Saturday, October 16, 2010

The problem of restricting America's gun free-for-all to 'normal' people

Four months on, and I'm increasingly intrigued by the continued mysterious absence of the promised "Überpost" from Mr Kevin Baker in response to my last series of posts on gun control in the late spring. Of course, it's entirely up to him whether he thinks it's worth the bother of responding, and in many ways he'd be a man after my own heart if he's simply decided he has better things to do with his time - but given the bile he and his devoted followers routinely dole out to anyone they feel has ducked out of debate, I think it is appropriate to note that this increasingly appears to be exactly what's happened here. To be fair, he did warn us that there would be a long delay so he could get it "just right", but four months? Was he planning an Überpost or a novel?

On the subject of that old familiar bile, there's a textbook example in one of Kevin's posts from a few days ago. Apparently another Arizona blogger called Alan C Baird dared to write a post expressing bewilderment and anger at seeing a customer openly carrying a gun in a grocery store (I'll say that again - a customer in a grocery store), and at the unwillingness of the store management to do anything about it due to the insane state laws. Baird received a couple of death threats (not to mention a torrent of more general abuse) for his troubles, so took the obvious and inevitable step of closing comments on his post. Well, it might seem obvious and inevitable to most of us, but of course to the 'blog function fascists' I've come to know and love the closing of comments on any blog anywhere in the world for even the best of reasons simply WILL - NOT - BE - TOLERATED. Naturally, Mr Baird was now in line to receive an epistle (or should I say Überepistle) from Kevin on the subject of (ahem) "bigotry". To save you the trouble, the general gist of it was - "You are such a bigot. In fact, do you know how much of a bigot you are, Mr Baird? Take the biggest bigot you can think of, multiply the level of that person's bigotry by the combined ages of all the bigots alive in the world today - cancel that, their combined ages to the power of four - and that's still not even close to how much of a bigot you are. Stop being such a bigot, you bigot."

There was one particular segment of the rant (sorry, forensic textual analysis) that made my jaw drop to the floor, though -

"I'm very glad you don't own a gun. Obviously have anger control issues and you're not a stable person. I'm beginning to understand why you don't like to see other people armed - you think they're just like you, and lack of self-control is 'normal.' I assure you, it is not."

Even if Kevin is clearly not the most dispassionate judge of character in this instance, I'm glad that he's glad that at least one 'law-abiding citizen' out there does not own a gun. I'd be even more glad to hear that he thinks it would also be desirable if everyone with more genuine 'anger control issues' and 'lack of self-control' did not possess a gun. But I'm just wondering how he thinks such a desire can conceivably be brought to fruition in the context of the gun free-for-all that he so zealously defends. Perhaps he's relying on his trusty prayer mat?

Come to think of it, he told me he's an atheist. It's a puzzle.

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