Reply #89: how not clever is it

[iverglas]

to give a link to something and then completely misrepresent what it says?

You linked to this post:

Maybe all of these idiots will accidentally
shoot themselves or each other.

and spun that into this:

The above poster on the other hand, was hoping that people in a peaceful protest, violating no laws, would kill each other simply because he or she disagreed with them.

To answer my own question: really, really not clever. If one is going to weave a web, one really has to make it more difficult to follow.


Don Kates, like a load of people hereabouts, needs to get his vocabularies drycleaned. It's dirty and nasty.

"Bigotry" does not mean anything some jerk might choose to pretend it means.

And one jerk quoting another does not a case make: anyone who does actually vilify all gun owners is a jerk. But I just can't tell from what you linked to:

Why, then, is it enlightened and liberal: to vilify the 50% of American householders who have guns as barbaric and/or deranged ("Gun Lunatics Silence Sounds of Civilization"{24}), "gun nuts", "gun fetishists", "anti-citizens" and "traitors, enemies of their own patriae"{25}, as sexually warped{26} "bulletbrains"{27} who engage in "simply beastly behavior"{28} and represent "the worst instincts in the human character"{29}; or to traduce pro-gun groups as the "pusher's best friend"{30} and their entire membership as "psychotics", "hunters who drink beer, don't vote and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend"{31}; to characterize the murder of children as "another slaughter co-sponsored by the National Rifle Association"{32} and assert that "The assassination of John Lennon has been brought to you by the National Rifle Association"{33}; and to cartoon gun owners as thugs and/or vigilantes, intellectually retarded, educationally backward and morally obtuse, or as Klansmen?{34}

who the subjects of those remarks actually were.

Should I track down all those footnotes and check it out?

Nope. Kates, good honest person that he is, should have spoken clearly. He should have said exactly who was being described as "gun nuts", "gun fetishists", etc. etc. etc.

All gun owners? In each case he cited? Allow me to doubt that. In fact, allow me to completely disbelieve it.

He actually does conflate gun owners with the National Rifle Association himself, amusingly. I'd say that if he wants to identify himself with the National Rifle Association and take comments about them as made about him, more power to him; his choice. What he may not do -- or rather, what an honest person may not do and retain that title -- is claim that anyone making a statement about the corporate entity called the National Rifle Association is making that statement about all gun owners (especially keeping in mind something that he knows very well: that most laypeople who refer to the NRA in this context are actually referring to the NRA-ILA).

To quote myself:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=245448&mesg_id=246027

Mon Aug-10-09 07:47 PM

Not all gun owners, even here in Canada, are right-wing scum, or gun militants, or Stephen Harper supporters. Or present any significantly elevated risk to themselves or anyone else. Some have farms with livestock and crops that need protecting, some live in remote areas with problematic wildlife (no more, percentage-wise, here than in the US, but some, and even in non-remote places there can be such problems), some work in the tourism industry and are employed as hunting outfitters and guides and whatnot (and some communities depend on that trade for their economic survival), some are First Nations members engaged in hunting as a way to practise and preserve their traditions and culture (as are some non-Aboriginal people), some people hunt for sustenance or just for recreation (as my mum put it the other day, that's fine: I just wouldn't want to live with one of them; hunting is a legitimate practice, but I have my druthers). And some people engage in sports shooting for recreation (also perfectly legitimate, just no reason to keep handguns, especially, in a home).

... Like the anti-abortion crew. As long as they aren't proposing or supporting proposals to deny women the exercise of reproductive rights, who cares what they think? They can think women who have abortions should be lined up and shot too, but if they acknowledge that outlawing abortion is not permissible and don't do anything that would prevent access, I don't care what they think.

And yet ... how many times have I been called a "bigot" in this place?


I'll distance myself from anybody who actually does propose "ban all guns", if there's some possibility the person is not just a gun militant troll. Ordinarily, I'll assume they're a person who doesn't have much of a clue.

I was looking to see whether anybody here wanted to distance themself from old lawodevolution ... by telling us how one could distinguish between him and them ...



typo fixed