It’s … authoritarian looking to a lot of people when you say “I’m going to come to your house and take your gun.”
David Harsanyi
Senior Writer, National Review
September 14, 2020
Confessions of a New Gun Owner (video starting at 4:08).
[Via email from Paul K.
It’s more than “authoritarian looking”. It’s authoritarian.—Joe]
Hey, give him a break, he works at NR. Style always mattered more to them than substance.
Any candidate who says, ” I am coming to take your (FILL IN THE BLANK) ” doesn’t deserve your vote.
The job does not entitle that person to confiscate wealth or property from anyone. Does not matter if it’s guns, books, land or someones business.
I would substitute “suicidal” for “authoritarian.”
And yet Beto O’Rourke still breathes even though he said that many times.
If that ever actually happens, I expect approximately 99% compliance, at least in larger urban areas.
Source: Go shopping in an urban area, and count up the number of people wearing masks vs. not wearing masks. I don’t think that the mask orders are nearly as popular as the compliance rate might appear to indicate.
I have secondhand anecdotal evidence, and a tiny amount of direct personal evidence, that in more rural environments across the Midwest the mask situation may be somewhat more loosely acknowledged.
In the city where I live, I wear the damned mask because I have had people cringe back from me when THEY weren’t wearing a mask, and thanks to the way the issue has been presented, not wearing a mask is an offensive act against the continued health-salvation of others. I also can’t afford a fine from the local health Nazis, and I don’t want the civilian busybodies from getting exercised at me.
Yes, but the orders are pretty toothless.
It’s a whole lot easier to make a stand against a mask order, where violations (for individuals) don’t even carry fines or jail time, and there are huge loopholes, and there’s a 99.99% chance there will be no police involvement, than it is to face down a pack of policemen with guns who really mean business.
I don’t think the mask compliance rate is much of an indication. Masks are a nuisance (except to those few for whom they create medical problems). So complying with such a requirement is not a big problem, nor a significant financial hit. In addition, you don’t need to worry about political hidden agendas behind such an order. Complying with gun confiscation is an entirely different matter. If nothing else, it raises the question “what do they intend to do that requires us to be defenseless” necessarily comes up.
In addition, you don’t need to worry about political hidden agendas behind such an order.
I strongly disagree. I think it is much more of a psychological conditioning tactic than it is a medically effective preventive measure.
It (and its associated “Karens”) reminds me very much of the Stanford/Milgram experiments.
It is worth noting that there is not any strong evidence in favor of these things–all of the “studies” touted by the NYT etc. boil down to models & simulations that–in essence-are predicated on assuming that they work in the first place. The better actual experimental studies don’t really support them (although the good ones are pretty much all done with influenza, so we have to “stretch” them a little bit to cover the current situation, which is admittedly going out on a limb a bit).
I think it’s also worth noting that, as far as the mask nazis are concerned, any dirty old rag will do–it doesn’t necessarily have to be a particular type, or be worn in a certain way. It seems to be much more important to them that something be worn, not that it be designed to be effective.
This has, in my judgement, none of the hallmarks of “actually working” or “actually designed to help” and all of the hallmarks of dividing people up into “yellow star” vs. “armband” groups, in a highly visible way.
I think it is extremely dangerous, and even more insidious because it is ostensibly so benign.
Fair enough. Still, a mask order doesn’t render you defenseless, the way confiscation of your weapons does.
Not only authoritarian. People who talk like that are insane. The impossibility of the proposition describes one as out of touch with their senses. And indeed, reality itself. Paranoid dementia. With delusions of grandeur.
People that talk like that don’t need to be elected. They need thorazine.
David Harsanyi is trying to sound reasonable to the kind of people he grew up with. He comes across to us gun rights absolutists as kind of wishy-washy, but he’s one of the better journalists out there. He grew up a city kid in New York City and didn’t touch a gun until he was an adult and wound up living in Colorado where someone introduced him to guns and shooting. I’m pretty sure he was over thirty and may have been over forty before he ever shot any kind of gun. He’s come a long way for someone with his background.
We have data on compliance with gun bans in NY and Connecticut. It was almost non-existent. Guns could have been removed to America or simply left where they were but few were turned in or registered as the precursor to confiscation. They are going to have to go door to door or at least engage in some sort of financial retaliation.
Masks are required in my county, but compliance is voluntary. Nearly all service employees wear them, but many pull them down so as to not cover their nostrils.
Maybe 50% of patrons wear them.
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