Help Me Respond to Letter to Editor

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  • hodgepodge

    Senior Member (Gold)
    Sep 3, 2009
    10,081
    Arnold, MD
    A few weeks ago, some yahoo writes to the Annapolis Capital praising the Parkland mob and praising "common sense gun laws". I respond with "Here are MD gun laws" and let's make laws on facts vs. emotions.

    The yahoo responds to my letter:

    Regarding Hodgepodge’s letter (The Capital, May 4) responding to my thoughts (The Capital, March 23) on the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting and the actions of the students who survived the tragic incident:

    I respect his opinions on the Second Amendment, so I won't debate the many points he raised about gun ownership and regulations.

    My earlier letter was intended to salute the efforts of the students who became actively involved in and perhaps will shape the national gun debate in a way no adults could do.

    Perhaps the Parkland shooting and these engaged students will generate serious interest in and funding for a much-needed gun violence research project that would help this nation answer questions that have plagued the gun debate for decades: the causes of gun violence, its effect on society and the best way to prevent this.

    Since Mr. Hodge critiqued me on this matter, I pose this question to him and your readers: What is the purpose of the AR-15, or any so-called assault-style rifle, other than to inflict maximum damage on the most people in the shortest amount of time? In my opinion, this weapon belongs only on the rifle range or in combat.

    JIM SCOTT

    Arnold


    He concedes to several points. He still likes the Parkland students.

    He wants gun violence research. OK, but not politically motivated research. I'd fund John Lott. What points do I need to make here?

    He also asks "Why does anyone need an AR-15?" He uses the phrase "so-called assault-style" which concedes a point I can drive through. They look like assault rifles, but they are not. He also answers his own question. They belong in combat (Not really, I know.) or on the range. I will add "or in home defense". What other points do I need to add here.

    Thank you for your suggestions.
     

    newmuzzleloader

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Apr 14, 2009
    4,761
    joppa
    It's not a matter of need. It's because I have a right to do so. Why does anyone NEED a maserati that does 185. Why does anyone NEED a McMansion on 2 acres that costs $750,000. Why does anyone NEED a well paying job, you can work at McDonald's and have subsidized housing and Amazon prime at a reduced price.
     

    MigraineMan

    Ultimate Member
    Jun 9, 2011
    19,038
    Frederick County
    First up, he's begging the question in the classical, logical-fallacy sense - his argument's premises assumes the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it with "What is the purpose of the AR-15, or any so-called assault-style rifle, other than to inflict maximum damage on the most people in the shortest amount of time?" Likely, it's a trap ... you won't be able to reason with someone espousing a foregone conclusion.

    Your opponent's fixation on "gun-violence" is probably a tell. If the objective of doing said research is to reduce injuries and fatalities, it would seem rational that addressing the largest causes of injuries and fatalities would yield the best immediate impacts to society, yes? That'd be medical-error-violence (est 200-400k/yr), followed closely by unintentional-poisoning-violence (48k/yr), motor-vehicle-violence (38k/yr), and unintentional-fall-violence (aka "ladder-violence") at 33k/yr. So-called "gun-violence", in the context of assaults and homicides, only accounts for 13k deaths per year.

    I would be inclined to turn the situation around as ask "what is the purpose of further studying violence involving firearms?" Because, if you could wave a magic fairy wand and magically eliminate ALL firearm-involved homicides, you would only have a small impact on deaths for a given year. Applying that same level of effort to eliminating medical-error-violence would seem to be a better choice if "overall benefit to society through reduction in deaths" is the objective ... which it doesn't appear to be.

    You could attempt to disconnect the "gun" from the "violence," because then you can address the root cause of the "violence." But you'll have to have a break-through moment and get him to accept that "people" are violent.
     

    Phoenixsm

    Active Member
    Aug 29, 2010
    513
    A few weeks ago, some yahoo writes to the Annapolis Capital praising the Parkland mob and praising "common sense gun laws". I respond with "Here are MD gun laws" and let's make laws on facts vs. emotions.

    The yahoo responds to my letter:

    Regarding Hodgepodge’s letter (The Capital, May 4) responding to my thoughts (The Capital, March 23) on the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting and the actions of the students who survived the tragic incident:

    I respect his opinions on the Second Amendment, so I won't debate the many points he raised about gun ownership and regulations.

    My earlier letter was intended to salute the efforts of the students who became actively involved in and perhaps will shape the national gun debate in a way no adults could do.

    Perhaps the Parkland shooting and these engaged students will generate serious interest in and funding for a much-needed gun violence research project that would help this nation answer questions that have plagued the gun debate for decades: the causes of gun violence, its effect on society and the best way to prevent this.

    Since Mr. Hodge critiqued me on this matter, I pose this question to him and your readers: What is the purpose of the AR-15, or any so-called assault-style rifle, other than to inflict maximum damage on the most people in the shortest amount of time? In my opinion, this weapon belongs only on the rifle range or in combat.

    JIM SCOTT

    Arnold


    He concedes to several points. He still likes the Parkland students.

    He wants gun violence research. OK, but not politically motivated research. I'd fund John Lott. What points do I need to make here?

    He also asks "Why does anyone need an AR-15?" He uses the phrase "so-called assault-style" which concedes a point I can drive through. They look like assault rifles, but they are not. He also answers his own question. They belong in combat (Not really, I know.) or on the range. I will add "or in home defense". What other points do I need to add here.

    Thank you for your suggestions.
    You could discuss the many competitive shooting sports which use both 223/5.56 and pistol calibers versions of the AR (and others). USPSA, IDPA, NRA and others have organized and sanctioned local thru national level matches that thousands participate in.

    Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
     

    eruby

    Confederate Jew
    MDS Supporter
    :innocent0


    51d1d1e28b345b7595b31ec8051a4887.jpg
     

    pilot25

    Ultimate Member
    Jul 13, 2016
    1,822
    Ask what his reasoning is for banning AR15s? How many deaths per year are from an AR-15? Less than a 1,000? There are far more deaths from human hands than an AR-15. What is his end goal? Its banning all guns?

    Tell him CDC research was done and buried by progressive politicians. The late 90's CDC data that was recently uncovered showing 3 million defensive gun uses a year over a three year period. Point him to the UC Davis professor that showed a 0.09% completion of rape for women with a gun vs. over 60% completion of rape for those who were unarmed. There are lots of studies already out there being ignored by the left.

    Ask him how many violent criminals are on the streets with plea bargains and dozens of convictions. Illegal gun possession charges plea bargained away for 6 months probation. Where are the Mom's Demand Action people at each illegal gun possession case that involves zero jail time? Those are back on the street committing more violent crimes. No protests surround them but against us who want to defend ourselves from a broken judicial system and immoral culture created by the progressive left.

    Stephen Williford and Zachary Peters are two who used AR-15s to save themselves and others. Overall gun deaths 31k even with 20k suicides by bullet cannot outweigh 200k-3mil defensive gun uses. CDC numbers. FBI states home invasions on average are 3 males one being armed. I'd rather have an AR-15 to fight off 3 than with something else. What is the response time of the police in minutes when the invaders are on you in seconds.

    If the goal is to save lives then the editor needs to look elsewhere but his goal is to ban firearms. It is and always will be their goal under the guise of "common sense" gun control which they have re-branded to "gun safety."

    Additionally, point him to Colion Noir's statement on school "shooters." His statements in the video"

    So when are we going to be completely honest and acknowledge the awkward, bullied, sexually frustrated, psychotropic drug-laced, suicidal, mass shooters in the room for what they are? Or are we just going to keep acting like we don't know what's going on in the name of not confronting the miserable reality that they are a creation of our so-called progressive culture and media?

    These shootings can't get any more predictable. They've had the same damn MO for years now, and every time the same type of person commits the same type of carnage, our media swan dives into a promiscuous exploration of who these killers are under the guise of, 'wanting to learn why they did it?' We've known why these kids shoot up schools since Columbine. The kids from Columbine left an entire manifesto about why they did it.

    Yet our moronic media in their blind pursuit for ratings will post every picture they can find of the shooter and repeat the shooters' name habitually, turning the kid into a damn rock star within hours of the damn shooting and they will keep asking why these shootings keep happening in a country obsessed with celebrity culture raising a generation of kids with an inability to cope with anything.

    It doesn't take a clinical psychologist to see what's going on and no it's not guns, we've had guns in this country since its inception. Hell, 60 years ago I could order a gun out of a magazine and they'd send it to my house no questions asked. This country didn't have these school shootings back in the day, and those kids were allowed to bring guns to school. Nothing has changed except our culture and the way our media handles these events when they happen.

    We are creating every subsequent school shooter with every mention of their name and every posting of their picture. Nearly every single school shooter suffered from the same type of social ostracism and social neglect. Yet, we are somehow dumbfounded as to why a kid who no one paid attention to unless he was being bullied or picked on decides to go out in a blaze of glory and after spending weeks turning that kid into an infamous demigod, are then even more surprised when another kid dealing with the same issues goes out and tries to do the same thing but only worse!

    We can't be this stupid!

    Instead of teaching our kids how to cope with the harsh realities of life, we shield them in safe spaces and give them participation trophies incentivizing mediocrity and tell our young boys that their masculinity is toxic, and our young girls that being a woman means acting like a man further confusing the hell out of kids who are naturally going to struggle with their identity as is.

    Anyone screaming for gun control in response to this last shooting is just not being honest with themselves. The kid used a shotgun and a revolver that he took from his parents because he wasn't old enough to buy a gun legally.

    Ask yourself, what is the more likely a reason this latest killer decided to secretly build improvised explosives in order to murder his classmates in cold blood ... "loose" gun laws, or our culture?

    Then again, I don't blame us. We're merely doing exactly what we teach our kids to do. Ignore reality and blame everything else even if it means blaming a lifeless tool because apparently personal responsibility and accountability is just too high a price to pay for freedom.


    Tell Jim Scott he needs to do some factual research and leave his emotion behind before he can have an intelligent conversation on the matter.
     

    tbmcdermott1

    Member
    Mar 26, 2018
    29
    Baltimore
    I always like to use facts. According to the CDC "Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies. ... Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008." When people say they want to ban "Assault Weapons" I ask "What do you mean by Assault Weapons?" They'll respond "Military style weapons, weapons of war." I'll counter "Shotguns are used in the military, Semi-Automatic handguns are used in the military, so what you truly mean is you want to ban all firearms."
     

    Biggfoot44

    Ultimate Member
    Aug 2, 2009
    32,775
    As everyone said , in the context of your Letter to Editor debate partner , he will mock conceade everything factual , and imeadately ignore the facts, and keep spinning SSDD . No "winning' a debate between he and you in those conditions.

    But Letters to the Editor mainly aren't about the two of you , their for the benefit of the rest of the readers to be exposed to your views and facts.

    If in the second contex , you believe the timing is wise to present the positive merits of AR to the larger audience, I can PM you a laundry list of positive aspects .
     

    pilot25

    Ultimate Member
    Jul 13, 2016
    1,822
    What I would do is gather the actual web links of the data and forward it to him. Then tell him the research is done. Then point to a few of the recent headlines on progressive papers and sites like the Washington Compost that state things like, "31,000 gun deaths per year." Knowing they are lying about the fact 20k of those are suicide.

    He will pull out the Australian card. Show the violent crime rate went up 20-30% after the confiscation and they are having another confiscation.

    They will want to compare homicide rates in US vs. England. However, they don't compare because we call a homicide one with a dead body and no natural cause. England doesn't register a homicide until there is a conviction.

    Overall they lie about the stats. If they have to lie to make an argument against guns then their argument isn't very strong.

    All these arguments end the same way. The progressive left having a tantrum because their argument is weak and in the final end there is the second amendment. Just state, "A well educated electorate, being necessary to a free state, the right of the people to read and compose books shall not be infringed." How does that compare to the 2nd amendment that he will tout only militia are allowed to guns being ignorant on the Federalist papers and various speech at the constitutional conventions that militia is all the people.

    I could go on about this forever. Burns me up!!
     

    Fredcohunter

    Active Member
    Nov 30, 2008
    431
    A little west of Frederick
    As MigraineMan above pointed out he has already drawn a conclusion to his "question" so it isn't really a question at all.

    In his "question" you could replace the "what is the purpose of" with literally thousands of things that we don't need, many that cause harm. For example there are about 3500 non-boating related drowning deaths per year in America, why does anyone need a swimming pool. People have swimming pools because they like to swim in them, people have AR-15's because they like to shoot them. Last I checked there was nothing in the constitution that protected ones rights to have a swimming pool in their backyard.
     

    Qbeam

    Ultimate Member
    Apr 16, 2008
    6,071
    Georgia
    Hodge,



    You may want to point out that AR-15s have been around for more than 40 years in its basic configuration, and that access to them has not really changed. The tool has been constant, but the operators have changed throughout the years. This is more of a deterioration of society values that manifests themselves in mass shootings. A vast majority of the shootings have common threads that need to be explored and addressed, but that would reveal the hypocrisy of the system that produced the shooters. Mass shootings have escalated recently over the years (thanks to msm and social media), but AR-15s have been a constant well before that. Which is easier, blaming an inanimate object, or holding an individual responsible that society created either purposely or as a slip through the cracks accident?


    My .02


    Q
     

    outrider58

    Eats Bacon Raw
    MDS Supporter
    Jul 29, 2014
    49,709
    The AR 15 IS the modern-day musket. It guarantees the the adherence to the COTUS and the freedoms guaranteed us, therein.

    End of point.
     

    Inigoes

    Head'n for the hills
    MDS Supporter
    Dec 21, 2008
    49,273
    SoMD / West PA
    He also asks "Why does anyone need an AR-15?" He uses the phrase "so-called assault-style" which concedes a point I can drive through. They look like assault rifles, but they are not. He also answers his own question. They belong in combat (Not really, I know.) or on the range. I will add "or in home defense". What other points do I need to add here.

    Thank you for your suggestions.


    This where he is blaming the gun, not the mental health of the person holding the gun.

    A kit car with a 4 cylinder engine look likes a muscle car, without being a muscle car. Guns that are in Combat (M16, M4) are not available on the civilian market since Hughes Amendment passed in 1986.

    Nor did crime go down when the Federal assault weapons ban was in effect.
     

    Moon

    M-O-O-N, that spells...
    Jan 4, 2013
    2,365
    In Orbit
    You could point out that the AR-15 doesn't belong on the battlefield, which is why our military doesn't use it.
     

    GOG-MD

    Active Member
    Aug 23, 2017
    366
    AA County
    First up, he's begging the question in the classical, logical-fallacy sense - his argument's premises assumes the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it with "What is the purpose of the AR-15, or any so-called assault-style rifle, other than to inflict maximum damage on the most people in the shortest amount of time?" Likely, it's a trap ... you won't be able to reason with someone espousing a foregone conclusion.

    Your opponent's fixation on "gun-violence" is probably a tell. If the objective of doing said research is to reduce injuries and fatalities, it would seem rational that addressing the largest causes of injuries and fatalities would yield the best immediate impacts to society, yes? That'd be medical-error-violence (est 200-400k/yr), followed closely by unintentional-poisoning-violence (48k/yr), motor-vehicle-violence (38k/yr), and unintentional-fall-violence (aka "ladder-violence") at 33k/yr. So-called "gun-violence", in the context of assaults and homicides, only accounts for 13k deaths per year.

    I would be inclined to turn the situation around as ask "what is the purpose of further studying violence involving firearms?" Because, if you could wave a magic fairy wand and magically eliminate ALL firearm-involved homicides, you would only have a small impact on deaths for a given year. Applying that same level of effort to eliminating medical-error-violence would seem to be a better choice if "overall benefit to society through reduction in deaths" is the objective ... which it doesn't appear to be.

    You could attempt to disconnect the "gun" from the "violence," because then you can address the root cause of the "violence." But you'll have to have a break-through moment and get him to accept that "people" are violent.

    Great points here. I was going to reply with much the same thing.

    I also always like the: "It's called the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs". Capitalism is based on the concept of being able to buy whatever you want and letting the market decide. From each according to his means, to each according to his needs is the premise of communism.
     

    Biggfoot44

    Ultimate Member
    Aug 2, 2009
    32,775
    To be more blunt , completely ignore the idiot "trading letters" with you . Only concern your self with the audience of readers m
     

    Ilexopaca

    Member
    Mar 4, 2012
    69
    Don't fight with people. I don't understand why everyone is so vexed about the Parkland kids. And I don't understand why Marylanders are so worried about their gun rights. I'm grandfathered in with all my guns and mags so maybe that's why I'm chill. I'm totally cool with ARs at the range - especially three gun comps. And for hunting - especially in 6.5 Creedmore for little hunters. Nobody has ever tried to take my guns away. Ever. I find that most of my neighbors and friends who are super worried about guns accept that I'm a responsible gun owner and often joke that I will be the first door they come a knocking on if things go south. My kids, and all the kids in the neighborhood are pretty much anti-gun. I understand their POV. But I also know they wouldn't hesitate to run into my home if they are in trouble. Or even if they just want advice or a bandaged knee. Be that guy.
     

    outrider58

    Eats Bacon Raw
    MDS Supporter
    Jul 29, 2014
    49,709
    Don't fight with people. I don't understand why everyone is so vexed about the Parkland kids. And I don't understand why Marylanders are so worried about their gun rights. I'm grandfathered in with all my guns and mags so maybe that's why I'm chill. I'm totally cool with ARs at the range - especially three gun comps. And for hunting - especially in 6.5 Creedmore for little hunters. Nobody has ever tried to take my guns away. Ever. I find that most of my neighbors and friends who are super worried about guns accept that I'm a responsible gun owner and often joke that I will be the first door they come a knocking on if things go south. My kids, and all the kids in the neighborhood are pretty much anti-gun. I understand their POV. But I also know they wouldn't hesitate to run into my home if they are in trouble. Or even if they just want advice or a bandaged knee. Be that guy.

    You don't get it, do you,?
     

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