Politics

According to Joan Peterson, the Chair of the Board of Protect Minnesota – the local anti-gun group here in Minnesota – and a board member of the Brady Campaign – in her most recent comment – here’s the reason why she won’t publish your comments:

you have no idea what kind of comments I receive because I don’t publish so many of them. It is just too hard to deal with the continued demeaning comments and those that are not relevant and miss the point.

I publish the ones that seem to make a point or don’t ask me questions in a snarky or accusatory fashion. Many times I answer what you guys ask me in another post. But most of the time, I tell you what I am all about and what I want to do about it in my post.

There is no sense in fighting about this stuff. You all resist even the most reasonable of gun laws without cause. You ( not necessarily you personally) don’t seem to care about the victims, and indeed, often deride them or make rude remarks about them.

We all, meaning me, Baldr, Mike, and the many others who blog on my side, just tire of the offensive comments. It leads to nothing but acrimony.

We so obviously disagree on so many levels that it doesn’t seem possible to have a decent “discussion.” Besides, as I have pointed out, you represent a small minority of Americans. The rest agree with me- even gun owners and 75% of NRA members. So the point is to get Congress to do the right thing because you and some of my readers will never agree with me.

In other words, I won’t publish your comments because you disagree with me.

I’m now up to one hundred and thirty-four comments that she has refused to publish.

Joan Peterson, the blogger at “Common Gunsense”, who also serves as a member of the Brady Campaign Board of Directors – and the chair of the local anti-gun group Protect Minnesota continues to lie about even the basic facts of the gun control / Second Amendment debate.

In a post that Joan has since removed (as of 10:13am CST on 9/1), she claimed in a comment the following about the Texas Department of Public Safety’s 2011 report on permit holders:

One of my readers thought he was sending me links to research or actual facts about gun violence. Unfortunately he sent mostly hyperbolic articles from far right media source, Breitbart misquoting and misinterpreting results of actual studies. But I do thank him for sending me stats about Texas conceal carry permit holders and crime. You can see it here.

Raise your hand if you think 51 homicides by permit holders is acceptable. Or if 1353 incidents of “deadly conduct” is acceptable. Or if 244 “deadly discharge deadly weapon is OK. Or 112 cases of manslaughter and 461 murders committed by CCW holders. This is great information and very useful as well. Why? Because it shows that permit holders are not the law abiding citizens that the gun lobby promised they would be. As I have said repeatedly, though these account for a small percentage of the total crimes, these are people trusted to carry deadly weapons around in public. There should be no crimes committed by these folks. Would these people have committed crimes anyway? Perhaps. But then we shouldn’t have given them the privilege of carrying deadly weapons around in the first place.

As is typical for Joan, she either cannot read the report itself, or she is deliberately misrepresenting the facts – because she is quoting the total # of crimes committed in Texas rather than crimes committed by permit holders – which we know to be significantly lower than this.

My rebuttal comment, submitted to her site, which is now the one hundred and thirty-first comment of mine that she has refused to post, reads as follows:

Your information is completely incorrect on the texas report. You are entirely misreading the columns on the report.

The 51 incidents of criminally negligent homicide is of all citizens. CHL holders have committed 0.

Of the 1353 incidents of deadly conduct, 9 were committed by CHL holders.

Of the 244 incidents of deadly discharge of a weapon, 2 were committed by CHL holders.

Of the 112 incidents of manslaughter, 3 were committed by CHL holders.

Of the 461 incidents of murder, 3 were committed by CHL holders.

Again, permit holders commit violent crimes at a rate several magnitudes less than the general population.

Even though Joan claims that she wants to have a rational discussion, the truth is that she and the other leaders of the gun control movement don’t want that – because it’s impossible for them to tell the truth – even when the facts are staring them right in the face.

Again, my offer stands. Joan, I’ll debate you anytime in public, with a fair set of rules, and with audio and video recording running. How about it?

More at Shall Not be Questioned – Post 1 and Post 2 and at Weer’d World.

Update: Joan is claiming that she accidentally deleted the post and comments. You decide.

Update #2: Joan has the post back up but conveniently left out her complete fabrication of the Texas data. Typical.

Update #3: Weer’d has more on the “deletion”.