Sunday, May 25, 2008

Liberals and Guns

My blog is verging on becoming a political blog! Oh, no! I'll write about something different soon, I promise, hehe. But I'm using this journal to vent some frustration, and, hey, it's not like anyone actually reads it, except for a few Europeans. ;)

One of the reasons I can't identify as a liberal is that, well, they're not very liberal. Take this "liberal" posting about why gun restrictions are bad. In my experience, this is pretty much the standard American liberal line about firearms - that, y'know, because most gun owners never blow anyone's head off, it's OK to ignore it when other gun owners do blow someone's head off. Because, okay, the quote is too good: "Guns are a tool, like anything, can be used to harm….or they can be used for fun, like most gun-users do."

For fun.

Around 10,000 people a year in the USA are murdered with firearms. That's 68% of all murders, not to mention 42% of all robberies and 22% of the assaults in the US involved guns. About 16,000 people a year kill themselves with guns. There are around 40,000 firearms injuries per year where hospitalization was sought. There are over half a million crimes a year committed with guns. A gun is eleven times more likely to be used in a suicide or suicide attempt than home defense!

But the justification is that guns are fun. And on the strength that people like guns, we are justified in turning our eye away from the 26,000 people a year who die because of guns, the forty-thousand who are seriously injured with guns, and the hundreds of thousands of gun-related crimes committed each year.

I have difficulty expressing how morally vacant I find that argument. I prefer the conservative argument, for even tho' I don't agree with it, and I think it is ignorant, it is not wholly morally vacant. To say that we need guns to kick the government's ass if it becomes tyrannical is a little crazy, but not morally vacant given that governments do become tyrannical. But the argument that guns are fun, or cool, or whatever, is so blindingly empty, so vile and backwards and stupid that I have trouble imagining how an intelligent person could hold to such an evil idea. It baffles me.

Additional Comment: One of the "guns are cool" group on the post that spurred my post has gone on to say how we should boycott bananas because of how awful and destructive United Fruit (aka Chiquita) is.

So, we should stop eating bananas because United Fruit is a horrible corporation but it's okay to supports the arms industry. Because "guns are cool". At least bananas are healthy. Oh, I think she's got a point about United Fruit - it is a horrible company, without doubt, but at least the product that United Fruit produces, bananas, are actually good for people.

I mean, how can you support firearms, the fucking arms industry, the death merchants and then criticize any other corporate entity for being horrible? And do support the most murderous - overtly, literally murderous and literally war mongers - group of corporations on earth and then get your knickers in a twist over bananas?

The piece de la resistance is, of course, that United Fruit's horrible policies would be impossible without the arms industry - the arms industry makes oppression possible. So, y'know, don't eat the banana, but support the company that makes the oppression of the farmers who grow the bananas possible.

It's insane.

11 comments:

Robert Taylor said...

You're off on this one Bradley. You went through the standard "numbers" game that most anti-gun people tote, but you forgot one key factor:

If we eliminate guns in the country, I can sure as hell guarantee you the government won't give up their guns...or nukes.

What's worse than a population that can't protect themselves from the fucking bastards who suffer from power trips in the government.

And let's just assume the government gave up its weapons. Another country would just come around and take over the US's position as world power and enslave us all.

I'm with you buddy, guns are an increasingly destructive force in society, but until some major paradigms shift, it's just not a good idea to get rid of them.

Unknown said...

Robert, well, I was addressing the liberal position of "guns are cool" not the more conservative position - that I mentioned I didn't find nearly as stupid - that firearms are necessary to defend ourselves from tyrannical governments.

However, if you think that the personal firearms in the hands of private citizens are capable of stopping the US military, you're daft. There, it's not a numbers game, it's a power game. If the US government turned on its citizens, the presence of firearms in our society would be nearly irrelevant due to the overwhelming power of the US military - and if the military sided with the people against government tyranny, well, the presence of guns in society still would be irrelevant.

So, mostly, I wasn't even trying to address your point. I think it's not a very sensible point, but I actually prefer it to the "guns are cool" nonsense that liberals pull.

Robert Taylor said...

Chris, I think you're going to establish a pattern that there are liberals who think "guns are cool" considering the blog post you cited was titled "WHERE I AM NOT LIBERAL"...

Unknown said...

*watches the goal posts slide*

And don't be lazy. Go Google "pro-gun liberal". I'm a blogger sounding off, not your personal research service.

Sheesh, not to mention any links I'd post would be cherry picked to support my position. Go do your own research. If you don't know about pro-gun liberals, you're not qualified to talk with me about the subject.

Unknown said...

And for what it's worth, her argument wasn't conservative, either. No conservative worth their salt would go with something as thin as "guns are fun". They'd at least talk about "home defense" or the issue you brought up, about how the Founding Fathers intended for the people to overthrow a tyrannical government. My point was that argument, expressed just not by the person in Punkass Blog link but several in the comments had no greater defense for gun ownership than "fun", which given the damage guns do to society is the position of an idiot.

Robert Taylor said...

Thinking guns are "fun" is a position of pro-gun liberal organized is the only lazy and intellectually lazy position I see here. The fact is that you live under this pathetic false left/right paradigm, and you don't have the capacity to think beyond those terms. You even had to post a second comment to try to cover your tracks bro. Sheesh is right.

Unknown said...

What bizarre reasoning you have. So, I give a post whose content is that guns are fun, from a reported liberal, which is a position I've heard quite a bit before - but because I don't cherry pick posts enough to give you "evidence" you say that because I wrote two posts - I mean, heavens, I didn't think of all I wanted to say IMMEDIATELY and had to revisit the subject, which is CLEARLY a sign of intellectual dishonesty, right? having something to add is obviously the sign of someone covering their tracks! - and then accuse me of some left/right paradigmic thinking because I won't do your research.

The new flaw in your "thinking" is a typical position of intellectual vacant people - you try to use linguistic uncertainty to destroy the meaning of terms in order to advance . . . heck, I think you're just trying to win, now, and have no point.

Left and right are positions that exist. Most Americans, broadly speaking, are usefully said to be either on the "left", the "right" or in the "center". The term "leftist" is one accepted by the people at PAB - they identify as being on the "left" and as "liberals". My characterization of them is, therefore, both obvious and accurate - they fulfill most of the criteria of leftist liberals, seem to be accepted as such, and identify as such.

If you are going to say that most pro-gun liberals don't, as did Lisa Kansas and Sabotabby and the rest, merely want guns because they're fun or cool, I'd even concede that point. They're not the ones I was talking about. The ones I was talking about are the people like at PAB whose biggest intellectual defense for the possession of firearms is the enjoyment that guns bring to a segment of the population.

Robert Taylor said...

Thanks for conceding

Unknown said...

Too bad you didn't actually say what I conceded to you saying. It's always pretty pathetic when the other guy makes your point better than you do.

divabeq said...

I dig it how all the insecure weirdos come out of the woodwork with their terrible arguments every time you start to talk about guns. It's probably not great for your blood pressure, but it's entertaining!

I'm with you all the way. For the record.

Unknown said...

No, no, no, Becky, they're not insecure nutjobs stroking their guns - they need them to PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM THE GOVERNMENT. No, really, it's not a juvenile power trip with murderous consequences for tens of thousands of people a year, it's a MORAL DECISION to DEFEND FREEDOM. And because they dress up their fetishizing of their mechanical penises as JUSTICE it's okay to ignore all the harm that guns do. Besides, only CRIMINAL use guns illegally, anyway, and not a meaningless tautology. It's not really about just the sense of power firearms ownership brings. Really. Just ask them.