Not long ago, Banagor asked the following question:
Why do we have to address issues? I'm talking about "issues" the "other side" has.
Take, for instance, the London bombings. You’ve probably all heard of the report about the bombings by now. If you haven’t, listen to that story for a moment and see what you think.
Or how about Iran? Let's see what NPR has to offer:
NPR: Arab Media Reports on Iran-U.S. Relationship
As well as the following:
WAMU: Iran
Or the following on Hamas:
NPR: Experts Question U.S. Policy on Hamas
If you listen to any one of those stories, there is an overriding theme there: "We have to understand the other side".
Well, why do we have to? Why do we have to care? What idiots actually came up with this idea and passed it off as an enlightened way of thinking?
I'd really like to know the answer to that one myself. When he asked that question, I thought of an article I saw not long ago from the daily newspaper at Oklahoma University, titled "Gun problem in U.S. needs compromise." In it, the author, one Sarah Waldrop, said:
We have to come off our respective high horses, stop shouting at each other and start working together if we really want to solve the problem of gun violence in this country.
That means taking the best ideas from each group and toning down the debate a little.
Well, I suppose that's a good idea, in theory...but would anyone care to guess what the "best ideas" are that come from the gun grabbers?
National standardization of gun control laws -- and we all know that if statists like Michael Bloomberg had their way, this would mean New York-style gun laws all across the country. Gun permits, licensing, you name it. They speak of straw purchases from other states. While this is a legitimate thing to bring up, the fact is that the straw purchasers are committing at least two federal felonies -- the straw purchase itself (5 years in a federal prison) and lying about it on the ATF's Form 4473 (10 years in federal prison). So the laws are there, and to the extent they're being broken, it should be patently obvious to all involved, that yet more gun control laws would do little to nothing to change that.
"Nationally mandated lock-and-key approach to gun storage." Yet another futile Nanny State reindeer game that could very well cost lives. We know what this means in practice -- means you can have your guns, but you can't keep them out and loaded, which would mean, if the gun-grabbers even got their way on this measure, if you obey such a moronic law, when the wolf comes knocking at the door, your only prayer is that you can fumble the safe open and the gun loaded -- under an insane amount of stress -- before he breaks the door down and takes your stuff and maybe your life.
So this is what some people wait us to do...listen to and understaaaand the other side. It sounds great, sure, but as Banagor so astutely points out, "the media has transformed the word 'listen' into the word 'agree'." And nowhere is this more true than in the area of gun politics, as the media has made its anti-gun leanings patently obvious, time after time, for longer than I've been alive. Why should we listen to the other side when it's been proven to be spectacularly wrong time after time? Why should we listen to the other side when they have been known to disingenuously manipulate data to support their freedom-restraining, criminal-empowering agenda? Why should we listen to, let alone trust, the other side when they have shown with their rhetoric, time after time, that they don't trust us? Listen to these people? Not hardly. Marganize them and resist them every chance we get? You damn well better believe we will.
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