I’ve been gone a week, so Jason Kilgore of Cesefire Oregon managed to write one blog post. His previous post show him again alone supporting his cause pushing a plywood boxcar (the two kids with him are his adopted children who are too young to know better).
His latest is typical hate-propiganda. Take absurd things said by the fringe and attempt to conflate it to the group. Those of you who read my blog probably know my rules of engagement. There are lots of people who might chime out “Hey, let’s kill all these gun nuts!” or “We need to repeal the 2nd Amendment”, or “All gun owners are murderers!”. But when you look at WHO these people are, they’re nobodies, and given that their words speak only for themselves, the fact that they’re evil or crazy doesn’t really further the cause. I mean anybody can say anything, but it doesn’t mean that if somebody is pro-gun and says something stupid doesn’t mean they stand for anybody else. Still paid members of the gun culture or the gun lobby DO. Not only do they speak for many, but if they go off the reservation there is fallout. See Jim Zumbo.
This is why I pick on people like Jason Kilgore, and Joan Peterson, and Ladd Everett. Not only are they extremist, illogical, irrational, and totally against private gun ownership, but they hold positions within various anti-gun groups. When Ladd Everett gets CSGV’s twitter account suspended for stalking and making threats, or calling for vigilante violence against George Zimmerman, he continued to hold his position in CSGV, and continues to get money from the Joyce Foundation. When Joan Peterson openly admits the mass confiscation of private firearms is a great idea, she continued to hold her position on the Brady Campaign board, as well as Joyce Funded Protect Minnesota. And of course Jason Kilgore is still out there using Cease Fire Oregon’s logo on his blog and public appearances, despite all of his adorable actions.
Its really a big deal when they speak, as they speak for groups bigger than themselves, and when their superiors continue to support them without comment, they are openly endorsing their words and positions. I get a lot of latitude to write this blog because my words and opinions are my own, and the support I get is from you the readers. But it means I don’t need to censor my opinions as not to offend those above me who support me.
Still I love this:
Fear and paranoia are the stock and trade of the gun industry, at least in the self-defense market. You wouldn’t buy a gun for self-defense unless you had an unhealthy dose of fear to drive the purchase. Unless you make your livelihood in law enforcement, security, bail bondsman, or some other high-risk job, or are actively being stalked, then chances are that fear is better characterized as paranoia, since the average citizen isn’t likely to ever need a gun to protect themselves, and having a gun actually increases your chance of being killed.
If you doubt that last statement, consider the facts. A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to harm you than to protect you. And if you carry that gun on the street with you, you are 4.5 times more likely to be killed.
But the gun industry wants you afraid — very afraid. Not just of the bad guys, but even of our government. Be afraid of the stranger on the street, too, and in coffee houses, restaurants, and schools. You never know what they may be thinking, so you’d better carry a loaded gun with you at all times! Guilty until proven innocent.
Ok so he’s citing the Kellerman Study that Arthur Kellerman won’t even support, and has even amended the numbers Kilgore is citing, and the Branas study, which makes zero distinction from people lawfully carrying guns, and criminals carrying guns as part of their illegal acts.
Ironic that he’s citing two bogus studies that have been discredited so thoroughly, and claiming we’re instilling paranoid fear. BTW I’ll do a full review when I finish it, but I’m halfway through On Killing . Its a good book, and I’m glad it was recommended. Right now the author has only hinted at his feelings of how human psychology reacts to killing other people in the civilian world, but in his extensive research on battlefield killing from per-history to our present actions in Iraq and Afganistan, is that overall people are VERY reluctant to kill other people, even when given direct orders from their country and superior officers. The reluctance to kill can be mitigated by MANY factors (I’ll save that for the review), but overall the type of killing talked about by anti-gun people: wanton murder, and people killing others over minor arguments and encounters, are psychologically almost impossible by his findings. If a soldier is reluctant to shoot at advancing enemy soldier advancing his position, then it goes further to say that people will be reluctant to kill another person for a traffic accident or over a difference of opinion.
Grossman DOES note that about 2% of people within the military population have no such reservations on killing. He notes that these people can probably be diagnosed with “Sociopathy” (Tho he’s reluctant to apply this diagnosis, as most of them are NOT violent people outside of war and combat, and “Sociopath” has a negative connotation, while these “Natural Soldiers” are great people and heroes.) Still he does note that in the general population that about 3% of people are estimated to have this mental state, and many of them are NOT fit for military life.
Still my main point is that most people are VERY reluctant to kill except in the gravest extremes, and even then might even die rather than kill another of their own species….but that there is a very small number of people with almost no reluctance to murder. We all know that these people are not perturbed by the laws of society, so any law passed to restrict them is going to be ignored, and even if things like guns are totally unavailable, we know that won’t stop them either.
So the big argument is of course arm all the good people who so choose to go armed, continue to deny the people who have been proven through due process to be dangerous, and overall the end result is the deck stacked against the bad people.
Simple logic, rather than fear-mongering. But fear-mongering is all they have!
Carry your damn guns, people!
