Colion Noir - Strange name, daft hat; but watch this space!

Moray Outfitting

Well-Known Member
Just come across this guy on Youtube.

Usual caveat - he's talking an American perspective and has that US of A outlook that differs greatly from the UK. So not claim I agree 100%. Look beyond the minutae of all that - to the broad stroke of what he says and the way he says it.

People are going to hear a lot more from this man.



 
It does go to show doesn't it - I'll confess I was expecting some kind of gangsta/ boyz from da hood rap. He's studying for the US Bar - ie Lawyer.

Not all his videos ring my bell, but there are some very well presented and constructed points made in a number of them. Just look at the hit rates they are getting - a refreshing antidote to the plethora of ( take your pick ) Redneck/whack 'em/ hog blasting/ Good 'ole boys/ big explosion/cold dead hands/ new world order type vids.
 
I've watched a few of his other videos and read about reactions to him in the States. Predictably, he has polarised opinion and drawn criticism from certain quarters. I think he is quite entertaining. At least he has a sense of humour. He is viewed as a departure from your typcal NRA member and is being utilised as part of a charm offensive to reach out to a younger, more racially diverse demographic.

He is undeniably articulate and well-educated. It's a pleasant surprise when someone's appearance and demeanour does not coincide with your preconceptions.
 
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O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady.
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need—
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need.
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age, wretched in both.
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely. Touch me with noble anger.
And let not women’s weapons, water drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags

I think this kind of thing has been said before!
 
This is why I love the SD. It's not often you read King Lear quotes in relation to an African-American proponent of gun rights.
 
I've thought about this a lot recently - more and more, I become convinced that guns should be stripped of all the romantic nonsense that seems to go with them. His point that they are 'fun toys' - like cameras etc - is spot on. But they are dangerous toys, more like SCUBA gear or powerboats, with a very high capacity to harm the user or those around them if not treated with care and respect, and if the user doesn't receive adequate training first.

This is the point he skirts around: my decision to blow money on expensive camera lenses that I don't need really has no consequences for you. My decision to buy a gun has potential consequences for you - and you have a right to demand some kind of garuntee that you're safe from me. This is what society is doing when it tries to restrict gun ownership: people are concerned for their own safety (in some cases, and in some places with very good reason), and are doing what is natural, and what is their right to do so when this is the case.

The solution, I think, is to make society feel safer: they are in the majority, and unless they feel safe in the presence of guns, guns will be taken away. There is no point in shouting that this is unfair, or accusing non-gun owners as being ignorant or irrationally phobic (in fact, this may make things worse). It is a fact: if the majority feel unsafe, rightly or wrongly, they will do whatever they think will make them safer.

So as I see it, there are two outcomes in the long run: (1) guns slowly and surely get taken away, until there is no legal private ownership; or (2) gun owners find ways to convince people that they are safe, so the urge to take them away declines or (hopefully) goes away.

The latter is clearly the one we'd prefer. What that means, I think, is that we need to become very proactive with regard to training and policing ourselves. We need to make it clear that anyone wanting to own a gun will be taught how to use it and to store it safely, and will be subject to extremely stringent background checks before getting a gun, and close monitoring after getting it. We need to make it it as unlikely as possible that a legal gun owner will ever kill someone.

To really stir things, I think that granting the 'right' to gun ownership is a mistake - it should be a privalege, granted when you can demonstrate that you are not a threat, and subject to removal should you break the rules. Exactly like the ability to drive a car...
 
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This is the point he skirts around: my decision to blow money on expensive camera lenses that I don't need really has no consequences for you. My decision to buy a gun has potential consequences for you - and you have a right to demand some kind of garuntee that you're safe from me. This is what society is doing when it tries to restrict gun ownership: people are concerned for their own safety (in some cases, and in some places with very good reason), and are doing what is natural, and what is their right to do so when this is the case.
It does if you use it to invade my privacy and make my life a living hell. That is the gun debate - it isn't the guns....
 
Mungo,

you can make legal gun owners better informed, and you can try and make the public better informed -if the mass media will let you (they have a very long track record of prefering lurid horror stories to tales of people being sensible, however)- but you can't evade the fact that the only people affected by legal controls are the law-abiding. In the USA violent crime has fallen as rates of gun ownership have risen. Coincidence? Possibly, but both sound like a good thing to me.

In any case, we know that media's love of campaigning for bans, and politicians' zeal for enacting new laws, is never matched by the enthusiasm of either for for raising taxes to fund their enforcement, so we end up in the situation we are in now, where the licensing arrangements are by-and-large a shambles, and law abiding shooters have a sad history of paying for the resulting failures. If licensed shooters are really a potential threat to public safety, and prevention is infinitely preferable to mopping up a tragic bloody mess, presumably CCs should allocate more resources to screening and monitoring us and less to armed response units?

Getting back to Mr. CN, his argument that a responsible armed citizenry is the best defence against street crime, home invasion and spree killers is hard to fault given that in a country -ours- with a far tighter set of legal restrictions still manages to produce such loathsome individuals with a proportionate degree of frequency. Legislation doesn't stop them, but -thanks to advocates like Mr. CN- the probability they'll be stopped by a member of the public before they can even get started is beginning to be recognised as a uniquely effective deterrent as well as a direct and immediate form of defence.

So, yes, let's train people, not just to be safe hunters, but also to use firearms safely and responsibly for defensive purposes -and if it's argued that no sufficient threat exists in this country, then there's no sufficient argument for banning firearms of whatever type or for any legitimate purpose either.
 
For all of my stance on firearms legislation in the UK ( posts ad nauseum over several years! ), my personal belief is that the defensive role has dropped so far from the public conscious and is sufficiently removed from sporting use so as to currently be a substantial negative to 'our' debate.

As I noted in my OP - the US situation has significant differences that do not translate to here.

I do think its a combination - 1. public opinion would be alienated and 2. Whilst the crime that really matters is what is happening to you and that should be under played - but overall the UK crime status is much lower and much less violent than the Daily Mail would have you believe.

There is a huge amount to be done in terms of fighting the ongoing threats and just as urgently changing the agenda to an entirely different footing. And collectively we aren't really up to fighting either of those to more than the slightest degree ( here and now ).

As an aside - watch Colion's piece on Piers Morgan - I love the end line; who says Americans are humourless!
 
In the USA violent crime has fallen as rates of gun ownership have risen. Coincidence? Possibly, but both sound like a good thing to me.

It is a coincidence - violent crime rates have plummeted across all developed countries. The rate of decline has actually been substantially slower in the US.

Getting back to Mr. CN, his argument that a responsible armed citizenry is the best defence against street crime, home invasion and spree killers is hard to fault given that in a country -ours- with a far tighter set of legal restrictions still manages to produce such loathsome individuals with a proportionate degree of frequency.

I don't think that's true, and would be very curious to see the data that says this. We've had 3 mass killings in the last 35 years (Hungerford, Dunblane and Cumbria). Even correcting for the difference in population size, I suspect this is very substantially lower than the US. As for straightforward gun crime, we have among the lowest rates in the world, with the US rate per capita near the very top (depending on which set of figures you look at, the difference is anything between 10 and 100 times greater than the UK).

But there is a much more fundamental point: we should regard it as a complete failure and an absolute tragedy were society to become so unsafe that the only solution is for individual citizens to have to arm themselves for protection at all times. Such a situation represents a regression back to a very primitive state - it's what happens when law and order break down completely. It is not a triumph of individual freedom: it is a catastrophic failure, and reveals that something has gone very badly wrong. Take the debate about guns in schools in the US: what could possibly be more tragic than sensible people advocating that their children require armed protection in a place of learning?

The only places where people should be advocating gun ownership for personal protection should be those that are utterly lawless: places like Somalia or DRC.

Legislation doesn't stop them, but -thanks to advocates like Mr. CN- the probability they'll be stopped by a member of the public before they can even get started is beginning to be recognised as a uniquely effective deterrent as well as a direct and immediate form of defence.

Can you show any clear empirical evidence that increased gun ownership actually does act as a 'uniquely effective deterrant'? I would really, genuinely like to see it.
 
It is a coincidence - violent crime rates have plummeted across all developed countries. The rate of decline has actually been substantially slower in the US.



I don't think that's true, and would be very curious to see the data that says this. We've had 3 mass killings in the last 35 years (Hungerford, Dunblane and Cumbria). Even correcting for the difference in population size, I suspect this is very substantially lower than the US. As for straightforward gun crime, we have among the lowest rates in the world, with the US rate per capita near the very top (depending on which set of figures you look at, the difference is anything between 10 and 100 times greater than the UK).

But there is a much more fundamental point: we should regard it as a complete failure and an absolute tragedy were society to become so unsafe that the only solution is for individual citizens to have to arm themselves for protection at all times. Such a situation represents a regression back to a very primitive state - it's what happens when law and order break down completely. It is not a triumph of individual freedom: it is a catastrophic failure, and reveals that something has gone very badly wrong. Take the debate about guns in schools in the US: what could possibly be more tragic than sensible people advocating that their children require armed protection in a place of learning?

The only places where people should be advocating gun ownership for personal protection should be those that are utterly lawless: places like Somalia or DRC.



Can you show any clear empirical evidence that increased gun ownership actually does act as a 'uniquely effective deterrant'? I would really, genuinely like to see it.


Interesting post Mungo, but it is one of those issues that is very hard because when you begin comparing America with Britain (or pretty much any other developed country) you run into this societal difference that I think in all honesty is a larger issue than what tools people are using to Harm each other, there are a few analysis out there that compare gun homicides between countries adjusted for population density and they show as one would expect North america's rate is exceptionally high, however in the same papers they also state if you exclude inner city street violence for all countries being compared the rates are more or less comparable between all developed nations, so I would maintain the US's immediate problem is a highly developed inner city criminal culture rather than a specific national "gun culture".

a bit of proper discussion would probably lead the Americans down the same road as us, as in legislation to control guns, what they would have as good reason etc. would be up to them I'm sure they could keep self defense as good reason and the 2nd amendment wouldn't be infringed, the issue becomes murky when the powers that be pass legislation as a result of a knee jerk reaction to an incident, case and point this nations pistol ban.
 
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