Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Kurt on Gun-control's bad faith...

Gun Rights Advocates Have A Devastating New Argument Against Gun Control. Here It Is.

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American gun owners are beginning to respond with a fresh, powerful argument when facing anti-gun liberals. Here it is, in its entirety. Ready?
“Screw you.” That’s it. Except the first word isn’t “Screw.”
It’s not exactly a traditional argument, but it’s certainly appropriate here. The fact is that there is no point in arguing with liberal gun-control advocates because their argument is never in good faith. They slander gun owners as murderers. They lie about their ultimate aim, which is to ban and confiscate all privately owned weapons. And they adopt a pose of reasonability, yet their position is not susceptible to change because of evidence, facts or law. None of those matter – they already have their conclusion. This has to do with power – their power.
You can’t argue with someone who is lying about his position or whose position is not based upon reason. You can talk all day about how crime has diminished where concealed carry is allowed, while it flourishes in Democrat blue cities where gun control is tightest. You can point to statistics showing that law-abiding citizens who carry legally are exponentially less likely to commit gun crimes than other people. You can cite examples of armed citizens protecting themselves and their communities with guns. You can offer government statistics showing how the typical American is at many times greater risk of death from an automobile crash, a fall, or poisoning than from murder by gun.
But none of that matters, because this debate is not about facts. It’s about power. The liberal anti-gun narrative is not aimed at creating the best public policy but at disarming citizens the liberal elite looks down upon – and for whom weapons represent their last-ditch ability to respond to liberal overreach.
Put simply, liberal elitists don’t like the fact that, at the end of the day, an armed citizenry can tell them, “No.”
So they argue in bad faith, shamelessly lying, libeling their opponents, and hiding their real endgame. Sure, sometimes the mask slips and a liberal politician like Mike Bloomberg or Diane Feinstein reveals their true agenda, but mostly they stay on-message.
For example, Barack Obama, who always tries to reassure us bitter clingers that he doesn’t want to take our guns, speaks longingly about the Australian plan – which was confiscation of most viable defensive weapons from the civilian population.
Obama is lying – about gay marriage, about your doctor – and he is likewise lying about guns. The minute he could disarm every American civilian he would, something particularly alarming in light of his pal Bill Ayers’ infamous observation that ‘fundamentally transforming’ America would require killing at least 25 million citizens.
No wonder free Americans are done pretending the gun argument is a rational debate and are responding with an extended middle finger – and the challenge to come and take their arms. The fact remains that any outright attempt to take the arms from tens of millions of American gun owners would almost certainly result in a second Civil War. And we all know how the first Civil War went for the Democrats.
So, through a campaign of shaming, dissembling, and outright slander, liberals are trying to talk Americans into giving up their weapons voluntarily. There’s always another “common sense” restriction to enact, spurred on by a tragedy that the last “common sense” restriction didn’t prevent and that the proposed new “common sense” restriction would not have prevented. They want to do it in baby steps, and with our cooperation, since they cannot do it by force.
There are a few people arguing in good faith, but it’s too late. Liberal writer Kurt Eichenwald recently wrote a “compromise” proposal to settle the gun issue that was notable because he actually analyzed gun freedom arguments and agreed with some of them. He cited the silliness of the “assault weapons” and “cop killer” bullet lies. While he still rejects 30 round capacity magazines, he began with opposition to silencers and then, after hearing facts and evidence from knowledgeable gun owners, changed his position. That’s good faith, the threshold requirement for a real debate, but Eichenwald mistakenly assumes this is a debate based upon reason between good faith opponents. It’s not. It’s based upon the desire of liberals for total supremacy.
So until the gun control argument becomes a real argument instead of a transparent power grab, there’s only one appropriate response to liberal gun banners. And it’s similar to “Screw you.”

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Planned Parenthood Video Shocks the moral conscience of the Nation

Write your Rep's. Here is what I wrote: 

A recent video has emerged of Planned Parenthood medical director Deborah Nucatola at a lunch with members of a group posing as representatives of a biotech firm. 

This video suggests, minimally, a disturbing and deeply troubling lapse in the bioethics of so-called "tissue harvesting" by the Planned Parenthood (plannedparenthood.org) organization. The callousness of Ms. Nucatola's attitude and language in said video reveals a grotesque and troubling portrait not only of Ms. Nucatola as an individual, but also casts aspersion upon the entire Planned Parenthood apparatus. 

An official inquiry should be made into whether or not Planned Parenthood is conducting its operations in a manner that is contrary to the laws of the United States. If Planned Parenthood as an organization is guilty of criminal activity they should be sanctioned, fined, or disbanded and the guilty parties tried in a court of law. 

Sincerely,

Saturday, July 4, 2015

When you are wrong will you admit you are wrong?

Paul Marks
When you have finally turned the United States into Mexico - with lots of "Social Justice" and "gun control" and the murder rate vastly increases (check towns on the Mexican-Texas border - Hispanic on both sides, but with rather different murder rates), will you admit that you were wrong?
Of course you will not admit that you were wrong - you will just go on to some other "liberal" crusade.
Perhaps "assisting" people to die ("their lives were not worth living", "they wanted to die really - the screaming and struggling was just a reflex").
This is why people do not trust "liberals" (whether they are Democrats or RINOs) - because your "liberalism" is actually a form of religion.
You sneer at people who believe in God - but you have a God of your own, the government. As long as it is controlled by "Progressive" "Enlightened" people who have been to the correct universities - people like you.
You believe that government can (by magic spells) prevent bad people from having firearms, whereas in fact "gun control" just keeps honest people from having fire arms, leaving a monopoly of firearms in the hands of criminals (and the "official bandits" - government itself).
But argument does not interest you, and examples (such as Mexico - or Chicago) do not interest you either. Because you have your religious faith - your faith in "Progressive" government.

Economists Anti-gun talking points shot down...

ThePessimst
It's too bad that the Economist quotes so many flawed talking points in this article. The U.S. has a high rate of gun-related [insert event here]. Yes, of course we do, because we have more guns. This is like saying that Saudi Arabia has a low DUI occurrence because they don't drink alcohol. Yet we don't see many articles in Economist calling for the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S., do we?
To put some of the anti-gun talking points in context, let's consider VT. This state has the most permissive gun laws in the U.S. They also have the lowest gun homicide rate in the U.S. Compare this troubling data point with cities such as Washington D.C. and Chicago, with the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S. and also the highest gun homicide rates in the U.S. These observations shoot big holes in that talking point (pun intended). (source: FBI stats)
Despite several recent record-breaking years in gun sales, the gun homicide rate in the U.S. is down 49% since 1993 (source: Pew Research). Those talking points aren't sounding so good anymore, are they?
Most gun homicides are concentrated among black males and urban populations in the U.S. where, in general, gun ownership rates are lower than rural areas with less diversity. Uncomfortable as these trends are, they are real and backed up by decades of FBI statistics, not to mention real life experiences by people like me who live in an American city. The message here is that gun violence is not a product of permissive gun ownership laws. They are a product of urban living factors and such trends as children born into poor, broken families with no positive adult role models. If you want to turn the tide on this, we need more mentors and more programs that encourage responsible child-rearing and lead to stable, two-parent families where education is emphasized to children as they grow up.
Gun homicide and suicide rates are higher in the U.S. than most of Europe? Really? Well, please tell me about the part of Europe that Economist excluded in their analysis? Right there you have an admission by Economist that they cherry-picked the data to get the result they wanted. Anyone trained in econometrics and quantitative methods will be disgusted before they get 3 paragraphs into this article. Distributing such faulty analysis and misleading information is not helpful to anyone and shows the naivety and ignorance of the author.
If any of the anti-gun talking points were true, the life span of a gun owner in the U.S. would be very short. Yet one can visit a gun range and find hundreds of responsible gun owners, none of which know anyone personally who was the victim of gun violence. That's because of the non-uniformity of gun violence I described above. If you want to solve a problem, you need to get to the root cause, and none of the ideas peddled by Economist or the anti-gun movement in general come even close.