Rolled Out On: 8/19/2007 11:15 PM

I hear Paul Helmke has a strange aversion to garlic. But I would think werewolves would be more for gun control. Or at least for controlling silver ammunition. Vampires would be big proponents of wooden stake, and perhaps super soaker control, since they can be filled with holy water.

But seriously, you're very correct that they won't debate us. It's an emotional issue for them, and the facts just don't jive with their agenda. I think for most of them it comes down to an emotional reaction to guns and violence, and not something that can really be put into reasoned arguments and debated.

Rolled Out On: 8/20/2007 9:04 AM

To give them the benefit of the doubt, Bryan Miller's blog does allow comments surprisingly. He's been strangely quiet though since he got his ass handed to him over the Newark incident.

wheredidtheguncomefrom "moderates" the comments heavily. I've had about 1 in 6 show up.

Ringler's blog has sporadic "moderating" but mostly only for the pro-gunners. Jadegold and ATR's posts seem to appear no matter how factually incorrect or offensive.

I find it funny when Mr. Ilovemydaughter... lambasts gun owners for having "marshall dillon" fantasies when he's the one advocating mob justice and violence.

Rolled Out On: 8/20/2007 9:49 AM

WhereDidTheGunComeFrom.com? At least they allow comments, however I’ve yet to see much in the way of anything worth commenting on.

---

(My comment -- text below -- was NOT allowed.)

You ask: Why else would gun sellers advertise a Tec-9 as “fingerprint resistant”

As is so often true, the path to enlightenment begins with asking the right questions.

1) Why has no city, state, or country (even those with strict gun control laws) banned “fingerprint resistant” guns?

2) An ad for a “fingerprint resistant” gun might be a powerful propaganda tool for gun control advocates. In view of this, why has the actual ad advertising a Tec-9 as “fingerprint resistant” never been shown or published by gun control advocates?

Rolled Out On: 8/20/2007 7:45 PM

Get a degree in something relevant, and do some scholarly work on the matter, and I'll happily invite you to my campus and destroy you in front of a large crowd. But while you remain a nobody with no relevant credentials, understand that serious people will laugh at you. And when you go into robot mode and repeat the same BS about how we can't distinguish guns and cars, no one with more than a few firing neurons is going to entertain it.

As much as you'd like to be victims of censorship, it's just that most people who have actually thought and read about this subject have no time for the opinions of stupid people.

Rolled Out On: 8/20/2007 8:21 PM

Coming from the guy who doesn't even have comments enabled, I'll just giggle.

I'll see your degree and raise you with experience, a better comprehension of reality, and training. I'm not the one who thinks an inanimate object has mind control powers.

Campus eh? Still a student? Wait until you grow up and deal with the real world where you can't pretend to be smart and actually have to work for a living, where the decisions you make actually affect your income and standing in society, and where you can't just wish away reality with credentials that aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Rolled Out On: 8/20/2007 10:12 PM

No, I'm not a student, as anyone bright enough to look around for five seconds at my blog would have discovered. Too much brain work for you, huh?

The real world? Oh, you mean the place where you're Marshal Dillon protecting the world from the guys in the black hats with your big mean gun? Yeah, funny, I moved out of that world around the age of 6 or 7, if I remember. Good luck with that.

Rolled Out On: 8/20/2007 11:13 PM

eesh. i think my early, private assessment of this "culturologist" will stand --- it's a good thing that he doesn't have any guns. seething, simmering aggression problems all too evident in that one.

Rolled Out On: 8/21/2007 7:17 AM

Oh, look, an illiterate gun nutter thinks he's qualified to decide who does or doesn't have psychological problems.

You need to study a bit more than the eighth grade to get to that status, genius.

And the fact that you have friends here is all the evidence needed to show that you lack the relevant qualifications.

What are you, a convenient store clerk?

Rolled Out On: 8/21/2007 7:41 AM

actually, i'm a computer programmer with a college degree. and i don't know anybody here i'd consider a "friend"; with due respect to mr. Allen, he's politically much too far out on the right wing for me to befriend him. i'd call him an acquaintance, of sorts, and extend the same courtesy to most anybody else here who doesn't use a string of personal insults as their way of greeting people they don't know the first thing about. because that sort of tendency seems too aggressive for my liking, and i don't need to get socially close to people who actively try to fight me off that way.

oh, and if you're going to call somebody "illiterate", maybe you should consider not doing it in, you know, writing. just sayin'.

Rolled Out On: 8/21/2007 9:37 AM

"scholarly work" eh? Just like you like to quote Hemenway whose statistics have been destroyed over and over for blatant bias? Howabout Bellesiles? That kind of "scholarly work"?

You openly advocate violence against individuals yet continue to claim we're the ones w/ psychological problems. Is this anger and hatred towards the countless groups you lambast on your various sites the kind of things you teach your daughter. I teach my kids responsibility and acceptance.

Rolled Out On: 8/24/2007 8:14 PM

Computer programmer, right. And that became a field in which one gained expertise in human psychology precisely when?

Not exactly a field in which experts in language congregate either. "Illiterate" has a number of meanings. Why don't you invest some money in a good dictionary and discover some of them? You might even find the one I was using in that post, which is not the one you assume.

"You openly advocate violence against individuals"--absolutely, WHEN THEY ARE A SERIOUS THREAT TO DO VIOLENCE toward me or my family. Maybe you think everybody not on your side of the fence on the gun issue is a hippie vegan pacifist--chalk that up to your own limited imagination.

DIfference between me and the wannabe Marshal Dillon convention gathered here is that I recognize how frequently guns intended for self-defense against bad guys actually wind up doing harm to just the people the self-defender is trying to protect, so I prefer self- and family-defense that involves weapons that can't be left around for innocent children to pick up or for bad guys to steal and use for bad things, i.e., my hands, elbows, forearms, knees, and feet. And in a pinch I've a few baseball bats and some pepper spray in the house.

Ultimately, though, I recognize that it's unlikely I'll ever have to use any of that, as I've read a lot about the sociology of crime and know that the Marshal Dillon universe of front yards full of nasty black thugs getting ready to pounce on your family as soon as you crack the front door is not based in reality, but in their own delusional and racist fantasies about the world.

Who has destroyed Hemenway? The scholars Heston, LaPierre and Nugent?

Please, provide me your extensive list of resources on this. I'm sure you must be quite up on the literature. Oh, please, teach me the error of my ways, highly intelligent anonymous blogger who is clearly so confident in his expertise in the field that he doesn't even have to share his credentials with us.

My experience has led me to understand that almost all anonyous bloggers are public health researchers with an intimate grasp of social scientific theory and methodology, so I'm sure you can't be just another blowhard dumbass rightwing baboon who hasn't read anything that wasn't posted on the NRA site. I'm just a person who reads such material as part of my job, i.e., every day, so I'm sure I don't know the literature as well as you, anonymous blogger whose credentials we haven't seen (and almost certainly never will), surely must.

So, yes, please, do show me all those great scholars who have "destroyed over and over" again Dr. Hemenway's work. Lemme guess, do their names start with 'L/R' as in Lott/Rosh?

Rolled Out On: 8/25/2007 10:26 AM

I recognize how frequently guns intended for self-defense against bad guys actually wind up doing harm to just the people the self-defender is trying to protect

Then you realize that it is an insignificant amount. Or you're a liar.

Who has destroyed Hemenway?

Hemenway. Oh, and a bunch of us uneducated knuckle-dragging rednecks with computers.

My experience has led me to understand that almost all anonyous bloggers are public health researchers with an intimate grasp of social scientific theory and methodology

You may as well be discussing pixie dust or faeries because they're about as sciency as 'social scientific theory and methodology'.

Rolled Out On: 8/25/2007 12:52 PM

Apparently sociologists don't need to take logic or critical thinking courses to gain their PHD anymore.

All the ad hominems, so little time.

We have Kleck, Eisen, and Gallant to name a few. Hemenway is the same individual that claimed firearms cause road rage and refuses to release data in a timely manner. But of course you just throw out logical fallacies instead of actually trying to present factual information.


Since you like the ad hominems so much, why don't you tell me which pro-gun researcher is completely funded by the NRA? Show your evidence. Hemenway is completely funded by anti-gun groups. I take it then that you accept reports from the tobacco industry as to how little harm cigarettes cause?

You claimed you would like to punch your old dentist. Is he a threat to your family or society or do you just have severe anger issues?

Apparently your "experience" is limited to the few people that can tolerate you.

But I'm arguing w/ someone who believes Gonzo is a legitimate source for anti-gun information and have to invent racism claims when there are none.

Rolled Out On: 8/25/2007 1:07 PM

BTW, if you're going to attack people on spelling or grammar, you might want to spell check yourself.

It's "anonymous".

Rolled Out On: 8/27/2007 12:09 PM

Computer programmer, right. And that became a field in which one gained expertise in human psychology precisely when?

i realize my profession is stereotyped as a bunch of socially incompetent geeks, and to be honest, there is some truth in that. but even we can see blatant, raging, frothing-at-the-mouth aggression that's only barely controlled by the physical separation of the 'net when it stares us in the computer monitor. the non-stop personal insults and the lack of any honest engagement with actual points made tends to be a very reliable give-away, i have always found.

way back when, there used to be a lamentation that nobody had yet created an RSP --- Remote Strangulation Protocol --- and how badly civility online was suffering for its lack. if i ever get around to designing such a thing, i shall make it prominent in the RFC that any user interface must be command-line based only, as well as undocumented and obscure. because certain tools must needs be kept in the right hands only, us coders know well...

Rolled Out On: 8/29/2007 7:46 PM

Did I miss something? ATR chaged his/her screen name to Culturologist? You can change your name but your style is unmistakable.

Rolled Out On: 8/29/2007 11:22 PM

I meant change. Wouldn't want to give "Culturologist" a chance to point out irrelevant spelling mistakes.

Rolled Out On: 9/14/2007 7:29 AM

As someone late into this thread, does anyone else find it as funny as I do?

The pro-gunners point out that the anti-gunners avoid addressing our arguments; provide examples and citations to support that premise, and opine that the problem may be that their position is based more upon emotion than logical thought.

The anti-gunner replies "Yea, but you're a bunch of doody-heads...neener, neener, neener."

I was laughing so hard I spit coffee onto my monitor.

Wow...culturologist is is so well educated, intelligent and refined that he has successfully achieved the sociological level of your average 6 year old...and the debating skills to match.

Very impressive.

"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."
--Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Rolled Out On: 12/28/2007 7:15 PM

Time to shine a spotlight