Not Feeding The Trolls

Ken AshfordGun Control, Right Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

I wanted to badly to do an extensive take-down of this latest screed from The World's Dumbest Bloggerâ„¢, but I'm mindful of Rachel's admonition about feeding the trolls.  So my take-down will be less extensive.

Basically, Aaron Walker Worthing, tackles Godwin's Law, which states that anyone who invokes Hitler in an online argument loses that argument merely by showing desparation.

Walker, having invoked Hitler several times in arguing against gun control, and without any bit of self-aware irony, does not think that applies to HIM.  After all, when he invokes Hitler, he argues, it's actually an apt historical comparison. 

It's really not.  For one thing, Obama isn't a dictator, and the gun control measures he has proposed are going through a democratic system, just like every other law on the books.  Secondly, and for the last time, Hitler did not engage in gun control except to the extent that he denied Jews the right to own guns as he made guns more available.

Walker then add the factless assertions that Kristallnacht was, in part, a measure to confiscate guns.  (It wasn't, which is why his entire post is link-free).

He then launches on a theory which, at best, boils down to this:

The framers of the Constitution wrote the Second Amendment to avoid another Holocaust, even though they couldn't have possibly imagined a Holocaust.

Ah. Makes sense mif you don't think about it.

But where he enters into nut crazy land is where he attempts to argue that the Second Amendment (at one time an "individual right") is now a "right of rebellion".  The framers, he argues, wanted the people to be armed so that they could overthrow a dictator and a tyrannical government.

The obvious problem (obvious to anyone with a brain, i.e., not Walker) is that, if that is the case, why does the Second Amendment state that its purpose is for "the security of a free State"?  Why is the militia regulated by Congress, and not the "people"?  The Second Amendment is there so that people can protect their government, not overthrow it.

But Walker doesn't even acknowledge that language.  It gets in the way.  He pretends it doesn't exist, placing him to the right of Scalia, i.e., wingnut territory.

Walker insists that the right to rebellion exists in the Constitution.  Like the Whiskey Rebels of 1791 (two years agter the Constitution came into operation), Walker believes the people have the collective right to change or challenge the government through extraconstitutional means.

Someone needs to tell him that the Whiskey Rebels lost, thus resolving the issue.

No, on second thought, don't feed the troll.  They don't eat facts anyway.