Tag Archives: guns

I’m a Ford truck man, I don’t compromise

I’m going to guess that our five-minute gun debate after a national travesty is already over. One the gems of this debate was this argument over at Fox News (via Crooks and Liars)

“He passed everything,” Gorka agreed. “Let’s be really clear about this. We could get a magic wand and the president could make all legally-owned weapons disappear in America, [but] jihadis will keep killing Americans on U.S. soil.”

Gorka pointed to an issue of Al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine: “There’s a giant poster on one of the pages that says, ‘Use your F-150 to kill the infidel.'”

“They will kill us with whatever tools they need,” he shrugged. “Pipe bombs are illegal in America, it is illegal to construct a pipe bomb. What did the Tsarnaev brothers do in Boston? Did it stop them from building pipe bombs. It didn’t.”

“So, the idea that legislation or focusing on a tool, a weapon or an explosive is going to mitigate this threat or make it disappear, again, is fantasy land.”

This poor guy can’t even get the talking point right (cars and explosives are already highly regulated).

Anyway, it seems the claim goes like this. Unless addressing the legality of something completely eliminates the possibility that this thing will ever happen, it is worthless to try. Eliminating guns will not eliminate terrorism, so it is worthless to eliminate guns.

That’s no one’s argument, of course.

Fill in your own counterexample.

Fair share of security

Fig. 1. Presidential Security

My hypothesis is this: given any opponent O to your view p, your first reaction is to claim that O is inconsistent with regard to p.  So, take Obama, whose first initial happens to be O.  He’s against arming school teachers and janitors.  The National Rifle Association naturally finds this absurd, and, of course, hypocritical.  In a recent commerical, which you can see at this link, they argue:

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the narrator of the group’s 35-second video asks. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s
just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

Is the President a hypocrite because his family has armed security?

Obviously not.  First, the President’s security is provided by the (hated) government; each of the gun-carrying individuals surrounding the President and his children (etc.) is of the very well-regulated militia type: trained and retrained, background tested, sworn to uphold the constitution, serve and protect, and so forth.  Second, the President (and members of Congress, etc.) exist in a gun-free zone, except for the police.

Unsurprisingly, I don’t have my 2nd amendment rights at the Capitol building, among the NRA’s biggest legislative boosters.  Does that not make them hypocrites?  Not really.