Monday, January 7, 2013

Hey, Feinstein, it's all in the data, stupid!


This is something that I will be expanding on in an upcoming post, but this is an excellent primer. On the Coyote Facebook Page I've quoted a lot of stats recently about crime in the US. I have used this same data source (the FBI Unified Crime Reports) for my data.  I completely agree with this guy (and his subliminal insertions) that the pundits (Piers Morgan) and the politicians (Diane Feinstein) are cherry-picking the data they want while ignoring the fact that we are safer, less likely to get robbed, attacked, raped or murdered than at any point in the last 20 years. In fact, one report I read (and I still have to locate the data source) said that our murder rate hasn't been this low since 1928.

So, the quick gist is we ALL need to keep pointing to the data.  When a gun-grabbing liberal tells you that assault rifles are the cause of all of our problems, respond with "Can you explain the logic behind your statement when ALL rifles account for just 2.5% of the murders in the US?"

When they say that hi capacity magazines are the cause of all of our problems, calmly point out that after the previous hi-cap magazine ban ended in 2004, the murder rate has dropped by 15%. How can those two statements - hi cap magazines cause our murder rate to go up, and the murder rate has dropped after hi-cap magazines were once again readily available - co-exist?  They cannot; one of them has to be false, and we have data on our side here.

We're not going to change the minds of people like Diane Feinstein, Her first thought when she gets up in the morning is "how can we limit the freedoms of the people?" and her last thought before going to bed is "how can we consolidate more power into the hands of the government?"  We can, however, sway the people who aren't vested in the debate but are only spoon fed half the story by the media. We do that with education.

Before my wife met me, she had very limited exposure to firearms. Her family doesn't hunt, and after returning from Vietnam her father had seen all he wanted to see regarding guns, so she wasn't raised around them like I was.  She could not have told you the difference between an AR-15 and an M-16. When the media shows B roll footage of fully auto M-16s or M4s being fired, but deceptively talks about the AR-15, it is actively helping distort the dialog, and it's effective at doing so. My wife often says that before she met me she thought that gun control was a GOOD thing based only on what the media says about it. Now, even though she has no interest in owning or shooting a gun herself, she's an ardent supporter of the 2nd Amendment and she was converted not by confrontation, but by my fact-backed positions about gun ownership.

So while we may all agree that the gun-grabbers are insane with their lust for power and control, and that they care not a whit for public safety, before labeling EVERYONE who is anti-gun as a whacko let's try to win over the people who are victims of the media. Keep the facts handy and present them as often as you can. Get people THINKING about this issue rather than REACTING to it.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

PLEASE shut your hypocrisy pie-holes.

Hollywood celebritards are at it again, releasing a PSA asking for Americans to 'ask for a plan' from the government in response to the Newtown shooting. I know that a bunch of these folks don't really buy the shit they're saying, they just do what their agents tell them. "It would boost your profile if you do this PSA" or "You'd look a more compassionate to audiences if you do it," and so on. Since I don't even recognize about half of these idjits, I would say they NEED some profile boosting, but this ain't the way to do it.  If you haven't seen this PSA, take a minute and 23 seconds to watch it:

The ones I did recognize on first watch were Jeremy Renner, Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Jessica Alba, Julianne Moore and Chris Rock - all of whom I know from movies that have in some capacity glamorized gunplay (whether justified or not) so I would beg them, please, for the good of all, so I can in good conscience keep watching your movies, PLEASE shut your hypocrisy pie-holes. When any of you turn down $20 million to be in a movie that uses guns and excessive violence because of your principled stand against gun violence after Newtown, then maybe I'll give two squirts about your opinion. Until then, please just entertain me like the dancing monkeys that you have chosen to be.

I wish there was a video that highlighted the depth of their hypocrisy.  Oh, wait, there is: this video (which came up when I searched for the one above) says it better than I can. Watch it. I'll wait.

Ok, they found clips that I never even knew existed. You know what, here's my offer to these stars: Give it back. Give back EVERY PENNY you made from these movies or TV shows to the families of the tragedies you are so dithered about.  If ALL OF YOU do that, I will give up my guns. But unless you're ready to give up all of YOUR blood money, please pardon me if I ask you to kiss my pucker when you make a hollow but sincere sounding 83 second video designed at assuaging YOUR liberal guilt. You see, unlike you, I've never publicly encouraged anyone to commit wanton acts of violence or been paid to commit pretend murders on screen, or crowed about how great it was to 'kill all the white people in the movie." That my friends, is on you. Work it out with your therapists.

Mean while, in the real world, more than 2100 murders per year (about 23% of all gun-murders in the US) are committed by illegal immigrants who SHOULD NOT BE HERE in the first place (murders by 'rifle', which I assume to include the horrifying 'assault rifle' accounted for 2.5% of murders in 2011, by comparison). How about a plan to fix THAT, you Hollywood hypocrites? We've only been asking for that for a decade now (or more) and it falls on deaf ears.


I'll have more on this in a future post, including flaws in the lawmakers decision process (assuming their goals are to reduce violence).  For now, suffice it to say that securing the borders would do a great many things for the nation, potentially cutting murders by 23% being one of them. Let's get the RNC and the NRA to work that into their narratives and see what happens. Contact the NRA, the NAGR, your representatives and senators today and tell them to seal the borders if they want to have an immediate, significant, meaningful reduction in gun violence.