You Can't Cure "Stupid."
By Claire Wolfe, for JPFO. December 21st 2013
But you can cure ignorance.
You can't stop liars from lying or elitists from scheming to control their "inferiors."
But you can expose the lies and show the elitists that we "inferiors" (that is, we proud, smart citizens and gun owners) are a powerful, determined, and well-informed force. An irresistible force.
That's why the #1 mission -- and biggest challenge -- of gun-rights is to know the facts and get them out there. To know the truth and speak it loud and clear.
There are a lot of ways to help protect gun rights. Lobbying is important. Grassroots activism is crucial. Everything from gun blogs to shooting sports play a role in keeping us free. Everybody from the big thinkers to the smallest gun-gear makers help, just by doing what they do. But knowing the truth and making sure people hear it is the One Big Thing.
-----------
Unfortunately, there's a lot of ignorance and fake "information" going around. Some anti-gunners flat-out lie. Others spout nonsense because that's all they know. Still others, who are in a position to know better, perpetuate nonsense because that's what their agenda demands that we believe. Worse, their foolish, bigoted words get printed in major magazines or run on national broadcasts, influencing millions.
Case in point: Earlier this month, one Lt. Col. Robert Bateman penned an op-ed for Esquire that began with gobsmacking ignorance about the Second Amendment, then used that ignorance to build a vicious anti-gun (and anti-freedom) wish list.
Robert Bateman
Bateman, a regular writer for Esquire's Politics Blog, boasts that his job is "about killing" and blithely claims, "I orchestrate violence." But the only arms he would "allow" the rest of us us would be a few smoothbores and a bolt-action rifle or two. (And it gets worse from there.) Virtually every "fact" in his op-ed is wrong.
L. Neil Smith already gave Bateman a well-deserved smack in his December 18, 2013 JPFO editorial, "Bad Colonel! No Eagles!". I won't dwell any longer on the pompously ignorant officer.
The key point is that Bateman could make such a case only because he doesn't know -- or he hopes readers don't know -- the actual meaning of the words "well-regulated militia" in the Second Amendment.
Unfortunately Bateman is one of many. Others count on people being ignorant about how firearms function (semi-autos are "spray and pray" "assault weapons"). Others hope the lies they tell to ignorant millions will make us suspicious of each other (all gun owners are violent racists, we're "43 times more likely" to be murdered if we keep a gun in our own home). Others count on us not knowing history (more on that below). Yet others want us to distrust ourselves while placing uncritical faith in government ("police and soldiers are the only ones who are well-trained enough to have guns").
Carolyn McCarthy
Some anti-gunner ignorance would be funny -- except when you consider the source. Carolyn McCarthy, put on the spot by a reporter, gave us a real howler when she opined that a barrel shroud was "a shoulder thing that goes up." But the laughter stops when you realize that Ms McCarthy is actually U.S. Rep. McCarthy, who was at that very moment trying to ban firearms with barrel shrouds.
Diana DeGette
More recently, her congressional comrade, U.S. Rep Diana DeGette (D-CO) earned national ridicule for claiming in a public forum that a ban on standard-capacity magazines would be effective because magazines "... are ammunition, they're bullets, so the people who have those now, they're going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more available." Very amusing -- except that Rep. DeGette has been, for several years, the prime sponsor of a federal magazine ban.
These people are dangerous. Their ignorance and bigotry is dangerous to our freedom.
Even more dangerous are those anti-gunners who fail to understand history. They praise the Gun Control Act of 1968 without understanding that it was taken directly from a law passed by Adolf Hitler! (This fact was originally revealed and documented by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership). Anti-gunners tell us that "gun control" would help end violence in minority communities -- not realizing (or not wanting us to realize) that their "concern" is just another display of the racism that has driven U.S. gun laws from the beginning (another fact JPFO promotes in documents like "No Guns for Negroes").
It's unfortunate but true. You can't cure stupid. You can't cure deliberate lying. You can't cure the power lust of men and women who want us disarmed so they can rule. The Batemans of the world -- and the McCarthy's, the DeGettes, the Bidens, the Feinsteins, the Schumers, the Josh Sugarmans -- will go on depositing their (pardon my French) noisome piles of steaming BS all over the media. They will not stop and we cannot stop them.
What we can do -- and must do -- is counter their influence so that their errors, follies, and downright lies don't eventually become our laws. We must know the facts, tell the truth, and make sure that accurate information gets spread far and wide to counter their deadly nonsense. In addition, because the antis like to trade on both ignorance and emotion, we need to ensure that these truths get out there in powerfully moving forms. It's not enough to recite dry statistics, correct inaccurate terminology, or point out factual errors. We must show that firearms increase everyone's freedom and safety. We must show the tragedies that are inflicted on disarmed victims time and again. We must move people to want to protect their families, their communities, and their nation -- and to understand that protecting doesn't just mean picking up a gun; it means understanding why gun rights matter.
We must inspire a love of freedom so strong that nobody who hears us will ever again fall for lies that are designed to disarm us and leave us helpless.
To succeed, we must have, and use, the resources to make sure our voice of truth and compassion speaks louder than their lies and elitism.
To keep our most powerful tools of liberty, we must utilize equally powerful tools of persuasion.
That's why I support Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and consider it one of the most important voices in the vast and impressive gun-rights movement. No other group can do what JPFO does -- tell the truth with such a punch, speak with a voice that knows historic catastrophe all too clearly, cry from the heart to the mind. When JPFO says "Never again!" they not only really, really mean it; they hold out to us the intellectual ammo to prevent deadly disaster.
Links of interest:
Innocents Betrayed
No Guns for Negroes
No Guns for Jews
Dial 911 and Die
The Psychological Problems of Gun Haters
The Gun is Civilization
Gun Facts 6.2
The Sandy Hook Archive
