Quote of the day—Paul Helmke

More guns mean more gun violence, sometimes intentional or sometimes accidental.

Paul Helmke
President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
December 22, 2010
Palm Beach County plans to lift ban on guns in parks
[There are so many things to say about this I don’t really have the time to fully fisk this one sentence. But I’ll get you started and you can continue the work.

He says this as if “gun violence” were necessarily a bad thing. This is not true. For example if the “gun violence” stopped or prevented a violent rape then I consider that a good thing. Perhaps Mr. Helmke’s organization should be advertise themselves as being advocates of rapists and other violent felons. It would be more honest.

Let play the word substitution game by substituting one constitutionally protected noun for another:

  • More n**gers mean more n**ger violence, sometimes intentional or sometimes accidental.
  • More Jews means more Jewish control of the banks, sometimes lawfully or sometimes via their cabal.
  • More homosexuals means more sodomy, sometimes intentional or sometimes accidental.
  • More mixed race marriages means more black men having sex with white women, sometimes consensual or sometimes via rape.

Helmke should go find a more ethical job like selling cattle prods to police officers, representing a cigarette company, or selling sheets and pillow cases to Klansmen.—Joe]

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10 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Paul Helmke

  1. I think you underestimate Paul. He knows what he’s saying. He knows he’s lying through his teeth, he simply doesn’t have the scruples we do. He makes good money spouting these lies and for him, the cash is worth any credibility he might have had.

  2. I saw this same article earlier today. There’s a few fundamental flaws. (1) There never was a legal “ban”, so it would be hard for the cities/counties to overturn them. Florida state law overrides them, and they’ve been illegal from the start. There is nothing to vote on. (2) It makes it sound like people carrying firearms in parks will be a new thing. Untrue. Licensed individuals like myself have been carrying concealed (legally, mind you) in Florida parks for years. (3) Florida does not issue firearms permits. Florida has a concealed weapons license, however.

    I’m tired of it making the news when counties and cities are forced to comply with state law. I’m tired of seeing the media act as if someone is “overturning a ban” (when no ban ever legally existed). I’m tired of interviews with scared parents that think me, my wife, or my family are going to kill them randomly as we continue to carry our firearms concealed with our proper licensing – yet these same people aren’t afraid at the same time of criminals (who again, obviously do not obey laws).

    FWIW, I dealt with this same ridiculousness when I advised Brevard County Florida that they too were not in compliance of State law back in January of this year.

  3. Sean,

    I suppose one could drop a gun and have it go off and hurt someone. It would be a “violent accident” involving a firearm. That would be technically correct and Helmke might even be correct about that. But the question is whether the increase in those sort of accidents results in a net decrease in public safety after you factor in the lower crime rates.

  4. More scalpels mean more people getting cut.

    More oncology units mean more Americans being irradiated.

    More locksmiths mean more cars being opened without even using the keys.

    None of these are bad things either.

  5. That’s a typical way for you to avoid the question altogether, Joe. It is, do guns actually do more harm than good, in other words, was John Lott right or wrong in his famous and continually repeated statement and book title? Helmke and others say yes, guns do more harm than good.

    What you do though, in your nit-picking way, is point out that not all “gun violence” is bad. That takes us off the real question into a direction that was not in dispute.

    And what does Linoge do? He points out the tedious correlation – causation business again. That’s especially funny because he just wrote the other day, “what correlation there might be is negative.” That’s typical too.

  6. MikeB302000 – Please point out, explicitly, where my math is wrong.

    I put all of it online for your perusal, told you exactly where all the data and information came from, and even provided you the Excel document wherein I did all of my work.

    Please show where it is incorrect.

    Something tells me you cannot.

    Given that, the fact remains that the numbers clearly show a correlation between firearm ownership and violent crimes of -0.36 – effectively no correlation at all, but negative. If one pays attention to rates, the correlation is is -0.75 – a strong correlation, but still negative.

    What about that is so very hard for you to comprehend? And why do you feel the need to cast baseless aspersions without any evidence that you understand the concepts you are so eager to deride?

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