Reply #46

In any case, by pseudointellectual I generally mean people who think they know more than they do. In this case, I was referring to pro-gunners who have read a couple articles by Kleck/Kates, accept what they say uncritically, ignore all the evidence to the contrary, and then go on about how knowledgable they are compared to "many, many liberals, particularly those who've never even held a gun and don't understand the first thing about them".

In reality, such pro-gunners are usually just as clueless as they were before reading Kleck, because rather than trying to incorporate what Kleck has to say into a rational worldview, they instead take it as gospel and become even more indoctrinated and impervious to facts. And this is the "smart idiot" effect that I was talking about.