The other argument Jones made was that the 2nd amendment was for protection against the government. Like the first argument, Morgan didn't deal with it at all. Even as Jones said, Morgan offered those little factoids that did not deal with the important point of what would prohibit or negate the most violent crimes.
I don't know why so many powerful Democrats and moderate Republicans are so set on taking away people's guns. They are willing to take this tragedy, play on people's emotions, in order to make their case. The facts don't bear them out, so they persuade people with half truths and stories out of their context.
I'm concerned about losing our right to bear arms, but I also thought that the Morgan way of arguing is so typical today, where the truth isn't what really matters.
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I've been busy, but I reread this and wanted to add another observation. I'm not sure if the media and the academic elite of the country actually do believe what they are saying about guns. What I think is that they do believe it, but it's based on a reprobate mind. And there are some, who don't believe what they are saying, but they are cowered by those with a reprobate mind. Here is a typical argument from a reprobate, as I have been hearing it.
2nd Amendment Guy: More guns result in less violent crime.
Reprobate Mind: What kind of guns were used in the killing of the innocent children in Connecticut?
2nd Amendment Guy: A semi-automatic bushmaster (etc. etc.), but it was an illegal act committed by self-deluded crazy, rebellious young man, who was into gratuitously violent video games. In other words, he liked to role play at blowing people away in his spare time.
Reprobrate Mind: (sarcastically) OoooKay. Right. So you think that these types of guns are needed for hunting?
2nd Amendment Guy: The point of the second amendment isn't hunting. The second amendment reads: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." But as I said, it isn't owning these types of guns that results in more violent crime. Gun control results in more violent crime. You can see that in the actual data, the actual statistics. Yes, overall gun crimes will decrease, but overall violence will increase. But even that misses the point of the right to bear arms. The actions of one crazy shouldn't take away the rights of law abiding citizens.
Reprobate Mind: Well, tell that to the parents whose children are dead up in Connecticut. I don't think you can really believe what you are saying, that you just want people like this to be able to freely have access to these types of guns to commit these types of horrendous acts.
2nd Amendment Guy: You haven't answered my point. Overall violence increases when there are less guns. It's easy to see why. Criminals can't be stopped, because people can't defend themselves against them. But even so, the second amendment is for protecting against the government itself, which is free to have as many and whatever kind of guns that it wants.
Reprobate Mind: What kind of gun was used in Aurora, Colorado to kill the people in the theater?
2nd Amendment Guy: A semi-automatic rifle.
Reprobate Mind: Exactly. If he didn't have that gun, he couldn't have killed so many people so quickly. More gun laws, outlawing semi-automatic assault weapons with high volume magazines would have saved those people's lives.
2nd Amendment Guy: If people in that theater had been carrying guns, they could have defended themselves, but it was a gun free zone for law abiding citizens. If he knew several others would be armed, he could have been deterred from doing what he did. There are already gun laws outlawing what he did.
Anyway, you get my drift. The reprobate mind doesn't make arguments. It just makes emotional appeals. It's essentially propaganda, which we saw in the last election is actually effective today in an age where the main audience is also reprobate in its mind.
7 comments:
The reprobate mind (RM) types will also state that the Newtown shooter used guns that were legally obtained. That is a lie. The moment he took them from his mother without her permission they were ilegally obtained. He did not have her permission, therefore he was outside of the law.
Bobby
Well I hope I don't qualify myself as an RM, but I think this might be one case where gun control could conceivably have prevented or mitigated the outcome. If his mother had not been allowed by law a semiautomatic rifle with large clip capacity where would he have gotten it? This was not a kid with ties to organized crime. He might have found it another way, he might not have. He might have settled on a weapon (pump shot gun-5 shots and more cumbersome to reload) that still would have resulted in deaths, but possibly fewer.
No, today's political zealots are not interested in truth and that is true for both sides, not just liberals. Open up Facebook and you see people whining about their payroll taxes going up and blaming Obama. Point out to them that it was Obama who got them temporarily lowered in the first place in 2009 and they will just ignore you.
Furthermore, lowering payroll taxes is a form of wealth redistribution because payroll taxes are the only taxes that half of the population pays at all. Lowering payroll taxes is a clever way to take more people off the tax rolls.
But when you point that out, you get ignored because those people just have to ignore truth that does not fit their ideology.
Hey David,
There is always some form of mitigation that can be done with gun laws, but often the effect is extremely small for a far reaching consequence for law abiding folks everywhere.
Take your suggestions. If you ban standard capacity magazines (30 rounds), then you've just forced the shooter to make 3-4 more reloads in an environment where no one can stop him. Have you actually achieved anything? Nope.
Again, if you ban the semi-auto rifle, then he simply could have used his pistols, which are actually more effective at the ranges he was shooting at (I'd rather be hit with a .223 than a 10mm at point blank). For your 9mm's you are usually looking at around 15-17 rounds per magazine, and under pressure you can reload in around 6 seconds. The 10mm probably would have around 10 shots, but again magazines are easy to come by.
So by instituting laws banning normal capacity magazines and semi-auto rifles that effects millions of people and will cost billions of dollars, you so far haven't done anything that I can see would actually save a life or really slow Lansa down.
You could spend more and ban handguns, but now pump shotguns are the best choice weapons. If you banned them too, that could potentially mitigate the amount of deaths. Now lever action shotguns are the worst, so if you banned them... etc etc etc.
At some stage of banning, you would get your mitigation of life loss in a situation like this. I don't think that cost is worth paying politically, economically, legally or in terms of "lives saved".
One more point to add to the above quickly.
You don't see any real reduction in Lansa's effectiveness in the "banning" scenarios above until you ban all semi-auto's and all handguns.
At that point, now you've made all your law abiding citizens hand in two primary self-defense weapons, you start to see people getting killed because they were unable to defend themselves. Every time a chap gets murdered who would have otherwise concealed carried, or been protected by an armed citizen, now you're spending innocent lives in addition to billions your country doesn't have.
David,
There was 100% gun control in force at the school. It is a federally mandated gun-free zone. Did that stop him? Bobby
Bobby,
That's completely different from actually making guns harder to acquire.
David
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