Lazy, Igonorant, Cowardly: Diagnostic Analysis, or Name Calling?

Keep it gun-specific. It doesn't help our cause to broaden it to a general liberal-conservative divide. After all, there are pro-gun liberals (although admittedly they aren't typical). We need all the allies we can get.

Words like "cowards" need to be banished from the lexicon. Calling someone a "coward" is guaranteed to turn him into an enemy. Just because someone chooses not to carry a gun doesn't make him a coward -- in many cases, it's quite the opposite.

Way to be an ambassador! I'm sure when you hit those Liberals with your two by four of wisdom they will be forced to confront their cowardice laziness and then thank you for helping them to self-actualize.

<slow clap>

Yeah, keep it to the RKBA argument and not the liberal vs conservative. There are a lot of liberal (socially anyway) firearms enthusiasts out there and name calling doesn't do anything to help our cause. That's coming from a gun totin' vegan...

Johnny Dollar said:

Please, break it up into smaller paragraphs, SDM! Only my Optometrist is benefiting!

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LOL.....

I was thinking the same thing.
I couldn't even finish reading the post.
It was giving me a headache.

What's it about anyways?

Words like "Nanny State", "denial", "sheeple" are bound to rankle. If irritating your debate-opponents is a tactic that you think will win them over (and it just might, given the dynamics of family relationships), go ahead.

On the other hand, there is a 2005 Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling that says the police are not there to protect you.

A woman reported to the police the whereabouts of her ex-husband (against whom she had a protective order) and her daughters, ages 7, 9 and 10 (who the ex-husband had kidnapped and, eventually, murdered). The police did not act. They were held not liable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0

Not that Mrs Gonzales would have been justified in taking a (tool of self-defense) and retrieving her children herself, but what would your family have her do if she had been on-scene when Mr. Gonzales was in the act of kidnapping the girls? Or in the act of killing them? Call 911?

"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."

Cogent, logical arguments are not always effective.

A closed mind is bad. An open mind is good, but not so open that your brain falls out.

I feel for your situation. Family, unapologetically wrong and not willing to hear. Tough.

I will end with a joke, unfortunately a depressing one:
Know how to turn a liberal into a conservative? A mugging.

OK, a second one. More of an aphorism:
When a man is young, if he is not a liberal, he has no heart.
When a man is older, if he is not a conservative, he has no brain.

Lost Sheep

In response to Johnny Dollar and SabbathWolf's pleas, I took it upon myself to paragraph the O.P.

SharpsDressedMan, please forgive my presumption.

I also have to ask: You mentioned three ways of not recognizing social awareness. I only found two, I think

SharpsDressedMan said:

(edited by Lost Sheep)
Subject Line:
Lazy, Igonorant, Cowardly: Diagnostic Analysis, or Name Calling?

I have family members that are increasingly difficult to communicate with due to the division created by the philosophical differences of the Conservative/Republican/Right wing (me and one other brother), and the Others (brother and two sisters (Democrat/Liberal/Left). This extends to many other acquaintances who are also apparently liberals.

I have tried to understand them, and have made some observations that many of them have in common, which might contribute to their opposing views on gun control. Most of the opposition have no interest in firearms, do not practice any pro-active awareness in self protection (often indicating that is what laws and the police are FOR), and tend towards "blanket" belief in what the left has to say about the issue.

This leads me to believe that they lack in social awareness in three ways.

One, a naïve belief in the security of our society in that the police "can handle it". Not individually having been victims of any serious crimes, they see no need in being armed, or being responsible for armed defense; thus, they see no need for anyone ELSE to be armed, either. To them, ANY more guns in the hands of civilians is a danger to the whole of society. History, current news, or a walk any rough area might give them pause, but that leads me to

the second problem: ignoring the possibility that citizens are the FIRST responders to violent crime; being the victims, they are the first ones on the scene, and by that, the BEST ones to thwart the offense.

To not accept this, after being presented with logical and historical proof is either lazy (shirking a social responsibility placed on them by thousands of years of human behavior, i.e. SELF DEFENSE), or, and I hate to say it, COWARDICE. Do we dare utter that word in this day of social advancement, our peaceful and utopian society notwithstanding?

I am preparing my discussions, debates, and arguments to include the words "ignorant, delusional, lazy, and coward" when countering liberal, anti-gun arguments. The words accurately describe citizens that ignore facts, neglect the social DUTY of self defense and defense of others, erroneously conclude that the police can thwart violent crime, and that new laws will miraculously save everyone (when the old laws failed so miserably for some reason).

I have tried to avoid name calling, but perhaps the two by four to the head approach with strong, but accurate, words is now the way to go. Coddling those who continue to ignore such obvious truths just isn't working. Most of the liberals I've encountered do not give the matter deep thought, or try to understand the issues, they just "adopt" the rhetoric. That is no longer acceptable.

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Does this help?

Lost Sheep

I have a headache after reading that. Best way to handle it? Your beliefs are yours, and their beliefs are theirs.

Take them shooting. If they'll have no part of it, move on. Problem solved.

I think if you go about this the way you are planning to, you will simply alienate your family and friends that much more, possibly pushing them to a position where they will close their mind completely to the subject. In which case, the dialog will be closed, and you will have killed any future chance of convincing them. I guess it makes more sense to me, to do everything to keep the subject open for debate, so that you can keep attempting to win them over to our side.

Why not try getting them to go to the range with you? I've had a good deal of luck converting antis by taking them to the range. A lot of them are simply uneducated about firearms, and frankly afraid of them. If you take the time to educate them, and show them that firearms are just tools, that can be used responsibly, and in fact can be fun, you would probably have a better chance of discussing these issues with them.

Having a gun is not the answer for everyone, trying to force your view will do nothing but make them dig their heels in even further. Not having a gun does not make them unaware, unprepared or anything else - there are a lot of other ways to handle things.

Sharps,

You stated your argument to US quite well, without unnecessary rancor; this might well be precisely the approach and presentation you should use with your family. The argument you needed, you found by explaining. I think you answered your question in post #1.

SharpsDressedMan said:

Damn, you guys are a tough audience! Three social failures: Ignorance, Laziness, Cowardice. Traits that seem to be in common with the enemies of the 2nd Amendment. Use these terms to evaluate and challenge those anti-gun liberals. Hope this simplifies the message for those of you that get headaches easily.

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I think there are a lot more than three social failures. Open your mind to the possibilities. Both possibilities of failures and other modes of (successful) thinking.

Denial is not the same as ignorance, though there is a lot of overlap.

Faith is not always a social failure.

Devout pacifism is practiced by some brave, intelligent and hard-working individuals. They have my admiration for adhering to their principles, though not my participation.

Your siblings and friends may or may not have closed minds.

Lost Sheep

Three social failures: Ignorance, Laziness, Cowardice.

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Those traits are common in enemies of liberty and freedom generally, not just of RKBA.

I'm not sure how to even respond here.
Sometimes family members can be even bigger rock heads than strangers are when it comes to some subjects.

Johnny Dollar said:

Please, break it up into smaller paragraphs, SDM! Only my Optometrist is benefiting!

Click to expand...

Ahh the paragraph. The only thing there is a greater shortage of than 22lr.

If self-righteousness was the the last meal available I would gladly starve.

My liberal friends think WE are in knuckle-draggers. Frankly, I see no benefit from name calling amongst friends and family. Love conquers all, but a fist up-side-oh-duh-head only gives both people sore knuckles.

I agree with another poster . . . take 'em shooting! More than one person has been converted this way, and it is a lot of fun.

Start with a respectful time of gun SAFETY, for this impresses all non-gun people that we are actually a very safe bunch indeed.

I'd recommend using .22 ammo for most bang for the buck, and have fun, person-to-person!!! We win the opposition via having fun and doing it with respect.

Good luck!

It seems unlikely that, for anyone alive today, the world is exactly the way they wish it would be in every detail. Because there is discordance between what is the case and what we wish the case would be, we all engage at some point in time in wishful thinking: the desire that our situation be something other than it really is.

There is certainly nothing wrong with this, and it can manifest in any number of ways — for example, in the daydreams which inspire us to make the necessary changes so that our lives will be more as we desire. When it comes to logical arguments, however, wishful thinking can create problems by blinding us to unpleasant truths and getting us to believe as true things which have little or no connection to reality.

One way in which wishful thinking can be seen in arguments is through the process of rationalization — a perversion of rational arguments in defense of an idea which you should know better than to accept and defend.

When we rationalize things, we are trying to show that it is rational to believe something we wish were true, but which in reality isn’t true and isn’t actually rational to believe. Rationalizations are common and appealing because they serve as effective means by which we can continue to believe things that make us comfortable while appearing to the whole world — and in particular to ourselves — as rational people. In other words, we appear to believe something because it is rational to do so, not because we simply want our beliefs to be true.

For example, there are people who indulge in too much alcohol, excessive drugs, smoking, poor foods, etc. while also claiming that none of it has ill effects on their health. Perhaps there are a few rare individuals out there for whom that may be true, but for the average person exactly the opposite will be the case — and when such a person offers lame arguments in defense of their claim, they are engaging in rationalizations designed to defend a belief which is based upon wishful thinking and not reality or reason.

Wishful thinking is dangerous because it impairs our ability to properly see and understand reality. There is a reason why our senses generally give us accurate information about the world around us: without accurate information, we couldn’t hope to navigate our world with any expectation of safety or success. We need to know what is going on around us if we are going to avoid danger or take advantage of opportunities.

We cannot do so, however, when our beliefs about that world are being founded upon what we wish the world were like rather than what the world really is. It’s even worse when we attempt to convince others to join us in our delusions, as if our beliefs about reality were in any way a means of changing the world into something else. Beliefs can be the cause of actions which in turn can change reality, but beliefs and wishes alone never managed to effect real innovations or transformations.

We can avoid the infection of wishful thinking in our own arguments by trying to stay attuned to what our wishes are, and thus how they might diverge from reality. If we acknowledge that we all are susceptible to wishful thinking, we may have an easier time forestalling it in what we say and write. Should we encounter this in the arguments of another, getting past it might be more difficult. It is rarely easy to get a person to see that their arguments are really rationalizations and that their wishes are not reality.

Such individuals have, almost by definition, convinced themselves that they are offering rational beliefs for empirical facts. Acknowledging that they are not is a twofold defeat: not only must they admit that they are wrong, but they must also admit that they somehow managed to engage in self-deception. But who wants to be guilty of that? This is an additional motive one may have to resist your critiques; the only way around this is to find some means of correcting them without bruising their ego, and by giving them a way to change their mind without having to admit quite so much error.

If they really do want to be as rational as they are trying to portray themselves, then eventually they will be able to look back and accept the presence of rationalization and self-deception without it being so difficult. In the meantime, however, a bit of compassion and understanding on your part will go a long way towards helping them get past their rationalizations and back on track to more defensible beliefs.

Sharp Dressed;

You'll have to do another prep session for yourself if you use this, but it might be more helpful than using the semantically negative words like "coward". Just ask them if they like being the victims of propoganda. Yes, it's a negative connotation, but a lot less confrontational. However, you'll then have to be able to marshal examples of how they've been propogandaized. But, showing them how they've been taken advantage of will quite possibly allow them to open their minds.

Otherwise, arrange for Bubba to mug 'em.

900F

Words like "cowards" need to be banished. Just because someone chooses not to carry a gun doesn't make him a coward -- in many cases, it's quite the opposite.

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This is the silliest thing I've read here on THR

I sure hope the poster wasn't being serious.

I recognize the fact that different people have different opinions and prejudging the basis for those opinions does not help in understanding the real reason for another person's opinion or in swaying that person's opinion.

I also have relatives who believe they will not be victims of crime, would be able to reason with a criminal to avoid injury, would be protected by the police, blah, blah, blah. I usually just discuss the downside of the differing opinions being wrong: if I am wrong, my gun gathers dust from not being used; if they are wrong, it may carry the price or injury of death.