Your Best Arguments and Talking Points against Anti-gunners and Fence-Sitters

[ReadyOnTheRight]

The anti gun movement uses fear, lies and emotion to try to take away our rights. They've figured out how to do it in slow waves -- like a frog slowly boiling in a pot or the camel's nose in your tent.

Please share with TFL members your favorite arguments, talking points, quotes -- whatever -- when you get into the RKBA discussion with an anti-gunner or someone who is sitting on the fence.

As stated (poorly) in an earlier post, I've found that asking "What gun control law would you propose to keep CRIMINALS from using a gun to commit a crime?" Seems to work well. It can get a fence-sitter to think and possibly open their eyes with a little help. A true Anti will just shut down because they know the answer.

The answer, of course is that there is no law that will stop law-breakers. Gun control laws only affect (and hurt) the law-abiding.

Asking this as a question usually works better than just lecturing because people have to get to the truth on their own.

The anti-gunners have much of the media and Hollywood on their side. But we have the Constitution, the internet, Freedom of Speech (backed up by the 2nd Amendment) and 18,000 TFL members to spread the truth through our words, actions and how we live our lives.

 

[Kaylee]

eek. Edited to remove bad joke in poor taste. My Bad.

-K

 

[Ledbetter]

The current gun laws, if they were only enforced, already prohibit criminals from buying guns retail. It is useless to enact more laws that only effect those who voluntarily obey them unless the laws prohibiting felons from buying guns are enforced via prosecutions and punishment.

Disarming the law-abiding populace and leaving them defenseless is the worst possible response to any increase in violent crime, especially since the police have no legal duty whatsoever to protect citizens from coming to harm.

Too often in society we elevate feel-good policies over realities. To do so in this instance is insanity. Law enforcement agencies across the nation are NOT calling for stricter gun control or ballistic fingerprinting

Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun. Again today, 85 million gunowners harmed no one. The figures quoted to you by Brady and others about the number of "children" being killed each day by firearms is false and misleading.

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental Constitutional right of all law-abiding Americans. The only legitimate way to rescind or limit it is to amend the Constitution through legal means.

The Second Amendment is not about hunting. It guaranteed the citizens of the eighteenth century access to the most technologically advanced rifles and pistols of there time for the defense of themselves, their homes and their inalienable rights. It is literally the "canary in the coalmine" to the remainder of our rights under the nation's highest law, the Constitutionand the Bill of Rights. Without it, the law-abiding citizens of the land become the literal subjects of the Government and the potential victims of anyone set on doing them harm, as in England where crime rates are soaring and the right to use force in defense of self or others is virtually nonexistent.

 

[Quartus]

Asking this as a question usually works better than just lecturing

Bingo. This is number one - ask questions. And, "okkay, what then" is a realy winner. Make THEM take you through the logic!

"Okay, if we did that, what would criminals do. How would that help -----?"


What success I have had has come by this method. One was a very liberal philosophy student who is now a perfessor of philosophy at the University of Califoria, Irvine. (Er wuz last I checked, 'bout 10 years ago.)

Anyone care to calculate the influence of THAT conversion?

Hit the fence sitters - forget the diehards.


And remember it's sometimes hard to tell the difference, so try them all!

 

[Mike Irwin]

For the antis who want to confiscate my guns?

Come and get them...

 

[spacemanspiff]

well i havent had a successful *discussion* with any antis. they all ignore the logic and facts behind the points i make and jump straight to 'guns kill hundreds of thousands of innocent children every year, to the tune of XX per day, and what, do you carry everywhere you go, since criminals dont broadcast their movements, so ifyou dont carry in the bathroom you arent really protected, but never mind that the media is overreporting and overexaggerating violent crimes, so you are a paranoid fool using your gun as an extension of your sex organ, and gunowners eat babies.'


enough to make you sick. but for the fence sitters, it just takes pointing out to them the low numbers of truly preventable deaths (i.e. accidents) as murders and suicides will always happen with or without firearms, and then show them that this represents much less than 1% of firearm owners in this country. you cant say the same about automobiles in this country.
then go on to show them how guns are used to prevent over a million crimes per year, and show how that if guns save 33+ times more people than they kill (1,000,000+ divided into 30,000) then any form of gun control is not worth it.


the most memorable fence sitter i worked on was my mother, and she now accepts that i carry both openly and concealed for my protection as well as that of the grandchildren she takes care of, when i am with them.

 

[NewShooter78]

For me it is easy. I was once an anit so to speak. I now love and enjoy my guns and lust after others daily, lol. But a lot of my friends are anti's or fence sitters, and they have had to rethink a lot of what they thought they knew now that I am stricktly pro SA. I use the arguements that persuaded me.

What I have found most useful is comparing the 1st and 2nd amendments not on what rights they guarantee, but on what affects abridgment of these rights can lead to. Every person who is staunchly for the 1st amendment knows the slippery slope analogy. I use that same analogy for the 2nd amendment. Today they ban so called "assault weapons". Some states want to limit the number of guns you can buy a month/year. Next they will limit calibers we can own. And then so fort and so on until none of us are allowed to own anything accept single shot small caliber rifles that aren't good for anything accept target practice.

Now while it is damn near impossible to convert a staunch anti, a lot of "liberal" fence sitters can see the logic behind the ideology we have towards the 2nd amendment. While they might not go out and buy a gun and start shooting like the rest of us, they might understand better why a lot of us are so "zealous" about protecting and unabridged 2nd amendment.

The only other thing that I know of that will convert fence sitters and anti's quickly is when they are victims of violent crimes. I posted not too long ago about two female friends of mine that were held up at gunpoint in front of thier house. Now one of them has seen the light and is going to go with me and some of my other gun owning friends to shop around for a pistol that is right for her, and she is going to enroll in a gun safety class and go through the steps to getting a CCW.

 

[SDC]

As a Canadian, almost the first anti-gun argument I always hear is "Well, what about those bloodthirsty Americans? If they didn't have all of those icky old guns, then they wouldn't have nearly as many murders". Putting aside the fact that Canadians have almost as many guns per capita as Americans do (a fact that the government up here and the gun control lobby do their best to cover up), something OTHER than guns has to explain the fact that Americans BEAT each other to death almost twice as often as Canadians do; when I point this out to them, and ask "How many Americans have you ever seen with twice as many arms or legs than you have?" then they start to think a little.

 

[another okie]

When I last checked the statistics, the total of non-gun murders in the U.S. exceeded the per capita rate of total murders, gun and non-gun, in most European countries. Guns are not the problem. (That's not a response to the question, that's an add-on to an earlier response.)

The most succesful arguments I have used are:

everyone has the right of self-defense

I don't say it's an absolute right, no right is absolute, I just want it to be taken as seriously as any other constitutional right

and in response to the "you want to own nuclear weapons":
The second amendment protects the type of weapons appropriate for the militia, such as rifles, shotguns, and pistols. We're not asking for artillery.

 

[Quartus]

The second amendment protects the type of weapons appropriate for the militia, such as rifles, shotguns, and pistols. We're not asking for artillery.

That would have been news to the authors of the 2A, since that notion wasn't heard of until the early 20th century.


http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145740


Our cause is best served when its supporters understand it well. It is NOT served by surrendering its heart and soul in an attempt to avoid being "extreme".

 

[Dennis]

Folks,

This subject will be addressed in "Enemy at the Gates" in the April issue of S.W.A.T. Magazine by Richard W. Stevens.

It's a good read!

 

[Skibane]

Taking 11.43x23's cue to pose every talking point as a question, here are a few of my favorites:

1. American citizens have been armed for some 227 years. Why change now? Has human nature suddently changed? Have criminals suddenly started "playing fair"? Have all our politicians suddenly become scrupulously honest?

2. With some 20,000 gun control laws already on the books, shouldn't we have incorporated all of the "sensible" ones a long time ago?

3. If only the police are allowed to own guns, isn't that the very definition of a police state?

 

[ReadyOnTheRight]

So...gun control can supposedly save lives. Along with the 2 million+ crimes prevented per year with guns, the right to keep and bear arms also protects us from an oppressive government.

Countries having successful gun control laws in the 20th Century -- and the results of the laws:

1915-1917 Ottoman Turkey, 1.5 million Armenians murdered
1929-1953 Soviet Union, 20 million people that opposed Stalin were murdered.
1933-1945 Nazi occupied Europe, 13 million Jews, Gypsies and others that opposed Hitler, murdered
1948-1952 China, 20 million anti-communists or communist reformers, murdered
1960-1981 Guatemala, 100,000 Maya Indians, murdered
1971-1979 Uganda, 300,000 Christians and political rivals of Idi Amin, murdered
1975-1979 Cambodia, 1 million educated persons, murdered
1995 Srebrenica Bosnians disarmed by the UN, the UN withdrew, Srebrenica was overrun and over 8,000 now-disarmed people were murdered by the Serb army.

That’s more than 2000 unarmed men, women and children murdered by their own government for EVERY SINGLE DAY in the 20th century.

www.jpfo.org

Join Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (it's for all of us, not just Jews). JPFO gets to the root of the reasons for firearms ownership.

-Molon Labe-

 

[ReadyOnTheRight]

Arguing through sarcasm --

Here's a gem I found somewhere on the internet -- maybe at TFL -- but I would like to post it here:

"Gun Control WILL reduce gun crimes... Here is how we do it. In cooperation with EVERY government in power we:

1. Confiscate firearms from all legal owners - including armies and police
2. Confiscate firearms from all criminals
3. Cease production of all arms and ammunition throughout the world
4. Kill all the scientists and engineers
5. Through a campaign of "re-education" all knowledge of pyrotechnics, and metallurgy will be removed from Earth's populace
5. Wait 450 years for all firearms to degrade to an unusable state
6. Allow the Human race to be overtaken by damn dirty apes

As you can see, in theory this gun control plan will abolish all gun crime in just a little more than 450 years... let me ask, is there any time too long to wait for our children's benefit?"

 

[Quartus]

eleven, I used just that line of argument (without the sarcasm ) to get to a liberal. That and asking "what if" questions.

It works. I don't think sarcasm helps, though it might get to a fence sitter who is listening to your conversation.

 

[Fred Hansen]

Currently I use the words of one of their Hollyperv idols to point out that even the true believer antis see the truth in one of their rare lucid moments.

Consider: "This started out as a documentary on gun violence in America, but the largest mass murder in our history was just committed -- without the use of a single gun! Not a single bullet fired! No bomb was set off, no missile was fired, no weapon (i.e., a device that was solely and specifically manufactured to kill humans) was used. A boxcutter! -- I can't stop thinking about this. A thousand gun control laws would not have prevented this massacre. What am I doing?

From Michael Moore's "Tears Down The Westside Highway" which he posted on his weblog circa 21-22 September, 2001

In that moment, Mikey made it plain that he knows that evil does not spring forth from inanimate objects. He knows that evil resides in the hearts and minds of men. Yet - for the sake of filthy lucre - Mikey Moore and other antis will aid and abet those who live for the sake of doing evil by working every day to disarm those who live for the sake of doing good.

Then I ask said anti why they don't at least have brains enough to cash in on their symbiotic relationship with killers/rapists/thugs like Mikey & Co.?

Said anti's reaction usually resembles the look that a carp has after being out of the water for an hour or three.

Oh yeah... and if they still don't get it, I tell them Molon Labe. When they ask what that means I tell them that it's ancient Greek for "From my cold dead hands!"

 

[jimpeel]

A fellow gunnie in CA, when I lived there, asked an HCI rep who was appearing with him on a TV show "Are you willing to die to take firearms away from those who own them?"

The guy answered "No."

My buddy then leaned over and told him "Look me in these baby blue eyes and tell me if you think I'm willing to die to keep my firearms."

The guy just wilted.

 

[jimpeel]

Here is one of the answers I give when someone tells me how the Second Amendment is to protect the states against federal disarmament of their official militias (the states "rights" argument).

"Pursuant to Article I, Section 10, para 3 of the Constitution it states:

"No State shall, without the consent of Congress, ... keep troops, or Ships of War in time of peace, ..."

So what you are saying is even though the States need to have the permission from Congress to do what is otherwise prohibited to them; the Second Amendment prevents the Congress from disarming the States who need their permission to be so equipped in the first place?"

Another good riposte, when they demand more laws, is to ask them "There are 20,000 federal, state, and local firearms laws in America yet you believe we need more laws. Upon what evidence do you base your belief that law number 20,001 will do the trick?"

 

[jimpeel]

When told that only the police and military should have firearms I ask them "Would those be the same police who played a starring role in the Mollen, Knapp, and Christopher Commissions?"

Of course this will likely require a bit of explanation on how these commissions were convened for the investigation of police corruption so you need to bone up a bit on those three.

 

[animal]

One of my sisters in law is Very liberal … sickeningly so … One time , when the conversation turned to gun control, after exhausting the factual/statistical/empirical arguments and she was completely unaffected … I closed by turning the conversation personal. Liberals seem to look at things personally.

I told her that that to me, gun ownership - especially of military style weapons - was not only a symbol of freedom but a tangible guarantee by the Constitution that we, as a people, would never be oppressed by a govt. (foreign or domestic) …that I would have the choice to fight back or at least not run away if faced by a criminal … to defend my family … and others.
I told her that supporting gun control laws (without first repeal of the 2nd Amendment)* was tantamount to signing a warrant for my death as well as for many of those I call friends because there are those of us who will never surrender our means and guarantee of freedom. I told her that I knew that the "gun nuts" would not be able to win such a fight (as almost all of us do) but that by that time it would no longer matter. I can not render myself and more importantly, my family, defenseless against tyranny of any form. I do not wish to die but to die fighting for my beliefs is preferable to life as a slave.
I also added that neither I nor anyone I know would look for a fight. We are defenders … not attackers. We are the people you rarely hear about. The people who would step in to help others against injustice and crime… to help people like you against an attacker … even knowing that you would take away our means to do so.

It shut her up. This was several years ago. She’s not a strong anti anymore and is actually a little on the pro side. There was no "great revelation" on her part. The change in her attitude was very gradual. I just like to think that I may have helped it along.


*Repeal of the 2nd would, in my view, mean the loss of the fight without a shot fired .. so to speak. It would mean that my country had left me so I guess I would have to go country shopping or something…