But I don’t hear you whining how we need to ban automobiles.
Ditto
OH MY GOD, i KNEW THERE WAS MANY ABORTIONS BUT NEVER THOUGHT IT WAS SO MANY,
NO WANDER SO MANY EVIL THINGS HAPPEN, GOD WILL PUNISH THE COUNTRY WHO ALLOWE THAT TO HAPPEN, AND WE HAVE THE PROOF OF IT THE MOTHER ABORTING LIKE AN ANATHEMA IS UPON US,
EVERY THING WRONG IS THERE, WE JUST HAVE TO LOOK,
THE PEOPLE ARE DEPRESS, THE CRIMES LIKE YOU NEVER SEEN IS ON THE RISE,
GOD IS BEING TAKEN OUT OF SCHOOLS AND PUBLIC PLACE THAT TELL THE PEOPLE THEY CAN DO ANYTHING WRONG, IT’ PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND THEY LEARN VERY YOUNG THAT GOD DOESN’T EXIST,
IT MAKE DAMNATION A ROUTINE OF EVERY DAY, OPENING THE DOOR FOR THE DEVIL TO TAKE IT,
WE CAN ALMOST SEE IT,
@Tom:
You want to talk about loss of life but only where guns are concerned, that means you only want to look at what few limited “facts” support your agenda, while ignoring that gun caused childhood mortality is quite low compared with much higher causes. (As I pointed out.)
It is sad that you act all shocked and outraged at the relatively low totals for gun-violence related childhood mortality, but not about much greater causes of dead children. I think FA readers might find it both interesting and important to compare your cherry picked statistics with the truly shocking reality of the incredibly greater number of lives ended in the US by abortion. Shall we tally the results? So far it’s three to one in my favor.
@retire05, #22:
Comparing the number of automobile-related deaths to firearm-related deaths doesn’t even make sense. Automobiles aren’t designed to be used as weapons. They’re designed to transport people from place to place. Mentally unbalanced people don’t generally plan to commit mass murder using automobiles.
You’re essentially saying that gun homicides should be matters of less concern than traffic accident deaths because they’re less frequent. Such a statement it totally ridiculous.
Various Reports: Latest school shooter alternately declared he was a socialist/communist:
Student On Arapahoe School Shooter: “Very Proud Of Being A Socialist” (Video)
@Greg: Except when “background checks” are intended to be used to restrict the transfer and sale, between private individuals, of a firearm. For, just as liberals do whenever they have an agenda they are too cowardly to honestly reveal to the public, this is what every proposed expansion of background checks has offered.
@Tom: You prefer liberals that use the tragedy to advance a gun control agenda that would do nothing to address the factors that contributed to the tragedy itself? Nancy Lanza was in the process of trying to have Adam Lanza committed for violent and uncontrollable behavior but was blocked by the ACLU looking out for the rights of insane killers. Nancy paid for the obstruction of the ACLU with her life and we all paid for left wing assaults on the rights of Americans while they ignore real problems that need to be addressed with the lives of 22 children.
@Greg: When 6 million, many with life threatening health conditions, get kicked off their coverages to further a left wing agenda, they are “insignificant”. When a tiny percentage of children are harmed or killed with firearms, you leftists leap to action, demanding that MORE conditions that promote the killing of undefendable children be created. How safe has Chicago been made by outlawing weapons in the hands of citizens?
@retire05:
They had to work very hard to assemble this information because the NRA has made it impossible for the CDC to track gun-related violence. I would love to hear your excuse for that.
Interesting that you limit it to 16-18. What if four years old were driving and gettinging into wrecks? That doesn’t happen, you say, because you need a driving license, which you obtain upon a certain age after passing a test? What a novel concept. Imagine if the bar was that high to obtain an AR-15. But that would add minimal inconvenience to our lives! The world would certainly end.
@Ditto:
If you want to justify preventable gun deaths because of abortion, be my guest. It seems to me a strange bit of moral equivalency to justify one tragedy by bringing up something completely unrelated.
Our silly socialists conflate universal background checks with accidental childhood death rates in the same argument as if the two had any remote relationship. What blinding brilliance!
The real impact of universal background checks is to prevent any future subject who will be required to account for his listed firearms from claiming they may have been legally sold to an unknown third party. It’s just another step towards the coveted state monopoly on arms.
What puzzles me about the useful idiots who lurk here is their ability to ignore the fact that their idols have proven that they will say anything, break any rule, to advance their power and that of their rich friends. Somehow these clowns believe that American freedom must be surrendered to the bureaucracy and its cronies. This despite watching the failure of the welfare society to better the lot of those enslaved by it. By the time they figure out that their leadership has been all along been only pretending to be working for “the little man” it will be too late and they will have surrendered their freedom and their own power forever.
@DaNang67:
It’s amazing how the conspiracy minded choose to allocate their paranoia. Let’s worry about the exceeding remote chances of jackbooted government thugs knocking the front door down to collect our guns (every right wing gun nut’s wet dream, if we’re being honest), but ignore the fact that the lobbying arm of a dangerous commodities manufacturer has half of congress in its back pocket and is writing laws to increase itssales.
We’ve arrived at the terminus of the gun zealot fetishists’ argument merry-go-round in record time. I’ve been through enough of these to know it by heart:
“Guns don’t hurt people! They’re not dangerous!”
present them with facts. Try to remain calm.
“Okay, but they’re not more dangerous than other things like sticks and knives!”
more facts. more patience.
“Okay, but… Second Amendment!”
point out the Second Amendment doesn’t expicitly forbid sesibile regulation, as even ultra-conservative judge Antonin Scalia has pointed out.
“Yes, guns are very dangerous. That’s why we can’t regulate them! We need them to fight the government!”
shake head. open beer.
@Tom:
And just how was the NRA able to do that? Do you even have a clue how CDC stats are gathered on gun shot incidents?
While you try to conflate what I said (that the NTSA breaks it down to 14 and under and MJ doesn’t so the MJ report would include 14-18 who are STILL considered children) the fact remains that kids are allowed to get driver’s licenses at 16 and are not allowed to “obtain an AR-15” test, or no test. And once they are 18 they have to pass a federal background check. Yet, you want to ignore that. So that “bar” that you want to set so high is actually higher for an AR-15 than it is for the ability to drive a 2,000 lb. vehicle that can be used as a weapon. Every time a drunk driver gets behind the steering wheel, that vehicle becomes a potential weapon. Every time someone drug impared gets behind the wheel of a vehicle it becomes a potential weapon.
@Tom:
Name one time a gun has gone off without human action behind the firing.
See Great Britain.
What do you not understand about “Shall NOT be infringed”?
Alcohol has been the cause of more violence in the United States than guns. Bring back prohibition to save lives.
@Tom: Corresponding with a drastic rise in gun ownership (tens of millions per year) is a drastic decline in violent crime and gun deaths. One would certainly be inclined to conclude that more guns equals less crime, particularly considering such successes as gun-free zones like Chicago and D.C. once was.
But, the primary way you leftists shoot yourselves in the foot (so to speak) when it comes to pretending to want to discuss logical, reasonable gun control efforts is the way you lie about what the goals and effects of the legislation you propose actually is. You strive to make the transfer of a gun between private individuals illegal, attempt to price ownership and ammunition out of the availability of the common man and insidiously attempt to make ownership and self defense (despite the wealth of evidence that expansion of this promotes safety and decreases crime) makes you all completely untrustworthy as bargaining partners. So, in my opinion, you have gotten all the gun control you are going to get or deserve.
@Tom:
Wow! That was impressive! You won that whole argument you just had with yourself. It was awesome.
Even we paranoids understand that the gangsters you put in charge wouldn’t need to send “jack-booted thugs” kicking down doors. We can see what happened in the U.K. and Australia. They’ve done a fine job at increasing home-invasion statistics and cowing their populations.
It has always been a goal of the statist left to end private ownership of firearms. If successful, that act will kill even more innocents than the progressive dream of a corruptocrat monopoly on healthcare. You’ve created a dumbed-down bottom-class with an entitlement mentality. Disarming middle class America would inevitably result in a savage dystopian future.
It’s a shame you can’t just surrender your own rights without screwing up the world for everyone else too. But you’d never settle for that, would you. You really, really aren’t as smart as you think you are. Please just go away.
@Bill Burris, #27:
Those on the left generally aren’t so insecure that they feel compelled to carry a lethal weapon everywhere they go. (I won’t use the word cowardly, because that would be a deliberate insult.)
@Greg: So, I am assuming you are so secure yourself that you feel no need to carry insurance, auto or health. Right? You also don’t need to insure your home, because you are so secure (and courageous).
In light of the fact that the VAST majority of all mass killers and lunatic murderers have been liberals, Democrats and socialists, it would be the ultimate foolishness not to take precautions, especially in an atmosphere where the liberal media and the liberal President himself want to whip up racial and economic tensions.
At least the right is not so insecure in their beliefs and positions that they have to misrepresent them to mask their true intentions.
I do, indeed, carry. It is simply the smart thing to do, nowadays. And, it is a right (a real one, not just something you want and declare it to be one).
@Bill Burris, #39:
That would be another incorrect assumption, not to mention another questionable analogy.
Those who favor tighter regulation of firearms, including universal background checks, aren’t necessarily anti-firearm. What they oppose is the ease with which people who have no business possessing them can get them, and the ready availability of more firepower than is required for personal and home defense.
Unless you’re talking about psychotic governments—where the emphasis is on psychotic rather than on whatever theory they claim as a rationalization—I don’t think there’s any basis in reality for that statement.
Whether or not it’s smart depends entirely on the person who makes that decision. If a person who carries is prone to acting out on their anger, to fantasizing themselves as a hero in violent confrontations, or who is generally prone to misjudging situations, ready access to a firearm may pose a far greater danger to the owner than being without one. An impulsive action or a misjudged situation can land such a person in court and in prison, where the physical dangers will be far greater than those previously imagined.
I’m sure you must have met people who probably shouldn’t carry a firearm, but who wouldn’t be prevented by any law from doing so. I don’t think such people are at all uncommon.
CONAN AND THOR two of my best like movies, don’t miss those,
@Greg:
Why don’t you contact Dr. Gratia-Hupp and ask her if her parents, or 21 other people, might be alive if she had been allowed to carry her hand gun when she met them for lunch? Or you can ask the widow of Jose Guerena if they had anything to fear while in their own home.
And while gun sales have skyrocketed, the number of gun fatalities decrease every year, something the Democrats in Chicago and Detroit should take note of.
Instead, liberals don’t like guns so they don’t want anyone to have one. One step, one tiny step, toward disarming this nation is just what you want. That way, your foot’s in the door and it is only a matter of time that we are a totally defenseless nation. Perhaps you should research what Hitler said when he disarmed Germany “it’s for the children.”
I’ve met people who shouldn’t have a driver’s license (i.e. illegals that can’t read signs in English, and others) but they do. Do you want to place more stringent requirements on getting a driver’s license? How about do background checks before someone can purchase a knife, any knife? Maybe that would cut down on the number of stabbings a year.
Why are liberal progressives so irrational as you exhibit?
@Greg: #40
1) It is a completely apt analogy. Legally carrying a weapon is a form of insurance. For one thing, no doubt that the thought, in the mind of someone contemplating violence, that he/she may be surrounded by people carrying a concealed weapon has contributed to the safety of society in an unsafe world. Further, we have had restriction after restriction and you leftists are never satisfied, especially when it is shown your restrictions have no impact on what the target should actually be: the criminal. These you dedicate an inordinate amount of energy to worrying about their rights.
2) Tuscon, Aurora, Newtown and now Arapaho, have all been carried out by people with left-wing sympathies. While the liberal media and even the President cannot control their urge to foment anger and violent reaction to promote their agenda, it appears that mainly leftists feel the desire to act upon them. Meanwhile, that very same left endeavors to disarm those who need the most protection.
3) The primary fear the left has striven to try to promote since concealed carry became available has been the gunslingers shooting it out among themselves in public places. However, the inconvenient fact is that there is no such foundation for such fears; CHL holders have proven to be the largest group of trustworthy, dependable and respectful citizens. Even the poster child of the left, Zimmerman, the example of choice for the left wing argument against allowing citizens to carry their own weapons, seems to continue to rudely deny the left their coup de grace. He continues to prove HE is not the problem.
No doubt, they are out there; somewhere, there are the CHL holders that will act like a fool and do something stupid. However, as yet, while the left supports and praises mobs of lawless, vagrant, destructive criminals such as the Occupy thugs or a mob to hunt down and lynch Zimmerman, they have not appeared.
@retire05, #42:
I get tired of pointing out in conversations like this one that I’ve been a gun owner for over 40 years. There’s a firearm less than 10 feet from where I’m presently sitting. Wanting sound firearm regulation isn’t the same thing as wanting to deprive responsible people of guns.
I can see this is devolving into a typical venting session. I haven’t got anything else to say, so I’m calling it a night.
@Greg: 10 feet. Sounds like an indication of insecurity. Mine is 16 feet away.
@Tom:
The whole purpose of pointing out other losses of life is to put it in perspective. You are all up in arms about a very small number of deaths only because you want to use the numbers to promote your political rants. Are yo also upset about all the innocent children killed ( estimated at 130 kids dead, and we aren’t even including the other innocent “collateral damage” victims). We rightfully point out to you that there are a multitude of things that cause much greater loss of life, but you want to ignore those because they not related to your gun control agenda. What is clear with your arguments, it is not the loss of life that concerns you but only that it was done with guns because, as always with you emotional ruled knee jerk socialists, you see this only as a means to an end.
By “dangerous commodities manufacturers” are we to assume you aren’t talking about automobiles, which result in far more lives lost than firearms?
As for jack-booted thugs (I prefer to call them Constitutionally illiterate law enforcement officers,) kicking down doors to collect guns, It happened in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, it is already happening to legal gun owners in California, and New York City has recently sent letters to it’s citizens who lawfully registered certain firearms prior to 2010 to expect their police officers to be coming around soon to confiscate all those nasty firearms that were “banned”. (No grandfathering exemption).
California Begins Confiscating Legally-Purchased Guns
NYPD: Modify or Surrender Rifles, Shotguns with Greater Than Five Round Capacity
NYPD cracks down on long guns that hold more than five rounds
Obama Expands ATF’s Right to Seize Guns Without Due Process
What is going on is that gun control freaks want these expanded background checks selling them under false pretenses, to the end that all firearms are registered. Once they succeed in “transforming America” into their socialist-fascist “utopia”, this will make it easier for them to come to your home and confiscate your weapons for whatever vague excuse they can sneak into legislation. So you can stop parroting the lying socialist talking points. History has shown this has happened in every socialist government take-over, and it is already starting to happen in Democratic controlled blue states. So you can cut the crap Tom, we’re on to you and your tyrannical cohorts.
IT was mentioned by a military that OBAMA IS AFRAID OF THE PEOPLE, he cannot end his fear by taking the guns out of the good citizens,
he spread the fear to other in position of taking out the gun from people,
like the bloomberg and followed by the ones he influence
that it was the gun alone who killed their children,
IT’S A PARANOIACK FRENZY, FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRYFOLLOWING HIS FEAR OF THE PEOPLE,
how can he govern this way?
HE SHOULD FOCUS ON THOSE WHO KILL BECAUSE THEY ARE SICK AND PROMOTE MORE PSYCHIATRIST
SO TO HELP THOSE PEOPLE AND PREVENT THEM TO DO IT,
AND PROMOTE MORE EXPERTS ON CRIME TO DEAL WITH THE CHICAGO PROBLEM OF CRIME BY GUN DONE BY CHILDREN, INSTEAD OF FOCUSSING ON LAW ABIDING CITIZENS WHO ARE A BLESSING TO BE AROUND IF ONE WANT TO FEEL SECURE,
HIS FEAR HAS BEEN THE THE PROMOTION OFMORE CRIMES INSTEAD,
JUST LOOK AT THAT YOUNG MOTHER SHOT DEAD IN HER CAR JUST IN FRONT OF THE GOVERNMENT SHE WAS SHOT IN THE SAME FRENZY TO KILL, BY THOSE GUARDS OF THE CAPITOL WHO GOT A STANDING OVATION FOR KILLING AN UNARMED CITIZEN, THEY WHERE FREAKEN SCARED OF A YOUNG MOTHER IN HER CAR WITH HER YOUNG SON,
TRYING TO GET AWAY FROM THERE,
the gates of hell are open,
check up HARVARD BUILDING SHUT BECAUSE OF THE FINDING OF EXPLOSIVES,
@Greg:
My issue with the whole gun debate is that the left is constantly trying to put limits on law-abiding gun owners and turning a blind eye to fact that they (the left) will not prosecute illegal gun owners.
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/03/28/chicago-los-angeles-new-york-prosecuted-fewest-federal-gun-crimes
Saying that you want to keep guns out of the hands of those that have no business having them is one thing, prosecuting them is another. So, how about prosecuting the existing gun laws first and see if that actually makes a difference before you start making new laws.
As for the “more firepower than is required for personal and home defense,” that is just malarkey. People hunt different game and different game requires different weapons. Using the same weapon to hunt pheasant as you use to hunt deer just doesn’t work. There are also collectors that have a lot of different weapons. As far as I know, there is nothing to say you can’t own as many as you want.
Ditto
ON 16
I WAS THINKING, about the abortions,
what if they let the mother continue her pregancy and at birth ,
they take the baby alive and kill the mother who was to be aborted just to free her,
the baby is more important than the mother, because he carry on the future AMERICAN
the preservation of the race so important to AMERICA,
while the mother could be discarded instead of her baby,
THAT IS DRASTIC MEASURE TO A DRASTIC SOLUTION,
why should it be the baby who die?