When America’s leftward “progress” encounters friction nowadays, we are told to have a national “conversation”. What is meant by the word “conversation” in this sense is something like: “the conservative opposition will now listen quietly and attentively, whilst enlightened liberals lead them through a long-overdue course of reeducation and rehabilitation. They may then speak, so as to be able to declare their assent.”
(Sometimes the phrase is “national dialogue“. The meaning is the same.)
The “conversation” we are supposed to be having now is, of course, about gun control. (Young Maria Gamez, sadly, won’t be joining us.)
Occasionally, some troublemaker refuses to receive his instruction in respectful silence, and is even so insolent as to raise reasonable objections to the content of the course material.
The “conversation” then goes like this, or this.
Here are a few points that might be worth making, if we can get a word in edgewise.
Finally, once we have got everyone in line, here are some procedures that every good Eloi should follow in the unlikely event of any further unpleasantness.
Just in: leading the charge on tougher gun laws will be Joe Biden.
8 Comments
Haha! Not too long ago, I responded to an invitation by our statewide online newspaper to join a “conversation” about race in their forums. I was banned each time I posted black crime statistics, and banned each time I complained about the previous banning.
I wasn’t the only one; dozens of posts from people who were saying things the moderators deemed “inappropriate” were disappearing each minute. It was a marvel to behold.
Needless to say, the subscriber base for that paper’s dead-tree version has pretty much dried up completely in the last couple of years, and its online commenting numbers have plummeted as well. (The reporters, in their tweets, have complained openly about the “racists” that have managed to hang in and comment despite multiple bannings – more patient folk than I.)
These left-wing media entities will never learn, even when they’ll only be able count their viewership/readership numbers on two hands.
What is it exactly that you are kvetching about?
Is it that people are outraged at the status quo and are trying to find ways to fix it? Or do you feel that controlling the nation’s largest cable “news” network, top business newspaper, and talk radio does not give conservatives enough of an opportunity to express their views? Or is it that you fear that a world in which gun owners have to register their weapons, or can no longer buy firearms at gun shows and on the Internet, would be a worse place? Perhaps you believe that magazines which can fire 100 rounds are so valuable to our society that the prospect of having fewer of them is just too much to bear. Or perhaps you wish for a return to a prelapsarian state where the country has fewer arms than Venus de Milo – but realize that this is beyond our grasp?
I’m guessing that it is just post-election self-victimization and dyspepsia.
Sure, OK, let’s ban big magazines.
We can start with this one.
“Self-victimization”? Heavens no, that doesn’t sound like any fun at all. I’m doing fine.
I’ll cop to the dyspepsia charge, though. But that goes back long before the election.
I just didn’t think that little tÁªte-Á -tÁªte between that bullying Piers Morgan and the eminently rational (and far better informed) John Lott looked much like what I’d call a “conversation”. (Certainly not like any conversation I’d like to have, anyway.)
Tell you what, one eyed man: if I wanted to do as much damage as I could as fast as possible, I wouldn’t use an oversized magazine. They’re more likely to jam. (Just like James Holmes’ 100-round magazine did in Aurora.)
Smarter just to carry multiple magazines instead. (And multiple weapons.) It only takes about one second to drop an empty magazine and pop in a full one.
But hey, go ahead, ban those big magazines if you like. That way you can really feel like you’ve done something. And as the next teenage victim is bleeding out on the floor of some “gun-free” theater, we’ll all have the satisfaction of knowing that the bullet that killed her didn’t come from one of those nasty large-capacity doo-hickeys.
Here’s all you need to know:
1. Unless you confiscate all the semiautomatic weapons in America, spree killers will be able to shoot bullets at roomfuls of victims as fast as they can pull the trigger.
2. “Assault weapons” are no different from any other semiautomatic weapons. Pull the trigger once, and one bullet comes out. They don’t fire any quicker, and those old-fashioned, ordinary guns’ll kill you just as dead.
3. Spree killers don’t stop until somebody kills them.
David ‘over the pond’ put up a post (our very early morning) I’d placed some comments on:
http://duffandnonsense.typepad.com/duff_nonsense/2012/12/message-to-america-dont-give-up-your-guns.html
There was a ‘rogerh’ who’d mixed some CDC with FBI statistics – but then there is as Henry reminds, “Rahm’s Proverb” – still I rather empathize with the FBI Proverb:
FBI: “FBI figures, reports that 774 people were killed between 2006 and 2010 by a mass killer … A third of the 156 mass killings did not involve firearms, but rather fire, knife or other weapon. … The dozens of deaths caused by mass killers represented about 1 percent of all homicides between 2006 and 2010.”
Then (depending on whether one cares for the facts of the matter) cares whether we come at the matter dispassionately [yes I know Peter, but by that I only mean ‘fact-based’]:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
Great minds think alike: Bill Vallicella posted a “conversation” item yesterday, making the same point: that when the Left tells us it’s time for us to have a “conversation” about some subject upon which they face broad opposition from traditionally minded Americans, it actually means: enough out of you bozos, now shut up and listen.
From: We Are More Alike Than We Think
–By Kevin Drum| Thu Dec. 13, 2012 8:25 AM PST