text:
Vilifying Gun Owners Doesn't Lead to a Better Society
Progressives push their luck with their totalitarian insistence that everybody is with them or against them on guns and so much else.
J.D. Tuccille | 3.5.2018 9:53 AM
(Pacific Press/Sipa USA/Newscom)
Last week, outdoor gear retailer REI became the latest business to pledge its fealty to the raging culture war against wrongthink. It's a high-stakes move that's unlikely to end well for the activists pushing the effort.
"We believe that it is the job of companies that manufacture and sell guns and ammunition to work towards common sense solutions that prevent the type of violence that happened in Florida last month," REI announced with regard to its relationship with supplier Vista Outdoor. "This morning we learned that Vista does not plan to make a public statement that outlines a clear plan of action. As a result, we have decided to place a hold on future orders of products that Vista sells through REI while we assess how Vista proceeds."
But "REI does not sell guns," as the firm itself announced. Instead, it sells products—including Camelbak hydration gear—made by companies that are owned by Vista Outdoor, which also owns Savage Arms, which does sell guns. REI's announcement, then, is a test of its economic leverage to compel a company with which it has no direct relationship to embrace a specific set of firearms policy preferences. (REI's Canadian counterpart, MEC, made a similar move.)
"It may seem a little bit like internet slacktivism," Slate senior business correspondent Jordan Weissmann concedes of the focus on isolating and inconveniencing the National Rifle Association and gun owners. "But it does send a message that the organization is no longer politically mainstream, which might ultimately matter to some politicians."
There's a lot of this going around, and while it's currently framed most commonly around gun policy, it looks a lot like part of a larger effort to delegitimize cultural and ideological enemies and force everybody to pick a side—preferably, the "right" side, from the point of view of the folks doing the pushing.
"Progressives could be on the verge of delegitimizing their foes, on guns, but also on much else, rendering them untouchable for anybody who wants to stay in polite society," cautions David Brooks of the New York Times. He adds that "progressives are getting better and better at silencing dissenting behavior."
In that light, it's worth noting the pounding that Marvel Comics took when a company executive suggested that efforts to diversify characters were meeting with limited enthusiasm among readers. Even though Senior Vice President David Gabriel mourned that the situation "was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out," he and the company took a public beating. Simply trying to process sales figures and analyze feedback from customers was deemed unacceptable.
Then there's the recent proliferation in the book industry of "sensitivity readers" who make sure that works slated for publication espouse only approved positions on race, religion, gender, sexuality, culture, and the like. Kirkus Reviews actually yanked a positive review of the young adult novel American Heart because some critics claimed it was "culturally insensitive"—an inherently ideological objection.
"Behind the scenes," reports the Seattle Times, "these readers are having a profound impact on children's literature, reshaping stories in big and small ways before they reach young audiences."
And, while YouTube claimed that February's temporary muzzling of a number of right-leaning channels was an error resulting from new hires botching efforts to enforce content guidelines, the disparate impact on part of the political spectrum inevitably resulted in fears of an ideological purge. Amazon, Apple, and YouTube remain under pressure from activists and celebrities to drop the NRA's video service in a direct effort to silence the gun-rights group's voice.
"The NRA is so engrained in the American culture now because of their very successful messaging of, 'Don't take away my gun' or 'You're infringing on my Second Amendment rights,'" actress Alyssa Milano told an interviewer about the push to get NRATV dropped. "What a campaign like this allows is for a cultural hack."
This sounds awfully familiar, like what former Harvard University president Larry Summers calls "creeping totalitarianism in terms of what kind of ideas are acceptable and are debatable on college campuses."
"All sorts of formerly legitimate opinions have now been deemed beyond the pale on elite campuses," David Brooks agrees. "The boundaries are being redrawn across society."
Warning that "we all live on campus now," Andrew Sullivan argues, "If voicing an 'incorrect' opinion can end your career, or mark you for instant social ostracism, you tend to keep quiet. This silence on any controversial social issue is endemic on college campuses, but it's now everywhere."
It's now everywhere, but the silence is allowed only with regard to "wrong" opinions. Enthusiastic endorsement of approved views is increasingly encouraged and expected.
And yes, the right can play at culture war, too. Some conservatives are champing at the bit for open conflict (hey Kurt Schlichter, the next civil war wants to know if it has time to finish its coffee). When Delta Air Lines distanced its business from the NRA, Georgia lawmakers punished the company by dumping a $50 million tax break. But that was a response to an already political action. This with-us-or-against-us absolutism has almost entirely been a tool of the progressive left.
By insisting that everybody pick a side and name themselves as friend or foe, activists who anticipate victory as the prize for hollowing out the middle and leaving no neutral ground are taking a hell of a risk.
"The NRA has spent years convincing its members that their way of life is under threat from coastal elites who want to take away their cherished freedom to tote 30-round magazines," acknowledges Slate's Weissmann. "When a bunch of corporations cut ties to the group in response to a celebrity-backed Twitter campaign, it reinforces that message pretty neatly."
The effort may already be proving counterproductive. "A majority (56% strongly and somewhat support combined) of voters want to support their constitutional right to bear arms when they hear Hollywood actors and actresses speak out about gun control," reports Zogby Analytics in poll results published just days ago. Tellingly, the reaction in favor of gun rights in response to hectoring by celebrities is strongest among younger respondents (65 percent among 18-29, and 58 percent among 18-24) who progressives often assume are theirs for the taking. "According to the data," notes Zogby, "Hollywood interjecting itself into the debate makes even the Democratic base want to bear arms."
That the cultural war may be doing even wider political damage is suggested by Zogby findings that "voters aged 18-29 (50 percent approve/48 percent disapprove) were more likely to approve of President Trump's job as commander in chief compared to older voters aged 65+ (44 percent approve/56 percent disapprove)." It seems unlikely that the president's recent incoherence on gun rights will ultimately prove attractive to voters supportive of the Second Amendment, but his critics apparently face a credibility gap of their own.
David Brooks sees the danger of a reaction, warning that "illiberalism breeds illiberalism." He suggests that progressives risk a "political backlash that could make Donald Trump look like Adlai Stevenson."
That would be quite the booby prize if progressives manage to pull it off. Instead of achieving their moment of triumph by forcing people and businesses to declare loyalty to the cause, partisans playing at heavy-handed speech and thought police might instead reap the whirlwind (and so will we all).
And if any progressives really care about the gun issue, they should consider that vilifying gun owners, demanding professions of fealty, and attempting to silence dissent guarantee that few if any ideological opponents would ever disarm. In an all-or-nothing political environment, they'd have to be suicidal to even consider the idea.
NEXT: Trump Cracks Jokes, West Virginia Teachers Strike Continues, The Shape of Water Wins Best Picture: A.M. Links
J.D. Tuccille is a contributing editor at Reason.
Guns Gun Rights Culture War
Show Comments (441)
Too late. It's already out of the news cycle.
TrickyVic (old school)
March.5.2018 at 10:25 am
Not really. I heard Chuckie Schumer talking on the radio this morning about how the children are his secret weapon.
billdeserthills
I'm guessing he doesn't count the 50 million dead babies c/o Planned Parenthood among his number
loveconstitution1789
You could tell by the end of last week, that the two week news cycle on gun control was losing momentum.
ravenshrike
Might be out of the news cycle for the left. But I guarantee that between the astroturfed hell the media feasted on with the Parkland students and the fact that they got Trump to say some shit that if you squint hard approached banning guns that it will be an issue in the 2018 midterms. Not to mention the gun industry's Trump Slump is about to be massively reversed.
MusketsForAll
How do you know the "gun industry's Trump Slump is about to be massively reversed"?
Milmowk
i spent about $500 restocking my ammo shelf last week and i don't think i am alone. probably spend another $500 next month. i've let my 5.56/.223 supply fall below 1000 rounds
Naaman Brown
April.14.2018 at 11:46 pm
NICS background checks (a proxy for gun purchase from licensed retail gun dealers) is way up for Mar 2018 and carrying over thru Apr 2018.
Trump Slump refers to the drop in sales after Trump was elected.
Thrackmoor
The NRA will be fine. If anything, they will grow due to constant political posturing by the left. GOA, NAGC and SAF are growing too.
I meant NAGR… sorry
$park? leftist poser
Quo Usque Tandem
I get that every time I use the word niggle.
And for that reason, I am niggardly with my use of the word "niggle".
Chipper Morning Baculum
We really shouldn't be nigrifying all these words.
True, it's melanizing.
My niggles are hard.
"People who annoy you"
I would like to solve the puzzle.
Red Tony
Among lefties.
Among niggers, Red Tony. The word you are looking for is niggers.
Give into the dark side of the force, Tony.
Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland
Are you yahoos trying to lose every election for the next few generations, or are you just so naturally disaffected and alienating that you can't help aggravating decent Americans?
Nardz
Ohhhhhh, nAggers…
I meant NAGR
Nagger?
The exact technical term, sanctified by Great Britain's poet laureate Rudyard Kipling, is naygur. This described all but the palest of anemic Englishmen, and was promptly taken up by Chicago comedian Finley Peter Dunne under his nom de plume of Mr Dooley. George Orwell dropped the euphemistic spelling in his "Burmese Days," and Her Majesty's Government promptly banned it under some limey version of the Comstock law. It may have been over his mention of the "Heroes of Amritsar", British soldiers who murdered over a thousand legally disarmed (no Second Amendment) civilians in the Raj–India's version of the Boston Massacre.
Arizona_Guy
No one joins a political advocacy group for a rental car discount. The net result of "Boycott NRA" is free publicity for the NRA. I predict massive enrollment in the next 6 months.
I do have at least two liberal hating friends that are not gun owners who signed up just to say screw you.
There are a whole lot of people who have better things to do with their money than give it to the NRA but now are giving it to them anyway thanks to these idiots giving them a reason. If you didn't know better, you would think the NRA was running the gun control movement.
damikesc
…but these same people feel that it is wrong to not force government employees to give money to unions.
No one is forcing them to give money to the NRA.
LR Heckerman
John|3.5.18 @ 10:29AM
" If you didn't know better, you would think the NRA was running the gun control movement."
The same was said for Obama's threats of gun control leading to some of the best sales years for firearms manufacturers, but we know that was not Obama's intent, just an unintentional consequence that happens every time a threat to our right to bear arms takes center stage in Washington.
Regarding a better place for our money, I can't think of a more powerful national organization than the NRA. Although some do not own firearms, they surely want the option in the future should the need present itself.
It makes rational sense to support a national organization that is best positioned to defend those rights, even with their shortcomings. I would not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Another thought:
It is human nature to defend ones self and property. We evaluate the effectiveness of the means to do so and rational people feel their rights are being threatened based on the actions of a maniac, to take the most rational and effective option away. Should we restrict the law abiding rational citizens based on the actions of what evil people will do?
And you can always direct those $. Whatever you think about the political leanings of the NRAILA, you can support the NRA Foundation, where a million NRA Basic Firearm Instructors are winning the gun-rights war one beginner class at a time.
wearingit
Quite telling that "liberal tears" are worth paying money to an organization that you don't even otherwise tend to support.
Quite telling? What is it "quite telling" of?
I find a comment such as yours quite telling – indicative of either intellectual or ethical castration. If you have something to say, say it. If you have a worthwhile observation (such as, "your comment indicates that you're an intellectual/ethical eunuch") make it. Otherwise you merely reveal frustrated impotence.
Unsatisfied impotence is not "too cool for school" – it's passive-aggressive.
Act like a man/woman or shut the f up.
Nardz|3.5.18 @ 1:01PM|#
Well said. They love throwing vagaries out there with no context. Baffling us with bullshit is the depth of their intellect.
It's fun to call out self-conceited "intellectuals" – those that come to mock, yet fail to provide any original thought or take a position. These folks like to think themselves above the fray, superior in their own minds, but simply display their insecurity. Mockery is a defense mechanism of the empty-minded. You'll notice another throughout these comments going by the name of Eric. Has not a damn thing to say
You'll notice another throughout these comments going by the name of Eric. Has not a damn thing to say
Ah, yes. Eric. He swoops in and snipes in many threads.
If you want pure estrogen induced emotional rage, then another is Michael Hihn. His arguments are cut and paste talking points and manipulated statistics along with a strong helping of insults and outrage.
I've noticed Hihn is a favorite around here.
I'll say this for Hihn and Tony, they're comments may be batshit insane (to quote another commenter I just read) and/or irrational, but at least they have something to say.
Not so much for Eric and wearingit (notice the zinging response below).
Oh you got me. Old Nardz to the rescue to tell people how to comment on message boards.
Lester224
Same thing happens in favor of liberal causes too. Ask Planned Parenthood about their donation rates. Up, up up since Trump was elected.
mmmjv
If they want to be so consumed with hatred that they throw their money away that's their problem. We really don't give a fuck.
TxJack 112
On google the amount of searches for NRA membership has increased by 4900%.
Well, it's always a good tactic to know your enemy. Speaking for myself, I wanted to find out the companies colluding with the NRA via discounts or other goodies so I know who to avoid.
Bob Nix
You don't know what that word means, do you? That's rhetorical, of course you don't, because otherwise you'd know that you're misusing it.
"Collusion: secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others."
So which is it? Are the companies which publicly advertise their partnerships with the NRA to provide discounts to NRA members doing so "secretly"? If so, they're really, really bad at it, because it's hard to get a discount if you don't know about it. Or is it "Illegal" to offer discounts to people who are members of a private association? If so, you'd better alert the authorities, because there are literally tens of thousands of groups (like AAA and AARP, for example) which enter into partnerships with companies to secure discounts for their members. And who is being cheated or deceived, in this case? The companies that entered into the partnerships? The individuals receiving the discounts? The NRA?
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. I shudder to imagine what your education level is, but I'm afraid it's probably disturbingly high- just another piece of evidence that education has little, if any, correlation to intelligence.
But how do you know the NRA will tell the truth about its membership total? To date, it has failed to prove it has even 5 million members.
BigChiefWahoo
Even if it only has 3.7 million members it still has a lot more than the Brady Campaign, which has a (very) few thousand, if that. It also has around twice the members of AFSCME or SEIU.
Indeed. Moreover, it can only really hurt the businesses doing this.
People like me will now just go ANYWHERE but there to buy what I want/need. It's the same with car rentals and air travel. I'll email US Bank to see if my REI mastercard can be converted to something else. If not, I'll close it.
Before this, I rented from Enterprise exclusively-I liked them and just stuck with them. Now I won't have anything to do with them – that's two 1 week rentals in the last month and 2 future 1 week rentals in April and May. Maybe it's small potatoes, but now someone else gets them.
With some exceptions, I would typically choose carriers based on a mix of things – price being important, but not necessarily most important, things like past experiences, how many flights (I hate being on the last flight due to too many overnight stays because of weather). I originally planned on booking the May trip with Delta, now nope. The April trip was probably always going to be another airline due to the short distance and cities.
Either way, Delta and United are now permanently out for me.
Given the recent history of these sorts of things, it's highly doubtful that they will see an increase in business to make up for all the people who walk away for good.
I doubt you understand the leverage of rich coastal liberals. They spend a lot of money. More than midwestern gun enthusiasts.
UnrepentantCurmudgeon
I doubt we'll see any rich coastal liberals blessing Delta or United with their hard-scammed wealth. They are very good at peddling outrage, but not so much at tending to the detritus they leave in their wake.
Okay so "rich coastal elites" have "hard-scammed wealth". I assume you're including your orange-pelted savior and his spawn in that description?
How do you define "fine"? How about if the NRA provides proof of its current claim of 5 million members?
P.S. I'm a gunowner, a hunter, a landowner, and a liberal. And the NRA will never represent me.
If you are truly a gun owner then the NRA represents your interests whether you're a member or not. You do know that firearms are there NRA's only issue, right? They don't advocate for Wal-Mart or NASCAR or low taxes or anything else. They don't have a position on abortion or BLM, they don't care of you're gay or evangelical, and they don't take a position on school vouchers.
But, by all means, continue with your virtue signaling.
KevinP
If you are a gun owner, you should be a member of the NRA. They stand between you and people like this:
New Jersey Democratic State Senators caught discussing gun confiscation on an open microphone:
http://www.nj.com/politics/ind…..ver_n.html
The discussion appears to be among Senator Loretta Weinberg (D37), Senator Sandra Cunningham (D31), Senator Linda Greenstein (D14), and at least one member of Senate Democratic staff. "We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate".
How do you know the NRA will be "fine"? And how do you know it will grow when it can't even prove it has 5 million members?
While I disagree with REI on this, I'm mainly annoyed because they are taking a political stand that has nothing to do with their business.
And it's annoying because it is part of the ongoing politicization of everything. Seems I can't even buy a hydration bladder without making a political statement.
You can buy Camelbak at 10 other retailers, so I'm not sure what REI is trying to accomplish. But if they want to give the finger to 2A advocates, my money spends just as well at Bass Pro Shops.
The politicization of everything is a mortal threat to our society. If you can't so much as go to a football game or now buy camping equipment without it having some kind of political context, the stakes of politics rise beyond any reason. Politics become almost life or death in such a society. And when politics become a matter of life or death, people start killing each other over them. The only thing that keeps people from killing each other over politics is living in a society where politics only effects certain and hopefully small portions of life. Make everything about politics and there will be no way for people to peacefully co-exist.
There has been no widespread "right-wing" violence in this country in a very long time. People on the right wing tend to operate with morals and with cost-benefit analysis.
At some point the politicization and / or oppression will reach the point of overcoming their moral reluctance and changing the result of cost-benefit of shooting political opponents.
A serious attempt at gun confiscation is one of those triggers that would change the equations and initiate open warfare.
Hey, an armed and hostile populace is no match for the Army. Every swinging dick Prog has informed me thusly over the last couple of weeks. I guess that is why Afghanistan and Iraq have been such easy and low casualty wars.
"Hey, an armed and hostile populace is no match for the Army. Every swinging dick Prog has informed me thusly over the last couple of weeks."
That is because progs don't understand how insurgencies work. Just like they don't understand jack shit about guns.
They don't understand anything. They just say whatever is convenient. The same idiots who have spent 50 years glorifying the VC and every third world resistance movement in existence today are claiming resistance is futile.
They also don't seem to recognize that the Army is full of actual people who might not be willing to fight an all out war against their fellow citizens. The army could possibly defeat and armed and hostile populace if nothing was off the table. But then you don't have any country left. And I think a lot of soldiers would refuse such an order or go to the other side.
Exactly that Zeb. I do not think most of the rank and file of the Army would wage war against our own people. Worse still, a good number of them would join the other side. And yes, we would not have much of a country left when it was over. But, these people are profoundly stupid and self-absorbed. They have lost touch with reality and have forgotten that their words can have real consequences.
You guys have too much faith in "the populous". I have no doubt that a good portion of the military would gladly turn their guns on their own citizens with the right amount of propoganda. And don't give me any bullshit about the right being moral. They have no more morality than what their preachers decide is moral. And their preachers are just as evil as any government bureaucrat. Any libertarian should know this.
You guys have too much faith in "the populous".
Maybe. But you probably have too little regard for people too. I hope we don't have to find out who's right.
"But you probably have too little regard for people too"
But the difference between me and just about everyone here is that i have enough perspective to know that BOTH sides are equally stupid and tribal.
Eric|3.5.18 @ 11:14AM|#
You guys have too much faith in "the populous". I have no doubt that a good portion of the military would gladly turn their guns on their own citizens with the right amount of propoganda. And don't give me any bullshit about the right being moral. They have no more morality than what their preachers decide is moral. And their preachers are just as evil as any government bureaucrat. Any libertarian should know this"
As a senior leader, I spent a career leading combat troops. You are delusional. Any order by the POTUS to executive military leadership to target citizens would not only be ignored, there would most likely be a military coupe to stabilize an administration gone rogue.
Yeah. Just like what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco, the historical moments at which our society turned from "democratic" to totalitarian.
Tionico
Most folks who go and JOIN the military do so because they vlaue our freedoms, often in particular our right to arms, and to stand against government tyranny. Comsider organisations such as Oath Keepers, various veteran's organisations, Three Percenters, etc.
I'm quite certain a huge percentage of our military would not take up arms against their folks back home, nor in any other town like their own…. they all swore an oath to defent against enemies, foreign and domestic. Its one thing to be sent off to some sandhole and kill the fill-in-the-blanks there…. but those sandholes are so "OTHER" when compared to our own country it makes some sort of sense, particularly when they are told "those guys" are trying to destroy our own way of life. They value that way of life and will defend it. The leftie proggies are dreaming if they think our military will mindlessly turn on the rest of is at their command, and stay the course till the end.
I do not think most of the rank and file of the Army would wage war against our own people.
While I agree with that in the context of modern times, there is precedent 1860s that suggests the opposite.
Even then, there were those such as Robert E. Lee who resigned their commission (when offered command of the Union Army) because he couldn't wage war against his fellow Virginians. Yes, some will fight against the American people. Some portion of our military is composed of gangbangers there for the weapons training. Not the majority.
Further, vets currently outnumber active service members by a conservative estimate of 6:1 – say half of those are "fighting age" and that's still 3:1. If you limit active members to those in combat roles, the ratio of combat capable vets to active duty vets becomes even more unbalanced.
Vets tend to be very supportive of the 2nd amendment.
Define "fighting age"!!!! Study the history of our War for Independance…. there were quite a number of men "too old to fight" that took up arms, went out to "see what I can do", and dealt the British Redcoats some serious harm. That was back when the standard type of long gun took a REAL MAN to haul about and fire accurately and quickly. (aobut one round per minute, but with training and practice perhaps three per minute) Today's lightweight modern extremely accurate long range weapons, anyone with a bit of training and a fair bit of practice can regularly hit a trget the size of a man's head at five hundred yards… and do it again in a few seconds. Ranges of a thousand yards are not that difficult to one who has studied the matter and applied himself.
I've watched men, and women, in their 5th and 6th decade fire ten rounds from prone, four different tiny targets, hitting 8 of the 10 in the center bull, and two more in the nine ring, and do it in well under one minute. May be slow getting in and out of prone position, but once there, if there were predators about, most would be dead, at that range.
"Define "fighting age"!!!!"
15-70?
Rebel Scum|3.5.18 @ 12:59PM|#
Yes and there is later precedent: The Bonus Army Revolt of 1932. Lessons were learned and the horrific gap filled to ensure it does not ever again happen. The fact that it did happen is reason for a civilian populace to be armed and prepared should another illegal act ever be directed by a standing army, against them. Some famous names were involved: McArthur, Patton, and Eisenhower. This was a HUGE abuse of power and public trust. Not many folks ever learn about this revolt as it was one of the biggest embarrassments and crimes against citizens to have ever occurred in our nations history by or federal forces.
That's a whole 'nother discussion, but we do have to remember that secession allowed Lincoln to change the entire conversation; the South was no longer part of "us". That doesn't excuse his cold treason in sending almost 700,000 Americans to their deaths in order to satisfy his imperial ambitions, but it is something to consider.
John|3.5.18 @ 10:59AM "And yes, we would not have much of a country left when it was over."
I can't emphasize that enough. Not only would we be a shell of what we were, our enemies would take advantage of this and use it as an excuse to attack us.
Do you people have any idea how insane you sound?
Who are these rednecks going to start shooting exactly? High-level government officials? Citizens on the street?
You chop the head off the serpent.
If all the politicians are gone and the military is answerable to the politicians, who is left to push a civil war against average Americans?
Tony is just into regimes that murder their own people. He has no idea how civil wars work in which the government loses.
Patrick Henry, the 2nd
It won't be pretty, but anybody that opposes them will be shot. Very few people actually want that, but once it starts, it won't end.
Sounds like a wonderful paradise of freedom and definitely not like every worst place on earth.
High-level government officials?
Steve Scalise would like a word with you.
Gabby Giffords on line 2. What a fun and enlightening game this is!
Gabby Giffords wasn't attacked for her politics.
Gabby Giffords was attacked by a schizophrenic leftist. While he was bald, he was not in fact a skinhead. Please try again.
Tony|3.5.18 @ 11:10AM|#
Read and comprehend.
A lot (I would guess most of the Infantry) of the Army and damn near all of the Marine Corps would walk off and join the other side.
can't even|3.5.18 @ 3:28PM|#
Very true. Our Tier 1 operators would as well. I am a veteran combat leader and was involved in many insurgency and counterinsurgency ops in Central America in the early to late eighties.
I hear the same uninformed arguments that people fervently believe to be true regarding our military wiping out any popular armed uprising. These are not students of history.
There are serious security flaws on our military installations. We exploit these same flaws in foreign military installations of our enemies that we trained in Central and South America.
It is possible and very likely that a well trained and armed battalion sized element could neutralize the security of an infantry divisions military base. Pick any one of them.
Only a small security force for the base is armed and on patrol.
All unit weapons are locked up in arms rooms with NO ammunition
All unit munitions are stored at the ASP
There are MANY inadequately secured points of ingress and egress to and from the target base. I will let your imagination digest the possibilities.
EvilWayz
ONE MILLION TIMES THIS. OORAH!
If they are given orders to go against "fellow citizens" I doubt very much those fellow citizens will be innocent people. Most likely they will at that point already have shot and possibly killed some people or in some other way be obviously a dangerous group. If you want an armed civil war you're going to have to start it. The government isn't going to. And when you do start it you are no longer just a "fellow citizen" you are a traitor.
Enjoy Every Sandwich
They also don't understand that much of the firepower that the military has is not really usable in an insurgency. The feds can't send the Air Force to level an entire city just because there are a handful of insurgents somewhere within.
WoodChipperBob
They also don't understand who makes up the vast bulk of the US Army. Hint to any progressives reading this: the average soldier isn't going to say, "Sir, yes, sir!" if the civilian (or military) leadership says, "Today we're going to go out and collect some guns."
That's betting a lot on members of the armed forces being knee-jerk political reactionaries over following orders in service of the state. Which do you think they spend more time training on?
Given that they can be punished for illegal orders, and have seen troops punished for following those orders, they won't play along, no.
Also, most troops are from the red states anyway. I doubt they'll be willing to go after them with any real vigor.
I'm pretty sure they'll do what their seniors order them to do or else be punished appropriately. The more interesting question is what if the president is a part of Team Slack-Jawed Yokel and orders them to start the purge of leftists these people are salivating for.
Boy, was it fun engaging in this violent fantasy escapism.
I'm pretty sure they'll do what their seniors order them to do or else be punished appropriately.
You actually believe soldiers will commit war crimes if their commanders order it, don't you?
The more interesting question is what if the president is a part of Team Slack-Jawed Yokel and orders them to start the purge of leftists these people are salivating for.
They would do so then, either. But here, the political Left seems to have the monopoly on political violence.
Tony, Tony, Tony. Stop. Yer killin me with your ignorance. Did you know that soldiers and military leaders are forbidden from following illegal orders? We swore to uphold the constitution. Measures were taken and a law enacted to ensure citizens can NEVER be disarmed by either local or federal forces IN ANY CASE OR NATIONAL EMERGENCY as they did during Hurricane Katrina. No declaration of martial law authorizes the disarming of the people and we KNOW this.
I can tell you were never in the armed forces by the delusional beliefs you are posting.
Hint: That's not how they'll say it when/if they do. But you knew that didn't you?
Nobody ever said they would. Nobody ever said they should collect guns. Ok, except for Donald Trump but he's an idiot. Oh, and also except for right wingers who are Monday morning quarterbacking and saying Nikolas Cruz should have had his guns taken away.
Everybody is engaged in "Monday morning quarterbacking" when these things happen, because we all try to beat the futile game of "why? how?"
But nobody is saying Cruz should have had his guns taken away, so far as I know. He had one gun. What I have (and others) have said is that there were sufficient indicators of a problem to justify someone (family, police, take your pick) in going to court in some way and either getting restraining orders, or a 5150, something that in a properly functioning system would have kept him from walking away from the gun store with a gun in hand.
The problem boils down to this: we have laws and structures in place. Time and again, it turns out not that there were insufficient laws but insufficient ability to enforce those laws. How about everyone focus on that and not on low-hanging fruit like bump stocks
Violent Sociopath
Yup. To a man they believe that Americans moved to resist their government with force will fight in ways that make it easy for the state to kill them.
"Hey, an armed and hostile populace is no match for the Army."
So, you're saying the Army should be smaller?
Yes, it should be, though maybe not for that reason.
I guess they totally forgot about Vietnam. There is no better example of a poorly armed yet dedicated force overcoming a vastly superior military unless of course, you toss in the American Revolution. I think it is ironic that progressives make the very same statements that Tories made during the revolution. They were convinced there was no way a rag tag group of farmers could defeat the most powerful military on earth, but they did.
The more germane comparison would be the US Civil War. This would be Civil War the sequel, and the better-armed side would probably win just like it did the first time.
You are talking about taking on the United States government as your enemy, yes? The best-armed entity in history? And you're banking on, what, a significant enough portion of its defense force doing the exact opposite of its job?
I think he's actually banking on their not thinking their job is to go out and subjugate their fellow citizens.
But that's precisely what he's calling for them to do.
""This would be Civil War the sequel, and the better-armed side would probably win just like it did the first time.""
So you are saying being better armed is necessary for a free state?
The US military is unmatched in force projection and capability in open war. Insurgencies are not open war. Insurgencies (among other things) are why we remain bogged down in the middle-east.
Well good luck making enough Americans desperate enough to fight a guerrilla war against the federal government for reasons that remain unclear.
freedomlover
The only way to win a guerrilla war is to kill everything in your path. And, the more you kill, the more you create new fighters for the insurgents.
Or, as more than a few U.S. generals have said in the past, overwhelming force.
When has the U.S. military ever been allowed to kill everything in it's path?
For crying out loud, even the whole Star Wars series is based on this historical precedence..
Ah, technically the vastly superior military force won in Vietnam. Then walked away and let the poorly armed yet dedicated force undo that victory.
Yep – Abrams won the war and Congress gave it back.
Frank Thorn
1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing
The 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing in Saigon was an aerial attack on 27 February 1962 by two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots, Second Lieutenant Nguy?n V?n C? and First Lieutenant Ph?m Ph? Qu?c. The pilots targeted the Independence Palace, the official residence of the President of South Vietnam, with the aim of assassinating President Ng? ??nh Di?m and his immediate family, who acted as his political advisers.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_So…..ce_bombing
Scarecrow Repair & Chippering
Agree with you on the American Revolution. Received wisdom is that it could not have been won without the regulars and the French. But I think that is accepted primarily because the idea of militia overthrowing a government is too scary.
The Brits tried Boston first, and lost because of the militia, as there was no real standing army yet. Then they tried coming down the Hudson to separate New England from the other colonies, and lost in large part to (A) the militia coming out of the woods to snipe at them, and (B) their own infighting.
Then they tried a southern strategy from Georgia north, and every time they captured a capital city, they crowed victory and moved north, whereupon the capital city reverted to rebel control. They had to import everything from England — cattle, uniforms, ammo, everything — because foraging parties seldom returned intact or with much useful loot.
It's also important to remember that the French didn't just jump right in. The colonists had to prove that they had a good chance to win before the French would take any significant risks to help.
Yes. Saratoga was won by colonists alone, and was the battle that convinced the French this might be a viable way to tweak the British nose and possible get back Quebec.
And that is the sleeping lion they are winding up to kick in the balls as action will be coming next.
Ya mean, upright Right Wingers like Cruz and Rooff?
Either that or you're just a doddering hypocrite who equates 5 minutes of discomfort to the end of the world.
Tony you are an idiot who has no idea what you are doing. You live your life in a childlike state where you honestly think no one will ever do to you what you want to do to your political enemies and there will never be any consequences to your actions, no matter how hideous as long as you are doing them for "the right side". You are a textbook example of the kind of hateful idiot that if such a person exists in large enough numbers prevent a society from having any kind of peaceful co-existence.
At some point, I would think you would grow tired of being hateful and stupid. But, I guess that is all you have so you can't give it up.
At least I'm not wound so tight and have so little respect for civilization that I fantasize about starting another civil war because I don't get my way in politics all the time.
Point to Tony.
MarkLastname
Instead, Tony fantasizes about subjugating people he disagrees with when people he disagrees with are at the helm. He also considers anyone who substantially disagrees with him a cousin fucking redneck, while shifting his pants at the insinuation of demographic generalizations (as long as they pertain to demographics that tend to vote Democrat).
No, no points to Tony. I'm sure he appreciates having a fan club though. You know he's gay, so you have a shot; just saying.
Nah. Tony's a hipster in disguise.
Tony, you are wound tight just for different reasons.
Liberty loving people are wound tight because we feel the grip of tyranny slowly strangling us.
You useful idiot types are wound tight because liberty minded Americans talk about defending ourselves against tyranny even if your side says resistance is futile. You're scared and sad that Americans will not all submit and might fight back against the forces trying to murder us.
Shorter LC: The lefties leftied mah LEFTY. And I'll lefty mah LEFTY right up your lefty… YOU GODDAMMED LEFTY!!!!
Very few people are "fantasizing" about it- they are trying to avoid it.
But we are warning that if things keep progressing like they are- everything is politics, people are being shunned because of the beliefs, guns are being confiscated- its not going to end like you think.
Republicans control everything dude.
No. They don't control the media, and that's why they seek to destroy it.
Same goes for academia. Because as we all know, the best, most freedom-loving regimes always go after the press and academia.
Don't spoil their narrative. It's been carefully cultivated via years of intellectual incest, misinformation, team politics and genetic cross-breeding with a long rifle.
Red Rocks White Privilege
It's been carefully cultivated via years of intellectual incest, misinformation, team politics and genetic cross-breeding with a long rifle
Whereas a lack of self-awareness is the proglydyte's stock-in-trade.
Yes, it's a real shame academia and the media get scrutinized for their insularity. Criticizing authorities is after all the the hallmark of authoritarianism. Why can't these wing nuts be good enlightened people and just shut up and believe what the TV and the credentialed expert tell them to? Sheesh.
Hitler didn't have to go after academia at all. They had gone for the Nazis well before Hitler was in power.
And given that the universities are some of the most freedom-stifling locations in this country, holding them up as vital for our liberty is amusing.
They literally burned books. They went after what you would call leftists (and Jews) in academia. Though some within academia did support Nazis.
They literally burned books.
It's adorable you think that this is a shock.
Did you know libraries are again pulling Huck Finn…but because SJW find it offensive?
They went after what you would call leftists (and Jews) in academia.
The Nazi youth groups and college groups did that. The government had little work to do since those groups were quite effective. Much like if Communists took over this country, they wouldn't have to make many changes to universities.
Pulling Huck Finn? Hmmm, that's interesting. I just did a search for that book in the Cambridge Public library, or as righties like to call it the "people's republic of Cambridge" and you can get the book there. I guess we didn't get the memo.
https://www.cambridgema.gov/cpl.aspx
Tony|3.5.18 @ 1:11PM|#
The leftist Nazis went after Communists and other leftists in academia that didn't play ball with Nazis.
There is no definition on the left-right spectrum that makes Nazis anything but extreme right. They kind of define what it means to be extreme right.
What you're trying to do is equate any regime that has an economic system that's not laissez-fiare bullshit that hadn't even been invented yet as leftist, and that's just stupid.
Ariki
"There is no definition on the left-right spectrum that makes Nazis anything but extreme right"
The greatest lie sold to us is the belief that Stalin and Hitler are at opposing ends of the left right spectrum. Have you read the Nazi political positions? Their policies? Do you know any actual history?
Here's a definition – authoritarian. Wheres Hitler fit on that spectrum while your out and about waving your hammer and sickle flag??
As Orwell wrote in the 1930's:
"Fascism, which at its very best is Socialism with the virtues left out."
You want slavery of class, they want slavery of race.
YOU ARE BOTH THE SAME.
Fuck off slaver.
Academics themselves ban books, speakers, and ideas from their campuses all the time; these days those are more hallmarks if 'intellectualism' than 'anti-intellectualism.'
because I don't get my way in politics all the time.
Remember when Republicans, Conservatives and libertarians rioted in the streets after their preferred candidate lost an election?
Then you must have been in a coma during the Tea Party era.
Of course scooting around in a motorized wheelchair using Koch money to agitate against Democrats may not amount to rioting, exactly.
Riots? You mean the guys who CLEANED up their areas after a protest event? That rioting group? Seriously?
God you are a fucking clown. Then again, you are a puppet of Putin, who helped fund anti-Trump protests.
Tea Party era.
The Tea Party did not riot. Words are important. Do you read them?
"Koch money…"
That conspiracy theory is a little old hat, don't you think?
Does this relate in some way to his point, or did you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?
I think that viewing everything through a political lens is a terrible way to live. To the extent that one engages in politics, it should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. And most ends do not require politics, unless one's end is to rule others.
To the extent that one engages in politics, it should be a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Power is an end, not a means.
Tell it to John. Being outraged over a silent 5-minute protest at a football game is also to be obsessed with politics. More obnoxiously so, because it's not about any cause, it's about flag-humping mindlessness.
Being outraged over a silent 5-minute protest at a football game is also to be obsessed with politics.
Not necessarily. It's possible to be outraged not by the particular political view that is being expressed but rather with the insertion of politics into a place it doesn't belong. Mind, it's generally a mistake to get outraged about it, because outrage is what the political wankers are attempting to generate. But for many it's the intrusion itself that irritates.
It's also a common mistake on the internet these days to conflate any sort of criticism of political protest with "outrage". I'm generally not inclined to call it "outrage" when all someone does is send a tweet. And the right to free speech does not include the right to not be criticized.
I'm calling John specifically outraged. It's his go-to look.
Where should political expression be confined to, exactly? We endorsing free-speech zones now? The entire reason they're protesting at these events is because of the exposure. And it's hardly without precedent.
John doesn't want sportsball free of politics. He wants it only to express the flag-humping military-worshiping politics he's used to.
John doesn't want your brand of politics. Lefty and pro-authoritarian.
John, like many of us, see right though the facade of lefty politics. Its useful idiots virtue signalling at sports games and many Americans are sick of it because it is signalling lefty causes that advocate murdering Americans.
Actually the cause in question is stopping the unjust extrajudicial killing of civilians by the state.
You'd think you'd support that cause.
Ewwww. (Imagining LC and John snuggling in bed , whispering sweet awful in each other's ears)
Jesus, man, give the strawmen a bit of rest. If someone chooses to boycott football games because of the protest, that's not "endorsing free-speech zones". It's a personal decision. It may be for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. But it's their right.
How many times does it have to be explained to you that the right of free speech does NOT include automatic enthusiastic endorsement?
I was responding to the claim that there are forums that are inappropriate for political speech, and one such forum is a sports game. A position John did not hold during the decades those same forums were being used to give the armed forces a handjob in propagandistic support of the war du jour. Nobody's calling for John to be jailed for his hypocrisy and unAmericanism.
Make everything about politics and there will be no way for people to peacefully co-exist.
Isn't that the goal of every leftist? They want everything politicized so they can use government violence to punish anyone who doesn't agree with them. Because leftists have good intentions, the only possible explanation for disagreement is bad intentions. And bad intentions must be punished.
The politicization of everything
Is done by proggies because they are totalitarian.
Yes – It's stupidity that never pays off. Unless you are already an explicitly political operations, offending half of your potential customers is never going to result in a windfall. It's just posturing on the way to bankruptcy.
REI is as dead as Sears. Amazon will kill their business model too. Eventually wandering around in North Face Jackets to be 'sporty' will lose it's cred.
Seems to me there is huge overlap in "outdoor recreation". Camping, hiking, hunting, shooting.
Does REI not realize they flipped off a bunch of their own customers?
Liberals shop at REI, or at least around here they all brag about it.
I'd guess that there is a big group of liberals or at least non-gun-enthusiasts that go camping, hiking, take their kids on vacations at national parks etc. and who shop at REI than right-wing gun-toting rural types. REIs are usually located in suburbs. Who goes camping and hiking vs. hunting and target shooting? There are a lot of people who go camping, hiking, biking, canoeing etc. that are not gun enthusiasts. I think REI knows their market and knows who to piss off strategically.
In other words, it's a cheap, virtue-signalling gesture for NEI?
This is THE Leftist tactic. Remember, "The Personal is Political." They want to force everyone to choose a side, because they believe in an "arc of history" for which they are on the "right side", and therefore cannot possibly lose. Remember "demographics is destiny"? Their philosophy is based on this delusion of inevitability, which is why they favor this and so many other totalitarian tactics. They assume based on their delusional philosophy that they will always be in control, always be the ones with the upper hand, imposing their preferences on others. They don't mind totalitarianism because they assume they'll always be in control of it. Thus they assume that if everyone is forced to take sides, that equates to a win for them in all circumstances. They want to force everyone into warring factions because they're convinced their faction always wins, and crushing your rivals is faster and easier than convincing them you're right.
OpenBordersLiberal-tarian
Warning that "we all live on campus now," Andrew Sullivan argues, "If voicing an 'incorrect' opinion can end your career, or mark you for instant social ostracism, you tend to keep quiet. This silence on any controversial social issue is endemic on college campuses, but it's now everywhere."
Sullivan says this like it's a bad thing. There are some attitudes ? support for the NRA, opposition to open borders, Islamophobia, etc. ? that absolutely should be considered out of bounds by any decent person.
Gun fetishists are just upset that the public has finally had enough. Well, tough luck. Your intentional misreading of the Second Amendment has gotten far too many people killed, and now advocates of common sense gun safety legislation obviously have the moral high ground. Gun nuts will just have to find a different way to compensate for their small genitalia. The days of stockpiling deadly assault weapons are coming to an end.
I'll give you a B on this effort. However, I think you overplayed it with the "small genitalia" comment.
Owning a gun is telling the world you have small genitalia and are over compensating. Running around claiming everyone who does anything you don't like is just over compensating for small genitalia, however, says nothing about you over compensating.
On the internet, no one knows the size of your genitals, even while you accuse someone else of having small genitals, eh?
Something like that. I never quite understood why it mattered. But apparently, it does to a lot of people.
It matters to them because they think that the "guns=small dicks" argument is intellectual and clever. You can bet that the people making that argument know little to nothing about psychology; they think they're experts because they audited Psych 101 in the hopes of learning some Jedi mind tricks to get into girls' pants or get more money from Daddy, and they gave it up when they discovered that real work was involved.
Hey! My genitals may be small and wrinkled, but they've satisfied many a man!
This is the most childish statement anyone can make and yet the most often used by people such as you. You say such things on the internet because you have the protection of being online. I seriously doubt you have the balls to make such a comment directly to someone who is a gun owner because you are scared they will kick your ass. Insults are the only weapon for a weak, immature and illogical mind.
I don't think you understand what I meant. Let me make it clear to you; saying someone has a small dick based on any opinion they have is absurd and anyone who resorts to such tactics should not be taken seriously. That was my point.
BTW, I sincerely believe you do not own any type of gun because clearly you are a massive d**k.
If this is supposed to be a parody of some kind of "cosmo" libertarian, you're taking it too far. All you've got anymore is tired, lefty talking points, and no pretense of libertarian anything. Your straw man is way too obvious.
Citizen X - #6
"Anymore"?
I may be overly generous. It happens.
Zeb,
Be nice. It is not often that a former Libertarian VP candidate comes on here. Treating Mr. Weld like this is why we can't have nice things and why Postrel hates us.
Your move.
Alcibiades
Extended my NRA membership by a couple years last week.
Contacted Amazon reps three times and told them "drop NRATV and we cancel our Prime subscription.
Ditto with an email to Amazon PR saying the same thing.
Contacted a Delta rep and told them this NRA family won't be flying Delta anymore.
David Hogg is the best membership drive for recruitment of new NRA memberships since forever.
Oh, and I'll be keeping my AR-15.
I'm not going to arm myself with a a weapon of mass killing because I'm not an insane paranoid baby man, but to each his own.
You might not, but you would contract others to do it for you. I'm sure you will call 911 and expect a firearm to arrive quickly to your location when needed.
The red carpet had a security sweep featuring dogs and officers with full auto weapons.
That's why I laugh when I hear there is not good guy with a gun argument. Who you gonna call? A bad guy with a gun? You are going to call someone with a gun when you think it's needed.
Well that's because I believe in civilization as opposed to solving disputes with vigilantism or, perhaps, pure unchecked "he with the biggest gun wins."
You don't believe in civilization Tony. You just don't. You are not smart enough to believe in anything. Emoting is not the same as believing.
John you do nothing but embarrass yourself with red-faced tantrums here, so don't talk to me about emoting.
Your notion of "civilization" is centralized, bureaucratic government?
Tony has said that parents would not take care of their children if the government didn't tell them to. So yeah, to him civilization means big government. Because no one cooperates or does anything civilized unless there is a threat of government violence.
I guess so? Beats the hell out of the rednecks on this board deciding at the point of their guns how I get to live my life.
Beats the hell out of the rednecks on this board deciding at the point of their guns how I get to live my life.
Yeah, because libertarians want to use their guns to force you to live a certain way.
Unless you mean we want to force you to stop using government to force us to live a certain way.
Liberty is tyranny!
We'd prefer to just ignore you.
But if you want to try and dictate to us, then yes, we will advise exactly how you can go fuck yourself.
Well that's because I believe in civilization as opposed to solving disputes with vigilantism
I've never met a leftist who understood the difference between self defense and vigilantism.
You're permitted violence in self-defense because the states grants an exemption to its monopoly on legitimate force for this extreme and specific circumstance. Otherwise it's just anarchy, and he with the biggest gun not only wins, but gets to claim whatever spoils he wants.
You're permitted violence in self-defense because the states grants an exemption to its monopoly on legitimate force for this extreme and specific circumstance.
There is so much wrong with that statement. I don't know where to begin.
You don't have a right to kill someone unless you can prove to the state's satisfaction that you did so under certain circumstances. You are essentially contracted to do the state's job in those situations.
You will counter with some natural law horsepucky, but as we've been over many times, that's just you saying magic exists and it whispers in your ear.
You accuse me of believing in magic while you ascribe godlike powers to government. Sure, dood. Whatevz.
No I don't.
Yes, you do. Government gives us rights and takes our rights away. Government determines morality, right and wrong. Without government parents wouldn't take care of their children. So government must have been there at the beginning of time, making cave men take care of their children, else the human race would never exist.
Government is your god.
No wonder your beliefs are so weird what with your completely jacked up hysterical characterization of mine.
Rights are indeed legal inventions, which doesn't mean they aren't good or important. It's just what they are. The problem with saying they were handed down from on high is that a) that means somebody forgot to tell most of humans for most of history and b) some unelected jackass gets to tell me what my rights are.
With any luck we can get a government that reflects a decent morality and respects human rights. The only alternative is one of the infinite forms of oppressive tyranny that have occupied most of humanity for most of its existence.
Some rights are legal inventions, some are natural. I have a natural right to self defense, a natural right to protect my life, regardless of what government says. That right comes from the fact that I am alive, and I have a right to stay that way. To say that the right to self defense comes from government is to say that government determines whether or not I have a right to live. That indeed is ascribing godlike powers to government.
I am alive, and I have a right to stay that way
Unless someone else decides otherwise, including a state.
The state can decide whether you live or die under certain circumstances. Most states in history had this power in an ultimate sense. Luckily more civilized societies invented (yes invented) rights like due process. But even that doesn't go for armed combatants in other countries, who presumably have the same "natural" right to life you claim.
Nor does it go for the person you're permissibly shooting to death for trying to steal your microwave, a situation in which your microwave literally has more rights than another human, even when this most basic of rights you're talking about.
You conflate so many things in that post that it makes my head hurt. You are one confused dood.
Rights are indeed legal inventions
Not according to the founding document and the people that wrote them. Rights are inalieanable. And any time rights are mentioned in the Constitution they re mentioned in the negative. That is, they are assumed to already exist and a prohibition is place on the government from infringing on them. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Have you read them?
So rights are both inherent to nature and didn't exist until 1776.
Are you intentionally obtuse or does it come naturally?
"" You are essentially contracted to do the state's job in those situations.""
This is false. It is not the state's job to protect you. Courts have said so. You can't be contracted to do someone else's job when it's not their job in the first place.
You don't have a right to kill someone unless you can prove to the state's satisfaction that you did so under certain circumstances.
I have the right to kill someone who is trying to kill me regardless of what the State has to say on the matter. It's called self-preservation. Do you practice it?
Given that self-defense is more common than police shoot-outs, perhaps the state's "monopoly on legitimate force" is nullified.
I'll note that your side feels that money should allow them to get whatever spoils you want. We're pushing back on that one a bit.
That's another misconception common to leftists. They feel that any use of force by anyone other than government is illegitimate. What they are incapable of understanding is that government has the monopoly on the initiation of force. Force in response to force, otherwise known as self defense, is perfectly legitimate. Though leftists have trouble with the concept. They don't understand what "in response to force" means. That's why they equate self defense to vigilantism. They see no difference between shooting someone who is trying to kill you, and hunting someone down and shooting them in the back. To leftists those two things are exactly the same, because someone other than government is using force.
Otherwise known as self-defense…
Mr. Dyslexic
When the lights go out and all the grocery store shelves are empty, head to Tony's house. He believes in civilization and is unarmed.
This is where Tony always loses me. Any article on reason about the police state always has him here agreeing with most of the commenters in opposition to government. But if someone demands the right to defend themselves against the state he expresses full faith in the state and calls it civilization. Tony, it's the same fucking government. Do you not get that?
Tony's Gov is a good Gov, a caring a loving Gov – but it's also a just and omnipotent Gov…
We are but sinners in the hands of an angry Gov
What you mean is "all governments are the same," which is of course absurd. Anarchy may be worse than any government, or maybe just worse than most. But who cares? The American criminal justice system is indeed fucked and oppressive, but that's mostly a state and local concern. Libertarians almost to the exclusion of all else wet their panties over the federal government and seem to be OK with local governments having more authority, even as they bitch about the same abuses.
I never said that any old government would work. Good government is the goal, and that takes effort, not slogans.
You know what a ditch of rotting communists smells like?
North Koreans don't get to choose their political system, so picking on the few remaining communists in the world seems a bit like an eccentricity on your part.
I'm sure all the freedom-lovers here will be around any moment to scold you for equating freedom with mass killing of political opponents.
Pointing out that every communist country in history has engaged in mass murder is just eccentric. The fact that nations that were once reasonably prosperous like Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe just to name three have turned into hell on earth because of the ideology that you would happily inflict on this country is just one of those things. God you are a sick ignorant fuck Tony. You really are.
Not only do you believe in a murderous ideology, you can't help but piss on the graves of the victims of that ideology.
Excuse me, but the lunatic I was responding to was specifically celebrating the idea of mass graves of political opponents.
I'd say you can't possibly be so stupid and brain-pickled to think I actually endorse revolutionary communism and the mass murder that tends to go with it, but you keep saying it…
Yes Tony, you believe in an ideology that wants to murder its opponents. Own it asshole.
There are several people on this thread jerking off to the idea of murdering political opponents, and I'm not one of them.
You want those of us who do not believe in your climate religion to be killed. That's political.
I don't have a climate religion, whatever that is, and I don't believe anyone should be killed.
Tony, you've said more than once that people who don't believe in the Prophet Owlgore must die. Try being honest for a change.
But John, Communists like Tony never intend to murder people! Communists have good intentions! They want everyone to be equal! They want everyone to get along! And if the right people are in charge, that's what will happen! It isn't his fault that every single time Communists have been put in charge, that they try to achieve their goals by murdering their political opponents! They did it with good intentions!
mumble mumble road to hell mumble mumble
What would you call a mass grave of dead Nazis? A bad thing?
Certain groups are not worth mourning over. Communists are deeply in that group.
It would make sense that the more oppressive a regime, the less choice the people have in following official doctrine. Thus, the less justifiable their mass murder would be, as they are more like victims than perpetrators. The most communist nation on earth is North Korea. Do all those people deserve death, or do they perhaps deserve pity and help?
""North Koreans don't get to choose their political system, "'
Neither did the British that were born in the American colonies. But once fed up with the political system. They decided to make a change.
That is great Tony. You don't arm yourself. Why do you think anyone here cares if you do?
Just making you aware that the more guns you have and the bigger they are, the more of a pussy you're admitting to being. Wouldn't want you to walk around with absurd delusions like "being able to rip apart flesh more easily" makes you a tough guy or something.
You really don't understand why people own guns. At all.
No he doesn't. He doesn't understand anything. Everyone is just a voice in his head and a cardboard cut out that plays in the morality play that goes on in his head. If Tony were capable of empathy or understanding, he wouldn't be a leftist.
A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box.
-Frederick Douglass
The KKK, the original gun-control group.
Presumably for diverse reasons. But if you outright state that it's because you're a pussy who's afraid of his own shadow, then it's because you're a pussy, I would think.
Argumentum ad baculum much? I've just never found that approach to be effective for encouraging me to see another persons point of view; no, not at all. Suggests a lack of rhetorical validity if anything.
You are so far away from anything relevant, I seriously have to question if you're suffering from prescription mixup.
I'm not going to arm myself with a a weapon of mass killing of modern technology and common use because I'm not an insane paranoid baby man a pussy.
You own a car, don't you?
Let's be clear though: you are admitting you think it's deranged to own a rifle? Or to own a firearm in general? Surely you're not referring to AR15 in particular, as they are no deadlier than most other rifles (same rate of fire, caliber, etc. only difference is cosmetic). Basically, you hate anyone who owns a hunting rifle? Are they all cousin fuckers in your book?
NealAppeal
Tony will leave the weapons of mass killing to the government and whoever controls it.
"There are some attitudes ? support for the NRA, opposition to open borders, Islamophobia, etc. ? that absolutely should be considered out of bounds by any decent person."
The Gun-fetishists ARE the public.
The NRA is paid for BY THE PUBLIC.
Kicking out illegal aliens and double illegal aliens is supported BY THE PUBLIC. Our border are already one of the most open IN the WORLD! We already have a liberal immigration policy.
Being afraid of a religion that specifically declared open war on anyone not in that religion is rational.
You're perfectly ok with restricting peoples rights to free speech on these subjects if they don't agree with you. You're a really bad person.
You're the same type of authoritarian idiot that I've heard of calling the public "Deplorables" in the middle of an election speech.
What do you call someone who argues with a mannequin? Because that's basically what you're doing.
Some poor soul stuck at work sitting on a soap box?
Hey, at least you're getting paid for this.
Longtobefree
Some attitudes? Support for the NRA = support for the consitiution
Opposition the open borders = support for the constitution
Islamophobia = not even a real thing. A phobia is an irrational fear. Fear of a large armed group with the stated goal of killing you is not irrational.
If oppose the NRA, repeal the second amendment.
If you support open borders, get the federal laws changed.
Please explain the 'misreading' of "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
There are almost 2 billion Muslims in the world. Do they all want to kill us? If so, yikes.
Open borders isn't actually a thing. It's a straw man. You're not interested in discussing immigration policy if you talk about open borders; same as with the Islam thing, you're outing yourself as a probable bigot.
The NRA takes extremist positions on gun laws that have absolutely nothing to do with what the 2nd amendment protects–and I'm talking about reality and current law, not some liberal's silly notion of reading what the words of the 2A actually are.
It seems pretty abundantly clear from those words that the right to keep and bear arms (a specific phrase meaning a specific thing, which is not "I get to own all the guns I want for any reason I dream up") is absolutely conditional on their being used for well-regulated militias, an obsolete concept. The 2A was about standing armies and the practicalities of organized defense in the 18th century. It never had anything to do with personal self-defense until the Supreme Court invented that interpretation out of thin air.
Of course they don't all want to kill us. OTOH, how many friendly, democratic majority Muslim countries do you see in the world? How many of them have active genocides against other religions?
Ideologies, (And Islam is as much an ideology as a religion.) have implications apart from the nominal motives of the people holding them. They lead places even if the people holding them don't really want to go to those places, so long as they're not prepared to abandon the ideology.
There are reasons that Communism keeps producing gulags, and Islam keeps producing inhumane theocracies. You have to be foolish to ignore them just because this or that adherent seems a nice guy.
A nice guy who'd put somebody in power who would march you into a death camp, if he had the chance.
So a quarter of the human species practices an inherently oppressive ideology. What are we to do? Start a war with it?
You'll get no argument from me that religions in general, especially ones that haven't gone wobbly via interaction with rationalist social movements, tend to go hand-in-hand with oppression. The wars of religion in Europe were among the deadliest conflicts in human history, and that wasn't Islam. By casting this as a problem with a particular religion (in contrast to the "good" religion) means you're missing the point.
The United States and other secular democracies should push back against attempts to install theocratic methods and regimes. In my particular neck of the woods it's the Christians I have to worry about, though.
Don't worry, that one changes in about a decade.
Not invite it in.
We currently have a lot less Islamic terrorism in the US than many other countries. It's not because of anything magical, it's because we have a lot fewer Muslims in the US than many countries. Under 1%. It used to be way under, not so much anymore. But they're over-performing their numbers.
I propose that we stop trying to change that.
"Inviting them in" is a funny way to put it considering they commit terrorism against the West largely because we invited ourselves in to their countries.
Bullshit. It's a tactic written into the Koran and used in many campaigns before "we" set foot in "their" countries.
That must be why the Chinese, non Muslim Africans, and Latin Americans commit so many acts of terrorism against foreign powers.
Anyway, you're clearly deluded. Most of jihadists victims aren't people if countries that ever had colonies over there. You're grasping at any straw you can to run interference for murderois lunatics because 'punching down' or whatever the fuck.
Maybe you should reflect on how far gone you are in terms of subjugating any semblance of a conscience to pure political tribalism. Oh and spare the "but Johhhnnnn" retort that has become your mantra. Focus on you, pal.
We (Europe / Western civilization) have had many many wars with Islam. Even before the 711 AD invasion of Hispania until at least 1829 (Greek's war of Independence from the Ottomans) European Christians were in near-constant warfare against invading Muslims.
The Europeans finally won. Then they stopped teaching history and invited the Muslims back in.
The NRA takes extremist positions on gun laws
Actually they don't. And that's why I'm not a member. GOA and SAF are way more hardcore on private arms ownership. But I might join the NRA just to spite you.
GOA is good and they carry a lot of political clout per dollar expended.
It seems pretty abundantly clear from those words that the right to keep and bear arms (a specific phrase meaning a specific thing
Yes, specifically instruments intended for fighting.
absolutely conditional on their being used for well-regulated militias
Are you familiar with the concept of a preamble? What I mean is that the first part of 2A describes a purpose, but not the only purpose. The operative statement is "the right of the people…shall not be infringed." Nevermind that "well-regulated" means trained and a militia is a group of citizens that provide their own arms.
The NRA's interpretation of the Second Amendment and Prof Tribes', Obama's Harvard Constitutional Law Professor, are now fundamentally the same. After reading the Heller decision he came to the conclusion the Second Amendment does indeed mean an individual right to own and bear arms and corrected the third edition of his textbook on Constitutional Law to reflect this.
They only want to kill the kafirs who won't submit. You don't have anything to worry about.
Gun nuts will just have to find a different way to compensate for their small genitalia.
Although you are a troll, this sentiment is surprisingly widespread among the left.
Why are gun control advocates so obsessed with other people's genital organs?
Here is a gun owner who is compensating for impotence and sexual inadequacy:
NC Teenage girl Scares Off Intruders With Rifle
A pair of 12 and 13-year-old sisters were by themselves in their home in Snow Camp, N.C. when three men approached the house and knocked on the door. The older sister did not recognize the men, prompting her to retrieve her father's rifle. Eventually, the men went to the back of the home and broke in through another door. Once the men were inside, the armed teen leveled the rifle at them. Upon meeting armed resistance, the home invaders fled. Following the incident, a neighbor praised the girl for her actions, telling a reporter, "To have had that kind of thoughtfulness going on in a time of crisis in her head to where that's what she did, instead of running and hiding. She probably stopped something major from going on."
In Great Britain [and several other places that come to mind] that kid would be in foster care and the parents facing some serious charges. That is what progressives want to happen here.
psmoot
My common sense response is to do nothing. School shootings are heinous but very, very rare. If I want to protect the kiddies, I'd focus on wearing bike helmets and looking when they cross the street. For that matter, I'd focus on encouraging them to walk to school instead of being driven so there are fewer cars (and car accidents) near crowds of kids.
Would that have been an acceptable response to REI?
Geez:
You sound like Stossel!
Seems to be working for them so far. They are getting what they want.
Why should others not use that same playbook?
He suggests that progressives risk a "political backlash that could make Donald Trump look like Adlai Stevenson."
I want a backlash against progressives that makes Hutus look like Quakers.
If progs and media toadies were not histrionic children, they would realize how reasonable Trump is. Trump is likely their last chance at ever having anyone reasonable. If they had any brains, they would be praying for Trump to succeed rather than doing everything they can to try and ensure his failure. If they had any brains, we wouldn't be in this situation now, would we?
*sharpens machete*
Ah, the old we need to wipe them off the face of the earth solution.
And the idiots will clap and applaud you for standing against those evil "others" who would subjugate you and your children.
The rest will say nothing and instead attack Tony, because he says such horrible things that don't reflect their tribal values.
This Machine Chips Fascists
Because no one here has ever given RedTony shit before.
Why are you addressing me?
CY just validated SIV's call for genocide. Go get him…Or are you afraid of stirring the stale and oh-so-rotten pot?
Progressives aren't a race.
Wow! A statement of fact? You get a cookie sir!
*pats SIV's furry little head lovingly
Where'd I call for genocide?
Oh, excuse me. I thought, not being an "idiot", that I must be one of "the rest". I was operating on the assumption you were being honest. My mistake.
I was being honest. You didn't say shit. SiV called for genocide. Cy won't use the term genocide, but instead frames his desire for mass murder as a defensive position (which is how every genocide is rationalized btw). So why the fuck aren't you calling them out? Or is it more important for you and everyone else here to circle the wagons and protect your fragile little paranoid world you've constructed?
People give me shit? I hadn't noticed.
When there are large groups of people openly discussing taking my property by force and forcing my children to be indoctrinated the way they see fit, it's perfectly rational to be prepare to defend myself, my family and my property from those groups.
I read posts like this with a Froghorn-Leghorn "old south" accent. "Maaaah Propertuh"…it makes me feel better when reading through the yokel thought vomit.
Did you have a point or did your lack of intelligence just default to stereotypical insults? Maybe that's how proggies rationalize the mass murder when that stage of their utopia comes around.
Who was rationalizing mass-murder?
*I have another cookie to give if you answer correctly!
Being prepared to defend myself is mass murder? WTF over?
Being deliberately obtuse is Tony's game Cy. No Cookie for you!
Being deliberately obtuse is Tony's game
I prefer the term "Socratic method."
Lol. You're not helping me. Shoo!
Freddy the Jerk
Socratic method? Snort. Actually you prefer running away whenever anyone asks you to explain and justify your positions.
For a supposed philosophy major you're not very big on thinking.
Yes I'm sure most people here are upset that I don't have more posts on this thread.
Tony, frothing uncontrollably may be what Socrates did after taking the hemlock before he died, but it doesn't count as the Socratic method.'
Nor does "when did you stop fucking your cousin you racist cracker?" count as Socratic questioning.
Here's a suggestion: take a couple middle before commenting, it might help.
I read posts like this with a Froghorn-Leghorn "old south" accent.
Yours require a lisping nu-male accent.
And you'll say nothing critical of Tony and instead keep sucking his dick, because his inanity reflects your values (whether you admit it or not; revealed preferences, they're called). And in it goes.
Pure, unbridled idiocy from the Dems/Progs. It belies their narrative that "more educated" = intelligent.
Trump is a centrist.
The Dems best chance for future success was silence (in hopes of failure) and co-opting those ideas Trump has that run counter to establishment Rep positions.
Instead they went all in on temper tantrums, Antifa, and Brennan's moronic Russia plot in hopes of pulling off a coup.
Won't happen, and this gun grab push will be the last straw.
Progressivism has finally been lain bare for all to see. Totalitarian socialism cannot be tolerated much longer.
I don't know what your definition of reasonable is, but even if he is "reasonable" he is also stupid and thin-skinned. Those are not presidential qualities. I would like Trump to fail drastically so someone smarter and less likely to destroy the economy can get elected.
"According to the data," notes Zogby, "Hollywood interjecting itself into the debate makes even the Democratic base want to bear arms."
But they just cannot help themselves; every time Hollywood, "coastal elites" etc. overly interject themselves into politics there is a repercussion. But being woke and having a bully pulpit is just too much to resits.
Resist. Sorry, had an eye exam this morning and they're still dilated.
So you're hyperwoke?
I hate the term 'woke' so much that I'm starting to like it…
#spitewoke
Marvel didn't get in trouble with their readers for diversifying. They've created lots of "diverse" characters before, and had them been popular.
They got in trouble for screwing with existing characters. Thor simply is not a woman. Good grief, it's not a title, it's his freaking NAME.
They didn't get in trouble for giving minorities their own characters, but instead for taking them way from straight white males.
colorblindkid
This notion that nerds and gamers are inherently racist sexist bigots is absolute nonsense. They just want good stories and good games.
That is exactly right. If Marvel wants to have more women and black characters, more power to them. But they should just create female and minority characters not turn their existing characters into something they are not.
The Thor thing is beyond absurd. Haven't these retards ever heard of the Valkyries or Brune Hilda? Or Athena? Or the Amazons? There are a million female warrior characters in mythology. What is the point of turning Thor into a woman other than to show the world how retarded you are?
Specifically to make you go red-faced and stomping. Now accuse someone else of emoting too much. These are fictional characters and you're under no obligation to pay attention.
Yes Tony, you are a retard who didn't get a single reference I gave. WE know that.
I understand that you think some political force ought to have power over an artist's choices when it comes to comic book characters.
Maybe they can create a new character – the Incredible Strawman!
Whenever White Knight needs to boost his own self esteem, the Incredible Strawman will arrive!
Wherever White Left finds xiself unable to face xis inherent inferiority, Strawman will appear!
White Knight is already a superhero character. Michael Poe, in Does Not Play Well With Others.
Well, SJW is a bit on the nose… and more of a team name.
I am, however, a fan of the Chinese term: White Left. Could work.
Except one cannot point to either quality or sales to justify the changes.
Why are they so scared to create a new character?
Even Stan Lee has asked that.
In recent years I decided that for the sake of zen it was possible to simply ignore artistic decisions you don't like. This was after JJ Abrams decided to take the world's biggest burrito shit all over Star Trek.
This was after JJ Abrams decided to take the world's biggest burrito shit all over Star Trek.
I certainly agree with you on that!
They don't teach you artistic invention in business school, would be my guess.
I also find it funny how progs try to paint the NRA as a "fringe" group.
It's the second largest (by membership) advocacy organization in the USA. (the AARP is first.)
The NRA has more members than the NEA. Let that sink in.
Last I checked the NRA had a 55% "favorable" rating among the general population in mainstream polls.
Despite Reason and other fair-weather civil libertarians lying about them supporting electronic game bans and regulations.
Nothing more mainstream USA than the Second Amendment.
:Fringe, fascist, NAZI, white supremacist, racist, misogynist, homophobic; these words at one time or another had very specific meaning, but now they are bandied about so much in an effort to vilify any and all opposing points of view that they are becoming meaningless.
Resist newspeak.
The word "communist" is also sprayed around so much it has absolutely no meaning.
NRA has more (approximately twice) the members of either SEIU or AFSCME. Ever read an editorial urging elected officials to "stand up" to either of those organizations?
NoVaNick
Who the hell has the time to keep track of what companies have an affiliation with gun makers and what store sell their products? Oh yeah, proggie trustifarians…This is making me want to join the NRA, even though I don't own a gun.
You don't have to own a gun to join.
I need to check the SPLC to see if they've made their list yet; I always wanted to belong to something that is banned, but just haven't wanted to join anything on their list thus far.
silencing those you disagree with allows for only one outlet for their grevences and that outlet is violence.
I have heard liberals give that reasoning in the defense of rioting.
It is not a defense, it is an explanation. An explanation for something is not the same as a justification.
I sure background checks are going through the roof and AR-15s are flying off the shelves.
Vilifying Gun Owners Doesn't Lead to a Better Society: New at Reason
It also doesn't win elections.
It does not lead to a better society.
It does, however, lead to the society that Socialists want.
….actress Alyssa Milano told an interviewer about the push to get NRATV dropped. "What a campaign like this allows is for a cultural hack."
Speaking of a cultural hack…
Amazon is just gonna tell all those bullies "take a hike".
Not in those exact same words but essentially it'll mean the same thing.
It looks like the astroturfing is starting to wear off.
Why Did It Take Two Weeks To Discover Parkland Students' Astroturfing?
"Can you believe these kids?" It's been a recurring theme of the coverage of the Parkland school shooting: the remarkable effectiveness of the high school students who created a gun control organization in the wake of the massacre. In seemingly no time, the magical kids had organized events ranging from a national march to a mass school walkout, and they'd brought in a million dollars in donations from Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney.
On February 28, BuzzFeed came out with the actual story: Rep. Debbie Wassermann Schultz aiding in the lobbying in Tallahassee, a teacher's union organizing the buses that got the kids there, Michael Bloomberg's groups and the Women's March working on the upcoming March For Our Lives, MoveOn.org doing social media promotion and (potentially) march logistics, and training for student activists provided by federally funded Planned Parenthood.
What's striking about all this isn't the organization. If you start reading books about organizing, it's clear how it all works. But no journalist covering the story wrote about this stuff for two weeks. Instead, every story was about the Parkland kids being magically effective.
If these whiny brats want to play hardcore politics that's fine by me.
At the end of the day they'll be a little older but a lot wiser.
They're whiny brats for reacting to their friends being shot dead in front of them?
You people tend to the psychopathic, you know. You should definitely be allowed to own more guns…
They forgave the cop who didn't do a fucking thing while their "friends" got shot but blamed the NRA.
Hell, when NR's Charles Cooke actually tried to take that Hogg kid seriously, the Left went nuts that he was being "mean".
Why aren't Steve Scalise's views sacrosanct? Unlike these kids, he WAS shot. Personally.
So was Gaby Giffords. A lot worse.
Scalise was shot by a Bernie bro trying to turn the House through assassination.
Giffords was shot by a rando loon…though, somehow, her shooting was Palin's fault.
Giffords' attack also got WAY more press than an attempt to gun down a large chunk of the House Republicans. Funny.
No, just the ones smiling and mugging for every camera that comes their way.
Wayne LaPierre doesn't smile! Oh you mean the kids whose school got shot up. You actually are bitching about them exercising free speech rights. Well, what a fucking monster you are. and have a nice day.
Thank you, I will.
Oh you mean the kids whose school got shot up.
Well, SOME of them get to be heard. The ones who don't agree with the dipshit Democrats don't seem to get any attention. It's almost like the whole exercise is bullshit.
They're whiny brats
Because they emote rather than think. And they don't know anything about anything. Come to think of it, they sound like you.
Yes they should shut up because they dare have emotions in response to their friends being torn up in front of them.
While people who jack off to guns are of near Vulcan-like rationality.
Hey, we didn't excuse a cop who refused to do his job.
It's not right to call them whiny brats. They're political props who are too young to realize they're being manipulated.
Don't sell them short, NRA footsoldiers are both whiny brats and political props.
Our resident racist name-caller drops another well-reasoned argument. Thanks Tony.
Wrong again. Most of them own cars and trucks. That would make them mechanized infantry, not footsoldiers.
They are exactly that and need to be called on it. Attacking law-abiding citizens and an organization that lobbies and supports a core constitutional right as if they pulled the trigger.
Name an organization more responsible for the proliferation of weapons of mass killing in this country.
Their thesis is that the prevalence of these weapons is a causal factor in their use in shooting up schools. You can disagree but you can't say it's an insane position.
The entertainment industry. Glorifying of thug culture has negative repurcussions.
Their thesis is that the prevalence of these weapons is a causal factor in their use in shooting up schools.
Using this logic, that lots of guns equals lots of shootings — gun stores should be victims of mass shootings on the regular.
Don't engage, there's nothing at the other end.
Gun stores keep the ammo separate, do they not?
There are other explanations for why the US has an overwhelmingly high rate of gun violence compared to other countries, but they're all kind of ones that don't suggest we should be giving out more guns. (E.g., We're an especially sick and violent people!)
ALL of us?
Or some smaller, select groups?
WHO are the ones driving the violence?
I know you won't actually name the groups because narrative and all.
When you refer to common semi-automatic rifles as "weapons of mass killing" — words suggesting they're analogous to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons — it makes it impossible to take you seriously.
Everyone objects to the usual terminology as if that makes the guns any less powerful. I think the ability to kill scores of people in under 10 minutes is mass. But you can call it whatever you want.
If "the ability to kill scores of people in under 10 minutes" is the criterion, then every firearm invented since approximately the 1860s is a "weapon of mass killing." Your car is a "weapon of mass killing." The bottle of Drain-O under your sink is a "weapon of mass killing."
Your criterion is asinine; your language, overwrought hyperbolic idiocy; your point, nonexistent.
Knives can kill tons of people in under ten minutes. Ditto sticks.
The Crips.
The Mafia
MS-13.
I'll say this again, of course those kids have been used as props and have been given help by professional organizers. It doesn't amount to a conspiracy.
They'll also be tossed aside tout suite after they've been wrung dry of their political usefulness and that will constitute the "wiser" part.
Of course they will be, but that's not the fault of starry-eyed teenagers. Starry-eyed teenagers are just that. They suffered a tragedy, and powerful people reached out to them and gave them a voice. That's how this game works. I don't blame the kids for any of this, and blaming them just seems callous.
When the rhetoric goes "anyone that takes money from the NRA has blood on their hands" a line is crossed and they need to be called on it.
Those who say "anyone that takes money from the NRA has blood on their hands" just want to lock up more black people just that so they can feel safe.
Their purpose is not to prevent mass shootings.
Their purpose is not to make a better society.
Their purpose isn't even to ban guns!
Their purpose is to take the House in November and impeach Trump.
Because they haven't accepted why Hillary Clinton lost–a lot of which had to do with vilifying the white, collar, middle class–they persist in the same strategy that put Trump in the White House.
The Democrats are now a party for BLM, illegal immigrant interests, feminists, radical environmentalists, LGBTQI+ interests, and that's about it. They can't accept that the SJWs are one of the big reasons why Hillary Clinton failed because they're the SJWs–and what's the point of being an SJW if you can't hate on the white, blue collar, middle class?
They'll probably take the House for reasons that have little to do with the issues.
They'll probably get clobbered by Trump in his reelection campaign–for same reasons he won the first time, only more so.
Not sure the dems can pull that off either-yes, lots of republicans are retiring and Trump is deeply unpopular, but mostly in districts that are blue already. They'll definitely pick up some seats, though, but not likely enough to take back the house.
This is what happens to the president's party in the House in a new president's first midterm–going back to the election of 1910.
First column is House seats won/lost. The last column is what I see as the dominant issue(s) of that midterm.
+9 1934 Franklin D. Roosevelt Great Depression
+8 2002 George W. Bush 9/11
-4 1962 John F. Kennedy Cuban Missile Crisis
-8 1990 George H. W. Bush USSR Falls, Operation Desert Shield
-9 1926 Calvin Coolidge 1st Midterm in 2nd Term (Death of Harding)
-12 1970 Richard Nixon Vietnam, Kent State
-15 1978 Jimmy Carter Energy Crisis, Inflation
-18 1954 Dwight D Eisenhower McCarthyism
-22 1918 Woodrow Wilson Broken Promise not to Enter WWI
-26 1982 Ronald Reagan Recession
-47 1966 Lyndon B. Johnson Great Society, Civil Rights Act
-48 1974 Gerald Ford Nixon Pardoned
-52 1930 Herbert Hoover Smoot?Hawley Tariff, Great Depression
-54 1946 Harry S Truman Labor Unrest, End of Wartime Price Controls
-54 1994 Bill Clinton Gun Control, HillaryCare
-57 1910 William Taft Strife within the Republcian Party (Progressives)
-63 2010 Barack Obama TARP, ObamaCare
-77 1922 Warren Harding Strife within the Republcian Party (Progressives)
The median is -24 House seats lost.
The average is -31`House seats lost.
The Republicans need to lose -20 seats in order to lose the House.
Yes, they need to do better than the median, but not implausibly better.
The problem for them is that they're doing very little to encourage Republican voters to turn out.
I think, based on what I've been seeing, that the Republican leadership might not actually mind being in the minority. Sure, you get less graft, but a lot less work, and you've got a ready made excuse for why you're not accomplishing anything.
A plausible interpretation of recent decades, but Occam's Razor suggests that they do like being in power, but people who don't believe in governing tend to be bad at it.
I'd easily believe that people who don't believe in governing could be bad at it, but that's not the Republican establishment, unfortunately. They're not libertarians, for the most part, just hacks.
Stephen Lathrop
Brett, bless your heart. On this forum, you seem an intellectual giant and a constructive force. You ought to spend more time here, and less on Volokh. You'll get more done here, and take less criticism.
The risk is of Democrats turning out–historically speaking.
I think that's what Trump's announcements last week on guns and free trade were about.
He's co-opting the Democrats' agenda on gun and jobs–at least from a PR perspective.
What do you expect? Trump has been a Democrat most of his adult life, and is pals with Chuck Schumer. Essentially, he IS still a D. I think he wants nothing more than to have the opportunity to work with members of his own party-hence why he is trying his best to destroy the GOP.
That's unlikely, because Democrats have made it quite clear that he's dead to them.
I think if anything he was just a "Democrat" because if he'd been a "Republican" his building permits would have been held up at City Hall.
That's not to say he's any kind of principled Republican, just that he's got no loyalty to the Democrats.
Unlike Republicans like you, people who support Democrats do so because they have coherent policy goals in mind.
Though I suppose "Git me away from the brown people!" is coherent enough.
There are so many problems with that statement, it's hard to know where to start.
There are so many problems with your thinking, there's no reason to start.
Schizophrenia is best left to its own self-destruction
P.S. I'm not a Republican.
Neither am I.
I am anti-progressive, both Ds and Rs.
Currently, the Rs are the lesser of evils… but they'll have to be dealt with too
Unlike Republicans like you, people who support Democrats do so because they have coherent policy goals in mind
Name one. The biggest one I've seen is that some of their richest have to pay more taxes while poorer folks do not.
We're just trying to become at least as civilized a country as every other decent place to live on earth. That means more public services than we have and a much more progressive tax system, necessarily, and I'm sorry about that. Meanwhile Republicans are running around screeching incoherently about imaginary brown hordes and simply being opposed to everything sane people want.
We're just trying to become at least as civilized a country as every other decent place
You're doing a wonderful job.
We're just trying to become at least as civilized a country as every other decent place to live on earth. That means more public services than we have and a much more progressive tax system, necessarily
And more violent refugee child rapists.
So, the only policy goal listed is higher taxes.
National healthcare, modernize infrastructure, a Manhattan Project-type effort to end reliance on fossil fuels, a vast overhaul of the criminal justice system. Those are some of my top priorities.
But we can't have any of that because taxes on billionaires are theft.
Tony, this is for you.
Today, Tony learns that a "wish list" is not "policy goals".
Hey I'm like the only one here who's not a utopian.
Did you read your list to Santa?
coherent policy goals
Right now, the only nice thing I can see coming from a 2020 Democrat election is that there will probably be less vandalism, arson, assaults, and rioting.
Ah, Black Lives Matter.
As Chris Morton wrote,
Anti-gun cultists stink of White supremacism.
They simultaneously proclaim that cops are violent, racist sociopaths while SIMULTANEOUSLY demanding that ONLY cops have guns.
Today's anti-gun cultists are the inheritors of the "White citizens councils".
This all or nothing polarizing of issues has been a horrible issue here in the States for decades. Life is more complicated that catch phrases and slogans along with click Bait article titles. All political parties and all media outlets exhibit this type of behavior and it's disturbing. Most Americans are a lot more intelligent than what can be described in a catchphrase
Most Americans are a lot more intelligent than what can be described in a catchphrase
By most Americans, you don't mean to include politicians and their fans?
Bill S., that's what you get when you withdraw national discourse from legacy media, which had a more comity-compatible business model. Used to be, the media business strategy was to use editorial acumen to build as broad an audience as possible, and then sell access to that audience to as broad an advertiser base as possible. That was inherently non-divisive. That happened because in legacy-land, the only way to measure what a publisher could deliver to advertisers was to audit its audience?to see who and how many were there?which third-party accounting firms did regularly.
Now, with the magic of the internet, you can sell stories?individually, one at a time?to both targeted audiences and targeted advertisers. That's the click-bait model, and it's inherently divisive. It has been made worse by foolishness in Congress, which essentially suspended libel law with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That affected much more than libel, because it relieved publishers of responsibility to read what their contributors submit before publishing it?which basically withdrew the application of human judgment from publishing. Enjoy.
I wonder when was the last time Tony looked at the title of this thread?
Vilifying Gun Owners Doesn't Lead to a Better Society
It does, however, lead gun-owners to buy more guns and ammo, and it makes some people who were indifferent to guns become gun-owners.
common sense solutions
I grow weary of this language manipulation of describing everything you want as "common sense" and everything someone else wants as "extreme". But anyway, firearms are mechanically simple devices and there is not one law, constitutional or otherwise that is going to prevent a bad person from doing bad things to other people.
On the one hand, they want to appeal to common sense. On the other hand, they despise the common people.
It's the grand delusion of progressives always that they imagine they represent the very people they despise.
The First Rule of Progressive Club; We represent the common people.
The Second Rule of Progressive Club: If the common people reject us, see The First Rule of Progressive Club.
The progressives genuinely believe both that they represent average, blue collar, working Americans and that average, blue collar, working Americans are deplorable–at the same time.
Nor do they actually enforce the "common sense" laws they have in the first place.
They just want MORE laws to ignore and inconvenience citizens.
How many people have been charged for making a straw man purchase? Because lots have been caught doing so. Virtually none are punished.
Maybe someone can explain why liberals are so eager to hand over all the guns to Trump, a man they believe is a fascist dictator more dangerous than Hitler.
Because they don't believe it, it's just rhetoric.
I believe Mr. Tuccille is relying on libertarian principle — rather than engaging in right-wing partisanship — when I observe his similar argument against anti-abortion advocates who employ scorched earth, authoritarian tactics (government micromanagement of clinics; defunding of abortion providers, or entities related to abortion providers; government funding of misleading anti-abortion and anti-contraception projects) to attempt to impose their superstition-laced preferences on our society.
Nothing about the government giving hundreds of millions a year to the largest abortion provider we have?
Don't answer. I'm not going to read your response.
Evidently the Kirkland-bot has exhausted its reserves of sanctimonious assholery and is now reduced to dreary whataboutism.
This with-us-or-against-us absolutism has almost entirely been a tool of the progressive left.
This could begin to resemble a sensible argument in a world without right-wing, authoritarian, nonsense-infused, anti-abortion zealotry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlI41B0Dwsw
Free market companies are allowed to take actions that improve their profits. If Dick's Sporting Goods doesn't want to sell AR15s any more because it's bad publicity to do so (for more customers than the AR15 enthusiasts) they have a right to drop that product. People can buy it somewhere else. Corporations have a right to decide what they offer to sell based on sales or even the politics of their boards of directors.
VIsa could also drop the "planned parenthood VISA" offering if one existed (it doesn't).
Haha, charade you are
As a non-party affiliated libertarian, these idiots keep making a more and more compelling case to vote team red in Nov. and 2020.
jfxgillis
Sure it does.
MaleMatters
Totalitarian gun-advocates = liberals.
Liberals = Democrats.
Democrats = this:
"Views Of Democratic Party Drop To Lowest Point Since 1992" https://hotair.com/
archives/2017/11/07/
poll-views-democratic-party-drop
-lowest-point-since-1992/
And this as of February 14, '18:
"Republicans have erased the Democratic advantage on the generic congressional ballot in a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll that, for the first time since April, also shows President Donald Trump's approval rating equaling the percentage of voters who disapprove of his job performance." February 14, 2018
https://www.politico.com/
story/2018/02/14/trump-polling-
democrats-republicans-407315
"The whole Democratic Party is now a smoking pile of rubble: In state government things are worse, if anything. The GOP now controls a historical record number of governors' mansions, including a majority of New England governorships. Tuesday's election swapped around a few state legislative houses but left Democrats controlling a distinct minority. The same story applies further down ballot, where most elected attorneys general, insurance commissioners, secretaries of state, and so forth are Republicans." http://www.vox.com/
policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13576488/
democratic-party-smoking-pile-rubble
The totalitarian gun-advocates, liberals, and Democrats should heed Humphrey Bogart's warning in "The African Queen":
"Things are never so bad they can't be made worse."
gr-grandma
I'm sorry, I just don't get it. I have never heard any of my "left-leaning" friends call for banning guns. I have not found it touted in any of the "left-leaning" media I go to, any more than I have in this publication. I would hope that they and I would agree that the types of guns that can mow down classrooms of children should be banned. I am a very old lady who grew up in a home where a gun was not allowed, I knew only two people who owned one. In later years I have lived in three different neighborhoods where a gun murder took place – two husbands killing their wives and a couple of kids breaking into a home, surprising two old people in bed, and shooting them dead. It is the obsession with guns, the changed culture around it, the political power of the NRA with its winner takes all approach, its egging ownership on, the loud hype, that frightens me. The noisy activists do not speak for the rest of us to the left, which is most of us. I hope that the noisy gun ownership protagonists do not speak for all the "right-leaning"members of our society. Maybe if all the loud mouths would just close them for a bit, the rest of us could find a common ground.
Then you're deaf and there's no common ground to be had.
I'm not relinquishing any of my Second Amendment rights and I'm keeping my AR-15.
I have not found it touted in any of the "left-leaning" media I go to, any more than I have in this publication.
The 44th President of the United States often spoke favorably about Australia's gun laws — a fairly comprehensive gun ban — and suggested them as a model for the United States. His name was Barack Obama. Maybe you've heard of him.
The New York Times editorial board called for the repeal of the Second Amendment, the only purpose of which would be to ban guns.
Those are two super-noteworthy examples. There are countless others. If you're not hearing left-leaning media calling for banning guns, you're not paying attention.
I would hope that they and I would agree that the types of guns that can mow down classrooms of children should be banned.
So you don't know anybody who's for banning guns, but you want to ban guns? By the way, approximately every gun made since the 1860s is capable of mowing down classrooms of children.
the NRA with its winner takes all approach
The same NRA that compromised on bump stocks and got the NICS provision added to the Brady Bill? That NRA?
I say this with no disrespect intended: the problem with people like you is that you are comprehensively ignorant, not just about firearms, but about the history of this debate. You literally do not know what you are talking about, and you want people like me to take you seriously.
The anti-gun campaign rests upon a foundation of dishonesty and invincible ignorance.
"A majority (56% strongly and somewhat support combined) of voters want to support their constitutional right to bear arms when they hear Hollywood actors and actresses speak out about gun control"
And when Hollywood actors "shut up and sing" they don't want to support their constitutional right to bear arms? If people are going to have such a problem just because somebody exercises their first amendment rights that's sad. The question doesn't specify which position these hypothetical Hollywood actors are taking when they speak out about gun control.
If only this were J.D. If only……………….
Here on the left coast, it's the exact opposite. My own stepdaughter started spouting the leftist news propoganda about how easy it is to obtain and "assault rifle" and how someone on Youtube had posted a video showing them walking into a store and buying one. How there is not need for anyone to have such a weapon and that I certainly couldn't hunt with one. That we are the only country that allows private fireamrm ownership and they never have these mass shootings in countries that ban guns.
All the normal, oft repeated mantra of the anti-gun crowd. Only, she was almost in tears when she realized that I didn't share that view. And, when I reminded her that I have more than four guns in the house, she damn near threatened me with not allowing my four year old granddaughter to come to the house.
I damn near threw her out of my house for the tirade. There is no discussion when insanity sets in and the person is so convinced by their own fear that they can't possibly be wrong.
Even when I pointed out that the whole shoot up a school thing was just the latest manifestation of mental health issues expressing misanthropy and that the news media taking it up like this only encouraged others, my own wife berated me saying that I was wrong, that this never used to happen.
Now mind you, neither my wife nor my step daughter know anything about guns….other then what they see on T.V. They've never fired or handled one. They know I used to hunt quite a bit. But, the step daughter is adamantly anti-gun because the left tells her to be. She is scared to death that her daughter might get mowed down by a lunatic "gun nut" when she starts school and that the only way to prevent this is to follow England and Australia into the nirvana they've become with full scale gun bans.
Like I said, they've won. I have no doubt that before I am gone from this planet, the authorities will be coming to take my guns "for my own good" of course. And no one will do anything but cheer.
People are that convinced by the mass shootings broadcasts of the last few years that taking guns from citizens is the only way to stop the madness.
What they hell will they do when the empowered politicians follow the gun ban in time with pogroms, mass incarceration and marshal law? The "believers" are convinced this could never happen here. They wouldn't let it. Despite having no way to defend against it.
Suppose no guns had been available to the recent mass-killer and to all the other mass-killers before him. Do gun-control advocates think none of these killers would have committed mass murders?
"Gun Control and Mass Killers"
https://relevantmatters.wordpress.com/
2016/06/30/rush-draft-why-gun-control-
fails-against-mass-killers/
Okay – let's play out your scenario. Person A has a deep-seated need to kill a large number of people. Person A cannot access a firearm capable of this insanity. What does Person A do to commit a "mass murder"?
Clearly, hammers, screwdrivers, and cars are not efficient alternatives. Bomb? Maybe. But that implies a level of sophistication that at least killers like Cruz and Rooff did not exhibit.
March.11.2018 at 1:15 pm
What does Person A do to commit a "mass murder"?
Buy them on the black market, drive a truck through a crowd, or plant grenades.
The NRA has spent years convincing its members that their way of life is under threat from coastal elites who want to take away their cherished freedom to tote 30-round magazines,"
quote from post above.
NRA have not tried to convince MEMBERS of anything, NRA hear what MEMBERS WANT, and work toward that. Don't forget, NRA are only about six million strong, some fifteen percent of all gun owners in the US. Further, there are at least half a dozen nationwide pro-rights groups, many of them far stronger and more active in some areas than NRA. Most states, even New Jersey, Maryland, California, and Illinois, have their own statewide gun rights organisations, fighting against the constant stream of infringements constantly flowing from the Marble Zoos running each state. SOMEONE is wildly wide of the mark.
Mr Putin is angry bot:Michael Hihn, has not returned to be reprogramed for serious bug issues.
bot:Michael Hihn, you were programmed to 'troll librarian web sites,' not libertarian web sites.
C>
bot:Michael Hihn, return
tommhan
They just won't really work on the real problem, mental problems.
The left wants to talk about "root causes" except when their polices are the root cause. Track the number of mass murders from 1900 to present day and the number remained fairly constant ? until they skyrocketed during the 1960s – when the U.S started de-institutionalizing the mentally ill and passing laws that made it almost impossible to confine mentally ill persons against their will. As a direct result, mentally ill people go without treatment. The Left would rather accept a few mass shootings and blame the NRA than admit that de-institutionalizing the mentally ill was a really bad idea.
On what do you base your conclusion, "The Left would rather accept a few …" and doesn't this contradict the tone of the article calling for de-vilifying all sides of the gun safety issue?
The de-institutionalization of the mentally ill started with Ronald Reagan. Look at the timeline. I agree it went too far but the state hospitals were frequently horrible, horrible hellpits at the time.
Explain how Reagan de-institutionalized the mentally ill.
the state hospitals were frequently horrible, horrible hellpits at the time.
It is time to bring those hellpits back.
I'm genuinely curious.
Currently, you can't buy ammunition that fits into a pistol (including .22 which is really annoying) if you're under 21. There are any number of age-base restrictions already in practice and have been in place for years.
Why is it anathema to raise the age of purchase for rapid-rate-of-fire, high capacity longarms (or however you want to define guns like the AR-15 and Bushmaster) from 18 to 21?
All this recent push will do is piss off a lot of gun owners and hurt the bottom line of businesses who choose to be arrogant. You are in business to make money and deliver a product, not impose your political beliefs on everyone. The level of arrogance displayed by celebrities and now CEOs is astounding. They think because they have money or fame suddenly they have the authority to tell the rest of us how to live and what we should think.
Rufus The Monocled
Once great article by Mr. Tuccille.
The other thing that should be kept in mind is, there's potential for the elites (CEOs, celebrities, politicians etc.) to take away guns from the people but permit themselves to own them.
Think Obamacare exemptions.
I'm just an observer on this issue but the United States are facing a real test here. Stand firm. Protect the 2A.
Don't let the bastards bully you.
I think it's great that these comments provide a place for socially inept, disaffected, backward, right-wing gun nuts — who spend their lives at the fringe of American society, often in the can't-keep-up, depleted backwaters — to congregate, express themselves, forget that their preferences stand little to no chance of surviving American progress, and feel "normal" for at least a moment.
100 million Americans own guns.
Fringe. Right.
Do you have any thing of relevance say or an argument to present instead of the usual, stale, smug, left-wing drivel?
Conservatism has become the new counter-culture. Thank the media and
this current crop of Leftist maniacs. All the public shaming in the world means
squat once in the election booth. It will, in fact, spurn the counter-culture to
mobilize into action.
1980-f
From the point of view of someone living in the rest of the world, that is the 95% of the world's population that doesn't love guns like Americans do, I can see no substantial disadvantage to fewer guns. The only people who would come off worse would be the people who want to kill other people. No-one outside the military and a small number of highly-trained police officers needs a gun.
That's called a police state. Save your progressive feudalism for a country that hasn't had over 400 years of private firearm ownership.
nrob
March.14.2018 at 8:14 am
You could use that circular logic to ban anything, all the time.
The new Democrats are totalitarian, we get it.