Guerrero: Wake up, Democrats. Don’t let Republicans own the issue of violent crime.
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I think this argument is dead – dead dead dead. When we find this argument used at the first opportunity by someone claiming to oppose any gun control, they have already lost, because it is a strawman.
The argument is, that “gun control” is simply a term meant to shut down the gun lobby. And that gun owners are not violent people who don’t deserve that label.
Yet when you look at what happens, with and without gun control, gun owners are very violent people. I’m not just talking about the criminals. Many regular gun owners will go on to shoot someone, and there are many other reasons that gun owners shoot people, be it for a momentary lapse in judgement, for sport or just as a result of stress, or any number of reasons.
You cannot make a rational argument for or against gun control or other types of law without accepting the basic argument that gun owners are violent people, who may even be inclined to abuse their gun ownership privilege. Gun rights people cannot make the argument, with a straight face.
The only way to counter this argument is to point out that violence is not inherent in gun ownership, that gun owners are not as extreme as gun control advocates make them out to be, and that this is a political argument masquerading as a political argument.
Gun control advocates are being dishonest when they call themselves “pro gun” and they are being dishonest when they call themselves “anti-gun”. These guys are no better than the NRA, a group who only have one agenda: keeping the people who have been shooting themselves and others with semi-automatic rifles from shooting again.
But, the NRA is not a political party. It is an organization, and we cannot expect them to be “for” anything. Their only aim is to keep as many people as possible from buying semi-
