Nobody likes to hear a whining baby.
Sometimes though, it’s amusing to watch an adult whine.
How America can free itself from guns
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
(Washington Post) – Advocates of a saner approach to guns need a new strategy.
What? Not getting anywhere with your demagoguery and propaganda demeaning the proven benefits of firearms ownership?
What’s needed is a long-term national effort to change popular attitudes toward handgun ownership.
Translation: We need better propaganda and marketing. The third-graders working for Everytown for Gun Control aren’t getting it.
And we need to insist on protecting the rights of Americans who do not want to be anywhere near guns.
There is no “right” not to be anywhere near guns. Isn’t it ironic these same people who don’t want to be anywhere near guns” always call men with guns (aka 9-1-1) when they get scared.
That’s why the nation needs a public service offensive on behalf of the health and safety of us all.
We do.
Look at Florida: With over 1 million carry licenses in that state, violent crime involving guns is at historic lows.
Look at the entire nation: Gun sales have been setting records every year since Obama’s election in 2008. We have more guns in America – and more gun owners – than ever before. With all those guns, crime rates have plummeted. Homicides are down 50% since the 1980s.
Let’s do a public service offensive to educate people about the proven benefits of firearm ownership to keep families safe.
My friend Guy Molyneux, a progressive pollster, laid out how it could happen. “We need to build a social movement devoted to the simple proposition that owning handguns makes us less safe, not more,” he told me. “The evidence is overwhelming that having a gun in your home increases the risks of suicide, domestic violence and fatal accidents, and yet the number one reason given for gun purchases is ‘personal safety.’ We need a public health campaign on the dangers of gun ownership, similar to the successful efforts against smoking and drunk driving.”
A social movement? Is that like a group bowel movement, as our own commenter Sam Whittemore might ask?
Just as using a car increases the risk of injury or death, firearm ownership so too has its risks. Americans recognize – in increasing numbers – that the benefits far outweigh the risks of utilizing those respective tools.
I’ve got better things to do than fisk out the rest of EJ Dionne’s whiny screed.
Suffice it to say the good guys are winning.
And EJ Dionne knows it and he’s about to throw a temper tantrum because of it.

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