How do you combat anti-gun argument fatigue??

How do you combat anti-gun argument fatigue??
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Don't fight battles you can't win. It is a waste of time and effort to try to convince many people. It is those undecided folks that have to be won over.

The subject came up today at lunch. Three ladies who are very much neutral, and have virtually no knowledge of firearms asked my opinion. I took the opportunity to explain facts about several questions.

One was curious that her daughters boyfriend had "built" his AR. She was under the impression that it was as simple as ordering all the parts and assembling a rifle.

They were also quite surprised when I explained that a 150 year old SXS shotgun loaded with #1 buck and a few reloads would have resulted in the same death toll, maybe more.
 
I no longer use Facebook and that was the only (anti) social media I have ever used, other than online forums. The only forums I've belonged to were on guns or cars. Most of those banned all political discourse.

I don't usually converse with Leftists on guns and the last time I did was in a doctor's office lobby and the lady (loose term for her) went bonkers, started yelling and using insults, and demanded I be removed. I stayed calm and had the backing of the clerk who carries a gun herself and hunts, and who heard part of Leftist's meltdown. *Every employee there hunts, has a CCW, and carries their guns to the office.

I always stay calm as I learned in high school debate that the first person to get angry is the first to lose the ability to think and will usually lose the debate. Facts work and since I've followed this topic since 1994 I am pretty well versed in the facts---legal, historical, statistical, and the ways guns work as I own a couple myself and have been shooting most of my life.

I enjoy the youtube comment section but today I had my life threatened there by a guy who strangely, threatened to shoot me while maintaining that no one should own guns. (The Left is a strange bird). Him I almost reported to the FBI but given they didn't do much when they actually had a guy's name I didn't expect much here. Google, to my shock, did delete his comments along with the entire thread. *I had reported his threat to Youtube.

I cannot recall many college debates on gun control but I recall one Indian fellow that said "I understand your position now and I agree with you." We had had a calm discussion in the dorm room.
 
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Take a noob shooting. Bring the 22LRs, show them a good time. You'll have a
shooter for life. Arguing with antis is shouting at the rain.
 
I'm a liberal with guns. I have several handguns, revolvers and semi-auto's, and a few rifles. I've had a many more in the past but I've downsized my collection.

I'm not looking for an argument here, just want solutions to stopping these endless, senseless mass shootings.

On both sides of this issue there are extreme positions, going from more guns to no guns. Let's be reasonable and find a middle ground.

Myself and others would like to hear real solutions from the conservative point of view of how to get us out worsening situation. Please post some suggestions for solutions to stop these mass shootings.
 
More guns "is an extreme position?"

What's a "reasonable position?" Harsh language? :p

Mass shooters are cowards by nature, they commit suicide or surrender the moment police show up. They do not target gun shows, gun stores, or police stations. No terrorists attacked Marine recruiting stations after armed citizens began doing armed security. You won't get within 100 feet of the private schools politicians send their kids without running into former Navy SEALS with their guns.

It's silly to think a teacher can carry concealed or carry openly off campus but suddenly becomes too dangerous to have that same right on campus. That is a selective hoplophobia that is getting people killed. The Left needs it though in order to advance their control agenda.

Today, a man threatened to kill me on social media, why? I disagreed with his demand to ban guns. The man who thinks guns should be illegal offered to use one to kill someone. If that doesn't show what his real goal is, nothing will (reported him to youtube and his threat was removed...I almost reported him to the FBI but they don't have a great track record on doing anything).

Another idea would be to recruit more reserve police officers. I actually sent that idea to Trump himself last weekend. In case no one knows, a reserve officer is like a volunteer fire fighter, trained by academy but doing police work for free. I entered such a program once in a large city but ended up moving away before getting very far along. Post a few volunteers in each school, that would avoid the "gun free zone" thing as police are exempt. Fund their training via the federal govt if needed. *If my parents weren't so bad off, I'd pay for my own academy training and do it myself.

The real solutions are harder though. Keep parents married. Make parents discipline their kids. Bring back the bible into schools. Religion is a proven regulator of behavior. Stop doping kids up to calm them down. Encourage sports participation.....strong bodies make for confident minds. Encourage the strong kids to protect the weak outcasts....make fighting in school a normal thing (it is normal) and stop punishing the victims of bullies for fighting back.

Guns were much more common and easier to get years back and there were no mass shootings. That in itself is proof guns are not the issue.
 
@simonz

The real problem is that the actual solutions will not come easy. No amount of legislation, be it pro or anti gun will solve the real problems plaguing the nation at this time. We are facing a multi-generation illness that has been festering for a very long time, and it will likely take just as many generations if not more to fix them.

What we have here are too many kids being raised in broken homes, impoverished, and left to the wilds where they more often than not fall victim to or become a part of the criminal element of the world. We have a system where kids are being drugged in order to suppress their emotions so that they’ll “behave and listen” like perfect little drones while in school. A generation of children (not all mind you) who were raised to believe that the world is owed to them and that they are special, and deserve everything and they deserve it right now. We have a generation where sex, drugs and violence is glorified. We have a society that tragically has lost the appreciation for the sanctity of life, and a generation of young men and women who have become so intolerant of opposing views that they will riot and destroy entire city blocks and/or obstruct traffic simply because someone has an opposing view.

There are so many more things that I can list, but I’d be here all night and still likely would never be able to list all the issues. All of these problems compound on top of each other, and no one thing will fix everything in one fell swoop. Banning firearms will not solve the real issues that plague society.

That being society itself is sick, so very, very sick. If we were to start somewhere, I would start looking at all the laws we currently have in the books and start by trimming down. Try and figure out, starting at the state level, what can and cannot be reasonably enforced with the current financing and manpower available to them. Look at historical data and try to determine if any real impact has been made to combat the criminal element of the population. If it has had little to no affect, then the law needs to go away or be reworked until it can somehow provide a more meaningful impact for what they are trying to accomplish. Next, actually follow through and enforce those laws.

These are complex issues which will require equally if not more complex solutions. However, there are so many out there that do not want to hear them. They want something right now, they don’t care what it is, and it doesn’t matter who it might burden, so long as we “do something” we can they say we did something and feel good temporarily for doing a thing. Even if that thing does absolutely squat to stop the next massacre and trust me, it will happen again sadly.

Evil people do not follow laws created to govern the masses. They follow their own laws, and will do whatever they wish until stopped by one method or another.

You cannot legislate morality, but you can try to mitigate the actions of those who have little to no sense of morality of their own.
 
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You just have to keep fighting. I actually have some pre-written posts saved to deal with anti-gun articles I see. I cut and paste sections to deal with particular fallacies. The issue for me isn't so much convincing the anti's as showing people who read the articles and don't comment, but who are on the fence about the issue, what the facts are.
 
In The Ten Ring said:
Today, a man threatened to kill me on social media, why? I disagreed with his demand to ban guns. The man who thinks guns should be illegal offered to use one to kill someone. If that doesn't show what his real goal is, nothing will (reported him to youtube and his threat was removed...I almost reported him to the FBI but they don't have a great track record on doing anything).
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:cool: YEP, gotta love those ones. Had that happen to me too, was debating some leftist woman on her blog, and she got so furious, she said it was a good thing I wasn't there in person with her or I wouldn't leave alive. Dana Loesch was forced to move from her home because of death threats from anti-gunners.
 
The issue for me isn't so much convincing the anti's as showing people who read the articles and don't comment, but who are on the fence about the issue, what the facts are.
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Good for you. You must have a high tolerance. I read the comments and so many, many times they just devolve into foul mouthed name calling (on both sides) and the repetition of stuff that is just untrue.

It really disappoints me that the news sites don't moderate the comments.
 
I can relate - I always cringe when the whole "we have to do something" mantra starts. Just saw an ad on the news for a CNN program with the Florida students who wanted - and I quote - "to stop the violence once and for all." Like this is a simple problem.

I also have mixed feelings about expanding background checks and banning bump stocks. That seems like a slippery slope risk, unless they tie in something like CCW reciprocity, so it's compromise and not caving.

That said, I do wonder how you rebut something like what happened with Australia and the UK. After their massive bans, mass shootings stopped. The U.S. has the highest gun violence rates of highly developed nations. Logic suggests the more of x there are, the more issues with x that might develop.

I don't think just saying constitutional right cuts it - the constitution can be - and has been - amended repeatedly. Are these tragedies the cost of individual freedom? Granted, we can do more with school security, mental health, accurate reporting of issues into NICS, but how do you argue against the differences between us and countries with tight gun restrictions?

I'm not trolling. I'm a gun owner, with an AR. But how do you address what other countries have done that seemed to work? Do they have more problems with criminal activity vs. unarmed citizens?
 
crand16rams said:
Do they have more problems with criminal activity vs. unarmed citizens?
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Yes, but that's a utility argument. There is utility in curbing free speech and letting the police conduct warrantless searches too, but to merely disregard a right on utilitarian grounds should be insufficient.

An individual right describes an individual's an option to speak or vote or travel so as to make the world worse. That we will only recognise the right when we approve of the choice is an argument against the right itself.
 
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After their massive bans, mass shootings stopped.
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No, they didn’t. Australia has had at least two mass shootings (4 or more shot) since Port Arthur. However, mass shootings were rare in Australia prior to Port Arthur as well. If you emptied out the metro areas of NYC and Chicago, you could fit the entire population of Australia in those two cities. The “massive ban” they implemented wouldn’t even reduce U.S. firearms ownership by 1/3 of one percent (if you could implement it here).

The U.S. has the highest gun violence rates of highly developed nations.
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Maybe. It depends on how you define “highly developed” and “gun violence.”
 
No, they didn’t. Australia has had at least two mass shootings (4 or more shot) since Port Arthur.
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Not true. You see one of these shootings was a family thing. So it doesn't count. This was explained to me by someone using very small words speaking slowly so I would understand. And I still didn't get their point.

I got my data from this site and I guess I'm just unable to understand things as they should be understood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia

And yes, I'm being sarcastic, but NOT at Bartholomew Roberts, I read and respect those posts.
 
crand16rams said:
That said, I do wonder how you rebut something like what happened with Australia and the UK. After their massive bans, mass shootings stopped. The U.S. has the highest gun violence rates of highly developed nations. Logic suggests the more of x there are, the more issues with x that might develop.
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I don't know if mass shooting stopped or not in Australia and the UK after their massive gun bans. Regardless, I think the more important question though is what effect such bans have on the crime rate. For the sake of argument, even if those bans reduced mass shootings, have crimes like murder, assault, etc. stayed the same, gone down or gone up? It would be ridiculous to declare victory if mass shootings went down but crimes like murder, assault, etc. went up.
 
I take the tact of pointing out that ignorant media hype distorts the situation.

Firearm murders are a very small percentage of total yearly US deaths.

Many firearm murders are drug gang related, and the numbers might be pretty resistant to reduction even by severe firearm confiscation measures.

School killings are a very small percentage of total firearm murders, and like some other mass killings, they seem to often be related to perpetrators who have taken prescribed psychiatric (psychotropic) medications.

Prescribed drugs, like opiates and psychotropics, are a very big profitable business, that like the junk food industry (which causes far more premature death and disability than guns), put lots of advertising dollars into mass media.

The US is not an ethnically homogenous country with a small gap between rich and poor - that heightens social instability. Personal firearms are an important factor in people being able to defend themselves and their families from criminal attacks.

And, the US government is very obviously developing intensive surveillance systems extending through the whole populace, and militarized police and other internal security organizations. What the end game of that is, remains to be seen, but it could be in extreme conflict with the US Constitution.
 
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As many have stated, I do not really engage in the pro-gun/anti-gun argument anymore. I have made one post on FB over this mess, specifically requesting that this not turn into a gun debate, which was highly critical of the FBI for not forwarding two (2) tips on this kid to the appropriate field office for investigation. That is where our current anger should lie, IMO.

No one dissented with my opinion, and many acquaintances who are not exactly "pro-2A" kept the comments clean and mostly free of the gun debate. They know I am very pro-gun, and I know that they feel like "no one needs an AR15." The battle lines there are drawn in a large portion of society, so debating it is pointless to me. Teach your kids to shoot. Take their friends (with parent's permission) hunting/shooting. Influence the next generation as much as you safely and ethically can. Don't worry about debating with anti-gun adults. And if a hot-button issue does arise, offer an alternative to the usual gun debate dribble.
 
A few years after the Labour Government of Tony Blair outlawed handgun ownership in the UK I saw an English newspaper with a banner headline:
"IT'S OFFICIAL-RATE OF STREET CRIME TWICE THAT OF US!"
I have read accounts of the Port Arthur Massacre which point out the shooter must have been The Flash to move so quickly.
I also point out that the difference between us and the Commonwealth countries is that we have a Constitution that was debated, written, edited-the Constitutional Convention had a Commiitee on Style-and then ratified by the People. The Federalist is considered the authoritative commentary on the Constitution because it was used to "sell" the Constitution. And the Bill of Rights was a make or break deal for ratification. Those other countries have "constitutions" which sort of "just growed" and deal more with distribution of powers and procedures and figuring out who's in charge than in dealing with the relationship between government and citizens.
 
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