“I think it would be very foolish not to take the irrational seriously.”—Jeanette Winterson
NRA Stickers evoke an emotional reaction…Carter Gaddis is a newspaper reporter who has a blog called, DadScribe, a blog over-focusing on parental anxiety.
Early this morning, as I sit with my German Shorthaired Pointers, Chloe and Gemma, a friend sent me this link, What Your NRA Decal Says About You
Sipping my coffee, I read the rant…And then I read it again…and I chuckled. Now, I’ve been at this a very long time, so my personal paradigm insulates me from the visceral emotional reaction this rant likely evoked within my friends at large in the second amendment community.
I am not going to argue the merits of what is written. There is no point in doing so. Gun Control is lost. In 1980 only seven states had laws enabling citizens to carry firearms. Today, 34 states have some form of licensing for the carrying of guns. Presently, eight states have passed constitutional carry, that is, being able to carry a gun without a license, provided one is not a prohibited person.
Polls by Rasmussen, Gallup, and Pew recently reveal that a majority of Americans think guns in the home makes us safer. Gun Control groups outspend Pro-Second Amendment efforts 7-to-1. Despite that effort, gun laws expand…guns sales have tripled, crime is down and anti-gun concerns are forced to spin false tales and faux narratives in a game of desperate catch-up. Lies about guns and petty rank charlatanry tells us they are, “on the ropes.” We’ve won..You’ve lost! So why get upset about petty whinings like this?
There are no facts here to refute, test or review. Inversely, we must be wary in the Pro-second community when politicians and policy makers operate from these very paradigms, and refute them as the rank hoplophobia and charlatanry they are, especially, when in the arena of policy formation and debate.
Our anti-gun pals on the other side of the debate love to point to Europe as a model for gun control. What they fail to acknowledge is nowhere in Europe (or anywhere else for that matter) does any nation have a constitution with any seed of principle even closely resembling the American Second Amendment. What Europe and other nations do have is far more violent crime, as my friend Bill Whittle points out in Number One with a Bullet.
So without further adieu, I give you Mr. Gaddis’ rant below… and he writes,
I see that NRA decal on the rear window of your car and my eyes narrow. I look at the back of your head in the driver’s seat and I wonder if you are a threat.
A threat to my children. A threat to me. A threat to society.
Remember when you were a kid and you got scared because you thought monsters were hiding in the closet or under the bed? I remember when I was a kid I sometimes slept in my bed with my knees cocked up in my abdomen because I feared snakes in my bed. This is the adult version of those fears. Some anxieties never change, only the things we are anxious about. Zoloft is now commonly prescribed for this.
I see a news report about the latest shooting deaths in the United States. I brace myself for the NRA talking points on social media.
I try not to read them. I fail at that. I am appalled and saddened and sickened and angry.
I am reminded why I consider you a potential threat.
Ironically, the fact is that NRA is silent on these tragedies. NRA speaks only when such solipsism begins to gravitate to the policy forum. Yet, when the NRA is silent, the Charlatans and Hoplophobes line up to call out the NRA on their silence. When Wayne LaPierre finally speaks, they seethe and hiss contempt upon every word spoken, dominating the lame stream media cycle for 48 hours thereafter.
Yes indeed. Anti-gun culture is a luxury that allows its gun ban harbingers to cherry-pick what to get upset about. For example, a considerable number of “gun deaths” consist of inner city gansters with illegal guns shooting each other in turf wars.
Black on Black crime that the lame stream media doesn’t like to talk about? Black lives matter…Really? ONLY when a white cop shoots a black person…Do the riots ensue, not when a gangster doing a drive-by, shoots a 9-year-old black girl doing homework in her bedroom. We see no outrage . By their logic, it could be argued these liberals are a bunch of racists.
To me, that NRA decal on the rear window of your car represents violent death.
By displaying that NRA decal on the rear window of your car, you are endorsing violent death.
I don’t know anything about Carter Gaddis’ extended family, but I would bet a Ruth Criss’s steakhouse dinner that he has an uncle or a cousin who is a card-carrying member of the NRA. That is almost a cultural inevitability. If he really thought rationally about that, he might not say that to his relative he cares about.
By endorsing violent death, you show me that you do not care about the tens of thousands of gun deaths in the United States every year.
Emotional false narratives still drive attempts at gun control policy. We’ve learned that anti-gunners try to modify the lexicon of social terminology in order to manipulate, confuse or falsely dominate the narrative. NRA sticker represents violent death? Is getting stabbed through the eye with a screwdriver any less violent than being shot with a gun?
Yes. a Screwdriver. One of the most popular weapons used by crooks today. Why? look at the case law. Juries have acquitted people using screwdrivers because they did not consider screwdrivers as deadly weapons. They are tools! Why do we not use terms like, “Screwdriver violence?” or, “Knife violence?” or, “Ball Bat-violence?” or, “Claw hammer violence?” FBI crime statistics tell us blunt objects and sharps outpace guns for homicide. See? False narrative. violence is violence, no matter the weapon used.
You don’t care about the gun deaths at Columbine. You don’t care about the gun deaths at Virginia Tech. You don’t care about the gun deaths at Tucson. You don’t care about the gun deaths at Aurora. You don’t care about the gun death at a movie theater up the road from here in Wesley Chapel. You don’t care about the gun deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. You don’t care about the gun deaths at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
You don’t care about the gun deaths this morning at Bridgewater Plaza in Virginia.
“You don’t care…” Mind reading and tarot cards are best left to the Carnies, Shysters and Grifters. When the accusatory finger is pointed and it is asserted, “you don’t care,” The conversation is personal. Its the single most visceral method used to personally demonize people. Ironically, such assertions are further away from rational conversation. The polarization begins and ends with this. It is no wonder Carter had to shut down the comments on his blog.
That is what the NRA decal displayed in the rear window of your car tells me.
Is that fair?
“Fairness,” is for Democrats and five-year-olds. I stopped measuring fairness a long time ago when anti-gun agitprops stepped up their attacks with outright lies, manipulations and personal attacks. For their effort, nothing is ever left on the table.
Measures and standards of fairness are virtually non-existent, unless it is the likes of me attacking some anti-gun measure. Then and only then, does the crucible of fairness come into play…and it is I who stands accused of being unfair.
Is it just of me to conclude that you don’t care about the loss of human life because of the proliferation of guns in the U.S., simply because you choose to display an NRA decal in the rear window of your car?
Maybe not. Yet, how am I to know that you are not the next “good guy with a gun” to snap?
Loss of Life and the proliferation of guns don’t go together. If I take my Walther PPS down off the top of my refrigerator, lay it on the table and nobody touches it, it will kill nobody. In order to shoot..or to kill, a gun requires an operator. Guns are amalgams of steel and carbon fiber…lumps…inanimate objects. The materials used to make the gun are some of the same materials used to make the Prius…the Subaru…the Lexus, only we do not politicize cars, not even for drunk driving. Its not the gun, its the human. With so many children dying at the hands of drunken driving, where is the outrage for that? Where is the outrage over all the kids poisoned due to negligence of the adults they depend on to protect them?
How am I to know that something about the way I drive, or something about the way your day or life is going, or something imagined by you and unimaginable to me triggers the compulsion to shoot, and to kill?
The answer is, “You don’t.” The ex-reporter who killed his ex-co-workers yesterday purchased his gun legally. He was not on the radar for mental health. When people kill other people, that is a mind-set..an evil one, albeit, and in this case the choice weapon was a gun…I am wondering what the narrative would have been had he used a knife, a bat or a vehicle to run them down? It has been done.
In the wake of such tragedies, its hard to acknowledge that American Society is not nearly as violent or brutal as we perceive, or when compared to European societies. But the fact remains, real evil does walk among us and we all, gun or no gun, should have a plan to deal with violence when it befalls us. Being self-aware, aware of the surroundings and cognizant of what is going on around us is plain old prudence. Getting our noses out of our iPhones and iPads will also keep us safe.
Because of that NRA decal in the rear window of your car, because I am the father of two beautiful boys who are growing up with a backdrop of rampant gun violence, the only responsible conclusion for me to draw is that you are armed – and dangerous. That you are a threat. That you could, if you chose, pull out your gun and shoot me or my children without a thought or even provocation.
Or… some nutjob with a stolen or otherwise illegally-obtained gun threatens your family, and a person lawfully carrying a gun, who has taken training, steps in to intervene on your behalf, saving your life and the lives of your family? It has happened, only the lame stream media is averse to reporting such events.
Maybe that is not fair. Maybe you are a gentle, kind person who happens to enjoy shooting sports.
Maybe.
All I know is what the NRA decal in the rear window of your car tells me.
The NRA Sticker makes no such statement. That is merely what you glean from it and assign to it. Those damn stickers are everywhere. Be vigilant! Your Pediatrician might have one, Your Veterinarian, Your Accountant, Your Plumber, Your Electrician, Your Landscaper, Your Pastor, One of your local Police officers or Sheriff’s, Your Bartender, Your Baker, Your Garbage Collector. At this rate, you could end up in the fetal position, shaking violently sucking your thumb, calling out to mother. Time, medication and counseling, my friend.
Here is a fair conclusion, though: You care more about your “right” to own a gun than you care about my right to live without the fear that members of my family or my friends might be shot and killed at school, at the movies, in our car, on the job, in church … anywhere. Anywhere at all.
It is more important to you that the 300 million guns in the United States remain in the hands of their owners than it is for my children to grow up in a country where violent gun deaths are an anomaly, rather than the norm.
Carter, I am here to tell you it is NOT a fair conclusion. Again, it is mind-reading and not born in facts. Your belief relies on linking every single American gun owner with criminality. That is a corrupt notion. I bet there is a family members of yours somewhere who owns a gun that has never been fired at anything other than wild game, aluminum cans or paper targets. So all NRA members are criminals?
You would rather risk more lives, thousands more, than take responsible action on gun control. In your world, there is an “acceptable” number of violent gun deaths.
I conclude that about you, because you choose to display that NRA decal in the rear window of your car.
How does it feel to know that the father, the husband, the son, the friend, the writer in the car behind you is afraid of what you might do because of that NRA decal displayed in the rear window of your car?
How does that feel to you?
Actually … never mind.
I don’t think I want to know.
I understand you don’t want to know, but I am going to tell you anyway. We all feel sorry for you. To be so inflicted over the mere presence of sticker on the back of a vehicle is regrettable. Such angst, such apprehension, such paranoia. And yet we are at the crossroads of another irony. Such fear and apprehension are the conventions of mental health counseling referrals. “Those people,” with, “those stickers” are identical to you and your life. They have families, mortgages, soccer practices, pets and enjoy the same things you do. We NRA members regret that you choose solipsistic ignorance over facts. We regret that you blame us for the criminality of a few.
I think that post came from a very dark emotional place. If you take a step back, I think you will agree.
Here is what you do not know….
- NRA is the largest source in America for Law Enforcement Training
- NRA is the largest source of 501(c)(3) funding for grants pertaining to gun safety, education and range development.
