Blasted Fools has decided that at the present time, the greatest danger to the tradition of individual rights in America is the ruthless push by liberals to bulldoze the 2nd Amendment and personal property rights. As such, I’m going to be placing editorial emphasis on this issue going forward for however long it takes all of us to sustain a successful pushback against the instincts of fascist authoritarians. With that in mind, I thought it would be of value to my readers to catalog a few key misnomers, myths, distortions and points of disinformation being circulated by the legacy media. Not just that, but to provide coherent arguments that you can use defensively against that propaganda.
I could have called this post ‘What Progressives understand about guns’. It would have saved me a lot of work. I could have just left the page completely blank. In no particular order, here are the sources, where available, and the distortions of fact:
1. The ‘Reverse Slippery Slope’ argument. This one is pretty ludicrous to any sensible person wishing to engage in an honest discussion about what the 2nd Amendment means when it says “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed”. Liberals will try to equate Semi-Automatic rifles with Rocket Propelled Grenades, Mortar Launchers, Tanks, Explosives and other munitions employed in the theater of war by Military personnel. Here is a recent quote by no other than the President’s ‘point man’ on gun violence himself, ‘Say it Ain’t So’ Joe Biden:
“You have an individual right to own a weapon both for recreation, for hunting and also for your self-protection,” he said. “But just as you don’t have an individual right to go out and buy an F-15—if you’re a billionaire—with ordnance on it, just like you don’t have the right to buy an M-1 tank, just like you don’t have a right to buy an automatic weapon” you should not be able to get other weapons for which there is “no reasonable societal justification, or constitutional justification.”
The notion they are attempting to put forth here is two-fold. One, is that a Semi-Automatic rifle for sale on the gun market domestically is no different than weapons used in Afghanistan. The other is that if Congress or the President don’t do something to legislatively define what is permissible and not permissible to own, that Tea Party and / or Militia types will begin assembling an arsenal of military armaments.
F-15’s and M-1 tanks being introduced into a debate about solutions for gun violence? Anyone in the room with Biden that day, or any day, suffered irreparable damage to their I.Q.s.
2. “You don’t need an ‘Assault Weapon’ type firearm.” One of the tactics of the ‘Frankfurt School’ of Communism and Marxist dialectic, is to frame the argument with terminology that is deceitful and partisan. A common example of this (albeit, in reverse), is how liberals euphemistically refer to abortions (which are homicides), as ‘choices’. Once your opponent in a debate begins to accept the trumped up nomenclature that you have devised as prejudicial, he has already ceded crucial ground in the battle for the minds of the undecided.
Only people who have an aversion to guns and gun ownership refer to Semi-Automatic rifles as ‘Assault Weapons’ or ‘Assault Rifles’. Those are pejoratives. Reject those definitions at the very outset – don’t adopt them, repeat them or allow your opponent to get away with using them.
The ‘B’ part of this assumptive statement is that ‘no ordinary citizen needs such weapons’. Number one, and I would start here, is that “neither you or Congress, or the White House have any business or say so in telling me whether I need one or should have one or whether or not I have a legitimate use for one”.
Usually they will attempt to divert the argument away from your basic, unassailable constitutional rights towards some peripheral question such as whether a hunter would need a certain weapon or not. Here’s an example:
“How are you going to hunting with something like that?” asked Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, pointing to the assault weapons displayed to his left. “You kill something, there’s nothing left to eat.”
Classic example of false equivalency. Whether I use a Semi-Automatic rifle for hunting purposes or not, isn’t germane to the discussion of gun control in light of the 2nd Amendment. If Commissioner Ramsey wants to try to talk me out of using a Semi-Auto for hunting, he’s perfectly within his 1st Amendment right to voice that opinion and I’m within my right to tell him that his opinion stinks worse than the Chicago Stockyards. The fact remains that the 2nd Amendment warrants the right of the citizen to bear arms regardless of whether that citizen happens to practice the sport of hunting or not.
Hunting and self-defense fall within the realm of Natural Law rights and in the view of the Founders, needed no ratification. I don’t need Commissioner Ramsey’s approval of what type of firearm I prefer to use to defend my household, my property or my freedom.
But back to the hunting issue. A firearm for hunting purposes is essentially an implement – a tool, if you will. So for example, if I cut down a tree with an axe or I cut down the same tree with a chainsaw, does anyone have any authority or even ethical propriety to suggest, much less impose a directive on me as to how to go about accomplishing the task at hand? That’s just a theoretical example mind you. Trees are our friends. Don’t cut down any trees – there might be someone living in one.
Another analogy, that more people can relate to, of the absurdity of his comment is the selection and purchase of an automobile for transportation or leisure purposes.
A Toyota Prius takes you from point A to point B every bit as successfully as does a Bentley Continental GT. However, if I happen to want and am able to afford, a Bentley Continental GT Mulsanne with a 12 Cylinder engine producing 560 hp with a top end speed just short of 200 MPH, do I not have that choice without someone lecturing or moralizing to me about my choice being excessive? Once we bully and restrict choices for lawful citizens, we become something other than what America was meant to be. This is exactly why the Founding Fathers made the Second Amendment the anchor for all the others.
3. You’re being selfish by not relinquishing your ‘Assault Weapons’. Once again, can it with the Assault adjective, please? As a good courtroom attorney would proclaim “Objection, your honor, counsel’s descriptions are incompetent, irrelevant and assume facts not in evidence.” As to the selfish part of the accusation, your value judgment on me is unfounded and offensive and bears no connection to reality.
If lawful firearm owners prevent, halt or interrupt several hundred thousands of crimes annually, could it not be legitimately said that lawful firearm owners are essentially assisting law enforcement in the fight against crime? And if a citizen is using a firearm to prevent, halt or interrupt a crime, would it not follow that he is aiding society by using the best, most capable and effective tool that he can obtain in doing so? Certainly, a Semi-Automatic rifle, depending on the particular situation at hand, could be arguably the best crime fighting tool with which to resist well armed criminal assailants.
4. ” Police overwhelmingly favor more gun control measures”. This is a media created myth. The truth is quite another story altogether. The high visibility representatives from ‘Law Enforcement’ that the Vice President and the Obama Administration trot out at these Gun Violence summits and so forth, are by no means typical of the majority of command staff or rank and file officers. Almost always, when you see someone like Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey or Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca in the Amen Chorus at these staged media events, there are at least two factors in play. One is that the executives of these departments are from Blue cities – Democrat run.
The second factor is that in these Blue cities, the Mayor, City Council and City Manager call the shots politically and the Chief of Police is expected to not only fall in line, but to actively advocate city policies such as gun control and non-enforcement of immigration laws. For purposes of career longevity, they do. However, it has become apparent that in jurisdictions where Chiefs and Sheriffs are not under sway to city leaders and political considerations, these leaders resist legislative assaults on the 2nd Amendment rights of citizens and the ancillary, but considerably important right to defend one’s self, family and property. This is how LEAA Executive Director Jim Fotis explains the more prevalent view:
I’m a cop. I worked the streets. I learned how criminals act and how they think. I’ve used the sidearm my department issued to me. I’ve got the permanent physical reminders of a cop who more than once found himself in harm’s way during years of active “street” law enforcement. I survived a “classic shootout” trading shots at a distance of roughly seven feet, something most cops don’t survive. Believe me when I say I know viscerally the issues that most concern rank-and-file police. I’m not a political cop nor was I a fast-track desk jockey looking for my chance at a grin-and-grip color portrait autographed by the resident of the governor’s mansion or the White House.
Today, as the Executive Director of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA), I represent other cops, corrections officers, private law enforcement, crime victims, and citizens across the nation who are fed up with the futility and hypocrisy of our criminal justice system.
When I’m asked if cops support gun control, I respond with a clarification: If by gun control, you mean taking guns away from every sullen-eyed slack who pushed rock cocaine, ripped off old ladies, mugged a pensioner, murdered an equally low-life, gang banger competitor, or defined his social encounters in terms of robbery, rape or murder, the answer is a resounding yes!
Every real cop I know is all for ripping weapons away from violent, criminal street-slime. But that is not what gun control means to the Brady’s, the Clintons, Charles Schumer and, Dianne Feinstein. Their definition of gun control means restricting the rights of, and disarming, peaceable citizens. And the answer to that idea is a loud and clear, unambiguous “NO”, at least from real cops.”
The New American reports that Gilberton Borough Police Chief Mark Kessler is speaking out, and asking lawmakers in his small borough of around 1,000 people to pass a nullification measure. In a phone interview, Chief Kessler detailed his proposed “Second Amendment Preservation Ordinance,” which would prevent any federal or state infringements on the right to keep and bear firearms, accessories, or ammunition within the jurisdiction.
Section 21 of the Pennsylvania Constitution reads: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.” Virtually all other state constitutions contain similar protections. The U.S. Constitution, meanwhile, states explicitly that the right of the people to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.”
For Chief Kessler, like for countless Americans, the constitutional language is clear, and any pretended acts of legislation contradicting those simple guarantees should be viewed as null and void. “Hopefully this will spread like fire throughout the country, and the people will stand up and say, you know what, enough is enough, and under the Tenth Amendment, which grants the power of nullification of unconstitutional laws, we’re going to recognize this as unconstitutional, we’re not going to enforce it, we’re going to make sure this doesn’t happen,” the police chief said.
Typical of the men and women who actually patrol the streets from sea to shining sea, is the perspective of Lt. Harry Thomas of the Cincinnati Police Department:
“The majority of peace officers I’ve talked to agree that gun laws only result in armed criminals preying on defenseless citizens. Instead of useless anti-gun owner legislation, what we need and need right now are tough anti-crime measures. Anti-gun bills only cloud the real issue. And those of us who actually battle crime, pay the price.”
The Law Enforcement Alliance of America, representing over 100,000 law enforcement professionals, points to another revealing factor as to why some of the large city police administrations and some national organizations that are continually cited by the liberal media, advocate tougher restrictions on legal gun owners:
In one year during the Clinton Administration, the Police Executive Research Forum, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs Association and the Police Foundation collectively hauled in $4.4 million in Justice Department grants. Before then the Department of Justice dollars flowed just as freely. The International Association of Chiefs of Police raked in over $630,000. National Sheriffs Association cheerfully pocketed $516,943. The Police Executive Research Forum netted $447,343. The Police Foundation accepted a more modest $221,634.
Add up the totals [$1.8 million before, $4.4 million after] and you get a small peek at the economic and political clout the Clinton White House wielded in shaping public policy and buying national police groups into line. Every federal dollar dumped into law enforcement bank accounts is quite legal. Each has a perfectly “rational” explanation. It is merely coincidence that the police groups that scurried to do Clinton’ bidding happen to be the same ones that were awarded the lucrative federal grants.
Even though Clinton has been out of office for several years, the liberal influence over these police groups remains strong. However, despite all the payoffs and political arm-twisting, when the National Association of Chiefs of Police conducted a mail survey of 15,000 sheriffs and police chiefs in 1996, 93 percent said they approved of law-abiding citizens arming themselves for self-defense.
5. “Only Police should have guns”. This is timely. It’s only a matter of formality that Christopher Dorner went on a rampage, after he was dismissed from his position as a rookie LAPD officer. Certainly, it would have been impossible for him to go on a deadly spree, had he still been employed by law enforcement, right? I’m being facetious to point up a couple of things. One is that Police are every bit as subject to human frailties and failings as are citizens. So, how would our lives be safer with only firearms in the hands of Police? The answer is obvious – or should be. They wouldn’t, not even in the least.
Part of the implicit argument is that well, “you know, cops are trained to handle guns – for citizens to have them is dangerous to them and others”. Again, a fallacy based on a complex equivalency. Some, law enforcement ‘professionals’, despite all efforts at competent training procedures, are surprisingly lacking in competent handling of firearms. There have been instances where a veteran officer has given a talk to the community about gun safety and shot himself in the foot with his service weapon – fact. Some in the Blue uniform get casual and careless with guns and bad things happen. Bottom line – they pull their pants on one leg at a time just like you and I do.
The real problem with the ‘Only Police should have guns’ premise is that the concept is fundamentally flawed. Police are not possessed with the attributes of the almighty. They are not Omniscient or Omnipresent. If you find yourself confronted by a criminal, the odds are almost infinitesimal that a law enforcement officer is going to show up immediately on the scene like Superman, and save your life.
Safe communities start with personal responsibility. You are accountable and obligated to be the ‘primary responder’ for your family’s protection and your own. By the time the police draw a chalk circle around your lifeless body, it’s too late. By the time your daughter has been raped while you struggle to free yourself from the rope tied around your wrists, it’s too late.
6. Misinformed loud mouths in the anti-Gun choir. At a recent hearing in Washington, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) flipped through what appeared to be a gun catalog, rendering outlandish claims such as that retail AR-15s are easily modified to fire up to 800 rounds per minute and two, three or four rounds at a time. She also lamented that these firearms are capable of “tremendous velocity and tremendous killing power,” which “I suspect tears young bodies apart.”
800 rounds per minute, Ms., er, Senator Feinstein? Three or four rounds at a time? What the hell are you talking about? Has someone developed a portable Gatling gun, we don’t know about? Feinstein, or Feinkenstein, as I have dubbed her, seems also to be fixated on the cosmetic appearance of certain firearms, evidenced by her insistence that rifles which have a Bayonet mount, must be rendered verboten. I guess I also must not be up to date on the rash of Bayonet slayings of recent note. But these are the people that have been elected to make laws that devolve on life and death matters.
I imagine Ricky Ricardo would have exclaimed something like “Mira que tiene cosa la loco cabesa liberal esta!” Roughly translated, “How do you like these crazy headed liberals?” Ay-yi-yi!
Blasted Fools 
Marcus Cato
August 31, 2013
When it comes to denial, most self-identified “progressives” are riverboat queens. In the real world, the sociopathic “progressive” mind consistently oozes such preposterous “logic”, that their assertions come in only two sizes — “Extra large” and “Oh My God!”. It’s really hard for decent, thinking people to believe that these creatures do not know how comically preposterous they are.
Ultimately, ALL social discourse about the true effect of any quantity of firearms in the hands of ANY number of people, is totally irrelevant to the existence of our most basic, pre-constitutional rights for harmless, responsible adults to be armed with state-of-the-art firearms — IN TOTAL PRIVACY! Even the opinion of judges, presidents, self-styled messiahs, princes, kings, queens, legislators, philosophers, psychiatrists, professors or “hole-in-the-air” media blabbermouths, cannot refute the FACT that every harmless individual adult was born with the freedom to harmlessly exercise ANY objectively legitimate right (of which being armed is one). Such freedom cannot be LAWFULLY (as opposed to “legally”) denied, encumbered, restricted or REGISTERED! So, with sincere respect for everyone here, this debate itself is just a “tempest in a teacup”.
Legitimate, human rights (which are possessed ONLY by individuals — not groups) were not invented by humans. They were DISCOVERED, in much the same way that we discovered fire, or the laws of physics. Acknowledgment and protection of our BILLIONS of legitimate rights is the first and BEST reason for tolerating government in any form! When government fails to protect our legitimate rights, or becomes an obstacle to the harmless exercise of those rights, it is revealed as an enemy of life itself. Such a government is unworthy of respect, cooperation or the benefit of any doubt. It deserves nothing but contempt and revolt.
BTW, even if, by some miracle, the police COULD supply instantaneous protection against criminal attacks, we would STILL have the right to be armed — PERIOD!
Richard Cameron
August 31, 2013
the gun debate is effectively over, the rubicon has been crossed and there’s no turning back – thanks to the brave and visionary efforts of the young man – Cody Wilson, I profile here:
Marcus Cato
August 31, 2013
With rare exceptions, the typical “progressive” mind is carried by a faithless person who is secretly tortured by uncertain wonders and nameless fears. These burdens of the mind form the shifting foundation on which they build a world view and then, with shivering soul, they seek to impose that view on everyone else by the only tactics that can sustain their envy-tortured notions — brute force, fraud at the polls, traitorous “intellectuals”, perfidious judges, honor-less politicians and propagandist “journalism”. BOTTOM LINE: “Progressives” do nothing more noble than to promote toxic Utopian pabulum to a hapless public that is addicted to emotional opiates.
Lewis Sanborn
March 5, 2013
Fully support the breadth and width of this stance on our 2nd! Save this column and use it in response to ‘politically correct’ low information persons who want to sell their P.C. to other low information persons.
noremac7
March 5, 2013
Thank you Lewis. And in the few weeks since I wrote this column, more and more Sheriffs and other law enforcement authorities have come out with a thumbs down on more restrictive gun legislation aimed at law abiding citizens.
I plan to write a short history on the subject of the 18th Amendment, popularly known as ‘Prohibition’, which turned average Americans into law breakers and spurred the rise of organized crime in America. Since then, Congress and the White House have taken over from John Gotti and Tony Provenzano and are running the racket from the Hill.
Meanwhile, if you want to get the jump on me – the next time you hear some dope dribbling on about “we’ve got to do something about guns”, ask him about the 18th Amendment. See if he even knows what that was to begin with. Then ask him how that worked out. Guaranteed debate ender! Unless he’s a complete fool and didn’t listen to a word you said – in which case you cut off the argument.
There’s an old saying, “Don’t argue with a fool – ’tis like wrestling with a pig. The pig has a ball and all you wind up with is mud all over you”.
noremac7
February 19, 2013
Various of my regular readers, will commonly ‘Guerrilla Post’ links to these articles on online comments and forums where there is a back and forth going on between liberals and conservatives. In this way, we bodyslam the false liberal narrative, while at the same time, more importantly, gird up the loins of the marginally political ‘independents’, who are looking for logic based arguments to support what they instinctively believe to be true.
I also welcome you to sign up for alerts whenever new content is posted here at Blasted Fools, which is quite frequently (1 -3 times a week).
Tim
February 19, 2013
I aplaud this article! It should be printed in every newspaper in the country.