NYTimes Prints Clueless Op-Ed By Stupid LGBT Gun-Fondler

Nicki Stallard, a spokeswoman for Pink Pistols, an LGBT gun group, has an oped in today's NYT.

Since the attack in Orlando, Fla., many L.G.B.T. groups have been calling loudly for laws restricting gun ownership. But if anyone should be concerned about protecting the individual right to bear arms, it’s L.G.B.T. people. We need to stop preaching nonviolence and voting for politicians who don’t protect us. Violence toward L.G.B.T. people is real. We are victimized at far greater rates than other minority groups. We often face multiple assailants. The attacks are frenzied and quickly escalate from harassment, to fists, to something altogether different. People die.

The laws sane people have been calling after Orlando—the same laws sane people called for after Sandy Hook and San Bernardino—would not prevent Stallard and the other member of Pink Pistols from owning and fondling firearms, and these laws wouldn't prevent them from obtaining a concealed-carry permit. Setting aside the fact that guns don't make people safer—not even the gun owner—banning un-concealable weapons of war like the ones used in Orlando and Sandy Hook and San Bernardino would not "restrict gun ownership" generally, nor would they disarm the presumably law-abiding members of the Pink Pistols. Banning private ownership of weapons of war, preventing people on the terror watch list from buying guns, requiring background checks, and closing the gun-show loophole wouldn't prevent Stallard from buying and fondling guns. The laws being proposed would, however, make it harder for wannabe mass murderers to get their hands on weapons that enable mass murder.

Back to Stallard:

I used to have reservations about people carrying guns in bars. But 12 states allow concealed carry in bars, and I haven’t heard any reports of increased violence in those places. Now I can’t help wondering how many victims in Orlando might have been saved if a few people inside the nightclub had had concealed carry permits, and been able to fight back.

Donald Trump made the same point:

"If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or right to their ankle," Trump said, patting his hip, "and this son of a b—— comes out and starts shooting and one of the people in that room happened to have (a gun) and goes 'boom, boom.' You know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks."

Trump's remarks were so self-evidently stupid—a bunch of people firing into a crowded, dark club are more likely to assist the shooter in upping the body count than they are to take out the shooter—that even the NRA condemned them (along with the idea of people carrying weapons into bars!):

"I don't think you should have firearms where people are drinking," NRA chief Wayne LaPierre said during an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation." At around the same time, on ABC's "This Week," top NRA lobbyist Chris Cox also rejected Trump's vision. "No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms," he said. "That defies common sense. It also defies the law. It's not what we're talking about here."

Stallard doesn't have reservations about people carrying guns into bars but Wayne LaFuckingPierre does. Being to the right of Wayne LaP on guns is hard to do, but somehow Stallard managed to get there. She just had to be as dumb as Donald Trump. (Trump walked his statement back, claiming he meant armed security guards, trained professionals, not armed club-goers. Um, right.) Back to Stallard:

But every day, Americans use guns to defend themselves, and they don’t even have to pull the trigger. The mere appearance of a firearm can save their life. Just last week, Tom G. Palmer, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote in an op-ed article in The New York Daily News about an episode in his 20s when he flashed his pistol at a group of men who were threatening to kill him because he was gay — and they retreated.

Republicans love to cite anecdotes to support policy. But this one—like so many other rightwing anecdotes—doesn't hold up. Take it away, Mother Jones:

Myth #6: Carrying a gun for self-defense makes you safer. Fact-check: In 2014, according to FBI data, nearly eight times more people were shot and killed in arguments than by civilians trying to stop a crime.

• In one survey, nearly 1 percent of Americans reported using guns to defend themselves or their property. However, a closer look at these claims found that more than half involved using guns in an aggressive manner, such as escalating an argument.

• A study in Philadelphia found that the odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun. His odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater.

The Mother Jones piece busting 10 pro-gun myths is worth your time. Stallard should read it too.