Posted on 03/09/2018 8:56:40 AM PST by MarvinStinson
A pair of left-leaning reporters complained in an op-ed and on social media that gun-rights activists are wrong to demand that they learn gun terminology before opining on gun policy.
Writing for the Washington Post this week, journalist Adam Weinstein complained that "The NRA and its allies use jargon to bully gun-control supporters."
"While debating the merits of various gun-control proposals, Second Amendment enthusiasts often diminish, or outright dismiss their views if they use imprecise firearms terminology," Weinstein wrote.
"Perhaps someone tweets about ‘assault-style' weapons, only to be told that there's no such thing," he continued. "Maybe they're reprimanded that an AR-15 is neither an assault rifle nor ‘high-powered.' Or they say something about ‘machine guns' when they really mean semiautomatic rifles."
Wesintein coined this phenomenon "gunsplaining" and complained that it is "always done in bad faith."
"Like mansplaining, it's less about adding to the discourse than smothering it," he added.
Vox reporter Zack Beauchamp agreed, arguing on Twitter that there is not a need for gun-control proponents to have knowledge of the terminology.
Zack Beauchamp
Saying you need to understand gun terminology to have opinions on gun policy is the equivalent of saying you need to understand the biology of a heroin overdose to have an opinion on the drug war
Beauchamp's tweet was promptly "ratioed," with journalists and activists on the other side of the issue expressing their disagreement.
Jay Caruso
It’s not just terminology. When people say things like, “The AR-15 can fire 700 rounds a minute” or say handguns “are too slow” to stop a school shooter, they speak from a position of total ignorance. Why should we listen to them?
Noah Rothman
This analogy aside, we should always demand intellectual rigor and specificity from folks commenting with any authority on public affairs. And we do.
Stephen Miller
Isn’t it your job to explain things?
It’s not what you said... it’s how you said it... where have I heard that before?
“...they speak from a position of total ignorance...”
Can be said of virtually everything that comes out of the Left’s mouths.
How dare they interfere with the lyingrom the Left!
Let’s say it one time really slow so everyone can understand... you are not going to disarm me because a bunch of democrats and looneys can’t play nice with their guns.
I agree. After all, why would a Leftist actually want to know about the things they talk/write about?
But call a dude in a dress a guy and they go batsh*t crazy about terminology...?
“Lying from”
Lyingrom doesn’t set off auto spellcheck
^^^^^^^...yep.....this
Assault rifle has a definition. Capable of full auto fire.
They are tightly regulated and expensive. Not a problem.
Scary looking guns is the more accurate term for what they want to ban right now.
Eventually they want to ban all guns.
My experience is do NOT correct a gun grabber on anything. They’ll use the new knowledge you give them to fine-tune their desire to cause you and your family harm.
They will take this new information and make sure it finds it’s way into law.
Look at much of America’s local and state gun laws. Look at CT as a prime example. They know so little about guns that it’s full of holes. Those holes equal what remains of the Nutmegger’s freedom.
CT has a law that bans all semi auto automatic counterparts of full auto guns. So if a gun even looks like it’s full-auto counterpart, it’s banned. That’s the Glock pistol. CT has defacto banned the Glock pistol. No one knows it, no one enforces it because they don’t understand their mistake.
If you point out their mistake as “See ? What you want is idiotic” they will only make sure that instead of learning a lesson, they arrest and confiscate all Glocks.
They aren’t about reason. They aren’t about safety. They are about disarming you to usher in laws and practices that you don’t like. Like being physically held-down to recieve mandated vaccines and treatments. Like being pulled out of your car, having it towed and making you walk - or worse.
Your umbrella looks like a gun ? Confiscated. All your property. Confiscated. For whatever reason. It’s already happened in liberal states (MA and CA come to mind easily) so it’s only a short matter of time before my seemingly ridiculous post becomes documented fact.
What do you expect from people that can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman?
They’re complaining that they are idiots?
No. It is the equivalent of saying you need to at the least understand that heroin and marijuana come from different plants when arguing you should ban one type of plant and not the other in order to stop injection overdoses.
What could possibly go wrong if they passed more gun laws without understanding anything about guns?
Doesn't the NRA understand that the left-wing education system doesn't prepare the idiots to actually consider learning something to be an asset?
Dear Adam Weinstein,
You have your choice. We can either consider you as a journalist or a leftist propagandist. You choose.
If you are a journalist, you verse yourself in the facts fo the issues being reported. Your fairly present all sides to the reader. You provide informed analysis without taking sides. You leave the public stage where the reader has no ability to tell your political alignment.
Or, if you wish to be a leftist propagandist, you just do what you’ve been doing.
I hope you catch on as I imagine you need a job bad.
KC Burke
F these whorespondents. They don’t control dialog.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.