October 1st Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James spoke to the media at Cavs training camp right after two shooting events. In Clevland a 5-month-old child was killed and in Oregon at the Umpqua Community College 9 people were killed in a mass shooting. Lebron James tweeted out to his followers on the subject of gun control and told the AP:
“Four kids under the age of five or six years old have been shot and killed or very badly injured, there’s no room for that. There’s no room for guns, first of all, but then for violence toward kids or anybody. I see the news go across my phone and I’m sitting there in front of my three kids, so it automatically just hit me.” “It’s not just in Cleveland, it’s the whole nation that goes through this as well,” he stated.
“We all hurt from it.” “I know what I see. I know how I feel. Obviously, you’re not going to be able to take every gun out. I don’t know how you can do that. There’s so many around now, today,” he said. “But if there’s some stipulations behind it or some penalties, some big-time penalties or rules or regulations about carrying firearms, legal or illegal, people will second-guess themselves.”
It’s understandable that the shooting affected James and he shouldn’t be mocked on his compassion for others. However as a famous person, who can reach millions of people, he does more harm than good with his tweets by spreading ignorance on a subject he knows little about. Basketball seems to be his forte. Likely he doesn’t care about the opinions of gun-owners but if he wants to be taken seriously by gun owners he should try to stay away from holding firearms of any kind if he believes they are dangerous.
http://youtu.be/kJzRhKwLK7A
Watch these two videos from YouTube. James can be seen using his fingers to mimic the hammer and barrel of a gun. In another video James can be seen firing a M249 SAW belt-fed machine gun. If James doesn’t like guns then he shouldn’t get near them for any reason. You are either for something that has the potential to kill or you are not. There’s no two ways about it. How many children have been sent home for pretending to have a gun by using their fingers ? Good role-models aren’t going to be hypocrites.
In 2013, actor Sean Penn, announced: “Being provoked by this aforementioned strong woman and considering how liberating of bulls–t and ugliness it would be not only get rid of the guns I have in the continental United States but also to destroy them, Jeff Koons and I had a chat the other day,” Penn said. He said, “The highest bidder gets every single one of my guns put in the hands of this iconic artist and sculptor…Koons will decommission [and] render inactive all of my cowardly killing machines.” Penn was referring to his then fiance and actress Charlize Theron who likely convinced him to destroy his gun collection.
It seems laughable that someone who despises a tool so much uses these tools as a tool to further his goals. Philosophically isn’t that hypocritical?
It is interesting to note that Penn used personification to describe his guns as being cowardly. Logic informs us that guns are machines and therefore cannot be alive. Logic also tells us that guns are not cowardly. Are guns cowardly or is the user cowardly? Penn can’t ask his deceased friend and authoritarian strongman Hugo Chavez for the answer even though Chavez used cowardly killing machines to prevent others from seizing power. This is important to note: THE USE OF personification is used to remove any responsibility from the labeler in order to put the blame on the machine and not the person. Firearms are labeled as evil, bad, wrong, wicked, and cowardly while the active shooter is blamed for having access to firearms.
We have to wonder why Penn purchased 65 firearms over a period of years and then eventually destroy them. At one time Penn believed it was okay to own guns. Once he started dating actress Charlize Theron he became enlightened and the guns had to go.
As the story goes Theron was 17 years old when her alcoholic father apparently attacked her mother. Her drunken and armed father threatened to kill his family and so the mother killed the father. Theron seems to have convinced Penn that guns are evil and wrong to own. Shouldn’t she have blamed the violence in the house on an alcoholic father with a mean temper and a lack of self-control rather than on guns?
Shouldn’t alcohol have been banned from the home? Shouldn’t the father have been banned from the home? If someone wants to kill you they will find a way; knife, rock, scissors, paper. Was Theron’s mother using a cowardly killing machine to kill a cowardly man who was also holding a cowardly killing machine? Does that make her a coward for using a cowardly weapon? Penn and Theron are no longer engaged and have broken up. Hopefully he got his ring back because he’s not getting his guns.
Let’s go ahead and balance the crazy-field now with a quote from a pro-gun person who seems more reasonable. “Less than 20 years ago, I was the target of a terrorist group. It was the New World Liberation Front. They blew up power stations and put a bomb at my home when my husband was dying of cancer and the bomb was set to detonate around 2 ‘o clock in the morning, but it was a construction explosive that doesn’t detonate when it drops below freezing. It doesn’t usually freeze in San Francisco, but on this night it dropped below freezing and the bomb didn’t detonate.
“I was very lucky, but I thought of what might have happened. Later the same group shot out all the windows of my home and I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself, because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. When I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick, I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out I was going to take them with me.”
That statement was made by Senator Diane Feinstein in 1995 author of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. She allowed herself the right to carry a cowardly killing machine but not the rest of America. Senator Feinstein, why can’t other people defend themselves because they too are frightened, just as you did?
On Oct 1st Obama suggested an Australian-like gun ban might be used in America. In the mid-1990s Australia and Great Britain both instituted large-scale bans on firearm(s) possession. Obama said, “We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.”
Oct 2nd just a day after Obama made that statement the State Crime Command in Sydney, Australia reported that a 15 year old boy shot and killed a man. In December in a Sydney a gunman took hostages at a cafe; Reuters reported that a 38-year-old mother and 34-year-old cafe manager were killed in that standoff.
Sadly, many who are famous and have the attention of millions of fans, have a pragmatic point of view or emotionally based perspective: if it works for them it must be TRUE or it feels right to them it must be TRUE. Let me tell you folks the mistake that too many people make when it comes to ascertaining truth: They need to stop confusing their opinion as being knowledge and stop confusing their passion for being sense. Truth has to be logical, factual and livable.
Actor James Woods seems like the only sensible one of the bunch. He took to social media to tweet about the Oregon shooting and how Obama didn’t speak out against the tragedy because it didn’t fit his Administration’s agenda.
“NY Times writes a front page story about a hate massacre targeting Christians without using the word ‘Christians,'” Woods tweeted, linking to story in the New York Times. Then: “If it is determined that the Oregon shooter targeted Christians specifically, that’s the last we will hear of it on MSM [mainstream media].” “Now that it is recognized that the terrible Oregon tragedy was an assault on Christians, will the President still sing Amazing Grace there?” Finally Woods tweeted a picture of the president with the comment: “Hate crime massacre of Christians finally silences Obama. #LiberalLaryngitis.” One would think if the murdered were of any faith other than Christian that he would speak out about the injustices. But Obama has politicized it for his own push to disarm Americans.
Anyone who has ever taken a debate class or dabbled in philosophy will know that the person who is in control of the meaning of a word is going to be able to control the debate. In George Orwell’s book 1984 the government of Big Brother controlled the media and removed words from their dictionary to limit the ability of people to express themselves. Their citizens could also be guilty of thought crimes. Personifying machinery, equivocating words, demonizing groups of people, and using feelings by appealing to emotions rather than falling back on evidence and logic to support your argument is the way dictatorships have controlled their people. Is that what is happening in this country? It seems that way.
When too few people speak out against the nonsense that is being pushed out by a group with a lot of influence it’s probably time to take a stand and say something.