I like to document...

...when I take the effort to bang out replies to moderated blogs.

A reply from MikeB:

Dear Elmo, Thanks for coming by. I think you said on another blog that you used to comment here under another name [note: I used to comment simply as "Michael", back when I could still give Mike the benefit of the doubt], so I guess we know each other already.

Your question: "You think that taking those two minutes to add a tiny bit of insurance against a low-probability/high-consequence emergency is "abominable", "sick and paranoid", and has such a deleterious effect on other people that I should be ashamed of myself?"

My answer is yes. Yes, because it doesn't stop at your cozy little home where thank goodness nothing went wrong this past Halloween. It's you and your justifiable situation multiplied by millions or tens of millions. A percentage of them is not as responsible as you, but you support them, you enable them, you allow them to continue doing damage by doing your little part in keeping the "gun rights" what they are in the States.

So, yes I blame you, Elmo, and Bob, and the rest of you, and I say you would be ashamed if you weren't so biased and self-interested.


And my answer:

So it's the old "partial responsibility" meme again? The worldview in which responsible gun owners who oppose burdensome gun laws are partially culpable for murderers, car owners who don't lock their vehicles are partially responsible for ensuing deadly police chases*, and presumably women who dress immodestly at night are partially culpable for rape?

If my situation is justifiable, then you have no business intruding on it. You and your friends want to pass laws that overwhelmingly affect me in hopes that they'll have some small affect on criminals... And you've _succeeded_. That gun I own I was able to buy only after a ridiculous number of fees and legal interventions, fingerprinting, police investigations, employer notification, and... [checks records] a 68 day waiting period. And despite going through the license-to-carry procedure in other states, I'm still forbidden from taking my gun out through the front door of my home (unless I'm going directly to and from the range with no stops) under penalty of a felony conviction that's significantly stricter than the penalty for actually assaulting somebody with a gun.

You and your buddies have won substantially here in New Jersey, and you're still telling me that exercising the tiny sliver of a fundamental civil right that I have left is "abominable", "sick and paranoid".

In 1900, we had essentially no gun laws. If you misused your gun, you were punished for it. And that wasn't good enough for people like you. So over the next century we accumulated a crushing burden of legislation, and it still isn't good enough. You leave no reason to believe anything ever will be.

The next step is a British-style system with complete handgun bans and discretionary permits to own non-repeating shotguns. And even in Britain, people like you are still campaigning for even stricter gun laws, and pontificating about how the few remaining sport shooters are "part of the problem".

The criminals are the problem. Period.

[* - This was a direct example MikeB used back in the old days to justify his "partial responsibility" theory. It was one of the things that made it clear to me what kind of erson I was really dealing with.]