Lots of people are making fun of Michael Gerson’s latest column, which exposes President Obama’s sinister, underhanded tactic of being reasonable. Gerson actually wrote this —
Given this weak Republican position, Obama must be tempted by a shiny political object: the destruction of the congressional GOP. He knows that Republicans are forced by the momentum of their ideology to take positions on spending that he can easily demagogue. He is in a good position to humiliate them again — to expose their internal divisions and unpopular policy views. It may even be a chance to discredit and then overturn the House Republican majority, finally reversing his own humiliation in the 2010 midterms.
The whole column is pretty awesome. Kevin Drum writes that “It might set a new mainstream media record for compressing the largest number of conservative pathologies into the smallest possible space.”
Booman says “‘The momentum of their ideology’ will now join “catapulting the propaganda” in the pantheon of awesomely-coined terms Republicans use to explain their own evil/insanity.” For some reason, thinking of Republicans being forced to do crazy things by the momentum of their own ideology reminds me of this …
See also Jonathan Chait.
Meanwhile, the NRA continues to play the Mad Dog role and is accusing the President of being a hypocritical elitist because his children get armed guard protection and other people’s children don’t. Seriously.
If the NRA were listening to me, I would argue that keeping the President’s family safe is not just a courtesy but a matter of national security. It removes the temptation to negotiate with hostage takers, for example. And I would also explain that just because the President is unlikely to promote the guards-in-schools idea, I don’t see him getting in the way of local school districts hiring armed security guards if they want to. Even if you think armed security guards in schools is a good idea, why does anyone need a federal law about it?
I’ve looked at the ad, and I don’t see it appealing to anyone who isn’t already a foaming-at-the-mouth Obama hater. The NRA may think it has a winner because polls show fairly strong support for putting armed guards in schools. However, the same polls show even stronger support for tougher gun control laws
” The presence of guns does not deter violence; it escalates violence. There is all kinds of data showing that higher rates of gun ownership correlate to higher rates of gun violence.”
Yes, higher rates of GUN violence, but lower rates of OVERALL violence.
And most of the time, as you’ve pointed out earlier, a CCW doesn’t even have to fire to stop a killer, as it happened it the last Oregon shooting. As soon as the murderous thug saw a citizen flashing his concealed weapon, he killed himself, stopping his carnage at three victims.
The citizen didn’t have to fire (which was good, since he didn’t have a clean shot) .
So often, the mere act of revealing a concealed gun deter a rape, a robbery, and so on and so forth. And because nothing happened, nothing is registered.
That’s only in the fevered dreams of gun nuts. If you check out violent crime statistics by city in the U.S., you’d find that rates of rape, for example, are much lower in gun-controlled New York City (13.3 per 100,000) than, say, pistol-packin’ Dallas (35 per 100,000). New York City has lower rates of burglary and car theft than nearly every other city in the country. So no, allowing citizens to carry firearms everywhere they go does not lower overall rates of crime and violence.
According to the news story I linked to, the armed citizen realized he couldn’t get a shot and then left, and hid in a store, and sometime after that the shooter killed himself. Not “as soon as.” It’s likely everyone had fled by then and he was the last person left to shoot. The fact that you ASSUME the mere sight of another gun made him give up tells me you are one more gun loon who doesn’t have his head screwed on straight.
If it’s not registered, how do you know it happened?
I just want to say if you are a left handed lesbian from Saskatoon..this is information that would matter to me…I have questions. (What ?Like a left handed lesbian couldn’t have turned this conversation around).
What bothers me most about trying to speak to a gun person is that they try to act like law abiding responsible sane people, but their ideas about guns and how they will save the world with them one bullet at a time is batshit insane. And what they miss in the “good guy , bad guy ” logic is that there is no bad guy anymore, just two people shooting instead of one. Twice the bullets for the rest of us innocent people to dodge.
The argument that a band of gun toters is going to free us from a tyranny proves my point..how unbalanced do you have to be to believe this? Believing in santa seems more rational.
The we have the “Lady , you’ll thank me ” crowd. While I am busy crying about my stolen purse some brave patriot will open fire in a crowd for me, shooting only the moving target and getting my purse back- and in my would be hero’s story , he did all this without ever spilling a drop of his beer. Crime: purse theft..misdemeanor. Tried , convicted and sentenced to death on the spot. The hero’s crimes? Discharging a weapon within city limits, child endangerment, endangering the welfare of the public and MURDER…seeing these crimes in progress can another gun nut pull a gun and kill him?
And murder isn’t bad if you do it in self defense? Really? Now see i did not see that exception in the fine print behind the commandment “THOU SHALL NOT KILL”. And ask those two young boys killed in fla about how that whole “self defense” thing works for them..oh thats right, you can’t because they are DEAD.
I have come to the conclusion that you cannot fix stupid, you can only hope it is shot with it’s own gun.
The guns were acquired lawfully by their owners, but the shooters stole the guns from them owners — which means they, the shooters, acquired legally purchased guns unlawfully.
Major difference.
In most cases in the article I linked, the guns were purchased lawfully by the shooter (the Aurora shooter, for example). In the Newtown case, one more time, the shooter had access to guns only because his mother had them in their house, not because he was a “criminal.” By all accounts he was barely functional, so it’s highly unlikely he could have have acquired guns on a criminal black market. Whether he “stole” them or “borrowed” them from his mother is a meaningless technicality.
BIG difference. The point is that squeaking about “criminals” obscures the reality of what actually happened. The only way to make it harder for unstable people to get military weapons is to make it harder for everyone to get military weapons. IMO people who legally own guns but who keep them in a place where children or mentally unstable people can get hold of them OUGHT to be criminally liable for whatever happens.
There’s a huge difference, both morally and legally, between killing and murdering.
Murder is always evil, whereas killing can be right, good.
In Buddhism and many other world religions, killing is sometimes “blameless,” meaning it couldn’t have been helped or had to be done to save others, but it is never “good.”
One last, to @justme,
the first commandments was “thou shall not murder “, not “kill “.
Actually, according to this Hebrew lessons page, the literal translation of the Hebrew 10 commandments is “kill,” not “murder.” I don’t know if there is a distinction between “kill” and “murder” in ancient Hebrew.
“If it’s not registered, how do you know it happened?”
Because the voices from the fillings in his teeth tell him it did.
I think the solution to the gun problem, is to hand out free aluminum hats.
It’s starting to look that way. It does make one wonder what is missing in people’s psyches or souls that they fill with firearm worship.
Interesting bio, Katechon.
Here’s something to think about. Around 2 yrs ago, I was working with a young fellow in St.Petersburg, FL. He is about 32 yrs old, 6ft 4in tall, covered with tatoos, shaved head, bushy beard, and numerous piercings. He is not in a relationship and lives with mom and dad, and is an avid gun owner / has a carry permit.We were driving down the street, and noticed a young man wearing a “wife beater” shirt and droopy jeans walking behind a young woman with a child. He was screaming at the woman about something, and he was walking as if to catch up with them. As our car was approaching them, the young guy I was with got very frightened, and told me “those guys” usually have guns. (the guy in the “wife beater” shirt was white, BTW).I continued to approach, as I got closer, I held up my cell phone and told the “wife Beater” guy the cops have been called, and he’d best haul ass. He did.No armed intervention needed.
My work companion was really rattled because he was so afraid. Most people carry cell phones, many with cameras, and in Florida; there are cameras everywhere. I realize that won’t stop every wacko from doing something crazy, but I’m sure it helps a bit.
Katechon has a point of view that is very common here in Florida, especially in the suburbs, and among the 55+ white guys, and among most of the men I work with.I happen to strongly disagree with his worldview, even though I’m sure that had I bought a bunch of guns, ammo, amd gold several years ago, I’d be able to sell high now. That worldview just feeds the beast, quite literally.
As for banning his comments, that’s not my place to say, and I don’t mind an opposing point of view, so long as it doesn’t go way into crazy town like stating the Newtown shootings were done by “the government” to justify taking away our guns.
Jesus, folks, all that is on the line here is reasonable backround checks, giving up high capacity clips, and military style guns; none of this will impact our lives to any significant degree.
If folks think this is Tyranny, I guess they weren’t around in the 60’s and 70’s when the government was pulling kids off the street and sending them to ‘Nam.
maha,
Your’e starting to argue the finer points of the origins and meanings of ancient Hebrew words and texts with a troll who’s about as intelligent and receptive to your points, and to logic in general, as your average turnip.
Have some tea, and relax, or it’s going to be a long weekend arguing semantics with a troll who wants nothing more than to create some antics on a Liberal blog.
🙂
Sooner or later, the jerks always retreat into fantasyland. They can’t stand up to facts.
The language issue interests me because it’s something I run into a lot on the other website. People often don’t appreciate that ancient languages can defy literal translation into 21st-century languages, because the way people conceptualized everything was very different way back when, and English translations can never be 100 percent accurate. For example, there’s a word frequently used in the old Pali texts of Buddhism that is rendered into “detachment” in some translations and “equanimity” in other translations. That’s way different. (The word doesn’t exactly mean either one, but “equanimity” is closer, or as close as you can get to it in English.) So whenever I see someone making a point about the precise English word that God or Jesus used back then, they’re usually wrong.
Buying guns and ammo as a hedge against inflation?
Swami,
Yes, it’s a “tell” that our new found “friend” is a gun nut – though, not the only one.
You see, after that KenyanSocialistFascistCommunistAtheistMuslim Usurper tyranically takes away every ones guns, and finishes turning us into his idea of SocialistFascistCommunist Heaven, which will cause rampant inflation, and forces us to abide by Sharia Law, then guns and ammo can be traded on the black market for things like food and gas – or, they can be sold to richer patriots who’ll need them for the defense of their homes from the roving SocialistFascistCommunist gangs of Obama Youth, enforcing Obama’s Sharia Law!
I think I read that somewhere on the intertubes.
maha,
I know what you mean.
I’m lucky, in that I can read Russian novels and poetry in the native language, and hence, know how poor some supposedly even “good” translations can be. So, I can read Pushkin and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Akhmatova in the original.
I used to be able to handle some German, too, so I could read a lot of Schiller and Goethe and Mann – but with the aid of a dictionary.
I wish I could read in Spanish, so that I could read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and other great writers, in the original. And French, too, for obvious reasons. As well as other languages.
One of my saddest days ever, was quite a while back, when I realized that I’d never live long enough to read everything I’d like to read.
Sorry but the commandments I read said “Thou shall not kill” Murder never came up. You can sit and argue word meanings with me all day, but if you are a christian there is no need to bullshit me, you know what it means and if you try to parse word meanings with your creator on judgement day to justify one of the 10 things you were told not to do- I just wanna wish you good luck with that.
Killing can be right and/or good? Are you on crack? Suppose some nut bust in my front door right now and I capped them. That isn’t good and it wont ever be.That would be the worst day of any persons life.This is a difference I have noted between the gunnies and the rest of us. And frankly it is frightening.
One of my dear friends is a state police officer on the east coast. He came to visit me when I lived in Kansas City and my neighbor had a son who really wanted to meet a “real cop” , the kid was 9? My friend agreed to meet him and tell him what it was like to be a cop. So his mom and him came over and the kid had a million really good questions and he sat on the edge of his seat waiting for answers. Then came “the question”. My friend didn’t see it coming. He smiled widely, waiting on the next question. I could tell he was impressed by the questions he had asked and thought it was kinda cool- but then it came out” Did you ever get to kill anybody”?
In a second my friends face changed. The smile was gone, his eyes were cold and hard but you could feel a very serious sadness. He sat without a word for a minute, then he told the boy to pay very close attention. He said ” No grown up who has the job of protecting human lives EVER wants to discharge their weapon and to a good cop like me it means there was no other solution.” He told the boy that he had been a police officer for almost 30 years and had only discharged his weapon once. The boy asked ” Was he a bad guy?” My friend told him that he was infact a very very dangerous bad guy to which the kid said ” Then why are you so sad?” My friend looked him right in the eye and said ” Because my job is to protect everyone, even very very bad guys”
To most anyone who has had the misforturne of watching another person die,
killing becomes a very differnt thing from the fantasy most of these wanna be hero’s. And it isn’t good and I would bet it doesn’t feel all that heroic either. It is easy to imagine this faceless image of a “bad guy” and the ability to end the life, like it is easier to kill in war by imagining them as terrorists or insurgents than actual people .But when the chips fall I figure most folks who think they are “natural born killers” or “patriots” or whatever the hell they are calling themselves this week would a. end up being so afraid they would panic and shoot before the person got close enough to tell it was their neighbor coming to borrow a cup of sugar or b. panic when face to face with an actual mean mo fo and get shot with their own weapon.
People who actually should have weapons dread the thought of discharging them, they don’t have a million stories pre-conceived of how they will use their firearms to save an imaginary day.
justme,
I was living in the part of NC that was home of Fort Bragg, and the are had its share of white supremacists, and anti-government nuts who practice fighting tyranical Uncel Sam in the nearby woods.
And I was in the play, “The Laramie project there,” and one of the people helping us, was a younn guy who had recently gotten back from Iraq. And told me that someone had approached him about joining one of the anti-government groups. I asked him what happened, and he said, “I laughed at the guy. I asked him if he’s ever seen the damage artillery or an Apache helicopter could do? And told him, if they got too out of hand with their play-acting, if the government wanted to, the military could level their town, not leaving a single stick standing – and that’s before any ground troops came in. I told him he was an idiot.”
This kid had seen actual war up close – had participated in it. And he knew that these wanna-be-soldiers were fools.
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