Let’s ring in 2013 with the latest indicator that our beloved America is dying of its own stupidity, shall we?
The recent Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 26 victims, including 20 young children, at Newtown, Connecticut has once again re-opened the national debate on just how available guns should be to the general public — a long sore topic in our nation. The national discourse spun off into sideshow dimensions when CNN interview show host Piers Morgan, a recent immigrant from Britain, used his program as a forum to berate and insult his gun-control stance forward.
Morgan interviewed Larry Pratt, the executive director of the Gun Owners of America, who, strangely enough, is against any notion of increased gun control. Morgan eschewed the more recommended method of repairing his side of the debate with facts and reasoning, rudely stepped on Pratt’s replies and insulted him for his views:
In the wake of this mutual duel of twisted facts, Second Amendment advocates festooned the White House’s “We The People” website with a petition to deport Morgan for his views, yielding more than 100,000 signatures and branding Morgan as a threat to the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
In a follow-up interview, conspiracy-obsessed radio host Alex Jones appeared as a guest on Piers Morgan’s show and went into his own tirade about how “1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!”
Here’s what I think makes the following parties morons:
Piers Morgan: First, if you’re supposed to be the host of an interview show and a television journalist, you don’t berate, insult, and hurl accusations at your guests –especially if you’re a recent immigrant to this country, and you’re discussing changing your new homeland’s laws. If you have a point you want to popularize, it seems that you don’t sell that viewpoint that by ambushing your guests. You do your homework. You gather statistics, predict the replies, prepare counter-arguments, and proceed with reasoning. This involves more time on the internet and less Liverpool FC v. Tottenham Hotspur in front of the telly. And besides, you can at least appreciate the fact that Americans need to protect their lives and properties from people who don’t give a damn about gun laws, gun control measures, background checks, or a society that wants to be safer from gun violence.
Larry Pratt: Congratulations for your use of diluted facts. A lesser gun murder rate in Fairfax County, Virginia than in most countries in Europe? You know, there were fewer gun related murders in my kitchen over the past five years than there were in the entire country of Sweden in the same time period, and I’ve never owned a gun. Care to explain that? Oh, yeah. That’s called “a diluted fact”. And your idea for preventing future Newtowns by arming all the teachers? Yeah. THAT sounds like the perfect learning environment. Going to school is a neurotic-enough process for a lot of these kids, who face academic pressures, peer pressure, and bullying. Let’s add “catching a stray bullet in the head” to their list of worries. That’ll bring their marks up.
Alex Jones: Hey Alex. We understand that your thing is to fan conspiracy theories and paranoia, because without it, you have no audience. And we also understand that you’re running out of conspiracy theories to plug without sounding like a broken record, so now you’re out to re-purpose yourself as a paranoid Constitution watchdog. I don’t know if you realize this, but it’s OK to not use a pile of dead kids as an opportunity to re-invent yourself publicly. And besides, let’s be honest, Alex: You don’t really believe in all those conspiracies, do you? No, no, no, you don’t. Because you realize that it’s not important if you believe them. It’s only important if you convince enough people OUT THERE to believe them. And you deserve your props: At the very least, you had better staying power than Jesse Ventura.
Petitioners wanting to deport Piers Morgan: Nicely done, guys. Most of you are impassioned gun owners who are sworn to protect your sacred rights as American citizens, and now you’re petitioning to kick a guy out for using his right to Freedom of Speech. How Piers Morgan treated Larry Pratt on his show was not unconstitutional. It’s more in the area of blatant unprofessionalism and poor taste. You can’t kick a guy out of the country for that. Sorry.
Certain gun control advocates: Believe it or not, even most gun owners agree that there are too many gun deaths in American society. Here’s a newsflash: Banning and confiscating guns will not make the problem magically go away. Most gun violence deaths are committed in this country by people who obtain their weapons illegally, anyway. They don’t give a shit about gun laws. They don’t participate in gun checks. Folks like these would LOVE stricter gun laws. Like it or not, there is a certain logic in the counter-argument that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Certain gun rights advocates: Some of you are responsible gun owners concerned about protecting your lives and properties, and I’m more than just OK with that. What follows doesn’t pertain to you. The rest of you though, let’s admit it: You’re self-interested, dickless assholes. You support gun laws because you like guns, period. You hide behind the Second Amendment pretending that the authors of the Constitution understood AR-15 technology when they wrote it in the 1780s, when in reality, you know they didn’t. So stop with all the fake over-the-top patriotism and loyalty. You guys don’t give a shit about the rest of us. You only care about yourselves.
The debate over gun accessibility in America is going to be a complicated issue for a long time to come, and I’m not going to debate the issue at all. I just wish that every time an incident like Newtown occurs, we didn’t have so many egotistical jerks from all sides drowning everyone else out.
2 comments
John F
2013/03/07 at 2:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Your kitchen also doesn’t have a population large enough to sample. Nice try, though. The Fairfax County example is perfectly legitimate and there are many other states, cities and places with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates. Check Switzerland out.
I didn’t look at anything other than the reply to Larry Pratt, so that’s why I’m not addressing everything.
Let’s be clear though: we know for a fact that gun control does not work. The CDC and National Academy of Sciences conducted massive studies and were unable to link a single gun control measure to a reduction in violent crime, suicides or accidents.
chuckfoxtrot
2013/03/09 at 9:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My kitchen is not an accurate statistical cross-section of American society, and neither is Fairfax County, Virginia. That was the point I was making. You are probably right that gun control measures don’t reduce violent crime as much as the gun control advocates want to think it does. But Pratt’s attempt to bolster that with crime stats from a county with a higher-than-average upper-income population with a corresponding higher percentage of private neighborhood patrols, gated communities, and automatic perimeter alarms doesn’t stick in the world of actual analysis. It works better in the world of self-interest propaganda.