Weer'd World

So Joan Peterson has a post up on banning dangerous things. In the comments frequent commenter Molonlabe points out that her whole premise is bullshit because gun control laws don’t lower violent crime, and allowing good people to carry guns doesn’t raise crime or violence. Again the old saw of them making claims of the “Wild West” and then in response to their nightmares violent crime goes DOWN, and the FBI reports the NICS lines are blowing up with the number of people buying guns.

Now of course Joan responds.

Hmmm- nice molon. I’m working on it and I think you are wrong.

Pretty typical Joan, no thinking, and a re-affirmation that she hasn’t changed her mind. So I dropped a line in the water and amazingly it was published.

Honest question, Joan. Is there a piece of data that could be presented to you where you WOULD change your mind?

Note I say this as a Gun Control advocate who DID change his mind when I was presented with said data.

Oddly she approved my comment, but her response tells me she didn’t read a word of it.

I don’t rule anything out. You?

I think I just explained that, didn’t I? But of course not even anything that could be claimed a satisfactory answer.

I doubled down on my question, and we’ll see where it goes, I suspect Joan didn’t answer because she knows NOT to answer.

So while we wait let me expand on my transition point from anti-gun to pro-gun. First up I would say that my first few trips to the range did NOT convert me. If anything they turned me from a Carolyn McCarthy-style anti (Ban them all, and I don’t know shit about them) to essentially a Fudd. (Ban all of them…except for these guns that I like…)

But let’s go on the basis of why I hated guns and felt something needed to be done about them. The big umbrella was that guns did more harm than good, so a ban or heavy restriction would make things BETTER. The basis for the “More harm than good” was #1 the Arthur Kellerman “Study”, I didn’t know the name of this study, or even quoted Kellerman’s finding properly. I certainly was unaware of what a HORRIBLE bit of ramshackle science it was, still I believed that if you had a gun in your house chances were VERY good you’d do something very horrible rather than anything you’d be pleased with. Of course TV and Movies also seemed to support this theory. I also believed that people who kept guns for self defense very rarely used them, essentially making them a bit on the paranoid side.

Also given that my years as an Anti were in the 90s, I also believed that so-called “Assault Weapons” were actual military weapons, and were more powerful than the more traditional hunting guns in calibers like .30-30 Win, .30-06, and .308 Win. (If any people who don’t immediately get that, reference click on any of those above links, and then compare the ballistic energy with the ubiquitous “Assault Weapon” cartridges like 5.56x45mm NATO or 7.62x39mm)

Learning to shoot took my fear away from guns, but it also got me INTERESTED with guns which got me to read the above information. Of course it went like a waterfall, when you expose one lie, you start looking for MORE lies…and when you FIND them. Well you have two choices, switch sides, or live a lie.

I suspect Joan thinks Molanlabe is wrong, and won’t answer my question because she chose the latter. She knows what she’s doing, and she knows what she campaigns for cause more harm than good, and as somebody who lost a love one to violent crime, he proposition will have MORE people feeling the same grief she did.

Joan Peterson is an evil woman, and I don’t use that term lightly. Just think of what must be wrong with such a person to live in this age, and know what she knows, and still do what she does.