Quote of the day—Bret Stephens

I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.

From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder.

Bret Stephens
October 5, 2017
Repeal the Second Amendment
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

Even if the Second Amendment were to be repealed, the Supreme Court has already said:

This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed…

So, the right would still exist even if Stephens could accomplish his desire. And as the repeal date approached you can be sure the preparation for what was to follow would make the previous world’s greatest gun salesmen record look pathetic.

And then Stephens would discover the, probably only, circumstances for which more guns means more murder as some foolish government types attempted to forcibly take those guns from their owners.—Joe]

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21 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Bret Stephens

  1. Could he at least do the minimum amount of research on the topic to not look so foolishly ignorant? More guns = less crime.

    Is it too much to ask that advocates of destroying a part of the Bill of Rights, know a tiny bit about the facts related to their proposal.

    Apparently not. I’m overly demanding and optimistic I guess.

    • He doesn’t want to hear it. The liberal meme is that John Lott’s research is phony, and that nobody needs a gun. Ever.

      I’ve had some luck with converting various flavors of minorities (blacks, LGBT, women) to the self-defense side simply by pointing out ‘if you’re afraid, the Second Amendment is for you too. And I won’t stop you. Hell, I’ll /help/ you, if you want it.’

      But people like Bret? Eh. Lost cause. He’ll be chanting the gun control mantra even as Generic Thug #546 is sinking a knife into his guts prior to stealing his wallet.

      • “The liberal meme is that John Lott’s research is phony, and that nobody needs a gun. Ever.”

        Except their bodyguards.

        • Well, yeah. After all, they’re IMPORTANT! You can’t expect them to be at risk like the commoners!

          /sarc, obviously

  2. Crap for brains.
    “More guns means more murder.” Just because he says so.

    More and more, my response to these jagoffs is two-tiered, one delivered to the genius, and the other delivered to whomever is standing nearby: “I don’t give a sh*t what you think.” Followed up with “F*ck that guy.”

  3. “And then Stephens would discover the, probably only, circumstances for which more guns means more murder as some foolish government types attempted to forcibly take those guns from their owners”

    Stephens would probably also discover that other activities, like the award of what some call the Julius Streicher Prize, would come his way for his propaganda efforts.

    • Talking like Mike Vanderboegh there, Miles.

      Keep that up, people might start to buy you drinks 🙂

      • While part of that is MV, most comes from Joe’s plan for new Nuremberg trials.

  4. He’s the leftist wacko that was dumped by the WSJ, and then ended up on the wrong side of some PC firestorm when he started “writing” for the NYT.

  5. I held my nose and read the article, in which Stephens listed a litany of reasons for why the gun control movement is failing – based on bad assumptions, bad ideas, and bad legislation. Actually presented a fairly factual exposition.

    At which point he goes off the rails, by proclaiming the only way to fix the gun violence situation is to repeal the 2A. Huh? The only thing that would do is make it easier to enact and enforce the very same laws that he just said don’t work! Repeal of 2A would not magically do anything – even if it was to magically disappear, it would take decades for us to see much of any change in new laws. And other than Heller, we very seldom see a court ruling that specifically cites 2A in the protection of RKBA.

    Gun control proponents see repeal of 2A as a holy grail, but I think they’d be grossly disappointed in how far their agenda would advance should it be repealed – even notwithstanding the huge reaction that Joe accurately predicts. Not to mention that some state constitutions, like that of Washington, provide greater protections of RKBA than 2A – not that our courts recognize that very often.

    • Actually, if you did exactly what the haters say, “repeal the 2nd Amendment” that would, legally speaking, change nothing at all. As Madison and others pointed out, the right to bear arms is not granted by the 2nd Amendment. And the authority to regulate arms is not prohibited by the 2nd Amendment. The only thing the 2nd Amendment does it restate for emphasis that the Federal government has no authority to regulate arms. It’s already plainly stated by Article 1 Section 8. While some parts of the Bill of Rights are not redundant (in spite of what Madison claimed), other parts certainly are — the 1st and 2nd Amendments among them.
      Of course, what the haters really aim for is to create a new amendment that says, roughly speaking “no civilians may own firearms”. That would be a different matter, at least theoretically. Practically speaking, neither would have any effect.

      • The Heller decision used the 2nd Amendment as the primary basis for declaring D.C. gun restrictions unconstitutional, correct? So, from a legal and practical perspectives, couldn’t D.C. reinstitute those restrictions? And the same for Chicago and the McDonald decision. And the same for decisions by lower courts based upon those two SCOTUS decisions?

        • You’re correct. Reading 2A objectively, the amendment is simply a restriction on .gov infringing on the right.

          The federalists didn’t see the BOR as necessary as they didn’t see how the Constitution (which they say they believed gave .gov only the powers listed, and no more.) could be used to by .gov to do anything like restrict rights.
          Of course, this supposes that the federalists actually were honorable men who weren’t lying through their teeth.

          The anti-federalists seemed to have better understanding of human nature and humanity’s usual corrupt grasping for more and more power and demanded a listing of what seemed to them the most important rights, along with a proviso that this wasn’t all of them.

          I’m one that believes TPTB began work on ways to evade the strangling noose the Constitution put on .gov before the ink was barely dry on the parchment.

        • My comment about the 2nd Amendment being redundant has to do with federal laws, I should have been clearer.
          For state laws, state constitutions govern. As Neil Schulman has pointed out, California, like most other states, has a state constitution clause protecting the right to bear arms.
          DC is a special case. Without the 2nd Amendment, a gun ban there might be legal (since the Constitution grants Congress plenary power over DC).
          The practical benefit of the 2nd Amendment is that it gives us another tool to fight illegal gun bans. If the law were enforced properly this would not be necessary, but lawyers and judges specialize in contorting themselves to justify things that cannot be justified by anything remotely resembling logic or rational mental operation.

          “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

          Re “before the ink was dry” — yes, that’s quite obvious if you read history. Read “View of the Constitution of the United States with” by St. George Tucker, published in 1803. It was very clear to him even at that early date that politicians would perpetrate whatever evil they wanted to, Constitution or not, and that the courts would enable them to do so.

  6. LONG time ago in another world, I loved to wipe the floor with @$$wipes like this. Even today, I would like to try, JUST for giggles. BARE handed of course.

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