NRA nonsense
by Dave Winer Monday, June 20, 2016

Just listened to an interview with the NRA chief Wayne LaPierre on Face The Nation. Trump was on before him, talking about how you shouldn't be politically correct, all the while refusing to say anything specific about what he would do to combat the terrorism he says is so rampant. In other words Trump has become politically correct, perfectly so. A real slippery politician. LaPierre says we're about to be overwhelmed by ISIS. Problem is a lot of people listening to him believe that kind of bullshit. 

Another popular bullshit line asks why should we bother passing laws -- since the "bad guys" don't bother with laws anyway. This sounds really savvy until you start to dig in. By that logic we shouldn't outlaw murder either, because murderers don't follow the law, right? But if it weren't illegal, then we wouldn't be able to put someone in jail for murdering someone. Right? And if we make owning automatic weapons illegal, we don't have to wait until we catch you killing 49 people in a night club on a Saturday night. We can arrest you as soon as we see that you have in your possession a gun whose only use is to mow down dozens of people. This would of course prevent some number of murders by automatic weapon. 

Basically yes, we should outlaw things like owning guns that can only be used for mass murder. And yes, if we did so, it likely would result in fewer deaths. It certainly would not result in more! How's that for a little common sense, non-politically correct talk.

LaPierre is the worst kind of person. I wish we could outlaw being that kind of person, but this is America and that's a line we won't cross. Though of course his candidate Trump doesn't live by that rule.