It is a basic principle of psychological warfare and propaganda that the assignment of a name that sticks to somebody or something can make or break that person or entity.  A fictional example from the Game of Thrones series exemplifies this.  If you're a slave in Meereen, and somebody called the "Mother of Dragons" and "Breaker of Chains" is outside your masters' walls with an army, you'll probably pick up anything you can use as a weapon to join a slave revolt.  If we look at a real historical example, serfs who had previously been willing to do almost anything to avoid service in the Russian Army, including knocking out their front teeth so they could not bite open musket cartridges, were eager to follow Aleksandr V. Suvorov, also known as "The Russian Hannibal."  He took good care of his soldiers and tended to win lopsided victories with minimal losses to his own side.

Suppose instead that you're a German soldier during the Second World War, and the Allies have named your general, Fedor von Bock, "Der Sterber" ("Let's go get killed") because he said the greatest thing a German soldier could do is die for Germany.  You'd probably want to surrender at the earliest opportunity, especially if you also learned that General Patton had meanwhile told his soldiers that the idea of war is to make the enemy (i.e., you) die for his country.  When your general and the opposing general have the same agenda, you have a real problem.

"Tricky Dick" stuck similarly to Richard Nixon, but not enough to keep him from becoming president in 1968.  We now have "Krazy Kamala" Harris, and "President Houseplant" (courtesy of conservative talk show host Ben Shapiro) Biden.  I came up, meanwhile, with "Hamas-American Bund" to equate the entire anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement to Hitler's useful idiots of the late 1930s.

Call Them Firearm Quacks or Anti-Gun Quacks

Supporters of the Second Amendment have depicted their adversaries as "gun-grabbers," but swing voters who do not own guns, much less hoplophobes who would probably like all the guns to be grabbed, do not care about "our" Second Amendment rights.  Everybody, however, has nothing but contempt for medical quacks — fake doctors who take desperate patients' money and deliver worse than useless remedies in return. A quack is worse than a fraud, who merely steals money; the quack's remedies are harmful and divert the patient from life-saving medical treatment until it is too late.

"Dangerous quack" is not an overstatement.  The houseplant in chief has dispensed advice that could easily, if acted upon, turn you into either (1) a convicted felon or (2) a corpse.  "Joe Biden's Shotgun Advice Could Land Jill Biden in Jail" states that "[f]elony aggravated menacing, reckless endangering charges could result from shooting gun in air."  This is under the laws of Delaware, Biden is (presumably still) licensed to practice law.  Missouri attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to charges for merely displaying firearms, as opposed to actually firing them, to warn protesters off their property.

Biden's quackery is not limited, however, to recommending the unlawful and reckless discharge of firearms, a practice discouraged by all responsible Second Amendment–supporters and NRA members.  He also said, "Instead of standing there and teaching a cop, when there's an unarmed person coming at them with a knife or something, you shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart is a very different thing."

Welcome to reality, Joe.  Here is a video of a female police officer who empties her sidearm into the center of mass (not the leg) of an "unarmed" subject who attacks her with a knife and almost succeeds in killing her despite sustaining multiple hits.  He managed, in fact, to apparently reach her weapon and jam it momentarily, because the bodycam video shows her clearing it so she can continue to fire.  Had she followed the houseplant in chief's quack advice by shooting to wound, it would have probably been "end of watch" for her.

Here, meanwhile, is more quackery from Pennsylvania's attorney general, Josh Shapiro, who is probably going to be the Democratic nominee for governor this year.  "Our coalition of AGs is fighting to defend VT's right to ban large-capacity magazines.  These magazines have one, deadly purpose & that's to hold the most ammo to kill the most people.  There is no reason any civilian should have access to a large capacity magazine."  Civilians need high-capacity magazines for the same reason police officers need them, as shown by the experience of the officer who was almost killed by a knife-unarmed suspect despite emptying a full magazine defending herself from him.  A woman in Georgia, meanwhile, emptied a handgun against a home invader and got four or five hits for six shots.  He probably didn't kill her and her child only because he didn't know that her weapon was empty; he fled the house and was arrested later.  The bottom line is that firearm quacks like Biden and Shapiro are, if allowed to hold positions of responsibility, likely to get law-abiding people killed.

The answer to quacks like Biden and Shapiro is a nationally recognized expert like Massad Ayoob.  Here is his affidavit in Fyock vs. Sunnyvale.  "Limiting the law-abiding citizen to a magazine of ten rounds or less will clearly limit their ability to protect themselves from violent criminals in certain situations.  Such limits on magazine capacity are likely to impair the ability of citizens to engage in lawful self-defense in those crime incidents necessitating that the victim fire many rounds in order to stop the aggressive actions of offenders."

Biden: A Liar as Well as a Quack

Andrea Widburg's recent column shows further that Biden is not just a firearm quack, but also a liar.  Biden said gun manufacturers are "the only industry in America that is exempted from being sued, and I find it to be outrageous."  Gun manufacturers have no protection from lawsuits for defective products that, when handled responsibly for their intended purpose, cause death or injury.  They are however protected from junk lawsuits by unscrupulous lawyers who try to hold them accountable for crimes committed with their products.  I am sure the same unscrupulous lawyers, disgraced New York governor, and former HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo  (AKA "Covid Andy") is among them, would try to sue General Motors if a drunk driver ran somebody over with a Chevy if they could get away with it.

If, by the way, you are ever called for jury duty in a junk case against a gun manufacturer, you need to know only two things.  Did the gun manufacturer sell the gun to a licensed (FFL) dealer?  If so, the manufacturer is not liable.  Did the dealer perform the required background check on the buyer?  If so, the dealer is not liable, either.  Then you should award the defendants legal fees and punitive damages, and preferably at the expense of the unscrupulous lawyer who brought the case rather than the distraught client who made the mistake of trusting the lawyer in question.

Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way.  The author is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.

Image via Pixabay.