I caught an article at the Huffington Post that represents a new low for them and Left Wing journalism.
Before I go into the article itself, I wanted to take a second to go into the author, whose HuffPo biography says:
Great. Here we have another senior military officer who after a lifetime of defending the United States – and supposedly the Constitution – has decided to become the arbiter on civilian gun ownership. John B. Alexander has been drinking from the same Koolaid as reteried generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus.
John B. Alexander serves as the Huffington Post’s senior writer on the subject of ISIS and Islamic Terrorism given the list of articles he’s written.
Now, for this piece of complete and utter bullshit.
It starts with a list of ways the ISIS, a terrorist organization, and the National Rifle Association, America’s oldest civil rights organization, have in common.
– Institutionally, both organizations are remorseless about the deaths of victims
– Both use fear and intimidation to obtain their objectives
– Both assume their ideology is superior to the wishes of the majority of citizens
– Both have intensely loyal followers
– Both recruit and indoctrinate members who are ignorant of the basic facts
– Both are relatively small organizations that have impact far beyond their size
– Neither organization will apologize for the harm they cause
That is some seriously morally ambiguous horseshit right there.
That is like saying:
The most important parallels between ISIS and Catholic Hospitals are:
– Institutionally, both organizations are motivated by religion
– Both organizations have members who slash people open and cut off limbs
Let’s get something straight here: ISIS is a FUCKING TERRORIST ORGANIZATION!!! I don’t know how that point can be stressed any harder. ISIS has a history of BURNING PEOPLE ALIVE. ISIS MURDERS CHILDREN including SHOOTING A 2-YEAR OLD and BEHEADING A 4-YEAR OLD. ISIS HAS COMMITTED GENOCIDE AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
The NRA as an organization or its members individually have done none of those things. The NRA does not condone the murder of innocents. The NRA does not condone the murder of children. The NRA has committed no acts of terrorism against the United States, its citizenry, or any of its allies.
Is this, somehow, not perfectly clear? I think Antonin Scalia was right, Liberals live in a world where “words have no meaning.”
The NRA is an organization that lobbies and fights in court for the people to meaningfully practice the Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.
Yes, the members of the NRA are passionate and motivated, but there are no, and have never been, any “Second Amendment Jihadis.”
Some radicalized Muslim, pledges allegiance to ISIS, decides that he doesn’t like the culture of the West, and goes and kills 49 and wounds some 50 more in a gay nightclub in Orlando. A husband and wife pledge allegiance to ISIS, and kill 14 and wound 22 at a Christmas party in San Barnardino.
Several million Americans join the NRA, dismayed by what they feel is the infringement of their civil liberties, and they get together to host a peaceful meeting, where nobody was shot, nobody was burnt alive, nobody was thrown off a rooftop to their death, nobody was beheaded, and some $53 Million was pumped into the local economy.
If the NRA was an ISIS like organization, we’re doing a really terrible job of killing people. John B. Alexander recognizes that at the end of his HuffPo skid mark and starts to backtrack.
To be fair, there are significant differences between ISIS and the NRA. ISIS overtly employs extreme violence to achieve their desired ends, while the NRA just takes advantage of other’s misdeeds. The NRA members do not directly kill the victims. The intentional brutality and physical intimidation displayed by ISIS far exceeds the tactics employed by the NRA. In the end, however, the body count tells the story.
IT’S THE NRA’S FUCKING BODY COUNT!!!
The NRA fights for gun right. Gun rights that apply to every law abiding citizen and legal resident of the Unites States of America.
There are criminals, however that do abuse and break America’s gun laws to arm themselves, illegally, and the result is seven people killed in a weekend and 374 people killed to date – not to mention the more than 2,000 shot but not killed – in the city of Chicago. Or the many other shot in similar, high crime (and Liberal) areas of the country.
It is acknowledged that much of that violence is gang-related as are many of the mass-shooting incidents.
But those shootings are NOT the fault of the NRA, and the NRA should NOT apologize for them. The millions of law abiding gun owners in America, who want to practice and retain their Second Amendment rights are not to blame for what a bunch of drug dealers and gang bangers do to each other. Their blood is not on our hands.
John B. Alexander wants us to believe that the NRA indoctrinate[s] members who are ignorant of the basic facts.
Basic facts like what? A barrel shroud is a shoulder thing that goes up. That a ghost can can empty a 30 magazine clip in half-a-second. That the best and most legal means to defend yourself from a home invasion in to fire two shots wildly into the air. That magazines aren’t reloadable. That you can’t lie on a 4473 to make a point in a news story. That you shouldn’t violate federal gun laws to make a documentary. Systematically, when you hear someone make an unbelievably stupid statement about guns or gun laws, they are not an NRA member, but an anti-gun politician or reporter. This phenomenon of anti-gunners saying monumentally stupid shit to the intense mockery of gun owners, and undermining their cause, has been recognized by even the deep thinkers at Slate and Bill Maher.
John B. Alexander’s blathering bullshit continues:
Both ISIS and the NRA have members who are intensely loyal and are willing to act unquestioningly based on directions from the organizational leadership. In ISIS controlled geographic areas they constitute a small percentage of the population. Yet, using fear and intimidation they exert near total control over the territory. By comparison, the NRA has less than five million members (a number that ignobly grows with each horrific event). That, is only about two percent of the eligible voters in the U.S. today (a little over 200 million) yet they wield extraordinary influence both locally and nationally. Like ISIS’ intimidation, it is effective because, on demand, NRA members show up at all meetings concerning gun regulations and inundate Congress members with petitions. They threaten noncompliant members with removal from office, typically done at primary level when just a few voters can swing elections.
ISIS tries to get people to capitulate by threatening to murder them.
The NRA tries to get politicians to support certain bills or vote a certain way by raising money for opposition campaigns or for political ads. First of all, there is a difference between these two acts. Cutting off heads… paying for TV air time… one is a terrorist act and the other is not.
But more importantly, what the NRA does and how it “threatens” politicians IS EXACTLY HOW OUR SYSTEM OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IS SUPPOSED TO FUCKING WORK!!!
Politicians are not entitled to their offices. They hold them as long as the Constitutions allows or the people want them to. Elected officials are supposed to represent the interests of their constituents, and if the constituents don’t feel properly represented they have the right to vote them out of office.
“Do what we want you to or we’ll find somebody else who will, come the next election” is the principle of how America works. The NRA is not alone trying to get politicians voted out of office based on single issues.
Planned Parenthood has a Super PAC that used the same tactics to influence US Senate elections to fight for federal funding of PP and abortion rights. Their members are very passionate about their issue (to the point of dressing up as female anatomy at protests). PP also does a lot more baby killing and hacking off limbs than the NRA does. So maybe PP/Code Pink is a better parallel for ISIS than the NRA. No… they are a Liberal organization, so never mind you intellectually disingenuous shit-weasel.
According to the NRA adherents, citizens should have access to any guns they desire. That includes availability of weapons designed primarily for war such as assault rifles, (yes, I know that technically that term means fully automatic- but not to the public) and even 50 caliber sniper rifles that can penetrate the engine of a car. If you are hunting elephants and can afford the $38,000 trophy fee, you can afford obtaining a special license for that weapon. Also in contention are high capacity magazines, typically holding 30 rounds, although there is the Beta C double drum magazine which can contain 100 rounds. While banned in some areas, it is clear that such magazine capabilities far exceed any reasonable sporting or hunting requirements.
We’ve been over this, Dr. Shit-for-Brains, the Second Amendment is not about hunting. The Supreme Court of the United States in DC vs. Heller made it clear that the right to keep and bear arms has everything to do with the natural right to self defense.
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court undertook its first-ever “in-depth examination” of the second amendment’s meaning Id. at 635. After a lengthy historical discussion, the Court ultimately concluded that the second amendment “guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation” (id. at 592); that “central to” this right is “the inherent right of self-defense”(id. at 628); that “the home” is “where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute” (id. at 628); and that, “above all other interests,” the second amendment elevates “the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home” (id. at 635). Based on this understanding, the Court held that a District of Columbia law banning handgun possession in the home violated the second amendment. Id. at 635.
The Government has put some restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms (I for one, being an NRA extremist feel that the NFA is unconstitutional) but in the end, it is up to ME and not you, you asshole, to decide what is the best tool for me to defend myself and my family with. And if that best tool is a 9mm with a 17 round magazine or an AR-15 with a 30 round magazine, that is my decision alone.
Hell, if I want to spend $5,000 for an impractically large rifle, for shooting things very far away, the ONLY person who should have the right to say shit about my decision is my wife, asking why we are sitting in the dark, with no cable or internet, eating nothing but ramen, because hubby had to buy a .50 cal.
Many low information gun owners appear influenced by movies such as Independence Day, Terminator, The Hunger Games, or other Hollywood fairytales, in which small bands of people overcome a technologically advanced enemy. The creators and adherents of such fanciful dramas are totally clueless about the real-world capabilities of the U.S. military. Espousing gun ownership, per the Second Amendment, as means to keep the potentially evil government in check is simply specious.
Fuck. You. Sideways.
This is the worst, most big government loving, out of touch, argument against gun control ever. One would think that a defense strategist would know better, but no. There are 1.3 Million active and reserve troops across the Army, Navy, USAF, and USMC. There are 4.5 million NRA members. There are 150 Million gun owners. As numbers go, we win. But let’s roll with John. B. Alexander’s expert analysis for a second and take into consideration the “real-world capabilities of the U.S. military.” Because the “real-world capabilities of the U.S. military” include heavy artillery and air superiority. This makes me wonder if in John. B. Alexander’s head, the US government is going to be using B1 bombers to blow up neighborhoods? I doubt that there would be anything that would galvanize the American people against the American Goverment than the military dropping a JDAM on some ranch house in the burbs in order to get one guy, since that is the type of “real-world capability” that we employ around the world. Maybe John B. Alexander is just another deep thinker with a boner for killing people that disagree with him politically, and NRA members in particular.
Despite, all of the zombie lies (ones that won’t die) no current government official or candidate has called for repealing the Second Amendment or confiscating all guns.
I guess when Senator Diane Feinstein said on 60 Minutes “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in” she really didn’t mean it? Because I think she did.
Or when Hillary Clinton said that she would consider Australian gun control (read mass confiscation) that was just a slip of the tongue? Because I’m sure that was the only time she has been honest on the campaign trail so far.
Anti-gun politicians may be retarded on the issue of guns, but not on the politics of guns. They know how to use fear tactics to get what they want too. And they know that a massive, single law, gun ban would be a disaster. They know, for them to get what they want is to kill the Second Amendment with a death by a thousand cuts. Just look at the stack of gun control laws making their way through California.
For the NRA, it’s not about the one “big bill” to ban everything at once. The NRA exists to fight the slow creep of infringements, little bill after little bill, that together will accomplish what the antis want. We are not going to give them once inch, because we know they want the whole mile.
The NRA is nothing like ISIS. I would expect someone who claims to be a terrorism expert to get that. But no. His far Left politics have rot his brain.
I remember being floored when Hillary Clinton says that she was proud that she made the NRA and Republicans her enemy. ISIS is burning people, chopping off heads, raping non-Muslim women by the thousands and selling them into sex slavery, and pretty much engaged in the worst type of savagery and barbarism that the dark ages had to offer; and the Democrat candidate for president says that her worst enemies are law abiding gun owners and the 26% of Americans who are registered with the GOP.
Hillary Clinton shorter: “Forget the Islamic terrorists who are trying to kill us, the people I hate the most are American citizens who disagree with me politically.”
It seems like John B. Alexander comes from the same ideological camp. “Never mind ISIS, the real terrorists are law abiding citizens who just want to keep their consistituanlly protected rights.”
What a fucking asshole this guy is!
My desire to own an AR or two (or eight) as a law abiding citizen, is in no way morally equivalent to murdering children or throwing gays off buildings. I can’t believe I have to say that out loud. It should be self evident, but for this dumbass, it’s not.
This idiot’s grasp of the gun issue is grounded in about as much reality as his grasp of UFO’s. He has nothing but hatred for the NRA based on his political leanings.
His moral relativistic bullshit is a new low for HuffPo, but somehow I get they feeling that they will find a way to go even lower.
