More lies and deception on handguns.

[Barth]

I was deeply disturbed by a gun control rant during the Sunday night NFL game.
A player killed his girlfriend and then committed suicide.
And this was depicted as one more example of how handguns don't protect folks they just escalate violence.

With thousands of documented cases of people successfully defending themselves and loved ones every year with handguns.
The comment s made were unfounded and irresponsible.

People that want to commit homicide/suicide will do so - handguns or not.
The event, although sad, has nothing to do with the right to have and carry handguns for self defense.

Parties don't erupt into homicide, and the streets aren't wild west shootouts,
due to law abiding citizens have the right to carry handguns.

What is documented is that the homicide rate in Florida dropped after
shall issue carry laws were put in place.
And crimes committed by folks with gun permits is right around zero.
I sure didn't hear anything about that.

My real concern is that lots of uninformed people might actually take stock in these outrageous claims.
And that in respect for the suicide others may not offer a responsible counterpoint.

I really hope this Abomination of an administration
isn't the start of a renewed attempt to disarm the american public.

[JFootin]

The socialist liberals, their media front line soldiers and the totally infiltrated education system are going to keep on with this brainwashing. Their motto is "keep telling the same lie insessantly until people believe it is true." Look how successful they have been in the last two presidential elections. And look at Great Brittain and Australia for examples of their successful anti-gun brainwashing. Frankly, I don't think it can be stopped, only slowed down a bit by our efforts. But they are patient over decades and generations to infiltrate, corrupt and brainwash the dumb masses on so many fronts that it is inevitable.

[muggsy]

Bob Costas is entitled to his personal views no matter how asinine they may be.

[mser]

Bob Costas is entitled to his personal views no matter how asinine they may be.

Agreed. His personal views are just that and he has every right to express them. The forum in which he chose to express them was a poor choice.

[Longitude Zero]

The forum in which he chose to express them was a poor choice.

That is putting it mildly. His venue of choice was flat out INAPPROPRIATE.

[Barth]

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/kansas-city-chiefs-jovan-belcher-suicide-murder-no-reason-to-take-away-rights-120512
The burning embers of the Twin Towers had a way of being invoked when a particularly dicey part of the Patriot Act needed selling 11 years ago.


BEARS REPEATING
Kasandra Perkins and Jovan Belcher would be alive if there had been no handgun in their home, Jason Whitlock says.
This was the smart play.
Watering down constitutional rights is not easily undertaken.
So scaring Americans and then using that fear to explain why this egregious assault on their rights is for their own good is genius.
This is exactly why the right protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures of Americans is no longer absolute, thanks to the Patriot Act, and a right to a speedy and public trial by jury was only days ago finally reaffirmed in the Senate, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) so eloquently arguing, “If we relinquish our rights because of fear, what is it exactly, then, we are fighting for?”

Yes, tragedy is a dangerous time for the Bill of Rights because somebody is always there to wave a flag or an orphaned baby and use that to explain why we need to voluntarily give up rights our Founding Fathers so wisely gave to us. And so it is with this Jovan Belcher tragedy.

The Kansas City Chiefs linebacker gunned down his girlfriend — the mother of his baby — and then killed himself, leaving a 3-month-old girl without parents. That this is a tragedy is inarguable. That this is some sort of referendum on the Second Amendment and our right to bear arms is absurd.

My esteemed colleague, Jason Whitlock, argued just that in a very thoughtful column, noting “What I believe is, if (Belcher) didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.” NBC analyst Bob Costas used this as a jumping off point to proselytize during halftime of “Football Night in America” about perspective in sports and the dangers of guns.

The problem with intelligent, impassioned, well-reasoned arguments is how seductive they are. It is easier to blow off the crazy guy screaming “ban all guns” than journalists such as Whitlock or Costas who are arguing rather convincingly how the Second Amendment threatens our liberty rather than enhances it.

What I know for sure is the distinguished senator from Kentucky is right. And his impassioned defense of the Sixth Amendment on the Senate floor last week needs to be Googled and viewed by everybody calling for a gun ban in response to the Belcher tragedy.


TRAGEDY IN KANSAS CITY
Chiefs' Belcher kills girlfriend, himself
Engel: Don't blame the gun
Whitlock: No time to play a game
Police release details | Families speak
Chiefs get emotional win | Reaction
Who was Belcher? | Career in pictures
“We have nothing to fear that should cause us to relinquish our rights as free men and women,” Paul said. “I urge my colleagues to reject fear, to reject the siren call for ever more powerful government.”

This is not simply about guns. This is about rights. It is a slippery slope from doing something in the interest of public safety to giving up what we hold dear. The slope is greased with fear, with a self-righteous belief that we know better than the framers of the Constitution. And it is all based on informal fallacy.

The idea that if we just ban all guns Kasandra Perkins does not die and a 3-month-old baby is not orphaned is the very essence of a stated premise that fails to support its proposed conclusion. Yes, guns are dangerous and people such as Belcher sometimes use them to do awful things. What I believe in my heart is Jovan Belcher was going to find a way to wreak havoc that day whether he had a gun or a knife or only his fists. And even the potential to stop him is not justification for willingly handing over rights guaranteed to us.

If this makes me a gun nut or a wing nut or a preachy PITA, I am OK with those labels. Although, I prefer Constitutionalist.

There are not a lot of us left — not absolutists, at least.

Conservatives argue for limiting the right to a speedy trial because terrorists are dangerous. Liberals argue for taking away my right to bear arms because people like Belcher use them in unspeakably horrific ways. Hell, the mayor of New York wants to take away my right to buy a big cup of Coke while in his city because obesity has become such an epidemic. Where does it end? Taking away free speech, freedom of the press? Restricting our right to peaceably assemble? Whittling away our very liberty?

Liberty and democracy are not the same things.

Democracy means the majority decides what rules govern us. Liberty is the idea that we all have certain rights that cannot be taken away, not even by a majority. These are the “inalienable rights” of the Declaration of Independence, and when we give them up voluntarily, for whatever reason no matter how altruistic, what we find is all we have done is given more rights to the government that were intended for us.

Doing so makes us less safe, not more.

So I absolutely believe in “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” just as I do the right to a trial by jury and freedom of religion. And as tragic as this Belcher murder-suicide story is, as much as my heart breaks for that little girl, the answer is not taking away or willingly giving up the right of Americans to bear arms.

Because if we give up our liberty for the mirage of safety, what really have we won?

[JFootin]

+1. We need a Like button. :)

[Longitude Zero]

Jason Whitlock is a racist POS. This is not the first time that his ignorance about race and reality has been splurged upon the public.

[muggsy]

Agreed. His personal views are just that and he has every right to express them. The forum in which he chose to express them was a poor choice.

Excuse me, but I think that you have confused me with someone who thinks that left wingers are intelligent. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[Bongo Boy]

It's very unfortunate there's so little thinking involved in these rants, and no useful thinking whatsoever. Wild speculation about what would or would not have happened had there been no firearm--in a case of premeditated murder/suicide, is so ridiculous you'd think someone would raise a hand and say, "Uh, wait a minute." I wonder how many ball players have been involved in some way in crimes resulting in murder that did NOT involve firearms. Doesn't matter...let's move on.

But no. It's an emotional free-for-all with the premise appearing to be whacked-out individuals who choose a firearm as their preferred weapon of insanity would be just A-Okay if those nasty firearms weren't laying all around the place.

What's also unfortunate is that the level of ignorance of facts, the complete disregard and lack of interest in them, and the inability of (apparently) 47% of the population to actually use them in any logical way--essentially allows nonsense to prevail. To no positive end.

NO ONE asks for meaningful facts surrounding these tragedies that could possibly lead to reducing them. Anything at all that the media chooses to make alarming can be alarming--and the job of commercial media is to do just that.

If anyone saw the ridiculous, contrived 'Guns and the NFL' story on TV this week, it should be obvious how capable the media is in getting everyone all spooled up when there isn't even a story. But again, what is most definitely missing are any pertinent facts, or even a clear definition of what the problem is in the first place.

The best examples of generating a problem to alarm the public where no problem is even defined, are the 'alarming number of guns' or the 'so many guns' and 'too many guns' themes. Always listen carefully when you watch or hear a commercial media 'expose' or little story--not just related to firearms--they consistently drum up some topic, make it 'feel' like a serious problem, but seldom actually define the problem or state why it's a problem.

The Brady Bunch is especially good at this, with a frequent theme being 'gun violence' and 'gun tragedies' and 'firearms related homicides'. So far in reading the studies they cite, they seem to make little distinction between or have little concern about who was killed, and in one oft-cited study, those who did the study caution that they don't even know how the vicitims were killed. So, is it actually a problem if more people are being killed by firearms if they're the right people? Let's not look into that--too hard and doing so won't help the Brady Bunch. Facts just confuse the issues.

[RRP]

~
With thousands of documented cases of people successfully defending themselves and loved ones every year with handguns.
The comment s made were unfounded and irresponsible.
~

I am a gun guy. I support our constitutional rights. Those rights must be preserved.

In the wake of national-news-making-events, such as this football shooting, there is always renewed talk of the dangers of guns in our society. Can you provide the source(s) of the 1000s of documented cases, annually? This is the type of back-up I need to fortify my position in responsible gun advocacy.

Thanks.

[Barth]

I am a gun guy. I support our constitutional rights. Those rights must be preserved.

In the wake of national-news-making-events, such as this football shooting, there is always renewed talk of the dangers of guns in our society. Can you provide the source(s) of the 1000s of documented cases, annually? This is the type of back-up I need to fortify my position in responsible gun advocacy.

Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Self-protection
Self-protection
See also: List of defensive gun use incidents
Between 1987 and 1990, David McDowall found that guns were used in defense during a crime incident 64,615 times annually (258,460 times total over the whole period).[66] This equates to two times out of 1,000 incidents (0.2%) that occurred in this period.[66] For violent crimes, assault, robbery, and rape, guns were used 0.83% of the time in self-defense.[66] Of the times that guns were used in self-defense, 71% of the crimes were committed by strangers, with the rest of the incidents evenly divided between offenders that were acquaintances or persons well known to the victim.[66] In 28% of incidents where a gun was used for self-defense, victims shot at the offender.[66] In 20% of the self-defense incidents, the guns were used by police officers.[66] During this same period, 1987 to 1990, there were 46,319 gun homicides,[67] and the National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that 2,628,532 nonfatal crimes involving guns occurred.[66]

[RRP]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Self-protection



Thanks for the information.

[Double3]

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/21821_10151295063062451_1427442729_n.jpg

[downtownv]

Listen to a liberal talk show host (yes, your ears will burn) It's amazing what the "call-in" public thinks and says!
You will quickly notice this type of thing in very little time.
But they are the first ones to want to honor the "local soldier" that comes home KIA. It's so oxymoronic that it's actually just words from a Moron.

[JFootin]

"... You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?"

I love it ! :D