U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Ben Shapiro has a saying. His saying is that “facts don’t care about your feelings.” Every time a shooting happens in the US the anti-gun leftist try to goad the pro-gun side into a debate. The issue is that you cannot have a discussion when one side is arguing facts, and the other side is using an emotional crutch.
We can all agree on what happened in Parkland, Florida was a hideous crime. We can all agree that this is a tragedy that we shouldn’t have to accept as “just part of life.” I think we all want to prevent the next mass shooting. It is just the left, and the right disagrees on how to fix the situation.
Where the pro-gun side wants to fix the actual problem such as the mental health system, the left would instead attack an inanimate object like it is the ring from the “Lord Of The Rings.” The Democrat method is akin to trying to fix the road instead of your car when it breaks down. It just doesn’t work.
I am not saying don’t debate the people on the left. What I am suggesting is when you do engage them in a war of ideas for you not to get sucked into a battle of emotions. Ben Shapiro headed off Piers Morgan by removing the emotional argument by insisting that Morgan “not stand on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook.”
Shapiro automatically puts Morgan on the defensive and took away his ability to use emotions in his argument by using this technique. Morgan spent a minute plus saying, “How dare you?” in his smug British accent. The reason he kept repeating himself is that Shapiro took away the emotional evidence that Morgan was so fond of using and he knew he couldn’t beat Shapiro in a war of facts.
When debating gun control with someone on the left, it is always good to know their arguments better than they do. Fortunately for us being on the pro-gun side, the gun grabbers will use the same talking points sourced from the same places. In reality most of the time they just repeat the twisted statistics they hear on TV.
The question I ask is, “If we were to stop the manufacture and sale of all firearms from this moment then how would you deal with the 350 million plus guns that are already in circulation in the United States?”
The only answer that they have is a forced confiscation of firearms. People always think that there is some list of the location of where every gun resides, but this isn’t the case, so make sure they know that fact. It is clear to see if no one knows where all the guns are then there is no way for gun confiscation to work.
Even if the government did know where every gun was, the confiscating firearms wouldn’t work in our country. Unless they are dishonest, they will have to admit a large percentage are not going to volunteer to give up their guns. How would the anti-gunner handle the holdouts? Usually, they will not have an answer.
Another argument I have seen today is the “18 school shootings this year” pushed by Everytown. Ask them if they know what Everytown considers a school shooting. When they don’t understand what Everytown uses in their study, then bring up the fact that they included bb guns in their stats of school shooting.
I always bring up the indisputable fact that schools are gun-free zones. If you look at the study by The Crime Research Prevention Center that looked at every mass shootings between 1950 and 2016, they found that a staggering 98.4% happened in gun free zones. Even if we limit the range to 1998 to 2016, we still see that 96.2% of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.
The anti-gunners are going to bring up more talking points from Everytown again. The Bloomberg group puts this number at only 30% of shootings happening in gun-free zones. When this happens, I always ask if they know what Everytown counts in their studies. Of course, they don’t.
Everytown includes suicides, accidental discharges, and airsoft guns. Yes, kids playing in the park with airsoft guns and police get called because someone overreacts is counted as “a shooting” by Everytown For Gun Safety. The average anti-gunners just hear the numbers and does not look at the method that was used to reach the figures.
In truth, Everytown For Gun Safety counts on people not looking into their methods used to come up with their skewed numbers. The more significant the amounts; The more prominent the headlines. By knowing their ways, we can discount their studies as propaganda.
The gun-grabbers will try to argue that the founding fathers were talking about muskets and not AR15s in the Consitution. This point is elementary to counter. James Madison, “The Father Of The Consitution,” wrote in Federalist No.46 about the need of the people to be armed as well as the military. Most gun-grabbers haven’t even heard of the Federalist Papers.
My favorite thing that they do is say that the other developed countries don’t have as many people killed by guns. What this does is discounts is the size of the US. The numbers they use do not include the differences in population. When you look at shootings per capita, you will find another answer.
Jaclyn Schildkraut of the State University of New York in Oswego and H. Jaymi Elsass of Texas State University analyzed mass shooting from 2004 to 2014. What they found is that you have a better chance of being killed in a shooting in Norway, Finland, and Switzerland than in the US.
Then you also have to look at the violent crime rates in other countries. This statistic is one thing that the left never uses in their anti-gun attack. For example, in China where citizens are not allowed to own firearms at all, they have a higher murder than in the US. If people want to kill you and don’t have access to a gun they are just going to use something else.
The final thing the gun-grabbers might use is another stat from the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. The statistic states that there were 300 mass school shootings since 2013. The actual number of total mass shootings since 1999 is 66 according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. These include all public mass shootings whether they happen in a school or a park. We can surmise from this fact that the 300 number is not only misleading but a total lie.
With separating emotion from the facts we, as responsible gun owners, can win any debate with the gun-grabbing leftist. What we must do is not follow them down the rabbit hole of emotion. We must present the fact and know the subject matter better than they do. In the end, the truth is on our side.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. He is the former CEO of Veritas Firearms, LLC and is the co-host of The Patriot News Podcast which can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/patriotnews. John has written extensively on the patriot movement including 3%’ers, Oath Keepers, and Militias. In addition to the Patriot movement, John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and is currently working on a book on the history of the patriot movement and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss or at www.crumpy.com.
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