To illustrate one of the more reckless fallacies within the pro-gun community’s rhetoric, let’s envision a scenario in which knife violence has been haunting the national imagination in a frenzied, nightmarish way.
Let’s say knife headlines are everywhere. Let’s say there’s been a notably savage incident in recent weeks, and let’s say it was savage enough to have inspired a political response.
Let’s bear in mind that basically everyone is a knife owner. We’ve all got sharp stuff in our kitchen drawers, right? Steak knives, fish knives, apple peelers. But we all likely meet the expectations for responsible knife-ownership without even thinking about it.
Let’s say, though, that the knives which have been used in knife attacks are of a trademarked and highly suspect ilk. They’ve been dubbed “Assault Knives” by those in the know but in fact they’re more like swords. They’re big, fat, almost industrial pieces of equipment that must be hefted upon one’s back a la Final Fantasy VII. They have zero practical uses. Deployment as cutlery or camping accoutrement would be preposterous even in the realm of practical joke.
In this alternate universe, let’s say the proposed political response is aimed only at these humongo-knives: weapons, recall, which have “Assault” in their official name.
That any American who uses knives every day — to cut her meat, say, or to gamely scrape up the dregs of his strawberry jam — would feel personally affronted by said legislation is absurd.
This article appears in Jan 16-22, 2013.
We are a kneejerk society because of our media because what is shoved down our throats on tv….
Thankfully there is Scene…
You retards are just a good read!!!!
Nice point of view, Sam. It sometimes seems as though there is an element trying to get gun owners to start protesting like they did in Iraq or in the wild west–when they just shoot up in the air and let the bullets fall as they will. And then when one injures someone they all just start shooting at each other in utter chaos. Some would call this a natural reduction of the excited ones of a population, but as in all crowds there are those who may become a help to the cultures in which they are born into. With 7 billion humans on earth life sometimes seems cheap and expendible by any and all means possible including war and murder.
I mean, in The Limits To Growth we learned that the lillies of the pond will thin themselves out by hogging all the resource and starving the bios. I’m glad I switched to almost all electronic image and am weeeding my bio from my thinking and my behavior altogether. My bio is now down to just a need for about 72 oz. of Bud Ice per day and some chicken noodle soup and maybe a few tokes on a nice seedless ‘fat boy’. Other than that, the sleep and walking of the bio seems like enough maintenance.
Lets ban all children that sass back at Mom and Dad and those that don’t clean their rooms. Lets have a intelligence test given to all drivers so we get the assholes off the road.
Lets take away all guns from Po-Lice that have Domestic Violence convictions.
Lets ban idiot Mayors that rape the wallets of the waning populace of the City by imposing unvoted taxes on Water Bills.
I have guns, knives and swords, haven’t shot, stabbed or lopped off the head of anyone lately that I can remember.
Sorry, but there are always bad apples in a barrel, and I am sick and tired of the law abiding citizen getting it rammed up his or hers kazoo because of a few bad people.
Maybe if the States installed an express lane for the Electric Chair and not 30 and 40 years of appeals, these Morons would stop and think before they had a bout with Johnny Walker then decide to hurt innocents.
Gun control advocacy tip #14: Don’t mention knife murder rates, which have been soaring in Britain since their ban on handguns. Their overall murder rates have finally come back down to where they were before the ban was enacted.
I also like the implication that most shootings or murders are committed with assault weapons. Not even remotely true, the expense and unconcealability of assault weapons makes them essentially noise level in crime. Daddy’s hunting shotguns or self-defense pistol have killed many, many times more people than all types of rifles have killed.
annals….I misread that and had a laugh quietly to myself btw….
Holy crap, that’s quite the collection of hardware right there….
So…Brady says they aren’t trying to take your guns away…
“We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest. . . . [W]e’ll have to start working again to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen the next law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. . . . The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition-except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors-totally illegal.”
Richard Harris, A Reporter at Large: Handguns, New Yorker, July 26, 1976, at 53, 58 (quoting Pete Shields, founder of Handgun Control, Inc. (aka the Brady Campaign)