Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Salon:

As a teen I watched Chris Rock brilliantly address America’s gun problem during his Bigger and Blacker stand up. “We don’t need gun control,” Rock pleaded to a packed house, “We need bullet control––if bullets were $5000, people would think before they shot some one! You gotta really piss someone off for them to dump $50,000 worth of bullets in to you!” And just like the crowd, my brother, some friends and I erupted in laughter.

Rock was definitely on point, $5000 bullets would be great but I’d take it a step further––I believe that being shot should be requirement for gun ownership in America. It’s very simple. You need to have gun, like taking selfies with pistols, can’t live with out it? Then take a bullet and you will be granted the right to purchase the firearm of your choice.

[ … ]

Bullets are extremely hot and they hurt. I saw them paralyze, cut through faces, pierce children and take life. I have friends, relatives and loved ones be gunned down. Guns break apart families and ruin lives. Other than giving a coward the heart to stand tall, what’s the positive part of gun ownership? Other than the people in rural areas who use them to hunt for food, I have only seen them destroy, both in the suburbs and in our inner cities.

[ … ]

Gun praisers are just like the people who were in favor of slavery back in the day–– the elite, lazy and ignorant who weren’t being beaten, raped or in the field doing the work, so they were perfectly okay with involuntary servitude, which is a problem and why I think gun owners need to feel more––they need a taste of the other side.

So if you love guns, if they make you feel safe, if you hold and cuddle with them at night, then you need to be shot. You need to feel a bullet rip through your flesh, and if you survive and enjoy the feeling­­––then the right to bear arms will be all yours.

Listen here, young’ un.  You’re just projecting the ugly, black-on-black violence onto others in a refusal to take responsibility for the social, theological and familial problems in the black community.  As we all know, criminal violence with guns in America today is primarily a black-on-black problem.  You know it, I know it, and everyone knows it.

And you don’t get to set the rules for when I can use weapons for self defense or what weapons I choose.  Rights are granted by God, not horrible writers who craft their dung in effete, metrosexual rages fit only for rap concerts.  You want to be a man?  You want to show how tough you are?

Good.  Go to the black community and tell them to stop taking handouts and having welfare babies by fathers who will never be there.  Tell them to stop blaming other people for their problems.  Tell them to shut the gangs down and go home to their families.  Tell them to shut down that hideous rap “music” with its lyrics about rape, violence and hedonism.  Tell them to return to God and put away the things of the world.

I doubt you will, because you are the real coward – a coward too scared to face down his own problems.  As for me, I’ll keep my guns.  You can try to take them any time you feel froggy.

Ema O’Connor has done a poor job of answering the questions, so I thought I would help her.

Q: Every time there is a mass shooting, President Obama makes a passionate speech about the need for gun control. And yet it never happens. Why? Does he not have the power to drive through change?

A: That’s easy.  We aren’t subjects of the crown.  That problem was handled more than 200 years ago by men who, not coincidentally, had guns.

Q: Would you say the majority of Americans want stricter gun control laws? If so, how come it hasn’t happened yet?

A: That’s easy.  It’s a lie promulgated by the elitist media who want America to be like obedient insects living in a collectivist hive.  The majority of Americans don’t really want more gun control.

Q: How did the gun lobby become so powerful?

A: We have guns.

Q: Gun rights advocates: What is their explanation for why the U.S. has a much higher rate of gun deaths than comparable countries? Or do they just not talk about it?

A: Gun violence is primarily a black-on-black issue.  Were it not for many of the entitled, inner city blacks who have been taught through the fourth, fifth and sixth generations now to expect handouts and never take responsibility, you wouldn’t have even asked the question.  This question is more properly posed to the elitist, collectivist, urban chattering class.  Let them explain to you why they chose to create a class of inner city criminals.

Q: What do gun rights advocates say the “well regulated” bit in “well regulated militia” means?

A: Capable of shooting and engaging other field combat tactics well.

Q: How easy is it to get a gun license in America? What’s the process?

A: Not easy enough.

Q: In a number of cases, the gunmen responsible for mass shootings have had criminal records and documented mental health problems, and yet they were able to purchase firearms legally. How does that happen?

A: Mental health issues don’t predispose one to violence.  You must mean how does an evil man obtain weapons.  With money.  Although not asked, why does an evil man obtain weapons?  To perpetrate acts of evil, as it has been from Genesis 2 onward.

I’m glad I could be of assistance.

Huffington Post:

In 2012, 986 mass shootings ago, I wrote these words: “”In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.”

Now it’s time to talk about guns.

In the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting, I had the unenviable task of appearing on CNN to defend the shooter’s mother, Laurel Harper, for sharing an entirely legal interest in firearms with her son.

Legal, but stupid.

Should Harper be blamed for her son’s actions? Of course not. Millions of parents share an interest in guns with their children. Harper did not have a crystal ball that could predict her son would become a mass shooter; in fact, it could be argued that mothers are the worst people to ask about their children’s weaknesses, because we prefer to focus, like Harper did, on our children’s strengths. Harper, who is grieving the loss of her son, the tenth victim of the shooting, couldn’t predict a mass shooting any better than anyone else can.

But was Harper irresponsible in how she owned and stored her guns? The clear answer is yes. Not because her son had a mental illness. Because all parents who own and store guns in their homes are irresponsible, regardless of whether anyone in the family has a mental illness.

What causes mass shootings? The same thing that causes 61% of all deaths by gun violence (suicides): easy access to guns. If no one in your family has suffered the negative effects of gun ownership, it’s not because you are a “responsible gun owner.” You are just lucky.

[ … ]

Our Founding Fathers were reasonable men. They surely never imagined a country where an amendment designed to keep the British from invading, at a time when guns could only fire one shot at a time with questionable accuracy, would lead to almost weekly mass shootings of innocent citizens.

I hope that Laurel Harper will join moms across America in demanding action from Congress on gun control. I’m one of those moms. Please don’t shoot me.

Our founding fathers were criminals and seditionists in the eyes of the British government.  And if they had the chance, they would have used any weapon at their disposal to shorten the war and ensure victory.  Your propositions are ridiculous.

Furthermore, storing guns isn’t any more dangerous than, say, storing typical household cleaning supplies, which can also kill you.  You just have to be responsible.  And no, I don’t believe in federal laws concerning the storage of household chemicals.  There is no inalienable right to wise parents.  Your propositions are ridiculous.

As for “please don’t shoot me,” I’m certainly okay with that, as long as you don’t come into my home and attempt to confiscate my guns.  Do we agree?

Baptist News Global:

Of course, the problem with “the devil made them do it,” is that personal and social responsibility are minimized to the point that we are off the hook. There is no way to prevent every tragedy, but why the push-back against laws that might minimize tragedy?

Can you imagine if that was the Church’s response to other tragic and violent situations?

…like Human Trafficking and Sex Slavery – “The devil made that man kidnap those girls, so there’s no reason to pass laws that might prevent human trafficking, and certainly no need to talk about it.”

Such an approach is not only irresponsible from a biblical perspective, but from a social and moral one.

Another pastor wrote in a forum:

“We cannot stop this stuff from going down. The world is going to hell in two handbaskets.”

Actually, part of what makes these tragedies so infuriating (and painfully sad) is that in other developed countries, mass killings do not happen with anywhere close to the same regularity we have in the States.

Can you imagine if the response of Christians to every moral dilemma was like the one above?

…like Racial Segregation – “We cannot stop segregation because the world is going to hell. The Bible says it will get worse before it gets better!”

Preposterous. Such a view is escapist, and denies Christ’s call to help usher in the Kingdom of Heaven in our present reality. Unfortunately the escapist view is rampant among American Christians, and common sense gun legislation isn’t the only issue held captive to such faulty thinking.

I even heard a pastor say:

“As Christians we shouldn’t expect politicians, judges and other leaders to make moral choices that usher in God’s Kingdom.”

Then as Christians, why do we elect them? I’m all for separation of church and state, but just because the state should not favor a particular religion or denomination doesn’t mean we should expect the worst from our government, or not care when violence (that can arguably be minimized) runs rampant.

What if the above view was taken in other situations?

…like Payday and Predatory Lending – “Why should Christians expect society to limit predatory financial practices that prey on the poor and vulnerable? If the Church was just salt and light then maybe these companies would go away.”

Don’t count on it. On many issues the church works to affect change for the better in our culture including human rights, economic initiatives, racial reconciliation, and environmental stewardship. If the church is salt and light in the world, wouldn’t legislative change materialize as fruit of our collective witness?

The non-answers, the posturing, the moral avoidance and theological escapism have got to stop – especially among Christian leaders. It’s time for a reality check.

In my opinion, the reason this debate is seemingly intractable is nothing short of idolatry masquerading as weak rhetoric, tired arguments, and a refusal to face the truth – We have an idolatry problem in America.

• Idolatry of the individual self
• Idolatry of guns
• Idolatry of “personal security and protection”

“The idolatry of security.”  This is a remarkable quote (and perspective) from a man who would be a boy, perhaps not old enough to have children or a wife who is precious to him and who depend upon him for protection.  He is old enough to be a Doctor of Ministry candidate, but not wise enough to study the Scriptures rather than the political scene for his world view.

Remember what we’ve seen concerning what the Holy Writ says about our responsibilities.

God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

And yet in spite of God’s expectations for us, the man-child actually recommends that we subjugate our personal security – and that of our family – for the greater social good, whatever that means!  We don’t know what form it would take – universal background checks, which wouldn’t do what he wants, bans on certain kinds of weapons, which wouldn’t do what he wants, or what.  But something must be done, because remember the children.

I am remembering the children, son, and perhaps you will one day too.  That’s why I won’t subjugate my right to own whatever weapons I deem appropriate for the defense of my family to any perceived social good.  And if your seminary is teaching that you should, I suggest you discuss with your wife, or future wife, the notion that you want her to sacrifice some of the security of your children for the greater social good.  You can have a long, perhaps contentious conversation on how much that “some” should be as your children lay in their beds at night.

Mike Vanderboegh:

This makes about as much sense as someone reacting to rape committed by a stranger in another town by cutting off his own penis.

Yep.  That’s how much sense gun control makes.

The Sacramento Bee:

Yes, the right to carry a gun is a civil liberty, constitutionally protected. But whatever their other uses, firearms also are a lot like liquor and pornography and tobacco.

“Guns,” he said bluntly, “are a vice.”

The majority of guns are being bought by a minority, just as a majority of porn is bought by a minority of users and a majority of cigarettes are bought by a minority of addicts. Only about 6 percent of Americans hunt, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, so these gun fans aren’t arming themselves to shoot groundhogs. Nor are they addressing some practical issue of public safety or government oppression; aside from all these mass shootings, this is one of the safest, most open democracies on the planet. So why are people hoarding assault rifles and military-grade weapons?

Why? What inner imperative is this accumulation of firepower serving? What imagined inequality is being compensated for?

I feel for those who need a gun to feel equal. Like smokers and winos and vaccine resisters, they can’t help needing that feeling they need.

My oldest son Josh sends this concerning the article above.

The juxtaposition presented by the reading of this article back-to-back with the one about the porosity of our southern border highlights the irrational, incoherent, emotionally derived worldview of these people.

“Ban guns! Keep the border open!”

But I just watched five Mexicans literally swim across the border and toss drugs into the back of an Explorer……

Also notice the incessant reflection on how things “feel,” and the continuing push to make all language and ideas equal, abusing and commandeering heavy concepts such as infringement of life and liberty. It’s the same thing these people are doing with the word “racist,” and pushing fat acceptance and gender identification. Now guns are a vice, being categorized as substance abuse. It’s insane.

These people are the products of the hippie generation. They are not thinking men and women.

That they are afforded the luxury of publishing their half-baked drivel for others to read exactly because many someones have picked up a gun and performed the killing of those needing it escapes them entirely.

These are not thinking people.

Concerning this same issue, reader Mack sends these comments by Dennis Prager.

The third reason for the left-right divide on guns is that the two sides ask different questions when formulating social policies. The right tends to ask, “Does it do good?” The left is more likely to ask, “Does it feel good?”

To liberals it feels good to declare a college a “gun-free zone.” Does it do good? Of course not. It does the opposite. It informs would-be murderers that no one will shoot them.

On gun violence, the left doesn’t ask, “What does good?” It asks, “What feels good?” It feels good to call for more gun laws. It enables liberals to feel good about themselves; it makes the right look bad; and it increases government control over the citizenry. A liberal trifecta.

One thing that would make incomparably more difference than more gun laws is more fathers, especially in the great majority of shooting murders …

You fill in with your own observations.

From the comments at Mother Jones.

Herschel Smith • 6 hours ago

I think everyone who advocates gun control should try to confiscate our weapons. All of them. Don’t leave even a single one behind. Come into our homes. That’s where they are. And be sure to join the SWAT teams who you’ll be sending to their deaths. If you really believe all of this stuff. I think you’re just blowing hot air and aren’t prepared for the bloody civil war that would ensue. Oh … you mean you’re just talking about sending OTHER PEOPLE to do the work? I get it now.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Your move.

RickMeister Herschel Smith • 5 hours ago

…these are the kind of comments that make you the poster boy for people who should not own guns.

 

Herschel Smith RickMeister • a minute ago

So your proposition is that if someone believes in God-given rights to own self protection, or believes in the second amendment, he is disqualified from owning a weapon in your world. Or in other words, if someone doesn’t really care if he owns a weapon or not, and doesn’t care if the government confiscates that weapon, that is the only true qualification for owning a weapon in your world.

Or said differently, if someone disagrees with you, they should be disarmed. The only people qualified to be armed are the ones who agree with you. Thanks for self-identifying. It’s always easier when you guys out yourself rather than us having to drag it out of you.

Really, you need to make it harder. I feel like I’m fighting a man who has both hands tied behind his back. It only took one comment deep before you willing fell into the trap.

Thanks for playing. I’ll look for you on those SWAT teams to confiscate weapons from otherwise peaceable men. Or not.

UPDATE:  Comment below from Sean: Anyone notice that several of the replies on MJ’s site to Herschel have suddenly disappeared? Only one remaining currently (3:36pm PST 10/8) is Rick Meister’s.

He’s right.  There were comments to the extent that Rick’s criteria was just fine, i.e., disarm those with whom we disagree (I wish I had copied them too).  This is rich.  Mother Jones has been deleting comments – comments that call their readers out for who they are.  This “new conversation” they want to have on guns is a lie.  All they want is confiscation and disarming.

Thanks for playing Motherless Jones.  As I told Jennifer Mascia of Everytown – a Bloomberg apparatchik – who came into my back yard and used a nom de guerre of “Tommy Gnosis,” if you want to tangle with my commenters, you’d going to have to run with the big dogs.

UPDATE #2:  Here is one deleted comment.

Actually, tough guy, I’d be pretty happy to use those criteria. And reflect on your bravery when the bad men cuff you and take your guns while you cry out for your aunty-mama.

12:33 a.m., Thursday Oct. 8 | Other comments by Reboogity Amen

So you don’t have to, I try to stay abreast of the latest silliness on Daily Kos, Salon, Balloon Juice and Mother Jones.  But it’s all so dreary, droll, boring and awful.  Seriously, the writers over these web sites at one time at least spoke honestly about their real intentions concerning guns.  But they don’t even do that any more.  It’s all prevarication, misdirects and smoke and mirrors – and it’s awful writing to top it all off.

The best model to understand their ilk is that the washed up hippie movement was never really about free love, peace, letting people do their own thing and libertarianism.  They were always statists, and they wanted guns and revolution right up to the point where they were in charge, and then to remove the liberty everyone else enjoyed.  They are control freaks, every one of them.  When they talk about gun control, they don’t mean gun control concerning the police – they want the police to be armed because the police preserve their state.  Hippies were only against cops when they were on different sides.

They’re hypocrites too, but this most recent instance is stunning.  Charles Kinnaird writing at Ameriblog preens moralistic about Americans sacrificing our children to Moloch.

And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of Ben Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Moloch; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination. – Jeremiah 32:35

Moloch was the ancient Phoenician and Canaanite god known in Deuteronomy for the practice of propitiatory child sacrifice. Apparently, the Hebrew prophets of old had a hard time convincing people that they should stop the practice. There are few images more horrifying to us modern folk than that of fearful people offering up their own children to be burned on the altar of a domineering death-making god. Yet we are seeing the fires of Moloch burning in 21^st Century America.

This week we have seen yet another disturbing incident of promising lives brought to a sudden end by gun violence — in keeping with our pattern of one school shooting per week. Once again there is talk of stronger gun control laws, yet we are impotent to make any changes. Even when we see students gunned down, and we know that there are steps we can take to make such incidents less likely in the future, we feel powerless to do anything. Our failure to act even in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre  in which 20 young children were killed, all of them 6 and 7 years old, demonstrated that we would rather sacrifice our beautiful preschoolers than do anything that might be perceived as a sleight against the Bill of Rights — they’re the price of our “freedom,” just ask Bill O’Reilly. Our words say that we honor American freedom, while our actions say that we live in fear and have so little regard for our children that we will willingly feed them to our modern day fires of Moloch.

In a country whose politicians love to shout “God Bless America!” at the end of their speeches, and whose people speak of faith in the public square and argue about putting the Ten Commandments on display, it is the ancient and brutal god Moloch who holds sway over so much of our public discourse. Indeed the fires of Moloch continue to consume our children while nothing is done to extinguish those flames.

That children can be and are killed with bombs, knives, clubs and fists is irrelevant to Charles.  And it’s also irrelevant to Charles that one the very reasons we have and carry weapons is to protect the children.  As I’ve explained before:

I am afraid there have been too many centuries of bad teaching endured by the church, but it makes sense to keep trying.  As I’ve explained before, the simplest and most compelling case for self defense lies in the decalogue.  Thou shall not murder means thou shall protect life.

God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

And concerning John Calvin’s comments on this subject:

We do not need to prove that when a good thing is commanded, the evil thing that conflicts with it is forbidden.  There is no one who doesn’t concede this.  That the opposite duties are enjoined when evil things are forbidden will also be willingly admitted in common judgment.  Indeed, it is commonplace that when virtues are commended, their opposing vices are condemned.  But we demand something more than what these phrases commonly signify.  For by the virtue of contrary to the vice, men usually mean abstinence from that vice.  We say that the virtue goes beyond this to contrary duties and deeds.  Therefore in this commandment, “You shall not kill,” men’s common sense will see only that we must abstain from wronging anyone or desiring to do so.  Besides this, it contains, I say, the requirement that we give our neighbor’s life all the help we can … the purpose of the commandment always discloses to us whatever it there enjoins or forbids us to do” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter viii, Part 9).

The real child abusers are Charles and his kind, who prefer to see them gunned down around him, or a bloody civil war trying to confiscate guns people intend to use to protect themselves and their children.  Either way, Charles wants to see blood and wants to project his blood-lust onto us.

And although he doesn’t mention it, one can bet how he and his kind see abortion – and here is the real hypocrisy.  As for children being sacrificed to Moloch, how many millions of babies have been killed inside and outside the womb as a sacrifice to Baal?  Have Charles or his co-writers said anything about that?  Of course not, because Charles is a hypocrite like all of his friends, concerning both abortion and guns.

We’re all bored with Charles now.  And so ends his stupid little sermon until he deals honestly with consistency.  It isn’t the hobgoblin of small minds.  It’s the stuff of life, and this sorry attempt by Charles to turn the tables on us only serves to highlight his own sins.  Come back when you have something, Charles.

David Codrea:

Basically, Clinton is dictating the terms of surrender to American gun owners and presuming they will just roll over and take it, and that she will have the power to go door-to-door and enforce her demands when a critical mass tells her to go pound sand. If a growing “I will not comply” movement has made an unenforceable dilemma for issuers of edicts in Connecticut, New York, and elsewhere, trying to impose the same thing that doesn’t work locally on a national scale seems the definition of insanity writ large.

Yes, and the civil war that ensues would be bloody.  But what the collectivists can indeed accomplish is to use their army of lawyers inside the beltway to add to those 50,000 pages of federal register every year with ever more onerous regulations leading to death by a thousand cuts.

David Codrea:

That’s because, in spite of what some gun-grabbers would have us believe, the PLCCA doesn’t protect all gun makers and sellers from being sued for reasons that include six exceptions to the civil immunity protections, loosely summarized as: Transferring a firearm knowing that it will be used to commit a crime of violence; Negligent entrustment or negligence; Causing harm by knowingly violating a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product; breach of contract or warranty; Responsibility for death, physical injuries or property damage resulting directly from a defect in design or manufacture of the product; and an action by the Attorney General to enforce the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act.

And at least its obvious to me that selling ammunition doesn’t fall into any of those categories.

Cuomo: Shut the government down over guns.  For once I agree with him.  Shut it down and don’t ever crank it up again.

Mike Vanderboegh:

Oregon Massacre: Part I

Oregon Massacre: Part II

Oregon Massacre: Part III

These are all well worth your time.

Oh go blow it out your ass O’Reilly.

Anna Clark at Columbia Journalism Review:

At a time of high-profile shootings and rising crime in many cities, the journal Preventive Magazine has published a special issue on gun violence, bringing together leading scholars to illuminate a subject that is often overwhelmed by political rancor. Guest editors David Hemenway and Daniel Webster apply a public health perspective to a field in which policy decisions have life-and-death stakes.

Yet, in at least one case, an attempt to dislodge a myth had a curious boomerang effect: The media reverb interpreted the study’s conclusions to mean the opposite of what researchers intended.

In the fall of 2013, researchers from Duke University and the University of Chicago asked people with a history of gun offenses at Chicago’s Cook County jail about how they got a weapon. By analyzing their responses, the researchers hoped to find ways to limit the ability of dangerous offenders to access firearms. Most of them, it turns out, got their guns not by stealing them or by buying them from authorized dealers, but via their social networks: family, friends, and gangs. They avoided obtaining guns from people they didn’t know out of concern that the person could be an undercover officer or an informant, or that the gun could have been used in a previous crime they could be implicated in if they are found with the weapon. As one respondent to the study said: “As far as Chicago, it’s so close to Indiana … there’s gun laws, but it’s easier to get access to guns in Indiana, so most people either go to the down-South states or go to Indiana to get guns, or people obtain gun licenses, go to the store and then resell.”

A key takeaway, then, is that policing and regulations impact how the underground gun market functions. With more enforcement and the targeting of key intermediaries, researchers say, gun access to dangerous people can be even more constrained. In other words, regulations may not yet put a complete stop to illegal trade, but they do make it more difficult for guns to get in the wrong hands. But much of the media pick-up boiled the study down to the notion that universal background checks on gun purchasers don’t work—a conclusion two researchers from the study emphatically deny.

For example, the Las Vegas Review-Journal cited the study to support the editorial board’s claim that background checks are “not a cure-all.” (Media Matters for America pointed out that this stance contradicts the edit board’s earlier position.) David French at the National Review  used the study to argue that gun regulations only “make it harder for ordinary, law-abiding people to buy guns.” The National Rifle Association acknowledged the researchers didn’t conclude that background checks don’t work—but suggested the researchers were blind to where their own evidence pointed them. Even the “Mallard Fillmore” comic strip weighed in, sarcastically inveighing that “more gun laws are the answer!”

This puts the researchers in a tough position. Philip J. Cook, the Duke professor who is the lead name on the gun study, has worked in this field for 40 years. He’s had his share of interactions with the NRA over those four decades. But, he says, it’s different this time. Rather than seeing the media that supports gun rights attack his study or his own expertise, it is actually running with his study—and using it as evidence to support their opposing view.

“I would be glad to have a forum to rebut the scurrilous lies being told about (this study),” Cook says. “But how do you rebut a comic strip?”

Well bless your heart, Mr. Cook!  Did your Ox get gored?  Could you not control the narrative after publication of your screed?  Is nobody interested in interviewing you to see what you wanted people to conclude?

Here’s the deal, Anna, and Mr. Cook.  Criminals will get their guns, even if they have to make them.  Or they will get their hammers, or knives, or garden tools, or whatever they want to use to perpetrate their crimes.  The only universal background check that will work to stop the legal sale of firearms is one that disallows it entirely (we know that’s what you really want, after all).  Furthermore, my God given rights aren’t subject to the vicissitudes of your studies and what you can or can’t demonstrate with them.  And finally, I don’t really think you can meet the conditions for calling what you do science.  I don’t think you can meet the central limit theorem with any of your data, with a first (mean), second (FSD) and third (VOV) moment.  So I’m not impressed.

But even if such a horrible government program got kicked off, it would never come to fruition, and the awful, bloody civil war it started would be worse than anything a collectivist could ever imagine, with dead cops on front lawns all over America as they tried to confiscate firearms from otherwise peaceable men.

Perhaps I’m assuming too much, though.  You’re not under the impression that we will willingly go along with such laws, are you?  You’re not persuaded that there are enough LEOs in the world to make that happen, are you?  You’re not ignorant of the noncompliance movements in Oregon, New York and Connecticut, are you?  And you know, prim and proper Connecticut isn’t Marietta, South Carolina, or Fines Creek, North Carolina, or Damascus, Virginia.  Now that I think about it, you’ve never really pondered the lives of the men you would be sending to their deaths trying to confiscate weapons, have you?