“Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned”, by Barry Snell, in his farewell piece at the Iowa State Daily.
It’s a wonderful piece about why pro-gun and anti-gun folks can’t sit down and talk, about the gun culture and how it is woven into our national fabric, and why there can’t and won’t ever be a conversation about guns in this country until the antis grow up and put away childish things.
It’s not politic, it’s not particularly polite (though it is civil), and it pulls no punches.
And, if you’re particularly astute, you’ll see that he touches on a great many more things than just guns, even if all he appears to speak on is the firearm issue.
Could you put your precious strawman arguments from anonymous “gun-grabbers” to the side for just a few seconds and comment on the letter from a real gun dealer and Life member of the NRA to Wayne La Pierre linked to in post #2160?
Posted in a thread full of examples of “gun people” being willfully stupid about guns and of them openly hating, despising and ridiculing those who don’t own them. Not exactly claiming the moral high ground there.
You anti-gunners need to grow up and put away childish things, or we won’t be able to have a meaningful conversation about how I need my .357 to shoot at the tanks when the government comes to get me.
Why is it necessary that we have owned or fired a gun in order to have a valid opinion? If you don’t have a car and don’t know a muffler bearing from a torsion valve, that means you cannot have in informed opinion about traffic safety laws?
Have you an opinion on immigration reform? Can you speak Spanish, can you tell by their accent if someone is from Guatemala or Mexico? What? Willfully ignorant, are you, refuse to learn Spanish before you offer an opinion on immigration?
Perhaps because you need to know the feel of that visceral, orgasmic thrill so you can truly understand what gun love is all about, and dispense with all that liberal reason and morality shit.
I’m the one hurling invectives? I’m saying that you have no credibility and that people on your side of the argument have said as much. They disown you the same way I disown Wayne LaPierre.
You don’t know what you are talking about. I’ve supported licensing and registration from the beginning. I warned your fellow travellers that their fascination with banning assault weapons would lead them to lose everything but some folks who today complain that there was never a chance of anything happening asked me back then why they should settle for background checks when they can get rid of these assault weapons. I wonder if they realize they were wrong now or if they still blame the NRA.
So you don’t know. Gotcha.
I’m just pointing out that you have a very casual relationship with the truth. Are you a Republican?
No its based on the notion that gun nuts don’t trust gun grabbers to begin with and you reinforce that distrust when you reach for their guns at every opportunity. I have no doubt that the gun grabbers really would like to disarm the general populace and to hell with the consequences of a disarmed public with armed criminals. Where I diverge from the gun nuts is that I don’t think that could ever happen but I understand why they feel that you want to take away their guns. Too many of your arguments aren’t “lets control and regulate guns” they are “guns are bad and wouldn’t the world be a much nicer place if we could just get rid of them”
So the links to Feinstein (the person your side put at the tip of the spear on this most recent attempt at gun control) saying she would have taken all the guns from all private citizens if she could, is a straw man? What is that compared to a rant by some anonynous NRA life member (BTW do you know what that means? it means you have given the NRA $1000, thats all it takes to be a life member). Hell if you want to affect the NRA, spend about a million dollars on 1000 life memberships and you can get at least 4 or 5 people on the NRA board. Spend 100 million and you can take them over. It still won’t make gun control any more popular.
You’re just proving the point of the article linked above. You’re an unthinking, ignorant liberal with strong opinion on something you know very little about and you make your point by demonizing gun owners.
If your idea of traffic safety laws is to ban Hondas after a drunk driver plowed into a bunch of little kids with it, then its more than just an ignorance of how cars work, its ignorance of the issue.
But I wouldn’t stick my fingers in my ears and sing lalalalala while someone who is much more familiar with the issues tells me that my preconceived notions are wrong. That is what many on your side of the argument have been doing. They have been looking for rationales and arguments to make their wrong argument right.
Informed? Perhaps; but if you insist that spoilers must be banned because they turn a car into a “racing” car that has no place on our streets, you’re going to get a :dubious:
Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Nobody’s entitled to have a stupid opinion respected.
Now, how about that little matter of reducing murders that so baffles and enrages you, Mr. Sociopath? Had time to think that over just a little? Or do you first need to take it out on that mannekin of Dianne Feinstein in your basement shooting range, the one right next to Hillary Clinton?
I’m sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Well the truth can hurt sometimes. Your own side thinks of you as a fringe member (even though I think many of them share your opinions on guns).
Other than vilifying guns, what have you proposed to reduce gun homocide? I’ve proposed licensing and registration. You just get all bent out of shape because your sides own side contributed to the failure of a very mild background check, and by your side, i mean the gun grabbers like Feinstein.
You have in the last two pages managed to
Dismiss my opinions as being driven by Obama hatred; I voted for him three times but you are having trouble wrapping your mind around the notion that anyone that likes Obama could possibly disagree with him on any particular thing (unless its the fact that he is not liberal enough on some issues).
Accused me of not knowing the facts when it is clear that your grasp of the facts is minima
Called me (and I think supporters of gun rights generally) a sociopath.
Called some posters (and I think gun rights supporters generally) adolescent whiners and gun strokers.
Implied that gun rights supporters are immoral.
So in what way have you been trying to foster a conversation?
If you can’t understand that the vote on background checks was informed by the Feinstein push on an AWB then I can see why you would think that the vote was entirely irrational. If you don’t understand that the senate largely represents states and most states are pro-gun.
That’s a great letter right there. And I am a gun owner that believes in doing things to help curtail sales of firearms to unstable or otherwise criminal people.
No doubt. But if I am of the opinion that such things should be regulated, due to the inherent danger of large metal objects hurtling about on wheels, I am calmly assured that most reasoning people would agree.
See, “regulate” is over here, and “ban” is waaaaaaaay over there. Not the same thing. At all.
Are you under the impression that there hasn’t been a push to ban things recently? That effort informs all gun control measures that follow. You guys fucked up and I was warning you that you were fucking up the entire time and your side thought I was just being bitter about having my guns taken away. I want good rational gun grabbers for the same reason i want good rational Republicans but I have a hard time finding either, mostly for the same reasons.
I think you could replace the word stupid with the word uninformed if you like.
What is regulation but the power to BAN things that don’t meet the regulatory requirements? Gun control advocates insist that they’re not “banning” anything, they’re just “regulating”? Like the regulations say that no firearm can have both a pistol grip and a foregrip. Or maybe a regulation that says no one who is being treated for depression can possess a firearm. Or maybe a regulation like in Mexico, where anything bigger than a .38 is reserved to the military and the police.
