These days, you don’t see much in the way of ridiculous op-eds on guns being published in the papers. Neither the media or the NRA are paying much attention to the gun issue today, and media is all too happy to attack NRA over their latest nothing-to-do-with-guns attack ads.
Every single one of these old lady’s complaints could be successfully addressed by training. It would relieve her of our ignorance on this topic. But I suspect she’s not about to seek training, because the parade of ignorance that is her op-ed wasn’t about that.
But I do have to hand it to her writing an op-ed about guns. She seems more interested in the gun rights battle these days than NRA is, at least.
I’m fine with it.
With the exception of the issues she has with her shoulder, every answer she gives is “I’m a feckless idiot”.
Good, if you’re so helpless the everyday things in life that I don’t even think about are a challenge to you, then yeah, maybe a gun isn’t for you.
My interest was a little peaked by the drop of “Ruger LC9” Seems a little bit of a deep cut for a gun to pull off the top of one’s head.
I wonder if somebody she knows carries one…that would be an interesting twist.
My opinion is, that probably more pro-gun people would read a column like that — just to be comforted knowing what morons their opposition are — than anti-gun people, who would find it terminally boring from the first sentence. No one at all would be persuaded of anything by it, other than that morons can get published.
Anyway, as columns go, it was nothing but filler.
NRA ILA is certainly paying attention but not NRATv.
I sent along a nice, polite email explaining her obvious knowledge lapses.
Offered to help find a good trainer.
And here she makes our case for us:
Safety experts say to keep all guns under lock and key and put the bullets in a different place altogether.
So what am I going to do when I wake up and find a burglar demanding the combination to my safe, the password to my computer and all my jewels?
Do I ask him to give me a moment so I can unlock my gun, find the bullets, load the darn thing and then scare him off?
At least somebody bought the Anti’s rebranding of “ban” to “control” to “safety”.
I explained to her that no expert worth their salt would offer this example.
I told her she is mistakenly mixing up uneducated elected officials and anti gun lobby people as gun experts.
She was nice enough to reply and sent me the link from CBS that showed the US has highest amount of gun crimes.
I responded by asking her, and supplying her, to list the 5 cities that IF removed from the tallies, would lower the US number.
Then, I said, guns are being replaced with cars, trucks, knives, acid, etc., etc.
So she followed SOP and tried changing the subject?
She also used the example of thinking there’s an intruder in the house, only to find that it was her 4-year-old son.
Granted, every other year or so I’ll hear a story about someone who shot his pregnant wife, or son, or husband who came home early from a business trip…and every time I hear a story like this, I think “Know your target and what’s beyond it”.
In other words, we have a rule for that, and it’s one of only four rules that, if followed carefully, would pretty much guarantee that no one would accidentally get injured or killed by a gun.
Although, come to think of it, that’s just another training issue, and a very important training issue at that!
To illustrate the problem, it is that just as with driving cars, there are “rules” that are just common sense and that everyone who drives, knows. But lots of people who know those rules, choose not to obey them.
So what follows is, “there oughta be a law,” and common sense/common knowledge becomes codified. And you need a license, to prove that you were exposed to common sense and convention, aka “the law”, at least once.
And thus does a fundamental “right” transition to being a “privilege” granted semi-arbitrarily by The State, and withdrawn with minimal adjudication.
You must forgive me — whenever I hear the word “training” introduced into a discussion involving fundamental rights, that comes to mind and I get jumpy. The next line to come is sure to be “with rights come responsibilities“, and people are lining up to tell us what our responsibilities are.
Jumpiness for “training” is understood. After all, it’s one of the back doors anti-gunners wish to use to instigate a de-factor ban.
The kind of training I mention, though, is the type that self-conscientious gun-owners would pursue on their own, after they decided to go on a range or carry for self defense. If such training should be mandatory, it should be a part of a requirement for getting a high school diploma, where kids are required to learn gun safety as a part of a required “pistol and rifle” course, regardless of the intentions of a particular student to own a gun.
The fact that anti-gun people oppose training like this, or even “Eddie Eagle” training, demonstrates that they aren’t all that interested in gun safety at all.
Most of the op-ed makes sense. It is intelligible, and I understand what the author is trying to say. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of this:
“Or take church: They’re passing the offering plate and the stranger next to you reaches for their wallet, and there staring you in the face is a Smith & Wesson — and its eyes ain’t on no sparrow.”
What is that supposed to mean? Did the stranger reach for their wallet but accidentally draw their handgun, and aim it directly at me? Or did I merely catch sight of their holstered gun as they moved aside their coat to get their wallet? And where does a sparrow come into this?
“And where does a sparrow come into this?”
It comers from Scripture, and a popular hymn that makes reference to it, titled “His eye is on the sparrow.”
It also has passed into usage in pop culture in ways I don’t quite get; but I think it often means “keep your eye on what’s important.”
In the author’s usage, I suppose the reference to church loosely alludes to Scripture and means “you can only hope God’s eye is on you, like on the sparrow.” (?)