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Buybacks And Loaded Language

There’s an ever-shrinking line between the modern journalist and the modern activist. Journalists are supposed to be objective messengers who relay factual information, while activists are biased campaigners who seek to enact change. In the twitter era, it’s become increasingly difficult to find journalists who aren’t activists first and foremost. There are countless examples to highlight this fact, but I’ll be focusing on just one in this writing: gun buybacks.

Gun buyback talk has been all the rage as of late due to back-to-back shootings that occurred on August 3rd and 4th in the U.S. As is consistently the case, whenever a shooting occurs that provides a beneficial political narrative, the gun legislation talk ramps back up. We know this to be the case, because shootings that can’t be used for political posturing never elicit the same heated response.

For example, there have been 25 mass shootings in Chicago this year as of this writing (gunviolencearchive.org). None of these shootings had trending hashtags on twitter or rampant calls for changes in gun legislation. Journalists weren’t tripping over themselves to write countless articles about this particular epidemic of gun violence. In Chicago, this violence is largely poor people killing other poor people. This isn’t a narrative that journalist activists can use to effectively demonize those on the other side of the political aisle, and whip latte-drinking, middle-class white people into a fervor, clamoring for government intervention. The victims themselves ultimately don’t matter to these people; feeding political outrage culture does.

This is where the loaded language comes into play. Loaded language is rhetoric attempting to influence by appealing to emotion or stereotypes. Take for example the very term “buyback”. This term is deceptive by very nature of how it is used.

If a government has not sold guns to its own citizens, that government cannot possibly have a gun “buyback” by very definition of the word. Governments do sell guns to other countries however, with the U.S. being responsible for 33% of worldwide gun exports. To the best of my knowledge, the U.S. doesn’t actually buy back guns it has sold to other countries; an act that would actually constitute a legitimate gun buyback.

Next, let’s look at another term often used for purposes of rhetoric:

“Returned” sure seems like an innocuous enough term at face value. Within the context of this subject however, it represents blatant loaded language. Returned implies that something was initially either borrowed or taken, i.e. the government in question owned these objects which are now being returned. This is obviously not the case, and any journalist writing an article on this subject would be well aware of this fact.

“Returned” is being used in these articles to imply that the gun owners who sold their belongings to the government were somehow in the wrong to begin with by owning them. It’s very subtle, but is completely intentional. You immediately know these journalist’s opinions on guns by the fact that the term “returned” was used. You’ll never see a Second Amendment advocate or absolutist using this term within the context of a government buyback, let alone an impartial journalist.

Finally, we have a rhetorical term that really doesn’t even try to hide it’s intentions:

This term is so loaded that it should be illegal to possess within a school zone.

There’s no alternate definition for this term that somehow implies anything other than what these publications are explicitly trying to get across. The people who owned these guns (legally) were somehow criminals for owning them (legally), and have consequently “submitted to the authorities”. Nice.

Maybe the casuals who read these types of publications are somehow under the impression that only the “bad guys” are turning their weapons in. This isn’t even remotely close to reality though. The guns that get turned in are usually inherited guns that people have no personal use for, or guns that gun owners no longer want in their arsenals. Criminals are the absolute last demographic who are going to willingly show up around police with a gun in their possession. The guns turned in to these buyback programs are guns that statistically would have never been used for illegal reasons.

Practically every last individual selling a gun at one of these events is a law-abiding citizen, yet the term “surrendered” seems to imply otherwise. It implies criminality. A bank robber or a hostage taker surrenders to authorities, not someone selling an object they legally own but no longer want. Publications who use a word like “surrender” are associating gun ownership with criminality, full-stop. If guns are only owned by criminals, then obviously we should strip everyone of their guns. It’s all very dishonest, yet completely intentional. It’s activism, not journalism.

The point here isn’t to take a side on New Zealand’s lawmaking decisions. New Zealand can do whatever they feel fit to as a country. The point is to show how journalist’s activist tendencies show through in their writings, and how easy it is to see through these biases by something as simple as assessing how a headline was written. This doesn’t just apply to topics like buybacks, and it doesn’t just apply to one side of the debate on any hot-button issue. It does serve to pull the curtain back and distinguish the objective journalists from the activist ones however.

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Terrible Politicians Birth Terrible Bills.

A bill was recently proposed in New York that is so stupid, that even people well aware with how stupid New York’s government officials are might do a double take. This is the very same state that just elected a woman to the House of Representatives who literally doesn’t know what the 3 branches of government are or how unemployment rates work. I give it about 3 more decades before New York actually turns into a John Carpenter movie.

The dumb bill in question (because there are many) proposes that anyone looking to buy a new gun, or renew their current permit, must legally allow the government to snoop through three years (I’m sure we can trust them to stop at just three) of their personal online data. This includes things like social media accounts and online histories. Holy absolutely unconstitutional authoritarian overreach, Batman.

What are our benevolent overlords in the government going to be looking for? Threats to the safety of others, intentions to commit terrorism, profane slurs, or biased language pertaining to race, color, origin, gender, religion, age, disabilities, or sexual orientation.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Jokingly call your friend a retard on facebook? The New York Gestapo might see this as “biased language” disparaging the handy-capable. No guns for you.

What about if you threatened to kill another person on twitter in jest. You know, like Kathy Griffin and countless other blue checkmarks have done to President Trump and members of his family. Sorry folks, but no gun rights for you any more.

How about if you voice sentiments critical of Israel on your myspace page? Well that could be (and quite often is) misconstrued as antisemitic speech. Congratulations! You’re possibly guilty of biased language pertaining to matters of race, origin, and religion. That’s a three-hit wrong-think combo. The second Amendment no longer exists for you.

The fact that there are actually people who think a proposal like this is a good idea is beyond depressing. This is ironically similar to the stop-and-frisk policies (also a New York staple) that liberals absolutely hate and conservatives foolishly justify by saying “well, if you don’t do anything wrong you have nothing to worry about”. Except now it’ll be the conservatives complaining about government overreach, and liberals taking the brilliant “don’t say something wrong, you have nothing to worry about” stance.

It’s also quite ironic that the people so vehemently outspoken against George W Bush’s NSA overreach (though most remain pro-Obama, even though he was a far worse violator of privacy rights(irony²)) seem to be the ones backing this gross violation, because what even is moral consistency?

The bill currently violates the first (freedom of speech), second (right to bear arms), fourth (unreasonable search and seizure), fifth (due process), and fourteenth (forbids states from passing unconstitutional laws) amendments. That has to be some sort of new record for legislative incompetence. Good job, Kevin Parker, you simple human being.

This bill is a problem for the same reason no-fly lists being a factor in firearm eligibility is a problem. It would be great if we lived in a utopian world full of rainbows and unicorns, wherein some magic list existed that provides the easily-digestible answers to every issue. This is far from the reality we live in though. In reality, the U.S. government tends to be far from efficient, and not very capable of balancing a budget, let alone maintaining any kind of valid list.

As it turns out, people have ended up on no-fly lists before, with no way of knowing why they were on said list, or how to get off of it. It’s like some twisted Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment mixed with a dash of complete bureaucratic incompetency.

People have ended up on no-fly lists due to name mix-ups, random human errors, mere speculation, and outright political discrimination. When you combine this with a complete lack of due process, you end up with people being unfairly screwed over, and prevented from flying due to no fault of their own. To further start stripping these people of their constitutional rights on top of that is a recipe for disaster. The ACLU, for all their numerous faults, have actually rightly protested these no-fly lists.

Allowing the government to root through people’s personal data takes the terrible idea inherent in no-fly lists to the next level. Who exactly is going to be the final arbiter of what’s intended as a joke, and what’s serious? Is the government going to ask you whether you said something in jest, or do they simply get to assume the context behind a statement regardless of the intent? This opens the door for rampant abuse of power.

Keep in mind, a man (Mark Meechan) was prosecuted in Scotland for uploading a video in which he taught his pug to do a Nazi salute. At the beginning of the video, he mentions that he is doing so as a joke, and that he was going to “turn [the dog] into the least cute thing I could think of, which is a Nazi.”

Yet somehow, the fact that the video was intended as a joke was outright disregarded, as the government decided that they, and not Mr. Meechan, would get to be the ones to determine the intent of the video. The government ultimately decided that he intended the video to be pro-Nazi propaganda, and not the joke it was in fact created to be.

The person who made the joke didn’t get to decide his intent, the government did. That is dystopian, and that is what an absolutely idiotic bill like S9191 would be ushering in within the U.S. judicial system.

A bill like this is just another shiny object created by the government to distract everyone from that fact that most high profile shootings could be prevented if our government was simply less incompetent. Law enforcement and the FBI fail time and time again to enforce laws that exist, and properly conduct investigations pertaining to those laws. Look into practically any mass shooting, from Nikolas Cruz, to San Bernardino, to The Pulse Night Club, and you’ll see that just about every one of them could have been prevented if the local police or FBI had done their jobs correctly.

Either the authorities were notified about the individual numerous times and never followed the proper course of action, or the FBI investigated, but never took the necessary steps to prevent the shooter from making a legal gun purchase. All three of the above shootings involved people the FBI had already been investigating, but for whatever reason never followed through on, ultimately allowing 80 deaths to occur.

But hey, lets just strip people of their constitutional rights, instead of holding people whose salaries we pay to any kind of standard as far as actually doing their jobs. That’s the far better alternative, obviously.

 

Wall Street Journal article on bureaucratic incompetency:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbis-parkland-fail-1519255068

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This Is What Propaganda Looks Like

Recently, nydailynews.com ran an article by one Gersh Kuntzman (actual name), which equates to nothing more than anti-gun propaganda.  The piece, called “What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying, menacing and very very loud”, was conveniently posted 3 days after the Orlando nightclub shooting.

Now, the point of my post isn’t to make a pro or anti gun argument, but merely to call out blatant propaganda for what it is.  The article by Kuntzman clearly comes across as a propaganda piece.

Our buddy Gersh went to a shooting range in Pennsylvania in order to shoot the media’s big, bad, scary scapegoat, the AR-15.  Now, he acknowledges in the article, that the Orlando shooter didn’t even use an AR-15, but most in the anti-gun camp wouldn’t know the difference between an AR-15 and a toaster.  They recognize the name AR-15, because it’s become the poster child of sorts for the fear-driven, anti-gun side of the weapons debate.

It seems very likely that this particular shooting range was selected due to the owners rather liberal views on gun ownership.  The article states that many gun shops turned down the request to have a journalist and cameraman show up to discuss the much demonized AR-15 rifle.  Not guns in general, mind you, but the AR-15 specifically.  Any shooting range in their right mind would have turned down this request, under the assumption that the article that resulted would be nothing more than an anti-gun propaganda piece.  Anti-gun propaganda isn’t exactly great business for shooting ranges.

The article then proceeds to spout off numerous bits of erroneous information, and conflicting statements.

Mr Kuntzman states that he’s fired pistols before, but “never something like an AR-15”.  This implies to the reader that the AR-15 is a powerful beast of a weapon, far removed from your average pistol.  It isn’t however.  The rounds that a run-of-the-mill AR-15 fires are actually not very powerful rounds.  To give you an example of the power we’re talking about, there are clips on youtube of young children firing this weapon without problem.  It’s actually illegal in some states to hunt deer with the .223 Remington round that an AR-15 fires, because the round isn’t thought to be powerful enough to humanely hunt something the size of a deer.  The point of hunting is to kill the animal, not give it a wound it can show off to its friends for the next week.  This ammo is generally considered more of a round for hunting animals up to coyote size.

It seems as though either Mr. Kuntzman a) has never fired a gun of any type before, or b) is grossly over-exaggerating the power of the AR-15 for sensational effect.  I can’t for the life of me figure out why this man would need to exaggerate the power of the AR-15 for this unbiased article.  c) That was probably sarcasm.

He claims the recoil of the gun bruised his shoulder.  This gun and round combination is actually known for having a relatively tame recoil.  Its low recoil is one of its main selling features.  Once again, young children can be seen shooting this gun on youtube.

He states how the shell casings flying out of the gun disoriented him, and that the “smell of sulfer and destruction” made him sick.  With all due respect, these revelations merely make it seem as though Gersh is probably a little too soft to be firing weapons in the first place.  Some people get sea-sick on boats, and those people tend to stay away from boats as a result.  Other people aren’t cut out for riding on roller coasters and should probably stick to the teacup ride.  If you practically get a case of the vapours and faint, like a colonial woman, firing guns maybe isn’t the thing for you.

Perhaps most telling of all, he claims that the explosions, “loud like a bomb” gave him PTSD.  PTSD being that anxiety disorder that people who have been in actual traumatic situations get.  Situations like warfare, plane crashes, or rape.  Yet somehow this fragile, porcelain doll of a man had PTSD after merely firing a gun.  Once again, a gun you can watch small children firing on the internet.  Either he doesn’t understand what PTSD is, or is once again exaggerating.

This begs the question.  Is our buddy Gersh a complete joke of a man-child, or are all of these claims fabricated merely for sensationalism.  First off, the site this article appears on has a massive anti-gun bias.  Three of the 5 articles in the “most popular” section as of this writing, are about “assault weapons” and the NRA.  Secondly, the video that accompanies the article doesn’t portray a man who was shaken from firing a gun.  He actually comes across as reasonable and even keeled.  Viewing the video alone doesn’t give off the impression of a man who felt uncomfortable shooting a gun.

I can’t help but feel that Mr. Kuntzman had an agenda from the start to try to demonize a particular gun.  It’s obvious that the man knows little to nothing about guns, and is merely writing a feelings-based sensation piece.  He actually refers to this gun as a “weapon of mass destruction” and proclaims that it only belongs in the hands of those in the military.

The problem is, the military would never use a gun like the AR-15.  As previously stated, the gun is relatively weak by gun standards, but is also only semi-automatic.  The military wouldn’t bother carrying a gun this size unless it was fully automatic, or able to be switched between semi and fully automatic.  A stock AR-15 is probably a little too weak for military application as well.  Remember that it typically isn’t even used for deer hunting.

Regardless, Mr. Kuntzman received a substantial amount of blowback from the article, from people who were either able to see through the bullshit, or outright accused him of being a pussy.  I don’t think it makes one weak for not being into firing guns, but it does make one weak for engaging in misleading propaganda.

I’m not even a “gun guy”, but it annoys me to no end when I see uneducated and misleading journalism around every corner these days.  Maybe I’m off base to expect a little truth and integrity from people who have made their living as reporters.  Reporters are supposed to educate, and not mislead.  Everything I know about guns comes from doing research on the topic, the same way I come to learn about any topic.  There’s no reason somebody with the title of “reporter” or “journalist” shouldn’t be putting in the effort to research topics just as well.

Every anti-gun article I read is from someone who obviously couldn’t be bothered to do any research on the subject of guns.  Otherwise the same inaccurate data wouldn’t be getting passed off time and time again.  Things like the “AR” in AR-15 standing for assault rifle.  The AR actually stands for ArmaLite Rifle, the company that makes the AR series of guns, which have been around since the 50’s.  The term assault rifle refers to a weapon that has the ability to fire fully automatic, or at very least, burst fire.  No civilian weapons legally able to be sold actually meet this criteria.

Any gun you can legally purchase as a civilian will be semi-automatic, meaning you have to pull the trigger once for every time a bullet is fired.  Just about every handgun, including revolvers, are semi-automatic guns.  The AR-15 is semi-automatic too.  It just looks scarier to some folks because it’s modeled after military-style weapons.  If a gun isn’t fully or semi-automatic, that means its single-fire, and you need to manually load a round after each firing, just like they used to do back in your great great great granddaddy’s day.

One more thing.  Before I go, the term magazine and clip refer to two different things, and aren’t interchangeable, and silencers don’t actually exist; they are called suppressors.  Peace.

Addendum:

Apparently another reporter tried to write a sensationalized hit piece against guns the day after Mr Kuntzman’s failed attempt, and failed even more spectacularly.  Another unscrupulous reporter (are there any other kinds of reporters these days?) by the name of Neil Steinberg went out to gun shop in Chicago to purchase a gun.  What type of gun did he try to buy?  I’m sure you can make an educated guess.  That’s right!  An AR-15.  The official gun of goofy, middle-aged, cringy, progressive men writing propaganda pieces.

Turns out he was denied making the purchase after a background check showed that he had a history of both alcoholism and domestic abuse.  The very background checks that guys like this push mistruths of either not existing, or being ineffective, were quite effective in blocking him from purchasing a gun.

“Isn’t it ironic” -Alanis Morrisette (1995)

All these hack reporters set out to sway public opinion further against guns, only to make it even more evident that their stances on the subject don’t have very stable foundations.  The background check worked exactly as it should have in keeping this guy from obtaining a weapon.  In the eyes of the gun store, it would have been a liability to have an individual with a history of violence and substance abuse obtaining an gun.

But of course he refuses to accept that fact, and he ends the article by conspiratorially stating that he was actually denied the gun because he was a reporter.  Because evidently gun stores have an agenda of suppressing (+5 Gun Pun Points™) the truth about guns by preventing hack journalists from purchasing them in order to write hit pieces.  The complete and utter lack of self awareness here is astounding.

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Applying Logic in Times of Tragedy

 

Warning

 

It seems that every time a tragedy occurs within this country involving innocent people being killed, a witch hunt always ensues.  This witch hunt always entails finding the “cause” of the violence in an attempt to find something or someone to blame for why the tragedy happened.  The cause of these tragedies is already in front of our faces, however.  It is people who kill other people.  More specifically, people in various states of mental duress kill other people.  Guns don’t kill people.  Cars don’t kill people.  Cigarettes don’t even kill people.  Inanimate objects don’t have free will.  Blaming inanimate objects is simply a way of humans taking the blame off of humanity for the terrible things humans do to other humans or to themselves.  Putting the onus of death on an object is either a grand form of delusion, or propaganda to push an agenda, pure and simple.

If all the guns were to disappear off the face of the Earth overnight, we would not live in a society devoid of violence.  Violence would still transpire where it would have transpired before.  Knives are the tools of wanton violence in many areas where access to guns is scant.  Massacres happen in Japan, wherein knives are used in lieu of guns.  Bombs are the tools of destruction in other areas, Afghanistan being a prime example.  Bombs are easy to construct out of any number of readily available materials and have a much higher casualty rate than a gun, all the while keeping the perpetrator out of harm’s way.  You can’t outlaw or regulate bombs.  People don’t decide to engage in violence because of the existence of a particular weapon.  The will to engage in violence exists independently of the weapon used and will transpire regardless, unless the root of the problem is addressed.

You always see debates about gun control after a massacre, but what you never see is a debate about the reasons why the massacre took place in the first place.  Limiting access to weapons doesn’t stop violence.  It never will stop violence.  Even attempting to do so is a lazy, uninformed reaction to a stimulus based upon aimless passion with no real thought placed behind it.  Nobody has ever decided not to murder another human being because of not having access to a gun.  Guns are merely one of a myriad of tools at the disposal of somebody who has made the decision to do something that most people can’t even fathom doing.  If not a gun, something else would be used to commit the act, and we surely can’t limit every human being’s access to every item that could potentially be a murder weapon, can we?  What we can do however, is lessen the likelihood that somebody takes the ultimate plunge into doing something drastic.

By finding out and understanding the actual reasons behind why somebody decides to take another person’s life, we have the fundamentals to work with in attempting to take preventative measures against others making that same decision.  By focusing on the tools used in these massacres, we aren’t taking any kind of preventative measure to stop future incidents from happening.  We would merely be ensuring that different tools be used the next time such an occurrence transpires.  The root of the problem is never isolated, and ultimately, nothing actually changes.  The root of the problem is not an inanimate object.  Unfortunately, finding the legitimate roots of problems such as these will always require a lot more thought and insight than pointing a finger and blaming a scapegoat.  Thus, the path of least resistance continues to be traveled.

By educating the public in general as to the signs of individuals who are prone to engaging in these self-destructive and harmful acts, we will be better equipped to prevent them before they ever occur.  The warning signs are always there, time after time after time.  These types of things don’t “just happen”.  Parents, friends, acquaintances, teachers, and therapists, among others see the warning signs of these events long before they occur.  Educating these people as to what to look for and how to handle the situation will do more than a reactive witch hunt ever will.  The best-case end result being that nobody loses their life and somebody in need of help actually gets that help and is able to turn their life around.  It’s always easier to point a finger and blame something that can’t defend itself rather than looking inward and realizing that we as a society are continually dropping the ball on taking the necessary preventative measures to keep history from repeating itself.

Peace.