In the wake of the appalling Northern Illinois University tragedy, it has been depressing to see the right-wing gun fanatics making the same tired and irrational arguments against any sort of gun regulation and, even worse, in favor of unrestricted concealed-carry laws on campuses. You can see all of these arguments brought forth by the extremists in the comments section of this post on Carpetbagger.
What astonishes me more than anything is that the extreme views of the gun fanatics make them living refutations of their own arguments. Reasonable people could convince me that there is a good middle ground on gun control, in which law-abiding citizens can own weapons with some restrictions; the fanatics push my temperament much closer to a full ban. This is a shame, because I have a lot of good friends who are gun owners and whom I have literally trusted with my life – I would hate to see crazies shift the gun discussion to the point where no reasonable solutions to gun violence can be found.
In the spirit of trying to push a reasonable discussion on gun violence – or maybe just to rant – I thought I’d refute, again, some of the common refrains of gun fanatics.
Skulls in the Stars 