Sunday, March 20, 2011
E.J. Dionne--Firearm Idiot
Rather than license people to pursue their God given right to self defense (and 2nd Amendment rights) I think we ought to look into licensing those who seek to exercise 1st Amendment rights regarding firearms. That is, you have to show a bare minimum of firearm knowledge before you can write about firearms and, here, call the NRA propagandists. [I'm just kidding--we never need a license from the government to exercise our natural and Constitutional rights, to think differently is to fail to understand the very concept of rights]
Here is Mr. Dionne, author of an anti-gun op-ed (link above) on Wednesday that discussed President Obama's vapid op-ed last Sunday and is the subject of this posting, on the subject of assault weapons:
No. Wrong again. The criminal element wants concealable weapons (pistols). They use shotguns a lot less often, but more often than rifles, which they use hardly at all.
Here are some statistics:
Here is Mr. Dionne, author of an anti-gun op-ed (link above) on Wednesday that discussed President Obama's vapid op-ed last Sunday and is the subject of this posting, on the subject of assault weapons:
“Assault weapons are not for hunting,” Obama said in 2004. “They are the weapons of choice for gang-bangers, drug dealers and terrorists.” Right again.
No. Wrong again. The criminal element wants concealable weapons (pistols). They use shotguns a lot less often, but more often than rifles, which they use hardly at all.
Here are some statistics:
The top 10 guns used in crimes in the U.S. in 2000, according to an unpublished study by U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and obtained exclusively by TIME:Here are the real statistics:1. Smith and Wesson .38 revolver
2. Ruger 9 mm semiautomatic
3. Lorcin Engineering .380 semiautomatic
4. Raven Arms .25 semiautomatic
5. Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun
6. Smith and Wesson 9mm semiautomatic
7. Smith and Wesson .357 revolver
8. Bryco Arms 9mm semiautomatic
9. Bryco Arms .380 semiautomatic
10. Davis Industries .380 semiautomaticThe list is derived from the center's investigations of 88,570 guns recovered from crime scenes in 46 cities in 2000...
Assault weapons are not the weapons of choice among drug dealers, gang members or criminals in general. Assault weapons are used in about one-fifth of one percent (.2%) of all violent crimes and about one percent in gun crimes.So why this false insistence by the firearm ignorant that criminals, et al. actually use assault weapons more than two times per 1,000 criminal acts? The answer it seems comes from a 1994 Washington Post editorial:
No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished [by the assault weapon ban]. Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control. (Emphasis added).Besides, the military like semi-automatic rifles called assault weapons sound and look really scary.
Labels: E.J. Dionne; Firearm Ignorance
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 8:56 AM 
Comments:
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1) The WaPo article, by citing higher ups who deny these allegations under conditions of anonymity, allow the discrediting of the story without any sort of accountability. If these denials turn out to be lies, which I thought the Rolling Stone article proved, then officials can say, "It wasn't us, we didn't say it." It effectively sows the seeds of doubt without backing it up. Douchebags like the aforementioned blogger eagerly regurgitate it, and mission accomplished, article discredited. What purpose is there for anonymity? Is the official in danger of losing his job? Only if he turns out to be lying, in which case it shouldn't be reported. The two WSJ articles do this too.
# posted by 
: 9:06 PM
: 9:06 PM
Read this First!
Ok, I keep trying to post a comment and it fails, maybe because of the html links and its length. If you need links, I'll send them to you.
Ok, I just did a search for a debunking of the psyops story, and here is what I came up with: a Wash Post story, this blog post (jim hanson at a site called bigpeace), and a couple WSJ articles, fairly similar to the WaPo story. The blog post basically reiterates what the other articles say, only in a much more profoundly douchey way. But both pieces had several issues:
Ok, I keep trying to post a comment and it fails, maybe because of the html links and its length. If you need links, I'll send them to you.
Ok, I just did a search for a debunking of the psyops story, and here is what I came up with: a Wash Post story, this blog post (jim hanson at a site called bigpeace), and a couple WSJ articles, fairly similar to the WaPo story. The blog post basically reiterates what the other articles say, only in a much more profoundly douchey way. But both pieces had several issues:
# posted by : 9:08 PM
: 9:08 PM
2) The douchebag also regurgitates the report made against Holmes, claiming that he's just a disgruntled ne'er-do-well. The RS article discusses the report pretty thoroughly, and I didn't really find any wrongdoing on Holmes' part. I'm pretty sure soldiers can use Facebook. Especially IO members, whose job is the dissemination of information. And I'm also pretty sure officers can go off base occasionally. And I'd hardly call goofy comments of Facebook photos evidence of an improper relationship with a subordinate. This leads me to my next point...
# posted by : 9:08 PM
: 9:08 PM
3) The attempts to discredit Holmes, first as a disgruntled officer, as well as someone unqualified in psyops training (which is also bullshit), are shifting the focus away from the real issue here:whether it's legal to use an information operations cell--trained to conduct psychological operations, among other things--to influence and manipulate U.S. senators. Hastings mentions that there were 2 lawyers who told him that it was either illegal, or extremely shady. Were they disgruntled yahoos who used Facebook too much, too?
# posted by : 9:09 PM
: 9:09 PM
4) I, and most educated readers of the article, understand perfectly well that this wasn't mind tricks or hypnosis that Holmes was ordered to perform on the senators. So stop labeling people who take this seriously as conspiracy theorists. The issue is whether the law that explicitly separates Public Affairs from Information Operations (of which Holmes was a part) was broken. And is that not worthy of reporting and concern?
I don't know if these are the sources you saw, so if there are other ones with more to say, please point them out to me, because I couldn't find anything else. But if not, then I'd hardly call it "totally debunked".
I don't know if these are the sources you saw, so if there are other ones with more to say, please point them out to me, because I couldn't find anything else. But if not, then I'd hardly call it "totally debunked".
# posted by : 9:10 PM
: 9:10 PM
Oh, and I guess I should say something about articles I keep posting these tangents on: good point, The ban is completely arbitrary and meaningless. I tend to follow the philosophy of Robert Anton Wilson's Guns and Dope Party: "You can keep your guns if we can keep our dope."
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# posted by : 9:11 PM
: 9:11 PM 
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