"Gun control" extremists are happiest when innocent people are murdered by criminals using firearms – after all, there will be more victims’ stories to exploit, more victims to sock-puppet as figureheads, more opportunities for appeals to emotion, more donations from people who think throwing money at astroturf will somehow convince criminals to stop being criminals, and more "proof" that guns are the root of all evil in society and thus must be destroyed. In reality, "gun control" organizations would not exist if there were not "gun violence".
Pro-rights activists are happiest when no one is being preyed upon by anyone, and we can all peacefully enjoy our individual rights as we see fit; however, given that we live in an imperfect world, we are willing to settle for the would-be murderer/rapist/mugger/thug having a sucking chest wound and his/her intended victim having to call the police.
If that does not tell you everything you need to know about the two sides of the debate, I am not sure what would.
Discuss.
And “gun rights” organizations like the NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, SCCC, USCCA, GOA, JPFO, and the countless state-level groups wouldn’t exist – or have anywhere near their numbers – if there weren’t “gun control” groups trying to limit or completely outlaw the free exercise of natural, God-given rights. The fact that the “gun control” groups are funded largely from two or three sources – who donate millions each – and still can’t generate funds on the level of the NRA – whose four million members only need donate $10-$100 each – should tell them all they need to know about where the “popular support” really lies.
The mission of “gun control” groups – whether openly stated or not – is the ultimate “redistribution of wealth” (“character” wealth, not financial). It is to seize the moral standing of good and just people and hand it to the immoral, to take the blame from the guilty and lay it on the innocent (and the innocence from the victims and give it to the criminals), to twist Justice so that it protects the unjust and punishes the law-abiding. It is to remove all value from the best of humanity, and place it on the worst. It is to force honest people to reason with the unreasonable and sacrifice everything they have for the momentary amusement of the dishonest, and face severe consequences for attempting to deny that amusement.
I used to think “gun control” fanatics were well-intentioned-but-misguided, but the more violent rhetoric they spout out, the less I’m inclined to keep believing that. “Good” and “evil” are subjects for a theologian (which, though well-studied, I am not), but attempting to use blatant dishonesty to force public policy is something I cannot tolerate in good conscience. And according to the CSGV, that makes me a “traitor” and an “insurrectionist.”
(Believe it or not, this was longer, but I edited some out; don’t want to hog the discussion.
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Ever notice that every time some wacko that shouldn’t have a gun does something stupid the gun control people want to take guns away from people that haven’t done any thing wrong? I would gladly give up my guns if I had the absolute guarantee the the bad guys would give theirs up first. Until that day I will add to my arsenal of ammo and guns from time to time and protect me and mine however I have to.
@ Archer: The sad thing is that the overwhelming majority of “gun control” extremists really are good-intentioned-but-misguided individuals; the honest truth is that they simply do not know any better. They are ignorant, and they are kept ignorant by the “gun control” organizations, and that ignorance is used as leverage to augment, expand, and inflate their fears. There may still be some hope for those kinds of folks with education; see Weer’d Beard for an example.
But those are just the majority. There most assuredly is a minority of anti-rights cultists who do know exactly what they are doing, exactly what they are proposing, and exactly what they are driving towards, and want to hasten the world along that path as quickly and as violently as possible. People like Ladd Everitt of the aformentioned CSGV are demonstrably evil based on their use of misinformation, lies, thuggish tactics, and abusive actions, and they I have absolutely no tolerance for or patience with.
As Marko has said, the gun is civilization, precisely because it allows a 90-pound granny to tell a 300-pound thug “no” with authority. Taking that away from the granny is devolving society back to a time when the strongest got what they want because they were the strongest, and being a weakling myself, I would rather avoid that, thanks.
@ Neill: Oh, that part always throws me for a loop. Person X commits all these heinous crimes, so what are we to do? Punish everyone except Person X.
Uhm, wat?
Here is my one liner: Gun control is the idea that you can somehow *prevent* a free person from obtaining a legal object.
@Linoge: Quite true. In this day and age, most people are happy just being “sheeple”, willingly following whatever direction and train of thought someone else is willing to give them. Thinking for one’s self is hard work, and most aren’t up to the task and don’t want to try.
I should have been more specific in my response. When I first started looking into the “gun rights vs. gun control” debate, I applied the “well-intentioned-but-misguided” status to such people as Joan Peterson and Jason Kilgore (a.k.a. Baldr Odinson). I prefer to give people the benefit of doubt when I first “meet” them.
While it’s true most people fall into the “well-intentioned-but-misguided” category, trolling around on the Interwebs will not typically present a person with “most people.” No, you get the fanatics, the true believers, the ones who are personally motivated enough to post on the subject daily. As a section of the population, the “gun control” supporters who are that invested in the debate are not “misguided”; they know exactly what they are saying, what direction their policies will steer the nation toward, and what the end result will be. Theirs is no “innocent misunderstanding” or “honest mistake.” They lie, they misrepresent, they omit facts and statistics that disprove their claims and focus attention on rare, isolated cases that support them – and they do it daily, with a straight face. They are not good people.
I’ve come to realize that our job as advocates is not to change the minds of the fanatics. It is to plant a seed of doubt into the minds of the blind followers, to educate them, to drive them to research and discern the basic truths for themselves (like you said, see Weer’d Beard for an example). It is to remove the wind from the fanatics’ sails by removing the one thing they need and desire: a willing flock of followers.
We win by removing the echo from their echo chamber.
@ TS: Hell, we cannot even prevent people from acquiring certain objects inside of maximum security prisons or a TSA checkpoint; it is fair to say you can strike “free” from that.
@ Archer: In fairness, it is extremely likely, bordering on unavoidably certain, that Joan Peterson is suffering from some rather extensive psychological and mental scarring and damage, to the point where she is literally incapable of identifying what she is doing as “misleading”, “malicious”, or even “wrong”. Granted, most of that psychological damage is probably self-inflicted, what with her quaint delusion that she is a “‘gun violence’ victim”, despite never having had a firearm pointed at her, but, in my opinion, it rather puts her in the same category as Tourette’s sufferers – she honestly cannot do anything about it.
In Joan’s case, I think she stands as a much better example of the derangement of the Brady Campaign as a whole: she is demonstrably mentally unbalanced, but that organization is all to happy to have her on their governing body precisely because she is a self-proclaimed “‘gun violence’ victim” and they can exploit her and her “experiences” to their own devices.
Any organization that would take advantage of mentally afflicted people in that way is, without a doubt, “not good people”, as you say.
You are right, though – we are never going to reach them, mostly because their adherence to “gun control” is an ingrained part of their psyche, and surrendering that would require giving up a part of them, as they see it, and few people can actually manage to do that. But we can hopefully decrease the number of people who are suckered into supporting “gun control” by these fanatics.