Gabby Giffords Says UBCs in Oregon Not Enough - More Gun Control Needed

Aguila Blanca said:
Have any of you watched a recent video of Gabby Giffords speaking? I have. She has made remarkable progress for someone who was shot in the brain, but she can barely string together enough words to form a sentence. IMHO, anything she said (or, more likely, gave out as a press release) was written by her traitorous husband, the former Navy officer who swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He has now become one of the enemies of the Constitution, and the scurrilous skunk shamelessly uses his wife as the front person because of the sympathy factor.
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I couldn't agree more. No disrespect to her—what she went through and is living with is horrible—but I would want to see results of problem solving & logic & executive function tests before I took seriously anything she says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_kTv2t2hlY#t=6m27s

Even if she is capable of complex reasoning necessary to wade through an issue like gun control, there's no evidence of it. Her media appearances consist of media-friendly propagandized rhetorical quips now.

The media have a love affair with anyone—even brain-damaged, cognitively-impaired individuals—who hit certain talking points. If they could get a mannequin to parrot their propaganda, the news hosts would have guest mannequins on screen 24/7 reciting the propaganda. Normally, standards of decorum (cultural respect for logic & rationality, even if the media don't respect those things) would prohibit putting cognitively impaired people on the news to talk about or promote issues not relating to brain damage, but an exception is being made because she allows the media to capitalize on public sympathy for the tragedy she's suffered.

Nobody ever engages her rationally on the issues, which suggests to me she isn't capable of it. It's always "You've made so much progress! We're so happy you can speak [almost, without prompting?] in complete sentences!" No problems so far. Then it's, "Tell the country where it's going wrong on the gun issue!" And the implied subtext: "Anyone who doesn't listen to your fact-free proclamations, and agree with them, is a sub-human who doesn't respect what you've gone through!"
 
Thank you, Tyme.

Yes, that pretty well sums it up. My previous post was not intended to show any disrespect for Ms. Giffords, and I don't think it did. That said, the uncomfortable truth is that she IS brain-damaged. We don't know how much reasoning ability is still there -- many years ago my grandmother suffered a serious stroke that left her unable to talk. We know she could think, and reason, but she had complete aphasia, which is the inability to connect words with thoughts. She couldn't speak, and it was painfully obvious how frustrating that was for her. So I do indeed have a lot of sympathy for Ms. Giffords.

That doesn't mean I have to pretend that she isn't being used by the anti-gun crowd and her husband. I have watched videos of Ms. Giffords at recent events. Whatever level of cognitive reasoning she may or may not be capable of, she is NOT capable of complex speech. Watching her give a "speech" is, for me (because of my grandmother) painful. Basically, she's being used as a prop for the antis.

I'm sorry, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I don't fault her -- I fault her husband for allowing (and, it seems) encouraging her to be used so shamelessly.
 
She may be able to do complex reasoning and ethical calculation. I don't know. But if she can't debate and discuss her anti-gun ideas, why should it matter whether her reasoning is intact? She shouldn't be given a microphone either way if she can't defend her statements.

Every time she makes an appearance on the news, it's an attempt to refresh anti-gun motivations in the audience by playing on sympathy for her suffering. I'll go beyond calling it "painful" and "shameless", though it is both of those things. What her husband and the media are doing is sick, and a perversion of principles every thinking person should value. They know criticism of her unsupported statements will be muted because of the tragedy she represents, so they get a free pass to say nearly anything they want, through her.
 
I feel sympathy for her.

But I feel that she is being used as a pawn.

If my spouse was in that situation, I'd respect her wishes if I felt she had understanding of what she was doing. But watching Gabby, I can't say that that is the case. But I definitely am supportive of her opinion, whatever it may be, even if I didn't agree.
I'm not sure what her opinion is.
 
If you pay attention to that video in tyme's link, it becomes obvious that Ms. Giffords is basically incapable of initiating speech. Pay close attention, and you'll see that she speaks pretty much when spoken to, and her answers lock in on and repeat a couple of words used by the person to whom she's speaking. It's like a child who is just learning to speak, and -- in fact -- that's exactly what's going on. That one sequence where she's at a podium and actually strings a few sentences together is so awkward that she has to have been either reading from a teleprompter, or reciting from rote memory.

Don't blame her -- blame Mark Kelly. And don't be fooled by his "We respect the Second Amendment" talk. He doesn't respect it. He just knows he can't come right out and say "Nobody should be allowed to own guns except me and Gabby."
 
IMHO there are two predominant drivers behind the politicization of Gabby Giffords.

The first is the Left's fixation with the concept that it is the responsibility of the State to provide for the security of it's citizens.

The Left rejects the idea that each individual is primarily responsible for their own physical security, with the State functioning only to police society at large. Once any personal responsibility has been eliminated, Gabby Giffords serves as a useful tool to illustrate the consequences when the State "fails to protect it's citizens".

The second is the Left's endless capacity to engage in magical thinking.

Wouldn't the world be wonderful if... "No Child Were Left Behind?"; "Families of Illegal Immigrants were not separated by convicted members being Deported?"; "Healthcare and College Educations were Free for All?"; etc.

Among these Progressive shibboleths is the enduring notion that if guns were magically disappeared from the US, all gun crime would end. "American society would be a fairer, safer, and more enlightened society if all guns were banned."

The simple observation that it has been completely illegal to own, import, purchase, sell, possess, carry concealed, or otherwise traffic in Heroin for more than 40 years, yet we again face an epidemic of Heroin use in major US cities, fails to persuade Progressives of the futility of this belief.

If Heroin can be imported in sufficient quantities to supply all US heroin users, it is a reasonable conclusion that guns could similarly be imported. Gun crime would no more disappear than Heroin use.

Gabby Giffords serves to obfuscate simple facts such as these. Reason cannot share the stage with Powerful Emotion. Powerful Emotion, because it is far more dramatic, wins every time. Gabby Giffords' presence dramatically illustrates the damage guns are capable of, escalating the Emotions of the Left and obscuring rational objections, hard data, and responsible reasoning behind a smokescreen of Drama.

Giffords is being trotted out in front of crowds precisely because she serves as a useful tool. It is pathetic.
 
Being shot has been known to color one's opinions about being shot.
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Being a victim has also been known to color one's opinion of about self defense capabilities.

I feel for Giffords, but at the same time feel angry at the way she is being used as a visual prop by her husband and anti-gun political hacks. I'm not an expert, but I too wonder about her cognitive capabilities, and whether she really understands what she is doing, or whether she is a trained seal being paraded about for sympathy because they didn't have a disfigured child handy.

One thing to always remember is that while we try to make arguments with logic and reason, our opposition capitalizes on knee jerk, emotional reactions to cloud rational judgment. Many of them were almost giddy when a bunch of children will killed at Sandyhook, and attempted to harness the emotion while it was fresh and the grieving were still irrational.
 
Delayed replay.
Jim Brady was not anti-gun until Sarah and Her Friends had time to harangue a man in a wheelchair into becoming the poster boy for that iteration of gun control rhetoric.
 
Being a victim has also been known to color one's opinion of about self defense capabilities.
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Oh absolutely. There is an old saying (usually told as a joke) that "the most staunch law & order conservative is a liberal who has been mugged."

And, it is often true. There is no zealot like the newly converted.

On either side of the issue.

So, they trot out the wounded, the crippled, they figuratively dance in the blood of murdered children, calling for gun bans, restrictions, all sorts of safety requirements, background checks, permits, "safe storage", and every other idea that is the "Empress of the Hour" in their think tanks.

Theses days they say "Gun Violence" as if it were somehow a real thing. Gun violence is no more a real thing than automobile intoxication.

What kind of mental imbalance allows one to accept one truth and deny another??? Do the mental health professionals have a word for that???

They can accept the truth that harm caused by drunk driving is not the fault of the car, it is the fault of the driver. But they do not accept the truth that harm caused with a gun is not the fault of the person pulling the trigger!!

Perhaps it is because they cannot get on their soapbox and call for tougher laws against murder???
 
Let's play “spot the pattern”:

Obama crying:
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Children and parents as props:
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More children and families as props, plus Gabby Giffords:
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If you said, "playing on emotion", you win!
 
Kind of wonder if at times the medical profession hasn't lost some of its good sense.
Just because it can be done doesn't always make it a good idea.
Saving brain damaged people from dying, for example, no matter how charitable it might sound.
It doesn't appear to have benefited poor Gabby - or us.
I certainly hope not to outlive my brain.
(I heard that)!
 
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