h/t Instapundit
[AmericanThinker] I don't think I'm alone when I say it's frustrating having the same conversation over and over and over again. I'm frustrated trying to explain the difference between a semi-automatic and a "military-style assault" weapon, parrying asinine retorts of how our Founding Fathers "only had muskets," and being told by strangers what weapons I "don't need." I'm frustrated with citing statistical evidence showing that the vast majority of gun violence in America is the result of suicides and of criminals who have obtained their guns illegally. I'm frustrated with trying to justify my personal choices to people who are completely ignorant about guns and who are completely unwilling to learn.
I'm frustrated because it's an exercise in futility. They return the very next day to push their very same debunked talking points that I've spent the last conversation refuting. Deploying factual evidence works only when dealing with people for whom factual evidence is valued, acknowledged, and conceded. When they simply ignore it and continue to talk over you, there is no benefit in trying to make them see reason. It is like talking to a brick wall.
If reducing gun violence were an honest aim of the Left, leftists would follow the evidence where it leads. But leftists oppose gun ownership not out of any heartfelt reaction to mass shootings (though they routinely go through the necessary public genuflections). They don't care about dead students, dead Walmart shoppers, dead worshipers, dead police, or dead black Americans. They don't care about getting help for the mentally ill. They care about the consolidation of political power into a centralized totalitarian entity, which they arrogantly assume they possess the competence to administer.
|