“Discussion”

It appears that Joan Peterson of the Brady Campaign and the Million Mom March has a new post up. I’ll let her words speak for themselves:

I saw this posted at the place where I exercise. “Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier”. This is pretty apropos to the “discussion” that has been going on lately on my blog. My posts have been peppered by comments, some of them quite nasty, rude and inappropriate. Many questions have been asked of me and answers demanded. Often the questions are answered by me but the answers are “unacceptable” to the commenters so they ask them again or ask in another way. So I have decided to play “20 questions.”

Wow, Come down of the Cross, Joan, we could use the wood! Talk about playing the hell out of the Victim card! Especially when she makes it very clear that “quite nasty, rude and inappropriate” include me using the word “Hon” in a comment.

Still a good deal of people have left answers to here 20 questions. You can read them in the comments, but two good sets are by Bob and Sebastian in a Q&A format that is really easy to read. I will first up say that overall I find myself as close to 100% aligned with Bob on the issues any most anybody on the ‘net, so his set sounds about as close to mine would sound, just with a Texas twang. Sebastian and I differ on a number of gun issues, but I must say he also slaps them out of the park.

As for me, I’ll answer just one:

Will you continue a reasonable discussion towards an end that might lead somewhere or is this an exercise in futility?

Seeing as Ms. Peterson has deleted 90% of my comments (All of them reasonably polite, tho I reserve the right to have a slightly grouchy tone to a person who is openly and deliberately misrepresenting the truth so that they may deprive myself, and other good people a protected right…not to mention most of the things she is calling for have been tried here, and in other nations and have been proven failures, and somebody of her position should be well aware of this) and is well aware of my blog which has open comments, and has received very simple questions from people on my side of the issue, that she feels the need to ignore or give very politically guarded actions, I would say this is definitely an exercise in futility when it boils down to an open discussion between Ms. Peterson and gun-rights advocates. I will also point out that Ms. Person is deeply involved in the anti-rights lobby, being a Board member of the Brady Campaign and a chapter President of the Million Mom March. When I myself switched sides from anti-gun to pro-gun it was a difficult pill to swallow, but I was a college student at the time, so I didn’t need to sever any serious political ties to do it. Given that Ms. Peterson is selfish enough to parade out her own dead sister when advocating laws that had nothing to do with that tragic death, I don’t see her as somebody even remotely invested in discussing the issues.

What I DO see as useful is reading the well-written and polite responses found in her comments, as well as reading the thoughts of the bloggers attached to them. I also think it will be interesting to watch the resulting fallout of gun rights advocates accepting her challenge. I can’t imagine she’ll deviate from the “Sad But Predictable” parameters very far, and has already exhibited most signs.

I will say that back when I was much less cynical I played such a game over at MikeB’s blog. He was feigning interest in the issue and asked for the pro-gun people he had attracted to his festering troll-blog to answer a few questions.

I deem my participation as a net-loss on grounds that the answers were mostly ignored, but also a small handful of answers were cherry-picked from the substantial compilation and were misrepresented for his anti-gun spin.

I don’t see Joan Peterson’s behavior to be much different than Sparky’s…but I will continue to read her blog for the purposes of opposition research and furthering human rights, but also to see if her curiosity might not be legitimate.

This entry was posted in Guns, Politics. Bookmark the permalink.

0 Responses to “Discussion”

  1. Bob S. says:

    Weer’d,

    Thanks for the link and the compliment.

    I answered the questions out of my own sense of integrity. I ask her questions and would like answers, so I felt compelled to answer. I’m really surprised my answers made it to publication on her site though.

    What do don’t find surprising is the fact she is not approving comments I made in response to MikeB302000 — Gee, here is someone with first hand experience at how guns flow from legal to illegal and she isn’t even letting the questions to him be seen. (Much less MikeB302000’s reluctance to answer questions about his firearms, ownership and use — when he constantly questions other gun owners).

    I also pointed out in my post how Joan doesn’t seem to be as interested in ‘thoughtful discussion’ as she says. Several times she says she has previously discussed issues on her blog, but I’ve found no proof of those issues being raised.

    Nor does she seem interested in discussing them again….so how much discussion does she really want?
    Apparently not much

    • Weerd Beard says:

      What I wonder is somebody who is such a provable liar, getting so butthurt when people call her just that!

      Even funnier is her PUBLISHING you exposing her lies. They are a strange lot indeed!

  2. mike w. says:

    One of the “nasty” posts of mine which actually made it through was a two-part question regarding police officers. Her “response” was one word. “yes.”

    I don’t know about you, but in my world a one word answer to an involved two-part question is not only unacceptable, it’s borderline nonsensical.

    Also, She says something I know to be false. I point out that it’s a lie, providing facts which prove it as such and somehow I’m a rude, nasty asshole. OK then lady. Let’s call a spade a spade. If someone spouts easily refutable lies I will refute them and call them a liar. There’s nothing uncivil about that. Joan Peterson just doesn’t like having her lies challenged.

  3. I don’t see Joan Peterson’s behavior to be much different than Sparky’s…

    For what it’s worth, I think you’re probably right.

    For the moment, it’s worthwhile to me to assume good faith, be a dissenting voice on her comments pages, and see where it goes. But I won’t be at all surprised if it ends up going nowhere.

  4. Pingback: The Anti-Freedom Religion | Weer'd World

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *