Quote of the day—Molly Ivins

I used to enjoy taunting my gun-nut friends about their psycho-sexual hang-ups – always in a spirit of good cheer, you understand. But letting the noisy minority in the National Rifle Association force us to allow this carnage to continue is just plain insane.

I do think gun nuts have a power hang-up. I don’t know what is missing in their psyches that they need to feel they have to have the power to kill. But no sane society would allow this to continue.

Ban the damn things. Ban them all.

You want protection? Get a dog.

Molly Ivins
Columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
March 15, 1993
Taking A Stab At Our Infatuation With Guns
[She also says, “As a civil libertarian, I of course support the Second Amendment.”

Note that this is someone who lives in Fort Worth Texas in 1993. Those were very, very dark days for gun owners.

I could spend several paragraphs picking apart the quote above but I really don’t have the time or interest. I just want to address one point.

If you “get a dog” for your protection keep in mind that it has a mind of it’s own. It isn’t under your full control. A gun does not have a mind of it’s own. You can lock up the gun in a safe and leave it there when you are at work without worrying it will get cranky and bite the neighbor kid that is poking a stick at it if you left it in your yard. When you decide your life is in immediate danger of termination or permanent injury you can pull the trigger and be nearly certain your persuasive forces have been significantly increased when the dog could be thinking of begging for a treat.

If your dog is a weapon big and determined enough to pull down a large attacker do you really want that weapon to have a brain with that much independence, and that much less judgment controlling it’s actions?

If Ivins has evaluated the judgment of dogs versus her own and decided in favor of the dog I’m certainly not going to dispute her conclusion on the basis of the evidence I have seen so far. But she has no business making a similar decision for me or anyone else.—Joe]

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24 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Molly Ivins

  1. She used to be known, for better or worse, as the “mouth of Texas”, and that mouth , like a Joe Biden shotgun, was not often aimed in the direction that ordinary rational thought would take it.

    How about something of hers from a more recent time? Inquiring minds want to know whether she has actually gathered any wisdom in the past 20 years. Anyway, history is the Great Teacher: Texas marched on towards firearms freedom without her.

  2. Molly Ivins! That name brings back some memories. Her columns full of well-crafted vituperation against all things conservative were well written, full of great turns of phrase, and fun to read, despite her liberal ideology. Would that more current liberals could write as well as she did.

    She is most famous for nicknaming GW Bush “Shrub” when he started running for governor of Texas, since he was in her considered opinion so much less a man than his daddy.

    Recall that “Shrub” won over Anne Richards, the governor who vetoed the Texas concealed carry law, partly because of that veto. Richards is best known for using the phrase “born with a silver foot in his mouth” to describe GHW Bush at the Dem convention in 1988, when GHW Bush beat Dukakis and her fellow Texan Lloyd Benson (who got off a memorable insult of his own against his opponent for VP).

    Her etting taken out of office by a mere Shrub, whose speech made his dad’s stumbling orations look like the words of Solomon, was icing on the cake for me.

    While it may be foolish on my part, I had more respect for liberal ideologues who could, at least, emit a pithy phrase in their column or a witty expression.

    I think conservative strategery should never misunderestimate the power of a well turned phrase.

    • Good writing is good writing. Doesn’t really matter the ideology, it’s still fun to read. (Some of the best writers I know are sports writers — and I’m not that crazy about sports.)

    • “I think conservative strategy should never misunderestimate the power of a well turned phrase.”
      Yes Sir! Particularly when opposition can be expressed as a well crafted bumper sticker phrase that ends debate yet doesn’t hold up to close examination, like the present example of getting a dog for security. When all one knows about a subject is the bumper sticker takeaway people get to the point as in “Idiocracy” where analysis and discussion stop with “but plants crave Brawn.”

  3. “You want protection? Get a dog.”

    She agrees that you have the right to defend yourself with lethal force and effect. She quibbles about the proper weapon to use.

    • I’ll point out that this is a very good look into the mind of a leftist. They DO believe in deadly force, but are desperately unwilling to take responsibility for it. They’re more than happy to delegate deadly force to others, even if it means delegating it to a dog. They can thereby feel absolved from it, and even declare themselves superior for it, like the aristocrat who never gets his hands dirty, and yet is dependent on his “lowly” servants not only for getting dressed every morning but for his very survival. He therefore needs and yet hates those who are capable, who make things work.

      Those people tend to need coercive force, because they rely on it for their sustenance, while the more self reliant, capable and independent do not, and THAT is the rub. It drives them insane. They must avoid the truth at all cost.

      In fact, the entire leftist ideology (if it can be said to be an ideology) is based on coercion and force, preferring the power of force and intimidation by the state in direct opposition to the force of reason and the basic American principles of liberty. It starts with the absolute power of the state in all matters as an ideal unto itself and then seeks to rationalize it in any way possible.

      It is the very definition of a “power hang-up”, but they’ve wrapped it up in a package made to look on the surface like virtue and good will. Very insidious.

      It is not too much to say that leftism is at its core, an insurrection, or rebellion, against the United States and against Mankind in general. And its agents have the audacity to point fingers of blame at an organization that seeks to protect one of the most basic human rights.

      When will we have the courage to name this rebellion for what it is, and to put it down?

  4. Hah! Relying solely on a dog to protect your very life. That would explain a lot. For example, it explains why we have the people we have in elected offices. Get a dog, indeed. We have thousands of them.

  5. “If your dog is a weapon big and determined enough to pull down a large attacker do you really want that weapon to have a brain with that much independence, and that much less judgment controlling it’s actions? ”

    This. There was a couple in S.F. that went to prison, due to them having a couple of large dogs that they couldn’t physically control. The woman couldn’t keep them from killing a female neighbor in their apt building, when they encountered her entering her apt. Each dog outweighed the owner, IIRC. Something Canaris? breed.

  6. In response to Molly I have discovered what is missing from the Liberal psyche.like hers, actual intelligence.

  7. Note that liberals are also perfectly happy to restrict dog breeds because they are ‘aggressive’ and ‘threatening’. Right back to square one, eh?

  8. Despite her claims, I consider Ivins to be a Progressive, with all the negative connotations that we now attach to the term.

    “Ban them all”

    To the same end she might as well have said “Cry havoc! And let slip the Dogs of War…”

    Mark A. has the right spirit, so with that, I’ll end my discussion of Ms. Ivins.

  9. Tiny flaw Ms. Irvins…the rapist/home invaders will first shoot the dog then have their way with you.

  10. I’m allergic to dogs, you stupid woman, ever heard of THAT ONE?

    Can’t carry a cop and I certainly cannot have a dog without getting hives.

  11. Molly Ivins was a vile creature indeed. As I said on my own blog some time ago, she was just another link in the long chain of people who have proved that education doesn’t necessarily lead to intelligence or enlightenment, and how hateful, ignorant and mean-spirited you can get away with being when you couch your rhetoric in faux down-home “humor.” I don’t know how she ever got to characterizing herself as a “civil libertarian,” as going by most of what she wrote, she was about as much of a “civil libertarian” as was Benito Mussolini or Idi Amin. She was a beloved Texas personality to a lot of leftists, which just goes to show you how much respect many on the left had for the Texan ideals Molly so gleefully shat on so often during her time at her keyboard. I may well catch some incoming for this, but as a Texan, Molly Ivins always struck me to be about as real as a three-dollar bill. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Molly Ivins was more or less a Maureen Dowd from Houston. Just like Maureen Dowd has her cutesy-nickname shtick, Molly Ivins had her down-home country-bumpkin Texan shtick leavened with a hearty helping of leftist bile, which basically could be boiled down to, “Shucks a-mighty, Ah shore do hate me some Republikens, ‘specially that dumb ol’ George Dubya, hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!” And it was bullshit, just like most of the word vomit that came off her keyboard. Fake, insincere, ignorant and hateful bullshit at that. I know it may be disrespectful to speak ill of the dead, but as far as I am concerned, such disrespect is only fitting for someone who used her First Amendment rights to so vigorously shit all over my Second Amendment rights (and everyone else’s too, of course). A lot of people bemoan the lack of civility in modern political discourse, and I’ll admit I am one of them…well, Molly Ivins contributed a hell of a lot more to that lack of civility than was her fair share. Even if the more polite of us don’t want to admit it.

    • As my saintly and ancient mother would say, “God bless her heart.”

      In other words, “She will burn in hell without some miracle.”

  12. There is nothing “missing in my psyche” that makes me have to have the power to kill.
    My psyche is fully developed and just fine thank you Ms. Molly.
    I have to have the power to kill, not because of any deficiency in my psyche, but because there are many, many bad people in the world (including, most notably at the current point in history, the fascist/Marxist/collectivist slavemaster wannabes in, affiliated with, and/or bankrolling the Obama regime) who want to do bad things to me, like rob me of my material possessions, rob me of my freedom and/or my very life, destroy my sovereign nation, and make me and my progeny slaves/serfs to their “entitled” progeny (because they are the anointed “elites” who are “destined to rule” because they are, according to their own proclamations, “smarter than everyone else, and therefore “the only ones” who can rule “correctly.”)
    “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” – Mao
    (They collectivists revere Mao and the way he ruthlessly grabbed power in China. The fact that he murdered about 100 million Chinese to do it is, to them, a “feature,” not a “bug.”)
    While I am not normally inclined to violence, I am a rational person, and all the evidence of history teaches me that those sorts of people, when they manage to rise to positions of power (generally by duping the poorly informed and/or bribing them with “free stuff” and promises of more to come), they inevitably go on campaigns of bloody butchery that always ultimately fail, but not until large numbers of their intended, but unwilling, subjects are eliminated in the most gruesome and inhumane fashion (all for the “greater good” and to “promote public safety” because those who resist slavery under the rule of the “elites” are “dangerous, subversive, extremists who must not be allowed to stand in the way of “progress” and “social justice.”
    This has played out over and over again throughout history. Just in the 20th century alone, at least 262 MILLION innocents were murdered by their own governments, after they allowed those governments to first disarm them.
    See: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
    I choose to behave rationally and resist such evil, rather than allowing myself and mine to be meekly herded into slavery and extermination. The only way to stop it is, unfortunately, to be prepared to kill those who would kill you.
    When I say “Never again!” I mean with all of the conviction of my soul.

  13. Really, the question is what is missing in other’s psyches that requires the obsession with other men’s genitals, and with the need to compel others to do things they would not want to be compelled to do themselves, were the situation reversed and a few details changed.

  14. Pingback: Quote of the day—Larry Correia | The View From North Central Idaho

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