Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Why the “Good Guy with a Gun” Argument Doesn’t Work With Leftists
Townhall.com ^ | November 27, 2018 | Karen Kataline

Posted on 11/27/2018 10:51:37 AM PST by Kaslin

As we are enjoying our Thanksgiving leftovers, some of us are thinking about the next set of issues over which the Left will spontaneously combust. Funny how it’s often timed perfectly for the next political fight and they are relatively quiet until people start paying attention after the New Year.

When Democrats gain control of the house in January, they will be fighting harder than ever to convince us that law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be trusted to have guns to defend themselves. Not long ago, they balked bitterly at the accusation that their real goal was to repeal the Second Amendment. Now, many have finally started to admit that this is precisely what they had in mind all along. Good for them. Better for us. They are easier to beat when they tell the truth. Unfortunately, that’s never very often.

Conservatives have an excellent argument in favor of the Second Amendment by proclaiming that “it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.” Unfortunately, it makes no sense to Leftists and it’s instructive to examine why.

The Left has been working overtime to erase the difference between good guys and bad guys. To them, we are all just as capable of being Charles Manson as we are Mother Theresa. They claim that individual choice and personal responsibility has nothing to do with who is good and who is evil. Maybe that’s why they can always be counted upon to come to the defense of ruthless, hardened criminals. They have for decades perpetuated the idea that criminals are victims. Now, they've moved on to painting law-abiding citizens are criminals. This speeds us on the road to being all the same. Think of it as the redistribution of personal responsibility.

If you are white, male, Christian, or God-forbid, a Republican, you are already guilty without having done anything at all. If you dare to own a gun, you are de facto guilty. It doesn’t matter what choices you make. The Left does not consider this to be prejudice as long as the right people are pre-judged. They argue that they can perfect the world and our behavior by creating a “correct” society which they will define for us. We are merely spokes in their socialist utopian wheel.

Whether it’s about women, guns, taxes, or trade, positions on the Left are built on the same collectivist bigotry. No one ever seems to hold them accountable for not counting themselves among the groups into which they have categorized everyone else. That’s how Michael Moore is able to rail about stupid white men even though he is one. That level of arrogance is reserved only for the power elite.

This crazy-making, upside down thinking makes most conservatives either shake their heads or giggle. “How can anybody actually believe that?” Possibly for the same reasons the Left believes that all women should be believed because they are women; that you can “identify” as anything you want but you shouldn’t engage in "cultural appropriation,” and that eating Chicken Cacciatore constitutes a holocaust on your plate.

Still, the Left is losing some of their mojo. It’s tough to try to convince people that they shouldn’t be able to defend themselves when Leftist politicians refuse to condemn the bullying and threatening behavior of their own base. In some cases, they have actually incited that behavior.

It is harder than ever to convince somebody like Tucker Carlson’s wife to give up her right to defend herself since she was recently visited at her home by “Anti-Fascist” Fascists chanting “We know where you sleep”. People like this especially love the idea of repealing the Second Amendment. Criminals always like it better when the people they’re attacking can’t fight back.

So what sort of Second Amendment argument could work with Leftists? I suggest we do a little “cultural appropriation” of our own. Let’s resurrect some of the trends that liberals themselves made famous in the sixties. I don’t think they’ll mind, since they aren’t using them anymore.

Liberals used to be champions of free speech. They made it cool to be a non-conformist and to “do your own thing.” They put individualism in fashion even though they all dressed and spoke alike!

Before we can make the argument that "a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun," our opponents will have to recognize that there are indeed good guys and bad guys. Individual choices and personal accountability is what makes much of the difference between them.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: 2ndamendment; banglist; guns; nra; secondamendment; theleft
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-57 next last
To: Kaslin

I’m not persuaded by the overall argument (seems on the right track, but still trying to nail down the core point).

However, this bit is brilliant:

“redistribution of personal responsibility”

That may very well nail the point right there.
There are bad guys. Really bad guys. They have too much bad.
So...
Redistribute it. Spread the bad around (seems an acceptable outcome for the Left’s economics, may as well do it with morality).
You (dear reader) are a good guy, with a gun. Good enough you could be trusted with an M16 in an orphanage. You don’t have enough bad in you (relative to “bad guy with a gun”), so you get some mass-murderer’s abundance of evil spread to you for the purpose of flattening out that distribution of evil to some uniform low point (as though it can’t be eliminated, just lowered to average).
Now ... you’re a bad guy, with a gun.

And since, by redistributing personal responsibility, you’re a bad guy with a gun, you must be disarmed of that gun.
Oh, but the “everyone is a little bad” Leftist with a gun? well, he has a gun for the right Leftist-approved reasons, so his redistributed bad is overlooked, so he’s not _really_ a “bad guy with a gun” under the circumstances (just like Michael Moore is a rich white guy with armed guards, but since he’s serving the Revolution it’s OK).

So there we go.
Money is evil, and having lots of money is evil, but since a Leftist axiom is “wealth is constant” then all money must be redistributed among everyone (except those who serve the Revolution exceptionally well, they can be rich).
Evil is ... well ... evil, and being really evil is evil, but since a (newly discovered) Leftist axiom is “evil is constant” then all evil must be redistributed among everyone (except in service to the Revolution, then evil isn’t an issue).
And since everyone now is assigned the same level of evil, anyone with a gun is, well, a bad guy with a gun and thus must be disarmed (except in service to the Revolution).

Clarifies it to me. Given the axiomatic imperative “everyone is equal”, then ... everyone is equally evil, which means if you’re a man with a gun then you’re a bad man with a gun and thus must be disarmed (service to the Revolution excepted). Hence Leftists cannot conceive of the notion that “good man with a gun” exists.


21 posted on 11/27/2018 11:32:20 AM PST by ctdonath2 (The Red Queen wasn't kidding.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Not long ago, they balked bitterly at the accusation that their real goal was to repeal the Second Amendment. Now, many have finally started to admit that this is precisely what they had in mind all along.

In my humble opinion, the 1st 10 Amendments to the Constitution should be inviolable. The reason for this is, when the country was debating whether to adopt it or not, the Anti-Federalist group would not agree to it unless certain protections were included. So, we would not have a Constitution were it not for the promise, and eventual passage, of the Bill of Rights. And without a Constitution, we would not have These United States.

22 posted on 11/27/2018 11:37:24 AM PST by rjsimmon (The Tree of Liberty Thirsts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

longer than needed


23 posted on 11/27/2018 11:38:21 AM PST by from occupied ga (Your government is your most dangerous enemy)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

As I’ve stated in the past. Even if they disarm every law abiding citizen in the US, one question the Democrats will never answer is how they will keep illegal guns, like illegal drugs and aliens, from flooding across the borders


24 posted on 11/27/2018 11:40:13 AM PST by antidemoncrat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: from occupied ga

I believe you’re correct, but that isn’t the Leftist thought process. They (on the whole) are not thinking “we want to rule over you, so we have to disarm you first” (be it true), and that’s not what the long winded article is saying (though, in erratic exploration, it may touch on that).

The Left began with the French Revolution, core imperative “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”. Among other things, you are equal to a school shooter if you share the only objective commonality: possess a gun. Have one, and you’re equal - and so must be disarmed.

Don’t confuse that with “we have to disarm you first”: that relies on the “in service to the Revolution” axiom - the only good is that which advances the Revolution, so if they need a gun for the revolution then having one is OK, and so is shooting you (you bad counter-Revolutionary you) with it; if you have a gun but don’t support the Revolution, then you don’t fit the exception and are merely a bad man with a gun and must be disarmed.


25 posted on 11/27/2018 11:42:51 AM PST by ctdonath2 (The Red Queen wasn't kidding.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: antidemoncrat

Forget the borders.
We’ll be cranking them out in our garages.

Best to get a handle on how to make barrels & primers. The rest is relatively easy.


26 posted on 11/27/2018 11:44:48 AM PST by ctdonath2 (The Red Queen wasn't kidding.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: so_real

It’s not so much “projection” as “equality”. If your axiom is that everyone truly is equal, then all are equally bad - there’s no such thing as “good guy with a gun” to them, because there is no “good guy” (save for those acting in service to the Revolution).


27 posted on 11/27/2018 11:46:49 AM PST by ctdonath2 (The Red Queen wasn't kidding.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

“If you are white, male, Christian, or God-forbid, a Republican, you are already guilty without having done anything at all. If you dare to own a gun, you are de facto guilty. It doesn’t matter what choices you make. The Left does not consider this to be prejudice as long as the right people are pre-judged. They argue that they can perfect the world and our behavior by creating a “correct” society which they will define for us. We are merely spokes in their socialist utopian wheel.”


In other words, “If we can just eliminate the sub-humans in society, then society will be dramatically improved to the point of having our long-hoped-for utopia.” Gee, where have I heard something like that before, hmmmm?

Oh, yeah, that’s right, I heard about it from my family - my immigrant family of 2-3 generations ago, who warned us about Socialists of various stripes (specifically, Russian and German stripes, usually wearing uniforms and always pretending to know what was best for everyone else).

Yeah, well, F^&# that noise: this Jew, whose family was horribly victimized by German and Russian socialists in the last century, is not about to have his family victimized AGAIN by socialists (this time American ones). But if we are victimized again, it certainly isn’t going to be for free, not THIS time.


28 posted on 11/27/2018 11:48:01 AM PST by Ancesthntr ("The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." A. E. van Vogt, The Weapons Shops of Isher)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ClearCase_guy
The Left just has a fundamental problem with “evil”. They don’t think it exists. This is a big reason they hate Christianity, since Christianity is very big on the concept of “right and wrong”. The Left feels threatened by such things. Just yesterday there was a thread here about a journalist who had a problem with JRR Tolkien and his depiction of Orcs as “evil”. For the journalist, this was just pure racism and totally unPC. Orcs are not “evil”, they are just misunderstood.

If there is no “evil” then no one needs a gun. Simple, eh?

And Jeffrey Dahmer had every right to play with his food. /s

29 posted on 11/27/2018 11:51:58 AM PST by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: RatRipper

According to Dave Mason there’s only you and I and we just disagree.


30 posted on 11/27/2018 12:04:09 PM PST by JZelle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: JZelle

As soon as they do two things I might listen.
First pick up every illegal gun in Chicago and Baltimore ands verify it.

second: Outlaw body guards for the elite inc all hollywood types and guberment personal.


31 posted on 11/27/2018 12:23:02 PM PST by oldasrocks (rump)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: ClearCase_guy

As with that old song Imagine: imagine a world with no right and wrong, where people no longer try to be good, and the magical thinking of many is that we won’t become bad.

But the reality is very different.

Consider the metaphor of Alice’s looking glass to help illustrate.

On one side of the glass there was the innocence and derivative holiness attributed to Adam and Eve. The thing about this story is that it describes people for whom only three things that they could have had done had any moral consequences. They could have eaten from the fruit of the tree of life. They could have had children born in holiness. They did eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But before that with so little of the innumerable things that they might have done having no moral or ethical consequences their “goodness” is what I term indiscriminatly good.

They had only two rules: have kids, don’t eat from tTotKoG&E.

When they ate the forbidden fruit they went from being holy beings to being merely moral beings and EVERYTHING they could do came with moral and ethical complications. They went from being free to being bound by endless concerns. The nature that they passed on to their kids was one that was drawn to either good or evil but which was powerless to actually be good. This is what I call being discriminately evil in that they and we are not good and when at our best in our own strength we desire to be good, to discriminate against the evil we would otherwise do.

But being discriminately evil is not the mirror image of being indiscriminately good, that would be bring indiscriminately evil.

So back to the looking glass: all of human history, all our civilization, art and so forth has not been on the other side of the looking glass but entirely contained within it.

The people who, like Lennon, “imagine” that they can cease trying to be right and good think they will return to the innocence and purity they think defines their real nature ... but if they do that they only pass through the looking glass and become as fallen as fallen can be. They unleash the evil they cannot accept of themselves. Rules become only power, their power they think, and they become and reproduce only monsters, once-Men.

You cannot vomit up the proverbial apple. It was digested long ago.

The only solution is to eliminate it, to pass it out. To become discriminately good brings, holy beings. In Scripture, cumulating at the Cross, the Lord addressed this need. Ultimately the Lord had to pay the price because we couldn’t and cannot, not even a tiny bit of it, That’s why it was so important for Him to say it is finished. When we put our trust in Him according to the only provision that He has offered even though we may still be in the looking glass, the world, we have an anchor on the right side of the glass and are being drawn back out to where He is. We won’t forget about morality, but with holiness restored we will no longer be drawn to any evil and no longer able to be deceived that we would want it ever again.


32 posted on 11/27/2018 12:29:17 PM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
The Left does not consider this to be prejudice as long as the right people are pre-judged.

That there is solid gold!

33 posted on 11/27/2018 12:39:27 PM PST by papertyger (Trump, A president so great, that Democrats who said they would leave America if he won, stayed!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

The phrase “good guy with a gun” has about the same reasoning effect on these fascists as a Jew telling a Nazi “but I’m a human being too!”.


34 posted on 11/27/2018 12:46:39 PM PST by Gritty (Progressives think that power should only be in expert hands - their own ... Angelo Codevilla)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

socialist have engineered this from day 1.

They have wanted to split the country.

We have two classes of people and the socialists through the hegelian dialectic have caused the left sides definitions of good and evil to be more and more reversed.

we have normal people with good and evil defined properly, and the left socialists with opposite definitions.

cwii will have to be done to purge out the socialist infection.

the commies mistake is that they thought tgeir side would be able to won like they did when they pleaded for normal folks to disarm voluntarily.

Not going to happen like it did in russia, the socialists here can be wiped out if we have/keep the stomach to finish it.


35 posted on 11/27/2018 12:50:48 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not Averse to Going Bronson.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Because they are collectivist. One person under attack only cares about surviving. For a collectivist, the needs or desires of the group always come first... even if that means the individual will die, be raped, beaten, etc.


36 posted on 11/27/2018 1:21:20 PM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
their real goal was to repeal the Second Amendment.

Maybe I've just missed it, but I've never heard a single liberal saying they want to repeal the Second Amendment. Either they want to just pass a law and ignore the Second Amendment or they want 5 people in blacks robes to say it doesn't mean what it says.

37 posted on 11/27/2018 1:39:22 PM PST by libertylover (I'm not against immigration; I'm against ILLEGAL immigration.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ctdonath2; Kaslin

All the left does is some form of redistribution:

Obamacare. Title IX. Freddy and Fanny bailouts. Illegal Invasion.

Redistribution of monies. Redistribution of rights.


38 posted on 11/27/2018 4:45:47 PM PST by YogicCowboy ("I am not entirely on anyone's side, because no one is entirely on mine." - J. R. R. Tolkien)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: DesertRhino

Post of the Day.

The collectivist omelette requires many individual, innocent broken eggs.


39 posted on 11/27/2018 4:47:40 PM PST by YogicCowboy ("I am not entirely on anyone's side, because no one is entirely on mine." - J. R. R. Tolkien)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: libertylover

A) They know that would arouse opposition, so do not admit it.

B) Death by a thousand cutting infringements is more effective.


40 posted on 11/27/2018 4:49:16 PM PST by YogicCowboy ("I am not entirely on anyone's side, because no one is entirely on mine." - J. R. R. Tolkien)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-57 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson