Fail, Fail, Fail

Okay, so let’s try a little exercise in fill-in-the-blank:

Laws outlawing _____ are useless because criminals will ignore them. Thus laws outlawing _____ will never prevent a crime and are of no use.

Let’s put the word ‘murder’ in the blank first:

Laws outlawing murder are useless because criminals will ignore them. Thus laws outlawing murder will never prevent a crime and are of no use.

Hmm…. by that logic, laws outlawing murder are useless because they didn’t stop Jeffrey Dahmer from murdering. Well, actually, given that Jeffrey Dahmer got sent to prison for life (and shanked — killed — while in prison), those laws darn well *did* stop Jeffrey Dahmer from killing. Without murder laws, we would have had to put Jeffrey Dahmer back on the streets — and he *would* have killed again.

Now, fill in the blank above with “semi-automatic weapons” and you have the position of Mr. Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. By his logic we should not outlaw semi-automatic weapons because such laws won’t prevent criminals from using semi-automatic weapons. Well, maybe not… but they would give prosecutors another way to put those criminals in jail when they got caught for that or other crimes, and criminals in jail are criminals who aren’t threatening me and mine.

You have a right to throw a punch. That right ends at the tip of my nose.

You have a right to free speech. That right ends at the moment you threaten danger me or mine with your speech (yes, Virginia, threatening speech *is* illegal).

You have a right to keep and bear arms. That right ends at the moment that your right endangers me or mine.

Unfortunately the NRA has banned research here in the USA on how to keep your guns from making my life less safe. Is it any wonder that people are now talking about outright bans on entire classes of guns? If gun fondlers weren’t so busy trying to make sure that nobody could take their metallic penile enhancements away from them that they outlawed objective research on the subject of how to keep your guns from threatening the lives of me and mine, there wouldn’t be this outcry calling for bans on entire classes of guns, there’d instead be scientific research on the subject of what’s needed to protect me and mine from your guns. But because gun fondlers are so busy stroking their metallic penile enhancements that they sneer at little things like, well, science and public safety… well. Seems to me gun fondlers are just getting what they deserve with all this ban talk.

You have a right to keep and bear arms… up until the time that it makes me and mine less safe. Period. End of story.

Reposted - Badtux the Reality-based Penguin