I am pedantic. I learned from the best, a Jewish attorney.
Just the other day I was watching the Aquaman movie. It sucked but I was bedridden after surgery and it was on.
In one scene, a character is describing the Trident as “forged from Poseidon steel” but what they show is red hot molten steel flowing into a trident shaped mold. That’s not forging, that’s open die casting. That pissed me off.
There is a time and a place to be pedantic. The coming gun rights debate is not it.
I can appreciate the argument that we need to be precise in our language but it’s worthless in this case.
Educated Hillbilly on Twitter did a wonderful thread on the ignorance of most of the media when it comes to guns (unrolled for easy reading).
OK… so here’s the deal with journalists raging on twitter about gun terminology, knowing technical facts or proper definitions. Hell how guns even work.
You see most journalists… most not all… are from well to do white families. Most avenues into journalism involve an internship and well. Rich white people can do that.
Most of them are there for going to be from liberal families in blue cities. Not exposed to guns in any way. And very isolated in experience to people who have grown up with guns.
Being rich and liberal and white means they’ve had their way most of their life. They get what that want. Many are legacy admits to Ivy schools…. Hi @mattyglesias ?
So not much has been earned and they aren’t used to getting pushback especially from their lessors. Now add to the mix of this hyperinflated ego an easy major. And yes I’m going to offend some people here but Philosophy and Engineering aren’t equal. One is hard & one isn’t.
So you have an entitled, white, liberal who now thinks they’re the smartest person in any room because they excelled at an easy major in a school they slid into. Look there’s a reason most journalists don’t have medical, engineering, STEM, etc degrees. Those are really hard.
Now we get back to guns. This hyper inflated ego who thinks they’re smarter than anyone in the room suddenly is getting owned by rural high school educated folks online. Like…. really owned.
These fragile egos can’t take that. They’re the smart one. They went to (insert bragging college here) and god dammit their thoughts and opinions are worth 1000x that of some hick who [lives] in rural America.
So what do they do? Every time they put out a tweet (that in their mind might as well be gospel) they get hammered with people pointing out all the technical mistakes in the tweet. Well they can’t have that.
So what do these fragile millennials do? Learn about guns? Talk to people who own & live with them everyday? Of course not. They stomp their feet & throw a hissy fit & say being knowledgeable about guns is unnecessary.
This is absolutely spot on, not just for “journalists” or media types, but for the Hollywood celebrity activists, youth “victim” activists, and frankly most of the sheltered anti-gun Left.
We think that making points like “an AR-15 is semiautomatic, so it fires one round for every pull of the trigger” and “functionally it is no different than the 10/22 used for target practice or Remington 7600 used for deer hunting.”
Those might be valid for people who care about making good law.
These people are not interested in making good law and they are not interested in debating in good faith.
Not a single one of these activists or journalists will ever say “You make a good point, I wanted to ban AR-15’s until you explained that it works just like the old 1100 I used to go trap shooting with my grandpa.”
They don’t want us to have the AR-15 or the 10/22 or the 1100 or anything else.
We can’t allow ourselves to get lost in the pedantic weeds trying to educate people on details that they really don’t want to know or wouldn’t change their minds if they did know.
We need to focus on the big picture, which is that blanket bans of any kind are ineffectual at preventing crime and a violation of the rights of the innocent.
Miguelexcuse me, J.KB;We shouldn’t stop.
What the proggies go “… stomp their feet & throw a hissy fit & say being knowledgeable about guns is unnecessary” is exactly what we need for them to do on a continuing basis.
Of course, we aren’t going to change their minds. That’s not the point. We need to be after the fence sitters who haven’t made of their minds and those who may change their minds when those they used to listen to appear to be ranting fools.
The point is that more we can make these paragons of ‘higher education’ appear to be the ridiculous, ranting, stampyfoot juvenile, intellectually stunted morons they actually are, THE BETTER!
Alinski rule # 5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.“ There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
We’ve been to ‘gentlemanly’. Use their tactics right back at them.
I knew it was a J. Kb post before I got here.
It is pointless. All of it is pointless. When you are talking to people at the top of the liberal talking points tree they aren’t going to be influenced by anything we say or do.
We are not talking to them. We are talking to the people that listen to them.
When the senator from CT says that “The right to keep and bear arms is a right reserved to the collective” because I say it does, there are those that will not listen any further, they stop at “Because important person said it”
But there are those that do listen. They do hear a little bit. So what we are doing is a multi front fight:
1) The right to defend yourself is a human right
2) The ability to use the best tool to defend yourself is part of that human right
3) That human right has a long history
4) That right is in the constitution of the United States
5) Because somebody misuses a tool does not make the tool bad or evil.
6) Doing “something” is often worse than doing “nothing” and if you do do “something” make sure it does something good.
7) Look at the results, not the intentions.
And if at any point in that list, the listener disagrees, nothing else will matter. They will not go any further. If they don’t believe you can defend yourself as a right, nothing else matters.
Many years ago I was dating a women. She was nice, smart, articulate, sexy. She had a son. We had gotten to the point where I was introduced to her parents and her son.
One day she, her son and I all walked to the school where he attended some sort of event. On the way home he was talking about bullies in the school.
I said “You need to stand up for yourself. You might get knocked down. But you get up and stand up for yourself. Bullies are cowards. They will find somebody else to pick on.”
She got very upset “You can’t do that! Just run home! I’m a lawyer, I’ll get the cops involved or sue them!”
We got back to her place, I said goodbye, got in my car and left. I never went back.
Her belief that safety came from the government and threat of legal action was enough to cause me to run for the hills. She did not believe in the right to defend yourself. Only the police should have that level of power.
I first saw the post on my twitter feed and it didn’t note the author, so I assumed the assumed position.
I had already posted my comment when I read the post on the website and saw who had written it.
So….
If you think we’re talking to the liberal wuss having a hissy-fit and we’re expecting to change their mind you are sorely mistaken.
We’re speaking to the audience whom is reading the exchange and seeing us patiently explaining the terms, and why they matter, to an ideologue whose mind is closed and holding their breath until they turn blue.
Believe it or not, it’s working.
That’s why we NEVER surrender on what words mean, because it matters what they mean. Because we surrendered back in the very early ’90’s “assault rifle” changed from a harmless, tongue-in-cheek, way to refer to modern military lookin’ guns into a hammer which is used to pound on us every single time this shit comes up.
Force them to use YOUR terminology. Control of the language IS control of the debate.
We’ve let them control the words for way too long.
They don’t care that they are using the wrong words because they don’t want guns for anything. They have hired help for that. Out here in the rest of America, we will fight the fight in the political arena. We will win or lose there.
If the fight is lost, we will fall back and fight the next battle in the courts. We will win or lose there.
If that is lost, then gun owners will face a choice: we will give in and surrender, or we will resist.
That completes the soapbox, ballot box, jury box, cartridge box of liberty.
As I get older, this becomes less and less a fight of mine, and one for my children’s generation. If they want to surrender, it is their world. They can live in it.