Don’t forget to check out some of the commentary at CSGV’s Facebook page. You have Andrew Goddard, who’s Colin’s dad saying “they will all come back as cockroaches – if they are lucky.” Andy Pelosi thanks Joan for the work she does in the “face of cowards.” Another person suggests “never give into a bully.” I think it’s time to cut out the niceties for the moment, and have a little frank discussion, so that both sides may better understand each other.
I am not unsympathetic to your grief. I’ve lost people close to me, some agonizingly over time and others suddenly. I can relate to the pain of loss, and learning how to cope and continue with life. I truly am sorry for what you have gone through, and may be still going through. If I had a time machine at my disposal, I’d go back and undo everything so it never happened. I have no wish to see you continuously hurting.
But you folks have a lot of nerve calling other people cowards and bullies. Let me explain to you why you elicit such “underhanded hate and misguided personal attacks” from some of the people on my side. It’s important for your side to understand. We want nothing more than to stay out of your business, leave you alone, let you heal and get on with your lives. By the same token, we expect the same courtesy in return. That is the fundamental violation you are committing in our eyes, and it’s a serious one.
There is nothing more personal, when it comes to ones own business, than his or her personal security measures. That is not a topic I take kindly to other people poking their noses into, or demanding politicians do the same. This is going to sound cold, but whatever happened in your lives is your tragedy, and not mine. I am not responsible for it. So when you stick your noses in our very personal business, then demand we tolerate that because of your special status as “victims,” don’t then then act surprised and indignant when some of us rhetorically punch you in it. We would all gladly leave you alone. But it seems that your happiness and sense of well being involves trying to take away ours. Are we just supposed to roll over quietly in that case?
“it seems that your happiness and sense of well being involves trying to take away ours. Are we just supposed to roll over quietly in that case?”
In a word, yes. It’s much like the anti-gunners version of the term “compromise” which is of course nothing of the sort.
That’s what I don’t get about people who before a tragedy never gave 2 seconds thought or care about guns or anything to do with them…but become rabid zealots after a close relation dies. I understand your grief. One of my best friends had his father murder his mother, then kill himself when we were young. Did any of us blame the gun? No. It was the fathers fault. It didn’t matter what the tool used was, the horrible fact was he killed her then himself.
Here’s the sad truth for those who have had personal gun tragedies: Even if your campaign was successful, if every gun ever made was found and melted down and we lived in a gun free world, it wouldn’t bring your loved ones back.
My entire family for at least 3 generations (maybe more, but my great grandparents died when I was very young so I never got the chance to know) have grown up with at least 1 gun in the house. None of us have ever hurt anyone with any of them. They have, however, provided protection, recreation, meat on the table, and life lessons for us all.
I’ll just never understand the objectification. More kids drown in pools than die by guns. Yet we don’t have mass campaigns to ban all private swimming pools.
The object, whether a gun, pool, hammer, whatever is not the issue. Personal responsibility is always the final issue. People commit acts. Objects do not.
Having lost people I knew and cared about, I understand the anger, hurt and frustration those with personal tragedy face. I just don’t think that gives you the right to tell me what I can or cannot own, no matter how deeply you feel your own pain.
Colin Goddard is now a mouthpiece for the Antin Gun movement because he is in a desperate search for the gonads he lost under a desk at Virginia Tech. It has to shame him to no end that a 76-year-old professor blocking a door with his body showed more balls than he will ever have.
To Andrew Goddard: The only roach that you know, scurried away under a desk that day at VT and is the fruit of your loins.
That’s what I don’t get about people who before a tragedy never gave 2 seconds thought or care about guns or anything to do with them…but become rabid zealots after a close relation dies.
The thing we don’t do and they do is they run to these grieving loved ones and pump them to support their cause. They tell them to channel their grief for the cause to prevent this from happening again. We don’t do this.
That’s what I don’t get about people who before a tragedy never gave 2 seconds thought or care about guns or anything to do with them…but become rabid zealots after a close relation dies.
More often than not, I don’t think that’s case. I’d be willing to bet most of those folks would have identified themselves as uncomfortable with guns before their tragedies. The tragedy is just what prompted them to act on those feelings.
I love how all of us on the other side get lumped into the “bullies” category.
Like Sebastian wisely pointed out – I’m in Minnesota, and I want NOTHING (repeat, nothing) to do with Joan Peterson. I’d rather I never had to hear her, or another one of her un-intelligible, mis-guided attacks on my lifestyle and my choice of defense.
You’re attacking a fundamental right – you’re attacking my right — and your choice of argument doesn’t make you an expert.
I won’t engage in the bullying – but since you mention your sister at every speaking engagement – I believe that makes YOU a public figure, and YOUR life open to discussion.
I like Andrew Goddards comments on the CSGV facebook site as well:
“More power to you Joan. ” Sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt you” – anyone who believes that is badly misguided. Words can be extremely painful, especially when they are so unjustified. All I can say is Karma will get them eventually – they will all come back as cockroaches -if they are lucky!”
Words can hurt?! My lord, we should ban them. For the children. And the cockroaches.
That’s basically how I feel: bring your grief into the public arena, to bring moral authority to your argument, it’s absolutely fair game to question whether that grief makes a sound basis for public policy. I don’t think we need to be rude, but the topic isn’t off limits. You don’t get to bring your personal life into a public policy debate then whine people are being mean when they criticize your motives.
So, here’s an even more interesting turn…I actually was a victim of gun violence.
I was held up at gunpoint about 5 years ago…did that make me an advocate against firearms? Nope, in fact I went out the next day and registered for a carry class…purchased my first handgun two weeks later and never looked back.
Interesting for a guy who “had” supported Joan and her organization at one point in the past.
And of course there are countless risky behaviors and oversights in many of these cases
http://www.weerdworld.com/2011/misplaced-guilt/
But somehow they look to lawful gun owners as something that lead to their tragedy.
Joan doesn’t blame the Police Chief that covered for her insane brother-in-law, she never sees it foolish that her sister and her sister’s boyfriend went over to her crazy husband’s house (one she felt sufficiently afraid of that she issued a restraining order)
Her late brother-in-law was in the news constantly with his criminal acts, and was well known to have a fiery temper, did she ever say anything?
And in the end her sister and her sister’s boyfriend were shot by her sister’s husband with a shotgun….and Joan deals with this grief by using her syster’s name when calling for bans on “Assault Weapons”, “Assault Clips”, conceal carry, and private sales.
What does that have to do with ANYTHING? Furthermore at one point can we call out how classless it is to be dragging up her sister’s death in such nonsensical ways.
This would be like Sebastian or Bitter claiming that if your respected parents had Carry permits (or Machine guns, or suppressors, ect) they would have beat cancer…or something.
It would be classless and stupid if you did such a thing too.
“words can never hurt you”
Oh really, so if some wanker starts spewing epithets at you, you don’t care?
I guess Kobe Bryant’s recent anti-homosexual slur shouldn’t be fined because “words can’t hurt you.”
fools.
“words can never hurt you†– Tell that the to the High School Facebook bullies and texting-email slanderers who drive kids to suicide.
Well said. Very, very well said.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that it’s easy for us to talk about freedoms and rights in the abstract as good and right and true.
Which, of course, they are.
But the abstract of “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is a hard to put up against the real and very concrete pain of someone who has lost a loved one to violent crime.
I feel for their loss. To quote from The Two Towers, “No father should have to bury his son”. But I do not want their loss to hamper my or anyone else’s ability to protect our loved ones from violent crime. No one should have to go through losing loved ones to violence, and I chose to prevent such a thing by awareness, preparation and avoidance, not by disarming potential victims en masse.
I particularly like to see how they handle it when victims disagree with their policy suggestions. If someone like Christina Green’s father opposes gun control (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXZOGNhw6p8), then the best thing they can do is ignore it. Otherwise, all they can do is think that he’s mistaken, confused, or perhaps not really a “victim” after all.
That is frankly what is most offensive to me. I’m expected to respect their Victimhood by agreeing with whatever they say, yet they can discard the presumably equally-valid opinions of other people who have experienced losses just because they disagree? That’s rank hypocrisy.
I also love the weasel words:
“The facts of Joan’s loss are as follows … In 1992, Joan’s sister, Barbara, was three years into divorce proceedings with her husband. After he left bizarre messages on her answering machine, Barbara got a restraining order against him. One day, Barbara and a male friend went to her husband’s house to deliver some paperwork regarding the divorce. Her husband erupted in anger and shot both of them in cold blood, killing them. Prior to this incident, he had no violent criminal history. He ended taking his own life not long thereafter in a psychiatric ward.”
As Sean D. Sorrentino has researched, he apparently did have some fairly serious criminal history. Just not a “violent” history. Most people don’t just snap and commit murder; they usually have some sort of criminal record and background.
Even the guy who wrote that revisionist summary didn’t believe it, hell he admitted that threats were made leading to a restraining order. They omit his well-documented temper, and insane behavior.
So I guess by “had no violent criminal history” they mean “He’d never murdered two people before!”
+1,000,000 for Miguel! My feelings exactly. I was raised to call a spade a spade, and Goddard’s definitely a coward (and a liar to boot). But even if you want to be more politically correct and avoid the epithet “coward,” it still boggles my mind that Joan and her ilk call him a hero. What did he do that was at all heroic? Now that Holocaust survivor that bought his students time to escape at the cost of his own life, he’s a hero.
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call Colin a coward. Trained soldiers and police officers freeze up sometimes when bullets start flying. But I agree that he’s no hero. That gets my goat for the same reason that Newsweek article about Japan did. “You’re a hero for going through six months of physical therapy.” Really? They want to get better? Shocking.
Here is a more apt quote from J.R.R. Tolkien: “I do not love the bright sword for it’s sharpness, nor the arrow for it’s swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.â€
Being relatively new to these Second Amendment blogs, I am curious if anyone ever confronted Joan with the scenario of her sister being murdered with a kitchen knife, instead of a gun. Would she still be anti-gun? The taking of any innocent life is tragic, but the instrument is not to be blamed, only the evil person who did it.
check out weerd beard’s “gun death?” series.
@Braden: Many times…she’ll “refuse to discuss the details of her personal life”.
Can’t help but think some of these people need to move on for their own mental health.
Braden Lynch, At one point she even said it would have been impossible for her sister to be killed with anything BUT a gun.
She also has gone to great lengths to marginalize how offbase, and dangerous her late brother-in-law was.
http://ncguns.blogspot.com/2010/12/murder-is-rarely-first-crime.html
So reality isn’t something she’s on friendly terms with.
AntiCitizenOne: Thanks for the plug, I’m glad people have appreciated the series. With a little luck, besides raising awareness of physical danger, I would love to get the Antis to abandon the made-up and nonsensical metric of “Gun death”.
@DirtCrashr: ““words can never hurt you†– Tell that the to the High School Facebook bullies and texting-email slanderers who drive kids to suicide.”
The gun control movement would blame Facebook and mobile carriers who profit from high-capacity SMS systems capable of delivering millions of bullying messages per second, if they were in the least consistent.
“Trained soldiers and police officers freeze up sometimes when bullets start flying. ”
Yep. Those are the cowards and sometimes they are warriors experiencing a temporary incidence of cowardice.
Thanks for posting a link that explains the death of Peterson’s sister. Hard to imagine a more foolish way to die.
Well said, Sebastian, well said. Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone.
Thanks Weer’d Beard and others…
You cleared up the whole divorced from reality situation with Joan. I had recently tried to engage her with pesky facts, but she remains unmoved. I just get the sentiment that guns are so bad and they kill, kill, kill, (as inantimate objects) with little acknowledgement that guns can be used to save the lives of innocents.
The idea that “…she even said it would have been impossible for her sister to be killed with anything BUT a gun” is complete proof that she is irrational. So much for common sense.
I’ve mentioned that starting with the boycott, I choose now to never visit her lame site anymore, I would ask others to also consider this. I’ve argued previously that we should be there to challenge her lies, half-truths, and wacky assertions, but the censorship, banning, super-sensitivity, and other tricks she does, proves that dialog is not really her intent. Good data and the Second Amendment are just irrelevant to her.
By the by — CSGV is playing “gotcha” with the comments on here.
Let’s recap. The gun banners want us to shut up. We, on the other hand, want them to keep talking. I’d actually pay money to put Joan Peterson on a nationally televised debate. Nothing could advance our cause faster and further than her trying to explain why gun control is a good idea.
Since they are reading these comments, Hey, CSGV, where’s my linky love??!! I spent a lot of time trashing Joan and her stupid views on my blog. In fact, the only reason my blog exists is because she moderated comments and irritated me. All you have to do is go to my blog, click on the label “Joan Peterson is ignorant” and you can read all my Joan Peterson posts. You can link my via Twitter and I can get the same 7 hits you managed to drive to Sebastian here. Every little bit helps.
I’ve come to believe that Joan’s site is one of the best PRO-gun sites on the internet, if only because its such a great example of irrationality on her part.
As for Colin Goddard, he didn’t “freeze.” By his own words, he was hiding under a desk for at least 10 MINUTES, before the Cho showed up. He refused, consciously, to defend himself OR leave the target area.
Lockdown? Screw that. What is he, a child?
Former ROTC? Thank God that he dropped that.
With all this discussion about losing a loved one, and being fired up for the cause, I’m a little surprised that no one brought up Suzanna Hupp. She lost her parents in Luby’s Cafeteria, and thus became a concealed-carry advocate. She carried a pistol at the time, but chose to leave it in her vehicle because it was illegal for her to carry it. At one point, she had a clear shot at the gunman, but didn’t have a gun.
Yes, there are advocates who lose a loved one, and then say “We must ban these EVIL devices!” But there are also those who lose a loved one, and then say “I should have been ready!” At a minimum, I would expect that the two types of people, since they are acting on their grief, ought to “cancel out” politically.
At the very least, Joan would never recognize those who advocate for the right to keep and bear arms because they lost a loved one–and that’s a high degree of hypocrisy right there!
@Sean… I am not even getting a registered tick on my blog from CSGV.
@Pat: Let them, they are not gonna refer people for too long after we are done dissecting their propaganda in our blogs.
I’m not really sure what I can add to this but my assent.
Goddard is a coward and a fool.
He is a fool because he thinks that restricting firearms will protect him. WRONG. The best thing we can do is get campus carry allowed.
I saw a comment on CSGV that said- “we should shoot Miguel 3-4 times and see how he likes it.”
LOL- as if!
The only thing they know about guns is that they go BANG BANG and they are in a lot of movies.
I’m sure Miguel isn’t STUPID or COWARDLY enough to start a campaign of foolishness if he gets shot.
I’d like to see those CSGV chumps try to shoot me 3-4 times.
I’ll be ready- A 130 grain projectile traveling at 3000 feet per second will make a BIG hole in their stupid heads:-)