Via email from Brian Keith:
This is just my job. So said the guy gathering signatures at the grocery store.
One of the initiatives he was promoting was designed to get more guns out of the hands of law abiding people.
When I saw his booth and the anti-gun language, I resolved to talk to him on my way out of the store.
He partly completed his spiel when I stopped him, told him about the Pink Pistols, and invited him out to the range.
“I’ll pay for everything. I want you to have more personal experience with handguns.”
His reply: “This is just a job for me. I’m a gun owner.”
I don’t remember my reply, but it was not what I was thinking:
Quisling.
Judenrat.
To make others defenseless because you are getting a paycheck.
I’ve worked hard jobs that involve doing things I’d rather not do; we all have.
But to promote the removal of the right to self defense as a way of paying the bills… it makes my blood boil.
I’m not even going to name the initiative. It doesn’t matter.
EVERY restriction on the right to keep and bear arms, regardless of who it is aimed at, enables more Orlandos.
The only reasonable response to evil is to #ShootBack. The 300 people in Orlando were prevented from doing so by people like that initiative-gatherer who don’t want people armed in bars.
But 4 states allow firearms in bars and none are the Wild West shootouts the anti-self defense people imagine.
We will be as safe as possible only when everyone, regardless of skin color, gender, sexuality, or income, feels comfortable defending themselves with the best tools around.
And when they feel comfortable doing so everywhere they normally go.
The grocery store. The bar. To pick up their kids from school. On a flight to Grandma’s.
Mr. “Just-My-Job” doesn’t believe that. That’s okay.
I’m going to keep inviting people out shooting, and eventually the concept that self-defense is immoral will belong squarely in the dustbin of history.
“I’m just doing my job. Now get in the boxcar.”
Zing!
Nuremberg trials will be held later for these unAmericans.
Remember, only my enemy wants me disarmed.
There’s going to be a rope shortage!
People will do that. It’s just the way the table has been set. We can either pay them ourselves or, better, figure out a way to work around them.
Only people who don’t have any self respect or integrity. There’s no excuse for such behavior. “I need a job” is not an excuse. There are lots of jobs out there that don’t require selling your soul. Flipping hamburgers. Stocking shelves in the local store. Hauling garbage.
What he really meant is “I don’t know anything about honesty, and I’m utterly lazy, so I took this job because it fits my personality”.
And that is how the Soviets recruited the bluecaps to be the USSR’s enforcers. Thugs, punks, lazy lower socioeconomic guys that would never have any power, money, or leverage in a fair economic system were recruited to grind up and spit out the hard-working, honest folks.
There’s always someone who will do it, no matter what “it” might happen to be.
I’m afraid you’re right. But that doesn’t mean we should excuse it — such people should be loudly and vigorously treated as the worthless scum they are.
Vidkun Quisling fared poorly in the long run.
He doesn’t say but I am betting it is New York Values. Follow the money.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured…the first thought forbidden…the first freedom denied – chains us all, irrevocably.”
https://youtu.be/fjJN08uqt70?t=15
To be fair, it’s possible the signature-collector was simply lying about being a gun owner.
Everyone is a whore in the sense that we all have our price. Some people will refuse to bake a cake, some people will refuse to process marriage licenses, in doing so stand up for their principles over the economic gain of doing something they don’t believe in. This guy does the opposite, and the only thing I can think is that how bad his luck is to be so economically desperate that the only work he can find is asking strangers for signatures on paper to support initiatives he doesn’t believe in.
I’d argue it’s a combination of laziness and dishonesty, not desperation.
By the way, you’re right on the cake thing, wrong on the license thing. In that case, the person is a perjurer — having promised to obey the law, she decided to violate it instead. An honest person would have resigned, not violated the law. The key difference here is private person (the case baker) vs public servant (the license clerk). Public servants are entitled to their opinions, but they are not entitled to go against the law, and claims of conscience is not an excuse if they do.