The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness. -R.A. Heinlein

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Sarah Brady's misguided tears

Well howdy everyone, sorry I haven't been posting. I've been working a lot, and blogging just hasn't been a priority. I am still working on a rebuttal to a video, that will be posted sometime this year I hope.....

Anyhoo, you all have seen the reports on the shooting in Arizona last week. Lots of emotions are running wild, and people are calling for something to be done. A major problem with an instance like this is people take the deeds and thoughts of an insane man and try and paint a picture that anyone who is even remotely close to the same ideas is just like him.

Sarah Brady is calling for more gun control (of course) thinking that will solve the problem:
Obama is our best hope, because he is surely aware that much of the resistance to common-sense changes to our gun laws is meant to shut us down and shut us up. It is meant to allow the guys with the guns -- instead of ordinary Americans like us with the ideas -- and men and women of good conscience, like Gabby and Jim -- to make the rules.
So....People with guns are not ordinary Americans? Anyone with a gun is going to do this? With all the millions of guns in the US, the fact that this doesn't happen often (especially in a place with lots of guns) doesn't mean anything? The instant you must resort to demonizing your opponent, you have already lost the moral high ground.

The bullies have succeeded too often. They have made cowardly lions out of too many members of Congress. This moment, as grievous as it is, presents a new opportunity for the president and other elected leaders to demonstrate political courage -- the way President Bill Clinton did when he stood by the side of victims and fought with all he had to pass the Brady Bill.


That's right, never let a crisis go to waste..never mind that the Brady Bill did absolutely no good in curbing gun crime. Guns are tools. They work both ways. There are no good guns and bad guns, there are only good men and bad men. A "High capacity" magazine could just as easily be used to save lives as to commit mass murder. Think mass rioting/looting that happens when societies collapse (for example, when a large scale earthquake hits California.) One shop owner isn't going to be a deterrent, however, one shop owner with a couple thousand rounds of ammunition at the ready to protect his family and property is quite a deterrent. Firearms are force multipliers...they even the playing field. Suddenly, an 80 year old grandma doesn't need to give in to a 200 lbs rapist. Taking away guns creates an environment where the strong live and the weak suffer.




Say "no" to those who won't retreat from an ideology that is fixated on weapons of war that are turned on babies and grandmothers alike. An ideology that helps assassinate dreamers and the dreams they hold dear. That litters across our fruited plains the bloodstains of innocents. That has kept us from forming that more perfect union, and pistol-whipped us into a seemingly endless cycle of wounding, maiming and murdering one another.
Those "Weapons of war" have been used to murder innocents, yes. There is no question of that. They have also been used to stop mass murder, save people from being mauled alive, put food on the table, etc. Anything can be used for evil, no matter what it is. Nothing is sacred. The internet can be used to stay connected with those you hold dear, stay aware of the world around you, learn things you never could. It could also be used to look at pornography, gossip, destroy someones character, steal military secrets. The tool is not the problem, the person is.



The Brady bunch does not want "common-sense" gun regulations, they want no guns whatsoever. Now, if it were even possible to get all the guns (which it's not, but let's just assume) we would find ourselves in a world with no equalizers. The citizens would be completely reliant on the good will of their governments for protection. Those who devoted their entire lives to training to do violence would have the upper hand and be able to prey on those that did not.