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Townhall
Excuse
Me, Your Illogic Is Showing:
Orwell’s Vision Emerges In California
by Austin Hill
Feb 17, 2013
In
the 1940’s and 50’s, famed
Author George Orwell surmised that both the English language and
civilized
society were in decline.
After
a press conference held last
week by Emeryville, California Police Chief Ken James, it’s easy to see
a
decline in both language and critical thinking skills in our country.
And as
Orwell thought, indeed civilized society may very well be in jeopardy.
It
happened on February 14th.
Taking to the microphones and cameras in his suburban San Francisco
community,
Chief James stood at a podium with the requisite group of
serious-looking,
professionally dressed, pouty-faced people standing behind him (it
appears that
Emeryville Mayor Kurt Brinkman was one of them). In part, the Chief
said “one
issue that always boggles my mind is that the idea that a gun is a
defensive
weapon. That is a myth. A gun is not a defensive weapon.”
From
there, Mr. James went on to
say that “a gun is an offensive weapon used to intimidate and show
power.
Police officers don’t carry a gun as a defensive weapon to defend
themselves or
their other officers. They carry a gun to be able to do their job in a
safe and
effective manner and face any oppositions we may come upon. If it was a
defensive measure, why did we lose 55 officers nationwide last year to
gun
violence? And unfortunately, in just the two months of this year so
far, we
have lost two officers to gun violence in the state of California
alone.”
So,
how shall we begin to analyze
the logical fallacies here? Let’s start with this: a gun is an
inanimate
object. A gun doesn’t think; it doesn’t feel; it has no intentions or
aspirations; and despite what the Emeryville Chief of Police says, a
gun does
not have “offensive” or “defensive” tendencies.
In
this regard, guns and footballs
share something in common. Neither a gun nor a football is “offensive”
or
“defensive” in its essence. Yet each of them can be utilized by a human
being
for either offensive or defensive purposes. In short, whether a gun or
a
football is used for offensive or defensive purposes depends on who
possesses
it...
Read
the rest of the article at
Townhall
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