In other words, a true debate and a fair fight. Not the incessant poo-flinging seen all to often. Generally speaking, the pro-2A crowd has a good track record of taking the high road and entering with logic against emotional stances. This approach is admirable, yet yields little fruit. Yes, we do it for the fence-sitters who are content to stay in the background, read but never comment and this is a much needed harvest.
But…destroying the logic of a decent argument is more difficult and therefore more rewarding both on a personal level and moving the chains down field for the team.
This is why I follow and comment on the anti blogs. I certainly can’t read them all, but I try to keep up with the heavy hitters like the Brady Bunch. After all, they are the 800 gram gorilla in the room.
Luby’s, Columbine, Amish School for Girls, Virginia Tech, Ft. Hood…etc…blah blah blah.
One common theme and decent argument is that these massacres would not have been possible on the scale that they were without the use of a gun. Forget the ranting against semi-autos vs. pump or lever actions. Forget the rant concerning how many rounds a magazine holds.
We’ve destroyed those arguments a thousand times over already; it’s dead, been raped by wild dingos and then killed again.
The premise of their argument is correct on a superficial level. A recurring theme goes something like this…”If the attacker had been using a knife, sword, bow and arrow, baseball bat, etc, then the body count would have been much lower.” Or equally…”He would not have been able to inflict that level of carnage had he not had a gun.”
Sounds reasonable and chock full of common sense, right?
My response would be that someone wielding a knife, sword, bow and arrow, baseball bat OR firearm could achieve any level of body count IF THEY ENCOUNTERED NO RESISTANCE. It may take a bit longer to bash in your brains with a blunt object, but if faced with zero resistance, you and those within their swath of influence are just as dead.
This forces the antis into the ol’ standby retort that if someone is taking the extra time to rupture skulls with a golf club, this will give the police more time to respond and save additional lives.
Sounds pretty good to the family members of victims 1 through 10, huh?
This also shows the hand of the antis in the sense that the way to deal with someone bashing in the skulls of innocents is to rally LEO’s carrying firearms. If the situation warrants calling armed LEOs to come stop the bad guy, then I have the RIGHT to call the LEOs after the bad guy is bleeding to death on my very expensive carpet.
The true defense against the criminal mind is not a 3 digit number on your phone’s speed dial, it is the spirit of self-preservation. Whatever weapon is wielded against you, an appropriate response would be to counter with a superior weapon, or an equal one at the least.
That is why we keep/carry the most effective defensive weapons allowed by law. I’ll best your baseball bat, knife, sword and bow and arrow; if it comes to pass that you carry a firearm as well…well then it’s a fair fight, isn’t it?
Who could argue against the innocent taking a stand against the lawless? The Brady Bunch.
This is why they fail.
9 comments:
My favorite conversation ever:
Cop: Why do you have a gun?
Driver: To defend myself.
Cop: Why? Do you think that you need a gun to defend yourself?
Driver: I dunno, I reckon for the same reason that you do.
And of course the multi-victim shootings that make this argument work are exceedingly rare. The number of multi-victim shootings in American history don't even come close to your average homicide count in places like Chicago or Philadelphia.
SO yeah, a spineless wuss like Seung Cho likely wouldn't have gotten very far with a bat or a knife, but your average gang member who kills one and MAYBE two victims at close range with an illegally held gun. They do just as well with a knife, Machete, or a club, or even their bare hands and feet.
We can prove this because they do it ALL TIME!
So yeah, I'll stick with defending myself with the best tools available.
My response would be that someone wielding a knife, sword, bow and arrow, baseball bat OR firearm could achieve any level of body count IF THEY ENCOUNTERED NO RESISTANCE. It may take a bit longer to bash in your brains with a blunt object, but if faced with zero resistance, you and those within their swath of influence are just as dead.
I wouldn't use this argument, personally. The Bradies and MAIG are wrong in general, but not quite so wrong here. It's extremely unlikely that a psycho will find 30 people who won't either fight back and overwhelm his bat-swinging or--more to the antis' tastes--simply run away. Not to say it _can't_ happen, but it'd be much less likely. I don't think Cho would've killed so many people if we lived in gun-control wet dream land.
I think the better answer is Weerd's reply. The US sees about 18,500 deaths by assault a year. A Virginia Tech is less than one six-hundredth of our annual violent death rate. Massively infringing on every American's civil rights and leaving the physically weak powerless against the strong in hopes of decreasing the violent death rate by a sixth of a percent doesn't seem very wise, does it?
You have to tread very carefully with this argument. Being seen as making light of a national tragedy will kill your message with a lot of people, even if you're right. But make sure you acknowledge the enormity and trauma of each individual's death; and explicitly point out that matters of _policy_ have to be motivated by reason and proportion, not by our natural tendency to overemphasize that which is shocking; and you'll convince most of the people who can be convinced.
" It's extremely unlikely that a psycho will find 30 people who won't either fight back and overwhelm his bat-swinging or--more to the antis' tastes--simply run away."
That's exactly my point.
1.The spirit of resistance is the key.
2. Yes it's easier fro a group of unarmed victims to overpower someone with a blunt object.
3. It's even easier for a single person to overpower someone carrying a blunt object if that single person has a gun and is willing to use it.
4. Gun vs gun, the odds are in favor of those who master the art of shooting it quickly and accurately.
I struggled for a while with the "problems" of guns. As I'm not much of a chess player I really can't delve and counter all the arguments in minutia. I have found that the VAST majority of anti arguments are emotion or mud slinging also. They do it because it's effective. They also have the upper hand there when you throw out logic because they have the "feel good" side of the "argument" on their side.
I've never found any logical argument that overcomes emotion when a person is primarily in the emotional camp. I've also never found a way to put a technological genie back in the bottle once it's discovered. Guns are the superior weapon of the day and will remain so until countered with something better. I'm sure banning swords, knives, bows, etc. have all been though of and tried somewhere, sometime before.
Until I hear a better argument, it'll always boil down to freedom for me. Freedom also has that nice fuzzy feel/ring to it until you get down and really examine it and see that it's a very messy thing and keeping it does indeed cost lives. The older I get, the more true "Live free or Die" really is for me. Safety is not, and never has been, an inalienable right. It has to be traded for freedom. People don't see this and don't care as long as they can think they are "safe" as they go about their sheeple business. Then they get in their car and go out where they are statistically more likely to die than just about anywhere else without a thought in the world about it.
You misunderstand the argument.
1) I am better than you. I have the right to defend myself. Disarming you defends me.
2) You are a subhuman, and have only the rights I grant. I would rather you be savaged and murdered than have the means to defend yourself.
3) I find it inconvenient to bear arms. I want other people disarmed, to level the playing field.
4) I'll live in an area with a fast, responsive police force, supplemented by other armed servants. People who choose to live somewhere else, or who can't afford to live here, are subhumans. See point #2.
I have not seen a new pro or anti gun argument since Heller came out. That was the intellectual high water mark for the pro gun side, and an exhibition of the same tired, refuted, emotional, non-rational, non-data-based crap from the antis that they have been spewing for decades.
I still hope for something new from the antis. That would at least make for an interesting exercise in seeing how they were wrong in a new way.
If having a gun makes a killer more effective at attacking, why won't it make me more effective at defending?
THE SINGLE COMMON DENOMINATOR IN ALL MASS SHOOTINGS IS THAT THEY HAVE OCCURED IN "GUN FREE ZONES"
PRIOR TO SCHOOLS BEING DESIGNATED GUN FREE ZONES THERE WERE EXACTLY ZERO MASS KILLINGS IN OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM
EXPLOSIVES AND FIRE ARE FAR MORE EFFECTIVE FOR MASS MURDER THAN GUNS
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Paul in Texas
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