I have a made a point not to respond to material from a certain, fundamentalist website, but occasionally, the site’s author will say something so outrageous that it requires correction.

#1.What Words Should We Use to Describe Immigrants?

First, they are NOT immigrants but criminals. They violate the immigration laws of the land they enter from their home country. But what bothers us is the attempt to reframe the reality of illegal immigration.

Woven into this framing is the near-constant use of the term “illegal” or “unlawful” to describe unauthorized crossings. As an advocate for immigrant survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, and trafficking, I’m alarmed by the use of this language to describe a migrant’s attempt to survive.

This is a very narrow view that ignores so many factors that it is hard to believe people actually think this way. The people doing ‘unauthorized’ crossings are illegal and doing an unlawful act. There is no other term to describe it and the reasons they use to justify it do not change this categorization.

If the author of those words and that article would do some research he would find that most of those people are not in jeopardy or trying to survive. they are trying to steal from the rich and keep it for themselves.

The excuses listed there are not legitimate immigration reasons. The home countries of these people have laws that deal with those issues. They do not need to escape their country and break the laws of another nation to get relief.

These people who make these unauthorized crossings are as bad as those they are trying to ‘escape’. Their actions make them wrong and violate the laws of the land. For America, here are the rules to seek refuge in that country:

Blood boiling yet? It should be. The notion that immigrants fleeing various forms of abuse are ‘as bad as the ones inflicting it’ is the sort of thing I’d expect only the ignorant to say. The author of this ‘piece’ is already well-aware that there are plenty of circumstances where going through ‘proper’ immigration channels is impossible. People fleeing for their lives should be treated with compassion; there is not a single compassionate bone in this fundamentalist’s body, and given their own personal history regarding border hopping, more than a small element of hypocrisy.

What would this fundamentalist have to say to Jews fleeing the Holocaust? ‘Because you didn’t go through proper channels, you’re as bad as the Nazis’. Is that what he would say? Would that have been his attitude back then? I’d genuinely like to think that would not be his approach, but his own words are damming.

#2. American Carnage and Death: Guns Are the Problem, And They Always Have Been

This is typical misguided thinking on the part of unbelievers. It is also very shortsighted thinking because guns just happen to be the weapon of choice at this time. Take away the guns and there remain knives, swords, homemade guns & other weapons, chains, bombs and so on.

The last one will kill more people than any one gun can and cause more destruction at the same time.

I know who the fundamentalist is talking about here. He is referring to a post by Bruce Gerencser, who was writing about yet another mass shooting in the USA. The fundamentalist and I have been over this subject before; he need only take a minute to consider the facts, but I do not expect him to do so.

Guns are the weapon in around 80% of US murders. They’ve usually been anywhere from 66% to 80% over the last five or six years. They are consistently the primary weapon of choice for murders, and mass shootings are far more common than mass knifings, bombings etc.

There have been almost 200 mass shootings since the start of 2023. This past weekend was particularly violent and bloody. Once again, innocent Americans have died because our ruling class — particularly Republicans — refuses to do one goddamn thing about assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

This is another amazing distortion for the source of the problem. It is not the Republicans’ fault that people are picking up guns to solve a preceioved problem or commit a crime. Most crimes aren’t committed using assault rifles or high-capacity magazines. Most crimes are committed using hand guns.

The ‘distortion’ is the strawman at work here by the fundamentalist. Bruce’s paragraph was referring, very clearly, to mass shootings, and mass shootings usually involve weapons like the AR-15. Bruce was not referring to overall homicides. Bruce is also correct that Republicans do not seem moved to do much about this (this is what you get when you place profit over people, as Republicans so often do, they are in the pocket of gun lobbies).

The type of gun used in most US homicides is not an AR-15

Handguns are used in nearly two-thirds of the nation’s gun murders. (source)

That report comes from a Disney owned liberal news source. That is just for murders, what about theft, robbery and so on? The above comment is a product of bad research. The author shoud know that the Blue cities and states are the home of most violent crimes

I’m not sure if the fundamentalist is aware, but the states with the highest murder rates (surely the most violent of all violent crimes, and a violation of the most serious of all of God’s Commandments, ‘thou shall not kill’, are in fact a very mixed bag. Plus, the three safest states for murder are states that typically vote Democrat. Besides which, Bruce’s original post was about murder, not other crime, so this is yet another strawman.

Without weapons of mass destruction, it is unlikely that we would see the level of mass causality shootings that we see today. Or as Hamill poignantly says: there would be no home runs without bats.

This is a misguided and unrealistic statement to make. Even if you take away all gunsd, people would still be killed. crimes would still be committed and worse. Even in countries like South Korea where gun owners are to store their guns at the differen tpolice stations, murder by guns and other crimes still take place.

Would the fundamentalist care to share how many firearm homicides there are in South Korea, compared to the USA? The Korean murder rate in 2020 was 0.6. The US murder rate with guns only was 6.24. Perhaps the fundamentalist would care to explain how this can be?

The case of the frog boys in Daegu is prime evidence for this. That was a case where 5 boys disappeared and were killed. Their remains were not found for 10 years. We know this because we lived onthe same mountain where the boys’ remains were found andd at the time they were found.

Another time, a man went to the police station to get his gun, gave thepolice some reason for wanting it. Onc ein his hand he went out and shot someone he knew. While these are isolated casualty incidents, bombs areknown to be set off in other countries killing more people at one time than an AR-15 can kill at one time.

The only one being misguided here is the fundamentalist. Bruce did not say there would be no crime if weapons like the AR-15 were banned. He argued there would be a reduction in mass shootings and deaths from mass shootings. Personal anecdotes aren’t proof of anything, for this is yet another strawman. Did Bruce claim that an assault weapon ban would stop any and all violent crime? No, he didn’t. The fundamentalist should be honest about the arguments made, and address them, instead of the strawman he has created. He himself even acknowledges that bomb attacks are ‘isolated incidents’, which suggests deep down, he knows his comparison is a falsehood.