quote of the day – joan peterson

I have spoken previously concerning how Joan Peterson is the face of “gun control” (though Colin Goddard is desperately trying to supplant her), how the majority of Joan’s arguments are based on inherently flawed logical fallacies, and how some of her positions are borderline disgusting in their flagrant blood-dancing, so today’s revelation should not no surprise for anyone. Specifically, Joan Peterson has no problem libeling each and every American who is concerned about their individual rights:

HBO’s “Gun Fight” -good comparison of two sides of the gun issue. One wants to stop the shootings; the other wants to shoot the government.

The very core of “libel” is “defamation” – the false or unjust injury of the good reputation of another – and, for the life of me, I cannot find a single true statement in that entire tweet.

To begin with, I do not have HBO, but based on people who watched the “Gun Fight” “documentary”, it was far from a “good comparison”. From this CalGuns thread:

Clay32: I just watched it. It (gun fight on HBO) comes across as basically a Brady Campaign supplement. Very anti-gun IMHO. Lots of good FUD [Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt] slingin’ as well, if you like that kind of thing.

furyous68: There was a pretty decent size segment on the “gun-show loophole”. There was an “investigative” reporter (covertly taped the gun-shoe footage that the Brady’s were using) who feels it necessary to lay out his will & DPA [durable power of attorney] on his counter before going on his assignments. Apparently he’s sure a bunch of law abiding gun owners are going to shoot him on site.

Zak: The show was also busy trying to portray the National Rifle Association as some lunatic organization. One guy in the video (forgot his name, but he had long hair) was saying something along the lines of “These people are extremists.. if not radicals”. The same guy also reveals that he’s a racist by saying something like white males are mad that their population is diminishing and they want to fight back. There’s seriously so many stupid lines like this in the documentary it makes me want to throw up.

JanG: just got done watching it (feeding my baby girl), it does have an anti gun flavor to the whole thing. it pretty much portrays gun owners as paranoid radicals out to overthrow the government and have no remorse to whatever happens to everybody else. a lot of focus on the brady bunch, portraying the nra as a secret revolutionary society.

From an admirer of Barbara Kopple, the filmmaker behind this “documentary”:

The first part of the film tries to give equal time to both sides of the gun argument but then Kopple, sadly, ventures off into partisan posturing by portraying gun owners primarily as militia members, survivalists and gang bangers along with zealots who claim Jesus supported the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.

[...]

Gun Fight would have been much more powerful is she had taken a dispassionate look at both sides of the issue and left out the nutcases. As a gun owner, I resent such stereotyping.

Even the fuddish, victim-blaming Robert Farago was unimpressed (link goes to Free Republic, not his site):

After watching Gunfight on HBO, I can state without equivocation that it was a heavily tilted, barely disguised polemic presenting the argument for gun control. In fact, you could call it the Colin [Goddard] and Paul [Helmke] Show . . .

Given that the Peterson Syndrome was named after Joan, it should come as no surprise to anyone that she would consider such a documentary to be a “good comparison”, given it speciously portrays her and her fellow anti-rights nuts as valiant martyrs working for a better world, while simultaneously demonizing firearm owners as universally being violent, revolutionary, paranoid nutjobs. Unfortunately (for her), her personal opinion does not necessarily make it a “good comparison”, and viewed objectively, it is likely to be anything but.

Moving on, it is quite obvious that the anti-rights cultists like Joan Peterson have absolutely no interest in “stop[ping] the shootings”. How do I know this? Simple: the laws, legislation, and restrictions they support have no recordable history of doing any such thing, and, in fact, they frequently do the exact opposite. For example, the Assault Weapon Ban had no discernible impact on crime, yet Joan religiously supports it; likewise, once-Great Britain’s draconian firearm laws have contributed to that country’s firearm-related crime rate growing seven times faster than its population.

Speaking more to the underlying premises of her comment, not all shootings are equal. A police officer shooting a criminal in the commission of a crime is not the same as a gangbanger murdering someone in cold blood. Equivalently, a law-abiding citizen shooting a rapist in self-defense is not equivalent to a drive-by shooting. Joan is, once again, attempting to speciously conflate “law-abiding citizen” with “criminal”, showing the depth of her inherent bigotry, and is actually confirming my private suspicions that she really does want to leave the smaller and weaker defenseless against the larger and stronger.

In the same vein, “shootings” are not the only metric of success for an organization purportedly interested in augmenting public safety – instead, one must consider the total violent crime rate, the total murder rate, and the total rate of successful self-defenses, in addition to countless other metrics. However, Joan Peterson has made it abundantly clear that your safety is unimportant to her, and that she would prefer a higher violent crime rate in exchange for lower shootings. We know where that road goes, Joan, and I would rather not follow once-Great Britain into being one of the most-violent countries in the world.

And farther down that very same path, her phrasing makes it seem as though those who are interested in retaining and preserving their individual rights are not interested in reducing the number of murders – of all types – throughout America. This is, of course, false; we sincerely do want the violent crime rate, in its totality, to decrease, but we choose to employ other, demonstrably more-effective methods.

Finally, Joan Peterson’s last comment is a bald-faced, unequivocal, shameful, reputation-attacking lie. While being on the opposite end of the “gun control” spectrum from Joan, I have absolutely no desire, whatsoever, to “shoot the government”. The vast, overwhelming majority of pro-rights activists have absolutely no desire, whatsoever, to “shoot the government”. To be certain, more than a few of us are more than a little annoyed/scared/angry/upset/concerned over where our country is going and how it is getting there, but there is a universe of difference between “expressing dissatisfaction” and “putting a crosshair on ‘the government’”.

However, given the reports coming in from those who watched “Gun Fight”, it is no great surprise that Joan would make such a disgustingly fallacious stereotype – it seems Kopple went out of the way to find radical examples from within the firearm-owning community, put them on screen, and then paint the entire community with a brush dipped in their particular zealotry.

So in the space of 140 characters, Joan Peterson was able to cram two lies, one fallacious conflation, two mischaracterizations, and one obfuscation – all of which were specifically and intentionally written to defame law-abiding firearm owners throughout America. Despite my revulsion at her libelous behavior and blatant intolerance, I must admit to being impressed… Unfortunately, none of those despicable falsehoods matter one whit to the hoplophobes – thanks to a known, mentally unstable criminal murdering her sister, Joan has been bestowed with damn-near saint status from her fellow cultists, to the point where she can say or do no wrong, no matter how ludicrous, hateful, or bigoted she might be.

I am not at all sorry to say this, Joan, but being related to someone who was murdered does not make you a “victim”, it does not make you a “survivor”, and it sure as hell does not make you an “expert”, nor does it excuse you maliciously lying about your fellow law-abiding Americans. I am sincerely sorry for your loss, but leveraging it as an excuse to victimize those who only want to exercise their rights in freedom and peace is simply unacceptable, nor will it be accepted.