For whatever reason, I found myself arguing with idiots and anti-gunners (but I repeat myself!) over the weekend and I noticed several versions of a persistent lie cropping up.
The simplest version is the Feinstein Fallacy: that some scary-looking semiautomatic rifles are far more dangerous than other guns. Yes, you and I know it's total nonsense, but J. Random Never-touched-a-gun sees that weird-lookin' gun, all flat black, flat dark earth, O.D. green and/or desert tan, slathered in rails and incomprehensible adjustments and bristling with accessories, and he or she is more than willing to credit the thing with the power to "blow a man's head clean off" while still regarding Uncle Jim's .44-40 lever-action hunting rifle as a friendly, familiar object. Wrong on both counts -- "Is gun. Is dangerous," as the old line has it -- but it's a tough point to get across. If you can trust a person with .22 rimfire or a shotgun, you can trust 'em with a .223 and if you can't, why're they walking around without a keeper?
The "advanced" version is even more pernicious and consists of sly insinuation that the rifles used in infamous mass shootings were in some way modified for extra deadliness, typically implying full-auto operation. It's not true -- once again, you and I know that it's not so simple to do and a Federal felony as well, which dissuades most sane persons from trying. I doubt the likelihood of criminal charges slows down the average murderous madman but the degree of difficulty certainly does.
Both of these ideas frequently crop up in emotion-laden discussions, in which logic is ridiculed as "heartless" and any notion of armed defense scorned as impossible. But they've got to be countered nevertheless.
Update
3 days ago
6 comments:
AMEN SISTER ROBERTA!
The media could stop this, but they're too busy playing with balls of foil.
Full-auto is unnecessary when there are zero rounds of return fire.
Hmmm. I THINK the last time Weapons were converted to Full Auto in a Major Shooting Incident was when the Symbionese Liberation Army filed down the sears on their M1 Carbines.
But that doesn't count, 'cause that was a group of Forward Thinking Leftist Progressive Marxists redistributing the Wealth on a Street Level.
Don't forget the North Hollywood shootout.
Here are the money quotes from my discussion with a liberal.
"People buy guns they think.look scary and intimidating. Take away the scary cosmetic parts no one needs anyway. How would you draft the bill?"
"I am saying that others judge guns by how they look. It is not hard to see why gun makers use these cosmetic tools to sell guns. If u have never bought a gun in part for how it looks, then u are an educated gun owner but a lot of gun owners are not. What proposal do you have?
Assume I accept ur argument, what would ur Awb look like?"
hey can be made to see that the items being targeted are purely cosmetic, but the desire to depend on government and restriction is so great that even as they concede the point, they still believe that action must be taken.
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