Gun cartoon of the day

People on both sides of the issue sometimes attribute evil intent to their opponents. While the evidence is overwhelming that evil intent exists in some cases (see also here) I am of the opinion the majority of the anti-gun people have good intentions. They typically are ignorant and/or have difficulty distinguishing between truth and falsity. This doesn’t mean that their actions don’t enable or cause evil results. Hell is paved with good intentions and all that.

It could be that my sample is biased but examples where anti-gun people acknowledge pro-gun people have good intentions appear to be non-existent. Typically they attribute NRA actions as benefiting the gun manufactures and it being “all about the money”. But many examples, such as the cartoon above, exist which claim the NRA markets guns to kids and works to arm criminals.

This systematic and persistent attribution of evil intent to all gun owners and organizations is no different than attributing evil intent to blacks who demand repeal of curfew laws and laws prohibiting socializing between the races or gays who wish to adopt children.

The VPC does not hide it’s belief that gun owners and gun organizations are evil. But the Brady Campaign does not do this. They are much more moderate in their rhetoric and probably as result of this are a much larger organization. They are aware that extremism in pursuit of their goals is a loosing strategy. While I find it telling that extremism in defense of liberty does not suffer from the same handicap that is a topic for another post (perhaps Lyle would like to take this up).

I can’t help but think that asking anti-gun people what they think the motivation is for pro-gun people would be revealing. I suspect asking them this question would cause them to confront beliefs which are clearly not supported by the evidence.

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7 thoughts on “Gun cartoon of the day

  1. “I can’t help but think that asking anti-gun people what they think the motivation is for pro-gun people would be revealing.”

    I’ve asked some, and they usually come up with one or more of the following three answers:

    1. Gun owners are stupid rednecks.
    2. Gun owners are psychos.
    3. Gun owners have small dicks.

    That pretty covers most of their reactions.

  2. Waste of time, Joe. The operative word here is “projection”. Same reason most of the GFW’s give for not owning/touching a gun; they’re afraid of what they might do with it…

  3. The sad thing is, the kid’s right. As a male, everybody is against him these days.

    Change the 5th panel to read “NOW FIGHTS MALE OUTREACH LAWS”, and the last panel to show him putting the barrel in his mouth, and it would actually be an accurate representation of reality.

  4. And that’s pretty revealing, isn’t it??

    It is to me. The majority of the anti-gun rhetoric seems to revolve around the fact that they think that they’re smarter, more affluent, and more virile than pro-gun people. I would like to point out that the majority of gun bloggers I know are married, decently well off, and educated. The anti-gunners… not so much.

    Change the 5th panel to read “NOW FIGHTS MALE OUTREACH LAWS”, and the last panel to show him putting the barrel in his mouth, and it would actually be an accurate representation of reality.

    NOW set up a branch at my university recently, and advertised with fliers talking about how NOW would combat the sexist stereotypes that held women down. The flier had a picture of a woman in 1950’s clothing (dress, beehive hair-do and apron) holding a plate of cookies… and their first meeting was an ice cream social. Talk about mixed messages…

  5. About a week ago I witnessed an example of the bigotry Joe often refers to. Two of my colleagues were talking at the desk next to mine. I didn’t hear all of the conversation but I got the impression someone in another group was giving L some grief about something work related and M says “You could join the NRA and then just shoot them all.” L smiled and just carried on like there wasn’t anything wrong attributing something like that to 4+ million people.

    I work at the other well know company in the Seattle area (not the one where Joe works). There is quite a “diversity” of people that work here and our customers quite literally cover the globe. The company has a pretty good program and policy concerning toleration and respect for people of differing backgrounds. Making a statement like the above but substituting race, religion, or country of origin in place of “NRA” would have resulted in HR interaction very quickly. It also is something that probably wouldn’t even have occurred to M to say.

    I’m not proud to say it but I just let it go without saying anything about it. I think Joe is right though: people who say such things need to see the bigotry in their own thinking so that they would no more say something like that about the NRA than they would about any other civil rights organization.

  6. But wait; doesn’t the artist know that schools are gun free zones? Problem solved– that kid can’t get in there with a gun. We stopped that with legislation.

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