authoritarianism Archives -

Law Abiding?

A friend pointed out a Twitter post by a Nathan Rubin. His Twitter bio says he’s an “award winning” author and Democratic activist. His book, Boomers to Millennials: Moving America Forward, does have some awards but it doesn’t look like it sold too many copies. Amazon puts it in the top 1.9 million best sellers.

Here is what Rubin wrote on Twitter:

New Rule — you can’t call yourself a law abiding gun owner if your response to a mandatory gun buyback is “come and get it.”

Either you’d follow the law and turn it in (because that’d be the law), or you’re an irresponsible criminal who has no business owning an AK-47 or AR-15.
— Nathan H. Rubin (@NathanHRubin) September 14, 2019

So unless I am a compliant sheep and turn in my ARs and AKs, I will be considered (by him) to be an irresponsible criminal. Hmm.

David Burkhead gave the best response to this nonsense on Facebook.

You can’t call yourself a law abiding American if you don’t return fugitive slaves to their owners. You can’t call yourself a law abiding Chinese if you don’t report any disagreement with Mao to the authorities. You can’t call yourself a law abiding German if you don’t report the presence of any hiding Jews.

See how that works?

The only one I’d add is that you couldn’t call yourself a law abiding Soviet citizen if you didn’t report someone criticizing the Communist Party to the KGB. In Stalin’s time, that was enough to either get you an ounce of lead along with an unmarked grave or a trip to the Gulag Archipelago.

I think that is the dream in the back of the minds of the authoritarian gun prohibitionists.

Misleading Infographic Of The Day

Normally, I like infographics. Used correctly, they convey a lot of useful information in an understandable format. However, they can be misused.

An example of infographic misuse is shown below. It comes from Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors and their Demand Action project.

What the infographic doesn’t tell you is that Harry Reid (D-NV) set the bar at 60 votes for any amendment to S. 649 to forestall any efforts at a filibuster. It was part of the motion to proceed to consideration of the bill and to accelerate the discussion. Otherwise, there would have been 30 hours of debate and Harry Reid didn’t want the details of Manchin-Toomey subjected to that much sunlight.

Moreover, their argument that five senators representing four states which comprise 1.4% of the US population is specious. You could make the equally valid argument that the six senators from three states – Vermont, Rhode Island, and Delaware – put Manchin-Toomey over the 50 vote mark. These three states, by the way, represent a mere 0.8% of the US population.

Jame Taranto of the Wall Street Journal in his Best of the Web Today column calls these efforts “a thuggish majoritarian rhetoric”. It helps put this infographic – which is nothing but authoritarian propaganda – into perspective.