When the pandemic hit and I walked down my local shopping street for an evening constitutional, I saw lines stretching around the block for the gun stores. I was just flabbergasted, and aghast. Clearly these guys don’t think they’re such great marksmen that they’re going to shoot the virus particles, right? So what are the guns for? The gun is to shoot their neighbors. That’s the only thing you would buy a gun for in a pandemic, the only thing a gun is good for in a pandemic.
Cory Doctorow
November 2, 2020
Cory Doctorow on his drive to inspire positive futures
[This is what they think of you. The only thing you buy a gun for in a pandemic is to shoot your neighbors.
Apparently Doctorow is severely lacking in imagination compared to the average U.S. citizen and/or he is deliberately putting a negative spin on the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Here are just the first two reasons that came to me when I think about reasons to buy a gun in response to a pandemic:
- What about when a significant number of the police are ill or dead from exposure to the plague? Don’t you think it would be nice to be able to defend yourself from the violent criminals?
- What about when you need to go hunting to put food on the table because you have been out of work for months or the food supply chain is mostly broken?
The most generous conclusion which I can come up as to the justification for Doctorow’s claim is that he has crap for brains.—Joe]
Does he think one never has to defend against violent criminals? Does he think that it is always the case that everyone encounters violent criminals only by going into “bad areas of town”? He would not say that about a woman if he thought he would be derided for “Blaming the Victim”, but it’s just fine about people who have seen the police stand down repeatedly in these last six months.
And as for neighbors, he must be thinking of people in “the Hood”, where the gang bangers live a few doors down with their grandmothers.
He also hasn’t seen the Ray Milland movie, Panic in the Year Zero”, or that Twilight Zone episode in which aliens manipulate a neighborhood’s electricity to the panic of the neighbors, and by the end of the episode, the neighbors learn something disturbing about how thin the veneer of civilization is on each other.
Right; if you were to shoot a violent attacker, one who lives in your general area, you would, technically speaking, have “shot a neighbor”.
This is the same kind of rhetoric the left uses for almost any situation. If you dislike criminals from Mexico, you dislike Mexicans. If you dislike crime, and if some criminals happen to be black, it means you dislike black people, and if you dislike coercive redistribution (robbery) it means you’re greedy, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
Now; they know they’re being disingenuous, and they know that we know they’re being disingenuous, but it’s all they have, and so they’re going to double down on it every time.
So yes, absolutely; guns are for shooting neighbors. I concur. There can be no arguing the point. Guns are also for shooting people from outside your area, if one tries to seriously injure or kill you, or is making a credible threat to do the same.
We can have no disagreement there. Yes, leftists; my guns are for shooting you, IF you should decide to criminally, violently, attack me. No doubt you have a problem with that. You’d rather be able to loot and “redistribute” and have your way with anyone who doesn’t like it, but such is life. The protection of rights is of course bad for any and all leftists, who want, and live for, nothing but to violate the rights and property of others, and so of course you hate it.
From the leftists’ (Romish) point of view, they being of the criminal mind, of course they’ll be stricken with fear, loathing and hatred at the thought of someone having the means to defend himself. In fact, defense of rights in the fullest would mean, by definition, the extinction of all leftists and the entire Romish, Babylonian system, for they cannot function as leftists without mass violation of rights. It’s what they do. It’s what defines them.
So let them make fools of themselves and soil themselves at the thought of a well and properly armed society. That is as it should be. It’s the whole point.
Leftists seem unable to distinguish the difference between “I will inflict violence on you because you are you, and I want some goodies today” (the distinguishing behavior of a criminal, IMHO), and “IF you try to hurt ME, I will fight back.”
This inability to understand the nature of a conditional statement, particularly one outside of the control of the speaker, is why so many people say Leftists do not understand logic.
And his crap-for-brains is what makes him believe:
I’ve always been able to go to the grocery store and buy what I want.
Why would things ever be any different?
My doctors have always been available, and my hospital open and that time I called for an ambulance, it arrived quickly.
Why would things ever be different?
I’m sure there’s many other things we can all think of that this “post-scarcity” dunce would believe would never come up from behind and cave his skull in.
He doesn’t actually believe one bit of that. He knows better. He’s engaging in the only thing the left has; deception, which can be defined as mind control, for the porpose of consolidating power.
I say it again and again; don’t make the mistake of believing that the left is merely idiotic. Such is to fail to understand the nature of the tactical landscape. They’ve managed to rule the world, infiltrating and corrupting all of our institutions worldwide, and they will rule it even more, harder, in the future. They know exactly what they are doing and they play the long game. If they have a few genuine idiots on their side, or millions of them, then so much the better for keeping us off guard.
I don’t discount the left as idiots, Lyle. Neither do I underestimate them. I think that “He doesn’t actually believe one bit of that. He knows better.” rates a –Maybe.
You see, you gave a basis to confirm Joe’s ‘crap-for-brains’ diagnosis with: “If they have a few genuine idiots on their side,…”
I think he’s one of them, but that doesn’t mean I file him away as inconsequential.
Well, if he lives in NYC, which I think he does, most of the people buying guns have neighbors who are criminals and/or not excessively law-abiding, so, yeah, they might be buying guns to shoot their neighbors!
He is right, you know. They are buying the guns to keep him from coming in and stabbing them to death when he realizes that he didn’t put up any food, water, medicine or toilet paper, and he’s there to steal theirs because he’s a socialist.
Poor Cory. Let’s hope reality never catches up with him. It’s going to hurt.
I’m curious Joe, did you read the next paragraph of the article?
“So these guys have the conviction that their neighbors are coming for them, and that they need to strap up so they’re ready. But if you ask them, “Are you coming for your neighbors?” They’re like, “No, no, I’m one of the good guys.” What an amazing piece of incredible luck it would be if 99.99% of people were sociopaths, barely held in check by the constraints of society, but you and everyone you know are just kind of flawed vessels who sometimes get it right and sometimes get it wrong. Like, that would be the most incredible non-representative sample of society for you to find yourself in.’
Clearly, you can disagree with his argument, and I do, but not quoting that is a bit of selective editing that doesn’t sit well with me.
I read the entire article.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand how the additional paragraph you quoted changes anything. I can’t even make sense of that paragraph. How does he, apparently, conclude the gun buyer believes 99.99% of people are sociopaths? Perhaps you can explain it to me.
The way I read it, he’s using “your neighbors” very generally to mean “someone else”. In fact, your neighbors could, under certain circumstances, be violent criminals.
His first sentence in the paragraph I quoted is the most important. He’s not saying, “All these people lining up to buy guns are doing it because they want to go out and indiscriminately shoot people”, he’s saying, “All these people are lining up to buy guns to defend themselves against violence.” That far, I agree, and I think you probably do as well, since it closely mirrors your #1.
The 99.99% sociopaths is just the usual liberal argument that preparing for an unlikely and undesired outcome (needing to use a gun to defend yourself) is irrational. It’s his version of “you’re more likely to shoot someone in your family than a violent criminal”, or “criminals would just take your gun away and use it against you.” My re-write of that part using his same argument would be something like, “It only makes sense to prepare yourself with a gun if it’s almost certain you’ll need to use it.”
If you had called him out on that, I would have agreed with the crap for brains statement, rather than feel compelled to comment.
In the meantime the markets are up again today. It seems that investors are not that unhappy with gridlock and more gun sales regardless of what Cory is saying. What’s really important is that people are spending. After all, a part of that money goes into their pockets.
Research shows that Wall Street likes divided government and has for about a century.
Let’s be honest: I am buying ammunition and not for the purposes of routine target practice. I am buying it because people that he supports are deciding that personal, on-the-spot “reparations” via other people’s livelihood is perfectly acceptable.
So he is correct that people are buying guns to shoot their neighbors. The part he leaves out is only if those neighbors, near or far, decide to come-a-calling and make some spot decisions on the disposition of your car, TV, house, food, toilet paper, wife, daughter, etc. Don’t come-a-calling and you won’t get shot.
Apparently a simple concept he can’t grasp. I’m perfectly harmless as long as you don’t threaten my life, my family or what I’ve earned.
This is the standard left argument. If the right is prepared or preparing to respond to a bad thing it is EXACTLY the same as if the right wanted the bad thing and wanted to respond.
I hear the forest fire approaching. I’m going to go buy extra hose, a garbage pump, and be prepared to put out or prevent my house and property from catching on fire. Left: Why are you stealing all that water from others that needed it?
Huh? The left thinks that preparing is doing. They feel that an response to a perceived threat is doing.
When I was younger the big thing being taught was “Not all blacks are criminals!” And I know way to many people that heard that “crossing the street to avoid a group of young blacks is racist!” so they didn’t. And instead women got raped, and both types got mugged. All for fear of being called racist.
Today, preparing for bad people to do things is wrong. It means you don’t trust your fellow man. It means your racist.
We are buying guns for two primary reasons, in my opinion:
1) Because we can today and we might not be able to tomorrow
2) Bad things are happening all around us and we prefer to make sure that those bad things don’t happen to us
I’ve finally understood why people who are anti-gun want to restrict magazine capacity. They associate the potential for harm, as you point out, for wanting to engage in the harm. And they believe that each round in the magazine equals a death. Thus fewer rounds, fewer deaths.
The fact that a simple mechanical switch and a magazine change starts that process over never seems to enter their minds. They seem to think after 10-7-5-3 rounds are expended from the magazine that changing the magazine is somehow as time consuming as loading a muzzleloader.
But they are projecting their perceived outcomes because to them guns only equals death and they apparently cannot distinguish predatory vs. protective gun ownership. They see all gun owners as predatory because that is all they see from criminals and feel the law-abiding is just a criminal who hasn’t gone out and shot anyone yet.
Why are people suddenly buying gun? It has nothing to do with the Rona and everything to do with woke mobs destroying minority neighborhoods ostensibly to achieve racial justice. Ignore the rhetoric. From their actions it appears the Democrats have brought back the Klan.
Well, mostly yes. But apparently gun sales started to go way up at the start of the CCP virus pandemic, before the latest batch of riots.
he was right…to shoot my neighbors when they try to take my stuff…
The “If-Then” nature of that concept eludes him completely, and eludes most leftists, including those in Information Technology with experience writing computer code.
I always keep enough defensive ammo around that there is no way I could survive enough fights to use it all.
I stockpile ammo for training and practice to keep my skills up. That takes a lot ammo, even with dry practice.
For a criminal or even for an honest person that has a gun, just in case, a single box is probably a lifetime supply. For those us who like to train, we need lots. Competitors need even more.
Democrats always lie.
Democrats always project.
Democrats always double down.
There is no law, only Zuul.
There will be war.
To be fair, he isn’t wrong.
In February and March, people started being concerned that we would be facing food riots due to the lockdowns.
Since then, the concern has shifted towards naked political violence from the left.
When riots occur, people generally riot close to where they live. That means that anyone using deadly force in self-defense against rioters will likely be using deadly force against their “neighbors.”
QED, CD is technically correct.