Courtesy of one of my Facebook friends:
All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon’s time, that there can be no real knowledge but which is based on observed facts.
– Auguste Comte
It really is as simple as that – unless quantifiable and repeatable facts substantiate your claims, we are talking about “faith”, not “knowledge”, and those are entirely different concepts. I have no real problems with faith, especially not with being a Christian like I am, but I would never claim to know that God exists – I believe he does, but those are not interchangeable words or ideas, despite the anti-rights cultists’ attempts at conflating them.
And, yes, we might as well stop mincing words – when it comes to “gun control”, we are talking about a cult, in the most common definition of that word – a group of like-minded extremists united under charismatic leaders who all share similar unconventional beliefs. Extremists? Yes – punishing the law-abiding for the actions of criminals, denying individual rights to adult human beings, desperately wanting to follow in the path of failed predecessors, and seeking to “re-educate” those who disagree are all extreme positions. Charismatic? Yes – just look at any press release from Paul Helmke or Peter Hamm or any of the rest of the glitterati of the “gun control” movement; they would not know facts if they were drowning in them, but they surely do know how to grab people’s attentions and emotions. Unconventional? Yes – the belief in deodands, the inherent totemistic qualities of “gun control”, the myth of the “Man Killer”, and the belief that criminals will obey Just One More Law are all far outside the realm of conventional thinking. And beliefs? Yes – as we have discussed time and time again, the overwhelming majority of “gun control” positions are not based in anything even approximating facts or reality, leaving only “faith”.
Which brings us back, full-circle, to the above point – without facts, you cannot know anything. Without facts, you do not know anything. You may believe things, you my have faith in something, but unless you can point to specific, concrete facts, that is not knowledge – that is religion.
Or, as I recently said to an increasingly boring cultist,
If there is no proof, it is not “obvious”.
Alternatively, if it is so very “obvious”, present the proof.
Anti-rights nuts can prattle on and on about “common sense” and “obvious” things and whatever the hell else they want, but until they have verifiable facts to substantiate their opinions, it is all so much pissing in the wind. Remember that.
Like I pointed out over at Joe’s, a lot of things that are “obvious” turn out to be wrong once you look at the evidence. I mean, who would think, just looking at the “obvious”, that glass is a liquid, or that the earth is round? Or that the earth’s “gravity” is not constant?
Evidence and data are the only ways to be sure the “obvious” is actually true. Otherwise, as you said, it’s just faith.
Unfortunately, people can get really suckered in by faith, especially when they agree that the item in question is obvious – just remember how the world treated those who propoesd that it was not flat, or not the center of the universe. I mean, hey, you look up at the sky, and it looks like it is revolving around us!
Only not so much.
Same thing applies here – it makes sense that more guns create more crime… as long as you do not pay attention to the facts. Thankfully, those facts are on our side, but damned if people do not try their hardest to ignore them.
[...] – have sprung up to combat the lies, misinformation, and petty authoritarianism of the cultists. Worse still for those “gun control” advocates are the fence-sitters they have likewise [...]
[...] of the facts, or pictures documenting them, will convince or even sway the hardcore anti-rights cultists out there, but hopefully they will be useful for reaching the fence-sitters you know. Put them to [...]
[...] up-front about my motivations for posting this poll – as VI said, I am curious to see if the anti-rights cultists can “muster a grassroots movement to show their numbers,” – and I will not claim [...]
[...] nor was “deception used to recruit them” – links were posted indicating that an anti-rights cultist was running a poll and asking for votes, which is an accurate, honest description of the [...]
[...] Anti-rights cultists have a long-standing history of focusing their efforts exclusively on firearm-related crimes, often to the detriment of the societies they are working in – one need only consider the history of once-Great Britain, and its current status as “most violent nation in Europe” to see how that particular train of thought ends. However, I have had the suspicion, especially of late, that those same “gun control” advocates would consider a decrease in firearm-related crime, but an overall increase in total violent crime, to be a “success”, even if the increase in violent crime was sufficiently large to overwhelm any corresponding decrease. [...]
[...] somewhere over two years now, anti-rights cultists have been trying to club us over the head with the myth that “90% of the firearms recovered [...]
[...] of the more-amusing talking points that is repeated ad nauseum by anti-rights cultists is that the “gun culture” is slowly dying, with the associated hand-waving and [...]
[...] lot of anti-rights cultists seem to extract no end of entertainment blathering on about the myth of how “guns are [...]
[...] discharge goes from “zero” to “something greater than zero”. Why do anti-rights cultists want to force law abiding citizens to decrease their personal safety by requiring them to leave [...]
[...] society should do leave a comment | 27Mar11 1117 | written by Linoge Have you ever noticed how anti-rights cultists have an amazing tendency to make unilateral, arbitrary proclamations, and immediately treat them as [...]
[...] the visitor wandered on to my hypothesis as to why Goddard is such a hot commodity amongst the anti-rights cultists these days, and then on to Kurt Huffman’s quote on the nature of “experts” and [...]
[...] on look whose name is in the newslook whose name is in the news | walls of the city on quote of the daylook whose name is in the news | walls of the city on did colin goddard really serve?Linoge on [...]
[...] course, on the “entertaining” side of the spectrum, one has to wonder what the average anti-rights cultist‘s reaction will be to this news… On the one hand, they cannot libellously discredit the [...]
[...] failed. Waiting periods failed. The list just goes on and on and on… and yet you can count on anti-rights cultists exploiting this shooting spree as yet another reason to enact in America all those laws that failed [...]
[...] of magazines at all, having effectively no bearing on the lethality of a murderer. Why are the anti-rights cultists so eagerly supporting legislation that did not “work” before and will not [...]
[...] the darndest things (18)rights are called rights for a reason (18)In Honor of Carolyn McCarthy (18)quote of the day (17)write what you know (17)review posts endeavor stitchworks cobra gun belt, in [...]
[...] bad mathLaughingdog on you get taxed for bad mathkeep it classy, @csgv | walls of the city on quote of the dayalcade on *stabs css*popular postsin the interests of honesty (41)dungeons and midbulk transports [...]
[...] postsin the interests of honesty (41)dungeons and midbulk transports (28)sad panda alert (20)quote of the day (19)pretty shiny things (19)dear eric heyl (19)rights are called rights for a reason (18)In Honor of [...]
[...] commentsstereotypes are worth what you pay for them | walls of the city on quote of the dayPyrotek85 on stereotypes are worth what you pay for themLinoge on rail-mounted sparrowsLinoge on [...]
[...] on fast fivepopular postsin the interests of honesty (41)dungeons and midbulk transports (28)quote of the day (21)sad panda alert (20)… but liars figure (20)pretty shiny things (19)dear eric heyl (19)rights [...]