Dan the Hat

Author, liberal and gun owner Dan Baum wrote a book (“Gun Guys: A Road Trip”) about the conflict of his gun ownership and his otherwise liberal politics.  The Atlantic has published an interview with Baum, which I am going to dissect below.

Why am I going to dissect it?  Quite simply: his beliefs are for the most part mutually exclusive.  He has to engage in some elaborate rhetorical dancing, and employ pretzel logic, in order to truly accept both beliefs.  And at some point he will have to jump one way or the other from the fence he is sitting on.

Full disclosure: I verbally sparred with Baum a few times in the comments sections of gun blogs.  While our exchanges were not abusive, he is stubbornly liberal, while clinging to some distinctly non-liberal views and attitudes (and I am not referring exclusively to “good” non-liberal traits).  He took particular exception to the common (and accurate) practice of referring to liberal gun grabbers as “gun grabbers”, so much so that he quit participating on one blog over the issue.

My issue is not with Baum personally (although his ever-present hat is kind of pretentious, LOL), but rather with the erratic logic which he uses to make his arguments as well as the inconsistencies in his beliefs.

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Make Believe

In the wake of Sandy Hook, yet another organ of the lamestream media has resumed praying at the altar of the mythical Smart Gun, which is alleged to be unable to fire for anyone except an “authorized user”:

Personalized guns touted as safety check

They aren’t the only ones yammering about the non-existent Smart Gun either:

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I call shotgun!

Late-breaking news from Colorado:

Popular Standard Shotgun Could Be Banned Under Proposed Bill

“A popular hunting shotgun could be banned under one of the bills moving through the state Capitol.

A pump or semi-automatic shotgun is the gun most hunters in Colorado use. It’s a gun state Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, says could be banned under a bill that’s already passed the House and Gov. John Hickenlooper says he’ll sign.”

2 questions leap to mind:

Don’t the gun-control proponents always promise that they won’t take our hunting guns?  and:

I wonder if Joe Biden will fight this on our behalf?

(The last question is a joke, btw.)

Twenty-Six

No, the police report still has not been released.  So we do not know what weapons were actually used in the massacre, among many other things.

But one of the victims’ parents was given some as-yet-unreleased information about the tragedy by the police.

At least one of the guns that Adam Lanza was using jammed during his murderous rampage.

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Politics As Usual

A while back, Ruger sent out an communication that offered a way to email each of your federal, state and local representatives with a message urging them to reject new gun laws.  Just add your contact info and they did the rest.  I did it, and so did a lot of the people I met in Hartford for the public hearing a few weeks back.

Only one of my representatives has responded.

On Jan 28, I received this email from Sen. Chris Murphy (D – CT):

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