So in this post Joan Peterson of the Brady Campaign and Joyce Foundation talks about people claiming she wants to ban and confiscate guns. She rambles on-and-on, but never actually says weather or not she desires to ban and confiscate guns. She does say in a few comments that she has no desire to ban or confiscate, but, bottom line she doesn’t say that she wants to do much of anything. Let’s have a look shall we?
As I first referenced she’s recently done a pair of posts where she talks about the merits of closing the “Gunshow Loophole”, only her “support” is talking about illegal guns bought from a state that has no such “loophole”, and talking about people committing felonies selling various guns knowingly to prohibited people.
Ok let’s look at a few more data points before we start trying to decipher what’s REALLY being said. Next look at this post. This is a response to this recent case where Texas is considering lowering the minimum age for a CCW permit from 21 to 18.
In her post she references a 19 year old ex-con who murdered two people while still on parole. (anybody who knows ANYTHING about gun laws should see the red flags on that issue), then she goes on about 14, 15, and 16 year old children committing a large number of crimes, including illegally carrying and using firearms. Seeing a pattern yet?
Let’s look at this one. Joan is beating one of her more bizarre drums, somehow implying that if wife-beaters got rid of their guns, domestic violence would be cured or drastically improved. (again, they call them wife-beaters for a reason). Several people chime in with very expert opinions, that while they totally admonish domestic violence, and have no sympathy for violent people, the current system is rife with abuse. Sean even penned an awesome post showing exactly how messed up the law Joan is praising is. Of course she doesn’t address any of these points.
Seeing anything in common? Well first up they’re near Non sequitur territory, as she’s either arguing for or against laws and “supporting” her argument with real-world cases that have almost NOTHING to do with said law. But there’s more. Let’s look a little deeper.
Try This One. Where a man with a conceal carry permit and armed finds himself in a vary strange situation where he’s looking for a romantic interest that he has no contact info for.
Odd story, yes. Any crimes committed, no. Gun have much relevance? No not really. But she thinks it was a mistake for him to be armed.
How about this one? A crazy woman threatens some store patrons, and Joan goes on a long lecture about how people shouldn’t carry guns because if you get angry you won’t be able to control yourself with the gun. First up, that’s bullshit. Do you have kitchen knives at home? Have you ever gotten mad behind the wheel of a car? Are you currently in Jail? I’d suspect that 99% of all people will answer “yes, yes, no”, because you CAN control yourself when angry, and knives and a vehicle can be just as deadly as a gun. But here’s the big issue, the woman she was talking about DIDN’T HAVE A GUN. Not only that she’s likely prohibited from owning a gun.
Should be pretty clear now. But another one that’s just nuts. A politician makes an analogy saying “I want to be George Patton – put anything in my scope and I will shoot it.”, and claiming this is calling for the assassination of the President, and further reason to support “Common Sense Gun Control”.
OK it should be near crystal clear now, but I have one last post from Joan to reference. She starts off by referencing another Joyce Foundation blog that talks about gun accident, and she gives some rather sloppy gun advice. Not BAD advice, but also not very helpful. I mean what does “Think before you shoot would be a good idea.” actually mean? Overall she mostly talks about mandating trigger locks for guns. First I must say I’m not impressed with them from a security standpoint. I’ve done the icepick trick. Also I got a defective lock from my gunsmith one evening, and after laughing at the irony he took 10 seconds with dremel tool and ground it right off. Also trigger locked guns still can be stolen, also putting a trigger lock on a LOADED gun is VERY dangerous. Lastly it makes using the gun defensively take much longer. All of this for a “problem” that is EXTREMELY rare.
Ok so what are we reading between the lines? Well she’s not being very honest, as most of her proposed laws don’t address the stories she references, and she admits that accidental shootings are very uncommon.
All of her proposed laws are an inconvenience and hindrance to lawful gun owners. Its not just her. Kurt Hoffman takes Josh Sugarmann to the woodshed on his most recent post. Josh pulls one of the goofs they tell you not to do in statistics class and compares a demographic set with the general population. In this case its CCW holders, and looking at suicide rates. Not only does “General Population” include people like infants who are physically unable to take their own lives, as well as all the sub demographics that are unlikely to take their own lives, but also the “people who are dead by suicide demographic” as well as the sub-group we’re looking at, people with CCW. Not only is the numbers generated worthless, it also doesn’t point to any conclusion. Is Josh proposing eliminating CCW to save a handful of lives? Doe he think permits are killing people? He doesn’t say. Or how about Brady Board member Colin Goddard who was shot by a gun legally bought at a gun shop with a 10-round magazine (Glock 19, but the magazines were bought on Ebay that only allowed 10-round or less magazines to be sold) calling for things like background checks at gun shows, and “assault weapon” bans.
Again there is no support that these laws would accomplish anything at all, but they do inconvenience lawful gun owners. Do you think they have a point where they will stop restricting and inconveniencing? Well given that their proposed laws are not effective, and they can’t even reference relevant stories, I’d suspect not.
Now do you wonder why Joan didn’t feel the need to clearly state that she doesn’t want to ban guns, and when asked will not approve of the ownership of any specific guns.
If they can’t ban them all they will strive for whatever they CAN do.
We must continue to fight them!
Keep up the fight!
