Hoisted

Larry Pratt of GOA talks about a good reason to oppose National Health Care from the standpoint of gun rights.   What’s even funnier is that Helmke one ups him:

But Paul Helmke, president of the gun control group Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said Pratt has the wrong linkage between gun rights and healthcare.

“One of the burdens on our healthcare system are the 70,000 to 80,000 people that suffer gunshot wounds every year and survive, ending up in wheelchairs, or showing up in emergency rooms without insurance after being shot. There is a connection [between healthcare and gun rights] but it’s not the connection that Larry Pratt is talking about. We as a society are paying a large portion of the cost for this gun violence.”

Yes, the connection is we’ll end up with gun restrictions because politicians become desparate to control costs, and are willing to listen to anyone with an idea.  I find that to be much more plausible, and could justify wider restrictions on guns.  I guess Larry wasn’t thinking big enough, eh Paul?

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Backpedaling
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  3. Fun Brady Campaign Rhetoric

5 thoughts on “Hoisted”

  1. This is certainly an opening for “our side.” Get Helmke in a room with similarly-opinioned health care advocates, present him with a list of all the other activities that are certifiably more lethal than guns (I’m thinking swimming pools and 5-gallon buckets), and ask what the time-frame is on banning them too.

    They already made a run at motorcycles and convertibles. There ought to be a lot of votes in the high school football lobby. Any orthopedist can tell you, cheerleaders go first.

    You have to be careful, though. In 1969 I editorialized that marihuana was no more dangerous to health than cigarettes. Pot is still illegal. Tobacco, for intents and purposes, ain’t.

  2. This may be tangential to this thread, but I have been noticing more and more that GOA in general and Larry Pratt in particular can spin any issue to make it a threat to gun rights — if opposing the issue is consistent with a Republican or social conservative agenda.

  3. I guess Paul Helmke thinks that we should be using more powerful weapons and maybe even poison bullets. Then those 70-80 thousand people won’t survive long enough to make it to the emergency room, thus reducing the health care burden of the country.

  4. I thought the most revealing part of the article was this:

    Helmke said. “It’s a level of intimidation, a level of bullying that is inappropriate in our public discourse. You worry enough about people carrying signs on sticks; well, guns are a whole new level of escalation. It endangers people at these events.”

    Sticks. He’s afraid of sticks.

  5. look at it this way illspirit, at least he’s branching out and trying to making 1st amdt rights difficult to exercise too. :)

    Honestly, should he get his way there will surely be a groupd gaining access to med records to study how many of those ER gunshot wound cases also have illegal drugs in their system at the time.

    Maybe the idiotic Helmke should worry about preventative medicine in this case. Educate his flock of folly to make them underst5and that if you rob someone you’re likely to get shot, just as if you go bareback with a hooker (or politician) you’re likely to get an STD. sex ed is mandated for schools, but other dangerous behavior is swept under the rug for monetary (and other) gain by his type.

    (hope this is overlooked by the memory hole.)

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