Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
When it comes to the Second Amendment and guns, it seems that President Obama can’t make anyone happy. Ever since Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency, the NRA has screamed that Obama will be taking away the guns. This scare tactic continued when Obama defeated John McCain for the Presidency. Just what has Barack Obama done to make the NRA and gun owners frightened for their guns? The simple answer to this question is nothing. The head of the National Rifle Association, Mr. Wayne LaPierre actually admitted recently that Obama has done nothing to attack gun owner’s rights to bear arms, but claims Obama’s inaction against guns is actually a conspiracy to take away guns!! ‘ “[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone,” LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday. “In public, he’ll remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws… The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment.” “But it’s a big fat stinking lie!” the NRA leader exclaimed. “It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” ‘ Raw Story
Now, before anyone thinks I am making this stuff up, the linked site includes a video clip wherein Mr. LaPierre verbalizes this alleged reverse conspiracy. Mr. LaPierre makes a point of throwing in the necessary names of alleged liberal co-conspirators to rev up his base. ‘ “Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast & Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today… President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they’re going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it. But we don’t care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!” ‘
The lying, conniving Obama crowd as Mr. LaPierre labels them has not done anything to harm the Second Amendment rights that the NRA claims to be at risk. I was interested in the last few words of LaPierre’s quotation above. The phrase “kiss our Constitution” appears to lay claim that the NRA and its followers own the Constitution and its protections. I could have sworn that my law school Constitutional professors taught me that the Constitution protects all citizens, but maybe I heard them wrong. But, I digress.
As the Raw Story article suggests, President Obama has actually taken heat from his own supporters over his alleged conspiracy to not take away the guns. NPR Does Mr. LaPierre provide any evidence of this bizarre claim? None that I could find. Maybe you will have better luck than me in finding evidence of presidential actions to hide President Obama’s intentions and/or actions of stealing legal guns from their owners.
I have to admit that if you read the comments section of the NPR article that details how the Left is disappointed with Obama’s inaction on gun control, you will read almost nothing except gun owners claiming that Obama’s words of inaction are actually code words that the End is Near and the Sky is Falling for gun owners! Just what will it take gun owners to ask Mr. LaPierre for evidence of his wild claims? I, for one would love to hear his answer to that question. I understand that candidate and President Obama may have stayed away from the 2nd Amendment issues for political reasons, but where is the evidence of this alleged conspiracy? I would think Fox News would be sending Bill O’Reilly’s reporters all over the country to uncover such a heinous conspiracy.
If Mr. Obama has not written any executive orders or supported additional legislative steps to control or take away guns since he has become President, just what is the basis for these wild claims? I realize that the NRA has a financial interest in getting gun owners scared into buying more guns, but are there other, underlying reasons why the gun owners are frightened so easily, when the facts do not support the NRA’s claims?
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Additional sources: Gun Owners of America; NRA-ILA; Pajamas Media;
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Slarti:
I fully understand all your points, show me where the jobs are? Sure they kept some teachers and police and fire personnell employed and the people at GM but where are all the jobs that are supposed to be created by the private sector once the stimulus has primed the economy?
I dont see them. It also looks like we are just barely getting buy and now we have gone from 161 billion deficit spending to over a trillion in deficit spending.
Give me a break, what resources are you looking at?
Big Government doesnt work, the evidence is everywhere. The only thing it is good at is transfering wealth from one person to another.
My logic may not be any good according to you but at least I dont think this way:
All dogs have three legs
Toby has 3 legs
Therefore Toby is a dog
The logic is correct but the predicate isnt. Your predicates arent correct but your logic is. What good is that?
Garbage in, garbage out.
Bron said:
the fallacy of the stimulus? Now you are making me laugh. The only fallacy of the stimulus is that the entire idea is a fallacy.
You used a fallacy in reference to the EPA (as you have in the past regarding the stimulus). You are confusing the relation of cause and effect and implicitly asserting that you know the results of the road not taken. By saying that the EPA (or the Stimulus) has done nothing means that you (A) think that you know (based, apparently, on nothing at all…) what would have happened had the EPA never existed; and (B) that different actions would have (unquestionably in your mind, it seems…) produced the same results. On part A, your theories (regarding both the EPA and the stimulus) are pretty much falsified by all of the available evidence (jobs created by the stimulus and gains in clean air and clean water made by the EPA*). As for part B, while expecting the same results from differing causes isn’t insanity like expecting different results from the same causes, it isn’t exactly wisdom, either. It seems pretty absurd to me to think that something like the EPA or the stimulus had no affect on the issues they were intended to address.
* Incidentally, the right-wing meme whereby they do their level best to systematically gut regulatory agencies and then use the resulting ineffective agency as evidence that regulations don’t work is one of the most blatant examples of bad faith that I’ve ever seen – but many conservatives don’t seem to care about the merits of an argument or the facts regarding policy, just whether or not they can use them to propagandize their position.
Are you for real? What kind of bullshit are you spouting now? It may work in a faculty lounge where all the liberal professors are falling over themselves to get tenure so they dont have to do shit for the rest of their lives, but please:
You’re the one that’s been spouting bullshit here (and you’ve been called on it over and over again…). I hate to break it to you, but I really don’t fit the stereotype you keep trying to shove me into – I’m not currently formally associated with any academic institutions and even when I was, 99.99% of all of the casual conversations I had with colleagues had absolutely nothing to do with politics. Currently I have no plans to try and restart my academic career and even if I did I would be looking for a research position (which would be dependent on my bringing in grant money) rather than a tenure-track position. Your prejudice against academics seems to entitle you (in your mind, at least) to dismiss arguments that you disagree with but can’t refute, but to me that’s just more dogma from the cult of stupidity that far too much of the right has bought into.
“Use of this fallacy brands one as either unable to think rationally or dishonest – which are you?”
I would not have thought you would be that intellectually dishonest.
Once again, you make an accusation with no explanation to back it up. How have I been dishonest? Both myself and others have repeatedly pointed out errors of fact, errors of understanding, errors of reasoning, and logical fallacies in your arguments. If I’ve unfairly accused you (here or elsewhere) then you should be able to easily explain why my analysis is incorrect or why it doesn’t apply to you. But you can’t do that, can you?
Elaine:
Makes what OK? You mean having gainful employment for people so they can make a living?
Yeah, I’d say providing jobs for people is OK.
I guess that makes it okay then, huh?
the miners and other people who sell goods and services to the coal miners and the corporation care.
Otteray,
“BTW, what about the little boy who was killed by the four ton boulder that came bounding down the hill in the middle of the night, crashed through the side of the house, crushing the child in his bed.”
Just a little collateral damage. Can’t really fault the coal company for that. I’m sure the dislodging of the boulder was not intentional.
***
“These mountains and streams that took millions of years to form will NEVER come back.”
Who cares–as long as a corporation is raking in the money?????
Otteray Scribe:
I am not against regulation per se, what I am against is an agenda driven regulatory environment vs a people driven one.
People have a right to be free from pollution on their property, companies have a right to make money and it seems to me we are smart enough to come up with a solution which accomadates everyone.
Government is not big enough to take care of everyone, people need jobs for a multitude of reasons, not just to make money to live and it seems the needs of the little guys who mine coal are just as important as the property owners who want a nice view.
I think they can both be accomadated without screwing the coal miner and the company which employs them.
back to the second amendment:
Murders in DC down to lowest level since 1965. Heller v. DC? Or something else?
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm
Bron, you may be right, but horrors–that would require government regulation and the EPA needs some real teeth.
Then the Bush administration was wrong. There should be a way to mine coal and be good stewards of the environment.
Bron, they are not reclaiming it because the Bush administration told them it was OK to dump the removed material into the valleys. If it proceeds to its logical conclusion, West Virgina and much of the Blue Ridge Mountains will look like one giant flat parking lot.
And BTW, clean coal is a contradiction in terms. An oxymoron. I heard Obama talking about the need for clean coal and wanted to put my foot through the TV. I am aware that he, like most presidents, only knows what his advisers tell him, but that was and is, inexcusable.
But I do agree that it is time for Atomic energy to be used for 90% of our power needs and for us to become exporters of natural gas, coal and oil.
Otteray Scribe:
The quarry industry reclaims quarries through parks or lakes. So you make a good point.
Although why not just change the way they mine? Reclaim the mountain top as they move across it? That way people have real work which is sustainable and the environment while not pristine is not being raped either.
By the way all that rock? People in the big cities would pay money for nice rock for walls and landscape features. if the stone is good, crush it for road beds and other construction projects.
Use that stimulus money which created all those shovel ready jobs to bury the stone under all those roads and bridges that are being built.
Those coal companies need to go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers. Buggy whip and wagon wheel makers did just fine when their businesses closed–new industry moved in. The new industry needs to be a massive environmental cleanup the likes of which this planet has never before seen. Put those mountain people to work in jobs the giant machines displaced. Use the damn giant machines to dig out the valley fills and put that dirt and rock back on the mountaintops. Tax hell out of the polluters to pay for the whole thing.