Left Rudder

Passionate, not murderous.

According to the GunLoons, threats and violence and assorted mayhem are fine–so long as you’re passionate about it.

Gun Loons will often complain those on the side of responsible gun ownership aren’t willing to engage in what they call “reasoned discourse.”

They will swear up and down the gun lobby wishes nothing more than a reasoned discussion of ideas and views and those opposed to them do not. Of course, this facade is a bit hard to maintain when the NRA promotes a slogan involving prying guns from “cold, dead hands” and the fact a racist and bigot like Ted Nugent is an NRA Board member.

Let me produce an illustrative example (I could produce many, many more). In 1995, the historian Garry Wills wrote an article in the NY Times (reproduced here) called “To Keep and Bear Arms.”

Here is the “reasoned” reply by J.Neil Schulman:

AN OPEN REPLY TO GARRY WILLS

_New York Review of Books_
Sept. 21, 1995
p. 62
“To Keep and Bear Arms”
by Garry Wills

Dear Garry Wills:

Ah, yes. George Orwell wrote a novel about guys like you. “War is peace,” “freedom is slavery.” If you control the media, you can always twist things so that they mean the opposite. If you control the media, just rewrite any inconvenient history to your own liking.

So “bear arms” in “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” means that the people have the right to a picture of a rifle on a coat of arms; and “keep” in that context means paying taxes to keep “their” guns at the National Guard armory.

And, of course, James Madison didn’t really believe in any of that stuff he was writing in Federalist Paper No. 46 when he wrote that the ultimate authority resides in the people; he was just trying to outsmart the Anti-Federalists so that we could be saddled with a Constitution that would be more tyrannical than anything old King George the Third could imagine. Well, I guess that crafty old
Madison pulled a fast one on us all, and we’ll just have to roll over, get out the vaseline, and take it up the ass.

You see, Mr. Wills, ultimately I don’t give a rat’s dick about whether you like me owning guns or not. If you don’t like my guns, come and get them. But you will need some guns, yourself, to try doing that. Someone will likely get shot. It might be me, it might be you. It will be a contest, with a winner and a loser. But you’re
not going to get my guns without first picking up a gun and entering the contest.

Of course, you’re a cowardly piece of statist shit who doesn’t have the balls to try and get my guns yourself. No, you’ll simply write your little Orwellian lies and hope that some 18-year-old Hitler Youth named Rolf, fresh out of some academy, will be given the orders to try and get my guns. Maybe I’ll die, maybe the poor young schmuck will buy it — but Garry Wills will be safely watching the raid
on TV while he’s sipping a cafe latte.

I don’t care whether the Second Amendment says I have a right to a gun or not. Guns are about power. If guys with guns use that power to murder, steal, rape, and tyrannize, you have a society not worth living in. If guys like me with guns use that power to protect ourselves and our loved ones, and our common liberty, then we get a nice place to live — and useless pieces of shit like you
are free to spin your web of lies.

I’m keeping and carrying guns to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To disempower me, you must first conquer me. Make your move, if you can.

But if you don’t have the guts for that, Garry Wills, go fuck yourself up the ass, pal. I write better than you, I think better than you, I’m armed to the teeth, and I can read the history of the United States without panicking.

You lose.

Reasoned discourse.