1. I’m not anti-gun, I’m pro-kindergartner.
After Newtown, what person in his right mind thinks it’s irrational to propose some common-sense measures to prevent similar tragedies in the future?
Rhetorical question with a faulty premise - implying that if a person disagrees, they have self-admitted to not being "in their right mind". Fortunately "jedi-mind tricks" don't work on me, I can think.
The gun in this instance was the tool, and the tool was used in an illegal way - but the tool wasn't the perpetrator. There are no court rooms where the firearm is being tried, while the gunman rests in a Ziplock "exhibit bag". The police did not handcuff the gun and put it in the backseat of the cruiser afte reading it its rights, while the perpetrator was asked to step into the trunk, and later escorted to the evidence locker. Let us be clear; Lanza did this, the gun was the tool.
In the field of statistics it is repeated that correlation doesn't not show causation; while it is true that the public appearance of umbrellas is correlated with liquid precipitation, it doesn't necessarily follow that people carrying umbrellas makes it rain. That is a ridiculous concept meant to illustrate the erroneous conclusions that can occur from false presumptions when backed by factual statistics.
An equally erroneous way to look at this would be if Lanza had raped 20+ students. Would there be calls for common sense legislation on penises, length, and stamina? Would there be calls for registration on the ~200 million penises in the US today on the off-chance that they might be used in a rape? As foolish as that sounds, it would be more viable than the 300+ million firearms already in circulation.
In returning to the original point, however, the author continues with "common sense measures to prevent further tragedies in the future". This is interesting, because, again, by attaching "common sense" to the question, it presupposes that by disagreeing with the question, you have rejected "common sense" - it's leading (again), and equally inefective because of the afore-mentioned immunity to 'jedi-mind tricks'. Murder is illegal. Lanza's magazine size was already illegal in NY, his possession of the rifle was already illegal since he stole it. Everything that Lanza did was already illegal. The author fails to recognize that a legal effort has been made to curtail this activity and suggests .... legal effort to curtail this activity. How is trying the same losing strategy twice-in-a-row 'common sense'? That isn't rhetorical, it's an actual question.
2. Saying “If we have gun control only outlaws will have guns” is like saying “If you outlaw drunk driving, only outlaws will drive drunk.”
Rush Limbaugh’s recent variation on the old “only outlaws will have guns” line went like this: “If you have gun control laws, the law-abiding will be the only people that don’t have guns.”
This portion is a constant mish-mash of cliches in lieu of plan speak. Broken down into a way that isn't aimed at using wit to 'score points', the underlying principle being espoused here is this; if there was a gun ban, an absolute gun ban, then honest people intent on legal integration into society... the law-abiding... would obey the new law. A criminal will not follow the law. The irony of this as a proposed plan is that the people who would voluntarily surrender their guns were never the problem, so society doesn't become safer. The opposite, in fact, as now the law-abiding have become defenseless. Worse, if a national gun registry was instituted, the people who acquire the guns legally -- having passed a criminal background check -- would be the only viable targets of such a confiscation. This would have no effect on people who have acquired their guns illegaly, their guns not being registered in this fictious example database.
Those in favor of gun banning love to use car analogies since that system is already in place, and has very little viable complaint from the American public. However, they continually pick analogies that only support their point, and ignore parallels between the two when it doesn't serve their purpose. I am under no such obligation; all cars are registered. Vehicular homocides still occur. Vehicular theft still occurs. Having a license that requires training does not stop accidents, or irresponsibility. The number of Americans killed each year because of traffic-related fatalities is unaffected by government-mandated training and registration.
This anti-gun control cliche makes absolutely no sense. We lose our driver’s license if we’re arrested for drunk driving, or if we commit too many other moving violations. But law-abiding people are free to drive. Gun control laws aren’t any different.
3. If dead children are a “distraction,” what subjects are important enough to be worthy of your attention?
As Media Matters reports, an increasing number of gun-extremist righties have suggested that attempts to prevent more deaths, including the deaths of young people at Newtown, Aurora, Columbine and elsewhere, are really just a “distraction” from more important matters.
Try convincing the parents of dead kids that their personal tragedies aren’t important. And if dead kindergartners don’t deserve your attention, what does?
This is a basic triage question poised as an 'either-or' question. If a person goes to the hospital with acute appendicitis and another patient goes to the hospital in the middle of heart-attack, and there is only one bed, then the patient with the heart-attack gets the bed. A person can choose to ignore the cardio-related individual and post a scathing question to the effect of, "So then acute appendicitis isn't serious? Try telling that to the person who takes their 7-year old to the emergecy room at 3:30 in the morning!" By taking a situation out of context, they can present a sanitized view meant to promote a specific point.
Japan famously said, "A gun behind every blade of grass" in response to an invasion of the continental United States. Purely hypothetical question; would this invasion and corresponding occupation have transpired without the loss of 20 children? In response to that I will cite statistics from the WWII invasion and occupation of Nanking, the then-capital of China.
Japan invaded China in 1937. Japanese soldiers marched on Nanking. The population fell from hundreds of thousands to 237, many have fled, 300,000+ being murdered. Thousands of Chinese women and girls were raped to death.
So in answer to the original question, the death of 20 children is a distraction. Preventing the horrific death of hundreds of thousands is the issue.
4. So you’ve got “Second Amendment” rights? Where’s the rest of your militia?
The text of the Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Where are the other soldiers? Who’s in charge? And which state are you protecting?
The Supreme Court - the same government entity that is beloved by the left for giving us Roe V. Wade and upholding Obamacare, has ruled that the clause in the 2A referring to a militia is clarification only. If we are going to ignore SC rulings, then I'll assume that everyone who has an abortion is a murderer, and I don't have to participate in the illegal Obamacare act. So which is? We abide by the SC or not?
Where are the soldiers? I am one, I am here. Who's in charge? Me. Which state am I protecting? Mine.
5. Oh, and congratulations on keeping the Lanza kid so “well-regulated.”
Along with Crazy New York Hermit Dude, the Columbine killers, the Tucson shooter, and all the other members of your “militia.”
Lanza stole the guns - a fact that is 100% igored by any anti-2A individual. That doesn't make him a 'militia' man, anymore than Lawless stealing a Congressional Medal of Honor makes him a recipient, so maybe don't lump the fradulent wearer of that decoration in with those who are actually bona fide recipients. It would be equally disingenious to blame the other MOH recipients for Lawless's theft of the same award.
However, if we're going to "lump-and-blame", then I'll just say to More, Richard, "Awesome rape tool you have there... and way to prevent other men from raping. Along with some Crazy dude in New York, some guys in Columbine, a rapist in Tuscon, and all of the other members of your 'gender'.
6. If I can’t drive without decent vision, I shouldn’t be able to purchase weapons of mass killing after beating my grandmother to death with a hammer.
Maybe I’m off base here, but that just seems like common sense to me.
We should have a law against that. Oh wait, we do. We should make it more illegal, then he'll follow the second law if the first one doesn't stop him.
So if he broke the law when he acquired those guns, do we blame him or the law? Antis love to blame the non-perpatrator, so in continuing that nonsensical tradition I'll say this: if there hadn't been a law, he wouldn't have broken it. That makes as much sense as, "if guns are illegal, people won't hurt people". We are to believe that guns and murder were invented simultaneously; that the absence of one leads to the absence of the other, and that one cannot exist without the other.
Well since I am feeling generous - it's why I answer a set of leading, rhetorical, cherry-picking questions to begin with - I'll point out the idiocy inherent in the assertion all by itself; the author apparently forgets before he reaches the end of his own sentence that the first murder was carried out without a firearm. This anecdotally destroys the argument he is trying to make. Anyway, if this guy couldn't get a gun what would he have done, buy a hammer? (I'm not sure that's even a rhetorical question)
7. “Freedom to own a gun”? I have the freedom to own a car. But I don’t have the freedom to buy an M1A1 Abrams tank, or the many kinds of rounds — armor-piercing, incendiary, point detonation, delay, airburst, and shotgun-like antipersonnel tungsten balls — manufactured for its 120mm smoothbore cannon.
And I’m okay with that.
If our laws had permitted that, I’m pretty sure we would’ve wised up the third or fourth time somebody drove one up to a school, parked in the school bus lane, and started lobbing cannon rounds into the gym, music room, cafeteria, and classrooms — while fending off law enforcement with a rain of fire from its three auxiliary machine guns.
Really? With the faulty car analogies again? Ok, let's play! So to actually create a parallel analogy, let's do this. If someone speeds and causes an accident, should we then impose a mechanical speed-limiter on everyone else's vehicle? Isn't that much more analogous to what he's saying here? That if one person abuses a privalege - driving a car - that all responsible car-owners should have their thus-far responsible activities curtailed to prevent them from doing something they weren't doing anyway? Or to go a different direction, if allowing for the civil lawsuit against S&W for the irresponsible use of their prodcut, do we also financially ruin GM when someone pulls a 74 in a 35 in a Corvette?
If we're going to nitpick, we don't have to right to operate a car, but we do have an inalienable right to a firearm. Not that this straw-man argument doesn't deserve a snicker - especially if you're a visual thinker. That said, has someone done this with an M1A1 Abrams, or is this just a ridiculous argument being postulated by no one in an attempt to make a point against his debate opposition? We can all do that! In which case, why does the left want us to cut off our hands? Statistically, there's a good chance of being murdered via beating as opposed to a firearm. The left doesn't just want to disarm us, they literally want to remove our arms from our body.... "for the children". When will we learn?
See? Imply your opposition is claiming an extreme side to their argument then you can make them look stupid. Straw-man arguments are dumb and don't propel rational debate.
8. The only other country besides the United States that considers unrestricted gun ownership a fundamental human right is Yemen …
… and Yemen’s having second thoughts.
From the UN’s Small Arms Survey: “Only two—the United States and Yemen—is ownership of firearms a citizen’s basic right. Figures published in the Small Arms Survey 2007 show that the USA and Yemen also have the highest rates of firearms per civilian, with an estimated 90 guns per 100 people in the US, and 55 in Yemen.”
There’s a slogan for you: “More extreme than Yemen.”
Cherry-picking. I thought we had this covered. If the More, Richard has his way, guns will be outlawed. There'll be a random target rimfire or high-powered, slow reload cumbersome hunting rifle for that archaic activity 'hunting', but ARs and AKs... not so much. We'll all be safer - that's the assumption. Why just look at Mexico - the utopia of More, Richard's proposals. No legal firearms allowed with the exception of the rare rimfire target, or slow, cumbersome hunting rifle - safest country on the planet. Almost, anyway, Britain is much safer, with violent crime at an all-time low.
There's a slogan for you: "We'll be as safe as Mexico."
9. Why is it that the people who think our “freedom to own guns” is absolute and inflexible are always the first ones to attack our other freedoms — of speech, of assembly, of worship (a religion other than their own), of privacy — in the name of national security?
We have the data which shows that our supposed “gun freedom” is causing thousands of needless deaths each year. Most “gun rights” advocates don’t care — and are more than eager to sacrifice other fundamental freedoms even when the evidence suggests it’s unnecessary and even wasteful.
Unconstitutional surveillance? Check. Unconstitutional suppression of Wikileaks and other information outlets? Check. Unconstitutional suppression of demonstrators’ rights? Check. Constitutional and rational gun control?
Never.
This is a tough one to tackle; when one must eat a s--t-sandwich the size of a cracker, you just pop it in. But when it's of this size.... where does one start?
The opening question starts with a few assumptions, that because I am in favor of the 2A as it is worded, I must therefore be against someone else's religion? I just checked the NRA website, and they don't have anything regarding religion, or freedom of speech, or anything else that I can detect. As far as being opposed to free speech, I'd remind More, Richard that his leading questions are designed to stifle discussion by implying falsehoods and insults to those who disagree. I'll also point out that the left - the pre-eminent side opposed to the 2A - has given us things like Obamacare, and in manners specifically designed to curtail free speech. "You'll have to pass it to know what's in it" - is the very definition of stifling debate. We saw Cuomo repeat this again in NY, using speed to pass a bill to avoid debate, both in the legislative body as well as with his constituents.
After a buffet of straw man arguments -- the list of which is too long to refute individually, though I have easily used specific examples to show how his side has done exactly what he is accusing of us -- he then goes on to state that the guns are causing thousands of needless deaths per year. If this is true, then the most dangerous job in the world isn't as a Chinese coal-miner, but instead, clearly it is working in a Remington warehouse. Except that it isn't true... because inanimate, non-volatile freight just sits there, being inanimate. Even though this point was made earlier, More, Richard somehow manages to forget that he made this very point when he specifically cited the case of the murderer who killed his grandmother with a claw-hammer. When he killed his grandmother with a hammer, HE was to blame... but when he killed a fireman, the GUN was to blame. Assuming guns were never invented, are we to assume that his grandmother would still be alive?
Without a doubt, the funniest point in this latest refrain is the drama-ridden diatribe capped with the perfect time of "never". What's so funny about it is that the very Constitution he is referring to is very clear, "shall not be infringed" -- a point he knows because he quoted it earlier. So let me clarify for More, Richard; Constitutional gun control is this: no laws against guns. Will More, Richard ever understand those simple words?
Never.
10. You say guns make us safer, but we already have more guns per capita than any other nation on Earth.
We also have the highest gun homicide rate of any developed nation. Our rate is 32 times that of Great Britain’s, for example.
Are we safe enough yet?
Cherry-pick, cherry-pick, ooh-la, la cherry-pick, cherry-pick! Piers Morgan did this very same thing. If you can put "gun" in front of homicide, you can make the homicide rate seem higher than it is relative to other countries with prohibitive gun laws. The murder rate for the US - gun or otherwise - is lower. The only way More, Richard's point is relevant is if a dying person cares about the subtle difference between their blood gushing out of a gunshot wound versus a stab wound versus gushing internally because of the beating they've received. Fun fact... Ceasar didn't say, "thank god I wasn't shot" as his last words.
Look at the clever mechanic of saying, "developed nation", then you can exclude the homocide rate of Mexico, or Ecuador, or Argentina - the places that are basically illegal to own guns, but enjoy great PER CAPITA homocide rates.
Or we could just be honest and look at the per-capita homocide rate without modifiers and come up with.... 4.7. On the list of countries and murder rates as provided by wikipedia, the US ranks with 108 countries having a higher murder rate, and 100 having a lower murder rate. Just for funsies... Yemen's is lower than the US. Piers Morgan weaseled his way out of this statistic by quoting agregate numbers, going instead with the total number of murders instead of the "per capita", banking on America's larger population to provide disproportionately high statistics. Unfortunately for him, this was in support of the "assault weapons ban", of which our murder rate falls from 4.7 per 100,000, to a measly 0.126 pe 100,000 .... that's not even a whole person until we increase the population to 793,650. Reality isn't scary enough to use it, so antis have to isolate facts or use careful wording to prove a point.
If we remove regions within the US that are disproportionately raising the per capita murder rate, we see an even more interesting story. See, to leave those regions, you have to go into areas that are ... pro-2A. More guns equals less crime. I own nine, because I also care about that question:
Are we safe enough yet?
11. “Recreational gun use”?
Which sports, exactly, require an assault weapon that fires 850 rounds per minute?
And is there any mass-killing capacity that would be too much for your recreational activity? 5,000 rounds per minute? 10,000 rounds per minute? Or is the recreational value of high-speed gunfire infinite and unbounded?
Number 11 is in quotes, as though he's never heard of it. I have a few guns, and I've fired thousands of rounds, but never at a person. I can't conceive of the odds of any particular bullet being used to harm someone. Given the gun-murder rate last year was ~11,000, what ratio is that in regards to the number of rounds fired? One in ten? One in a hundred? One in a thousand? Well actually, estimates range for between 7 billion and 10 billion rounds of ammunition purchased in 2012, and based against the gun homicide rate, that means that the odds of any particular bullet being used to kill someone is between ... 1 in 636,363 and 1 in 909,090.
... which kind of begs the question: what are the circumstances in which the remaining 99.99988% (I calculated that precisely to the first non-9 point) being used? Oh wait... it's for sport. Like maybe 3-gun, or IPSC, or... this post is long enough to avoid actually listing every one of a myriad of actual sports - to say nothing of unorganized recreation. As shocking as this may seem to More, Richard, certain shooting sports - just like a huge number of other sports - operate under a timer.
Just to nit-pick, which gun do people use that fires at 850 rounds a minute? Ohhhh... wait... he means CAN be fired as much as 850 rounds a minute, because there really aren't too many guns sold at Wal-Mart in which you can hold down the trigger and a minute later, have wasted 850 rounds. Your words reflect you; incorrect and dishonest words, incorrect and dishonest man.
12. Statistics show that states with more guns also have more homicides. Have you considered starting your own state?
That would allow you, for the first time, to use the Second Amendment for its true and stated purpose: to protect the security of a state.
All the other gun extremists could join you there. Wouldn’t that be great?
Source? No source? Here's one for you:
The researchers of the Cato Institute found and wrote:The 31 states that have “shall issue” laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons have, on average, a 24 percent lower violent crime rate, a 19 percent lower murder rate and a 39 percent lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. In fact, the nine states with the lowest violent crime rates are all right-to-carry states. Remarkably, guns are used for self-defense more than 2 million times a year, three to five times the estimated number of violent crimes committed with guns.
Their source? Department of Justice.
As to whether that would be great... yes, it would. Statistically it would be good - for us, mind you, not you. But also, philisophically it would be nice too. There'd be less lies, less people intent on depriving you of an "inalienable" right, and greater safety, too.
Most of us are getting tired of reading the obituaries of public servants, moviegoers, shoppers, schoolchildren, and other innocent bystanders in our local papers. Now we can be safe, you can be happy — and Wall Street investors can keep profiting from guns and the misery they cause.
The state of “Guntopia” isn’t a perfect idea. We would worry about your children’s safety — but then, we already do.
More Richard (RJ) Eskow.
This last portion isn't a point, it's just snide sarcasm delivered from a high horse. No response needed. 
