Chronicling the depravities of the State.
I guess when you are openly working to ban a means of personal protection you can become a bit violent. Joe Huffman has a good post demonstrating the violent desires of anti-gunners:
to the above poster, take your H&K 93, shove it up your ass and pull the trigger.
Harsh. It’s funny but I see it all the time. Arguments made out of emotions and feelings but otherwise not backed by any real research generally cause the person making said argument to lash out violently when challenged.
That’s that this post is about. Although I do realize arguing things on the Internet is ultimately pointless I do sometimes partake in it. There are two main reasons I argue with anti-gunners online; to keep my kills of debating fresh and because I love watching them break down into personal insults after devastating their arguments. The last one is a guilty pleasure of mine to say the least. But some of these arguments are worth a little analysis so I figured I’d post a couple of the recent threads I participated in on reddit.
The first argument I’ll post up is one I had with a person going by the handle APeacefulWarrior. To save you some brain damage I’ll sum things up. APeacefulWarrior was stating that “idiot gun nuts” are getting what they deserve for listening to the NRA and stockpiling weaponry for a potential gun ban that could never be.
Well I tried pointing out the fact that the NRA never said Obama was going to use the UN to take our guns but instead tried to explain the implications of the Small Arms Treaty. Likewise I posted a link to Obama’s campaign website that stated the Obamessiah was in favor of repealing the Tiahrt Amendment (including a link that actually described what the amendment was) and reinstating the “assault weapons” ban (as well as explained what the ban really was). I also decided to point out the fact that the “gun show loophole” mentioned was responsible for less than 1% of crime guns. Yes I included links to sources of information on all of those subjects.
Like most anti-gunners eventually APeacefulWarrior broke down into personal insults and not once posted any links citing anything he was claiming. Generally in a debate if one side provides citations for their arguments it’s expected the other side will as well. Of course when you have no real facts to back up your arguments that very difficult and it ultimately what causes the anti-gunners to lose.
Another example of anti-gunner argument failures is a long running thread I had with a user going by the handle malevolentjelly. He tried making the argument that stricter gun control laws lowers the number of guns available to criminals and hence lower the crime rate. It’s important to note he is stating there is a correlation between the number of guns available to civilians and the amount of gun crime in a country.
Again I made several posts with citations to backup my claims. Anti-gunners facing facts often like to perform a little trick called moving the goal posts. They claim your information is invalid and irrelevant since it comes from obviously biased sources (while they source studies from people like the Violence Policy Center as neutral but this individual couldn’t even be bothered to do that). For instance take the following:
What research? Everything your cited is coming from biased sources. How about citing the FBI or the UN?
I laughed pretty hard when he said the UN is an unbiased source but alas I decided to oblige him by posting a link to the FBI United Crime Report for 2008 and a link to the number of FBI NICS checks performed. The number of NICS checks performed is the only method I know of to estimate the number of firearms sold in the country. According to the United Crime Report violent crime has been on a downward trend while the number of gun sales have been constantly increasing. This would of course destroy the argument that more available guns increases violent crime rates which was the correlation he was using. What was his response? Well it was golden:
Just wishing for those two datapoints to be connected does not make it so. Correlation does not equate causation. A systemic analysis state to state of crime would probably show no correlation to gun ownership. In fact, it’s probably largely unrelated. I would suppose that it makes more difference in the nature of crimes committed, not the rate.
This is why arguing with anti-gunners is so much fun. Given enough time they will invalidate their own argument. Of course anybody reading this knows I don’t believe correlation proves causality. But if you can show a correlation that doesn’t fit you can defeat an argument based on correlation.
It was at this point the threat devolved into personal attacks and became irrelevant. But my favorite closing argument from him was the following:
I don’t feel like walking you through criminology 101, it’s not worth the effort to cite for someone who links to webpages devoted to armed citizenry. You keep your eyes out for flying saucers and the gubberment. I’ll just keep deadly weapons out of my household and you get to be safer when the redcoats invade.
Yup apparently it’s not worth citing all this information on criminology that he knows to be fact. And all the sources I posted were biased including those FBI links I tossed up upon request for information from the FBI. Good old moving the goal posts.
Arguing with anti-gunners is completely pointless I admit but it does keep me in a good state of mind and sometimes I learn of new arguments they’re trying to make. But I posted these two threads for your analysis so you can watch a typical argument where one side has factual information to provide and the other side has emotional arguments.
Godwin’s Law states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” I’m going to go ahead and create a law for arguing with anti-gunners. As a debate with an anti-gunners grows longer, the probability of the anti-gunners using personal attacks and invalidating their own argument approaches one.
Another great post was thrown up over at Every Day, No Days Off. It’s a link to a video of a public service announcement (PSA) for the Amber Alert e-mail notification system. The video is trying to convince you that you do not need a gun to protect your children. Unfortunately for the people who made the video they totally failed at that. Watch is and then ask yourself, would I fuck with these mothers’ kids?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi13LczGlsE]
I certainly would not.
Also is that lady holding a RPD that is both belt fed and has an attached drum magazine at the same time? Can that even work?
China isn’t exactly known as the land of the free know a country that has high regard for individual liberty. They have a complete ban on private ownership of firearms as that would allow the peasants to rise up against their rulers.
Thanks to Snowflakes in Hell I found out even China is admitting gun control doesn’t work. When China admits gun control fails you know it’s bad.
Very seldom can you get two completely unrelated topics into one news article. But that’s what I found. The main gist of the story is talking about how California is planning to make money. They’ve tossed around tons of ideas but this one most certainly takes the cake. California is looking into using electronic license plates so they can turn your car into a rolling billboard. The idea is if the car is stopped for more than four seconds the license plate goes from your standard license plate to a billboard displaying advertisements.
I’m sure no mechanism would be introduce to opt out of certain adds leading some hilarity such as a car with an anti-gun bumper sticker displaying an add for the NRA or visa versa. Oh wait this California they probably won’t allow the NRA to advertise. Either way not only would you get the privilege of paying California for a new license plate but you would also get to be an advertisement system for them.
Things I’m curious about are how do they plan on updating the ads? Cellular connection maybe? So then California would have to pay up for cellular data plans to one or more of the big carriers. I also couldn’t wait to see some ingenious hacker get into their electronic license plate and display far more fun and interesting things.
But that’s not all this other little quip was in the same news article:
Lead ammunition would be banned completely from state wildlife management areas under a bill by Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara. While state law already requires hunters to use nontoxic shot to hunt waterfowl and big game, certain migratory birds and small game species are not protected. Nava’s AB2223 seeks to close that loophole. He says lead ammunition can spread through the food chain when animals ingest the casings. The bill is scheduled to be heard Tuesday in the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.
Emphasis mine. Once again the anti-gunners are claiming a law is a loophole and it needs to be closed. I wonder what got them started with this word. Did Mr. Hennigan open up a dictionary one day and randomly come across this word? Did he think, “Gee golly that’s a neat word. It’s pretty long too so I bet I’d sound smart saying it.”
Also I find it funny how lead ammunition can spread through the food chain by animals ingesting casings. I would think that would happen if the animals ingested the lead shot not the plastic casings. It’s almost as if the person talking about this doesn’t actually know anything about the subject at hand. But that’s impossible, nobody would hire somebody who didn’t know anything about guns to write a law involving guns… oh wait.
I’m sorry have I deprived you of your daily spoonful of bull shit? Well fear not because here it is! Via the “fair and balanced” Washington Post we get to learn the “facts” about gun control “myths.” And boy are there some real winners. The first one, guns don’t kill people, people kill people:
But in a groundbreaking and often-replicated look at the details of criminal attacks in Chicago in the 1960s, University of California at Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring found that the circumstances of gun and knife assaults are quite similar: They’re typically unplanned and with no clear intention to kill. Offenders use whatever weapon is at hand, and having a gun available makes it more likely that the victim will die. This helps explain why, even though the United States has overall rates of violent crime in line with rates in other developed nations, our homicide rate is, relatively speaking, off the charts.
Funny because according to another researcher holding a Ph. D more guns leads to less crime. Of course we can’t trust somebody like John Lott because he refuses to write a book on the subject… oh wait. Also I love this stupid quote:
As Ozzy Osbourne once said in an interview with the New York Times: “I keep hearing this [expletive] thing that guns don’t kill people, but people kill people. If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?”
Why not just send the guns? Funny enough if you send the people without guns there are still going to be deaths, if you send the guns without people there won’t be any deaths. What part of the equation leads to death then?
Next up is the “myth” that gun laws only affect law-abiding citizens:
The ban on felons buying guns, part of the 1968 Gun Control Act, doesn’t stop them entirely, of course. In fact, most homicides involve someone with a criminal record carrying a gun in public. Data from 2008 in Chicago show that 81 percent of homicides were committed with guns and that 91 percent of homicide offenders had a prior arrest record.
Here’s a hint when debating something, don’t support the opponents argument by making it for them. And in classic anti-gunner lack of ability to use basic logic:
But the gun laws provide police with a tool to keep these high-risk people from carrying guns; without these laws, the number of people with prior records who commit homicides could be even higher.
So according to this article convicted felons are still obtaining guns but these laws prevent convicted felons from obtaining guns? I’m sorry but it’s either one or the other. “Myth” number three is when more households have guns for self-defense, crime goes down:
The key question is whether the self-defense benefits of owning a gun outweigh the costs of having more guns in circulation. And the costs can be high: more and cheaper guns available to criminals in the “secondary market” — including gun shows and online sales — which is almost totally unregulated under federal laws, and increased risk of a child or a spouse misusing a gun at home.
Almost totally unregulated? Really? Seriously? Go to a gun show some time. That’s what Matt Snyder did when he found out gun shows are not an unregulated source of firearms. Likewise try buying a gun on GunBroker and see if the seller will ship the gun to your home. Guess what? They won’t, it has to be sent to an FFL holder in your state and transferred to you (which includes the NICS check and you having to fill out ATF Form 4473). Unregulated my ass. Also I love this dribble:
Our research suggests that as many as 500,000 guns are stolen each year in the United States, going directly into the hands of people who are, by definition, criminals.
So what you’re saying is gun laws only affect law-abiding citizens since criminals will just steal them from said law-abiding citizens? Nice you once again countered your own so-called argument. Also since when have we punished law-abiding citizens (the gun owners in this case) because of what criminals do (the gun thieves)? Well I guess for a while now but that shit has to stop. Let’s move onto their fourth “myth,” in high-crime urban neighborhoods, guns are as easy to get as fast food:
Our own study of the underground gun market in Chicago, with Columbia sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh and Harvard criminologist Anthony Braga, contradicts this claim. Handguns that can be bought legally for around $100 sell on the street in Chicago for $250 to $400. Surveys of people who have been arrested find that a majority of those who didn’t own a gun at the time of their arrest, but who would want one, say it would take more than a week to get one. Some people who can’t find a gun on the street hire a broker in the underground market to help them get one. It costs more and takes more time to get guns in the underground market — evidence that gun regulations do make some difference.
So according to your research over 500,000 guns are stolen every year in the United States. But now you’re saying guns are hard for criminals to get. Riiiiiiiiight. But I thought they could just walk into any gun show or buying guns on the Internet and not have to worry about an regulations preventing their criminal asses from obtaining guns. Make up your fucking mind. This isn’t an argument so much as a spastic tossing of random ideas on the wall hoping people reading will be dumb enough not to know how to use logic (an anti-gunner). Let’s move onto “myth” five which is, repealing Chicago’s handgun ban will dramatically increase gun crimes. Wait that is an actual myth. For fuck’s sake make up your mind!
Local officials from Dodge City to Chicago have understood that some regulation of firearms within city limits is in the public’s interest, and that regulation and law enforcement are important complements in the effort to reduce gun violence. Even before the repeal of D.C.’s handgun ban, the city’s police reestablished a gun-recovery unit and focused on seizing illegal firearms. The city’s homicide rate has been relatively flat the past several years. If the court decides that Chicago must follow D.C’s lead in getting rid of its handgun ban, we can only hope that it leaves the door open for sensible control measures.
So much double-speak it hurts. D.C.’s homicide rate has remained flat even with the repeal of their handgun ban. But only after said ban was lifted did the police actually work on recovering illegal firearms. Does that mean illegal firearms were available in D.C. only after the handgun ban was lifted? Seriously my head hurts from the lack of basic understanding of forming a logical argument.
And even though D.C.’s homicide rate has remained flat after the ban the author hopes if the ban falls in Chicago it leaves the door open to “sensible” control measures? Would you like to maybe, oh I don’t know, give an example of such a measure that was used in D.C. to keep the homicide rate flat? Because if you meant the reestablishment of the gun-recovery unit as being a “sensible” control it’s not a control at all, it’s enforcing laws already on the books at a federal level. That’s not further regulation or additional “sensible” controls.
What a dip shit. Seriously this is why we win, the anti-gunners can’t form a coherent argument.
Linoge is a big fan of doing things right. To that extend he decided to do actual work that us other bloggers could repost in a vain attempt to make it appear as though we also do real work (but those who know me know that I avoid real work like our government avoids civil rights). He put together a nice little graph showing increased firearm ownership doesn’t lead to increased firearm related fatalities. This is always a big thing the anti-gunners parrot and they often also have pretty charts to prove their point. They difference is where the numbers come from. Linoge obtained his numbers from the CDC and ATF and sourced them.
As an added note it’s good to see firearm related deaths were already on a downward turn before the Brady Act came into law deflating the idea that the little piece of anti-gun legislation was the cause of decreasing firearm related deaths.
We’ve all heard the anti-gunners parrot on and on about how we need stronger gun control laws to prevent violence. They claim if gun control laws here were as strong as those found in most European nations most mass shootings would be prevented.
John Lott did a quick look into the history of European mass shootings and found out the anti-gunners, as usual, are wrong. No it seems mass shootings have a habit of popping up in so-called “gun free zones.”
A certain representative with the last name Paymar has been trying to pass a law here in Minnesota to close the “gun show loophole.” Of course if you’ve been reading this site for any amount of time you know it’s not a “gun show loophole” but private property right.
Well a journalist by the name of Matt Snyders decided to test the “gun show loophole.” What he discovered is something us gun owners have known forever, buying a gun from a dealer regardless of venue requires paperwork, a NICS check, and here in Minnesota a permit to purchase or carry for certain firearms. First let’s bring up Mr. Paymar and his qualifications on firearms:
Paymar has never fired a handgun, nor has he ever attended a gun show. He was moved to act, he says, after seeing a YouTube clip. In it, Colin Goddard, a Virginia Tech massacre survivor who was shot four times, attends gun shows and successfully buys firearms without undergoing a background check or even being asked to show identification.
He’s never fired a handgun nor attended a gun show? In politics that makes him the most qualified person to write a law restricting both. In the real world that makes him uneducated and whole incapable of writing legislation that affects either.
He also brings up the Virginia Tech shooter who legally purchased both of his guns not a gun shows, but through a dealer. That means the Virginia Tech shooter when through the paperwork and background checks to obtain his weapons. In any logical argument that would make the example of Virginia Tech irrelevant and inadmissible. But as we all know anti-gunners don’t use logic instead opting for hysteria.
Anyways Mr. Snyder put forth the following mission for himself:
So I decided to try to buy a gun. To hear the Citizens for a Safer Minnesota tell it, this would be an easy task. I didn’t have a permit, but surely these gun merchants would insist I purchase their wares, federal red tape be damned. I might even enjoy it.
Obviously he should have no problem here. After all according to the anti-gunners you can just walk into any gun show and walk out with fifty machine guns without raising any eyebrows. But the truth, as usual, is at odds with what the anti-gunners think. The first gun show Mr. Snyder attended yielded several things. First it wasn’t just guns for sale:
Over at a literature table, dozens of books offer a history of killing machines from the 18th century to the present. Nazi-themed tomes, for whatever reason, seem particularly popular.
This is where the anti-gunners claim those of us in the shooting culture are Nazis. The truth is far less insidious though. Many gunnies are also big history buffs. They don’t collect World War II memorabilia because they think Hitler was right, they collect it because it’s a part of history that should never be forgot. One of my uncles actually collects many items from World War II from flags to helmets. He’s not a Nazi, racist, or bigot. He’s a history buff and owing a piece of history is a big deal for him. It’s no different than owning a jacket worn by a famous movie star except the memorabilia from various wars actually has meaning since good men shed blood over it. So how did Mr. Snyder fair on the gun front? Well:
Before any transaction is finalized, all licensed vendors must place a call to the National Instant Criminal Background Checks System, an all-day hotline that every diligent vendor has on speed dial and which is referred to as “Nicks” (NICS). If the call turns up any felonies, instances of domestic abuse, or mental illness, the sale is canceled.
“This is not the venue for selling machine guns,” Tim adds as he nods respectfully to a passing browser. “Those are hard to come by. Only hard collectors get into them. Very expensive, plus there’s a $200 federal transfer tacked on for every sale.”
That’s a dirty little secret the anti-gunners never tell you. All transactions through dealers requires a NICS check and an ATF form filled out while machine guns are heavily regulated. So that only leaves sales between individuals:
About 12 minutes later, a prim man wades through the booths, black Romanian WASR-10 AK-47 slung over his shoulder. A white sheet of paper taped to its glistening black barrel announces its price: $500 or best offer.
“I want my baby to go to a good home,” he says, eyeing me up and down.
I can tell by his squinting, sun-weathered eyes that he doesn’t mean mine.
And as Mr. Snyder found out most individuals are picky where their property winds up.
That’s one failure so Mr. Snyder attends another gun show. First of all he finds out unlike what the anti-gunners claim gunners are not racists:
When three black men enter the show at around 1 p.m., however, no one pays them much mind. Asked about their experience here, they seem more taken aback by the question’s presumption than the surroundings.
“I’ve been to three gun shows, and I’ve never had a problem,” says Grant, turning to his friends for corroboration. They nod. They’re not here to purchase, Grant adds. For many, gun and knife shows are the male equivalent of window-shopping for shoes.
And later Mr. Snyder again attempts to obtain a firearm at a gun show without a permit or background check:
“You have your permit to purchase, right?” asks the vendor.
The answer to the question was an unfortunate no.
“No permit to purchase?” he said. “You’re shit outta luck, my friend.”
This “loophole” is starting to look more like a brick wall. How does Mr. Snyder fair at the next show? Surprisingly just as well as the other two mentioned shows:
But three consecutive attempts yield reactions ranging from apologetic to annoyed.
“No permit to purchase, no sale,” snaps a looming, pear-shaped man as his plump hands hastily repackage what would otherwise be a sale. “Wasting your time here without one. Good day.”
The vendors here are sticklers on every provision, clause, subsection, and footnote on the books. In one case, a clean-cut seller in a charcoal-black Harley Davidson shirt conversed curtly with two men, one who appeared to be in his 70s, the other fiftyish. The vendor refuses to sell more than two handguns to the befuddled duo.
“Them’s the rules,” says the vendor. “I don’t give a fuck, but them’s the rules.”
“Well, in that case, I’ll just buy the Colt and sell it to him,” replies the elder of the two.
“Now that’s a straw buy,” retorted the vendor. “One hundred percent illegal. I don’t give a fuck, but if I were to sell ya that after you just told me that, I’d lose my license!”
“I’ve known him since he was this high,” says the man, holding his liver-spotted hand four feet off the floor.
“I understand that, but it’s worse than dealing with the IRS if I sold ya two!”
Six days, three gun shows, and 19 attempts to buy handguns sans permit had yielded zero sales.
That’s right six days, three gun shows, 19 attempts to purchase, and zero guns. Some loophole that turned out to be. So much for that “gun show loophole” that allows anybody to purchase untold numbers of guns without any regulation.
So the next time you hear a blow hard anti-gunners claiming anything about firearms go talk to somebody in the shooting community. We have experience and knowledge in the firearm fields, we know the laws, and we will give you the truth instead of the hysteria.
Ah yes the UK’s gun ban the single reason that the island is a perfect utopia where nobody is ever murdered or violently attacked. I wish I lived in the UK where there are no shooting.
Wait I hear reality calling, give me a second here.
You won’t believe this reality just called to inform me that the UK’s gun ban isn’t work. In fact a shooter just murdered four people using and offed himself with a gun. I just don’t get how this could happen though; guns are illegal there! Also the government will protect you!