Spiner: Weapons No!
1 min read
Although he had no problem using a phaser on Star Trek: The Next Generation, in real life, Brent Spiner is not keen on weapons.
The actor got into an exchange recently with some of his Twitter followers, where he made his views known on the matter of gun ownership.
When a poster said that he looked forward to the day that no shooting would be reported after a recent shooting incident, Spiner said “or…wait for it…no guns.”
“If you’re not going to shoot them, why do you need them?” he asked another poster.
One woman explained that where she lived, many residents actually hunted for food, using rifles. Although Spiner saw “the sense” in having a rifle, “for hunting food,” he preferred that “we feed people” instead.
The Second Amendment didn’t impress Spiner either, who appears to consider it outdated by his “The British are coming!!!” reply to someone who posted the wording of the amendment on Twitter. Gun owners are “dangerous,” said Spiner.
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Yes, Brent, we are.
Takes some to “come out” like that before a vengeful, bullying mob. I salute Brent’s courage and spirit. Guns are the new Golden Calf. As to the 2nd A. the endoctrination is such that virtually no one realises how armed “militias” or bands of citizens could be manipulated into enforcing and supporting tyranny all the same. The indirect physical threats made by angry gun owners against dissenters clearly point at that. Time for Americans to shake out of drone mode and start really thinking things through and out of the box. Living under a dictatorship of guns is absolutely no better than living in a state of permanent war. There has to be a better way, as most civilised countries prove every day. Good luck with sorting out your harmful myths and violent culture, America. Drop the cynicism and the hero delusions. You CAN do it because you invented and gave us Star Trek after all. Or so I choose to believe.
I own a gun and I hope never to have to use it. I’m not angry with anyone over it and have never made direct, indirect, implied, or sky-written threats against “dissenters”, as you call them. I’m not vengeful, nor am I a bully. I simply want the capability of protecting my property and family, and to use a gun to do that if necessary. If you don’t want to use a gun to do the same, then I wish you the best and have no problem with you. Why would you want to dictate to me the means I can and cannot use to protect myself? That, my friend, seems tyrannical to me. Pardon my cynicism.
So I guess I shouldn’t send him that gift subscription to Guns and Ammo I was thinking about. Oh well.
While Brent Spiner has the right to voice his opinion like every American, I find his opinions wrong concerning this hot topic of an issue. There is absolutely nothing wrong with owning a firearm. Gun ownership has been around for as long as this country has existed. The 2nd Amendment – The Right To Bear Arms – has been a part of the Constitution Of The United States Of America. It is NOT outdated, as he thinks it is.
As long there are still background checks, waiting periods, and psychological screening proceedures, the general republic has the Right To Bear
Arms. It is NOT the guns that are harming people. It is the people who misue them that are.
Those are the people that Brent should blame! Not the decent people!
For me it’s not that I have no faith in guns, but rather, I have no faith in humans that use guns. For me, I think it comes down to the moral and ethical questions about absolute power and what it does to the best of us. Even a good, decent person can become corrupt given enough power. Guns represent power over others, including the very power of life or death. However, I also realize that no issue is fully black and white and that even gun owns can make rational arguments.
Sorry, but the anti-gun mob has been steadily losing ground in America for years. Dictatorship can only exist when the people do not have the power to fight back, which is why the first thing every dictatorship throughout history has done has been to confiscate privately-owned weapons.
We are here, there are millions of us, and we have the upper hand in this country to such a degree that even Sandy Hook wasn’t able to be used as a pretext for the gun-control thugs to run their bullshit over our backs. Perhaps Brent Spiner has the “courage and spirit” to afford to live in a neighborhood in which personal protection isn’t an issue for him. Perhaps you have a similar quality of “courage”. For the rest of us who are not so lucky, we will not be cattle and we are not going away.
Go mind whatever shithole you live in and find better things to do with your time than fret about how we manage our lives.
This is not a simple issue. Nor is it clear-cut.
There are many responsible gun owners in America. I know many of them. There are also many twits who act as though their gun is the all-empowering organ they were not gifted with at birth. I know too many of them also.
People should indeed have the right to defend themselves. People should also be more aware of the responsibilities and risks involved in using a gun to do so. I believe that with guns, as with so many other issues, the best solution is education and personal responsibility. This unfortunately is not a good solution for America, which is very much under the grip of the cult of abject stupidity. Too many of the very same voices advocating Second Amendment rights are at the same time actively working to reduce the responsibilities involved in gun ownership.
It is very true that there are too many regulations on firearms. Many of these regulations are poorly written, vaguely interpreted, and inconsistently applied. Slapping new laws on top of old laws is a bandaid, not a solution.There is no national standard or body to make sure that law A in state A has the same restrictions and permissions as law B in state B has, resulting in little unpleasantries like the Virginia Tech incident.
Blanket restrictions on certain vaguely defined categories of weapons are also not the answer. Citing Virginia Tech again, one shooter with two garden-variety semiautomatic pistols and a sack full of ten-round magazines is strong evidence that bans on high-capacity magazines or assault rifles (whatever they loosely define those to be) are not the solution.
I don’t see any resolution to the issue of gun ownership and gun violence. I agree that the root of the issue of the irresponsible misuse of firearms is in a cancer that gnaws at the innards of the nation. This is the glorification of violence. The representation that violence is cool. That violence is the solution to all problems. Violence is publicly acceptable. It pervades media, fashion, it’s hip, trendy, hot, happenin’. Violence is cool.
Guns are cool.
As guns are portrayed in the media now, anyone can pick up a gun and make their life better. They don’t have to be smart; they don’t have to work hard; they don’t have to follow rules; they don’t have to have understanding, or empathy, or respect; all they need is the gun. All the good things– the money, the girl, the car, the washer-dryer, the high-paying job, the respect of their peers and elders, yadda yadda– all that will follow. All they need to get it is the gun.
What I’ve always liked about Star Trek is that violence was the last resort, not the first and only option. Phasers were used judiciously when they had to be used at all. Problems were approached with intelligence, with courage, with understanding and insight. At least until recently.
I still believe that we, as a species, can reach that point someday. I’m also painfully aware that right now, we have a long, hard road to get there.
If he dislikes firearms so much, he definitely shouldn’t call the police if he’s in danger. After all, the police have firearms and might shoot someone!!! Brent should resolve things with his quips and ideas for revisions to the Constitution instead.
Hello? That’s precisely the issue we’ve been dealing with here. “Background checks, waiting periods, and psychological screening procedures” would do a lot to prevent gun violence, but our elected representatives can’t seem to muster the fortitude to enact even these reasonable restrictions.
OK, so the problem is always the other guy, right? The way I see it, the danger inherent to gun handling is never quite zero. Even in the most perfect conditions, no one can claim they will *never* accidentally shoot someone — or themselves. No one can guarantee with absolute certainty that a kid will never ever find a way to the house vault and cause the irreparable. Every such such incident is one incident too much.
Possessing a gun with ammunition is actually exposing others to a risk they have not necessarily chosen for themselves. Very much like smokers have long exposed non-smokers to cigarette smoke and caused lung cancer and death in others. Honestly, there may be a thing or two to learn from world history (not the Tea Party-edited and revised history, that is — Rwanda, Iraq under Saddam, how Hitler actually *relaxed*(!) the strict gun control laws dictated by the Treaty of Versailles to secure popularity before pouncing on the Jews, etc…), and also from countries like Northern Europe or Canada.
As to self-protection, I know one thing for sure: Forget about being a hero. It is never quite like the movies. Mass shooting. Good guy draws gun and shoots the wrong man, then gets shot by the police? Is that such an unrealistic scenario? No time to research this in depth, but I’d bet it is not unheard of. On the other hand, in the Tucson shooting, Loughner was initially disarmed and subdued by unarmed by-standers (one of them with military training), leaving little to do to the gun-carrying citizen that arrived a few seconds later.
In the meantime, each truly responsible prospective gun owner should spend a few hours assisting nurses and doctors in a large city ER, as well as speak with police officers and gunshot victims before they make their decision to own final. Only by first becoming aware of *all* the unpleasant, unforeseen, and mostly hidden aspects of gun ownership can one declare themselves a truly responsible weapon owner. And whatever you choose, please don’t hurt yourselves, someone you love, or an innocent by-stander. But if you do carry a loaded weapon, this is not something you really can promise, unfortunately. I only hope it gets better one day.
“Even a good, decent person can become corrupt given enough power. Guns represent power over others, including the very power of life or death.”
Sounds like what happened to Captain Ron Tracey, when he was driven insane by the death of his entire crew and the loss of his ship(i.e. the fate of the U.S.S. Exeter, NCC-1672 in the episode ‘The Omega Glory’).
Then we need new elected representatives who know what the hell they are doing, and know what the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights is all about!
I own a gun, too. And as long as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are still in existence, I WILL CONTINUE to exercise my Second Amendment rights! No matter what people say.
To quote the late Charlton Heston, the only way someone will ever get my gun is when they pry it “from my cold, dead hands!!!”
My gun, my rights, nuff said!!!!
In the UK, firearms were legal (my dad owned several), until the Dunblane massacre , where 16 young children were massacred. Gun ownership is severely restricted here. Our country has one of the lowest rates of gun-homicide in the world here. There were 0.04 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010.
Even our police officers dont carry guns.
There was uproar amongst some gun owners when the law changed, but the results speak for themselves.
America though has a different history and I understand that gun-ownership is a political issue.
Prior to 1997, the UK had such checks, waiting periods and screenings that were very stringent (I know this as my father owned some guns). Nonethless a former scout leader had a psychotic break and killed 16 children.
Now the UK has some of the toughest gun laws in the world and has a very low gun crime rate. On 2 June 2010, Derek Bird, a 52-year-old taxi driver, shot and killed 12 people and injured 11 others while driving through Cumbria. He then shot himself. Bird was a licensed firearms holder; his weapons were a 12 gauge double-barreled shotgun and CZ 452-2E ZKM .22-calibre bolt-action rifle.
I am grateful that he did not have access to an automatic weapon that would have done far more damage.
Why do actors do this to themselves? It never ends well and at the end of the day it’s just a negative experience for everyone involved in the little Twitter spat.
I must have missed it, when did the UK and Japan become dictatorships? They have both essentially banned guns, and yet they remain peaceful democracies. Also, the Nazis never banned private firearm ownership.
Maybe he’s sick of the now-weekly gun massacres that we have to put up with in this country. Last week it was a guy with an assault rifle shooting up LAX. What will it be this week? After a while, it gets a bit tiresome. Especially when you look at Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, etc and see that they somehow magically don’t have weekly mass shootings.
LIke any liberal, and in particulary in Hollywood, Spiner should direct his attention to the violence in the gangs, black on black violence and the fact law inforcement is hindered from enforcing the 20,000 gun laws already on the books, because of political correctness and the race card. And the VIOLENCE that is presented in films from Hollywood? Yeah, a bit of hypocrisy there I would say.
Sure but gun crime is actually down quite a bit. Seems odd that anti gun voices are strongest now when statistically it’s not as bad as it was in the 80’s or 90’s.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue a Twitter rant about it gets nothing done and like I said, is just a negative experience.
Seems to me that if folks really wanted fewer guns, they’d be asking why the Social Security Administration needs assault rifles and MRAPs. Why aren’t the folks against gun ownership demanding a better explanation as to why the civilian government agencies recently purchased over two *billion* rounds of ammunition? How about demanding the government own fewer weapons as well? Why do we have the right to own guns? 1. *the government has no obligation to protect us*. It’s not the job of the police to protect us, and the police have no obligation to put themselves in harm’s way to protect us. Numerous court cases have shown this. If the government has no obligation to protect us, then who does? *We* have the obligation to protect ourselves. 2. We have the right to own weapons to protect ourselves against our own government, not against criminals or to hunt. This is why we have the right to bear arms: http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/justice/new-mexico-search-lawsuit/
“Even a good, decent person can become corrupt given enough power.” “…I have no faith in humans that use guns.” Consider that the Social Security Administration now has assault weapons and armored personnel carriers. Why should we trust the government with guns, either? Why does the *Social Security Administration* have assault weapons? It is because even good, decent people can become corrupt, given enough power that we should have no more faith in a government with weapons than we do with civilians. Why should we think that the government would be any more benevolent with a firearm than anyone else? Why aren’t we hearing people like Brent Spiner demanding that the *government* disarm itself as well? After all, it’s suppose to be a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”, which means the government is made of folks just like the rest of us. Since power corrupts and folks in the government are people just like us, why should the government be trusted any more than anyone else with guns? Why have more faith in someone with a gun wearing a government badge, given that power corrupts, than someone not in government? After all, here’s what can happen to folks with other folks with guns and a badge: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/11/05/2892851/police-forced-anal-probe-colonoscopy-mexico-man-stopped-traffic-violation/
Spiner didn’t seem to have a problem glorifying weapons when he played Data in Star Trek. I guess the money has run out.
*pew pew!* Get those Borgs!
He says, “Gun owner are dangerous” He is quite right.
That is the POINT of having a gun.
If you are not dangerous, your enemies won’t respect you.