If you cite a quote, people will say "he didn't really say that". The quote about there being "a gun behind every blade of grass" is a prime example.
If you use a statistic, people will say "your statistic is wrong". The oft-referenced number of 20,000 anti-gun laws being an example.
It apparently doesn't matter if the information being transferred in the quote is accurate- what matters to quibblers is whether the person it is attributed to actually said it. It's why I don't really like using quotes. I much prefer to just speak for myself, and anyone who wants to quote me can do so. My words, and yours, hold just as much import as anyone else's words as long as we speak of things we know.
And, it apparently doesn't matter that even one anti-gun "law" is too many- they want to quibble over whether the number you quoted is accurate, and whether the same "law" that applies to non-overlapping territories count as two or one. It doesn't matter. One anti-gun "law" will kill people. One is wrong. Whether the "true number" is 20,000 or "only" 300 (as one person tried to argue), any is too many.
If the best you can do for your anti-liberty bigotry is to worry about who first said which accurate thing, or to try to split hairs over just how much evil is OK, then your position is empty. You have no ethical high-ground to defend.
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