Finally, the Court’s ruling to extend the scope of the Second Amendment has
national implications. The gun lobby is using this decision to further its
real agenda, that they want anyone to have any gun, anywhere, at any time
regardless of the proven risk to police and the public. Their unstated motive
is to enhance the profits of the gun industry by encouraging individuals to
believe they need a multitude of guns and are seeking nothing less than the
complete dismantling of our nation’s gun laws for their own political and
financial gain. Lawmakers in state legislatures and in Congress must utilize
the Supreme Court’s decision to press for common sense gun laws for the safety
and security of the America people.
Thom Mannard
Executive Director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence
June 28, 2010
Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence Issues Statement On Supreme Court Ruling Over Chicago’s Handgun Ban
[He is just repeating the same lies anti-gun people have been attempting to use for decades. Here is a quick scan of the obvious lies from just this one paragraph:
- I have had many “behind the scenes” conversations with multiple people placed high in the power structure of “the gun lobby”. I read nearly all their media releases. I have never heard anyone in power within “the gun lobby” even hint they want “anyone to have any gun, anywhere, at any time”. Mannard is either lying or is delusional.
- If there is “proven risk to police and the public” then Mannard (or anyone) should be able to answer Just One Question. Just One Question has been posted for nearly six years now. Still there have not been any answers which Mannard is likely to tout (I do have a nomination for an answer that I must investigate sometime soon–if I can just find the email they sent).
- The “gun lobby” that represents the gun industry and is concerned with their profits is the NSSF. They had an exceedingly small role in the Heller and McDonald decisions. The NRA (with, at best, minor roles) and SAF were the gun lobby organizations that won those decisions. The NRA and SAF are grassroots organizations that represent individuals, not the manufacturer and profits of “the gun industry”. Even five minutes of research would have clearly revealed these facts. That is, if Mannard had been concerned with facts.
- Mannard has motive for “the complete dismantling of our nation’s gun laws” exactly backward. If the NRA and SAF were to be totally successful, by Mannard’s criteria, then they would have destroyed their “industry”. And with it any further political and financial gain. In fact some gun rights activists accuse the NRA of not wanting to win because it would destroy their positions of power and money.
-Joe]
I am always amused by the “powerful gun industry lobby”. I used to work at a mid-sized GM plant with a single production line producing minor variations of the same basic vehicle. When I started, this plant had an output greater than the combined value of the US gun industry.
(That plant was closed a year and a half ago.)
“Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?”
Shooting of armed home-invaders, executing violent criminals, locking up violent criminals, psychiatric lock up, not letting 4 year olds play with sharp knives or pots of boiling water. The NRA publishes “the armed citizen” monthly; it chronicles examples of average people making themselves safer by restricting the ability of criminals to exert their will via handheld weapons.
I suspect you have definitions of “average person”, “safer” and “restricting access” that don’t actually appear in your question.
Dusty,
I found your email from last month and responded to it but the email bounced.
Here is the important part of your email and my response:
—-
Sorry for the long delay. Your comment got lost…
The first two are not “restricting access to handheld weapons” as much as they are restricting violent criminal from access to “the average person”.
The third is probably valid in the sense that it meets my criteria as stated. But it sidesteps the intent of the question because in that case it is a matter of the denying weapons to enemy combatants while in a state of war. In this case it would also make people safer if the enemy combatants were denied communication and mobility. The problem being that the enemy combatants are not in uniform and cannot be easily identified. Hence the denial of weapons is the least objectionable of the numerous rights available for infringing to increase safety of the average person.
I would like to believe that being in a state of war is not the normal condition and should not be used as basis for determining public policy in general. After all, in the context of the discussion one’s own government is not a legitimate government if it considers it in a state of war against the people as a whole.
—-
My response to your lastest candidates for answers (“armed home-invaders, executing violent criminals, locking up violent criminals, psychiatric lock up,”) falls into the same “bucket” as the “restricting violent criminal from access” answer above.
The restricting access to dangerous objects by four year olds is valid but sidesteps the context in which the question was asked–unless you are suggesting the general population of a nation should be treated in a similar manner to a four year-old child.
“manufactures” describes what a gun *manufacturer* does. “Ruger manufactures the Blackhawk revolver.” “Rock River is an AR-15 manufacturer.”
jmck,
Fixed.
Thanks.
I know you love quotes so you might find this interesting. I stole this from another website but I thought it was interesting too.
Violent Rhetoric from the Tea Party Movement?*
1. “Patriots in this room and patriots across this country are rising up. And we have a message for liberals: We’re planting the flag on common ground, and if you try to take our freedoms, we will fight back!”
2. “If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”
3. “You will have to shoot me in the forehead before I let somebody into my house to tell me how to raise my children; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and be silent.”
4. “When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire . . . or preserve his freedom.”|
5. “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”
6. “How can you thank a man for giving you what’s already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?”
7. “Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.”
8. “ We don’t hate anybody because of their color. We hate oppression!”
9. “History is people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.”
10. “It doesn’t mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time, I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don’t call it violence when it’s self-defense. I call it intelligence.”
___________
*Nope, not at all. Some of the quotes come from then-Black Panther leader Bobby Seale or from Malcolm X when he was associated with the Nation of Islam. Some are from Tea Party leaders.
Thanks for taking the time to reply!
The Just One Question is a powerful and thought-provoking tool, but it doesn’t close the deal as worded. It would be a better educational tool if it didn’t need context; as it is, a anti-rights person can find a stock answer and dismiss it. It only preaches to the choir.
To me it is obvious that we don’t need to restrict adults to protect society – my definition of adult is someone responsible. A responsible person isn’t a threat. Likewise, the immature/evil/crazy/enemies are a risk with whatever tools they have, and the focus on firearms is merely ‘not letting an opportunity go to waste.’
Most conservatives believe that the best government policy for making the average person safer is by restricting violent actors from access from tools and from average people. To me, that seems like an obvious and direct answer to your question. It is moving the goalposts to switch from the question as worded to ‘determining public policy in general … legitimate government’ without refining the question.
A few moments of MSNBC indicates most people who favor restricting the rights of regular citizens have different reasoning. Liberal sites have ancedotes about a victim who didn’t fight back and survived, contrasted against somebody who died trying to fight back. In the whole of human history, it’s likely that at least 2 rape victims actually were safer (in the sense that they weren’t killed, or were raped less) because they had been prevented by the state from having weapons. Likewise, there must be a dozen people who would have been killed during a robbery that weren’t killed – that is the type of logic Baltimore uses to justify their gun restrictions. Liberals point to no-knock wrong-address police raids where homeowners have been shot because they pulled a gun to defend themselves as a reason to deny guns in the home to citydwellers; I must concede that a person who would have been shot to death if he had had a gun, but didn’t have a gun because he lived in DC/NYC/Chicago, was technically and temporarily made safer by that restriction.
For about 200 years of America’s history, Democrats denied slaves access to weapons. Slavery and disarming slaves was a horrible evil; it undeniably had the effect of making the white people (slave owner and non-slave owner alike) in the South safer. This falls into the same bin as prisoners and people willing to go to war.
The Just One Question would be stronger if it accounted for both the few legitimate restrictions on gun possession and also the transient helpless safety of being a good victim.
I’ve been trying to find a link but can’t: pre-Heller, a Maryland politician was against allowing guns into DC, because it would encourage criminals to spread out into Maryland looking for easier prey. If you don’t know, Maryland allows guns in the home but doesn’t allow regular people to carry pistols outside the home. The jist was that DC, Virginia and Maryland criminals were attracted to the gun-free DC area. Undeniably this has some truth to it: disarming one pool of people makes people who are, or might be, armed safer (in a micro-societal sense if not in a macro-cultural sense).
I’ve been a director of Washington’s largest gun show promoter (non profit Washington Arms Collectors) as well as their webmaster and 2nd in charge of their education committee that teaches ~300 people a year to be safer with firearms. For 2003 I was director of communications for Second Amendment Foundation. The idea that -anyone- wants “anyone to have any gun, anywhere, at any time” is news to me, I think “delusional” is to kind a description (or perhaps to cruel to people who actually suffer delusion…). But then, you knew that 😉 -Boyd http://washingtonarmscollectors.org http://saf.org
Ubu, sometimes a busted clock is right once in a while.
And not all insurrectionists think alike, either.
For the record, I do not support the Tea Party in any manner whatsoever, and I will gladly not mind being called “heartless” by people of your worthless ilk.