What is with gun nuts drawing crazy comparisons between guns and black people stuff?
First the NRA ex-president claimed that people are racist against guns. Then Ted Nugent claimed that gun owners are the new Rosa Parks. Now, Larry Ward, the organizer of Gun Appreciation Day, is claiming that slavery might never have happened if black people — excuse me — “African-Americans” had owned guns.
The irony of how Africans became African-Americans is, apparently, lost on crazy white folks.
Jesus beat me about the head and chest with the wheel.
aimai
I get that their wurlitzer pumps this shit out and they all repeat it in lockstep and its not like i’me xpecting that any of them are great thinkers or political theorists or anything but does it not occur to them that the reason democratic society functions is that the individual (black or white, male or female) does not actually require weapons to protect their civil rights in the ordinary course of events. Even their own example “wouldn’t have been slaves if they’d owned guns” is completely illogical. People were enslaved, even after fighting, because their owners/oppressors had more more firepower or more more other options, including state control over violence and law, than they did.
If I get a handgun to protect my rights there is nothing stopping my oppressor from getting a grenade and an assault rifle. The point of living in a free, open, democratic society is that I don’t ahve to build my own private army in order to protect myself from the willingness of my neighbor to enslave me or infringe on my rights.
aimai
Mark S.
Wow, that might be peak wingnut.
I know, some peak wingnut can never be reached, but holy fuck that’s insane.
Xenos
If white people had not been allowed to keep guns then blacks could not have been kept in slavery. Think of the size of the state security apparatus required for the Roman Empire to succeed in keeping a similarly large proportion of the population in a state of slavery.
Mark S.
If Lincoln had had a gun on him, he would have never been assassinated.
Schlemizel
I want to take yet another opportunity to remind the Motor City Meathead he made us a promise, he only has 89 days left:
http://countingdownto.com/countdown/176293
Ruckus
@aimai:
You see, right there, that’s what’s known as actual thought and intelligence, not empty pants, irrational reaction from the fear of…
Everything.
red dog
Why do religious and gun freaks and Fox “news” get to rewrite history and we don’t?
Mark S.
God I’m tired of looking at that creepy guy who gives out online degrees in counter-terrorism. I have two ads of him side by side on my screen.
PeakVT
is claiming that slavery might never have happened if black people — excuse me — “African-Americans” had owned guns.
That’s probably true, in the same way it’s probably true that if the Allies hadn’t been militarily superior to the Axis, they wouldn’t have won WWII. But so what? Nobody is proposing to make slaves of today’s gun owners, even if many gun nuts believe that to be the case.
Villago Delenda Est
@red dog:
Because we have honor.
They do not.
Breezeblock
Speaking of Lincoln, how come Garfield, McKinley and JFK weren’t packing? And what about Ford and RayGun?? All US Presidents should be trained to protect themselves, think how much $ the nation can save by getting rid of the Secret Service?
ruemara
I’m going to ask my doctor if I can have some of the stuff these guys are smoking.
Raven
Big crowd at the local gun store this morning. There are two major ones in town about a mile apart. The newer, upstart outfit, has a billboard right next the old one. It’s a huge picture of an AR-15.
Chris
@aimai:
… and with the power of the state on his side, he’s the one in luck.
daveNYC
Some right-wing nutters believe that any mention of black people will trigger such extreme levels of white guilt in liberals that they’ll agree with whatever idea is being pushed.
1) slavery was bad for blacks
2) gun ownership would have prevented slavery
Ergo:
3) gun ownership is good
See also the belief by many on the right that people were only voting for Obama due to his skin color in 2008 and with that guilt assuaged they’d vote ‘normal’ in 2012.
aimai
Well, this level of general crazy is why I never, ever, thought that the thought experiment “what if lots of black people showed up using open carry like they did in Reagan’s day in California” would “work” to cause right wingers/second amendment lunatics to ratchet back on the crazy. Because they think this has already happened. If you read gun nut sites or their generalized accounts of reality they all believe, as a matter of faith that
1) Most gun violence is gang banger/non white
2) Potential gun violence and tyranny emanate from a centralized government that has already been coopted by liberals and non whites.
Point one leads them to believe that they must be armed, personally, against an armed mob of minorities. Point two leads them to believe that other-like-minded-whites need to be armed against the government stripping them of their rights for self defense under the terms of point One. Its like an infinite closed loop:
Because black and hispanic people are already armed and would remain armed because they are criminals => attempts to disarm criminals and lunatics would inevitably lead to government attempts to disarm people like me => rendering me helpless in the face of the presumed agression of criminals/black and hispanic people/the government=> lather, rinse, repeat.
Because they already believe that other people want to own guns in order to harm them, generalized laws against gun ownership are seen as preventing them from self protection.
We can’t “win” this argument, ever. In the end we are only going to be able to stand by and watch them kill themselves, open fire on random strangers, and gnaw themselves into a spittle flecked frenzy.
aimai
Matt McIrvin
@aimai:
It absolutely does not occur to them. In fact, they think the truth is the opposite: the reason democratic society functions is that they have their guns to ward off tyranny and evil, and all the unarmed people are free riders on their gun-having.
They figure that civil society fundamentally runs on the explicit or implicit threat of violence, and unarmed societies have outsourced all their violence-threat to the state, which is a form of slavery.
Baud
It’s the right-wing view of cosmic justice, as in “Black people got to stop being slaves and got the right to vote, etc., so how come we don’t get to have whatever we want most.”
MomSense
@@Mark S.:
More like pique wingnut.
Culture of Truth
But don’t Gun-Americans believe African-Americans are actually better for off for having their ancestors brought involuntarily to America?
MomSense
@Mark S.:
He sounds better than the gold coin ads and the weird arrest record cleaning service I am getting.
Sheesh I used to have lovely skeins of yarn and pet accessories everywhere I went but all this talk of wingnuts with guns and debt ceiling coins has spoiled the internet for me.
Thlayli
Things like this remind me of the stoner LOLcat:
“Dude … wait, what?”
Santa Fe
Imani, have you seen Django Unchained? Going to do a review?
handsmile
Yeah, and what if Jesus had been packing at Gethsemane…those bastards would have lost more than ears. (and don’t give me no smartass remark about the history of firearms, he was the Son of the omnipotent God, fer Chrissakes)
@Breezeblock:
Yeah, and that budget-bustin’ Kenyan Muslim just signed a bill “granting lifetime Secret Service protection to former presidents and spouses,” reversing a 1994 law that ended such protection after 10 years of leaving office.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-signs-bill-granting-lifetime-secret-service-protection-to-former-presidents-and-spouses/2013/01/10/c4474416-5b5a-11e2-b8b2-0d18a64c8dfa_story.html
Villago Delenda Est
@daveNYC:
Actually, I voted ‘normal’, that is, against the incompetent asshole, and for the sane guy, in 2008 and 2012.
scav
@MomSense:
v. nice.
Davis X. Machina
@Culture of Truth: We did let them become Christians, so it was a fair deal.
Davis X. Machina
@Matt McIrvin:
What ‘society’? They’re having none of that rubbish, thank you.
“There is no such thing as ‘society’. There are individual men and women, and there are families….” Margaret, Baroness Thatcher, 1987 interview with The Woman’s Own
Trakker
One of the wingnut trolls on my blog called me a racist a few weeks back because I (white) keep implying he (also white) is stupid. He says I feel superior to him. Says I’m contemptuous of his views. (All true by the way).
I never, ever, want to hear his reasoning for why that makes me a racist…
Punchy
So in their world, they’re OK with all AAs having and carrying guns?
Trakker
@Culture of Truth:
Gun-Americans. Oh, I like that!
Higgs Boson's Mate
@aimai:
I have a friend in the National Guard. He says that if they are called into the streets they are authorized to use anything except crew-served weapons to suppress disorder.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
I spent most of the week in and out of rural Connecticut. I overheard a surprising amount of gun discussion. 100% of the conversation between gun owners was based on the assumption that the government is going to try to take away all guns. Even when the discussion started with Newtown, which was very near by.
What reflex in their brains instantly reacts to any mention of gun violence with a refusal to consider anything less than unlimited firearm rights? I can’t think of another subject where the opposition is so monolithically and consistently aligned.
Davis X. Machina
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Which are off-limits presumably because they’re vaguely collectivist…. There is no “I” in crew’.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Can they have 100-round drum magazines for greater killing efficiency?
Imani Gandy (ABL)
@Mark S.: winner.
maya
@handsmile:
Don’t be silly. All he had to do was sic his pit-dino, Ga’al on them.
Imani Gandy (ABL)
@Santa Fe: I haven’t seen it and I’m not sure if I can stomach the violence, actually.
Yutsano
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: You can have any gun you want. But if you need more than six bullets to hit any target you’re such a poor marksman that you shouldn’t be anywhere near a weapon. Own any gun you wish, but you get six bullets in your magazine period. Anything higher should be illegal with steep fines and/or jail time. Also stamping of bullets, you have an unmarked bullet, steep fine/jail time. It’s called well-regulated folks.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@Imani Gandy (ABL):
Did you see Lincoln?
Imani Gandy (ABL)
@aimai: hadn’t thought of the argument in those terms. that actually explains a lot.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Raven: Is Franklin’s still on Hawthorne?
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
I can’t think of another subject where the opposition is so monolithically and consistently aligned.
They are on a roll. They need to keep the momentum and apparently feel no foolish consistency.
Raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: No, it’s out on the Atlanta Highway by the Mall. Been there for probably 20 years I think.
Mark S.
@Davis X. Machina:
You joke, but I have heard this argument from right wing Catholics, albeit in regards to the Spanish and Native Americans.
maya
Peak wingnut is, theoretically, an octave higher than high C. Therefor, you’ll only know it’s been achieved when all the glass breaks in all the FOX studios around the globe simultaneously. Just think of FOX News as the white Ella Fitzgerald.
Cassidy
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin): No. They’re heavy and they jam and are not worth the money.
Southern Beale
A conservative talk radio mouthpiece who is a hero to the Tea Party has called it quits. Blames corporate consolidation.
Hilarious.
Davis X. Machina
@Mark S.: The standard slavery-a-positive-good argument from our antebellum South made use of this as well.
Imani Gandy (ABL)
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin): i haven’t seen that yet either. i think that’s one i’ll watch at home. i get really fidgety in movies like that and need to take breaks. either that, or i’d have to take an adderall before going, and i’m running low on adderall. :)
Just Some Fuckhead
if guns had guns they could free themselves from their oppressive white owners.
Brachiator
@Imani Gandy (ABL):
If you are going to wait for them to come out on video, you might consider making a night of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, Lincoln, and Django Unchained.
Does movie popcorn go well with aderall?
@Davis X. Machina:
I think I’ve heard Pat Buchanan, among others, try to sling this bullshit fairly recently. Some crap never loses its stink.
mellowjohn
to paraphrase “Billy Madison”: Mr. Ward, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.
Corner Stone
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I’d like to hear more of this if we have anyone else here in or from the NG.
I find it hard to believe they have standing instructions where this is a factual statement.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Now you’re getting into ST:TNG territory. Like Wes Crusher’s experiments with the nanobots, the ethical discussion of when does the tool serve us or choose to assist us may be instructive here.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@Brachiator:
Does movie popcorn go well with aderall?
Aderall is one those multi-tasking substances wherein the kernels sprout limbs and walk away sputtering obscenities.
scav
OT Should someone alert Matt “algebra is liberal indoctrination in our schools” Bolling about how deep and organized the Al Gebra threat has become? Walmart has 42 Regional Distribution Centers all over this nation and worse? ! Walmart sells guns so it’s an insidious threat to gun-americans! How far has the distributive property infiltrated our economic system?
honus
@handsmile: for the record, Jesus told Peter to put away his sidearm in the Garden of Gethsemane, rejecting the idea of armed self-defense saying that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” (He also expressly told his followers to pay their taxes, but that’s another story)
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
RE: I have a friend in the National Guard. He says that if they are called into the streets they are authorized to use anything except crew-served weapons to suppress disorder.
From some of the analysis of the deployment of the California National Guard during the Los Angeles riots:
Randy P
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin): Apropos of nothing in particular but while I was watching Lincoln I was reflecting that it was kind of interesting Daniel Day-Lewis played Lincoln and also a guy who hated Lincoln. In Gangs of New York, there’s a scene where Bill the Butcher (Lewis) throws a knife through a campaign poster of Lincoln.
That was kind of a surprise to me, as I didn’t know there was that kind of Lincoln-hatred in the North. Based on what? The draft?
scav
@Randy P:Why would political and social affiliations be any more simple and geographically tidy then they they are now? Families were violently divided on the issue.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: Interesting info. I wonder how/if RoE has changed given the expanded uses of the NG over the last 20 years?
handsmile
@honus:
Thank you, your eminence. And there was all that hubbub among the money-changers as well, iirc.
In no small part, I come here for the theological instruction. Reading the comments, I learn a lot about the damned.
aimai
@Randy P:
Based on the draft and the fact that the upperclasses could pay to get out of serving by hiring someone to fight for them, and also the extreme racism of the New Yorkers towards their own slave and free black population. My younger daughter used to sing in a very interesting repertory show based on the lives of a well known abolitionist singing group of the era (they were friends with both frederick Douglass and P.T. Barnum and abolitionism/temperance were a unifying theme)–at any rate they were denied the right to sing to the troops at one point because the abolitionist message wasn’t necessarily going over all that well with some of the troops who were fighting but not “against” slavery (in their own view). Its a complicated history,for sure.
aimai
Yutsano
@Randy P:
Northern support of the Union was not monolithic just as Confederate support was not in the South. Even then opinions differed and both sides did it.
@aimai: Or wot u said. :)
Brachiator
@Randy P:
The draft, among other things. So, from the Wiki, about New York City during the Civil War:
The mayor of New York at the time, Fernando Wood, was one of those Southern sympathizers derided as “Copperheads.” He later tried to work both Southern and Northern sentiments to his political advantage.
Good catch on Day-Lewis playing a Lincoln hater in Gangs of New York. I had forgot about that. Along with his roles in Last of the Mohicans and The Age of Innocence, he has played a number of memorable Americans.
Randy P
@aimai: That makes a lot of sense. Glad nobody made the obvious point that “it’s fiction, the character has any opinions the writer wants him to”. Some writer gave Bill the Butcher those politics because it made sense for his character, a gang-leader of down-and-out impoverished New Yorkers basically living in anarchy, to have those views. You’ve explained why.
Now that you mention racism, I seem to remember there was a really ugly race riot around the time of the events of Gangs, in which a number of completely innocent blacks were murdered. It might have even been mentioned in the movie.
handsmile
@Randy P:
I see other fingers are faster than mine on the subject of the Copperheads and anti-Lincoln sentiment in the Northern states. Here’s the Encyclopedia Wilkipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperhead_(politics)
The Devil’s Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America (2005), by New York historian Barnet Schecter is now the most authoritative (and eminently readable) book on this matter.
ETA: Herbert Asbury’s delightful “The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld” (1928) was the source material for Scorcese’s film and touches upon Copperhead sentiment among the working classes in NYC.
honus
@handsmile: sorry you were offended by my errant pedantry. I was simply trying to point out the hypocrisy of the religious right. To spell it out even more plainly, I was agreeing with you.
canada eh
This is insanity. Comparisons to rosa parks? This is a ridiculous thing to argue over.. race, slavery, etc should not be drawn into the discussion because it detracts from the main point: that a gun appreciation day is being lobbied for. This is ridiculous in itself, and the timing? C’mon!! No decency here.
handsmile
@honus:
Oh no no no…snark detection failure. I loved your reply and was simply riffing on it in response. My apologies: clearly my comment needed a little more vermouth.
PurpleGirl
@Breezeblock: The first president protected formally and full time by the Secret Service was Theodore Roosevelt. The Service was originally created to investigate counterfeiting and various land frauds involving federal land in the western states.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Corner Stone:
I’m telling you what he told me. He was on deck during the LA riots. When I asked him what constituted a crew-served weapon he said that belt fed machine guns were considered to be crew served and therefore not deployed. Obviously, howitzers the same.
Corner Stone
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I’m taking you at your word, there’s no disagreement I have there.
My thought, and as I have never been in the NG it’s just IMO, but telling men and women that are in actuality community based part-time soldiers they should mentally prepare themselves for rock n roll against their “community” seems like a hard sell.
And again, the 1992 Riots were pre-Iraq and Afghanistan where I will hazard a guess most NG members have had more than their fill of this.
I’m just curious to see what, if any, a current NG’s standing RoE is in such a case.
That’s all.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Corner Stone:
I know. I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t presenting it as a matter of fact.
I’m not sure that I agree with you re going up against fellow citizens. If some of my fellow citizens have formed themselves into armed mobs who are busy torching and looting the city then going up against them wouldn’t even require a second thought.
handsmile
@Brachiator:
Also be mindful of Day-Lewis’s lead performances in The Crucible and There Will Be Blood. Many of his prominent roles have now spanned much of American history (colonial era to early 20th-c.).
(that he was the longtime partner of Isabelle Adjani, however, remains, for me at least, his greatest accomplishment)
Raven
@handsmile: He was great in In the Name of the Father.
Raven
@Corner Stone:
Tin Soldiers and Nixon calling,
we’re finally on our own
this summer I hear the calling. . .
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@Corner Stone:
Before Tianenmen Square it was unthinkable that the Peoples’ Army would turn weapons on the population.
PurpleGirl
@Raven:
Four dead in O-hi-o
Four dead in O-hi-o
Need those lines to drive it home.
aimai
@Randy P:
I’m pretty sure it was alluded to in the movie. It was one of the most horrific race riots in this country and just reading about it still raises chills of horror and makes me sick.
aimai
Brachiator
@handsmile:
I feel a college course coming on. American Studies 55X, American History in Films Starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
More seriously, I still am particularly impressed by his portrayal of a proto-American in Last of the Mohicans. Set in the 1750s, his Hawkeye is no longer British,because of his life in the New World, but he is not yet a full-on Yankee.
Now, I’m jealous.
@Raven:
I recall seeing him in My Beautiful Launderette(1985) and thinking, what an interesting actor.
But yeah, Day-Lewis and Pete Postlethwaite in In the Name of the Father, freaking amazing. Emma Thompson ain’t exactly chopped liver, either.
gene108
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Finally realizing the entire anti-gun-control side of the “debate” is built up on the wild imagination of the fanciful imaginations of a bunch of scaredie-cat dipshits?
Heard this Keene NRA guy on NPR and he was going on about, if there’s a gun registry then the government will know exactly what doors to knock down to get people’s guns, because a gun registry invariably will lead to an outright ban on guns.
I really wish someone, anyone, with any kind of media megaphone would point out you aren’t allowed to make decide public policy by whatever crazy-ass what-if scenarios your fevered imagination can cook up.
Corner Stone
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
What if those citizens have refused to pay local taxes and have had their collective water shut off?
We could play the “what-ifs” all day, I’m sure. I’ll just suggest that even the 1992 Riots were ambiguous at best depending on your perspective, right?
If I were ordered to turn my full auto weapons on citizens I would need a hell of a lot more than, “Because they’re burning Main St.!” Well…why? And so on.
Which I guess is as good a reason as any I am not in the NG.
Corner Stone
“You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you.”
And a million pairs of panties were mentally thrown on stage.
gene108
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
The fact that there were T.V. crews there is what made it so shocking. People got to watch it live.
Do you really think without a complicit military, Mao could’ve pushed through his disastrous policies? You don’t accomplish things like a mass relocation of people, without a military willing to put down any unrest it might cause.
One thing Communist countries made sure of was that the military was always on the same side of things as the politicians.
handsmile
@Raven: , @Brachiator:
Fellas, the man is always great, why even in the otherwise cringe-inducing Nine. (excepting, of course, Judi Dench’s gams)
I’m hard-pressed to think of another lead actor of the past 50 years who has maintained such consistently high(est) quality in their work (the careers of Bridges, Hackman, deNiro et al are littered with turkeys; true, they are rather older than Day-Lewis).
Re The Last of the Mohicans
For all its considerable qualities, it is broadcast so often on multiple channels here in the NYC market that Hawkeye’s earnestly emphatic phrase, “I WILL FIND YOU!,” has become rather a joke between the mrs. and me.
ETA: I see Corner Stone (#85) understands what I mean. :)
Brachiator
@handsmile:
When director Rod Lurie was a film critic, he called “Last of the Mohicans” a “movie that will get you sex” because of this scene.
I tried to explain to some of the younger guys in the office why they should take their significant others to “Les Miz” using the same logic. I had gone to see “Django Unchained,” noted that the first three shows of “Les Miserables” were sold out, and that most of the women coming out from that film were swooning, smiling and generally tingly.
So I would patiently explain, “I don’t care if you don’t like movies with singing, especially if there are no explosions. I hear women murmuring that they don’t know who is hotter in the film, Hugh Jackman or Eddie Redmayne, and how wonderful it is. It is a movie that will get you sex.”
And obviously, not every woman or man feels or thinks the same way.
Imani Gandy (ABL)
@Brachiator: oh dear. that’s a heavy-duty trio.
henqiguai
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (#73):
P*ssies. During the aftermath of the riots of ’67 in DC, they had 105s deployed with shells stacked on the area high school grounds (Spingarn HS); pointed out toward the residential section, not downtown wherein all the excitement had happened. Fun times.