Posted on 01/25/2010 3:49:33 AM PST by marktwain
Walking the talk of valuing diversity can lead to some unusual places.
Brian, a regular at monthly meetings of a diversity coalition in Overland Park, talked me out of going to church one Sunday in June and into riding with him to a gun show at the KCI Expo Center in the Northland. I grew up with guns, and this place was very familiar to me.
Dad still has the six-shooters his father carried every day to work as a railroad brakeman, beginning in the late 1800s. I shot guns when I was a Boy Scout. As an adult, I have fired friends handguns, shotguns and rifles, including flintlock weapons, requiring that we load steel balls and powder.
But I never warmed up to weaponry, though guns can be fun for target practice, hunting and showing off to friends.
They make some people feel secure, thinking guns offer protection. But my experience also has been that guns get used to intimidate, threaten, injure and kill people.
I saw that growing up in inner-city St. Louis. Ive seen it in neighborhoods where Ive lived in Kansas City and witnessed a lifetime of deaths from firearms as a journalist.
I vividly remember covering a story more than 30 years ago and seeing one gunshot victim bundled in a blanket on a more than 90-degree summer day saying how cold he was as he was wheeled from his home into an ambulance and whisked to a hospital where he died. Heat and life bled out of him all caused by a gun.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.kansascity.com ...
He doesn't try to keep me from owning one, and I won't force him to own one.
HUH???? STEEL balls???
Either the author wasn't paying attention, or he's lying through his rotten teeth.
I have noticed that many liberals seem to be bigots and have zero understanding of the cause and effect thingy.
No ... it's not just "feeling" better, and it's not just scare-quoted illusion of protection ... the protection is quite real, evidenced by a large number of dead and wounded criminals, and thwarted crimes. Dude is definitely not paying attention.
Ditto.
This guy is an idiot.
Is there anything worthwhile in the rest of the piece? The author's command of facts and logic is clearly deficient.
“But my experience also has been that guns get used to intimidate, threaten, injure and kill people.”
So do cars.
This fool is also a racist. Look at the crime stats to see which race is misusing firearms.
Heat and life bled out of him all caused by a gun.
He is wrong, the man’s death was caused by a criminal.
Delusional. Probably best that he be kept from gun ownership.
I stopped reading right about here. This is like frontloading a conversation about Obama with, "I have several black friends, but..."
Well they’tr part of the ellielite.
YOU CAN’T TAKE A PASS ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT ANY MORE THAN YOU CAN TAKE A PASS ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT... IS THIS AUTHOR SOME GAY COMMIE?
LLS
Break into my home and I’ll show you 240 gr of .45 caliber protection right in the middle of your forehead and two in your chest.
LLS
Wow, you’re so cool.
Just a typical Louis DooGood article. As the KC Red Star’s affirmative action editorialist, he is immune to charges of racism and incompetence.
Yep. He’s look for another pay cut.
http://cancelthebee.blogspot.com/2009/03/kansas-city-star-demotes-controversial.html
That's when the big flashing neon "IDIOT" light went off.
An effective way to greet such fools is to suggest that their “tangible” arguments, which seldom are, are just a cover for their having a phobic fear of loud, unexpected noises.
It sounds strange until you think about it, but there are lots of people that have a deep seated, even instinctual phobia of loud and unexpected noises. Some even call it one of the two “natural” phobias, the fear of falling being the other one.
http://www.phobiagone.com/phobias/loud_noises.php
Typical things that can trigger fears & phobias of loud noises.
- Balloons - fear of them popping or making a loud noise.
- Party poppers.
- Fireworks.
- Pyrotechnics used in theater productions, concerts etc.
- Loud noises, cars back firing, heavy things being dropped.
- Thunder and lightning.
And of course, gunfire. More importantly, the *anticipation* of gunfire.
There’s a joke about an amateur golfer who is tricked into playing a game for money with a semi-pro. So the amateur offers to trade several handicap points for a “three bag” handicap. Confident of his skills, the semi-pro agrees, though he doesn’t know what that means. But just before he tees off on the first hole, the amateur pops a paper bag right behind him, and he badly slices.
Then the amateur says, “That’s one bag.” For the rest of the game, the semi-pro can’t hit a ball to save his life, out of the anticipation of another paper bag being popped.
In the real world, people with loud and unexpected noise phobias are pretty miserable. Claustrophobics can avoid confined spaces and Coulrophobics can avoid clowns. But loud and unexpected noises can be anywhere.
For them, guns must be terrifying when they see them, because to them they are first and foremost “noisemakers”. Which to them must be like someone with a deep phobia of snakes seeing someone enter the room with a pet snake about their shoulders.
Their heart starts to pound, they break out in a cold sweat, they want to run away, to flee in terror. And most of all, they cannot reason their fear away. It has control over them.
It is no surprise they want to ban guns. So the big question is what percentage of the gun control movement has people for whom this is the primary motivation?
But since this is likely the case, whenever some anti-gun advocate spouts off, the question has to be raised: Do you want to ban guns, or do you want to ban loud and unexpected noises?
Thank you for that info, as I haven’t followed Looee much since moving from the KC area. I am surprised; I didn’t think they would ever demote him. My good news for the day. He must hate having to work for a white woman; probably a good thing he doesn’t own a gun.
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