Duh Factor
Is "Captain Obvious" really a "personal attack"? How about "fat, dumb and happy"?
As I have pointed out, every "responsible gun owner" is a "responsible gun owner" until they aren't.
As Bilvon put it: "Every stupid gun owner started out the day NOT thinking he was stupid."
Now, why is this important? Because we can't do anything as a society to curb gun violence owing to concerns about wrongly punishing "responsible gun owners".
Consider our neighbor Truck Captain Stumpy, who blithely argues that the problem is prosecutors. This is not an invalid point, but neither is it the whole point.
In Pennsylvania, prosecutors refused to charge a man who killed his kid with an illegally-possessed handgun, allegedly after failing to clear the chamber; the story doesn't even make sense, since he was allegedly transporting the gun to dispose of it, yet killed the kid as they
left the gun store. It would be wrong to prosecute, the logic goes, becasue he feels really bad; after all, his son is dead.
In Florida, we just experienced the weirdest schedenfreude after a mother bragged that her four year-old son gets "jacked up" to go shooting. Mere hours later, the boy got hold of her .45 and put a round through her back. Local authorities recommend charges, but prosecutors have not yet filed.
When "responsible gun owners" perceive prosecutors charging them for their accidents, do you think they're going to take it? That's the part our neighbor skips over. What do you think is going to happen when a local, elected prosecutor starts prosecuting every firearm accident?
Are the "responsible gun owners" going to line up behind that prosecutor with thanks and celebration? Go ahead, tell me they will; I dare you.
The problem with your response―
"Not responsible. Stupid."―is that it is both obvious and unhelpful. I've
mentioned before↑ an analog involving Christian evangelism by which the zealot sidesteps questions by disqualifying other Christians from Christianity. This is pretty much the same thing; it would be just as impossible for either you or TCS or anyone else to prove as pretend any of these irresponsible gun owners
never used the phrase "responsible gun owner" in any context that includes themselves. I might add I've never heard a firearms advocate say, "Well, you can't punish 'responsible gun owners', but that doesn't really have anything to do with me because I'm an irresponsible gun owner." And
every "responsible gun owner" I know will eventually tell stories recalling fondly prior acts of irresponsibility. So while the phrase might mean something to you―
you are a "responsible gun owner" because _____―it is exactly meaningless in the larger discourse; it is a cowardly fallacy.
And I use the adjective "cowardly" for a reason; the phrase is wielded irresponsibly as a political weapon. It means something to you, in your life, but that assertion means nothing to me.
You might ask about the thousands of rounds fired that don't hurt anyone; not all of them are "responsible", and we oughtn to pretend otherwise. Furthermore, would you ever be witnessed saying that to someone who just lost a friend or family member to an "accidental" shooting? You know, "Gosh, Bob, this is terrible, but remember the thousands of rounds sent that
don't result in outcomes like this". I bet the dead fell better, too.
Some firearms advocates bawl about defensive gun use not getting enough credit; I say, "Great. Let's scrutinize these. All of them."
What's that? One successfully defended against an unreported crime? Why not report it? Oh, because you successfully defended against it? Okay, so you scared an alleged criminal away, but it's not important enough to the rest of the community to report the attempted crime?
It was, in fact, a self-proclaimed "responsible gun owner" who made it clear to me just how frightened so many of these people are. He tried making a point about defensive gun use by telling a story about how he walked around a city flashing his piece at people he didn't like the look of, because, you know, crime. It was clear by his own telling he was either terrified of people or simply looking for a reason to feel tough by brandishing a gun. So, yeah, as long as we're disqualifying "responsible gun owners", sure, that dude is disqualified. Great. What does that mean? Exactly nothing; he'll go on describing himself as a "responsible gun owner", helping stir emotions with fallacies because, you know, this whole idea of being a "responsible gun owner" is beyond reproach. So, sure, let's scrutinize those defensive gun uses we only hear about long after the fact because they are never reported until someone needs to tell us it happened.
The "responsible gun owner" who fondly recalls shooting under irresponsible circumstances while drunk? Disqualified, even before she tried to threaten me with it. The former marine who tells an insane hunting story involving his underage sons getting really, really drunk, and ends with one of them beating a wounded deer to death with an empty .44 revolver? Definitely disqualified. So's the "responsible gun owner" who went to juvenile detention and paid a little less than $1150 in restitution after "accidentally" killing one of those sons. The retired Navy officer with holes in his living room from the reloader, who shot a kitten for pissing in the garage, who required
three different rifles to put down a
possum that cornered the
dog? The same guy I once picked up drunk at the bar after the posse rounded up to search for an accountant spent the day in the tavern instead? Sure, whatever. Disqualified. You think
he is going to stop using the phrase "responsible gun owner"? After all, he hasn't accidentally killed anyone, yet, so why not?
I have a proposition for you:
Statistically, there is a subset of very dangerous criminals who use guns; because many of them are already known criminals, we can actually stop them from legally obtaining new guns. So what do I tell the "responsible gun owner" who thinks this is a bad idea because, well, something about female politicians he doesn't like, nannies, and how everyone who disagrees with him is a foul authoritarian git. Anyone who wants to argue on behalf of stalkers and known violent abusers carrying firearms is disqualified.
And this is the problem: It probably works better if we don't run around disqualifying people so easily; most "responsible gun owners" would, technically, be disqualified, because "responsible gun owners" are just as human as the next person, and it is virtually impossible to convince me I am seeing so radical a deviation from a statistical norm in my own life. I think you know this:
"Responsible gun owners" are "responsible" until they are caught being irresponsible in some way that hurts someone else.
So let us start prosecuting all these incidents, as TCS suggests; and every time a "responsible gun owner" steps up to complain, let us at least acknowledge that person's figurative disqualification. I do believe when one rationally assesses the data, it becomes obvious that while the phrase "responsible gun owner" has intrinsic value to many individuals who use it the words become meaningless in accounting for the range of diverse interpretations.
Still, one thing is certain: If post-hoc disqualification should be the standard in lieu of actually acknowledging the substantial reality of what words like "responsible gun owner" are supposd to mean, then our society is doing it wrong.
Meanwhile, the actual thread topic has to do with the relationship between firearm rights and all the rest of our rights. The idea of suppressing academic liberty has generally been set aside in order to pursue general firearm advocacy against fallacies, but we also have an interesting abstraction arising in the public discourse as society raised the question of guns at a national political convention. It is one thing to say this could be
interesting, but that still includes tremendous danger; it is my personal thesis we're dealing with a bloc that
wants violence, which in turn would raise its own interesting question of whether or not any of these who have spent the last seven years bawling their way toward revolt would ever have bothered using the phrase. As that question has an obvious answer, though, we can pass it over:
What is the overlap? Is the petition from those who fear the Trump bloc? Is it from the Trump bloc? How will guns be involved in the expected violence in Cleveland? After Minneapolis, is it unreasonable to worry about right-wing provocateurs among all this?
Politically, of course, it seems strange to summarize our hopes of a national political convention by saying, "I hope everyone lives through it". To the other, though, we do have this weird opportunity coming; there's a lot of nasty talk in an insurrectionist season, and we are left to wonder where and how those elements of coercive force inherently reserved by Naturee unto the People will play out.