Guns don’t get people fired…

…people get people fired.

I’m a free speech advocate and also I’m against undeterred gun ownership, so the item below really brings my two Constitutional priorities into conflict.

http://jinwicked.livejournal.com/156836.html

I’m definitely going to have to give priority to the First Amendment here: This is completely ludicrous. That a guy is fired simply for talking about acquiring a rifle, and that his depiction of it in a webcomic gets a police investigation, for crying out loud? Insanity.

PAD

59 comments on “Guns don’t get people fired…

  1. Jerry, there’s really no argument between us. I think it would be more accurate to say that the statement “america is the greatest country in the world,” reflects your attitude about the US, rather than opinion, just as a similar statement about a band or a team or a comic would. But this is just semantics. I completely understand the distinction between what you are saying and your attitude, and he attitude of people like Hannity. You’re the sane one. But you know as well as I do that America has a bad reputation for arrogance, for thinking it is better than everybody else, and that this is because of all the people who are not as sensible as you with their attitude toward their country. If I feel a little annoyed when somebody says that America is the greatest nation on earth it is because I think — either correctly or incorrectly — that it reflects a certain arrogance by the speakers. In your case I know it does not and never suspected that it did, so there’s no problem.

    There’s also a difference in attitude between Americans and people from other countries like Israel. The people in the US know they live in a country that casts a long shadow. This sometimes leads to arrogance, but not in your case. Israelis know they do not leave in the Greatest country by far. In fact they tend to be very critical of the country. But they (or some of them [us]) choose to live there despite of that. So there is a distinction between the right country and the best country.

    I suppose it’s like that with most other countries that are not the US. Sometimes people in these countries try to emigrate to the US because they want part of that greatness, but others choose to remain, even in places that are certainly not the best anything.

    In any case, I understand where you’re coming from and I have no arrgument with you. I’m just trying to convay my own point of view as a non-american.

  2. My understanding was that Kazakhstan was the greatest country in the world, and that all the other countries are run by little girls.

  3. Ever hear of Roshomon? It all depends on perspective.

    I once worked with a guy on the overnight shift, a fairly competent TV engineer. One night during a dull period he said, “Wanna see my gun?” He pulled open his coat to reveal a holster and a weapon.

    Now, at the time our TV station was literally in the ghetto, and it might seem possible that a pistol would be self-defense. But it wasn’t approved by management. Also, the guy had a voice and a personality that resembled Peter Lorre if he’d been born in the deep South. And at a Christmas dinner he occupied my date with a discussion of the efficiency of various grains of gunpowder in the bullet loads he made.

    For a while, management allowed him to carry a can of Mace instead – mind you, a police-sized can, also in a shoulder holster – but in the end they fired him. Everyone was afraid of him.

    Maybe I was being sensitive. Maybe my own history of being subject to violence affected my viewpoint. But although I didn’t say or do anything against him (it was other co-workers who were bothered and reported it) I was scared of him. Around him I felt like he was a pit bull for whom an insect sting might make him flip and take out my throat.

    And I would have felt that way if he was only drawing pictures of guns and discussing exactly how many pieces of a human skull it would create. Or the gorehounds I run across in fandom who enthusiastically talk about the same gory stuff.

  4. “Greatest” is relative, and almost always used with vague criteria. Is it “greatest” because of one thing? All things? Do we measure it like NASCAR, which allows for ranking 2nd, 5th, 10th, in individual events but can ‘win’ by an aggregate total?

    An argument based on unquantifiable superlatives is usually pointless.

  5. I have a friend who’s English. He moved here because he feels that way as well. His brother still lives in The Isle of Man because he feels that England is the greatest country in the world.

    That makes very little sense. The Isle of Man is the Isle of Man. England is England. Both parts of the UK, but what you’ve written there is akin to saying ‘And his brother still lives in Rhode Island because he feels that Massachusetts is the greatest state in the Union’.

  6. Today at work, I overheard a pair of WoW players discussing the accomplishment of some task or other. They were talking at the time about the best weapon to kill the boss.

    I can only imagine what the woman in the original story would have made of that conversation…

  7. Remembering some people at work having lunch time UNREAL TOURNAMENT matches over the corporate network, I can’t help wonder how some of the loons running around nowadays would react to hearing – from the next cubicle – a shrill [game character] voice shouting DIE, B*TCH!!! (or other invectives) followed by explosions and screams of pain. Oh, wait, I know, the players would probably all be in jail now.

    (They’ve since switched to a WWII simulation and use headphones.)

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