Quote of the day—Andrew Rosenthal

I want to be clear: the New York Times editorial board does not oppose gun ownership. We believe the Second Amendment confers a communal right on Americans to own guns – not an individual one. But that’s actually a smaller point than you might think. All we really want are sensible restrictions based on public safety and common sense. I wrote about our position in April, 2009 on our website. You can read it there, but I’ll summarize it here.

Go ahead, buy a gun. Use it to hunt, for target practice, in a collection, or in case you need to defend your home. Just register it and submit to a background check. If you live in a city, then your political leaders have the right to restrict ownership of handguns. In cities, they tend to be used to kill people.

Andrew Rosenthal
November 8, 2011
The Gun Lobby and Military Suicides
[This is so full fail that I could write thousands of words about it. But I don’t have the time and the people in the comments did a pretty fair job and raking him over the coals.

I’ll just give an overview.

Since all nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices disagree with the individual right issue what Rosenthal and the NYT editorial board thinks only has political implications and very few legal implications.

The very words he uses demonstrates he is essentially living in a different universe. We don’t have “political leaders”. We have public servants. Our servants do not have “rights” to regulate anything. They have delegated powers given to them by the people via the U.S., and state constitutions. When our servants start demanding we give up firearms and beg permission from them to own what is a specific enumerated right it is quite clear to me they have either forgotten they are servants or that they intend to change the relationship.

Yes. Handguns are sometimes used to kill people. Sometimes deadly force needs to be legally exercised and sometimes people get killed. Get over it.—Joe]

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10 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Andrew Rosenthal

  1. I think your biggest problem with Rosenthal is he’s not extreme enough for you. He doesn’t want to ban guns. He just wants to tighten up the requirements in order to screen out some of the bad apples among you.

    But since that’s such a reasonable request, what you guys usually do is claim that he’s lying and really his goal is complete disarmament of all civilians and he wants to begin with registration.

    You guys are bogus. You’re the ones responsible for not only the kooks among you who flip out but also the hard-core criminals who can so easily get their hands on guns. The reason you’re responsible is because you resist reasonable suggestions like Rosenthal’s.

  2. Umm, actually, mike, he and all his ilk DO want to ban all guns(well except for the ones carried by their private security guards or the po-po’s protecting each of them). The fact that you continue to carry their water toward this effort makes you one of them.
    The real problem here is that none of these fools knows where the trip wire is. They just keeping tromping through the woods in search of a final solution. I would suggest they return their caves, acquire a copy of “Unintended Consequences”, read it, and then consider the ramifications, especially in view of the fact that the book was written over 15 years ago.

  3. @mikeb302000,

    My problem with Rosenthal is that he thinks his opinion trumps the U.S. Supreme Court in matters of constitutional law.

  4. What does a “communal right” mean, exactly? Does it mean I have to assemble with others before exercising such a right?
    Does it mean I cannot exercise the right as an individual? Does it mean I have to have permission from some communal, i.e., government, authority before exercising the right? A “Yes” answer to any of those questions pretty much means it is not a right, but a privilege, which can be revoked at the whim of the authorities.

    Eff that.

  5. The idjit troll is back. He must not be getting enough hits, and needs to do some drive-by driveling to boost his stats.

  6. I want to be clear: the NRA board of directors does not oppose printing press ownership. We believe the First Amendment confers a communal right on Americans to own printing presses – not an individual one. But that’s actually a smaller point than you might think. All we really want are sensible restrictions based on public safety and common sense.

    To be clear: This is not actually the position of the NRA. But they were the only people I could think of off the top of my head in roughly a parallel position to the NYT editorial board.

    Also: Shut up, Mike.

  7. It’s always about pretexts, isn’t it? The phoney pretext that veterans use guns to off themselves means nothing. It also means nothing that guns are used in non-military suicides. Those failing Koch’s Level Five insanity test will simply find another modality to end their lives. If we were to apply this sort of filter to general life, it would mean banning existence itself.

    There’s no reason not to use the Scientific Method on “reasonable restrictions”. A theory pops up. Fine, study it. If you’ve done your homework, several ways to address the problem usually come into view, not just the “one” solution of banning guns. Since the Supreme Court has said that the 2A confers an individual right, that much is not in question anymore, unless we get a new Constitution which lacks a Second Amendment.

    So, disarmament theory in hand, you establish a control group and run your experiment. There are many such Control Groups available. Chicago and New York come to mind. Then you will see that the control group shows that mayhem, murder and 12-guage, self-inflicted craniectomies are NOT affected.

    Bingo! That theory which says that we must ban guns for our safety just bit the dust, because it’s solution modality has been shown not to work OR be repeatable.

    Next Question, Mr. Troll

  8. Actually, the Constitution does not “confer” (give) ANY rights. It enumerates (lists) some of our rights. This is an important distinction because these rights existed prior to the Constitution.

  9. MikeB, we already know your endgame really IS to ban all guns, shall we remind you of your past, or what?

    Don’t try to pull that “reasonable restriction” crap on us after what we’ve seen from you.

    http://www.wallsofthecity.net/2011/07/quote-of-the-day-mikeb302000.html

    “All right, I was exaggerating. If you guys suddenly cooperated with the common sense gun control laws that we propose and we saw a tremendous decrease in gun violence, we would naturally want stricter laws in order to lower even more the remaining gun violence. Eventually, I and most of the others would conclude that no guns at all in civilian hands is the best way to go.”

  10. Like mikeb302000, Rosenthal lies about his intentions, lies about the history and meaning of the Second Amendment, lies about the amount and character of current gun control laws and lies about their effectiveness.

    That’s our problem with both.

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