Weer'd World

So I’ve found a TON of anti-gun images recently, I’ve been really busy to write a post about each and every one, so I decided to combine a bunch of them in one.

All of these images have the same thing in common. They are straw men. They are factually incorrect and intellectually dishonest, but through those underhanded means the antis can ATTEMPT to make an argument.

First up is a classic:

Yep, the old “The 2nd Amendment is only about muskets” lie. First up, while the Brown Bess Musket was the primary infantry gun for both the British Empire and the American Colonists, it wasn’t the ONLY gun in existence at the time. There were large-capacity military weapons at the time, and rapid-fire weapons as well. They didn’t work as well in battlefield conditions and weren’t as cheap as the old Bess, but it’s hard to imagine that NONE of the framers (especially people like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who were both world travelers, futurists, and technology g33ks) were aware of guns like this, nor that any of them thought that the old front-stuffers were the apex of technology for the end of time.

Of course the irony extends that people will post this cartoon on the INTERNET and fail to see the irony. The Bill of Rights is not some interesting time capsule that freezes our rights in the 18th Century. There is no anti-freedom outrage that police need a warrant to search your car or cellphone, tho the carriages in the 18th Century were pretty wide open, and phones, let alone SMART phones didn’t exist at all.

No they just hate guns, and if they can get rid of all the MODERN ones, that’s at least a START for them.

Now this:

Now at the surface I kinda get this one. The Open Carry movement has been handing us some interesting setbacks. It’s fairly easy to imagine that we may have created a monster of unintended consequences. Still the idea that Open Carry people are somehow violent menacing golems is just ridiculous. Of course the antis NEED for them to be violent and dangerous for their arguments to work, because in the end the downside of open carry activists is they makes some people FEEL uncomfortable. That sucks, but it makes me FEEL uncomfortable with all these anti-freedom activists claiming I’m some sort of murderer on the edge of sanity because I own guns.

That doesn’t give me warrant to strip them of THEIR rights….but they don’t agree with the converse of that.

Now the last few are all on the NRA and anybody reasonable’s position that the school “Gun Free Zone” policy doesn’t do much to PREVENT crimes, and I would say is ENCOURAGES it!

Yep, we WANT kids carrying AR-15s to school! That gets said all the time! This is just as big a strawman argument as you can make.

This one at least has a grain of truth in it. I mean hiring private security, or police officers to guard schools is EXPENSIVE! Even if you have a big school that gets a lot of tax dollars, it doesn’t make the situation more affordable than rural schools. They have more money, but they have more students and areas to guard.

So the solution has been two major ideas. #1. Volunteers, and #2 Allowing Teachers and staff to carry.

Now none of these proposals have been as simple as lifting the ban from the books and turning the school into EVERY OTHER PLACE IN THE COMMUNITY. I’d be all for that, given that there isn’t “blood in the streets” outside the school, and sadly school shooters behave themselves UNTIL they get to school.

Still even THAT rather liberal proposal doesn’t HAND guns to unwilling and untrained parties.

Reality is that people carrying on school grounds have been asked to take additional and extensive training in order to make sure they are safe. I’m willing to accept this, still now we’re DAMN far from the image in the cartoon.

So yeah, reality isn’t friendly to anti-gun people, and much like them cooking up bogus studies to suit their needs, they cook up a bogus reality so that banning guns isn’t the worst idea ever!

This is a good one:

First let’s see the video

Ok step one, look at that disclaimer at the front-and-center. Now look at the image. Billy Johnson works for the NRA but speaks for himself. Now we can reflect that NRA is not horribly offended by his statements, as he has not be fired from his position. Still this is the FURTHEST thing from “NRA Policy”.

Still I don’t see what the big deal is. We’re one of the most heavily armed countries in the world. Guns are out there. We also have a ton of roads and cars, so we teach kids how to safely cross the street. We teach kids about the dangers of illegal drugs. We teach kids the ins-and-outs of sex, and the dangers of it.

That last one can be oped out of in most schools, but there are some schools where the sex ed class is mandatory. I’m fine with that, sex can indeed be dangerous, emotionally, and physically. My parents taught me about sex long before the teachers were talking about it. It was a smart move, it meant THEY were teaching those lessons, and anything my teachers had to add were simply supplemental, and given that I had a good understanding of the issue, I could easily ask questions.

But for folks not as proactive as mine, sex is still out there, and the desires are still there. Ignoring them won’t make them go away, and very well might make them worse. The same goes for guns. Guns exist, and even if you don’t like guns or have them, they are out there. I fail to see how basic firearms safety can in any way be a DETRIMENT to people.

Hell that’s why I shot my first gun. I was 19, I didn’t understand or like guns, but to burn an afternoon and learn how to use guns seemed like a no-brainer.

Turned out to have changed my life, but it doesn’t have that effect on everybody.

Of course the real reason why anti-rights people (who constantly crow about “safety”) wouldn’t want something like this taught to age-appropriate children is it puts guns in a light that shows them as ANYTHING but bad.

They can’t have that. They can’t show how FUN it is to shoot guns. They can’t show people saving lives with guns. They can’t show history with guns. They can’t show family connection with guns.

They can only show them as horrible lumps of pure evil, because ONLY THEN do their ravings look sane.

Also check out Sean touching on the same subject.