People who think socialized health care is a good idea.
People who care about Obama’s birth certificate.
People who think that “concealed carry = potential criminal”.
People who think we should just stop all immigration, legal or otherwise.
But the number one thing that I don’t get today comes our own pro-gun team – for the life of me, I do not get the compulsion that some of my pro-gun friends and fellow bloggers have to engage in near constant debate with anti-gunners on the blogs and websites of said anti-gunners, or at HuffPo or wherever else the battles are met. I just don’t get it. I mean, we’re not going to win these arguments, and the foes with which we’re engaging (the likes of mikeb, jadegold and skyewriter) aren’t exactly what you’d call intellectual heavies either.
Maybe one of ya’ll can enlighten me – what’s the sauce in this? I don’t see the payoff, but there has to be a reason for it, right?
I believe that opinions of the anti-gunners need to be challenged. I prefer to do it on neutral sites like Digg, instead of on their home turf, but I’ve posted there as well. If you challenge the anti-gunners with cold, hard facts then I think you can win over those sitting on the fence. Getting in verbal spats with them is not conducive, in my opinion. I think the key is to take the high road and not to stoop down to their level when posting on other blog sites.
Caleb,
I reason I do it is what I saw out on the internet when I first researched the gun rights issue — lots of negative comments and posts from the gun banners and not much from the pro-gun side. Now that was years ago and blogging has taken off.
Still, a person who is on the fence but slightly anti is going to spend more time looking at anti gun sites. Posting on the anti sites show the fence sitters the facts, the evidence and the counter to the malarkey put out by the banners.
I think having the debates with the antis also show the shallowness of their arguments. Very few can counter the legitimate points made by pro-rights folks. Look at how few pro-ignorance, anti-freedom gun banners take up Kevin Baker’s challenge to debate.
I see this a no lose situation. We are unlikely to change the mind of someone dead set against guns, but get to use their sites to sharpen our arguments and reach out to those still making up their minds.
+1 to Bob. If I find myself no longer having a good time, I stop. But overall if I can engage them on their own turf and expose them for what they are it projects a fine message for the honestly undecided people.
Guns aren’t a liberal/conservative issue (If the anti-gun conservatives, of which there are tons, had sites with open comments I’d be there too) so I see this as having a net gain.
But I won’t let my hobby become work. I do my “Work” on my own blog (that has a nice readership of pro-gun lefties).
Plus it’s fun to bloody their snot little noses. I live in Mass where we have liberal Enclaves like Cambridge filled with snooty liberals that think their agenda is truth from on high simply because all their acquaintances are ultra-lefty, and they intentionally avoid people who might disagree with them.
This is how people like Judge Sotomayor come about. She’s a bright woman and highly educated…but totally wishy-washy when a question comes from the other side.
You are never going to convince the anti-gun crowd, BUT, we have to challenge them every chance we get, with facts and clear arguments, so that the undecided readers out there get to hear BOTH sides of the argument. If we don’t, then the undecided readers will believe that the anti-gun crowd are the majority, when in reality, they are vocal, but they few.
“How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”
I’ve been in plenty of fights, and had plenty of arguments with anti-gunners. I just don’t go looking for them.
It’s a sport.
They are “fish in a barrel” but I’m getting old, have a bum knee, and can’t participate in the same sports I used to.
I’m with Joe, It’s a sport and I get a kick out of exposing their bigotry and hatred.
That said, I don’t comment over at HuffPo and won’t bother with the likes of Jade or Skyewriter. I think if you did it constantly it’d drive you nuts and would no longer be entertaining.
Simply, I didn’t know how I felt about certain issues. Engaging folks for opinions helps shape one’s views on many different levels.
Fight is a strong word, but the sentiment is there.
More about engaging people rather than starting fights.
I don’t see the payoff, but there has to be a reason for it, right?
Because they’re wrong!
One simple reason,
A lie left unchallenged soon becomes truth.
I don’t care about the birth certificate flap. Even if it is true, I suspect the money, power and influence available to a POTUS would make it ridiculously easy to obtain a perfectly made forgery. Even if everything went the way the proponents of that idea would like, how does having Biden as President help us?
However, needling true believiers of hope&change rainbow farting unicorn crowd with it and watching them go a tad apoplectic is fun.
Fun, but not quite as much fun as bringing up the Belicheat scenario with die hard Pats fans, calling their boys cheater,cheater, cheaters! Then bring up the fact that they followed that up with the greatest dry-hump of a season in the entire history of professional sports with the 18 and D’oh!
Good natured needling of rivals is all in good fun. We can’t be deadly serious all the time.
It’s not about changing the minds of jadegold or skywriter, it’s about refuting them for the non-commenting readers.
Thomas beat me to my answer.
When people read something repeatedly, they start to believe it. When it’s repeated by “Everybody”, they internalize it and try and normalize it.
When someone strongly argues against it and refutes it it sometimes causes them to re-access. Sometimes not right away, sometimes only when life or circumstance throw different curve balls at them.
But just the fact that somebody says “Not only is that wrong, I’ll show you why” is important, IMO.
It’s not enough to just say that they’re wrong, it’s important to show _why_.
When I was in high school, I remember how many times I wrote a letter to the editor – that was usually edited in a not-complimentary manner in response to the local papers idiocy on guns.
Anti-gun was the default from the single-sourced MSM. Now that there’s no longer the chokepoint on getting information out to people – and the fact that when the MSM writes something stupid you can argue it on your dime, so to speak – and have a chance of winning is part of the reason why the pro-gun fortunes have skyrocketed since ’94.
Here is why you should care about the birth certificate: The consituttion requires a President to be a natural-born citizen, not just a citizen.
This higher standard is a technical legal question that has been answered by documents that prove nothing – they were available to people with foreign births. The question is open until definitively answered, which he refuses to do. (Why would a candidate for a high office need or want to cover the fact that he was a natural-born citizen?)
Therefore, if allowed to stand, the result is an overt statement of the governement that they NO LONGER INTEND TO FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION AT ALL.