Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Burn The Witches!

The wonderful thing about Lucianne is it only takes a few minutes of scrolling to find something that makes me want to punch the monitor. Easy-peasy inspiration for a post.

Now comes one Robert Smith Jr. writing in the Detroit News Political Blog, and offering a no nonsense approach to the violence plaguing the communities of America - Burn The Witches!... I mean ban the guns... whatever.

Combining historical illiteracy with an utter disregard for logic, and wrapping the whole in a thick sheath of hysteria, Mr. Smith concentrates more dimwittery in four short paragraphs than most pro-crime hacks do in forty.

I encourage you to read the entire post, but a few excerpts are in order...

The right to bear arms is killing all of us. In 2005 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 3,006 children and teens killed by gunfire, most of them young, black men in inner-city neighborhoods.

Uh... that's not all of us, and I do not think it's the second amendment that's down in the hood bustin' caps. Some of us even use that pesky right to bear arms as a means of not being killed.

Then there's this head scratcher...

We need to ensure that those we elect to public office are not so stuck on protecting us from another British invasion that they cannot enact legislation that will limit the number of guns in our country.

Yeah, those perfidious Brits, still hanging around waiting for their chance to come in and take over. A limey peril is what it is, and if we're not armed to the teeth it's tea and crumpets for us buddy.

The country's urban centers are loaded with stupid, violent people, doing stupid, violent things, and the decent people who live there are the ones to suffer. Human brutality does not have a cause - it is a default position. It is decency and civilization which have causes, and when those enabling causes are suppressed, the result is a Hobbesean dystopia.

For decades, our politicians, public intellectuals, and community leaders have been actively undermining the causes of prosperity and decency for their own short term gain (bailouts anybody?), so it should come as no surprise that the rising tide of barbarism thus enabled is swamping the vulnerable first.

Mr. Smith, those who encourage false solutions, obscure truth behind rhetoric, and appeal to magic instead of reason are helping kill people more surely than lack of worthless gun laws.

6 comments:

me said...

That guy looks NOTHING like Robert Smith from the cure, are you SURE they're related?

The problem with bing "allies" with the limey bastards is that we get lots of their oppressive nanny state shit, something we, last time I looked at history, fought a war over.

The reporting is so sensationalized that it makes stars of the infamous murderers in the poor black communities. Young men often tell their friends to watch the 6 o'clock news for their action.

So, that's a gun or gun owners fault? Sounds more like an issue with the media and mentality that reality TV has created. Since we're already working on shit-canning preexisting rights why not get rid of the media and the first amendment too.

wv=ducky, the way that RSJ walks, like a ducky.

Anonymous said...

He IS from Detroit; anyone who can think has already left there (well, except for Karen DeCoster). Anyway, it's not the guns, it's the drugs. Let's ban drugs! We haven't tried that yet, have we?

Earl said...

I went, I read, I tried to leave my opinion on his article and was a fool, they didn't really want my opinion.

I remain certain that anyone that writes such opinions or reads and agrees with such opinions should not be allowed to keep and bear arms - they certainly would be less dangerous that way.

Robert Langham said...

You were right. Simple-mindedness at its best.

Now, how am I going to get a Garand to you so that you can practice a bit handling it before the National Matches?

Blackfork6@aol.com

Kevin said...

You missed this bit of innumeracy:

The Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois gun killings took 32 lives, and the world was upset and every day 128 young people are shot to death in hard-pressed, poor communities across America and there is no outcry to change it

Let's see: 128 x 365 = 46,720

Sooooo, there are 46,720 homicides by gunshot in "hard-pressed, poor communities across America" each year?

Didn't anybody vet this op-ed before publication? According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2005 (most recent data available) there were 12,682 homicides by firearm, about 1/4 of the number this guy touts.

Once again I am struck by the fact that gun ban proponents seem to feel it necessary to blow the (admittedly bad) statistics completely out of proportion. I am reminded once again of author Jean Hanff Korelitz's assertion in a Salon piece that "more than 4,000 children...die in gun-related accidents each year." A number (if you believe "children" are 17 years of age and under) that is more than 31 times higher than the actual statistic.

These are extreme examples, but they're not all that unusual. Scaaaary Numbers! are part of the modus operandi of the gun ban crowd, and one of the reasons I became an activist.

These people piss me OFF.

the pistolero said...

These people piss me OFF.
Me, too...unfortunately their co-bloggers aren't any more enlightened.