Quote of the day—James Dawson

No need for new gun laws, but will you please make all NRA Members, including you, take a Mental Test!

If this was to happen, you and 96% of NRA Members would fail a mental test.
BTW, you already failed..

James Dawson
April 24, 2014
Comment to The battle over gun policy: Old fight, new strategies
[This was in response to “Kim Jong” who said:

States/counties that issue CCWs have statistically lower crime rates. The more guns in the hands of ordinary citizens the more empowered they become against gun toting criminals who don’t care what the gun laws are.

Jong made a calm, rational, claim of fact and is told that he would fail a mental test on the basis of this statement. And the anti-gun side says we are preventing there being a national conversation on guns. Wow!

This “Progressive” wants to make all NRA members take an mental test. What is the moral, political, constitutional, or common law justification for anyone or organization having such power?  For someone to believe what he believes means I do not have any words for him. It is simply not possible for me to have a conversation with someone with whom I have no common basis to communicate. He is an alien life form who intends to destroy me and our culture and should be treated as such.—Joe]

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25 thoughts on “Quote of the day—James Dawson

  1. A mental test?
    Does he mean a psychological exam?
    I think Mr. Dawson may have had problems in the past passing the test himself.

  2. Well, if they had facts, they’d use them. Since they don’t all they can use is emotional arguments and irrational blather.

    Which they’re very good at.

  3. It looks like the Dawson and Kim Jong comments are both responses to a third comment by Richard Cranium. I can’t get them to both display at the same time with the original, to which they are responding.

  4. “This “Progressive” wants to make all NRA members take an [sic] mental test. What is the moral, political, constitutional, or common law justification for anyone or organization having such power?”

    There is none, of course.

    Unfortunately though, we left that barn door open a long time ago, and now we are tested, qualified, licensed and background-checked by government for all sorts of things, and we accept it. Once we’ve tolerated, and in some cases embraced, the concept, there is no moral argument for drawing a specific line somewhere and saying we will go no farther with it. Any such line would be arbitrary, and therefore subject to the whims and vagaries of the political winds.

    When my wife and I had our first child, for example, the state sent in a case worker to interview us and inspect our home to make sure we were fit to raise our own child. How many people have been speaking up against THAT?

    We can’t have it both ways.

    No, Grasshopper; the horses escaped that barn a LONG time ago, such that they have since become wild and are running un-checked over our lands. We, as a society, let go of the moral, political, constitutional, or common law justifications long before you and I were born. Now, assertions of “the common good” trump most of those things most of the time.

  5. “Jong made a calm, rational, claim of fact”

    He made a statement. It was not a “fact.” Just because you guys keep repeating it, it doesn’t make it true. Hawaii, which doesn’t issue CCWs, has a lower crime rate than most states that issue CCWs.

    • Ever heard of the concept of an “outlier”?

      Of course not. What a silly question.

      • Plus culture is more relevant here than anything else.
        Not race.
        Culture.

    • And Illinois and New York, both of which rarely issue CCWs, have very high crime rates.
      “Outlier” indeed. This is not new. After John Lott published his famous research showing the benefits of Shall Issue, he made his data available to all. (Note how this differs from the pseudo-science practiced by global warmists.) Some fakers at some university took his data, deleted a carefully chosen 85%, and used the remaining 15% to “prove” that the real answer was the opposite of what Lott showed.
      Needless to say, such hackwork is not science. I don’t know if the perps are still employed by a university, but I suspect they are.
      So anyway, since you can prove the opposite by selecting the right 15% of the real data, it’s hardly a surprise that you can also prove it by selecting the right 1% of the data — which is what Ubu did.

        • Here’s a good comparison for you. NY vs. Florida.

          http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/flcrime.htm
          http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm

          Florida has the most CCW permits per capita in the USA. Both states have population numbers very close to each other (19+ million).

          2012 statistics
          Homicides:
          Florida 1009, NY 684 (Florida +325)

          Rapes:
          Florida 5260, NY 2848 (Florida +2412)

          Robberies
          Florida 23,889, NY 28,655 (NY +4766)

          Assaults
          Florida 63,929, NY 47,423 (Florida +16,506)

          Burglary
          Florida 153,563, NY 64,553 (Florida +89,010)

          So, apart from robberies, Florida is much higher in all crime categories. Do gunnies only count robberies when considering “States/counties that issue CCWs have statistically lower crime rates”? New York is MUCH safer than Florida and that’s without issuing a CCW to everyone who wants one.

          • Ubu —

            You do realize that in most of NY state it is pretty easy to get a CCW. NYC and a few other areas, not so much. (And, interestingly enough, NYC residents with premits are “more equal” — their permits are, by state law, good anywhere in the state, while other NY permits are good ANYWHERE BUT NYC.)

          • Still can’t compete with neighboring Vermont is all I can say.

            There are other parts playing into a higher crime rate but trying to pin it alone on “whether or not the state issues CCWs” is plain ignorant.

    • “Hawaii, which doesn’t issue CCWs, has a lower crime rate than most states that issue CCWs.”

      Would that fact alter or abolish anyone’s basic human rights?

      If one of your neighbors killed someone with a knife, would that justify your government requiring you to register your kitchen knives, get a background check and a permit to own them, inspect them and your home periodically to unsure compliance, or ban them altogether? Your neighbors have knives, you have knives, they killed with knives, you’re all knife owners (part of the same group) and so what’s stopping you from killing with knives? For the betterment of society, maybe you should have a psychological examination before being allowed to keep such deadly instruments in your home. Since you are thus armed, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from going out and murdering the first little kid that walks in front of your house because you’re having a bad day. Can we as a society afford to take such a risk? (these are the arguments used against gun owners)

      (Unless you had conspired with them in some way) by what moral concept or authority would you be held in any way suspect in, or accountable for, your neighbor’s crimes?

      We’re hitting, you see, on the very distinct (day and night) difference between the founding American concept of liberty and justice verses the Progressive idea of humans as herd animals to be tended, bred, molded, shaped and used for someone else’s’ benefit or the “benefit” of some collective. A farmer de-horns his cattle so that he can obtain the most productivity from them with the least hassle and the lowest investment. A libertarian stands up for his neighbors’ rights and freedom because he believes that liberty (the protection of inherent rights) is the natural and ideal state of human existence and development—that it is born into every human the desire to think, perceive and act without intimidation.

      Either position can be argued (and has been forever) and so it comes down to what a person wants to believe. It is that want, that I address— the allegiance to one mindset or the other, and in so doing I can only present the case for liberty, and hope that someone will be able to consider it at its most basic, moral (and some would say “spiritual”) level.

    • Ah, Hawaii!

      “It has a lower crime rate than most states that don’t issue CCWs.”

      You lead, I follow.

      Better to compare to those states that functionally don’t issue permits as well – Illinois (Chicago), New York (New York), say.

      Surely, we have all spent a few years hanging in Honolulu and most obvious –

      Hawaii is the 8th smallest, the 11th least populous, but the 13th most densely populated of the 50 U.S. states (per wiki).

      You’ve been there, Honolulu is rather like Chicago or New York, but on the Pacific rather than Lake Michigan or the Atlantic.

      Bump some elbows on the the street,or wiki, and you’ll notice:

      White – 25%
      Asian / Pacific Islander – 49%
      Mixed – 24%
      Other – 3%

      The fact is there are a hell of a lot less white people packing heat shooting people for shits and giggles, not lack of CCW, that explains the lower crime rate.

      QED

  6. I’m just guessing here, but I’ll bet that James Dawson wants to be the one who makes up the test. Or at least someone HE deems ‘rational’ (that term defined, at least in part, as, “someone who dislikes guns and/or distrusts gun-owners.)
    Rational, indeed!

    • No need to spend much time guessing.

      Dawson has predetermined the fail rate. It must be 96%. So it doesn’t really matter what the content of the test is.

  7. He made a statement. It was not a “fact.” Just because you guys keep repeating it, it doesn’t make it true. Hawaii, which doesn’t issue CCWs, has a lower crime rate than most states that issue CCWs.

    I can easily prove that one wrong by simply changing the way crime rates are measured: http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/hi/crime/

    When you measure “crime per square mile” Hawaii is higher than the national average, 48 crimes/square mile over the national average of 39.3 crimes/square mile.

    One things I’ve learned from leftists is that if the data doesn’t support your argument, change the way you measure it until it does. Call gangbanger 18 years old “children” or lump in suicides with “gun deaths.” Doesn’t matter if it is crap data as long as the easily swayed can feel an emotional connection.

  8. We think guns are useful for defending ourselves.
    Dawson thinks socialism works.
    Which of us is crazy?

  9. I can imagine what Dawson would have said 60 years ago if someone had said what he said about him and his view that the First Amendment was as far-reaching and all-encompassing as he doubtless believes it to be.

    I went to a Jesuit University. The Father who ran the library was known for not saying anything bad about anybody. To test this, famously someone asked him about the Devil. His only comment was that “You have to admit he is a very hard worker.” UBU always comes back, and always with the arguments that carry so much weight among the Leftists and the Daily Kos and the Democrat Underground. And like the arguments from the Devil’s Advocate in the Vatican’s proceedings for canonizing new saints, these arguments must be heard, analyzed and refuted with facts and logic so that we might have the strongest arguments possible to assure the preservation of liberty, so that one’s right to self defense without unreasonable restrictions* do not disappear today, and one’s right to privacy and security from unreasonable search do not disappear the day after, and one’s right to associate with who one wishes, or express one’s worship as one pleases and one’s political views, do not disappear the day after that. In spite, then, of UBU’s annoying habit of mimicking Joan Peterson, that is a great service we receive, because we see evidence that our arguments become stronger and more widely understood every day; i.e. Heller in DC, then McDonald in Illinois, and others, sure to follow, as surely as Brown flowed out of the piecemeal decisions that whittled away that blight on liberty, Plessey v Ferguson.

    *A bar fight is not in any reasonable or realistic sense the same as a home invasion at 1:30 am, even though both may occur at that time. To apply the same rules, i.e. meeting force with proportional force and not escalating by using weapons where the aggressor used fists, or a stick, and so deeming the defender to have lost his or her status as victim is so morally bankrupt outside the concept of a bar fight as to be purely evil.

    • I’m not sure what the point is of the comment you quoted about not escalating. Fists and sticks are both deadly weapons; in what way is defense with a firearm “escalation”?

      • I suspect he is using “bar fight” in the meaning of the kind of foolishness people get into, where the bar fight is really a form of mutual combat without expressly setting the rules.I avoid such stupidity, as I don’t view fighting as “fun” — but many people do.

        • Sorry, I was writing with a bit of shorthand.
          When two customers at a bar get into a fight, it is generally considered that if the person who did not throw the first punch refrains from bringing greater force or heavier weapons to bear, he is permitted under the law to defend himself. If he answers a fist with a stick or a knife or a gun, he ceases to have that protection .
          In (f)GB and to a lesser extent in Canada (I am informed), a homeowner confronted by an intruder in the middle of the night is supposed to, under the Marquis-of-Queensbury rules, meet force with proportionate force. Fist can only be met with fist, knife with knife, and stick with stick. If the homeowner manages to get the upper hand, he becomes the aggressor and subject to prosecution.
          To put such restrictions on the meetings of homeowners and burglars is to apply the rules of a bar fight to a home invasion, which is wrong in so many ways as to be evil.
          This is why I mentioned the bit about a bar fight.

  10. Lyle,

    When my wife and I had our first child, for example, the state sent in a case worker to interview us and inspect our home to make sure we were fit to raise our own child.

    Did you let them in???

  11. Interestingly he would like a mental health for Americans to exercise a Right that is theirs for being human and re-enforced by the foundational documents of our nation , but rest assured he would object to requiring ID to vote. And will see no contradiction in the position. He is clearly insane.

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