Ethics Alarms’ eccentric philosopher Michael Ejercito, who excels in asking provocative questions, ends his Comment of the Day regarding the attack on gun ownership with the query, “Why do people use such discredited arguments?”
There’s certainly a lot of discredited arguments in the air. A writer named Michael Pusitan wrote a risible post (inspiring a very funny Animal House referenced take-town by the Instapundit) about getting rid of his guns, ending with this passage:
Last week, I sat in a hotel room and watched the President talk about the latest mass shooting and how they had become routine and the concern that nothing would change. I started to shrug it off and pretend in my mind that there was nothing I could do. But the idea that gun culture doesn’t bear some responsibility for these killings didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t want to be a part of gun culture anymore.
I was never going to use these guns for self-defense, they were safely locked and out of reach. I don’t hunt. I don’t shoot clays. There are no dangerous animals where I live. There are no zombies. I’m not a police officer or soldier. I am not part of a well regulated militia. There’s no reason for me to have them.
So I got rid of them. Firearms are no longer a hobby of mine.
This well-exposes the logical disconnect of virtually all the “WE GOTTA DO SOMETHING!” rants from political exploiters of the recent shootings, where the tragedy is used to insist on measures that will have no effect on preventing the tragedies at issue. Pusitan getting rid of his guns is grandstanding, that’s all. His action won’t save a single life, and if he snapped and decided to go shoot up a church he’d still be able to buy the guns to do it. Meanwhile, the statement “I didn’t want to be a part of gun culture anymore” is pure, distilled ignorance. It’s not the gun culture, you fool, it’s the culture, and unless you want to book a slow boat to China, you’re part of it whether you like it or not, because you live here, and derive the good and the bad from the uniquely vital and productive individual initiative and freedom-based culture that is the United States of America.
(Instapundit’s joke quotes Otter: THESE TIMES CALL FOR A REALLY STUPID, FUTILE GESTURE. And he’s just the guy who can do it.)
The answers to Michael’s question are many: because they don’t know what they are talking about, because they have no good, honest proposals, just bad, dishonest ones, because they are preaching to the choir and not really interested in changing anyone’s mind, because the whole debate is framed by emotion, not facts.
Here is Michael Ejercito‘s Comment of the Day on the post, “Who Are You Calling A Nut?” And Other Ethics Issues In The Community College Shooting Aftermath (Continued)”
A column from George Skelton on this issue, and my response.
It is really quite simple: Guns are designed for killing. The more guns there are, the more people get killed. That’s not just simple logic. It’s simple fact.
The same thing have been argued with regards to alcohol- or black people.
And no other developed nation comes close to us in firearms fatalities. We’re at 10-plus per 100,000 people. One third are homicides, two thirds are suicides.
I wonder if George Skelton even heard that California has legalized assisted suicide. The state thus declared that suicide is a good thing.
No, it’s not necessarily true that if people didn’t kill themselves with guns, they’d do it with poison or rope or razors.
“Firearms are very easy to use,” says Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program. “If you shoot yourself with the intent to kill, chances are 80% to 90% you will. Not many people mess that up. But use any other method and the chances of success go way down.”
Again, California, by law, declared suicide to be a good thing.
The gun death rate in France is 3 per 100,000 people. In Italy and Germany it’s 1-plus. In Britain, India and Japan, it’s way under 1.
No mention of Russia, Jamaica, South Africa, or Mexico. Of course, no mention of how those other countries grant much more leeway to their police regarding searches and seizures.
We have, of course, the 2nd Amendment. The Founders didn’t want to maintain a large standing army so they inserted this into the Constitution: “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.” A good copy editor would have deleted that third comma.
Last time I looked, we had a pretty robust standing army.
And yet, this standing army does not protect the American people from criminal gun violence.
Imagine that. Of course, Skelton here is completely dishonest about the history of the Second Amendment.
“We are unique in our regulatory approach,” Wintemute says. “We allow pretty much anybody to buy any firearm…. Our approach is permissive. In most other countries, their primary approach is restrictive. You can’t buy a firearm unless you show a need for it.”
In America, the government is supposed to be the party that has to justify their need to restrict the people’s rights, not the other way around.
Fortunately, California has good gun laws, perhaps the toughest in the nation. We ban the sale of magazines holding more than 10 rounds. We have 10-day waiting periods with solid background checks. We require gun-handling tests, among other restrictions. But we’re vulnerable to other states on our border, where people can buy weapons willy-nilly at gun shows and cart them into California. Like Chicago, despite its tough gun controls, is vulnerable to downstate Illinois and Indiana. And Washington, D.C., is defenseless against Northern Virginia. That’s why we need a nationwide ban on high-capacity magazines — so common in mass shootings — and universal background checks to try to weed out the criminals and crazies.
Similar arguments were used to justify taking Prohibition nationwide. We abandoned Prohibition for some reason. I wonder what it was.
We also need the Republican-controlled Congress to resume federal funding of gun-violence research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Bowing to the National Rifle Assn., GOP lawmakers cut off the money two decades ago, claiming there was a hidden gun control agenda. Well, maybe such research would result in an acceptable partial cure to the killing epidemic.
Wintemute is an emergency room physician who was inspired to research gun violence after treating countless shooting victims. He used to receive CDC grants. When they ceased, he spent $1.2 million of his own money to continue his research.
An emergency room physician has as much expertise on this issue as the issue of the stricture of the core of neutron stars.
“This is not insoluble,” Wintemute says. “Americans don’t throw up their hands and walk away. They go find the answer. Americans are really good at that.”
George Skelton also neglects to mention that homicides are at an all-time low since 1993.
Seriously, why do people use such discredited arguments?
Ethics Alarms 
Well done.
Loving the new background.
The suicide argument is one that I have real problems with.
If someone takes some sleeping tablets and then calls a friend to say farewell, they are not trying to kill themselves, they are trying to get help. When someone holds a firearm to their head and pulls the trigger, sometimes several times before they are successful, they are determined to kill themselves. If you take away the firearm they will find another way.
Obviously if firearms are available they will be a popular choice for suicide. The argument that they are conveniently available completely ignores the fact that sleeping tablets are at least as easily available and are a guaranteed and painless way to end things.
I’m not an untouched by this, one of my cousins committed suicide with a firearm.
George Skelton supports assisted suicide .
Anyone who supports assisted suicide has no credibility complaining about suicides by firearm.
Okay.
[Reply to Michael Ejercito Oct 12 9:15 pm]
Yeah, it’s like, assisted is OK, but DIY? NEVER! SHAME on everyone else for making it so EASY!
Obviously, the principle we are all supposed to believe in is: “It takes a village” for one to kill oneself, too. So, let’s make that the LAW!
Good points, Michael.
Do these people not even think through their decisions. It is as if George Skelton wrote about how tragic it is that so many Americans are killing themselves using firearms while forgetting his own prior writings supporting assisted suicide.
I can understand arguments for assisted suicide. Suicide is a common method for people to deal with great shame that they brought upon themselves. But for sex offenders, having a firearm is illegal, so…
Interesting stuff. A couple of questions I have are:
– “got rid of them”. How? To whom? Did he dump them in the ocean or sell them on a street corner?
– Has anyone fact checked this claim – this smacks of the latest rape hoax. Is this a real person? Are they telling the truth? I ask this because I am skeptical that a gun collector would all-of-a-sudden be driven to “get rid of” their entire collection after watching an Obama speech. I’m not saying this is impossible, just implausible. It would be like a hard-core Planned Parenthood supporter switching sides after watching a Mike Huckabee interview – very unlikely.
Michael Pusateri is a real person.
View at Medium.com
His LInkedIn profile confirms he is real.
George Skelton wants also to put a tax on emails. I really think he should join the Bernie Sanders campaign.
I wonder why he thinks that police officers need guns?
to gun down unarmed black men, as #BlackLivesMatters claims?
If so, does that not mean the Crips need guns too?
Here is how Chicago practiced gun control.
Chicago required handguns to be registered. No problem, right? What is wrong with requiring registration of handguns? All you do is fill our a form and mail it to the appropriate address, right?
Except that they refused to provide new registration forms. They refused to process new registrations. Of course, for some reason, rich, white people with political connections to the Daley junta somehow managed to be able to register their handguns. Not that they actually needed those forms- one of them had actually been pulled over for suspicion for drunk driving, spat at the arresting officer, was found with a unregistered pistol with the serial numbers filed off (a federal offense), and was later allowed to walk- with the gun.
Can you imagine if voting was treated like this, if officials refused to accept registrations of new voters (especially if huge numbers of the “wrong” kind of people recently moved into the precinct). Would any civil rights organization (let alone voting rights organizations) tolerate a government’s refusal to accept new voter registrations (let alone refusing to provide the forms in the first place)
It is the height of chutzpah to require registration of anything as a condition of ownership, and then to go on and refuse to accept new registrations. that any politician would defend this is inexplicable by anything except hostility to private gun owners.
Chutzpah with a capital CH !
It is interesting that guns that are seemingly harmless in downstate Illinois suddenly become very dangerous when they get to Chicago. It is also interesting that guns that are seemingly harmless elsewhere become very dangerous when brought into California. It is almost like the people in California and Chicago make the guns more dangerous than they were in their previous location.
I am very willing to help this guy out by taking his entire collection off his hands.
Let’s ban big cities. That’s where the killings are so concentrated. You know, have “urban-free zones.” Limit the capacity of people residing or working per square mile, instead of limiting numbers of rounds per magazine. Finally, let’s decriminalize guns and ammo. We must speak in the lexicon of the leftists – they MUST change their thinking!
Readers of the L.A. Times would note that Skelton’s column is on the front page of the California section, not in the Opinion section.
It is a simple fact, martial arts were made for violence and killing. The more martial arts studios we have the more violence we have. We need to get rid of all these martial arts, especially the ones with no sporting purpose, like tai chi.
I blame babies. The more babies that are born, the more people die. In absolute numbers, we can see that a spike in births is predictably followed by a spike in deaths some years later. That’s not just simple logic. It’s simple fact.
Michael R. and Null win my puny award for sarcasm today.
Great comment. Well done!
jvb
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/10/ryan-mcmaken/gun-lies/
Here is more derp.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/amy-schumer-tackles-guns-on-snl/410134/
Yet more craziness from the gun control nuts:
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/16/want_a_gun_take_a_bullet_new_rule_before_you_pack_heat_you_will_know_what_it_feels_like_to_be_shot/
Why did Salon even publish this?
The author failed to note that, if we to remove such cities at New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington from the gun crimes list- all cities with horrendous crime rates AND restrictive gun ownership laws- America’s international ranking in such crimes shrinks to insignificance. Then, there’s Switzerland!
I don’t think this is accurate. This was brought up before and search as we might, couldn’t find the stats to support this argument.
More on this topic.
http://news.yahoo.com/democrats-push-prevent-gun-sales-terror-list-suspects-081850711–politics.html