Quote of the day—Brennan Bailey

[A]nti-gun laws don’t reduce violence.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.  Their repeated failures are what enable them to come back demanding more.

Brennan Bailey
December 14, 2012
[From the gun email list at work.

From listening to nearly all anti-gun politicians and most anti-freedom activists it’s very clear they know, or at least strongly suspect, the laws they demand to be passed will not increase public safety. They will say things like “We need to protect our children!”, not “This will make our children safer!”. Or “We should not have to fear gun violence!”, not “Restrictions on gun sales will make us safer!”

Read the CSGV media release on the Newtown Connecticut shooting. Read the Handgun Control Inc.’s Brady Campaign media releases on almost anything. They do not claim their defense of, and avocations for, more restrictions increase public safety. Even Dennis Henigan in his own book Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy admits that it is difficult to determine if gun control decreases violent crime.

It gun control cannot be shown to reduce violence yet people who know this continue to advocate for it then it would appear Bailey is completely justified in saying, “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” Whatever their motivation might be we know the motivation is not to reduce violence. And if their motivation is not to reduce violence we are completely justified in not only demanding the repeal of existing gun control laws but calling them out as evil scoundrels.—Joe]

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9 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Brennan Bailey

  1. “Anti-gun laws don’t reduce violence” and stop signs don’t make cars stop. Think of all the people who are killed because someone ran a stop sign! Why even erect the signs if they can’t make cars stop?

    • @Ubu52: Bad analogy. Maybe an attempt to construct a straw man, but it actually proves my point, not yours.

      The law-abiding drivers do stop at those stop signs and drive responsibly and usually do not cause accidents. It is crazy, law-breaking misfits who zoom through a stop sign that are likely to cause an accident. In an attempt to fix your broken idea, it would be drunk, homicidal and road-rage SOBs that might run a stop light while looking for a bus stop to plough into for a spot on the evening news. So yes, stop signs serve a purpose for good guys, but they do not slow down an evil person.

      You are trying to equate practical laws for uniformity of our actions (i.e. rules if the road) with gun laws that do not impact criminals. This is the key. All of the gun laws are useless with half-way determined criminals. Laws about safe storage, gun free zones, magazine capacity, approved firearms, bayonet lugs, caliber, adjustable stocks, waiting periods, may issue and a multitude of other useless gun laws are only inflicted on law-abiding citizens. Unintended negative consequences abound with these supposedly good-intentioned regulations. [See violent encounters in “gun free zones” where the victims were defenseless versus those locations where armed citizens ended them quickly].

      Criminals circumvent all of the useless gun control laws noted above and then perform crimes that will deserve even more severe penalties (e.g. assault, robbery, rape, kidnapping, murder). Exactly how is a minor law going to be a deterrent when easily side-stepped and bigger law-breaking activities are sought?

      Your possible attempt (hard to tell your exact intentions with this botched analogy) to argue for the equivalent of more silly signs like, “Slow down, children crossing” or “You text, we ticket” and other feel good gestures is weak. We already have stiff laws in place for murder and that has been happening since Cain versus Abel. Banning certain “assault rocks” which he used to smite his brother misses the point. He might just have easily used a stick or just his bare hands, but the result is the same…murder. Banning an object does nothing to stop the evil in a man’s heart (but a 9mm bullet can).

  2. As noted at SayUncle,
    “A 20 year-old had a couple of handguns (illegal). And, depending on the press report, had an assault weapon (illegal), automatic rifle (illegal), or machine gun (illegal). Shot his mom in the face (illegal). Stole his mom’s vehicle (illegal). Transported the gun in the vehicle (illegal) within 1,000 feet of a school (illegal). Carried it onto school property (illegal). Broke and entered (illegal). Carried a gun in a school (illegal). Discharged a firearm (illegal). Shot at people (illegal). Killed some people (illegal). Killed himself (not sure if illegal).”

    So what, exactlty, are more guns laws supposed to accomplish, other than to make those who pass them feel good about “doing something”?

    I guess some questions just answer themselves.

    • And yet, the one adult who we know had weapons available for personal self defense (Nancy Lanza) had her weapons stolen and used against her — and then used against another 26 people.

  3. @Ubu52: Ah yes, I always lock and load when a family member enters the room and sometimes fire warning shots at them to judge whether they are friend or now foe. I so rarely get a meaningful insight from you. This is such an extreme situation that blaming Nancy Lanza is just ridiculous. All he had to do was walk in the front door, say “Hi mom” and act OK for 30 seconds to get her to lower her guard and then attack her. Ask anybody who was killed by a close friend or spouse in such an unexpected manner if they had a chance. Oh wait, they are dead because they were tricked by a loved one. Pretty hard to prepare against that.

    So your premise is that all gun owners out there (80+ million) are just ready to snap and go on a killing rampage or that we are so irresponsible that we leave them just lying around for criminals to harvest. Well, with 200 million firearms out there and a good percentage of the population who are criminals, and a small number of evil SOBs, there are going to be some crimes committed with guns. What you cannot seem to understand is that vastly more crimes are averted or mitigated by firearms. Since you want to talk about this tragedy, let’s do a simple thought experiment. If a good guy had been aware and armed, perhaps this would have been stopped earlier. Instead the insane law for “gun free zones” invited this SOB to come and kill with impunity. Enough with your insanity! We see the results of gun bans on the local scale (like this tragedy), but I am more worried about the national scale like Nazi Germany, communist countries, and other repressive hell holes. Your desires for civilian disarmament prepares the way for these. Ubu52, you have ZERO moral authority here.

    Never Again!
    Molon Labe!

      • No, you do not get off the hook that easily. My response to you was to dissect what you said in response to alanstorm.

        He stated various illegal activities that the evil SOB (who shall not be named) did and the laws that did not deter his actions. I touched on this, too.

        Your statement, “And yet, the one adult who we know had weapons available for personal self defense (Nancy Lanza) had her weapons stolen and used against her — and then used against another 26 people.”

        Your statement implies the following:

        1) Laws did not work and an evil SOB killed people
        2) Firearms for self-defense are ineffective and the mother was to blame for the theft of them

        Regarding #1: Evil people killing good people has been happening since the dawn of time. The goal of our justice system is to PUNISH bad behavior. Hopefully, it also serves to deter. In a violent encounter, it’s often only the victim-to-be that has the opportunity to resist the violence, but only if they have the means. The premise of gun control is to take away all or nearly all firearms by making it onerous to have them. The evidence of this is the utter lack of utility of gun control laws and schemes. The only exception that I can think of is a mandatory sentence enhancement for the use of firearms in a violent crime (e.g. assault, robbery, rape, murder). Still, the crime is what needs to be punished, not the tool. Dead is dead. So ,proposals to take away firearms is tantamount to empowering evil criminals.

        2) The idea that a firearm is talisman, always protecting the owner and never being stolen or misused is silly. It merely improves the odds for those facing an evil SOB who many be more bigger, meaner, armed, more numerous, etc. Your statement can be easily misconstrued to ascribe blame to the mother for the mere ownership of firearms. That idea is simply unacceptable since it is so easily shown to be false. The evil SOB could easily have gotten firearms from so many other places illegally or could have used alternative means (e.g. arson) to have killed even more innocents.

          • @Ubu52: Nice deflection. I threw out one alernate example and you latch on to that because you cannot adequately respond to the fundamental argument. We have profound training and protocols that are effective for fires so no it is not used as a weapon…yet. Of course, an evil person could drive a gas truck into a school if they thought it would get their results. FYI, I have training in chemistry so look at the accident in India for an example. Let’s not go down this path further since I do not want to give the crazies more ideas.

            My argument is that having armed teachers, parents, security, could stop some of these events. The stupid gun free zones make these places more often than not, soft targets. That is the most visible result of the misguided gun control policies.

            You know I am tired of debating you. Your little snippets show a lack of insights into the realities of the world, human nature, logistical realities of trying to infringe on my rights, unintended consequences, completely ignoring the ratio of cost/benefit which heavily favors gun ownership, and finally the little snippets fail to address my main themes. Troll somewhere else…

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