Isegoria

Otherwise-leftist blogger Kontra lives in Virginia and owns guns.  Kontra offers gun-control Democrats 6 ways to make a better argument:

Allow me this humble suggestion: The best way to convince the American public that you’re not interested in taking guns away is to stop talking about taking guns away.

Firstly, when your politicians are asked, “Do you support state legislation to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?” as Obama was in his 1996 Senate campaign, you should never answer “Yes,” as Obama did. Publicly advocating a ban on all handguns is not the way to convince people that you’re not interested in banning guns. Furthermore, when you are campaigning for president, never say the phrase “I continue to support a [federal] ban on concealed carry,” as Obama did in 2004. This gives people the impression that your intention is to prevent the states from setting reasonable guidelines on who can defend themselves outside of their home.

If you then win the election, do not go on to fully support gun bans in two US cities — Chicago and D.C. — in which law-abiding citizens are disarmed, citing them as models for gun policy while trying to convince the rest of the country that you really aren’t interested in banning their guns. (Guess which two US cities you’re most likely to be killed by a gun in.)

It has become almost cliché for smirking Democrats to attempt to ridicule people like myself by crooning, “Obama wants to take our guns!” in a stereotyped hillbilly drawl — something particularly offensive to some folks here in the south — when in fact, Obama has said exactly that.

Nothing in Bruce Holbert’s New York Times piece, I Killed My Friend, makes much sense. Here’s how it kicks off:

The summer before my sophomore year in high school, I moved into my father’s house. My father had remarried and the only unoccupied bedroom in his house was the gun room. Against one wall was a gun case he had built in high school, and beside it were two empty refrigerators stocked with rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. My bed’s headboard resided against the other wall and, above it, a resigned-looking, marble-eyed, five-point mule deer’s head with a fedora on its antler rack.

The room had no windows, so the smell of gun oil filled my senses at least eight hours each day. It clung to my clothes like smoke, and like a smoker’s cigarettes, it became my smell. No one in my high school noticed. We all smelled like something: motorheads of motor oil, farm kids of wheat chaff and cow dung, athletes like footballs and grass, dopers like the other kind of grass.

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who smelled of gun oil or been any place that smelled of gun oil — unless someone literally just cleaned and oiled a gun. Gun shops don’t smell like gun oil. Gun ranges don’t smell like gun oil. (They do smell like burnt gun powder though.)

Anyway, here’s the meat of his story:

The driver, who worked with the county sheriff’s department, offered me his service revolver to examine. I turned the weapon onto its side, pointed it toward the door. The barrel, however, slipped when I shifted my grip to pull the hammer back, to make certain the chamber was empty, and turned the gun toward the driver’s seat. When I let the hammer fall, the cylinder must have rotated without my knowing. When I pulled the hammer back a second time it fired a live round.

Wait, what? I don’t even understand how he claims to have set off that live round, but let’s review the rules of gun safety:

1. All guns are always loaded.
2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

Who hands a loaded gun over without unloading it and showing that it’s clear? Or even mentioning that it’s “hot”?  Who points a loaded gun anywhere near his buddy while he checks to see if it’s loaded? And who thumbs the hammer back?

Are we supposed to believe the gun went off without anyone pulling the trigger?

I suppose non-shooters are meant to read a story like that and conclude, see, it can happen to anyone who owns a gun! Um, no, not really.  Not like that.

(Hat tip to Megan McArdle.)