Friday, April 11, 2014

Cenk Uygur - Understanding the Pro-Gun Mentality

36 comments:

  1. "Understanding the Pro-Gun Mentality"? These buffoons understand nothing.

    And the last guy, on the far right (in terms of location, not ideology), saying that both Ft. Hood shooters died. Er . . . what??? So the Nidal Malik Hasan in Ft. Leavenworth isn't really Nidal Malik Hasan?

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    1. "These buffoons understand nothing."

      Yep. What a load of projection of incorrect notions. I love how people like this always pat themselves and each other on the back because they managed, in a thought experiment, to put themselves in our shoes and understand where we're coming from. Especially since they never actually understand where we're coming from since they make a bunch of false assumptions about our beliefs and principles, assume we're illogical as a principle, and wind up far afield.

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    2. If they really want to understand our perspective, they could, you know, come spend a day with some of us. Course, they'd have to take the blinders off too, and come with a truly open mind--something it seems fewer and fewer media folks on the left are capable of. Rank and file manage it ok now, but not the type that become journalists and politicians.

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    3. Kurt, I noticed that mistake too. But the rest of what he said was right-on.

      Simon, you're being a bit condescending to think the gun control people have never spent a day with some of you. We're not all as ignorant of guns as you like to pretend.

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    4. I'm not talking about all of you. I'm talking about the people in this video and various others I've met or whose articles I've read.

      Cenk talks about how he's finally gotten inside our heads and figured out how we view things from our perspective, but he's nowhere close. I've heard similar claims at college from some people. When I'd try to explain, "No, that's not how I and others think...this is," they'd sometimes stare blankly and be unable to understand because it didn't fit their preconceived notion. Other times, folks from the same point on the political spectrum, but with more open minds, would understand what I was saying. They wouldn't usually agree, but they would understand.

      Heck, even one of the Brady Campaign lawyers I had lunch with at a continuing education meeting sat there talking to me with a relatively open mind. I didn't convince her anymore than her friend, but she walked away understanding my point of view better, and me understanding hers better.

      Dialogue is a lot better than two monologues talking past each other.

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    5. You're not ignorant of guns, Mikeb? You do such a good job hiding your knowledge, then.

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    6. GC, you don't do a good job at all hiding your ignorance, you prove it by lying all the time.

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    7. Anonymous, I reissue my challenge to you: If you can prove that I lied in these comments, I will leave and never return.

      Of course, that requires you to understand what a lie means, but surely you can manage that. I've made this challenge many times, and no one has been able to meet it.

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    8. Greg, Anonymous has proven that multiple times. As he's pointed out, so many times that I don't even permit him to do it anymore. So, your question is totally deceptive and dishonest not to mention unfair since you know I'm not posting his responses. This issue is closed.

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  2. Do these folk intentionally come into work with no idea what they'll be talking about? The biggest thing that jumped out at me was one commentator's belief that both Ft. Hood shooters were dead. Not sure how he missed the whole Hasan trial thing in the news, especially since these are supposedly media type people.

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    1. How about the points he made. Are you getting as petty as the others now in order to avoid the point?

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    2. How about the points he made.

      He made "points"? I must have missed them.

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    3. "How about the points he made."

      You mean like the thought experiment about what if there was no outside of this room? That was pointless, rather than being a point. It was pretty much all opinionated stereotype except for the discussion about Ft. Hood, and they just plain got that wrong.

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    4. No, we've been talking about the last speaker who made the stupid flub that both Fort Hood shooters died. His main point was what I always say, that gun free ones do not attract the nuts. These guys go to the place of their grievance in almost every case.

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    5. And we've agreed that these psychos usually go to a place of grievance without regard to it being gun free or not. These places have just tended to coincidentally be gun free zones which has resulted in the victims being stripped of an effective means of resisting the grievance shooter--a means that has been used to great effect in some other cases.

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    6. You're still missing the point, Mikeb. Where wackos go is subject to all manner of motivations. But gun-free zones disarm their intended targets.

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    7. Simon, you're still doing it, I guess you can't help yourself.

      "These places have just tended to coincidentally be gun free zones"

      "Coincidentally?"

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    8. Coincidentally--as in it was a coincidence--most of them didn't choose to go to a gun free zone, it just happened to be one. As in, correlation without causation.

      Exactly what am I doing?

      Are you implying that I was using coincidentally while intending sarcastic air quotes or something? Don't read things in that aren't there. As I said, it was a coincidence in most of these cases that the place they went was a gun free zone--they were just going to a place where they had a grievance.

      What I was getting at was that in the shootings that happened at gun free zones, the victims were unable to have a means of defense that has proven effective in stopping other shootings.

      Maybe you can answer this point now that I've cleared up that I wasn't spinning the way you thought I might have been.

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    9. Since only a small minority of gun owners have a carry license, they have passed on the opportunity to get one. They obviously don't want one. So what's all this screaming about they can't get one? What makes you think there would be a person with a gun, there, ready to stop a killer? Just because you pack everywhere you go? You are in a minority. Your "sides" answer, arm all teachers and students. We heard from the majority of teachers, they don't want to be armed. As for arming minor children (students) you are nuts any why America calls you gun loons.

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    10. Let's see, we start with a straw man on a topic not even being discussed, then we move on to a straw man more on topic, and finally, another strawman argument suggesting that we want to arm minors at school.

      So much bullshit, it's not even worth wading through to explain what all's wrong with it.

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    11. Lawyers are right up there with used car salesmen and have been the but of jokes for centuries because of their hypocrisy.

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  3. 1. No, I'm not safer with no guns. I'm safer with guns that I control.

    2. When these condescending elitists actually study how to use a gun, then I'll listen. But while they yammer about things they know nothing about, I can't care.

    3. Yes, what they say are a bunch of cliches. I know that gun control freaks believe that it's a cabal of gun manufacturers, and I'm glad they think that way. Their delusions make them easier to defeat.

    4. The first Fort Hood shooter didn't die.

    5. Once again, they fail to recognize that while wackos go to places for a variety of reasons, gun-free zones have the effect of disarming good people.

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    1. Maybe good people don't want to be armed, or is it only armed people that are good people?
      Oh, and you gun loons don't have false cliches?
      You are safer with guns? Where? Everywhere including the bathroom?
      It's your irrational fear that a bad guy might pull a gun on your anywhere, that makes you want to be able to carry a gun anywhere. I think you watched to many westerns growing up. Crime is WAY down, it's your irrational fear that is WAY up.

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    2. Crime is WAY down . . .

      And the number of privately owned guns is WAY up. I'm not claiming that correlation equals causation, but I think we can be pretty confident that negative correlation does not equal causation.

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    3. Anonymous, a good person is good with or without a gun. But having a gun gives a good person a better chance.

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    4. "Maybe good people don't want to be armed, or is it only armed people that are good people?"

      Everyone has the freedom do decide to forgo the means for armed self defense. The problem is that many want to impose limitations on this individual right And to be honest, there are already many limitations.
      Considering what seems to have become a common pejorative label many like to use here when referring to people who advocate for gun rights, and one you seem to use also, perhaps a better question is, in your opinion, are only unarmed people good?

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    5. If you are not saying that, then why say it? Love your hypocrisy and dishonesty.

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    6. GC, what about good people who don't want lawlessness and 10's of thousands killed by guns in their society? What about good people who don't want to go out in public knowing people are armed and have to worry about their proven negligence hurting them, or their family? What's wrong with good people who want a civil society, that includes restricting guns that are only made to kill? The West was tamed of its indiscriminate gun killings and society people called that a direction of a more civil society. Now we go backwards and have open gunfire in any city on any day. 10,000 gun murders a year, 30,000 gun shot deaths a year, and 10's of thousands more gun injuries a year. Glad you love your violent society since you contribute to it by supporting it. You just don't get it, the more guns, the more gun deaths and injuries.

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    7. SS,
      Where's the concern for good people who don't want to live in your society of excessive gun violence and death? You have your gun rights in law, where is their right to a safe society without the fear of constant gun violence? See the comment I left for Greg. I'm glad you guys think those gun death and injury statistics are something that is ok to have in a civil society. I think it shows just how violent society is, and not the goal of a civil society.

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    8. Kurt, the negative correlation does indeed exist. Since two-thirds fo murders are committed with guns, the murder rate is going down IN SPITE OF more guns.

      And crime is not WAY down unless you pick just the right starting point for your analysis.

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    9. Brilliant, Mikeb! More guns=more murders, as illustrated by the fact that we have more guns and WAY fewer murders.

      And crime is not WAY down unless you pick just the right starting point for your analysis.

      Pick 1992, if 1993 is off limits (for whatever bizarre reason you're arguing), or 1994. And you still haven't explained why it's disingenuous to pick 1993 as the starting point, because it most clearly illustrates the enormity of the plummet in violent crime, but it's perfectly legitimate to pick one year in Missouri as an illustration of an ostensible negative outcome of repealing a restrictive gun law--especially when two years later, the trend reversed.

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    10. Proof by strenuous assertion is all you have to go on for that, Mike. That and some specious "logic."

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    11. The starting point we've selected is the time when gun laws around the country started loosening.

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    12. 1993 is often used because it was the peak of violence. There is nothing shady about presenting a statistic that way, and it's done all the time across any field- like presenting where a stock is now compared to its high (or low). But crime is at a 40 year low. So pick any point in the last 40 years and you'll get the same result. Crime is down. You would have a point if crime were going up over the last decade or so, and we were sticking to this 1993 stat to hide the uptick... But that's not the case.

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    13. TS, I was disputing Kurt's saying it's WAY down. It's not, unless you start with 1993 or some other high point during the past decades. It is down, but this is IN SPITE OF the fact that there are more guns, not because of it. And, it really would be WAY down if there were fewer guns. That's obvious since most of the murders are committed with guns.

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    14. Mikeb, are you even aware that when someone claims something to be obvious, that's an indication of where the argument is failing?

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