So the anonymous conservative blogger who runs the blog called, er, Anonymous Conservative, is upset that The Human Rights Campaign, an influential LGBT group, is calling for stricter gun laws in the wake of the Orlando massacre.
To Anonymous Conservative, calling for gun control rather than, well, Muslim control is evidence that gays are too illogical to ever be trusted to tell the truth. Or at least it’s a good excuse for AC to pretend that he thinks gays are too illogical to ever be trusted with the truth.
And if gays are this illogical, AC concludes, gun owners should never vote to convict anyone charged with hate crimes.
Dear reader, your immediate reaction to this leap in, er, logic may be the same as my immediate reaction:
So let’s try to make sense of AC’s rather novel argument. Near the start of his post on this subject, AC sets forth his thesis:
[I]f these gays want to try and attack the rights of gun owners, all gun owners need to point out is that if they begin to feel hostile to gays, and begin to see gays as too emotional and illogical, they might begin to not believe the testimony of gays in trials.
Huh. It sounds like these hypothetical gun owners are deciding to dismiss testimony from gays out of spite, not because they genuinely believe that gays are unreliable witnesses. But AC insists he’s sincere, though I’m pretty sure he’s not being sincere about that.
Personally now, I am quite confident that nothing a gay says could be believed, if they cannot come to terms with the fact that Islamic fundamentalism, and not a gun, was the cause of the Orlando shooting. I can’t help but realize how that realization of their illogicality would contaminate any testimony from any gay in a trial setting. I would even question whether any physical evidence was manufactured by an overly emotional gay, unable to deal with simple reality as it exists.
If all gun owners felt this way, AC concludes,
it would in effect jury-nullify all hate crimes laws, and possibly affect any trial involving a crime committed against a gay.
AC thinks this brilliant scheme would be easy as pie to pull off:
There are about 102 million gun owners out there (32% of all Americans), and all a defense attorney would need to do is find one to put on the jury of a man who beat a gay guy, stabbed a transgender, or murdered a transvestite. Did a transgender man use the girls locker room when a pee wee swim team was changing, and get beaten to a pulp? Don’t think the beater is going to get convicted on the word of the gay.
Yeah, it’s not like there would be other evidence or anything. Except maybe “the gay’s” physical injuries, bloodstains on the assailant’s clothes, an entire pee wee swim team’s worth of witnesses, surveillance camera footage of the beater fleeing the scene, or, wait, that does sound like a lot of evidence.
If gays think guns should be banned, then the gay’s testimony is meaningless, and I would assume any evidence had been fabricated in an overemotional meltdown.
Ah, yes, because gays have the ability to fabricate injuries, video footage, an entire locker room full of witnesses.
[I]f gays are this unable to perceive simple reality, I could probably never vote to convict in any such case. I suspect if I had been on the trial of the Orlando shooter tomorrow, I am not sure I would have been able to vote guilty, given the stories of a second shooter, the gay holding the door shut, and the fact that the shooter himself appears to have been gay.
Dude, you’re aware that the shooter is dead, right? Dead men aren’t generally tried for murder.
It would all have been too convoluted, I suspect. I would probably have let him walk out the door of the courtroom a free man, and I would have felt it was the only moral outcome, given my convictions regarding the gay’s inability to perceive simple realties such as Islamic radicalism, and the fact guns reduce crime when the law abiding have them.
I’m pretty sure it’s not “the gay” who is having trouble perceiving reality here.
The potential consequences against gays would admittedly be dangerous. Millions of people who want to commit crime might begin targeting gays specifically, knowing that they would be unlikely to be convicted, given how all it would take is one of the 102 million gun owners to land on their jury – and the lawyers of the perpetrator would undoubtedly be looking for gun owners to put on the jury.
Nice justice system you’ve got here, pity if something were to happen to it.
Also, dude, you do realize, don’t you, that prosecutors also get to screen jury members, and could veto anyone who seemed to believe any of the nonsense you’re peddling.
Gang members, who need to kill somebody as an initiation might seek out gays as victims, thinking they would be a free kill, and sadly there would be nothing I could do about that.
Would these gang members flash their car lights at gay drivers to get them to pull their cars over?
Those prone to engage in violence against gays specifically because of homophobia might be emboldened, and gay attacks could increase precipitously, and obviously all of those gay attackers going free without any consequence would be unfortunate.
Nice justice system you’ve got here, pity if something were … oh wait, we did that already.
However gays do not seem to consider our safety when contemplating their actions. They are all too happy to try and make us and our families less safe by preventing us from getting the guns we want to protect them. So the idea that gays would be less safe due to our realization that gays are too emotional and cannot be trusted, would not be of concern to me. I would have to vote my conscience – every time – and I suspect most other gun owners would as well.
And as an added bonus, this dumbass idea might bring about the collapse of civilization itself!
Once a group is, from a practical perspective, unable to appeal to the justice system for justice, it will not be long before the entire system’s foundation is in question. I suspect most politicians, rather than see this come to pass, would rather let everything cool off.
Perhaps this is the only path forward for the nation however – one step closer to Apocalypse.
Dude, why wait for the possible apocalypse? Seal yourself up in your doomsday bunker right now and avoid the rush!
I saw this truly horrifying video a couple of months back, thought I’d post it here for those who haven’t seen it. I really didn’t realise, being British and all, how the Right have mixed up guns and religion.
God, Guns and the Gospel.
You’re not really free until you have the power of life and death over your neighbours, or better yet the whole neighbourhood. Ideally everyone who passed the background check could have their own tank (obviously you’d also need a driving license to use it on the highway), then families would be really safe. Obviously, if an ‘unstable loner’ who ‘kept himself to himself’ reduces half the town to rubble, it is just the price of freedom and not a reflection on the desirability of unrestricted tank ownership.
@ Richard
Weirdly that used to be really easy under English gun laws.
It’s pretty simple to get a shotgun certificate. In the old days you didn’t have to register shotguns. Once you had your ticket you could just buy as many as you wanted with no checks.
In English law a shotgun is any smooth-bore firearm with a barrel length over 24 inches (you can probably guess where this is heading).
Lots of tanks have smooth-bore barrels and they’re certainly over two feet long. Quite a few people bought old tanks that still had working guns.
(Shotgun ammo though has to have at least five ‘pellets’ so to buy a tank shell you’d need a firearms ticket and they can restrict what ammo you can purchase)
It’s my understanding that the 2nd amendment represents a compromise. Some of the founders wanted a standing army during peacetime and some did not. Having an armed citizen militia was a way to meet in the middle so that’s what was put in the constitution. I’m no expert in early American history so I could be wrong but that’s what I remember hearing or reading somewhere. It wasn’t necessarily the intent to say all individuals can have any weapon they want, it’s all in how the courts interpret it.
Courts often talk about “the intent of the legislature” but it’s recognised that there really isn’t such a thing. The drafters of the Constitution were not all of one mind. Like most bits of legislation the Constitution is just the words the majority could live with. Then it is up to the courts to try to find an objective single meaning (as you say, theoretically courts don’t ‘make’ law they just ‘interpret’ it)
Incidentally, that’s one of the reasons it’s a general rule that courts can’t look at the record of the debate leading up to the passing of laws. It’s to stop someone at the last minute saying “so this means we can all have assault rifles yeah?” and that becoming the definitive meaning.
(The most obvious compromise in your constitution is having a bicameral legislature. Originally everyone agreed on a single house, but then the big states wanted proportional representation and the little states wanted equal representation, so you got one of each)
Wow, thanks, that clears up a lot! Still, it amazes me that basically anyone can go out and buy an assault weapon, (practically) no questions asked. I mean, a lot of pro-gun people like to shout about defending themselves but what would you need a semi- or automatic weapon to defend yourself against? The zombie apocalypse?
This actually happens all the time at the state level here (at least in Illinois). That kind of research is one of the main draws at my workplace.
@ maistrechat
Oh wow, so you have to trawl through all the transcripts of your state legislature?
A trans person was attacked after a benefit held for the victims of the Pulse shooting in Seattle recently.
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/06/24/24258701/this-is-not-an-isolated-incident-says-victim-of-anti-trans-attack
There are so many things that upset me about this. It’s pride week. They were in one of the LGBT+ friendliest neighborhoods in the country. That neighborhood is becoming more and more gentrified and the queer community is being pushed out. We don’t even have a good enough healthcare system in place to cover their injuries.
It’s just shit. Everything is shit.
US, the only country were people demand LESS rights. It’s really mind boggling to see how little some US value their freedom. Does any of you have any knowledge of history? does anyone here know how many countries owe their existence to firearms? do you really believe that you live in a fantasy world filled with ice cream?
It is ironic that right wingers want more (and more powerfull) weapons in the hand of individuals, yet they are the nazis (nevermind that nazi germany and every totalitarian regime had stric gun control for anyone outside their ranks). Meanwhile the “liberals” want to give all the power and weapons to the “big daddy” goverment, because that worked SO WELL in the history of mankind.
Looks like necro troll doesn’t realize that many democracies have gun control and are still democracies.
Also, I’m not going to waste time doing homework for a necro troll, but I’m pretty sure that the Nazis only had strict gun control for Jewish people but relaxed gun control laws for Christian Germans. What does that even have to do with background checks for gun purchases?
The tragedy of Jo Cox MP proved one thing, even in a country which has strict firearm regulations, if somebody wants to shoot someone they will get a gun and do it, licence or not. Where Tom Mair got his gun from, who knows? Probably a farm or even a museum. Did his lack of a formal gun licence prevent him from killing? No, of course not. Government intervention will not stop those who wish to procure a gun for illegal purposes from procuring one. Maybe from the Dark Web or somewhere like that?