An antigun article based on someone's tragic incompetence

[Old Grump]

Deputy hands his loaded service gun to a man not familiar with handguns. Some mistakes you only make once. From the description of the sequence of events the author knows nothing about handguns but if it was a true story then the deputy paid for his bone head move in the worst way possible. I'm sorry for his family but you didn't need a deputy like that on the force any way.

It isn't anti-gun, it's anti-ignorant/stupid people handling guns. You cannot fix stupid, you can only slow it down with a well placed application of a 2X4 to the forehead.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

My view is that:

1. The Times is vehemently antigun. Thus they take every effort to attack gun owners. Even if once in awhile they have an honest article - their editorial stance is clear.

2. Either through their own emotions and/or deliberately they choose incidents where guns do bad. This is to portray a vivid instance to appear emotionally to ban all guns.

3. They play to the incompetence argument. This fellow and the article Vanya cited. See they are unsafe for the average dope (like you and me).

4. They play on the currently popular hipster themes of depression, PTSD, drug usage - as compared to a realistic therapeutic solution. Oh, no - see you will go nuts if you use a gun.

5. The article attacks what they view as the classic male attitudes. The violent, rural male - out of control. It is an attack on a culture which to the island of Manhattan is evil and bizarre.

Similarly, Vanya's article has a woman who requests and trumpets her own incompetence to deal with a psychological problem. She portrays a picture of wanting benevolent sexism as the disturbed little lady cannot overcome her disturbances and own a firearm. The suicide argument is specious as an impulsive use of drugs, or jumping off a building are available. True, guns might be a touch easier but depriving many of gun rights as she cannot handle it is egocentric, narcissistic personal weakness.

I'm glad she didn't but suggestion the denial of rights for many more is not acceptable.

The Times is trying to present a set of weak people. I wonder if they try to find such or have them come over the transom. Certainly, they might get over the transom positive stories of gun use. They have had some in the past but the total package is to use emotion and appeal to an Eastern and/or urban view of personal weakness to tar all gun owners as a bizarre and dangerous subculture.

 

[Evan Thomas]

Good analysis, Glenn.

I'd add one more item: I think the Times is also portraying guns as seductively dangerous: in this recent piece, the author says that he was unable to resist the masculine allure of guns and the gun culture. He writes:

Like many other young men, I mythologized guns and the ideas of manhood associated with them.
<snip>
My friend was killed by a man who misunderstood guns, who imagined that comfort with — and affection for — guns was a vital component of manhood.​

Similarly, the author of the piece I mentioned says that because of her history of depression, guns are just too dangerous for her, and she is powerless before them:

But since most people like me are more likely to harm ourselves than to turn into mass-murdering monsters, our leaders should do more to keep us safe from ourselves.​

If she's afraid of owning a gun, all she has to do is not buy one, but their seductive power is such that she doesn't trust herself not to -- and the State should save her from herself. The implicit message, I think, is that all gun owners have been seduced by these dangerous objects, and that we are at risk because of our own weakness.

 

[MLeake]

This is frustrating, but it isn't only guns.

For instance, look at the reporting on the collision between the Navy EP-3 and the Chinese fighter.

The Chinese fighter should have yielded right of way because it was intercepting.

The Chinese fighter should have yielded right of way because it was more maneuverable.

The Chinese fighter should have yielded right of way because its cockpit design affords better visibility.

These are international rules of the road, and would not have been hard for reporters or editors to discover. Yet the international, and even the US, media often as not went along with the Chinese meme of "the aggressor P3 caused the accident."

Don't even get me started on the JFK, Jr reporting. Guy went flying with a not fully healed broken leg/foot (have fun operating rudder pedal and brake), proceeding into conditions requiring more instrument training than he had, and pushed into weather that caused him to lose orientation and either a) spin or b) spiral a perfectly good airplane into the ocean. Press coverage on that looked for flaws in the airplane; implied general aviation was unsafe; yada yada yada.

I could look at motorcycles, boats, etc; the point is that while malfeasance in reporting is possible (and likely in the case of guns), a lot of bad reporting is due to outright laziness, and a failure to consult subject matter experts.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Great addition, Vanya!

 

[lcpiper]

Sounds like total fiction to me.
dc

This pulled from http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2013/04/very_strange_ny.php

OK, looks like it did happen. I just got this from the Omak Chronicle, where someone was kind enough to check the morgue for me:

--
Bruce Allen Holbert, 22, Kent, was booked for second-degree manslaughter then released on PR.

Groomes, Holbert and a third unnamed man were sitting in a vehicle on Cemetery Road around 9:45 p.m. near Okanogan when Groomes was shot the back in what deputy prosecutor Mike Dempsey said was an accidental shooting.

It was left to prosecutor Doug Boole to decide to charge. Boole was on vacation.

Grooms was a student at Eastern Washington University studying criminology. He was spending the summer as a trainee with the Okanogan Police Department.

Just sounds like a young man who did a really stupid thing with something that you really shouldn't be doing stupid things with. This is the story he has fashioned for himself in order to help himself live with what he has done.

And yea, I don't think he knows anything about guns or cars. But he is carrying one hell of a burden and a guy has to find a way to life and move on.

The NYT on the other hand are losers, doubly so for publishing. Personally I don't think much of the author for writing this. I truly understand how accidents can happen, but I can't see a man who properly shoulders his guilt and responsibility for his own actions writing a piece like this.

 

[Tom Servo]

I can't see a man who properly shoulders his guilt and responsibility for his own actions writing a piece like this.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The guy's transferring guilt to the instrument while he does jazz hands and claims he's most absolutely definitely not blaming the instrument.

"You see, it's the fault of the NRA and the gun culture that there are guns out there in the first place, because if there weren't guns, the deputy wouldn't have needed one, and this whole thing wouldn't have happened. Now look at what I have to live with. Everybody feel sorry for me."

Yeesh.

 

[SPEMack618]

To me, it just seems to underline the growing division between the camp of those in favor of personal responsibility in America and those who feel that the Government will have to save us from ourselves.

 

[lcpiper]

Well, he did turn to writing for his living. He writes fiction and non-fiction, and it seems on this subject he has a problem keeping the two apart