More anti-gun lunacy from Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald

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the pistolero

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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/15745817.htm

A few choice snippets...
We have become ever more impatient with the complexities and convolutions that characterize our most intractable problems, ever more intolerant of solutions that require patience, long-term thinking, and the coordination of multiple strategies....

So sure, if school shootings are a threat, let's arm the teachers. Because, as everyone knows, the real problem in this country is that there just aren't enough people with guns. At the very least, arming teachers will sure discourage cheating. Indeed, why stop there?
Arm the bus drivers. That'll teach some punk to try to slip on with an expired transfer.
Arm the waiters. Bet folks won't be so quick to whine about their soup being cold.
Heck, arm the editors. Presto! Suddenly everybody's able to make their deadlines.
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I really don't know what to say to any of this, but that it's a sad commentary on American journalism that dreck like this gets published in a major metropolitan daily and the person who writes it has garnered a reputation in many circles as a respected journalist. :barf:
 
I saw this same editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, along with a few others that concluded that only by getting rid of the NRA and all guns would this problem be solved.
 
We have become ever more impatient with the complexities and convolutions that characterize our most intractable problems, ever more intolerant of solutions that require patience, long-term thinking, and the coordination of multiple strategies....
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Using big words does not mean you know what you're talking about :rolleyes:

Hell I like to think I am smarter than Mr. Pitts, and I don't even know what intractable means.

this is what comes to mind when I hear of "multiple strategies" from the antis:

free-MrBurnsExcellent.gif
 
One of the biggest problems with the world is so many people automatically dismiss opposing viewpoints without even attempting to examine them critically. Arming teachers, bus drivers, waiters, and editors; he doesn't tell us what's wrong with the idea, it's dismissed as a matter of course. And if you challenge him on it, he won't argue the point (maybe write another column about how the letters the gun wackos wrote him) because it is, of course, so obvious. And he doesn't answer the obvious question as to the logical dichotomy between deciding that guns are too dangerous for anyone to possess, while not doing so for something like automobiles, which are consistently more dangerous. Which means that while the writer has perfected the modern art of passing off compound phrases and sarcasm as analysis, his thought process is already exposed as faulty, making his opinion worthless.
 
junyo said:
And he doesn't answer the obvious question as to the logical dichotomy between deciding that guns are too dangerous for anyone to possess, while not doing so for something like automobiles, which are consistently more dangerous.
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The antigunners will respond: "cars aren't built to kill people, guns are." Which of course is beside the point. Neither mechanism is designed to commit murder, which is what the END USER of the product decides.
It isn't that they're incapable of providing answers, it's just that their answers don't make any more sense than their opening thesis.
 
He implies that teachers and bus drivers will shoot misbehaving students if allowed to be armed. If that isn't projection, I don't know what is.
 
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullpucky!!!


We have become ever more impatient with the complexities and convolutions that characterize our most intractable problems, ever more intolerant of solutions that require patience, long-term thinking, and the coordination of multiple strategies....
Click to expand...

Using big words does not mean you know what you're talking about

Hell I like to think I am smarter than Mr. Pitts, and I don't even know what intractable means.

this is what comes to mind when I hear of "multiple strategies" from the antis:
Click to expand...
 
I'd like to see him spend a month in a max security prison, where the prisoners have no guns, and see if being disarmed is really the peaceful utopia he says it would be.
 
The left's objection to people being armed shows us what kind of people many of them are. This guy admits, in a subconcious way, that were he armed, he would shoot people for trivial reasons. He knows, subconsciously, that he lacks the self control to use his weapon only for self-defense, and instead would use it for offense, and for trivial reasons at that, and projects that lack of self control on to the rest of society. He assumes that because he would shoot, or at least threaten to shoot, reporters for their failure to make deadlines, that we all would do so. I guess in a way, I agree with him then. If he lacks the self control, then no, I don't want him to have a gun. However, just because he is that way does not mean the rest of us are.
 
:scrutiny:

Well, we armed the FBI and that seems to have made a difference. Wasn't there a time when NYC Constables were not armed??

No offense, but I have seen more crap interventionism from the Baby Boomer Generation than any other... EVER. Someone posted the basic idea on another thread, WHEN did LAW become a PREVENTATIVE measure for Crime?

Punish criminals, send flowers and therapists and be nice to your fellow human beings. That is the solution to "evil". Nothing else you can do really.
 
Yep. If laws work so well to prevent crime, why not just ban crime. That way, we won't have any, right?
 
Did you catch the extrapolation? If you arm teachers, they will threaten children who cheat on tests. If you arm bus drivers, they will use their guns on students with expired transfers (whatever that is). A waiter with a gun will shoot a cold soup complaining customer because he’s armed. The common denominator is the idea that having a gun will result in using the gun to solve every problem a person encounters. This ignores the thousands of people who carry daily and would never dream of using their gun to solve minor difficulties.

When I was stationed at Charleston AFB in SC, the law said you could (and may still be the case, I don’t know) carry a pistol loaded in the glove box of your car. Whenever the news or newspaper would do a report that included this information, they would quickly point out that this was a bad idea because you might get angry in traffic and shoot someone. Let’s think, who carries a gun daily and has to sit in traffic, deal with irate people, and generally spends their day handling grief? The police! Are they neutered? Are they issued some magic happy pills when they come on duty? No. They are just like you and me; they deal with stress just like everyone else. And just like everyone else, they don’t use their gun to solve their problems.

The subtle and blatantly false picture the writer very successfully paints, is that firearms somehow exert a negative influence on the people that have them. Any rational and thoughtful individual will become a homicidal maniac simply because the gun is present. It’s misleading at best, and cowardly at worst. I wouldn’t attempt to outlaw high buildings simply because I am afraid of heights. I acknowledge the fear and deal with it, not attempt to justify it through rules that hide my fear. I don’t tell my son he is not allowed to have a tree house. By injecting the false idea, that guns are more than inanimate objects, he can then promote his agenda, thus concealing his own cowardice.
 
Pitts is an educated guy, and I often like his writing, but he's way off on this one.

I'm not convinced arming teachers is the answer. I'm not convinced that it isn't. If you begin discussion on an issue by taking any potential solutions off the table, then you do yourself a disservice, and you possibly set yourself up for complete and abject failure. Sometimes the most outlandish and bizarre (well, seemingly outlandish and bizarre) ideas are the only hopes we have.
 
Funny he called the idea to arm teachers "simple" and then went ahead with such a simplistic article...Just how hard was it to find 4 anti-gun people to bad-mouth the idea? And THAT constitutes a "consensus" that its a dumb idea?

What was aprapo is that in my local paper where this was printed, they also had an article about coyotes in a local area reeking havoc on the fenced in sheeps and chickens.

Hmmm...group all the lambs together in one place, throw in some sheep to teach them - then pass laws that will ensure there will be no German Shepards there to protect them when the wolves show up. Surprised it took this long for those prone to commit evil to notice what low-risk target-rich environments we created.
 
...the person who writes it has garnered a reputation in many circles as a respected journalist.
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Respected by whom? His fellow nitwits? So?
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If that was as far as it went, it wouldn't be that big of a deal...just yet another example of the circle-jerk mentality so prevalent in the media nowadays, at least to the extent that the media agreed with him. No, I'm afraid this goes further, to Mr. Pitts' audience as a syndicated columnist. For better or for worse, he's built up a certain amount of credibility in the readership of the papers his columns get printed in (to cite two local examples, the Beaumont Enterprise and the Houston Chronicle). Combine that with the insidious anti-gun messages that Americans are bombarded with on a daily basis, and the gun-grabbers' evil agenda gets advanced just a little further...:mad:
 
We have become ever more impatient with the complexities and convolutions that characterize our most intractable problems, ever more intolerant of solutions that require patience, long-term thinking, and the coordination of multiple strategies....

So sure, if school shootings are a threat, let's arm the teachers. Because, as everyone knows, the real problem in this country is that there just aren't enough people with guns. At the very least, arming teachers will sure discourage cheating. Indeed, why stop there?
Arm the bus drivers. That'll teach some punk to try to slip on with an expired transfer.
Arm the waiters. Bet folks won't be so quick to whine about their soup being cold.
Heck, arm the editors. Presto! Suddenly everybody's able to make their deadlines.
Click to expand...

What great ideas! Armed bus drivers will stop hijackings, and why shouldn't waiters and editors also be able to exercise their rights ? BTW, as a professional journalist, I would think he would know to use correct grammar.
everybody's able to make their deadlines
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That should be everbody is able to make his or her deadlines. Words with one or body require singular subject pronouns.
 
While he's at it he may as well arm bears because we a have a constitutional "right to keep bears armed"! :D Sorry, I couldn't resist. I still find it funny that people think that a gun in the hand=pscho killer!?!?
 
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