Pax Baculum Loons vs. The Afronaut

**The Wastrel** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 10:00am

Browsing Pax Baculum in search of techniques for the speedy disarm and incapacitation of vagrant minorities, I stumbled across this hilarious thread in which Afronaut attempts to take on the PB regulars on the issue of gun control.

Now, I heartily support private gun ownership, but there are reasonable limits. Phil and his ilk do not need Mark 19s, as much as they might think them quite dandily efficient for daily personal security.

In this entire argument on this thread, it seems that everyone, including Afronaut unfortunately, is missing the best, and only genuine, argument for gun control legislation.

The typical Second Amendment zealot's argument, other than hinging upon a misunderstanding of a dependent clause, is that regulations on gun ownership only affect law abiding citizens. By this logic, which seems impervious, regulations don't matter because criminals break laws by nature. Therefore, only decent law-abiding citizens are affected.

Anyone see the problem with that?

It's simple, really. It's true. And that's the point. By regulating the sale and possession of firearms, we force criminally-minded folks to obtain them through alternate channels to avoid being traced to weapons used in crimes. Therefore, the possession of an illegally-owned firearm demonstrates a kind of intent. Furthermore, and this is really important, this allows you to actually arrest someone before they've gone out and killed someone.

You can imagine the scenario. Police pull over a speeding driver, come out to a house on some other call, or what have you, and discover a huge weapons cache. With no regulation, you'd have to wait until people were actually killed. With it, law-abiding folk can have all the weapons allowed to them under the law, while those seeking to acquire them deliberately for the purpose of committing crimes can be distinguished from those who are not. They want to avoid records, registration, waiting periods, etc.

Translated into Pax Baculum language, this means that when a red-blooded American performs a citzen's arrest on that violent-looking Negro who certainly cannot be the rightful owner of the Mercedes Benz SL500 he is driving, when they find the inevitable stash of Tec-9s, they can bust him on that alone. That is of course, assuming he has already smoked the crack. Which he probably has, being a racial minority.

Of course, the logic over at Pax Baculum lurches into even greater slapstick. According to Phil, unless you know more about firearms than he does, you cannot disagree with him on the virtues of gun control legislation.

Now this seems a rather tortuous position to try and hold, no?

**Phrost** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 11:15am

Phil needs to get his fat ass into the military if he's such a gun aficionado. Those of us who've served revile shitbags like him who expect the same degree of respect given to those who've actually learned to use military weapons for the purposes they were intended; in the service of their country.

Phil is the modern day Walter Mitty.

**Honey Badger** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 11:35am

So how, exactly, is Scott Bacula maintaining the peace?

**afronaut** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 12:37pm

I like that argument, Wastrel. A lot. I'll try posting it. They'll have kittens. They're already pulling out the "youn committed a logical phallacy that a read about once and therefore nothing you said is true" guns. Which means banning can't be far away. If they find the pictures you maniacs made of Philly they'll promote me to Persona non grata with oak leaf clusters.

**WingChun Lawyer** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 12:50pm

Amazing how they keep dodging the issue. ANd Afronaut is just trying to have a decent discussion.

**afronaut** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 12:57pm

(whine) But I liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike guns! They're sooo cooooooooool. I was totally going to be an FBI guy or an Army guy, but I became a network admin instead. Look at my H&K 38343738389473D. I'm like a Special Forces guy.

**WingChun Lawyer** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 1:02pm

They actually give some decent arguments for gun ownership, but they seem absolutely incapable of admiting that guns are dangerous, and some regulation could be a good idea.

No compromise at all. Hell, they don´t seem to read Afro´s posts to begin with, they just bring up the chainsaws and the baseball bats and the kitchen knives and (gasp) the wing chun as a shield when they get unconfortable with his arguments.

**Wounded Ronin** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 1:40pm

I'm getting this mental image of fat Phil wheezing and gasping in exhaustion while holding an MP5 as he unsuccessfully tries to sweep a house with the SWAT team.

**Wounded Ronin** · Posted On: 12/01/2004 1:48pm

More fundamentally, hoplophobes fear weapons because they know nothing about them. To the average citizen or deluded "martial" artist who scoffs at the idea of going armed, a knife or a gun is a mysterious, contemptible object possessing volition and intent of its own, capable of inducing in its owners the desire to murder their neighbors. The average hoplophobe knows nothing about guns or blades, their realistic limitations, or their applications. He or she has no frame of reference for the realistic power of such weapons.

Hoplophobes believe mythology they see on television, in which bullets have enough power to hurl people through the air and fictional "cop killer bullets" can penetrate the shovel of a bulldozer. They think only Norman Bates and Hannibal Lechter would carry knives on a regular basis, even as they struggle desperately to open a plastic package of snack food with their teeth or their car keys. They have no concept of the discipline or the methodology behind earnest weapons training, instead dismissing what they do not understand as "useless" or (paradoxically) too dangerous for mere mortals.

Heh, we can guess what Phil spends a lot of time doing. I didn't realize that most people spend a lot of time opening bags of snack food.

http://www.themartialist.com/pecom/goingarmed.htm