I stumbled across this quote while reading a novel by Andrew Wareham about the RAF in India during WWII. The protagonist, Group Captain Thomas Stark, is talking to his adjutant Henry.
Good argument in itself, Henry! Whenever someone says “common sense” to me, I know it’s going to be bloody stupid. “Common sense” always means you’re too bloody lazy to learn the facts and apply the science, or too bloody stupid to make something up.
The Last Campaign by Andrew Wareham (#commision earned)
How many times have we heard the phrase “common sense” when applied to a new gun control law, regulation, or other governmental restriction on our rights? When a politician or gun control activist utters those words, I either turn them off or think “BOHICA!” I think Thomas Paine would be appalled at how American politicians have perverted this phrase.
There is a lot of value in actual common sense. The problem is that the left perverts the term to mask the fact that their agenda is anything but common sense. They abuse language constantly to sell an agenda to the public that would never fly if they called it what it really is.
So, it’s no longer “gun control” it’s “common sense gun safety” because who would oppose common sense gun safety?
The sad thing is that it often works. They repeat a term often enough and screech loudly enough when someone refuses to use their term that it becomes embedded in the language to the point that the uninformed simply accept the inaccurate terminology as fact.
You make a very good point. The perversion of the language has translated common sense gun safety from meaning you follow Col. Cooper’s Four Rules to now a buzzword for more gun control.