I finally tracked down the ads from the controversial Mom’s Demand Action campaign against guns. They appeared in an article on Yahoo Shine. That also quotes the organization’s leader. It illustrates a very typical knee-jerk-reaction, long on emotion, reactionary, and illogical, because none of the things they propose would have stopped the event they leverage for action and because a thing done quickly is rarely a thing done well. What times like these really remind us is that there is evil in the world and why it is dangerous to trust in men. Just as Julius Caesar.
On the off chance, you haven’t seen the images and if they go down, I have decided to reproduce them here. They tell an interesting and misleading story. While there are myriad stories attesting to how helpful it could be to have a gun, the media ignores those stories.
Most of what passes for journalism today is little more than editorials masquerading as news and political propaganda. Reporters project, not the whole truth, but that portion of the truth that corroborates what they already happen to believe. "We chose these images to point out the absurdity in America's gun laws right now," Shannon Watts tells reporters while her own images are even more absurd than her premise.
The campaign is predicated on poor facts that strain at gnats while they swallow camels. It uses children because we all ostensibly care about what happens to the most defenseless among us. The fact of the matter is that those children in New Town Connecticut were helpless sitting ducks in that classroom until police, who are also armed with guns, arrived and shot the gunman dead. Interesting that if they got their way and we had a world without guns the police might not have been able to stop Adam Lanza before he slaughtered more babies. “I believe in a world without guns” the jury consultant says in “Runaway Jury”. “That’s a little naive” Dustin Hoffman tells him back. One day, we’ll have better weapons anyway, but we still won’t have peace because we will still have evil men.
Looking at the images, the campaign bases itself on false premises and emotional pleas. Both of these are logical fallacies, but that doesn’t matter to the promoters. They have an agenda. You can take a look at the pictures and draw your own conclusions. Here are mine:
The book pictured is banned for the cover image, and only in two schools, not carte blanche for the nation entire. At the same time, they propose to limit gun access for everyone, everywhere, at all times, because some single nutjob slew some children. By that logic, it should be illegal to even mention the title of the book depicted let alone read it, but again it’s true for only two schools. Ah, the beauty of federalism…
First False Premise
“we have limited the 1st amendment for the safety of our children” Watts claims. What limitations have there been? Also, it assumes that the 1st Amendment protects ALL speech when it only protects political speech although the Supreme Court may decide to change that.
It isn’t even clear what kind of ball one child is holding. The other child’s finger is on the trigger, a clip is loaded, and the breach is closed, so we can’t tell if it’s armed even if you can tell if the safety is on. This, any trained gun user will tell you, is one of the worst things you can do. At least it’s pointed at the ground… Isn’t Michelle Obama responsible for that advertisement campaign to play at least an hour every day? What are they supposed to play? Aren’t all children’s games potentially hazardous? Isn’t oxygen toxic to humans and water for that matter?
Second False premise
“"What is absurd is that we're talking about having guns in our schools in this country," she says, as if there are not already armed policemen on school and college campuses. Oops! Guns get in all the time, and their efforts would not have stopped Mr. Lanza. From the accounts I saw, he BROKE in after being denied access through the front office. If you’re going to break into a school, gun laws won’t keep you from procuring one. In fact, several stories this past week featured criminals in possession of stolen firearms or firearms acquired through straw sales.
A girl holds a gun at the ready with her finger on the trigger, again with a magazine inserted and the breech closed so we can’t tell if there’s one in the chamber. I’m not familiar with this model, so I don’t know where the safety is, but it’s not being handled safely. For my part, I have never understood why Kinder Ueberaschungseier are banned in the US. Aren’t the small parts from IKEA furniture also choking hazards? Also, I wouldn’t give a small child one of those anyway, because chocolate is bad for them, but then I see some parents using their iPhones as toys, distractions, or even in lieu of pacifiers, so maybe we’re looking at the wrong issue here.
Third False premise
“"The NRA has been very very good at creating fear among their members that their rights are going to be taken away or somehow the government is going to turn against them. We're trying to create debate and discussion about the facts” Watts claims. Isn’t the use of tiny children holding guns a fearmongering technique? Ah, projection. In the demo, the person holding the gun, who is clearly an adult by the size and age of the hands, handles the weapon much differently. They focus on the breech is open so you can tell there are no rounds in the chamber, and he is firing, not at a person, but in an indiscriminate direction while emotional pleas are played in the background.
Final premise
Assault weapons are already banned in schools. When Adam Lanza brought one on campus, it was already illegal. None of the school shootings would have been stopped by background checks. When the shooters had the guns legally, they had already passed the checks, and where not they stole them from people who had. Criminals don’t line up to report themselves or get into lines where they are going to get caught. Usually they go out of their way to find another way in.
Final and interesting observation. In all the images, the child holding the gun is white. That’s racist.
I protest this kind of pageantry. Trotting out kids to be props in a show that won’t do anything. How about harsher punishments for parole violators? You can’t have world peace as long as there are criminals, which kind of makes world peace a red herring. Finally, why are the guns even in the schools? Isn’t that a crime? Why aren’t the people who did these ads serving time? I know if I brought a gun on campus (the two bills in the NV Legislature to allow carry on campus failed to get out of committee again this session), it’s a one way ticket to State Penn, do not pass Go.
While they worry about law-abiding citizens, they propose nothing actionable to protect us against other threats. Gangs continue to slaughter children in Chicago, and they do nothing. Today, someone blew up spectators at a marathon, and they will do nothing. Drug dealers, terrorists, and other undesirables flood over the Mexican border, and they will do nothing. Under siege from every direction, they take a political opportunity to make of the citizens the miscreants and of the miscreants new heroes for their cause. Their cause is to subjugate people to their wills. They must be very insecure and very small to think it makes them bigger people to make someone else low. These people are bullies, outlawing things they happen to dislike, which is an abuse of power. If you want to lift people up, you have to be in a position to be uplifting.
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