January 25, 2013 5:04 AM

Gun control: We can't have a reasoned, rational debate with unreasonable, irrational people

….they are absolutely essential to defend human life. They are used to defend our property and our families and our faith and our freedom, and they are absolutely essential to living the way God intended for us to live.

  • Tim Donnelly, CA Republican, arguing that guns are part of God’s Divine Plan

You could call me one of those “He wants to take our guns” Liberals, and you wouldn’t be far from the truth. I believe the 2nd Amendment to be an ancient, outdated concept that no longer even remotely relates to the world we live in today. I recognize, of course, that I’m a minority in this belief, and I know the 2nd Amendment will disappear about the time you pry it from the cold, dead fingers of the gun nuts.

What this reality leaves us is hope for common sense gun control, the desire to create a world in which school massacres like Sandy Hook Elementary School are exceedingly rare. Yes, I understand that there’s no perfect solution, no way to ensure that massacres never happen. As long as there are profoundly mentally ill people…and gun nuts who demand unfettered access to weaponry with no questions asked…there will be senseless, but quite possibly preventable, massacres of children.

We could take steps toward preventing, or at least decreasing the likelihood of, future massacres by working together to get assault weapons off our streets, require uniform and meaningful background checks, and other measures that would make a difference. We could, but there’s one big problem: a large number of rabid gun owners who cling to their guns and their paranoid fantasy that the government is bent on disarming them. Trust me, I’d love to see that happen, but I know it’s not going to, and so I choose to live in the land of the possible. Would that the gun nuts could see their way clear to do the same…because the constant drumbeat emanating from the paranoid conspiracy theorists in the NRA and groups like Gun Owners of America is nothing but sheer and utter nonsense.

[I]f you want to know why getting meaningful measures to curb gun violence through Congress will be so arduous, just have a listen to Erich Pratt, director of communications for Gun Owners of America. His interview on Andrea Mitchell’s eponymous MSNBC show this afternoon was a revealing look at the fevered thinking within the gun-rights movement.

Pratt told Mitchell that he didn’t support anything the president proposed. “We shouldn’t be registering [gun owners] like sex offenders, like they are in New York,” he said referring to that state’s tough new assault weapons ban. “We shouldn’t be in any way be impeding them if they have not committed a crime.”

Pratt tried to make the case that Obama was pursuing a worthless cause by citing a Gallup poll that didn’t list gun control as a top problem facing the country. For the record, “Guns/Gun control” came in seventh. But when Mitchell asked Pratt whether he thought the National Rifle Association went “over the line” in targeting the president’s children in a web ad released today, Pratt said, “Based on this poll, he should have been apologizing to those children for breaking their piggy banks to pay off the national debt.

And this is the level of honest, open debate we seem to be condemned to have with those who believe the 2nd Amendment is immutable, unalterable, and sacrosanct. No compromise, no retreat, no limits of guns in any shape, manner, or form will be entertained, much less discussed. How do you negotiate with someone pointing a gun with six loaded chambers at their head and fully willing and able to pull the trigger?

The gun lobby could take a seat at the table and get out ahead of things by openly and honestly discussing what might be done to protect our children. The pre-1977 NRA (before the loons took over) would have be willing to negotiate a compromise that protected the innocent AND the rights of gun owners. That was then; now the NRA is run by loony-tune paranoid conspiracy theorists so politically tone-deaf that they would sooner commit seppuku that negotiate with gun control advocates.

It would be nice to think that we could all sit down and talk like adults working together for the common good. It would be nice, but groups like the NRA and Gun Owners of America will scream “TYRANNY!!” at the slightest mention of gun control.

This is what happens when you value guns and the gun industry over human life.

WE DESERVE BETTER…and getting it may involve destroying the NRA, Gun Owners of America, and groups like it. If they won’t be reasonable and rational, then those of us trying to make our world a safer place should do everything within our power and ability to marginalize, devalue, and render the gun nuts irrelevant. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but how can you have a rational discussion with irrational people? The only option you have left is to roll them and do what needs to be done. Sadly, that appears to be the option available to us.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 25, 2013 5:04 AM.

Today's shining example of the benefits of a Texas publik skool edumication was the previous entry in this blog.

Handy debating tips for gun nuts is the next entry in this blog.

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