Left Rudder

After the bogus quotes are exposed, the GunLoon will quickly deflect the argument in some other direction. They will never, never admit error on anything. Instead, they will shift gears to some other topic or subject.

Additionally, GunLoons are innumerate. They simply don’t understand statistics. Any time a scientific survey or statistics show the risks of guns outweigh the positives–the GunLoon will attack the statistician. Never will they attack the data or the methodology which are really the only ways to criticize or attack statistical findings. Instead, a GunLoon will claim bias on behalf of the researchers.

Sometimes a GunLoon will try to attack data or methodologies, often with hilarious results. Here is the GunLoon Alphecca on a Harvard study that showed states with the most firearm prevalence also had the highest rates of gun homicide.

Alphecca starts out, predictably, by attacking the researchers. He admits he hasn’t even read the study but feels just fine attacking the results anyway. BTW, this is an almost universal trait among GunLoons–they will often attack scientific surveys without actually having read the studies.

Soon, Alphecca does obtain the study and decides to use the data but not the methodology. He explains:

Notice that I use the raw data. I don’t feel the need to “control” for anything.

Even a C-student in Stats 101 can see the folly of this. The reason one controls for variables is to reduce error in the findings. Essentially, Alphecca is saying he wants to produce error in his study. A quick example: I could do a ’study’ that shows children with bigger feet are smarter than kids with smaller feet. This would be done by not controlling for the age of children; older kids generally have bigger feet and would do better in testing than their younger counterparts with smaller feet. Of course, tmy failure to control for this factor would render my findings nonsensical.

There’s a familiar pattern to any argument with a GunLoon.

First, the quotes. It is important to understand most GunLoon quotes (usually from historical figures, politicians, or ‘experts’) are bogus. They will often be created out of thin air, or taken out of context, or truncated to distort the actual meaning.

Recently, we saw Don Kates, Jr. completely fabricate a quote from Freud. This is a fairly common practice among GunLoons. Here are some famous GunLoon quotes that simply are bogus:

“The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. “–Thomas Jefferson

“

This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!” -Adolf Hitler

Here’s an actual quote from Ghandi that has been taken completely out of context:

“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.”

What the GunLoon omits or, more likely, is ignorant of is that this quote comes from Ghandi’s outrage that Indians weren’t conscripted into the British military in WWI.

An example of a GunLoon truncated quote is:

“”Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual descretion, in private self-defense.” –John Adams

Unfortunately for GunLoonery, the real Adams quote is:

“To suppose arms in the hands of the citizens, to be used at individual discretion, . . . , is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man is a dissolution of the government. “

Here’s a favorite quote of GunLoon and InstaCracker Glenn Reynolds from Patrick Henry:

“The great object is that every man be armed…. Everyone who is able may have a gun.”

Unfortunately for InstaCracker, Patrick Henry was actually talking about funding the federal militia:

“Our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, &c.; and thus, at a very great cost, we shall he doubly armed. The great object is that every man [of the militia] be armed. But can the people afford to pay for double sets of arms, &c? Every one who is able may have a gun. But we have learned, by experience, that, necessary as it is to have arms, and though our Assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case.”

Bottomline: if a GunLoon quotes a politician or historical figure–the safe money is that its bogus.