Gun Advocates Posing as "Victims of Bigotry" is Nonsense
For regular readers of the gun blogosphere, the meme of some gun advocates posing as “victims” of the so-called “bigtory” of people who disagree with them is not new.
Sebastian, for example, wrote a coda to Friday’s back-and-forth over a piece written last week by columnist Mark Morford, with Sebastian invoking the “bigotry” defense of gun advocates versus people who effectively argue against them.
In fact, the notion of “bigotry” is perhaps the pillar upon which the National Rifle Association itself has built its whole bogus empire. That is: “Aren’t you mad at those coastal elites who look down their noses at you and your ‘way of life’? You should be mad as hell. GET MAD AS HELL AT THOSE ELITES! Donate to us today.”
That’s basically the NRA’s pitch in a nutshell.
Some adherents of this mantra have taken it to bizarre extremes, in fact, likening their position to African-Americans in the Civil Rights movement. No, not kidding. Look at this latest stemwinder by Joe from Idaho.
In order to think this way, the key assumption such gun advocates have to make is that their guns and gun use are functionally identical to race, or sexual orientation — such that one’s status as a gun advocate is essentially an immutable characteristic.
From that flows the conclusion that anyone who disagrees with the effects of their gun advocacy — such as forcing families and children to accept semi-automatic pistols or assault weapons in the local Starbucks or other restaurant — is the same as those who refused service to African-Americans at a Woolworth’s lunch counter.
It is mind-boggling, but you’ve got to hand it to them: It takes a very skilled strategist to perform the social ju-jitsu necessary to turn what is, in essence, armed political bullying into victimization (after community members reject their tactics) and get others to nod their heads in agreement.
The truth, of course, is that guns and gun carrying are obviously not immutable characteristics of people, and that the whole cultural framework around the issue of gun violence prevention is a sham. (Brady Center Vice-President Dennis Henigan has exposed this most recently here and here.)
Guns are guns. They are tools designed to kill people, and are clearly the best tool for the job. In America each year guns are used to fulfill their function 30,000 times, while injuring another 80,000.
Yet regardless of what NRA propaganda might have us believe, Americans are not born with guns in our hands, and the regulation of where guns can be carried; what kinds of guns should be out of civilian hands; how guns should be stored; and whether suspected terrorists, felons, fugitives, wife-beaters or the dangerously mentally ill should be screened out of the gun-buying process by the strongest possible background check, have absolutely nothing to do with “culture” or “bigotry.”
It has everything to do with public safety, public health and common sense.
That, of course, is why gun advocates who oppose gun regulation of any kind — led by NRA strategists — do all they can to cloak themselves in the mantle of “civil rights,” pretend they’ve suffered trials even remotely equivalent to racial segregation and homophobia, and pose as “victims” of “bigotry” whenever people interested in a peaceful community free from the constant presence of guns so powerfully and effectively call out gun advocates on their political bully tactics.
There will always be some individuals who dislike other individuals for who they are. But when it comes to gun policy in this country, calling for a gun violence prevention safety net is not hatred for people with guns.
It is a hatred for the effects of guns in the hands of dangerous people who never should have had them in the first place, bound to the deep empathy we have for victims and survivors of gun violence who will never get their loved ones back, and fueled by a fierce determination to reduce as many of those horrific stories as we possibly can.
Currently, gun advocates — led by the National Rifle Association — are standing in the way of that progress.
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But the Bradys say we should trust the government.
36,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S., including murder, self-defense homicide, accidents and suicides.
300 million Americans, 90 million of whom own 200 million guns .
300,000 defensive uses of guns each year, often without anyone having to be shot.
99 of every 100 gun owners never charged with a single gun-related crime .
200,000 Americans die every year of MEDICAL ERROR.
Prolific Progressive critic of constitutionalists objects to being pawed and pwned by TSA.
He can't grasp that this is precisely what the (admittedly imperfect) Glenn Beck , Rush Limbaugh and (maybe) Sarah Palin and (certainly and especially) Tea Party conservatives and libertarians object to.
When you advocate against others' perceived rights, you sign The Contract.
I think it would kill them to write "gun RIGHTS advocate."
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/video-david-pakman-gets-porno-patdown-at-airport
Bigotry derives from the belief that one's own position is correct, and refusal to listen to other points of view.
That makes the Brady Campaign one of the most bigoted organizations on the face of the earth.
The "immutability" argument is a canard. There are very few things that are "immutable" - but if the standard for protection of a right (as in the right to keep and bear arms) was the immutability of the standard, then there would likewise be no protection for any of the rights in the Bill of Rights - no protection for speech , religion , freedom of association...
The Brady Campaign pushes for dictatorial/communist standards - and never bothers to refute the FACTS that make their position untenable. I listen to what they have to say - and then I evaluate. And it all comes out as hogwash.
i am like alot of the people i know, SICK OF THE BRADY BUNCH BIAS BULLS***. Please stop trying to convince people who wont be convinced
You have less credibility than the IPCC. Your like a person who speaks louder to as they spin a lie, as if more volume will make the words more true.
You are a fraud. You will go the way of ACORN, Edwards, the dodo, and O.J. Simpson.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
I really am growing weary of the Brady Bunch's antics.
Your saying that calling all of us crazy gun toting red necks who think they're one man swat teams isn't bigotry.
Or are you saying that taking away our second amendment rights bears no similarity to taking away an African American's right to vote ?
You keep saying that guns kill people. You seem to forget the 10,000 years of human history before their invention. You know, the ones with massive bloody wars.
You have also never shown us one case of a gun just walking into a building and shooting up the place.
You also forget that the leader of your closes allies, the million mom march, got a gun in DC despite the gun ban , and shot an innocent man that she thought had killed her son .
And the gun advocates are the ones "Preying on the losses of innocents?"
Hello, I seem to remember you gun grabbers being the first ones on the scene at VT and Ft. Hood, demanding that everyone's gun be taken.
And if you really were for "Reasonable Gun Control" Why has there never been a gun law that you have opposed.
If I put up a gun law, saying that all legal gun owners must pain a half inch white stripe down their stock, would you oppose it? No you wouldn't.
And we're expected to believe one word you say, when your leadership had no clue what a barrel shroud was after banning them.
Get out and try shooting a few guns before you come back to this site.
Please, BB, stop. I beg you. You are showing just how bitter & petty you are. You don't have facts on your side, you don't have the majority of people on your side and you don't have much money left. Have some dignity and call it a day. You fought the good fight and lost. Move on.