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January 21, 2016, 10:21 AM | #26 | |
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Humorlessness isn't a virtue. Moreover, parody is a recognised critical vehicle. See A Modest Proposal. The contrast drawn by the original article and some of the funny posts following it is informative. Levity and intelligence aren't natural adversaries.
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January 21, 2016, 11:52 AM | #27 | |
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January 21, 2016, 01:18 PM | #28 |
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Satire is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles.
I think I recall that as from H.L. Mencken. Paranoid busybodies, the antigunners, need to be ridiculed. It's an effective technique. There is no such thing as moral relativism when the antigun half of the equation are amoral, lying, scheming, hate-filled, Fascists. The worst thing that can happen to them is for them to become irrelevant to the general public. If you want to look more intelligent, get a dog. |
January 21, 2016, 01:41 PM | #29 | |
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Some of the anti's are dog owners, too.....
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January 21, 2016, 02:36 PM | #30 | ||
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January 21, 2016, 06:49 PM | #31 |
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"like the NRA? The same NRA that has folded on things like background checks and has advanced the notion that getting government permission to carry a firearm is a good thing?"
Yes, that NRA. The very same bunch. Ponder this for a while. Without the NRA, you would have needed a $200 transfer tax stamp and paperwork with every handgun beginning in 1934. You would have had to register your firearms, all of them, in 1968. NFA items would have been banned and confiscated in 1968. You might be lucky to live in a 'may issue' state, one of perhaps six or seven states, for carrying a pistol, should you be even luckier to be a pal of the local politicos, and have the $200 for the pistol tax laying around. The other three dozen states wouldn't have a permit system in the first place. The supreme courts in states with RKBA in their constitution would have been packed with judges who rule that RKBA doesn't apply to handguns, concealed carry, things like that. Your semi-auto rifles would have been banned in 1992 and there would have been no exceptions. Turn them all in, Mr. and Mrs. America. Folded on background checks? Pardon me while I laugh. The choice was either NICS or ten-day waiting periods, with no exceptions. You can bluster about absolute rights all you want from whatever ivory tower you choose to build for yourself, but the reality is that the NRA is the best guarantor of your RKBA, bar none. Even after the last half dozen horrible mass murders in this country, with constant media drumbeats for action, and an entire political party in favor of confiscation, the NRA is so powerful that the only way even weak and ineffective national gun control actions can be done is for the President to take unilateral action. Congress won't touch it. Yep, that's weak all right. Lapdogs. Spineless eclairs. I don't mean to berate you, but if you don't have the brains or the guts to stand up and join with your citizens to protect your rights, then you're not going to have them very much longer. The NRA has 5 million members. With 10 million members, the Democrats would be sputtering about nothing but the minimum wage and global warming. |
January 21, 2016, 07:33 PM | #32 | |
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January 21, 2016, 10:24 PM | #33 |
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Double Naught Spy, i disagree. i think that sarcasm drives home how ludicrous these restrictions on the second amendment are. satire has always been a very potent political tool.
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January 22, 2016, 12:36 AM | #34 |
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The sad part is the critics of the NRA on our side say the NRA "sold us out" when in fact all they did was not win completely.
The simple fact is that there have been times when some kind of gun control was absolutely going to become law. Despite all we could do. The "sell outs" kept things from being WORSE, and you will never convince me otherwise. Look at it this way, if you are fighting for the steering wheel trying to keep a fanatic from driving you off a cliff, sometimes the best you can manage is to crash into the uphill side. You take damage, but you don't go off the cliff. Is that selling out??? Not to me.
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January 22, 2016, 02:04 PM | #35 |
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My guess is that the pro-gun folks that vocally berate the NRA perceive them as "conservative" or "Republican". They see the NRA backing more politicians with an "R" rather than a "D" next to their names, and they don't like this.
Rather than coming right out and saying "I like what the NRA does, but they aren't supporting XYZ who is backed by my union (which is more important to me than gun rights), I can't support them," they justify their non-support based on old battles lost or compromised by the NRA. This is a dishonest and disingenuous position. |
January 22, 2016, 02:12 PM | #36 |
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My sense is that the sentiment is more often naive rather than dishonest.
It can be hard to communicate the details of negotiation and brinksmanship to someone who hasn't been there for all the work. If one isn't interested in the details, but also doesn't like the result, it may be easier to conclude that the better solution didn't manifest because it was "sold out". This isn't peculiar to 2d Am. issues.
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January 22, 2016, 08:53 PM | #37 |
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Back in the day...
Down in Southern Colorado we used to have the, now mythical, animal the "conservative Democrat". This creature would have had high NRA ratings as well as normally a strong military background that led to an unwavering belief in the 2nd amendment.
My Father knew and hung around with these men (bringing me along frequently).I can remember such creatures when confronted with anti 2nd amendment rhetoric uttering some pretty insulting terms about the persons intelligence as well as (to them) the obvious lack of education involved. The reason I bring this up is I think I remember something like this being floated as something to bring up in the Colorado legislature and being abandoned because the people who it was aimed at (big city anti-gun/non-conservative politicians of BOTH parties) simply would be incapable of seeing how it applied to them. As I recall heads were sadly shaken across the board, another round was ordered, and the question was asked "Where are we hunting this weekend?" As we talk about this I'm again reminded that we need to stand behind those who stand behind our rights regardless of the letter next to their name.
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Gaily bedight, A gallant knight In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of El Dorado Last edited by scrubcedar; January 26, 2016 at 01:51 AM. |
January 25, 2016, 11:55 PM | #38 |
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There are a lot of gun-owning Democrats who are not NRA members, some have told me it's because the NRA is 'the enemy', and they would rather not deal with friends and acquaintances finding it out.
Last edited by kilimanjaro; January 26, 2016 at 12:28 PM. |
January 26, 2016, 12:27 AM | #39 |
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If "the pen is mightier than the sword" shouldn't there be a good one-liner here?
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January 26, 2016, 08:59 AM | #40 | |
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It's fine to not want to give one cent to an organization that supports a politician(s) that you can't stand. It's not fine to be disingenuous about WHY you don't support the NRA if you are a knowledgeable gun owner. |
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January 26, 2016, 10:01 AM | #41 | |
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January 26, 2016, 10:10 AM | #42 | |
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On the rest, you're correct. It's easy for folks (most of whom admit to not being members) to blame the NRA for not making everything perfect while missing the magnitude of the burden the organization has had to shoulder. Back to the original subject, I really think it's a bad idea from top to bottom. It seems quaint, but what we really have is a lawmaker deliberately introducing a bill he knows to be unconstitutional. Furthermore, he's wasting the taxpayers' time and money with it. And for what? To make a rhetorical point? To whom? The only folks who get the joke are the folks who already support the RKBA. It's not going to change anyone's mind, and it just comes off as wasteful and petty to rest of the population.
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January 26, 2016, 09:58 PM | #43 | |
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Just so I'm clear, if I don't support the NRA for reasons other than what you've enumerated them I'm dishonest or just being disingenuous? That's a pretty absurd assumption, I think. I honestly believe that more D's, and probably even more I's, would join the NRA right now if 'lil Wayne wasn't the face and voice of the organization. And I think even the current administration would be a little bit less anti-NRA if someone a little less caustic and maybe less anti-Obama were in that position. |
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January 27, 2016, 07:18 AM | #44 | ||
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Even with a more sensible spokesperson, we'd have that narrative.
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January 27, 2016, 07:53 AM | #45 | |
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January 27, 2016, 09:16 AM | #46 | ||
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How was LaPierre's response disasterous? What disaster ensued? In the hours following the Sandy Hook news, there were some advocates of more firearms restriction who figuratively ran through the blood to get to a camera and push their policy wish list. They didn't get their way. LaPierre's observation was factual in that there were staff whose only means of resistance was to soak up a few shots. Jeb Bush noted a few months ago that the impulse to make a law isn't always the right one. He has been mocked for that too, but there is more than a little wisdom in it.
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January 27, 2016, 01:10 PM | #47 | |
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You have to look at it from two points of view: the anti-gunner and the uncommitted person. To the uncommitted, the act of giving a speech and proposing policy solutions seemed to imply some sort of guilt. Furthermore, the idea of flooding our schools with armed security came off as opportunistic and tone-deaf. To the antis, it was a goldmine. They twisted the "good guy with a gun" phrase and used the speech as proof the NRA was somehow trying to take advantage of the situation. Let's remember that Timothy McVeigh had an NRA membership. So what, right? That's what we think. At the time, the antis pounced on that. He also had some remote involvement with the KKK, and the media had a field day. They stressed his memberships in both organizations as a way of "proving" some connection between the NRA and KKK. Public relations were terrible for the gun culture at that point, and what did LaPierre do? He referred to law enforcement as "jack booted thugs." Thanks, Wayne. The backlash was epic. If there was to be any statement following Newtown, it should have been a noncommittal "our hearts go out to the families, but this has nothing to do with us" sort of thing, preferably delivered by someone without such a poisoned public-relations history. LaPierre really needs to be replaced with someone with a better sense of public opinion.
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January 27, 2016, 01:54 PM | #48 | ||||||
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In fact, the NRA stood accused. One is permitted to draw an adverse inference against a person who remains silent in the face of an accusation. That part of common-law reflects ordinary human intuition. For the NRA to have failed to respond with vigor would more likely have been interpreted as an admission. Quote:
Proponents for additional firearms restrictions had those restrictions drafted and ready to go. It would be unrealistic to imagine that they would not also make their arguments with vigor. That they incorporated or caricatured parts of the NRA response should not suggest to you that the NRA response was wrong. Indeed, had the NRA been conspicuously silent, don't you imagine that the silence would have been incorporated into gun-control arguments of the moment? So, we heard derision of "a good guy with a gun", a manifestly true observation. An advocate who derides the truth is unlikely to buy credibility with that derision. On the other hand, a civil rights organization that remains silent in the face of calls to abridge the right it is charged with defending invites the observation that it is not responding because there is no response and that of the idea the organization represents is itself bankrupt. Quote:
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Neither of us seem particularly enthused by LaPierre, but for somewhat contrary reasons.
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