By Aaron Goldstein on 1.20.13 @ 9:16PM
Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall writes there are “gun people and non-gun people”. Marshall identifies himself as a non-gun person.
Now Marshall doesn’t define the difference between a gun person and a non-gun person other than to say that guns are “alien” to him. Marshall says he has never owned nor shot a gun.
Well, Marshall and I have something in common. Guns are largely alien to me as well. I, too, have never owned nor shot a gun. While I reserve the right to reconsider, I do not plan to purchase one for myself. I suppose that makes me a non-gun person. Yet somehow I imagine he wouldn’t want me as a member.
Aside from police officers, the only time I’ve seen guns was when I visited Israel almost 25 years ago. I was part of a Canadian Jewish youth group that was visiting and several of the adults in charge of us were armed. They had served in the IDF and served in the reserves once a year. The sight of guns was certainly “alien” to me at first but I soon discovered that men and women carrying rifles in the streets on their shoulders was a common sight. I overcame the culture shock and didn’t really think about it after awhile.
Here is where I part company from Marshall. He argues that he has his “own set of rights not to have gun culture run roughshod over me.” Marshall believes that gun people are “invading my area, my culture, my part of the country.” Well, last I checked, the Upper West Side is covered by the Second Amendment. Besides, I hardly think a couple of guys legally carrying semi-automatic rifles around Portland, Oregon (while disconcerting) constitutes an invasion of gun people.
Indeed, if anyone is doing the invading it is non-gun people whether by printing the names of gun owners in newspapers, by the Danny Glovers of the world who claim the Second Amendment was instituted to protect slavery or when President Obama shamefully surrounding himself with children when he introduced his gun control proposals a few days back.
Marshall argues that the studies that demonstrate that we would all be safer if we were armed have been discredited. Well, he cites neither the studies nor the people who have debunked them. Yet consider his argument that follows:
But even if it was possible that we could be just as safe with everyone armed as no one armed, I’d still want no one armed. Not at my coffee shop or on the highway or wherever. Because I don’t want to carry a gun. And I don’t want to be around armed people.
In other words, because Josh Marshall doesn’t want to own gun or want to be around anyone who owns a gun, no one else should be allowed to own one. So who exactly is invading whom?
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