With the Senate reaching a deal for gun control, it feels like the door is open. 10 Republican senators cracked it open just a bit, and now the foot is in the door.
Informal logical fallacies are often handy ways to dispute arguments. I’m rather fascinated by them myself, but a lot of people misuse them. They call something a logical fallacy when it’s not accurate to do so. One a discussion of how to treat an injury or illness, a person mentioning they’re a physician isn’t “an appeal to authority,” since they are, in fact, an authority.
Likewise, it’s not a slippery slope fallacy where there is, indeed, a slippery slope.
Which brings us back to gun control.
At the Washington Times, an op-ed takes a look at abortion and gun control and how compromise can lead to the erosion of constitutional rights. I’m not going to get into abortion because that ain’t what we do here, but on guns…
There is a similar “slippery slope” with gun control. Proponents claim they only want to eliminate weapons such as the much-mentioned AR-15. President Biden recently stated, in support of that idea, that our Founding Fathers didn’t conceive of allowing citizens to own cannonballs. In fact, particularly on the frontier, communities did, in fact, possess cannons and ammunition for them.
But in the aftermath of several recent mass shootings, Mr. Biden, among others, hinted at also outlawing other guns as well, including some pistols. It is clear that advocates see the elimination of this particular model as the first step in an eventual attack on weapon possession in general.
There is an overwhelming lack of logic in the concept of gun control. A criminal who is going to rob, rape or kill will not care about breaking another law and illegally obtaining an AR-15 or any other type of rifle or pistol. Innocent civilians, who require and have the right to self-protection (especially in the era of underfunded police departments and rampant criminality) will, however, dutifully obey. That leads directly to the dilemma seen in cities such as New York and Chicago, where the honest population is largely disarmed and at the mercy of armed criminals. That situation is one that gun control advocates would duplicate nationwide.
In other words, today they’ll settle for beefing up background checks, but tomorrow they’ll want not just your AR-15, but your handguns too.
Keep in mind that many of these anti-gun people argue that your right to keep and bear arms isn’t infringed so long as you still can have any kind of firearm. So when we’re reduced down to a single-shot .410 shotgun, in their minds, our Second Amendment rights will still be uninfringed.
This is the true slippery slope and it’s not a logical fallacy. It’s a gameplan.
Of course, Cam has written about this as well. These folks are coming for our guns.
What’s more is that they smell blood in the water. A group of senators capitulated with their demands once. They’re convinced they can get them to do it all over again as well.
I’d love to tell you that they can’t, that the anti-gun jihadists aren’t going to be able to push deeper because what those senators agreed to is relatively minor compared to what the anti-gun jihadists want. However, I can’t. Why? Because there are a least 10 senators I don’t think are particularly trustworthy when it comes to our gun rights.
It’s just that simple.
So the anti-gun slippery slope is here and it’s real. They’re not even hiding it from us. They’re broadcasting their hopes for the whole universe to see.
In the process, though, they’re also illustrating why so many of us take a “no compromise” approach with them. It’s not like they’ll stop after you reach an agreement. They’ll just keep nibbling away until our rights are nothing but words on a page.
