gun control hysteria

Let Us Give Belated Thanks To President Biden’s Ventriloquists For Another Vivid Example of Unethical Anti-Gun Propaganda

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I missed this, but the White House statement from “President Biden” (Who wrote it? Who approved it? Did the President even know about it?) following the Madison, Wisconsin school shooting two weeks ago couldn’t be a better demonstration of the intellectual dishonesty and ruthlessness of the Left’s anti-Second Amendment fanatics. Apparently gun-phobics are thrilled any time a gun-related tragedy occurs so they can rush out junk like this and fundraising appeals to exploit the event for all it’s worth, and the higher body count the better. The alleged Presidential sentiment deliberately misrepresents the shooting by linking it to standard tenets of the anti-gun agenda that literally have nothing to do with the incident being exploited.

The Biden statement also brands itself as standard issue cant by using the deliberately meaningless Axis phrase “commonsense gun safety laws,” overwhelming used by those whose idea of “common sense” is not to allow legal private gun ownership at all. Then the letter advocates universal background checks, a national red flag law, a ban on assault weapons, and a ban on high-capacity magazines, not one of which would have done anything to prevent the shooting that is supposed to be the subject of the letter.

The shooter in Madison was a 15-year-old girl who couldn’t legally purchase a gun anyway: background checks don’t apply to shooters like her. Nor would a “red flag law” have flagged her, since it doesn’t include children too young to own guns. The shooter didn’t use an “assault weapon”; she used a pistol; nor was a high-capacity magazine involved. Never mind! Guns bad, so this tragedy that might have been prevented if only “we could melt all the guns and give a new world to our daughters and sons” (which we can’t: Who recognizes the song lyric?) justifies rushing out anti-gun propaganda when the appeal to emotion would be most effective.

Yecchh.

_______________

Pointer: Not the Bee

Ethics Lessons From An Ethics Dunce, Ed Stack, Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Ed Stack, the CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods, is profiled in Sunday’s New York Times. He reveals himself as a thorough Ethics Dunce on many fronts, but in doing so performs a valuable service by showing vividly why the world doesn’t work, or at least the United States.

  • Stack had an epiphany, we learn, after the shooting murders of 17 at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. “As Mr. Stack watched the news, he decided to drastically curtail Dick’s gun sales,” we learn.

This is management incompetence, and life incompetence as well. Stack employed pure emotion to make a business decision with unknown impact. Such business practices make an executive untrustworthy by definition.

  • Quote: “But I sat there hearing about the kids who were killed, and I hadn’t cried that much since my mother passed away. We need to do something. This has got to stop.”

More incompetence, and irresponsible as well. More than two years after deciding, based on a single unusual tragedy, that guns are bad, Stack’s level of criticism remains stuck at the “Do something!” stage. Of course, so is the anti-gun movement generally, making Stack an excellent symbol of its lack of policy seriousness and willingness to deal openly with reality. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/15/18: Money, Massacres, Mudd And More (Item #1 School Shootings Demagoguery)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This comment grew on me the more I read the increasingly dishonest and unhinged arguments, all too familiar, from the anti-gun hysterics. It was sparked by a comment from another commenter, who asked how many of the proposed measures would stop a student from bringing a gun to school.

Here is the Comment of the Day, the first of several waiting for re-publication, by one of our Texas participants, slickwilly:

Aha! Good point, as most of this is aimed at the external threat, the shooter who is not a student.

Our High School Principal came out with a letter this morning, showing the ongoing policy for the student shooter angle. This was sent to teachers and staff, and I got it courtesy of my wife, a teacher. (bold is mine)

“As I look back on this week, I think about all the positive things taking place here. We have kids competing at State competitions, teams in playoffs, in addition to all the great things taking place in the classroom. Our hospitality committee provided a great lunch on Valentine’s Day, and the list goes on and on. When I hear about the events that took place in Florida this week. I think about how blessed we are that we have not had to face a situation like that, and pray we never do. I wonder, if there is one thing we could do to prevent it from happening, what would it be? I keep coming back to relationships. I know many of you work hard to build great relationships with kids, and I know some are hard to reach. I asked at our last faculty meeting, could we all choose one student a week to send a positive email home about. If we all had a student in mind, about 120 parents a week would be hearing from us. We may never know what that could mean in that student’s life or ours. I hope you all have a great Friday. Thank you for all you do. ”

This policy of establishing relationships with students has stopped several potential students shootings in the past couple of years. Continue reading →

Slate Gives Us A Lovely Example Of Deceit

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

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Thanks, Slate!

A lot of people have trouble with the concept of deceit, which is the intentional use of apparently true statements to deceive. Now I have a wonderful example to give them, thanks to Slate’s use of the most sneaky of lies as its recent contribution to the Post Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck, Media Anti-gun Propaganda Division.

Slate compiled a list it called “How Many People Have Been Killed By Guns Since Newtown,” and illustrated it with an “infographic.” The list was widely used in the current “those crazy Republican gun nuts have blood on their hands” campaign led by the President, the Vice President, Mayor Bloomberg and others.  The list is unreliable, however, as an advocacy device, since one of the names it includes is Boston Marathon terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed in a shootout with police. How many other gun casualties are on the list that are perfectly justified, legally and ethically, unless one is an anti-gum absolutist who thinks neither the police nor other law enforcement should have access to firearms either? Quite a few, it turns out.

The only explanation for including Tsarnaev (and the others) is to mislead the public and inflame fear and passion by maximizing the raw number of names on the “shooting death list.” Yes, this is literally an accurate (I guess) list of every gun death since Newtown, but if the purpose of the list is to dramatize the need for anti-gun measures in the wake of the Sandy Hood shooting, why is a Boston Marathon child-killer on the list? What does his death have to do with the defeat of gun-control legislation in the Newtown aftermath, or the Newtown massacre generally? Nothing…except that it inflates the number, to be used in fear-mongering and misrepresentation. And that is exactly how Slate’s list is being used…as if it didn’t know. Those defeated, Newtown-inspired anti-gun measures would not have have saved the terrorist, nor does anyone sane wish they could have. Continue reading →

Here’s A “No-Tolerance” Policy We Should Get Behind

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

At least Springfield understands...

At least Springfield understands…

All sane and compassionate adults, tax-payer, responsible citizens and elected officials should adopt this “no-tolerance policy”:

“School officials and teachers who engage in child abuse, hysterical over-reactions and otherwise indefensible punitive measures against children who talk about guns, show pictures of guns, wear T-shirts with guns, use their fingers as guns, form objects that vaguely look like guns, or display obvious toys of any size and material that nobody who has ever watched TV or a movie or traveled among the living could conceivably think was dangerous or a real gun, will not be tolerated, not even once. They will be fired, shunned, and forbidden to engage in any occupation that will give them power or authority over children, anywhere, forever. And school board members, administrators, elected officials or parents supporting such fools will also not be tolerated. Their indefensible opinions will go on their permanent record, creating a prima facie case for any future employer that they are, in fact, too silly to be trusted.”

Is that too harsh? I don’t think so. After all, I just removed the provision that says that any school housing such teachers or officials should be closed down and converted into a shooting range. I can’t stand any more of these stories. Anyone who can read them and blithely send their kids to be “educated’ by such utter dolts and hysterics should be investigated for child cruelty themselves. Who knows what other irresponsible things such parents might be doing?

From the Washington Post: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Have We Achieved The Ultimate No-Tolerance Insanity At Last?

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

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Wow, were kids sick back then, or what!

Wow, were kids sick back then, or what!

Could it be? Is it possible? Has school administrator incompetence, fearfulness, power abuse and cruelty finally reached its apotheosis?

In Loveland, Colorado, 7-year-old Mary Blair Elementary School student Alex Watkins was suspended by the Thompson School District for going through the motions of throwing an imaginary hand grenade at an equally imaginary box that contained “something evil,” with the admirable purpose of saving the world, doing so on what is anachronistically called a “school playground.” The imaginary grenade caused the imaginary box to be vaporized in an imaginary explosion.

The Horror.

The imaginary minds of one or more teachers who witnessed this carnage ignited in fear and anger. Of course, an overly-broad, incompetently drafted, utterly stupid no-tolerance rule was involved: Mary Blair Elementary School bans imaginary fighting and imaginary weaponry. The only bright side of this disgraceful abuse of an innocent child and blatant attempt at thought-control is that it might finally provide the absolute end point on the spectrum of school administration no-tolerance incompetence. Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz question for today is..

Is it? Continue reading →

When “No Tolerance” Meets Anti-Gun Hysteria: How Silly Can School Administrators Get?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I have this sinking feeling that we have not yet seen the worst.

Phil? Is that you?

Phil? Is that you?

In Woody Allen’s oddball satiric masterpiece “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?”, the hero, a dim-bulb Japanese version of James Bond named “Phil Moskowitz,” is being briefed on his quary, a Chinese super-villain named Wing Fat. Pointing to a map, the secret agent’s boss tel’s him, “This is the home of Wing Fat!” “You mean he lives in that little piece of paper?”the agent exclaims.

I always wondered what happened to Phil, considering his, ah, handicap. I should have guessed. He became a school administrator in Tan Valley, Arizona,.

Daniel McClaine, Jr., a freshman at Poston Butte High School there, made a web photo of an AK 47 against an American flag backdrop  as the desktop background on his school-issued computer and was suspended as a result.

NO, Phil, the piece of paper isn’t the real gun! Won’t you ever learn? Continue reading →