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defrogJoe The Plumber is still around, evidently. And boy is he upset over the Eliot Rodger shooting spree. Specifically, he’s upset about the victims’ families stomping all over his Second Amendment rights by bringing up gun regulation.
In fact, he’s so upset about it that he’s written an open letter to them telling them so:
Well, look. Joe The Plumber is what he is – a media buffoon whose purpose in life is to say all the really obnoxious Archie-Bunker stuff that professional politicians wish they could say if their jobs didn’t depend on votes. So there’s no real reason to take him seriously. After all, it’s not like he’s blaming the Isla Vista shootings on gay marriage and Obamacare (although he did make a joke about Rodger being an Obama voter).
But I thought it was worth passing on because Mr The Plumber does kind of symbolize everything that’s wrong with the NRA these days – namely, its increasing insensitivity to how society at large feels about guns and mass shootings. (That and openly paranoid fantasies about Obama plotting to take everyone’s guns away.)
Here’s what I’m getting at:
The NRA’s mission, more or less, is to convince everyone that guns are not the problem – people are the problem, and taking everyone’s guns away will not put a stop to mass murder. This is a valid point (except that no one of any consequence is proposing a full-on gun ban, but you know, slippery slopes and secret agendas and all).
The problem is that every time there’s a major shooting, the NRA and its loudest supporters seem incapable of reacting to mass shootings in any way other than treating it as a major inconvenience to their quest to repeal every single form of gun legislation in the country.
I’m sure at some level Wayne LaPierre and Joe TP do feel bad for the shooting victims. But they don’t seem to understand that offering condolences to a victim’s family sounds pretty empty when you qualify it with political rhetoric that, in essence, says: “Honestly we don't care how YOU feel about guns – we love them, and the 2A says we can have them so shut up!”
For people who are tempted to respond, “But they’re RIGHT!”:
Maybe. So what? That’s not the way this game is played. You don’t win by being right – you win by persuading enough of yr opponents that yr right. And when yr opponents are people horrified and devastated by violence and grief, telling them that yr right to a gun is more important than the fact that their friends and family members were murdered is a really stupid and nonproductive way to go about doing it.
For that matter, the same goes for the NRA’s other two standard tactics: (1) the Fear card (OMG the world is scary and we need guns to defend ourselves, even in restaurants and churches, and if only all those poor women in Isla Vista had been packing heat, they’d all still be alive, etc) and (2) the Paranoia card (OMG this is just the excuse Liberal Obama has been looking for to take our guns away), which is actually a subcategory of the Fear card.
It’s no wonder people take them less and less seriously. The NRA has pretty much painted itself into an ideological corner where anything less than zero restrictions is a one-way ticket to Dictatorship, and now their options are limited to backtracking or spouting batshit. And while they’re doing that, more mass shootings are going to happen until people decide that enough is enough.
When that happens, I suspect the NRA is going to get its ass handed to it in the form of legislation so draconian they’ll wish they’d settled for more strenuous background checks after Newtown.
Yr doing it wrong,
In fact, he’s so upset about it that he’s written an open letter to them telling them so:
I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now. But:
As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don't trump my Constitutional rights.
As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don't trump my Constitutional rights.
Well, look. Joe The Plumber is what he is – a media buffoon whose purpose in life is to say all the really obnoxious Archie-Bunker stuff that professional politicians wish they could say if their jobs didn’t depend on votes. So there’s no real reason to take him seriously. After all, it’s not like he’s blaming the Isla Vista shootings on gay marriage and Obamacare (although he did make a joke about Rodger being an Obama voter).
But I thought it was worth passing on because Mr The Plumber does kind of symbolize everything that’s wrong with the NRA these days – namely, its increasing insensitivity to how society at large feels about guns and mass shootings. (That and openly paranoid fantasies about Obama plotting to take everyone’s guns away.)
Here’s what I’m getting at:
The NRA’s mission, more or less, is to convince everyone that guns are not the problem – people are the problem, and taking everyone’s guns away will not put a stop to mass murder. This is a valid point (except that no one of any consequence is proposing a full-on gun ban, but you know, slippery slopes and secret agendas and all).
The problem is that every time there’s a major shooting, the NRA and its loudest supporters seem incapable of reacting to mass shootings in any way other than treating it as a major inconvenience to their quest to repeal every single form of gun legislation in the country.
I’m sure at some level Wayne LaPierre and Joe TP do feel bad for the shooting victims. But they don’t seem to understand that offering condolences to a victim’s family sounds pretty empty when you qualify it with political rhetoric that, in essence, says: “Honestly we don't care how YOU feel about guns – we love them, and the 2A says we can have them so shut up!”
For people who are tempted to respond, “But they’re RIGHT!”:
Maybe. So what? That’s not the way this game is played. You don’t win by being right – you win by persuading enough of yr opponents that yr right. And when yr opponents are people horrified and devastated by violence and grief, telling them that yr right to a gun is more important than the fact that their friends and family members were murdered is a really stupid and nonproductive way to go about doing it.
For that matter, the same goes for the NRA’s other two standard tactics: (1) the Fear card (OMG the world is scary and we need guns to defend ourselves, even in restaurants and churches, and if only all those poor women in Isla Vista had been packing heat, they’d all still be alive, etc) and (2) the Paranoia card (OMG this is just the excuse Liberal Obama has been looking for to take our guns away), which is actually a subcategory of the Fear card.
It’s no wonder people take them less and less seriously. The NRA has pretty much painted itself into an ideological corner where anything less than zero restrictions is a one-way ticket to Dictatorship, and now their options are limited to backtracking or spouting batshit. And while they’re doing that, more mass shootings are going to happen until people decide that enough is enough.
When that happens, I suspect the NRA is going to get its ass handed to it in the form of legislation so draconian they’ll wish they’d settled for more strenuous background checks after Newtown.
Yr doing it wrong,
This is dF
