A mildly positive column in the NYTimes

G

Glenn E. Meyer

New member
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/opinion/first-time-at-a-gun-show.html

Mr. Blow is usually quite the antigun person. In this article, he recounts going to the gun show in San Antonio (which I didn't - sigh). He found that the people there were not an entire set of nuts, antigun proponents calling them nuts is not productive and he seems to see the value of armed self-defense.

This is not a perfect conversion but it's a good thing to see. Let's avoid rants. We should reward progress on the issue.
 
I had with my brother — full of mutual respect, adults disagreeing but not attempting to demonize, honestly searching for solutions.

The gun lobby poisons these conversations.
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Glen, with all due respect, I find this article to be a veiled shot at the NRA, and making it seem everyone (like his brother) is for universal background checks, smart guns, etc. He even throws out some unsubstantiated statistics and uses "his brother" to substantiate them by claiming they both agreed the number was too much.

No, it's not the the NRA that poisons the discussions. I am the NRA. Many people here are the NRA, i.e. "gun lobby". It's the anti-gun propaganda propagated by Mr. Blow and many other antis. Needless to say, I didn't like the "soft-sell" anti-gun rhetoric of the article.

Well, at least he attended a gun show with his brother - that's more than I can say about a lot of antis.
 
Take a look at the comments sent in by readers, especially the ones endorsed by the NY Times.

For all the talk about insane gun nuts are like, the gun haters with a keyboard are all we need to have driving national policy.

It was refreshing, however, to see that Mr. Blow admitted at the end of his article that previously he did not know what he was talking about when he wrote his previous antigun columns, and apologized for his demagoguery.

He didn't do that.
 
Like I said - being absolutist isn't a solution to getting the population distribution on gun issues to shift towards the RKBA.

New York has draconian laws - if folks there who are totally antigun, starting moving to realizing the self-defense position, that's progress. Maybe pieces like this could shift NY a touch. That would benefit that area, even if it's not pure constitutional carry.

I did say, it wasn't perfect. He still doesn't like the NRA.

But I prefer his column to one that says:

The NRA stinks
All gun owners are nuts
Self-defense is not legitimate.

That's the point.
 
But, I must also say that, to a lesser degree, some proponents of better regulations also do damage by painting with too broad a brush and labeling the millions of gun hunters, collectors and people simply seeking to provide an extra layer of protections for their families — people like my brother and his gun show buddies — as deranged and deficient. Most are not. Many are simply enthusiasts like my brother and the elderly man who climbed out of an S.U.V. as we were about to leave.
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Seems like he painted both side's lobbyist as problematic, even if he was unwilling to single out an organization instead of "some proponents."
 
Interesting common ground.

Background Checks: Surely his brother agreed that background checks dhould be done as they are done now......but wait! We have recently determined that there are hundreds of criminal and mentally ill databases not connected.....so really this is just a way to trap legal gun buyers in a bearaucracy that in snd of itself reduces buyers. So, in the sense that i think background checks are a good idea, i also think they need to be of greater value to offset the bearaucracy. That cost money and therefore, the disarmers avoid it.

Suicides: So, what should we do? Some say we need a 3 - 7 day wait. What will keep the suiciders from crossing the yellow line on the highway or suicide by cop or jumping off an overpass? Yes, suicide needs addressed. Legal gun sales, not so much.

Smart Guns: Why is this an issue? Make one and sell it, if you want choice. Oh wait, NOBODY buys gun locks so they mandate them as a freebie. NOBODY will buy a smart gun either. Frankly, nobody wants a gun in hand that might ever not fire when the trigger is pulled. The gun ring? Good idea, All 3 they sold were loved, i guess. So you have yo mandate them....no thanks.

Gun owners arent nuts: Yea. I would guess we aren't. Frankly, i prefer calling gun owners by their original name.....Americans...cause, you see, Americans live by the constitution, including the 2nd amendment.
 
I took a look at the article and kind of agreed with you. Then, on that page, I found a link to another of their articles on December 12, 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/o...edCenter&action=click&src=recg&pgtype=article

A responsible Congress would restore the assault weapons ban and enact limits on gross ammunition clips that let shooters spray crowds of victims with up to 100-round bursts.
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Why not require a gun owner to have liability insurance
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demand mandates and penalties to keep guns unloaded and locked up at home.
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selling citizens on the fantasy of self-defense in public places.
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with at least 29 mass shootings since 2007 found to involve concealed-carry licensees.
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The article also promotes 'smart guns', universal background checks, allowing the CDC to research 'gun violence' and repealing the law that prevents gun manufactures to be sued in cases like Newton.
 
Dale said:
I took a look at the article and kind of agreed with you. Then, on that page, I found a link to another of their articles on December 12, 2015.
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It's still the NYT. Do you wonder if he got grief from an editor who wanted a stronger and clearer anti-gun message?

Blow said:
I thought of how productive it would be if more people with discordant views on gun regulations could have as civil a discussion as I had with my brother — full of mutual respect, adults disagreeing but not attempting to demonize, honestly searching for solutions.

The gun lobby poisons these conversations. It pumps out and promotes a never-ending stream of worst-case scenarios until it builds a level of fear and paranoia that only profits gun makers and grinds all progress to a halt.
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Paranoia is a fear without a reasonable basis. There is very little of the sort of respect for which Blow calls in calling those with whom he disagrees a poisonous lobby that feeds paranoia.

While slightly moderated in tone, Mr. Blow's article does not display greater self-awareness than one reasonably expects from the NYT.
 
From Skans & the article:

"I had with my brother — full of mutual respect, adults disagreeing but not attempting to demonize, honestly searching for solutions.

The gun lobby poisons these conversations. "

The same thing jumped out at me too. And I couldn't agree with Skans more.
OK, yeah, he went to a gun show, and wrote a softened up article about enthusiasts, so I can give him a little credit for that.

But really, I feel the anti's poison the conversation, and the gun lobby's reaction is the response to the over-reach, misinformation and outright lies perpetrated by the anti's.
 
While the antis have reached anoth crescendo of fevered pitch, the number of pro-gun people are growing.
I don't mean to be sexist, but the number of female gun rights supporters has increased in my view.
 
Nathan said:
Suicides: So, what should we do? Some say we need a 3 - 7 day wait. What will keep the suiciders from crossing the yellow line on the highway or suicide by cop or jumping off an overpass? Yes, suicide needs addressed. Legal gun sales, not so much.
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We will never EVER be able to stop suicides, and making guns more difficult to obtain won't make even a slight down tick on the graph. People who want to kill themselves will find a way.

Many years ago, I worked with a guy who had depression issues, and who had previously attempted suicide. Our office manager lived not far from him and knew him personally as well as professionally (no, not like in a relationship -- just friends). At one point she became concerned about him, and talked him into checking into the local teaching hospital's psych ward for a three-day evaluation. They determined he was okay and sent him home. Once he got home, he fired up his pickup truck, drove down the road a quarter of a mile, and parked across the railroad tracks where the Amtrak came through. The spot he picked was where the track went through a narrow cut in high ledges, so the train driver couldn't have seen the truck in time to stop -- and didn't.

More recently, my adopted daughter has made six attempts at suicide in five months. Her method of choice has been to OD on her prescription psych meds. She has been living with her birth mother since my wife died, and the birth mother took control of the meds ... so the last attempt she just swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin. That attempt very nearly succeeded, and she did permanent damage to a couple of internal organs.

They don't need guns.
 
In fact, there would be no "gun lobby" if it weren't for the antis constantly trying to take our 2nd Amendment rights away and deny our access to firearms. If there were no Antis, the NRA would be nothing more than an organization like USTA is for tennis enthusiasts.
 
Mr. Meyer said in his original post, "This is not a perfect conversion but it's a good thing to see".

Mr. Blow does seem to have softened if only a little bit on his typical stance.

Though all points made have validity, I still have to agree with Mr. Meyer.
 
If I read between the lines, I can see someone pretending to move to the middle. Note this quote:

My brother’s agreement on this point [universal background checks] was a reasonable concession by a reasonable man.
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I submit that it's only being called "reasonable" because the brother agrees with him. We need to be wary.

I have real trouble trusting the NYT editorial board when they run front-page editorials on gun control after an incident none of the main gun-control proposals would have stopped.
 
A perfect example of damning with faint praise.

His idea of a reasonable discourse is to put words in his brother's mouth and quietly putting forth his ideas without ever mentioning what his brother's response was.
 
While it's nice to see gun owners less-than-thoroughly bashed, I'm with Tom. This is not about the author moving to the middle.
Tom Servo said:
If I read between the lines, I can see someone pretending to move to the middle. Note this quote:
Mr. Blow said:
My brother’s agreement on this point [universal background checks] was a reasonable concession by a reasonable man.
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I submit that it's only being called "reasonable" because the brother agrees with him. We need to be wary.
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This article is about convincing The Astute Readership that victory over The Heathens is still possible, even though it's cloaked in other guise.
My brother and I could both agree that those numbers were too high; we simply disagreed on how best to address it.
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One area of agreement was to stop the opposition to smart guns
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He also didn’t oppose universal background checks.
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Notice that, at no point in the article does the author change his position on anything. Either his brother comes around to his way of thinking, or "they agree" on something. The author never changes his mind. On anything. The closest he comes to conceding anything to "gun folk" is:
But, I must also say that, to a lesser degree, some proponents of better regulations also do damage by painting with too broad a brush and labeling the millions of gun hunters, collectors and people simply seeking to provide an extra layer of protections for their families — people like my brother and his gun show buddies — as deranged and deficient. Most are not. Many are simply enthusiasts like my brother and the elderly man who climbed out of an S.U.V. as we were about to leave.
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So, we're not all "deranged and deficient?" Gee, thanks. :rolleyes:

Ok, I guess it's a good thing that we're not all deranged and deficient, but the author has to assure The Astute Readership that he is "one of them:"
Overall, the word that kept popping into my head was how “pedestrian” it all seemed, . . . .
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He went to a gun show. How quaint.
 
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