The willful self-delusion of the gun control side :: 08/17/2023

I get that not everyone agrees with me on gun control. I can accept it, even if I don’t like it. After all, if everyone agreed with folks like us on gun control, there wouldn’t be any threat to our Second Amendment rights.

But alas, we’re not that fortunate and I understand that.

What bothers me, though, is the double standard of it all.

Sure, there’s a certain double standard involved in people calling for defunding the police or claiming that cops are racist jackwagons who can’t be trusted to protect our communities all while also telling us to trust the police with our safety instead of owning guns.

But then there are attitudes like this one in a letter to the editor at a Tennesee newspaper.

It is not Gov. Bill Lee or the politicians who are working to improve gun control in Tennessee. It is not the NRA. Because the NRA contributes so much money to politicians, no one wants to second guess the NRA’s motives. In essence, politicians have placed getting re-elected ahead of sound governance. And of course, too many Tennesseans like the Legislature’s permitless carry, as they continue to introduce additional harmful legislation, such as the guns on campus expansion to the state’s Shoot First Law. Tennessee politicians also made it easier for domestic abusers to buy guns. It is alarming that 1,385 people die by guns in Tennessee in an average year.

…

If you believe that mass shootings are out of control in the U.S., then Americans have a powerful weapon of their own. That weapon is the ballot box. Vote out the NRA-loving corrupt politicians.

Now, understand that her sentiment–voting out politicians who you disagree with–is totally fine. I generally suggest people do that myself.

What I find to be the double standard here is that anyone who votes for pro-gun laws is just NRA-loving, bought-and-paid-for, or otherwise just not worth a damn, all while anti-gun lawmakers are somehow noble, giving, and enlightened souls doing what needs to be done for the good of the people.

They’re not.

At least, they’re no more enlightened than pro-gun lawmakers.

Once an anti-gun candidate comes out for gun control and starts getting money from groups like Bloomberg and Giffords, they can’t really stop being anti-gun. They can’t really look at what’s transpiring in our communities and change because they need that money coming in.

But that’s always fine with anti-gunners. So long as gun control is being pushed, they won’t question the beliefs of anyone else.

Yet why is it good governance to support gun control–a policy that is contrary to the Constitution of the United States of America–while supporting people’s rights somehow not? The answer, of course, is that it’s what people like this letter writer wants.

Remember that letters to the editor aren’t usually filled with novel ideas. Those who write them are generally parroting talking points made by others.

There are a lot of people who view support by the NRA as somehow tainted while celebrating support from gun control groups that spend as much, if not more, than the NRA itself.

But they don’t see an issue there. It’s a kind of self-delusion that ultimately creates the double standards they’re too blinded by ideology to see.

https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/08/16/delusion-gun-control-n73740