Bad things happen. Tragedies happen. When they happen, it’s good to help those affected, and it’s good to think about ways to prevent those things from happening again. If they can’t be prevented, it’s good to think about ways to protect us from the damage they cause in the future. These seem like normal responses, yet so often, doing these things gets blasted as an attempt to politicize a tragedy. I really don’t like that critique, and the critique itself seems to be more “political” than actually talking about solutions and prevention.
Tag: guns
Second amendment stream of consciousness
It’s almost impossible to be politically aware these days and not think much about guns and the second amendment. Support for second amendment rights is almost a shibboleth for somebody’s standard as a true conservative, and support for gun control laws is nearly ubiquitous among liberals. This has been a topic of discussion/debate many times in my spheres, and I’ve had a fair amount of time to think about issues related to guns and the second amendment. Given the renewed interest in the topic after the awful attack on republican members of Congress (at baseball practice), I thought I’d put some of my thoughts down, as disorganized as they may be. So here goes, in no particular order.
Immigrants and guns
I, and many others, have been sickened by the calls to ban Muslims from coming to the United States, and I’ve written plenty (here, here, and here) about these fears and how sad the blatant bigotry makes me. In response to calls for civility, and calls to stop being bigoted about Muslims, some gun owners have responded (acting like hated victims, another theme I covered earlier here and here) by trying to draw a similar comparison with gun control advocates.
Although I see their point, and understand where they’re coming from, there are some pretty big flaws in the comparison, with a dash of straw man in the mix.
Hitting Bregma 