Bullshit Narrative 25- Liberals Are Coming for Your Guns

This one.....

This one is complicated.

This one might not be total bullshit. 

At least not anymore. 

Liberals WEREN'T coming for the guns. At least not most liberals. And they weren't coming for most guns. A fair number of leftists don't want only agents of the state being armed.

The vast majority of liberals coming for anything were coming for the assault style rifles (the AR-15 and all its clones) that are trivial to convert into full auto (conversions which are so laughably "illegal" with scare quotes around them that people will put up pictures of them firing it on Youtube under their real name). 

They might have been coming for the extended clips, and the bump stocks and the background check workarounds and the laws that essentially let people walk around in Piggly Wiggly armed for war. They were coming for no waiting periods, gun show loopholes, and guns for convicted abusers. They were coming for some sensible gun laws. They were coming to get the FBI to take domestic violence more seriously when it comes to who gets to own a firearm. They were coming to try to arm-twist the nation into a conversation about how to defuse the toxic masculinity and entitlement that is causing young men to be this angry, about better mental health care as a matter of policy and change and not just a scapegoat for doing nothing, and yes, about some sensible gun regulations.

Sure some were coming for all of them. There have always been a few liberals who wanted all the guns melted down into statues memorializing murdered school children. And they've grown in number every shooting since Columbine. And if you wanted to just take your soundbites from them, you could whip up quite the persecution complex. But there were probably no more of those folks than there were folks who wanted rocket launchers to be legal. The political will just didn't exist. It was all sound and fury. And Texas sharpshooting the "other side"'s argument in bad faith to create a strawman.

By and large, however, this is a complicated conversation and people on all points of the political spectrum are DYING TO HAVE IT.  You'll notice that in this entire article, in no place—not even ONCE—have I suggested that we outlaw guns. I have only pointed out the bad arguments that are used to defend doing absolutely nothing.

There's a lot of of impassioned positions about gun control, and a lot of them have salient points, and not every argument belongs on a list of fallacies, but instead of having THOSE discussions, folks have let the NRA engage in this conversation for them. And the NRA is not debating in good faith. With a national, culture war issue, they have essentially convinced most of the GOP to follow them in sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "Lalalalala. I can't hear you."

This shouldn't be surprising, as they are essentially the propaganda wing of companies that are war profiteering and have successfully controlled the narrative about why the war should be ramped up–earning a lot more profit.

But by leaving the table with nothing but some shitty, easily debunked narratives that are either fallacies or criminally and immorally negligent of nuance.... By disrespecting those who want to stop seeing their children murdered, while right wing politicians parrot the same bumper sticker slogans, bullshit boilerplate narratives, and TERRIBAD arguments that they trot out after every mass shooting and school shooting... By answering desperate pleas over and over with an outright refusal to have a conversation or compromise.... the NRA and the intractable pro-gun folks are basically ensuring that the political will is building to do exactly what they fear the most––to come for the guns.

They reduced us to one option and then are going to try to scare everyone else with the fact that we're considering it.

Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, try not reducing us to one option.

Because I don't really want to take all people's guns or ALL the guns (and I know a lot of other liberals don't either).

But if ZERO compromise, ZERO discussion, proposing only LOOSER regulations (while handing the NRA moral authority to stand on the front line of this national cultural conversation with its racist double standard and adamant insistence that the only POSSIBLE solution is MOAR guns), MORE dead kids, and "suck it up, buttercup" cost-of-doing-business solutions…is being held up against melting down all the guns into statues…

And that is the ONLY choice I'm being given…

… I’m picking the statues.

Bullshit rating: Actually becoming somewhat plausible.

Coming Soon (Personal and Meta Update)

I want to talk about what's coming up for July. There may be more, but these are the things I definitely want to hit. Most of these articles are well past the initial planning phase, some are half written and one just needs a final revision, so I'm pretty confident we can get them going in the next couple of weeks, and bring in July at a slightly better than June. 

I've let my patrons know most of the details, but suffice things are going a LOT better while still being a little bumpy. Compared to a month ago, I'm doing great, and two months ago, I'm doing spectacularly. 

So things have been getting better every month. I know know that I probably should have put my blog on hiatus for the month Still, in June we had a possible covid exposure turn into "Yes the whole house has Covid" for a week (and ruined a vacation to boot), we've had a dozen special circumstances, the boys are out of school (and now are in camps which take a lot of chauffeuring), and this post didn't go up yesterday (or even Monday) because we are currently trying to juggle one car. 

But in the next couple of weeks you can expect

• The Final Installment of 25 Bullshit Narratives We Hear After Every School Shooting (Plus I'm going to need a day for all the formatting of that article to make every article have a link to the next part, previous part, and first part—which will need a link to every one of the 25 arguments. I know that one took a full month, and I appreciate everyone's patience. Sadly it's likely going to remain relevant for a long, long time.
• An article about what being asexual means to me
• An article about non-monogamy
• An article in defense of half assery in writing
• And a couple of mailbox questions

Bullshit Argument 24- "American Lives" or "Won't Someone Think of the Children?"

You could probably get someone to throw a punch by pointing out the hypocrisy needed to pretend they literally are incapable of understanding a statement like "black lives matter" while holding onto a position like "America first" but of those two, only one of them is exclusionary, xenophobic, nationalistic, rooted in white supremacy, and trying to prioritize a group that is generally already at the top of the socio/economic hierarchy,  so it's not a perfect comparison—mostly just a way to point out "Oh so you actually DO get the concept."

For as long as I've been alive, "the children" have been used to weaponize every homophobic, transphobic, body-autonomy-crushing agenda the GOP sees fit to try and use as a wedge to fire up their Christian base right around an election. "American lives" has been used since early fall in 2001 to be the rallying cry to legitimize oppression, surveillance, torture, and an erosion of all the rights codified in amendments that aren't the second. 

And don't even get me started on how those "American lives" are ACTUALLY treated when things like veterans issues or homelessness are the topics on the table.

Not that I particularly want these arguments trotted out on the regular, given what they almost always defend, but gun advocates need to understand that if they do nothing while school shootings happen several times a year, they don't get to use these points anymore. They're going to start getting that same laugh that Trump got during the debates when he said that no one respects women more than he does. If they don't do something it becomes brazenly, unavoidably obvious that they do not actually care about human lives, American lives, or children's' lives.

I mean I hope that people start behaving in a way that takes into consideration things like "the children" who are being killed because they care about children who are being killed and not because they're worried that their breathtaking hypocrisy is going to get them eaten by irony demons or lose them political points, but it's worth pointing out.

Bullshit Rating- Perfect bullshit. 10/10. Would hypocrite again.

Bullshit Argument 23- The Slippery Slope

You know you're in bad argument territory when the argument people are non-ironically advancing has the same name as the fallacy that its poor thinking is named after. Like when people say: "We can't do that because it's a slippery slope," LITERALLY invoking the name of a logical fallacy to make their argument, you absolutely know that what you're about to hear is not going to be a good argument.

You want to know how I already know folks have a water's edge somewhere about what kinds of weapons civilians should have access to? Because they're not reading this from their armed M1 Abrams or their fully functional Apache attack helicopter. Because they might own a whole panic room full of assault style rifles, and maybe even a few M203 grenade launchers, but they probably don't have an M141 shoulder-mounted anti-structure weapon (or if they do, they know they could go to prison for having it—and not for a couple of days). They don't have a bunker buster they can launch from an A-10 Warthog. They likely don't have the howitzers that the Continental Army used against the British during the American Revolutionary War either. Or an Ironside ship with functional 24-pounder cannons.

Because we already HAVE a line in the sand. And we have always HAD a line in the sand. 

We already draw the line somewhere and say "Okay, there's no need for any citizen to own this weaponry. We want ordinance like this to be in the hands of carefully vetted people who use it only when absolutely appropriate (and not without some measure of oversight)." And for 240+ years, we've managed to have conversation about where that line should be, so acting like bump stocks simply MUST be legal or all liberals are coming for all guns is the worst kind of fallacy imaginable.

Not every conversation is intended to erode gun rights with the end goal of total banishment. I'm sure SOME liberals will keep going, but like most of the history of this country, most will lack the political momentum once there is an equilibrium.  One the compromise doesn't involve accepting dead children on the 6 o'clock a few times a year, there won't be momentum. Unless of course there can't BE a compromise….then the momentum becomes a buildup and the backlash a flood.

Sometimes we just need to talk about the fact that the line in the sand seems to be a little misplaced.

Bullshit rating: You didn't slip in the bullshit. You just pretended to so people wouldn't think you didn't notice it.

Bullshit Narrative 22- The Government Should Be Afraid of Its People

"Oh no! They have a rifle!"

The United States military is not afraid of your AR-15s. 

They have tanks and jets and body armor and artillery and drones that make firing a hellfire at a human considerably easier than beating the first level of Pole Position and they also have shit you haven't even heard of yet. And oh yeah, they have the most sophisticated air domination in the history of Earth that can effortlessly deploy weapons of mass destruction we haven't even seen. They are, in general, slowed down primarily by the political will of the folks back home––an issue they wouldn't be dealing with in any such scenario.

The only thing these little guns are going to do is maybe give a militia a few days standoff against the ATF or FBI because those organizations actually WILL go out of their way to avoid the optics of dead kids' bodies in the background on the six o'clock news. (Something the NRA could stand to learn.)

Okay, wait. I've seen that meme too. With the Viet Cong saying "Cool story bro" or whatever it is to tell you that yes indeedie a bunch of peoples with automatic rifles can totally defeat the US military.

So let me head the bullshit off at the pass.

1- Vietnam was half a century ago. Warfare has changed. Get over yourself.

2- The Viet Cong was not a militia with what would today be civilian grade weaponry. It was a MASSIVE political organization with its own army (and if you're enjoying irony today, no small amount of US-made weapons). I would need a FLOW CHART to explain fully the cavalcade of mistakes made in Vietnam that led to the loss. Suffice to say that the United States Military would never make those kinds of errors in the ONE place on Earth it has sufficient resources and deployment ability. Any political movement sufficiently large to play an analogue to the Viet Cong in the US could much more effectively work in non-violent ways. 

Unless there's a colonizer of the US that could directly intervene who I'm not aware of.

The counter-insurgency conflicts we are involved in today are similar. Your average soldier doing patrols might be concerned about an IED, but the government of the United States (very obviously) is not.

I am not saying that there is no scenario in which the citizenry of a nation with the most powerful military that has ever existed on the face of the Earth decides it's time to take up arms in a guerrilla war against its own government, but if even if that does happen, the U.S. government wouldn't be afraid of our small arms. They wouldn't be afraid of us at all unless we were (very) well supplied by another world power and our conflict was essentially a proxy war. The same could be said about any country with gun control and no monthly massacres, of course.

Even a marine rifleman who IS essentially carrying almost everything a civilian could acquire in our country is better trained by orders of magnitude, deployed with such weaponry ONLY in very specific theaters, monitored and kept in check by a sophisticated chain of command designed to prevent exactly the sort of things this series of articles is about.

There are situations where guns would be useful (if obviously escalating and violent and prone to accidents and mistakes). There are places where this argument touches something real. If there is some version of the brownshirts in the US—a proxy group given broad authority to enact domestic terrorism. If the police are abusing their authority in a potentially lethal way, they might hesitate if they know their target is armed. (A weirdly telling data point given how many police officers shoot and cite their fear for their lives when a target is NOT actually armed.) If people start disappearing in the night. If white supremacists start trying to take matters into their own hands. This is why there's the old phrase comes from: "If you go far enough left, you get your guns back" (and the reason I'm not against guns so much as the absurd arguments that civilians need semi-automatic long rifles or it's tyranny). But there are just an awful lot of ways to not trust, and even resist your government without taking up arms against it.

The idea of being The Wolverines is fun for a couple of hours while eating some popcorn, but that Hitler quote about disarming a nation is mostly not what people think it's about, and there's only been one uprising in the United States that even gave the government pause (dude named Bacon), and even back then, it was a whole shit load more than some armed civilians.

Bullshit Rating: This shit is from a bull/wolverine hybrid. You were so concerned with whether you could, you didn't stop to think about whether you should!

Bullshit Narrative 21- If Guns Kill People, Pencils Misspell Words

This is (somehow) an even more ridiculous version of "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" Like just when you thought that narrative couldn't get ANY worse, someone brings out the misspelling pencils like they've just slam dunked a rhetorical point. Check and mate. Game, set, and match. 

Uh…no…

And yeah, the full version of this has a fatphobic thing about spoons making people fat, just in case these folks worried that they were in danger of making a point that was not demonstrative of how terrible they are as people.

The problems come early and often with this gem of a narrative. It is SO bad that even its logical structure as an analogy (W is to X as Y is to Z, like those SAT questions)  doesn't stand up because the primary function of a pencil is NOT to misspell words. Whereas the purpose of a gun is literally to kill. 

That is its intended function. It has no other.

I do understand a gun can be used to kill for food, to only injure someone, or possibly to intimidate someone. But the primary purpose of a gun is a lethal weapon. But in this preposterous analogy, a gun would have any number of artistic and technical functions and only sometimes be lethal (often unintentionally).

It's just a BAD argument. It's under the fallacy dictionary in false equivalency. 

But the real reason this narrative is beyond the ridiculous and obtuse enough that I'm actually having to get clever to avoid some serious ableism here is that people do not run around killing people with misspelled words (or in the case of the fat-phobic example, using spoons on OTHER PEOPLE). 

There is a major, fundamental, philosophical, moral, and ethical difference between mistakes we make that hurt no one (but maybe our English teacher's heart) and those that kill…as a primary functionality. Those that might affect us, and those that rip the life out of another.

Bullshit Rating: 7/5 Perfect bullshit. Would not respect again.

Bullshit Narrative 20- Victim Blaming

This is just really the worst sort of place to which humanity can descend. It's hard to even have a sarcastic quip about behavior this disgusting. 

I wasn't even going to mention it because lord knows not every extreme action of fringe groups should be held up as if it is being made by the mainstream folks on one side of an issue, but the leader of the Republican party, the president of the United States at the time, and the biggest politician beneficiary of the NRA decided to make it a TALKING POINT. 

And this isn't the first or only time.

This particular tweet refers to the Parkland students and just for the record, they FUCKING DID warn law enforcement, their teachers, even the tooth fairy that the shooter was dangerous. No one was listening. But why should that stop a good tweet that stigmatizes the mentally ill, right? We see this over and over again, often even when there absolutely IS a history of complaints and violence.

And then of course there was #walkup––an entire movement designed to overshadow and silence The March for Our Lives with the idea that high school kids have some level of responsibility for preventing their own murders.

Let's just set aside for the moment that these are—by and large—many of the exact same people who have, for the last decade, been saying, "fuck your feelings," as a matter of personal and political ideology to everyone with whom they don't agree. Now it seems they are literally advancing the idea that it is up to high school students to be nicer to violent, entitled young men–and particularly to women to never "spurn" them. (Read: "say no to an advance.")

This is to say nothing of the people so horrifically callous and depraved that they were making pictures of the survivors into targets. The survivors who, after watching their friends be murdered, had the unmitigated temerity to use their First Amendment rights to ask for some sensible gun legislation.

…Or the false flag conspiracy theorists who claim every shooting is just a bunch of actors trying to soften the ground for a gun purge. Each one willing to dismiss parents who have lost their children as crisis actors.

…Or the so called "incels" who cheer from their communities at the deaths of the "normies" when a woman rejecting a man is the impetus of his free will decision to commit mass murder.

…Or the mainstream media using the narrative framing of words like "provoked" and "spurned" to describe a young woman with the temerity to resist four months of harassment, who was then murdered for it.

Far from being fringe, these groups and narratives are repeatedly brought to the table and repeated by mainstream news and pundits....and also the leader the Republican party.

Bullshit rating: You would think that major players in would be above such bullshit. You would think that.