October 14, 2014 8:36 AM

Gun nuts: When you have no argument, cheap personal insults are ALWAYS a good choice

NRA News host Cam Edwards provided a platform for a guest to push a sexist attack against prominent gun safety advocate Shannon Watts in which the guest called Watts a “shrill harridan” and said she “stripped the most basic and threshold abilities of a man” from her husband. On the October 9 edition of the NRA’s radio show Cam & Company, guest and conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter claimed that Watts, who founded gun safety group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, had stripped her husband “of the most basic and threshold abilities of a man; that is to defend his self, his family and his community, by being married to this shrill harridan.” Schlichter was unfavorably comparing Watts to actress Annette Bening’s American Beauty character Carolyn Burnham, provoking Edwards’ laughter.

The time seems to have long since passed when gun nuts could make a reasonable, cogent argument refuting common sense gun control. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and to a gun nut everything looks like a “Liberal gun grabber.” Why attempt persuade and convince when you can howl at the moon about “LIBERAL GUN GRABBERS!!” and how they’re trying to rob us of our inalienable right to carry an AK-47 into a Walmart?

I’m a “Liberal gun grabber,” but I’m also a realist. I understand that guns will always be a part of American culture. As much as I might like to rid society of firearms altogether, Americans will always cling to their guns as if they were a part of their persona. In some cases, they truly are. With that sad fact in mind, what’s left is to keep guns out of the hands of people who have no business carrying them- criminals and the mentally ill leap immediately to mind. Background checks are simple, unobtrusive, and effective means of weeding out those who shouldn’t be allowed to carry firearms. If you believe gun nuts, though, you’d think they were the most invasive, anti-American threat to our freedom and liberty since British forces burned the White House in 1812.

ANYONE advocating for common sense gun control is ipso facto defined by gun nuts as anti-American and deserving only of scorn, derision, and destruction. The problem for gun nuts is that they have no real arguments, no facts they can use to defeat the assertion that effective background checks work. Seldom has this been more evident in the effort to discredit proponents of common sense gun control like Shannon Watts, CEO of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, who’s not looking to take your guns. She just wants our gun policies to be grounded in common sense and concern for safety first as opposed to elevating the rights of gun nuts above any and all other considerations.

Cam Edwards managed to really class up the argument against background checks by introducing misogyny and sexism into the debate. Unable to refute the facts, Edwards and his guest stooped to accusing Watts of “emasculating” her husband. Evidently, the idea of a strong, committed, and independent woman committed to a cause is (to their way of thinking) to be considered anti-male…because men NEED their guns, don’tchaknow?

The truth is that gun nuts have proven themselves incapable of producing a convincing argument to support the contention that their gun “rights” supersede any and all other rights and considerations. Absent facts and a supportable argument, they resort to name calling of the most sexist and offensive sort…because as ANY Conservative, gun-loving American patriot will tell you, facts are for losers and Liberals. E

I can’t imagine that Watts took the insults to heart. It’s simply a matter of considering the source, and understanding that the NRA and the gun nuts they enable have no argument…and they know it. I’d think that being insulted by troglodytes like Edwards and Schlichter would be a badge of honor. If they’re so threatened by Watts that they’d stoop so low, I’d say she’s on the right track.

What Edwards, Schlichter, and their ilk conveniently fail to recognize and acknowledge is that NO ONE in public life is threatening to take their guns. Even those like myself, who would dearly love for that to happen, understand the 2nd Amendment isn’t going away, nor is it like to be updated. No, we’re not going to take your guns from your cold dead fingers, appealing as that option may sometimes seem. What we’re asking for is a COMMON SENSE approach that protects the rights of gun owners and aficionados WHILE ALSO protecting the lives of Americans…who have the right to not see their lives cut short by a bullet.

A rational person might wonder why it is that good people can’t come together and find common ground that protects both rights AND lives? Then again, when all one side cares about are their “rights” to own whatever firepower their hearts desire, I’m not certain there’s common ground to be found…and so sexism and misogyny are what pass for debating points in this discussion.

Stay classy, eh?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on October 14, 2014 8:36 AM.

The best argument for paying teachers more you'll see all day was the previous entry in this blog.

If I believed in a benevolent God, it would look a lot like bacon is the next entry in this blog.

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