We like to toss out statistics that bolster the pro second amendment position.  That’s something of an oxymoron, really.  I’ve done my share of it, certainly.

For example, there is the decline in our murder rate as gun ownership has gone up.  That’s nice and all, but I heard the other night that if our medical and response training and technology were that of the 1960s, our murder rate would be three times what it is today.  A person must actually die, you see, before it’s actually murder.  I haven’t looked it up (that’s your job – I’m not your servant) but it certainly sounded plausible.  If it’s true, then it means that there is in fact much more violence, but that yet more lives are being saved.  Gun owners couldn’t very well take credit for that.

I’ve been harping on this stats issue, and probably pissing off some people.  It may seem like a subtle point to some, but if so it is a subtle point of crucial importance.

Like Tam said, and I paraphrase; “Even if every other gun owner on the planet tried to kill someone last night; I didn’t, so leave me alone!”

And that’s really it, isn’t it?  As the story goes, Sodom and Gomorrah would have been spared for just one righteous person.

The concept of a right is a purely moral concept, and if you can find where the Bill of Rights was to be dependent on statistics, I’d like you to show me.

The communists hate the concept of unalienable rights, and will use stats as a way of changing the subject– of completely reframing the conversation.  I call them “tweakers” because all they care about is tweaking this and tweaking that, using the force of government ostensibly to get some predicted result in the statistics.

That’s a communist premise, and it stinks right from the get go.  It puts us into disparate groups, each being ruled according to its status.  Statistical arguments alone, either for or against a “right” imply the non-existence of rights by ignoring them.  Conversely, if rights truly exist, stats have no bearing on them, and the discussion is purely about morals– right verses wrong.

Our premise is, or should be, that justice demands the respect of all human rights, all the time, that rights belong only to individuals, just as criminal prosecutions are of individuals.  If you didn’t violate, or attempt to violate, someone else’s rights, you are to be held harmless in all regards.  If there were only one, that is the American principle.  If that ideal is not upheld, you have no rights and in that case your statistics won’t save you.

The communists know exactly how this works, and you all know that they know it, and of course they hate the very concept of rights.  They will ignore it and fall back on statistics.  It’s a pretty clever, evil trick.  I’ll give them that, but what else have they got, being that they’re on the wrong side?

That is where we (I hope) differ.  Not only is the moral rights concept all we need, it is all that can work in the long run to persuade good people.  If we rely on stats, we’re relying on the weather, essentially, because stats, like the weather, are not only very fickle but are subject to interpretation, while rights are eternal.

Sure; bring out the human interest stories– we probably don’t do near enough of that, all told, but start them, and finish them, with the moral Declaration.  There’s not a Republican alive, and very few in the NRA, who can do this, so it’s up to us.