For most of my adult life, which may have started, as it does for most men, after the age of eighteen because we mature later and die earlier than women -- there has been a struggle in navigating when people say something that I know to be false in my presence.
I think that most younger people assume that a person is trying to get away with a lie. I think that, usually, we should assume that the person is just wrong. Still, when you realize that there's a trickle down of lies on a subject, and you see how people behave when they're challenged on talking points, the issue gains complexity. Is this person clued into the lie, bought into the lie, brain washed by the lie, wishfully ignorant, or just an idiot?
The fight over assault weapons has been around since before I was born.
In the early 80s, about three years before I came into this world, there was a horrible shooting in Southern California which started a debate about banning so-called "assault weapons." Contrary to many of your assumptions, neither an AR-15 nor an AK was involved. The shooter used three guns: a 9mm handgun, a shotgun, and a civilian-style Uzi. Even the Uzi involved, by current legal definitions in These United States, qualifies as a pistol in that configuration.
This lead to a push for an assault weapons ban, which even failed to pass in California (aka, America's butt hole).
Three years after I was born, Josh Sugarmann boasted about a lie that would infect this debate 35 years later, and for the foreseeable future.
As Mr. Sugarmann wrote to his organization, he Violence Policy Center in 1988 --
"The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons - anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun - can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
Even if you're on the anti-gun side, this should piss you off.
You know who isn't confused about these distinctions? Pro-gun people like me. You know who doesn't immediately regard anything that looks like a machine gun as being one? Gun owners like me.
What this douche is saying is that your ignorance is his power. He knew that he was lying when I was three-years-old, and he's still lying, and most anti-2A people are either aware of the lie, purveyors of the lie, fellow travelers with the lie, willfully ignorant, or just not very smart.
We have one person on record saying that his endeavor is to lie, and exploite people's ignorance right there, all pink and naked. So, what about the millions of fellow travelers over the last thirty-five years?
I think that most people who are making a substantial amount of money know that they're lying.
Sheila Jackson-Lee recently tried to cajole congress into an assault weapons ban while showing diagrams. She knew about as much about how to navigate an AR-15 as I knew about how to navigate a vagina when I was thirteen.
Beto O'Rourke is already a known liar on a lot of issues. Gun control is one of his biggest talking points, and he doesn't know piss and head from his sister's titty on the issue. During a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club, they were joking about how an AR-15 is useless for hunting because it would obliterate the animal. If you take five minutes, you can find video of a hunter taking down a deer with an AR with one shot.
Beto is probably mildly retarded; but, he's also a liar.
Still, this trickles down to the public at large.
People are supporting people in power who want to imprison people for decades who haven't hurt anyone. It's just the presence of the gun that they want to elevate to the level of rape in the criminal justice system.
Okay, define your fucking terms. Back yourself up. I'm fucking listening. I've been listening for twenty years. Come at me with something that's clear and reasoned -- and not based on a lie that was embraced more than three decades ago.
Forget, "What is a woman?" for a moment. If you think that people should be in jail for having an assault weapon, tell me what that fucking is. Give me examples of guns that you think are fine, and why. Give me examples that you think make you the moral equivalent of a rapist and why.
I dare you. Come at me with all you got. Call me names. Tell me how I just don't care about the safety of children. Take any and all moral highgrounds that you think that you may have.
Be vicious. Be mean. Be condescending.
I've been there. I've done that.
I know more than you.
I'm willing to hurt your feelings as much as you're willing to hurt mine.
The difference is that I'm not basing anything on a lie.