Quote of the day—Amitai Etzioni

Given that even micro gun control measures will be effectively blocked by the NRA and its allies, and that promoting mini measures as potentially effective is misleading, progressives may as well go for the big enchilada: Call for domestic disarmament.

One may say that the Supreme Court, after 250 years in which the Second Amendment was read as allowing only a well-regulated militia to have guns, recently reinterpreted it to mean that there is an individualized right to own guns. This suggests that we may have to get to domestic disarmament through the back door.

Make the gun manufacturers liable for harm done with their products. Ban the sale of ammunition. And vote for a president that will add to the Supreme Court those who will read the Second Amendment as written.

Above all, domestic disarmament is a true, compelling vision which cannot be said about the small gun control measures that are currently promoted by some of the most enlightened people among us.

Amitai Etzioni
December 7, 2015
Needed: Domestic Disarmament, Not ‘Gun Control’
[It’s amusing that someone so ignorant and naïve talks about knowing who is “enlightened”.

All nine SCOTUS justices agreed the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right. He thinks its plausible to replace five or more of them with people that will reverse that and ignore all the evidence going back hundreds of years? And then once you have a court that will allow such laws to stand does he can get the votes in congress?

And does he think making gun manufactures liable is going to pass muster in congress or the courts? We currently have a law specifically protecting them from liability.

And banning the sale of ammunition? That’s not only legally problematic but practically impossible. Recreational drugs are impossible to keep out of the hands of teenagers. Ammunition will be no different.

The most amusing is the part where he says “micro guns control measures will be effectively blocked” so they “may as well go for the big enchilada”? That’s like saying, “We can’t get away with robbing the local mini-mart so we might as well go for Fort Knox.

These people are apparently incapable of rational thought!

The one thing he has right is that he has a “compelling vision”. It’s compelling evidence that he is delusional and well as bordering on criminal behavior.

And if you remember anything from this it is that you should never let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

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18 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Amitai Etzioni

  1. “The one thing he has right is that he has a ‘compelling vision.'”

    Indeed. His vision involves compelling people, at the point of a government gun, to act in accordance with his whims.

  2. Also it’s not “backdoor” disarmament if you publish your idea on a page that deliberately tries to get wide readership.
    It’s funny it keeps being pointed out to these folks that their screaming for gun grabbing is proving us gun nuts totally correct in thinking they wanted to ban guns.

    Meanwhile some other gun control folks are trying to tell their cohorts to stop this.
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/12/president_obama_s_bad_ideas_for_fighting_gun_violence_assault_weapons_and.html

    Look past the title of this Slate bit, the first part is talking about how bad the optics are for Obama’s gun control demands, the end is a frank and blatant plea for gun controllers to stop poisoning their own well on stuff that they can’t get right now

    Meanwhile the comments… well let’s just say they ignore the writer’s advice.
    Remember last year when there were all those “think pieces” about how the Gun Control movement had “smartened up” and learned that gun bans just spooked Americans and thus they were going ot have a laser-focus on background checks and other items to build up momentum.

    Well… they’re still doing that, but seems it’s not/good/ enough for ’em

  3. I’d love to see this dimwit trying to enter my house through the backdoor. He’d get to experience gun control and disarmament first hand.

  4. Cert was denied in the Supreme Court for the IL assault weapons ban and magazine limit law. There is no need to ban all guns; the Supremes just gave states and the Feds the ability to do so piecemeal, one category at a time.

    I, for one, look forward to using my then-to-be-legal smoothbore musket and lead balls made from old car batteries, with home made black powder, to secure a more modern firearm from the opposition in any future insurrection.

    • Before we get to that point, it’s time to impeach some judges and justices for perjury.

  5. “…Second Amendment was read as allowing only a well-regulated militia to have guns…”

    I love this logic failure. The Bill of Rights was passed to specifically limit and prohibit the government from doing certain things and to affirm that they are the designated individual rights at a minimum, and others retained by the States.

    The idea that the Second Amendment was there to authorize the government to have “well regulated” militias for the defense of the homeland is silly given that the Constitution specifies the ability to raise armies. This person simply needs to learn how to read carefully. The fixation on “militias” and “well regulated” simply shows they cannot comprehend slightly complex sentence structures. Finally, the copious writings of the Founding Fathers leaves absolutely no doubt for the rationale for the Second Amendment. If any of the SCOTUS had not affirmed the individual right of citizens to be armed in light of the historical documents, I would have advocated for hanging them from a lamp post.

    • This will serve as an explanation for what’s going on here:

      “In nothing did the founders of this country so demonstrate their essential naivete than in attempting to constrain government from all its favorite abuses, and entrusting the enforcement of those protections to judges; that is to say, men who had been lawyers; that is to say, men professionally trained in finding plausible excuses for dishonest and dishonorable acts.” — H. L. Mencken

    • The rules of statutory construction require that in the event of ambiguity (and thanks to over a century of intentional confusion, we have that with the words “Militia” and “Regulated”), writings known as “Legislative Intent” are to be used. Everything the Founding Fathers wrote about those words and the Second Amendment weigh against the anti-liberty Leftists’ arguments.
      Only because Leftists believe in the effectiveness of the logical fallacy, Argumentum Ad Nauseum (familiar to parents of small children), and never give up repeating the same failed argument until the other side gives up.

  6. “Rational thought” from Leftists?
    The closest they’ve ever gotten to rational thought was when the short bus they were riding in while licking the windows passed Independence Hall.

  7. p.s. i hate to interject a scholarly tone into this brawl, but for those of you who would understand what the 2nd amendment and the rest of the bill of rights actually mean, you should take recourse to “the federalist papers,” written collectively under the pen name of “publius” by hamilton, madison and jay during the formative stages of our present government. the united states code annotated lists “the federalist papers” as part of the organic texts of our government, right along with the declaration of independence and the constitution of the united states. the federalist papers are recognized as being authoritative on matters dealing with the institutions of government, and the purpose behind them in a “political science” sense.

    at the time of the ratification of the constitution various groups issued pamphlets and broadsides to the public, arguing political theory and institutional theory about what government should be. the primary disagreements were best advanced by the federalists (to include jay, hamilton & madison), and the anti-federalists. one group would advance an argument in a broadside, to be answered by the other group, and the other group would counter with a rejoinder. (much like court pleadings in those days.)

    the federalists, who backed the constitution, won. and, their views on our government hold considerable sway. madison ended up being a president of the united states. jay was the first chief justice of the united states. (that is the proper title, not chief justice of the supreme court.) hamilton was a high government official, and instrumental in the formation of the national banking system. as a matter of fact, many, to include me, hold their views as dispositive.

    the views of jay, hamilton and madison on gun ownership, possession and use were adopted by such legal authority and commentators on the law, such as chief justice storey, who wrote law texts & commentary after serving in office. in short, their view was that guns were for the use of the people in blocking and answering political tyranny, and the unlawful and overreaching grasp of power by political factions, whether minority or majority in nature. if need be, firearms, firearm ownership, and the use of firearms in the hands of people who would protect their right and privilege were considered the bulwark of liberty and right.

    leftists are in the main ignorant of this, or want to ignore it.

    the general populace is just plain ignorant, because they have gotten lazy and careless and idle in protecting their liberty.

    but, if you want to learn, the knowledge is there.

    john jay
    whitman college, 1970, b.a. in political science
    university of oregon school of law, 1977, doctor of jurisprudence

    • I first read the Federalist Papers when I was preparing for naturalization back in 1987, and have read them cover to cover several times since.
      The current high esteem applied to these documents is interesting considering their original purpose: they were propaganda pieces aimed at arguing in favor of ratification (specifically, ratification in NY) and in favor of a more powerful central government. It is instructive to read the various “the proposed constitution will do xyz” claims, and contrast them to the reality that has emerged in the past 100 years or so. The claims of limited government and limited federal powers have not held up well in practice at all.
      I sometimes wonder if the authors were honestly asserting what they believed to be true, or were distorting the truth for the sake of the story they intended to sell. Some items suggest the latter.
      One example is Hamilton’s insistence on the limitations of federal power in the Papers, quite contrary to the rest of his career in general, and his proposal in the Constitutional Convention in particular. (Read it some time, it’s in Madison’s notes of the convention, which is also very much worth reading. Hamilton’s proposal there looks a lot more like what we actually ended up with than the things he and his partners predicted in the Federalist Papers.)
      Another example is Madison’s bizarre claim that Article 1 Section 8 limits the power of taxation. See Federalist #41, where he rests his argument on the meaning of a particular semicolon, conveniently ignoring all the other semicolons in that section.
      Finally, I highly recommend “Ratification” by Pauline Maier. It describes the history of the ratification of the Constitution. The machine politics and political logrolling involved in getting it pushed through are quite mind boggling.

  8. Etzioni is the guru of the communtarian movement. They claim to be a new philosophy in politics. In reality, it is just the same old leftist nonsense in new clothes. This shows here. It is not clear how many of them there actually are but should you encounter one remember this article.

    • It’s disturbing to see such a piece from a person who, judging by his name, is likely to be jewish. It serves to prove Robert Avrech’s observation that many jews are socialist first, and jewish a far second if at all.

      • Paul:

        From the name, he is most likely Israeli. (Which just goes to show, as the old joke goes, that Israelis are just like everybody else, only more so. Yes, there are stupid Israelis. Yes, there are pacifist Israelis. And so on.)

        Not all Jews (or Israelis) are like that, by any means. Here’s a counterexample:

        https://davidhuntpe.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/jewish-and-in-the-tea-party/

        Go ahead, send the guy $18… and, the next time one of your Jewish friends invites you to his son’s bar mitzvah, you’ll have something to wear that will make heads explode. Enjoy!

        Best wishes,
        Daniel
        formerly IDF MP (unit 391)

        • Very nice! I’ll have to consider that.
          I like pointing people to Robert Avrech’s brilliant essay “Jew without a gun”. And the novel “the Mitzvah” by Zelman and Smith.

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