17 Comments
May 31Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Great article. I appreciate you taking time to sift through the shit so we don't have to. God's work, my friend.

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Jun 1Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

I cherish and celebrate your upholding of the basic conceit that anybody actually changes their mind on this or any other political battleground topic due to data and its proper handling. I haven't seen much evidence of this, but it's a fine and noble article of faith. I will continue to behave as though it were true.

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May 31Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

"and it seems almost as if CAP stole exactly half of it while ignoring the other half, when it put together its “Fact Sheet.”"

Noooooo.... They would never, ever, ever do that. *inserts pikachu shocked face*

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Jun 1Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

There's apparently a(nother?) semi-formal name for the firehose tactic: "Gish gallop". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Though I suppose it's more directly applicable to in-person debates, where response times are inherently more limited.

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I live in Illinois. We have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Especially Cook county(Chicago) no one ever addresses the ammount of violent gun crime there. It seems to get conveniently left out of the discussion by the people opposed to 2A. Legal or not I don’t ever go into Chicago without protection. I’d rather go to jail of fight a court battle than be dead. Period.

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Jun 2Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

I appreciate the focus on the pernicious effects of gun-free zones. I avoid those places as much as I can. Fortunately, I live in a place where the trespass law is the only way to enforce it.

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Jun 1Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Brandolini's law: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."

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May 31Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Keep fighting the good fight, Lord knows we need it and most people can't be bothered to do this work.

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May 31Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Ah, I do love a good fisking of a firehose of bullshittery.

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