Seriously, who reads this McArdle’s blogging? I don’t understand its appeal in the least. I think I’ve gotten through maybe four of her posts [like this embarrassment on the Tiller assassination], and I end up scratching my head every time. The level of discussion here never gets above high-school forensics, and, yet, there this Megan person is on the internet every day, going on an on about issues she never seems to make the tiniest headway on–in this case, the troubling new trend of right-wingers to show up at healthcare reform Town Halls strapped with guns.
Well, maybe that’s the way to get a cushy gig in this world: stay in the mushy middle. Drown in the edgeless oatmeal of your own making.
Good morning netizens, and grab a spoon and about a ton of brown sugar…
My Last Word on Guns
Jason Zengerle indicates that the real point is that openly carrying weapons at a protest makes it harder for the Secret Service to do their job. Probably.
No, absolutely. Assassinations of the president have been a brutal part of our history, tearing the country down. Do you think the Secret Service aren’t aware of the worst possible scenario for the President, the country, the Secret Service, their careers and their personal lives? So why make it harder for the Secret Service absent a really good reason? Carrying a gun around at a Presidential event is clearly a wink in that direction, fuck that.
On the other hand, lots of things make it harder for the Secret Service to do their job. Protesting is much harder on the Secret Service–almost certainly harder than one guy openly carrying a gun, because the protesters are a crowd of people who have to be watched constantly for suspicious movements. Should we ban protesting? Or force the people who do it off the premises and into a park eight blocks away?
You see what I’m talking about with this McArdle? Holy smokes, stupid. Protesters are a 100% given at these events, that’s probably been going on for more than a century, that’s routine for the Secret Service. Yes, still ‘the protesters are a crowd of people who have to be watched constantly for suspicious movements’, the reason being it’s possible there could be a credible threat to the President out there. Like someone carrying a gun.
Of course not. Expression in a free society is important–important enough even to let us risk the president’s life, as we are indisputably doing every time we allow a protest, or for that matter a crowd, near him. You can say, well, free speech is really important, and carrying a gun isn’t, but that’s begging the question.
We don’t allow protests, Megan, the Constitution does. And just what is this ‘begging the question’? It sounds like something really stupid meant to sound smart.
I’m going to stop discussing this after the post, because what it comes down to is liberals saying, “Conservatives with guns make me extraordinarily anxious and upset,” and clearly, they’re right. Nonetheless.
Nonetheless. Porridge. Glorps. And thanks for acknowledging those nervous liberals, ‘they’re right’ about their own feelings. The Atlantic pays this McArdle, really?
Carrying a gun is clearly an attempt to make some sort of political statement, though we may not know what–rather like flag burning. And the supreme court takes a very dim view of “Fighting words” type excuses to limit constitutional rights.
Rather like flag burning, it shouldn’t happen, even though you’ve a perfect right to do this.
AAAAAAAAAUUGGHHHHHH. Flag burning? I can do that in the privacy of my own backyard. Menacing the President–and everybody in the vicinity–takes loading your AR-15 and tracking Obama down at a Town Hall.
The problem with taking a narrow position is that everyone wants to push you into the broader position.
Wow. I’m going to take a wild guess there’s the opposite problem with the broader position. Seriously, who is this naif? She fascinates me.
It’s easier to argue with the opposite of your position than a halfhearted compromise. And making narrow arguments in the face of towering rage and anxiety seems, well, kind of wussy.
AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!
Nonetheless, I take the narrow position: openly carrying a gun to a protest is idiotic…
And we are done.
Oh, alright, sigh. One last McArdling:
I’m done talking about this now. To me, liberals sound like the pro-war crowd did in 2002–positive that they’re right, and constructing a lot of arguments around their ability to imagine what is going on in the heads of people they don’t know very well, and like even less…
I should add that Zengerle asks me what, besides a bet, I would take as proof that liberals are 100% serious in their beliefs about protesters. Well, I think revealed preference is the best cue, but I would take a non-bet bet. That is: what would falsify your belief that these people are the vanguard of a rising tide of dangerous right-wing militia action?
I don’t get the feeling that it is possible to falsify these beliefs–indeed, the rage that confronts me when I attempt the fairly anodyne task of showing that law-abiding gun owners almost never turn criminal, suggests a very considerable emotional investment in them.
Which of our Presidential assassins weren’t ‘law-abiding gun owners’ until they pulled off their violent, jaw-dropping coups? Off the top of my head, Lee Harvey Oswald took a shot at General Edwin Walker, but law enforcement had no idea. His wife didn’t even know.
And yet, hundreds of thousands of other, less environmentally threatened Americans swear that they really, really have to have a gun. Especially a handgun, the easily concealed weapon best suited for shooting human beings in close quarters urban combat. They don’t feel right without one, and they freak out just considering living without it.
