Having decided to torture myself by looking at some "progressive" news sources this morning, I found this article on Think Progress - people do love to preach to the choir..
The illogic and ignorance of it is somewhat remarkable if totally fathomable given the source. A smattering of the folly:
1. "In a time where it is virtually impossible to keep track of all of the gun deaths, story after story about these incidents notes that nothing is likely to change and that action on gun violence is almost impossible."
The problem is that everything that is regularly discussed by "progressive" media or the president is not really intended to address "gun violence" but gun ownership, gun possession. Their intention is that such restrictions should be codified in law. Yet, violence is not lawful, yet occurs.
There are guns and there is violence. At times they intersect, but more often than not guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens will never be fired in anger or even self-defense, will never be used as tools of violence. I know this is sacrilege to progressives, who believe that all gun owners are evil and potential murderers, but it is nonetheless true. If efforts to address violence were evident in these "actions" - efforts that were not intended to restrict law-abiding legal access to firearms - perhaps something could be done. But as long as guns and violence are purposely conflated and violence is used as a means to a long-time progressive agenda, then one can only hope such progressive totalitarian changes will forever be resisted.
2. "The same is not true for firearm ownership. Over the same period, Gallup polling shows American gun ownership rates have remained largely unchanged and even a modest gun bill in 2013 fell well short of passage. The threat posed by unfettered access to firearms has never been clearer, so why has the gun lobby and industry in America flourished as the tobacco industry became a pariah?"
"Unfettered"? News flash - Over 180,000 NICS checks were done on Black Friday. This shows that not only are more and more law-abiding people interested in legally obtaining firearms they have a right to own (most likely motivated by progressive attempts to "fetter" their access), but also that one does not legally obtain access to a firearm "unfettered". To call that "unfettered" access is to suggest that acts, like access to prescription medication via legal channels, is "unfettered". Do these "fetters" mean that people do not use these drugs illegally and come to have them via non-legal means? No. Unfettered access to both scheduled drugs and firearms is illegal already.
As an aside: The process of buying a firearms is no more "unfettered" than is access of migrants to the US - according to progressive media reports on vetting of migrants. If such checks are good enough to allow migrants into the US, then they should be good enough to allow legal purchase of firearms.
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH - more whining - cut to the chase:
The author's point, much like one Hilary Clinton has made, is that firearms makers should be held liable for the consequences of their product just as cigarette makes have. Again, this kind of logic can only make sense to a person who wants to ban firearms.
Cigarettes are dangerous, potentially lethal in the long-term, no matter how one uses them (unless they never smoke them). There is no safe way to use them. Research on their health risks that was detrimental to their sales was covered up. Now, if one is a staunch and uninformed proponent of gun confiscation, then they will will believe this about firearms as well. They will believe that every gun owner is evil and there is no way a gun can be used safely even thought he sheer numbers of owners puts the lie to the notion. And there is no cover-up - everyone knows that a firearm is potentially lethal - anyone who has watched a western, a war movie, or seen media reports knows this. The difference is how the user uses it.
Guns are not cigarettes. They can be and are used safely by the vast majority of users - especially those users who have been vetted repeatedly as part of their "fettered" access. they can be put to many uses that are not lethal. the right to their possession is enshrined in the Constitution. The problem with their use is criminal use, is criminal violence in which criminals use them as tools. No one has ever denied that they can be lethal, can be misused. So can knives, cars, fertilizer, boards, fists, and so on. If we do not hold manufacturers of those products liable for the violence that some choose to commit using those tools - tools that can also be used safely - then the author's logic falls apart.
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