Gunsplaining

Picture found here.

Well, actually, the “AR” in AR15 doesn’t stand for “automatic rifle.” it stands for “ArmaLite rifle.” Maybe you shouldn’t be trying to regulate something you don’t know anything about.

Well, actually, the AR15 is not an “assault weapon” or an “assault rifle.” An assault rifle is fully automatic — a machine gun. You obviously don’t know anything about this subject.

Gunsplaining is a bit different from the Distraction Game that we discussed yesterday. The distraction game is aimed at getting you to run down a rabbit trail trying to disprove a stupid argument: The problem is video games, not guns. Gunsplaining is part typical mansplaining and part gaslighting. It’s designed to make you feel that you don’t understand the subject as well as the gun fetishist and to doubt your own position. And it’s bollocks.

I don’t need to understand the lifecycle of the Clostridium butyricum bacteria to know that we need food regulations to prevent botulism. I don’t need to understand the precise physics of car crashes to know that we need regulations to prevent car manufacturers from selling flimsy cars. And, as we all know, men apparently don’t need to understand ANYTHING about female reproduction in order to pass all kinds of laws about our bodies.

The way to handle Gunsplaining is to laugh at it, dismiss it, call the person a gun-nut for even knowing all that minutia, and move on.