Ah. “Antis” is, as I picked up from earlier in the thread, a derogatory word used by gun owners to denigrate those who disagree with them?
I’m not for one “side” or the other (totally different country). I’m just curious about the personal politics involved in America. It’s fascinating!
I wonder how I managed to not pick up on that terminology before, having seen many internet forums in my time. Maybe I just glossed over it.
No. I identify you as an anti by your 10+ year history of viciously attacking gun owners and the right to keep and bear arms. By your smug, condescending dismissal of the second amendment. By your repeated referral to firearms as “bangsticks,” and second amendment advocacy as “the church of the holy bangstick.”
The OP wasn’t limited to “a message board such as this”, but if that’s where you want to move the goalposts, you know perfectly well that this question is rarely asked with the doe-eyed naivete of a Martian landing in Abilene and saying “gosh, what’s up with all these exploding metal sticks?”
It usually has more in common with the morons who breeze through GQ with questions like “If evolution is real, why are there still monkeys? I’m just asking!” It’s obvious where they’re coming from, and it’s obvious where they’re going , regardless of what answer you supply. You learn after a while that most of them are not sincerely seeking knowledge and there’s no point in engaging them.
No. “Anti” is a term generally used by pro-gun people to refer to virulently anti-gun people.
They same way they call us “cowards” for owning guns for self defense, implying we’re not “man enough” to overcome armed rapists/intruders/burglars bare-handed.
The same way they refer to our lack of penises and the need to compensate for that lack with “bangsticks.”
The same way they intimate that we sit around stroking our subsitute phalli, fantasizing about killing people.
The same way they describe/label gun owners as God-crazy neo-Nazis just itching to kill homosexuals, atheists, commies, and racial minorities in our death camps, after rounding them up with our guns.
The well is poisoned. There is nothing to discuss or debate with them.
Has any of that happened in this thread, and if not, who is doing the poisoning here?
While you may not, precisely, have done any poisoning, you have definitely left a greasy slick of mendacity. As previously referenced, your history at the board speaks for itself. Not only are you not so clever as you believe yourself to be, we are not so stupid as you believe. Nobody sucked in for your play acting as impartial, curious outsider in this thread.
When the question is asked non-confrontationally, we freely give those answers. When is the question ask in that manner? Rarely, especially here, where gun threads usually devolve very quickly without moderator action (like this one).
That said, there are several gun threads in IMHO right now that have stayed on topic without the usual hijacks. I find that refreshing.
Thanks Bricker, I will just respond briefly so as not to ignore your question or hijack the current discussion by others.
IANAL, but AFAICT from my layperson’s perspective that recourse would consist of (a) jack and (b) shit.
Mind you, I’m not happy about that. I think that if some future government in the absence of any constitutional protection for gun ownership did wish to ban all guns, that would almost certainly be a Bad Thing, and I would vote against it. However, opposing a ban on something and regarding that something as a fundamental inalienable right are two different kettles of fish.
I think it would probably be a Bad Thing if some future government wished to ban cars, too, but I don’t think it would be appropriate to establish car ownership as a constitutional right in order to protect it from potential bans. With the best will in the world towards (most) gun owners, none of whom I’ve ever had any problems with in my own experience, I simply don’t think that gun ownership as a constitutional right makes any more sense than car ownership or, say, trebuchet ownership as a constitutional right in this modern world.
And I can’t honestly justify a strategic policy of supporting its continuance as a constitutional right merely to prevent ill-advised people from possibly banning it.
You on the other hand have been an antagonistic jackass throughout this thread. Your posts have been nothing but childish outbursts deliberately designed to poison any chance of understanding between those who own firearms and those that don’t. You go far beyond slinging mud-you sling shit. Your use of the term “antis” to label those who dare to ask questions tells us more about you then it does about those you are trying to slander, btw.
I’m very surprised that we can’t all agree that the question “why do you own a gun?” is usually not asked in good faith.
Some answer freely and honestly, and those answers(as I have repeatedly pointed out) are appreciated, but lets not pretend that there are not also those who instantly oppose any questions at all, those respond with venom-not to things said, but to things they say are inevitably going to be said by those who asked the questions in the first place. I’ve got no problem if you wish to respond in kind to nastiness aimed at you, but when you automatically assume you know which way a conversation is going to go and take preemptive strikes to shut down conversation the only person at fault is you. That imaginary “anti” attack didn’t happen in this thread..but the nonimaginary counterattack certainly did more than once.
As to ExTank’s depiction of me as an “anti”, well…
I am pro 2nd Amendment, but I disagreed as to it’s interpretation re the first half of it until the Supreme Court weighed in on the matter, then accepted the ruling. I grew up in Northern Idaho, have owned both pistol and rifle ,and have gone hunting.
I have used the term “Church of the Holy Bangstick” in referring to those who get violently upset when others ask questions, and those that stockpiled weapons and ammo when they thought that Obama’s Gestapo was going to go door to door the day after the election to take their guns away.
ExTank, you said
Are there any mildly anti-gun posters on this board you would be willing to discuss questions of this sort with, since apparently my image has been tarnished in your eyes? I’d be willing to sit the conversation out if you feel that my asking such questions instead of someone else somehow poisons the well beyond all hope.
It can be asked in good faith…and it was answered in the same good faith in this very thread.
Do you have any idea how exasperating it is to have these arguments over and over again? They have been done to death. Yet they keep coming up, and while we do occasionally win people over to a more neutral or even positive point of view, it takes a lot of work and patience. People who have to do this over and over again rightfully get frustrated with it and take a more hardline tack. It’s like talking with a Truther or a Birther when it’s the same subject over and over again. Who can blame them for being tired of it? Even I lose my patience from time to time and drop a bomb, and I usually enjoy these discussions. And the worst part is that we have to engage in these threads. Oh, sure, we could sit them out, but what then? “Fighting ignorance” is a serious cliche here, but given the contentiousness of this topic we can’t surrender an opportunity to do just that.
As for your participation, your views are well known, and since we’re laying it all on the table here we are humoring you right now. I take every question you ask in these threads to be a setup because history has proven that they are, and being repeatedly burned by setup questions contributes greatly to the exasperation I mentioned earlier. It’s very difficult to believe that you ask your questions in good faith because you never have before.
But hey, today’s a new day. Maybe it’s different this time. Right?
This sort of pre-judgment may be one reason why polarized Americans have such problem communicating with each other.
If you move to a new neighborhood and notice a neighbor with a barbecue set, you know why he has it. If instead you notice he has a gun, asking why is very natural: There are different reasons people own guns, and you might wonder if the neighborhood has high crime.
And while “Mind your own business” (or “Because I have the right” if that’s really the equivalent) may be an appropriate way to cut off a nosy stranger, the Heston quote really is startling, isn’t it? He’s the head of NRA, for heaven’s sake, but doesn’t want to comment on why he owns guns? :smack:
I’m not particularly against guns or gun owners, BTW, and almost bought a Glock-19 for home protection except that as a foreigner it would be tedious for me to get a gun permit. (My wife could get one but refuses. I don’t think she’s afraid of my violent temper, more just too stingy to want to spend $1500 for a new handgun when she already has her Dad’s rusty old shot pistol. :smack: )
I shouldn’t hijack my own thread, especially since we have a big thread in this forum dedicated to denouncing what a pitiful excuse for a vertebrate brain the rotting neurons in Shodan are, but I do want to point this out:
Let me get this straight. Shodan says something that makes no sense at all, that has to be either a 100%-wrong lie or proof that he babbles on topics where he’s completely ignorant, and you say it was either just a rhetorical flourish … or since MM is leftist swine, uttering nonsense bullshit about MM is legitimate.
This would make good evidence for the Who is smarter? Shodan or the average cockroach? thread, yet I get the impression you’re one of Shodan’s supporters! :smack: 
After a question is asked, what direction a conversation goes is next up to those that respond to the question. Nobody has a fucking gun pointed at their heads as far as I can tell, and the supposedly unavoidable “anti” arguments haven’t popped up(outside of a couple of posters that have reacted to imaginary responses). I doubt very much that it is my participation in this thread that has poisoned the well because I have responded with gratitude to those that addressed questions asked without rancor. Can you point out, at any time in this thread, where I haven’t? I have even offered to bow out if there was someone else that would be acceptable in asking the same questions. I have asked if there were any non-virulently “anti” posters that would fit the bill. Instead of responding to any of this, we get yet another cartoonish caricature of me for you to bash like a piñata, allowing you to point to the self-fulfilling prophesy that these threads never amount to anything.
People often react based on what usually happens, not what can happen. There’s nothing abnormal about that. It’s possible that the old smelly dude with half of a beer and a cigarette he pulled out of the trash trying to start a conversation with me on the street wants to discuss Wittgenstein, but he’s probably just going to ask me for money, so I’m going to ignore him.
I could be missing something here, but it seems as if everyone except you is addressing the OP, which poses the question “why do people say 'because I have the right?” The answer is because most often it’s not really a sincere or simple query. Case closed. But then you waltz in and jack the thread by saying “Starting now, this thread is no longer about why people in general respond to that question a certain wayl… I’m now asking it for real, and I’m entitled to a real response.” So while everyone else is necessarily discussing the cultural well-poisoning that feeds situations like this in general, you’re pretending that you were a priori accused of well-poisoning, and see, this just proves you’re reasonable and everyone else is nuts. This appears DEEPLY dishonest and draws real ire toward you specifically, because you’ve just presented an example of the dishonesty that makes people so paranoid about the question.
Really, you could have posed a clean thread in MPSIMS and framed it in a sincere way, and it would go well. Dropping into a Pit thread that was already about well-poisoning, well, I can’t imagine that anyone would truly believe that’s a fruitful context for honest inquiry.
You’re a moron.
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, it is only you I handled roughly. Your “aw shucks, I’m just asking” act is an insult to the intelligence of anybody who has seen you in a gun thread before. So is your outrage right now.