{"id":50,"date":"2008-04-08T20:48:53","date_gmt":"2008-04-09T04:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=50"},"modified":"2008-04-08T20:48:53","modified_gmt":"2008-04-09T04:48:53","slug":"losing-is-winning-ignorance-is-strength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/50\/losing-is-winning-ignorance-is-strength\/","title":{"rendered":"Losing is Winning, Ignorance is Strength"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Helmke (or whoever writes it) has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bradycampaign.org\/blog\/2008\/04\/07\/obama-and-america-doing-the-gun-dance\/\">comical post<\/a> post on the Brady Bunch blog about Obama&#8217;s pandering to gun owners. It seems that in their upside down world, the fact that candidates are running away from them somehow means they&#8217;re winning. Or something.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If Senator Obama is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doing the gun dance,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d then he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in step with most of the American people. A recent poll by the Washington Post indicated that while 72% felt the Second Amendment provided an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153individual right,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 59% also supported gun restrictions as strong as those in the District of Columbia.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Umm, no, that doesn&#8217;t mean Obama is in step with most people. It means he&#8217;s lying. His support for banning pretty much everything is kind of the exact opposite of an individual right. And, Paul (or whoever), doesn&#8217;t that 72% there indicate that your belief that an individual right is a &#8220;fantasy&#8221; place you in a rather small minority?<\/p>\n<p>As for the second number from the cited <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/graphic\/2008\/03\/16\/GR2008031600072.html\">poll<\/a>, that was something of a trick question. By asking who supports an extreme total ban and a ostensibly innocuous trigger lock provision, it&#8217;s hard to say who favors what. Do the people who strongly support trigger locks mildly support a total ban? Did some people who somewhat oppose a ban and support locks split the difference? Or, for that matter, did the people who claimed to like locks realize that the law <strong>never<\/strong> allows you to unlock it? There are plenty of people out there who think such &#8220;safety&#8221; laws are &#8220;reasonable&#8221; until you explain to them just what they do..<\/p>\n<p>Either way, the compound question was a bit like asking someone if they support kicking puppies <strong>and<\/strong> protecting babies from cannibals. Of course some people are going to say yes to avoid looking like they don&#8217;t &#8220;think of the children&#8221; or whatever.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Support for common sense gun control should be a vote-winning issue for most candidates.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Bwahahaha! Given that the Brady Bunch&#8217;s idea of &#8220;common sense&#8221; is banning everything short of fingers, I&#8217;d say that&#8217;s a big no. Besides, if it was a &#8220;vote-winning issue,&#8221; he wouldn&#8217;t be doing the &#8220;gun dance,&#8221; now, would he?<\/p>\n<p>Sebastian at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snowflakesinhell.com\/2008\/04\/08\/when-youre-losing-claim-to-be-winning\/\">Snowflakes in Hell<\/a> has more on the absurd notion that gun control is a vote-winning issue in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Helmke (or whoever writes it) has a comical post post on the Brady Bunch blog about Obama&#8217;s pandering to gun owners. It seems that in their upside down world, the fact that candidates are running away from them somehow means they&#8217;re winning. Or something. If Senator Obama is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doing the gun dance,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d then he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}