Quote of the day—Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Guns, and their use, on the other hand, are pretty darn real. You can’t fire a shot now for “future use.” You can’t correct a mistake in a future edition. You can’t do a write-through on a bullet.

What’s more, you can’t spin your way out of a mugging or a rape. Guns, simply by existing, are a reminder that there is another, more concrete world out there, one where reality is more fixed, and where actions have inescapable consequences, consequences that can’t be talked out of existence. I suspect that most journalists are threatened by this world, and perhaps by the sense that they wouldn’t do very well in such situations. Their hostility to guns is a way of dealing with insecurity and a form of denial fueled by performance anxiety: If you’re afraid you’re not up to protecting yourself or your family, you compensate by deriding the means of such protection. And, given that it’s a defense mechanism and journalists are herd animals, any colleague who disagrees is a threat who must be shouted down. (Unsurprisingly, of all the journalists I’ve dealt with, the folks at Popular Mechanics—where they write about real things with concrete consequences all the time— were the most comfortable with guns).

If I’m right, then there’s not a lot gun enthusiasts can do to win over journalists in large numbers. You may change a mind or two, but most of them hold their opinions because doing so is less threatening to their self-esteem than agreeing with you. Those who wield a pen have a vested interest in believing that the pen is mightier than the sword. And apparently they’ve been that way at least since Mark Twain’s time.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds
August 2020
Why So Many Media Members Are Opposed to Your Freedom
[See also yesterday’s QOTD about insecurity and performance anxiety.

I’ve read enough insider stories by fed up journalists and seen disconnected from reality reporting of gun events where I was there to know the national mainstream media is, almost without exception, delusional and/or evil. The primary exception is the Newsweek writer who attended Boomershoot (pictures here). But she had Stephanie Sailor “holding her hand” for a couple days and I’m sure that made a big difference.—Joe]

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10 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Glenn Harlan Reynolds

  1. That’s a really complicated way to say that the fear people have is not of guns, but of what guns represent. Guns are a reminder that the world is not safe and that you’re responsible to protect yourself in this unsafe world. The people who tell you that you “don’t need guns” are actually saying “My solution to being afraid of an unsafe world is to pretend that it’s safe, and your insistence on reminding me that it’s not safe angers me.”

    Grimm, from Blackfive, explained it from the POV of the soldier with PTSD

    “What you are experiencing is not an illness, but the awareness of what human nature is like deep down. It is the awareness of what life is like without the walls that protect civilization.

    Those who have never been outside those walls don’t know: they can’t see. The walls form their horizon. You know what lays beyond them, and can’t forget it. What we’re going to talk about today is how to come home, back inside those walls: how to learn to trust them again.”

    https://web.archive.org/web/20210227045804/http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/11/on-ptsd-or-more.html

    We know the walls are basically an illusion that can be broken at any time. What’s more to the point is that THE ANTI-GUNNERS KNOW IT, TOO! And they hate us for pointing out their illusions.

    We aren’t fighting with their dislike of guns, or even their dislike of us. We’re fighting with their desperate need to believe their illusions.

    • If you are referring to willful ignorance, then I would decline to engage you on the topic. There would be some nuance to your claim, but not enough to spend much time on it.

      If you are referring to something more generic, then we could have a spirited debate on various portions of the ignorance spectrum. A ignorant five-year-old? You are going to have a tough time defending an assertion they are evil merely because they are ignorant on some topic.

      Ignorance on a topic such as quantum computing? So few people can claim to not be ignorant and evil being unrelated to whatever view they might have on topic that you’re going to be hard pressed to defend your assertion.

      Ignorance on the topic of the hazard of communism or theocracies as forms of governments by adults of sound mind? Yeah, I can see you would have a defendable position.

      The benefits and hazards of gun ownership? It’s much closer to the communist and theocratic government end of the spectrum than the quantum computing situation. But I will give people some wiggle room unless they are a strong public advocate of banning guns. Politicians advocating for gun restrictions and obviously ignorant or lying? They are evil SOBs. Give them a fair trial and, if convicted, a just sentence.

  2. Journalism. I can think of no other group that has been the willing victims conspiracy, educational inbreeding, anti-trust, and in a word, gatekeeping.
    Men of power long ago recognized the power of the pen.
    They have bought the papers, controlled the information, and shut-out anyone that didn’t go along with the program. If it didn’t fit the narrative, it didn’t get in the news cycle. Period.
    I’ve taken pictures of journalist with Cheshire cat grins on their face holding a machine gun they just got finished dumping a 60 round mag through…..
    Many of them know. But no editor is ever going to let that good report into the evening paper. Or on the air.
    Since the time of Randolf Hearst and before. The press has been consolidated and gatekept by the rich and powerful.
    Not to excuse anyone though. Reporters are willing victims. Willing or not. We cannot ignore that the press is every bit as corrupt as the government. Even more so in some cases, and always has been.
    They know the illusions very well, they helped put them up. What pisses them off the most is when you point out how stupid the illusion is.
    What a twist. To have them saying the first Ukraine genocide was just breaking a few eggs. To being against the Russians doing it again.

  3. Leftists in general choose fantasy, make believe and wishful thinking over reality on a routine basis. The problem is the rest of us have made it possible for them to do this and still survive. Because of that they seek to impose their insanity on the rest of us. Time to let Darwin take over again and thin the herd…and maybe give him an assist from time to time.

  4. We’re – slowly – emerging from the “Covid Conscription” in which we were told by Those Who Should Know that we needed to wear masks, we needed to shut [some] businesses down, we needed to stay home and avoid church, sports events and all similar group assemblies, we needed to shut schools down, we needed to stay at least 6 feet apart, etc., etc. all in the Name Of Protecting Everyone because “each and every one of us posed a threat to everyone else.”

    Those who spoke against The Conscription were branded ‘Conspiracy Theorists” and very soundly derided by All Right Thinking People.

    Turns out the so-called “Conspiracy Theorists” were right all along, and the destruction of a (or perhaps, multiple) fully functional society and economy and the educational lives of children was “just a side effect,” or, maybe, there was some degree of deliberate planning involved; proving sych deliberateness would be, and if undertaken, will be, extremely difficult but the fingerprints and blood trails will be noted for some time to come. In any event, neither Anthony Fauci nor his cohorts in the mainstream media and political life will, in all probablity, suffer a moment’s inconvenience over their binge of destructiveness.

    Now let’s take the same methodology and apply it to gun control. If a Venn diagram were to be created, those who advocate universal masking and avoidance quite strongly overlap with those who advocate abolition of firearms and prohibition of access and use.

    We now know, or at least a great many of us do and the number is increasing daily, that The Truth about Covid was not told, first by those who should have known what the truth was, and those who vociferously parroted advancement of the untruth; some supported the lie nefariously, many advocated in its favor because of comforting ignorance, ignorance they shose to maintain.

    Having established their near-criminal negligence in pursuit of truth, how much credence should be allowed for their actions restricting the individual right of self defense? As Sean points out (above) “We’re fighting with their desperate need to believe their illusions.” Do we owe any allegiance whatsoever to supporting their ignorant obedience to illusion? Does not their embracing of illusions, whether willful or inadvertant, immediately disqualify them from any position of influence over individual liberties and freedoms?

  5. Pingback: Quote of the day—Julia Gorin | The View From North Central Idaho

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