"I'm always right"

Robyn Ringler is an upstate New York gun control advocate who operates a blog at the Albany Times-Union. (Why someone who isn't a reporter for them has a blog at their newspaper--well, let's just file that under "newspaper shows its lack of political bias," shall we?)

For a long time, she has allowed people to comment about her gun control claims--and while some of the comments were rude and nasty, some have been simply disagreeing with Ms. Ringler. For example, after she made a pretty bizarre claim about how rarely guns are used in self-defense, I commented with a link to the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog. I wasn't rude or insulting--just pointed out that there was evidence that it was actually pretty common. She deleted my comment, as she did for many who posted evidence that contradicted her claims.

Now, she has a right to do that--it's her blog. She also has a right to have no comments at all. You really do need to police comments on your blog, because there will be people that will post comments that aren't just nasty, but criminal in nature. This is part of why I don't allow comments on my blog--it's a lot of work to keep your eye on what's going on there. It does say a lot for Ringler's position that she doesn't allow thoughtful, evidence-based opposing ideas there.

Still, her announcement that she was going to stop allowing comments doesn't particularly upset or surprise me--this is a common response of gun control advocates, who soon discover that we knuckle-dragging Neanderthals don't just outnumber them, but we're smarter than they are--way smarter. What does amuse me is how she chose to announce it.

I do not accept comments because I don't have time and I'm always right!

Below is a screen shot that one of my co-bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog took.



Most people (other than lawyers and lobbyists, who get paid to do this), pretty obviously, don't continually defend positions that they think are wrong. But most people recognize that they make mistakes. (I made several yesterday, relating to using regular expressions in sed scripts to remove certain complex strings.) But "I'm always right"? My, that's an arrogant position.