1 (This post has been certified as 65% "nuttable" by the AoSHQ Ewok Rating Board)

That joke isn't funny anymore now that Ace had to go over to Althouse's blog to explain it to her.  What's funny is that most people over there seemed to get it, and found it funny even after Ace admits it was a so-so effort on his part to come up with that list in about 10 minutes.

2

You are very very late to this point of view.

In England, when they banned guns, violence INCREASED.

And if you check the stats, you will see the cities with the most stringent gun control laws, for YEARS, have more violence than places with no gun control laws.

And isn't it interesting that I just happen to be wearing my "Fight Crime, Shoot Back" Tshirt today...

3 It wasn't the chicken. Leave the chicken alone. JUST LEAVE IT! [sobs]

4   Yeah, I've always realized that banning the law abiding from owning firearms just makes them into defenseless victims and encourages the lawless; but the thought that gun control itself might be part of the root cause of the lawlessness is a fairly new idea to me.

5 Would a fork ban work for fat people

6

Criminals are stupid, if there is no danger, gunless places, then crime will happen.

How many gun free schools have had massacures vs carry schools?

7 Guns are racist.

8 It must have been a coincidence that crime rates began to drop when the three strike laws started taking effect. Then some over educated lawyer argued iit was too draconian and judges quit enforcing it. Habitual offender laws are hardly enforced.

9 In Israel, most 18-21 year olds walk around the streets carrying Uzis, Galils, M-16s, ... (years ago they used to leave their weapons in piles in the lobbies of the movie theaters, since you weren't allowed to take guns to your seats), pretty much everyone has guns and automatic weapons in their houses, and the violent crime rate in Israel is very, very low (except for the suicide bombers, though the new Russians brought some public violence with them).

I agree with you that liberals screaming that anyone who picks up a gun is likely to shoot someone because they can't control themselves, certainly contributes to people thinking that that sort of behavior is expected of them.  This is like liberals who hand out condoms to ever younger children and are then "surprised" that those kids have sex at ever younger ages - prompting the liberals to dispense condoms to younger and younger kids.  Of course, a 13 year old who is given a condom by an "official" gets the idea that it is normal for him to have sex (and abnormal not to), since enough 13 year olds must be having sex to warrant the official giving him the condoms.  This, as with so many issues, is where liberals lose both sides of the same argument.  They try to convince people that they can't carry guns without shooting them on a whim and they try to convince young children that they are EXPECTED to have sex so much that they shove condoms down their throats.

10

If community standards teach you that gun ownership is a natural precursor to crime and irresponsibility, then it follows that those who value crime and irresponsibility will be drawn to own a gun.

Anti-gun people I've heard also treat it like something that is evil and cannot be used for good.

Other people see it as a tool used by an actual human, not a caricature.

11 "If irresponsibility and violence are the product of a "Bell Curve" sort of genetic predisposition, then you would expect to see rural or suburban minority communities awash in violence. As far as I know, that is not the case."

That's a big can of worms you're dancing around there, chief.  Probably better to just not go there.

12

When I was in h.s. I a many others had rifles in the back windows of our pickups. 

Today, we'd go to jail for that.

13 5 Would a fork ban work for fat people

Posted by: serfer62 at August 18, 2010 02:04 PM (HLCnI)

Nailed it!  10.0.

14 Anti-gun people I've heard also treat it like something that is evil and cannot be used for good.


Yup. And ironically, the same anti-gun people see no problem with calling on their local police to risk their lives to protect the anti-gun complainers.....with guns.

Teh stoopid, it hurts.

I always get a kick out of the stories that came out of the Rodney King riots, where scared SoCal liberals streamed into their local gun shops to buy firearms to protect themselves, and came up against the CA mandated 10-day wait.

Oops.

15

The fastest, surest way to test one's own attitude about guns is to carry one yourself for a day. Maybe just a couple of hours.

As a suburban teenager, I got all the Norman Lear/Lucas Tanner propaganda about how private citizens were too reckless to be trusted with guns. I heard no other argument, so I accepted it.

When my testosterone hit, I imagined if I owned a gun, I'd be totally crazy with it, threatening people in traffic who offended me, etc. Adolescent power trip, I guess it's called.

Never forget the first 30 minutes after I bought a small handgun and rode home with a friend in his car. Some guy on the highway cut us off, and I thought, I've always wondered what I'd do if I had a gun in my hand at a moment like this.

Know what I did?

Nothing.

Having that pistol in my lap, I felt suddenly overwhelmed with the responsibility for what would happen if I did anything other than let it sit right there.

That's what it took -- having it in my hand.

Would that more who don't "get it" would do so in the same manner.

Now I'm a "town's leading citizen" by any measure. And a CHL bearer for 12 years.

16 There's about 15 feet between me and the door of the trailer that keeps me cool and dry in Mosul, Iraq. Halfway across that distance is an M4 automatic rifle; hanging from the fire extinguisher mount is a Sig 229. I'm on a camp with probably a few hundred souls, each similiarly armed (or moreso), and everyone carries. Our camp is on a larger FOB (forward operating base) of thousands, and those thousands carry--in the PX, to the DFAC, walking along the road, you name it. A few observations: 1. I have never seen or heard of anyone shooting anyone else here who didn't deserve it, disproving the nostrum that a profusion of guns is going to lead to careless accidents. And while many of these young people are away from home, working on little sleep, being confronted by angry people every day, you don't hear about many mass shootings in an environment where to do so would be incredibly, incredibly easy due to the availability of guns (not that doing so would be sound; that person would be mass executed in about 3.7 seconds) 2. You wanna feel safe? Walk around a base with armed servicemen and women. Works like a charm. Why society couldn't learn from this puzzles the mind. 3. Speaking of Maryland/Virginia, I'm from Virginia, which means that my tolerance for faggoty anti-carry laws is low. By contrast, I know some Marylanders, I've driven in Maryland, I've vacationed there. Lovely Eastern Shore. Shame the state is populated by drooling mutants who CAN'T DRIVE WORTH A FUCK. Gun ownership deters people who like to tell other people what to do. Guns are a big "fuck you" to social meddlers. Finally, you can be sure that any man who tells you he "doesn't like guns" is a homosexual, NTTAWWT, or something.

17 I'm from a family of outdoorsmen, and somewhat unusual for an Englishman (well, a Scotch/Englishman). We hunt actual live animals and if their corpses are tasty, we eat them. I have an intimate association with large-calibre weapons and have sent many thousand rounds down-range, many of them on full-auto. Please, please do not be offended if you point a gun-shaped object at me and I punch you in the jaw. Range safety is in my marrow. I have seen bullet wounds on prey, so I know the consequences. I go into Condition Red if someone points a super-soaker at me. A cap gun could get you killed. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the closest familiarity with firearms is the greatest contributor to their safe deployment.

18 B-T H, I'm a fellow ex-Marylander. Moved myself out of there for college in '91, but with college and the active Army I didn't get rid of the Maryland driver's license until '06. I'm a happy Tennesseean these days.

Railwriter, you suck for getting a Sig instead of a Beretta. Totally suck.

19 Dan: I got a Glock and a S&W at home, and I don't like the latter much. Uncle Sam decided I'd carry a Sig. I plead innocent.

20 >>When I was in h.s. I a many others had rifles in the back windows of our pickups. Today, we'd go to jail for that.<< In certain parts of my wonderful home state, you'd be drafted by unanimous consent as mayor.

21 Guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Guns just make the bullets go fast.

22

Everyone I know that grew up with guns respects them, doesn't fear them. Not one of them would use a weapon in a criminal fashion. The only ones that joke about 'poppin a cap' are the ones that didn't grow up with guns. Even the libs.

Interesting theory, Russ. Wonder if our friends in Kildee Hall at ISU have ever considered it. But I know they haven't, because that would prove the left dogma as false.

23 Slaves don't want to leave the pens.

24 It's part of the spectrum arc of Self Reliance vs. Gov't Knows Best.  Trust in the people vs trust in the Gov't.  Dependence on the gov't leads to the citizenry not being able to recognize danger unless a gov't-issued warning sign is present. 

25 Lets get real.

There are VAST and obvious differences between the people of Montana and Wyoming and those of DC's neighborhoods like Anacostia.

Montana and Wyoming are not very dense. They are mostly White (with some Amerindian). Montanans and Wyoming folks live mostly on property they own, and while many have low incomes, they mostly (excluding Amerindians) rely on their own efforts not welfare/government payouts.

Inner city folks in DC are mostly Black, mostly poor, mostly reliant on welfare, and mostly criminal. The way to advance as a young man in DC's inner city is through criminal gangs. The way to advance in Montana is through ownership of a small ranch, farming, etc. which is mostly inherited.

Yeah, duh. White "small holders" of land act far more responsibly than basically, your thug gangsta in DC. The same can be said of White Israelis, or the Swiss, or Finns, or other Europeans with widespread gun ownership. Most French folks in the countryside own firearms (mostly illegally) as do the country Italians. They mostly don't abuse it, being conservative "small holders."

But really, if you get right down to it, gun violence merely measures race and class. Thats all it is. You can get rid of legal ownership of guns nation-wide. But you cannot change race and class. Thus the pattern of illegal gun ownership by thugs which causes the inner city carnage will continue.

26 To the original point, yes, I think the cultural context that supports a general anti-gun or, more particularly, anti-self-defense attitude fosters at the very least irresponsibility and probably crime as well.

It isn't necessarily the fact of being anti-gun, but the idiotic mental contortions one has to go through to support that position, i.e. the old "things you have to believe..." list. You keep telling people they're irresponsible and can't control themselves or their lives and it breeds fatalism and hopelessness.

I spent literally YEARS obsessed with disassembling the control freak's irrational arguments in pointless online debates, only to realize that you can't actually debate an irrational person. The pattern was always the same, and so was the result - they ran screaming and then were back the next day with a new username and the exact same talking points.

27
I'm a 58-year-old boomer who's lived all his life in Chicago. I'm conservative by nature, and from long, bitter experience despises the left. Yet, I never thought seriously about gun ownership, and so I absorbed many of the attitudes of the people around me: that somehow, in some way, I was not to be trusted to possess a firearm. This, mind you, after two of our sons enlisted and did tours in Iraq.

When Obama was elected, my wife (who occasionally posts here under the handle of "Sonetka's Mom") insisted that we buy a gun. I was not at all enthusiastic about it, but she insisted, so I went along. But as long as it was going to be in the house, I wanted to learn how to handle it safely; so one fine Sunday, Sonetka's Mom and I went up to a range in Wisconsin, along with our 12-year-old son, to be instructed by an NRA-certified instructor on how to handle a gun properly.

Our instructor insisted that we all take some shots at the trap range. When my turn came, I called "pull", aimed, and nailed the bird with my first shot. Those few moments were as close to a road-to-Damascus experience as I've ever had. I realized, first, that what the MFM had been saying for years about guns was a load of bull; and second, that shooting is fun!

I was also interested to see how our son reacted to handling guns. It will come as no surprise to most of you to hear that he took to it quite naturally; and more, that learning to handle a firearm responsibly has been an important lesson in helping him to grow as man and as a citizen.

So, we have a family membership in the NRA now (the sticker on our front door is marvelous deterrent to political types who go door to door), we enjoy our shooting (our son just earned his Scouting shotgun merit badge), and I'm trying to figure out how I can make it to the Oklahoma Full Auto festival next summer.

This is just my long-winded way of saying that, based on my experience, I think Russ is right. Gun control is one important part of the campaign to breed helpless, irresponsible people - to breed subjects instead of citizens - and people bred to be helpless and irresponsible don't handle responsibility well, including the responsibility that comes with possessing a firearm.

28 As a current Marylander I would first like to apologize for the poor driving people, most of them come from elsewhere to work for govt. which has further ruined the place. In my youth(I'm 45) I would drive around with a 6.5mm garcano in the gun rack of my dads pick up and never even got a look. Now when I go hunting on the Eastern Shore I put shotgun in case on backseat to keep "The Man" happy. I also do it so that they wont look any farther to find my compact 9mm that I usually carry with me 75% of the time. I have been caught in an actual shoot out in DC and had to take cover, did not enjoy that one bit. Went to local shop and bought said 9mm, do not want to hear about 9mm being crappy round etc. I got it because it was small and inexpensive so that if I did get caught with it and it got taken I took no serious loss, I would be PO'd if it was my 1911. Anyhoo I grew up around guns, own and have inherited 3 gens worth plus my own and have the utmost respect for them, I think it is the grabbers who are actually scared of them and that is why they subscribe to the take them all away and we will be fine theory. I can not wait to get the hell out of this mess of a state, anyone want to buy a house 30 mins from DC and 5 from the Bay?      By the way anyone hear about the DOD cop that shot a dog in the dog park in Severn MD, the biggest problem around here is that since no one but authorities are allowed to carry they get extremely pissy with anyone who does not respect there authority. They tried to make like it was no big deal but people bitched enough that now he gets a couple misdemeanors for it. Total BS.

29

Things that make you go "Hmmm":

Why is it that liberals rag on abstinence-only sex education curricula, and then embrace that same idea (abstinence only) when it comes to gun control?

 

30 Sorry to ramble it is just a topic that gets to me living in MD. Here most people nowadays cannot function without calling 911 or similar because to deal with something straight on is hard. Not crime but just anything! This is such a nanny state it is hard to explain to anyone except as the posters above acknowlege you have lived here. And so yes the argument layed out makes perfect sense, no responsibility means no consequence or making any kind of decision on anything, long live the King! 

31 While you're calling 911 because your wife is being raped...the cops are at McD's checking on an assholes McNuggets.

32 Get a gun. (rifle first, then shotgun and pistol)
Get training.
Get ready.

If you are a conservative and down own, shame on you.

Russ from Winterset, rural communities are a whole H*ll of a lot better, and smarter, than they are given credit for...just sayin'.

33 don't own not down own

34 Chicken or the Egg?

The first gun control (prohibition) laws were against slaves carrying, whether the master approved or not. The next set of gun control laws targeted blacks whether slaves or not. Then soonandsoforth after the civil war...

The democrat controlled cities maintain that tradition to this day.

35 I think it is very odd that in places where I could carry a firearm, I never thought I needed one, and in those places where a firearm was prohibited, I wished I had one.  Many years ago, I took a wrong turn as I was entering Missouri and wound up lost in East St. Louis, Ill. about 2:00 am.  I wanted a bazooka.

36
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