Friday, September 13, 2019

Please Step Over By the Ditch. Thank You.

Letter: In gun debate, we need civility, persuasion [More]
Before or after you try to imprison and kill us "terrorists"? And be civil while you lie in order to help make that happen?

[Via Mack H]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mike Vanderboegh once wrote:

"I was once asked by a gun prohibitionist my thoughts on his desire for my disarmament. I began to explain as best I could and he cut me off with an impatient, “Give me the short answer.” “Okay,” I said after pausing briefly, “If you try to take our firearms we will kill you.” He left quickly, muttering oaths about my sanity. Yet you will get the same answer from that other half of the country that such people make no attempt to understand, only deride and name-call. Such ignorance can get a whole lot of people killed. That is the point I'm trying to get across. If the Constitution as crafted by the Founders and the rule of law no longer applies, that is, if we now have the law of the jungle, then my half of the country is far better prepared to live and thrive in that jungle others force into than they are. Another formulation: If the rule of law no longer protects us from government tyranny, it no longer protects that tyranny and its acolytes from us. It is a two-way street and I hope desperately that Nancy Pelosi and her ilk understand that before it is too late."

IMHO, if we had more Mike Vanderboeghs and fewer Mitt Romneys we'd be in better shape

Max said...

Just another Fudd or he is a liar

DDS said...

“What if, instead of dealing with opponents by demonizing them and distorting their views, we were to take some steps to persuade them? … If I am trying to persuade others, I first have to understand their position, which means I have to listen to them. I have to appeal to their values, which means I have to show them respect. I have to find the best arguments for my position, which means I have to think about my values in the context of their concerns."

OK, I'll play.

What if you had (mostly) patiently done all that, for more than 50 years, and the other side continued to say "In the interest of society we want you to compromise away yet another piece of what you used to know as an inalienable right." Which was exactly their position 50 years and God knows how many compromises ago.

At what point would you feel it would be reasonable to say:

"All right!
Enough!
No!
Not one more piece of our liberty!
Your move!"

One more point. The line "While it would be illogical to ban all semi-automatic weapons, is there a valid reason for not banning any semi-automatic weapon that is a clone of what is used in combat by our armed forces?" ignores the fact that just about every firearm owned by citizens of the United States is a "clone" of something used by some armed force at some point in history. How many of those are we supposed to give up?