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For Anti-Gunners, No Evidence Will Ever Be Enough

There are some people who you can debate with and show that they’re wrong. You can present facts and evidence and they’ll understand their preconceived notions are incorrect. They understand they don’t have all the answers and are willing to entertain new bits of data that go against what they previously believed.

These people, however, are rarely the die-hard anti-gunners.

For the die-hard, no evidence will ever be enough. Take this bit from an article on how churches are using armed parishioners to help provide security.

Gun-control advocates balk at the idea that more weapons will create safer spaces, and others suggest that armed security — especially volunteers — may actually bring more risk.

“Whenever firearms are present, there’s always room for error and the possibility that the guns which are intended to protect become liable to endanger,” said James Densley, a criminal justice professor at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota. “Arming parishioners so they can make the kind of split-second decisions that police get wrong worries me a little bit.”

See, anti-gunners routinely run out this line whenever we talk about arming citizens in environments that are potential targets, places like churches.

The problem is that we just don’t see that happening. There have been shootings stopped by armed volunteer security personnel, but not a single example where such an individual has made the situation worse. Why is that, especially when Densley argues that police get those situations wrong?

Well, for one thing, police are in a lot of positions where things are in shades of gray; not the black and white of a mass shooting in progress like in White Settlement, TX. There’s no ambiguity, and those are what church security is there for. That’s when they draw their weapons. Otherwise, they just keep an eye on folks, maybe ask rowdy people to leave, stuff like that.

But none of that matters for an anti-gunner. That’s because they’re not driven by fact, by history or statistics or anything else except raw emotion. Their mind can conjure a situation where an armed church security person might make things worse, so that’s what drives every little thing they do from then on. They simply can’t comprehend that there’s no bit of data that actually supports their thinking.

Until some biased study comes out and then it’s all the study all the time.

With the gun rights side, we acknowledge that we’re not necessarily driven by data. We’re driven by a deep belief in our rights being paramount and an unwillingness to give those up. We take the words of our Founding Fathers very seriously when it comes to the use of arms by the populace.

Yet between the two, there are those who don’t particularly care about rights but also don’t necessarily care about someone else’s fears and feelings. It’s those people who we present with data so they can understand. Once they do, it becomes easier to get them to understand that even if freedom were as bad as the anti-gunners claim, it would still be worth it. It just helps to do that when you can prove that the gun grabbers are hysterical nitwits governed by their own neurosis and not anything else.

But for the die-hard anti-gunner, no bit of evidence will ever sway them.

So don’t try. Don’t get disappointed when it doesn’t happen. Bestselling author and confirmed gun nut Larry Correia likes to say that arguing on the internet is a spectator sport. You’re not trying to change the other person’s mind. You’re arguing to change the mind of someone who isn’t so vehement in their beliefs, someone who can be swayed.

That’s important to understand. You won’t sway the die-hards. True Believers will always believe what they believe until they decide to open their minds. That quote above should be all the evidence you really need, at this point, to understand that.

 

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