A random thought occurred to me yesterday as I drove past Blacksburg, VA in the torrential downpour blanketing the East Coast…
The “gun control” / anti-rights movement is largely defined – and hamstrung – by their logical fallacies, but one they keep coming back to again and again like a dog returning to its own vomit is that of the appeal to popularity – anti-rights cultists consistently and repeatedly adopt the position that because “so many” people support “gun control” (though evidence of this popular support is almost never provided and always from suspected / astroturfed sources), then it is obviously the “right” course of action. Unfortunately for them, not only is this position intrinsically wrong, it also makes “gun control” supporters morally no better than slaveholders looking to keep their “property”.
However, for the sake of argument, let us accept their logical fallacy at face value, and return again to the topic of Blacksburg. How many people were wounded during the Virginia Tech shooting?
Getting to my hotel room, I was able to determine the answer: 26.
On the other hand, how many of those victims have aligned themselves, however quietly, vociferously, or in-between, with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Ownership, the Violence Policy Center Continuators, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Ownership, or any of those other organizations or groups that support “gun control”?
The answer: 1.
If their message resonates so very poorly with the very people they seek to exploit – “gun violence” victims – how can “gun control” extremists ever hope to honestly claim “popular support”?
There I go again, mistakenly assuming that “gun control” has anything to do with honesty. Now, to be forthright myself, I shall not make assumptions about the motivations and desires of people I do not even know through the media or press releases, but the lack of actual “gun violence” victims flocking to the Brady Campaign to lend their public support and solidarity speaks volumes as to that organization’s failed cause. Millions upon millions of Americans have concluded that there are better things to spend their time on than pointlessly, capriciously, and arbitrarily infringing upon the natural, individual, and Constitutionally-protected rights of law-abiding American citizens; I dare say it is well past time for even the most radical anti-rights cultist to abandon his morally offensive quest and find something actually constructive to do with his time.
(… Again, not as though their claims of “popular support” matter, but we might as well play tenpins with their house of cards…)
Great point about the Virginia Tech shooting but let’s expand it out.
but the lack of actual “gun violence” victims flocking to the Brady Campaign to lend their public support and solidarity speaks volumes as to that organization’s failed cause.
In 2009, 149,493 armed robberies using firearms for all of the country. 146,650 Aggravated assaults using firearms. 9,146 firearm related murders — over 300,000 victims of “gun crime”.
If gun control was as popular of a concept; wouldn’t there be nightly news stories about the victims calling for ever more restrictive laws?
That is just one year. Unless the criminals target the same people over and over again, one has to wonder where all hue and cry is ?
I’m certainly not seeing it, reading about it except for a few vocal advocates for citizen disarmament.
D’oh! I wish I’d realized you were passing by! There are some good local places to eat around here where we could have met up for dinner!
And yeah, even when the other 25 were still taking classes here, you didn’t see more than a couple participating in the “lie-ins” or anything during the memorial events. In fact, I’ve heard more from their parents than from the victims themselves, and even that’s pretty unusual.
I think an important element is the victimhood status. It can be used to get attention and in some cases employment. If you are used to Big Daddy government wiping your arse for you, you come to expect it to do everything for you, including your security.
Bob S. really has a good point about the scope and number of violent crimes. He made sure to take into account only those cases where EVIL firearms were used so good for comparisons.
So, you would think there would have to be more “common gunsense” people up in arms (figuratively, since they HATE guns) for more gun control if that was the real problem and not the criminals. Wrong…people are smart of enough to deduce that the criminal is the issue, not the weapon or tool.
I think there are probably more people complaining about alien abductions, UFO sightings, and Area 51 cover ups than there are really motivated gun control freaks out there. Let’s continue to marginalize them as the anti-rights control freaks that they are.
My experience with anti-gunners are a little more along Lynch’s line- that is, they’re a minority. Or at least they *act* like a minority.
The Brady bunch and VPC might pull the “we are legion” line, but all the anti-gun and straight up plain liberal types I’ve talked to are more along the line of “Guns are made only to kill people, and are therefore imbued with evil”.
Basically, seems to me that REAL anti-gunners are into the idea of the righteous minority standing up to the barbaric majority, at all costs.
@ Bob S.: Naturally the Virginia Tech microcosm is arguably too small for any real statistical inference to be built out of it, but you definitely expanded my thought process to its natural conclusion. Thanks
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Yes, we do see the occasional “gun violence” victim standing up for more “gun control” and all of the associated legislation – Mr. Brady, after all, is a prime example of this. However, we also see occasional victims standing up for the preservation and perpetuation of the individual right of self-defense.
In either case, it does not matter – popularity is a craptacular reason to abridge free people’s rights, and we simply shall not stand for it.
@ Jake: We may yet – check the email address you use here
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@ Braden Lynch: At last count, the Brady Campaign had all of 50,000 people who gave money to it in the past two years. Any money at all. 50k, out of a population of 300,000,000 – 0.0167%. To say that their numbers are statistically insignificant would be overly generous.
That said, people like Colin do hold an impressive sway over the population of America as a whole – he is photogenic, arguably charismatic, and his story reaches out and plucks at the heartstrings of people who are vulnerable to that kind of thing. Of course, the irrational charlatans of the “gun control” movement have significantly less pull when people are able to accurately identify them as the extremists they are, which is where sites like this one come in
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@ the Dude: Unfortunately, for people fully inducted into the “gun control” cult, they ‘win’ both ways – either they are supported by the majority and thus their cause is right (in their minds), or they are the victims, the valiant underdogs fighting the good fight against people who want the world awash in “illegal” guns. Inconveniently for us, the propaganda machine employed by anti-rights cultists has been quite prolific…
@Linoge
Thank you for the great statistic on the BC contributors. They are loud, but a joke. We are indebted to you for alerting us about their nefarious activities and debunking their claims. Eternal vigilance is required to preserve our freedoms.
Meanwhile, since I have given to the NRA, NRA-ILA, SAF, CRPA and JPFO, do I get to count as 5 pro-gun people? Virtually every time Joan Peterson or Colin Goddard spew their nonsense, I end up donating money or calling my representatives.
Since the POTUS is the greatest firearms salesman ever, that would make the Brady Campaign et al the best pro-guns donation solicitation organizations ever.
We should thank them for their breathless indignation that we have GUNS and for revealing their true motives.
More than a few pro-rights advocates have only become pro-rights advocates because of things like the Ban on Scary-Looking Firearms and similar legislation… I know I am only so vocal in defending my rights because I know, full well, that jackasses with petty authoritarian complexes are constantly trying to strip those rights away from me.
And without speaking up, they will be successful.
You have to give them credit for motivating folks, though… just not in the way they were originally expecting.
[...] been reading Walls of the City recently, you may know that Linoge and his Better Half have been traveling through my neck of the woods. Well, their plans had them actually stopping in My Town for the night, so we met up for dinner [...]