I can easily buy a hand gun or a rifle without restriction. It is absurd that someone like me could ever have access to such dangerous weapons.
MY
Sonoma
January 19, 2013
Comment to Please Take Away My Right to a Gun
[Many people have said something to the effect, “They want to take other’s people’s guns away because they believe other people are the same as they are.” I never really expected to find someone who admitted that.—Joe]
Gun control is prior restraint. Since prior restraint for the First Amendment is unconstitutional it is also unconstitutional when applied to the Second Amendment.
The classic example of falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater can be extended to illustrate.
Prior restraint would be requiring a gag on everyone as they enter the theater because someone might falsely yell fire.
The solution we have is to punish those that do, not gag everyone who enters the building.
“Gun free zones” are the same sort of thing. You must leave your gun behind because it is feared that you might use it in a criminal manner.
The solution must be that we punish those that injure innocent people and we must not attempt to prevent all people from using their gun at all.
One might claim that the risks are so high that prior restraint is justified as in drunk driving laws. There are two counters to that. 1) Driving is a privilege, not a specific enumerated right; and 2) Only in extremely rare cases does driving drunk have any benefit to society.
And even if we were to accept crime prevention is a valid means to protect innocent life we have problems. Does that mean to prevent rape we should castrate all the men? How about sewing all vaginas shut so women can’t engage in prostitution? Or removing eyes so people can’t engage in voyeurism? And to prove I’m not stuck on sex crimes, we can prevent fights by shackling the hands and feet of everyone. We can prevent drunk driving and public drunkenness by banning alcohol. Slander can be prevented by removing people’s vocal cords. Libel can be prevented by banning publication of, well, everything. And while we are at it we can prevent theft by abolishing private property.
Crime “prevention” is a very hot button for me. There is no limit to the evil that can be justified and/or enabled once you accept the premise that it is acceptable to prevent crime by restricting liberty.
The very name of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence demonstrates they are a very misguided and dangerous organization.
We are better than this.
…we’d have gotten something like this;
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the statistical averages which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Statistical Ranges, that among these are Crime Rates, Unemployment Rates and the pursuit of Smaller Relative Income Disparities.–That to secure these statistics, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these statistics, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their desired statistics…
The first ten amendments to the constitution would have been called the Bill of Statistics, and it would lay out the target statistical ranges for various things like crime, accidents, economics, and so on.
We like to toss out statistics that bolster the pro second amendment position. That’s something of an oxymoron, really. I’ve done my share of it, certainly.
For example, there is the decline in our murder rate as gun ownership has gone up. That’s nice and all, but I heard the other night that if our medical and response training and technology were that of the 1960s, our murder rate would be three times what it is today. A person must actually die, you see, before it’s actually murder. I haven’t looked it up (that’s your job – I’m not your servant) but it certainly sounded plausible. If it’s true, then it means that there is in fact much more violence, but that yet more lives are being saved. Gun owners couldn’t very well take credit for that.
I’ve been harping on this stats issue, and probably pissing off some people. It may seem like a subtle point to some, but if so it is a subtle point of crucial importance.
Like Tam said, and I paraphrase; “Even if every other gun owner on the planet tried to kill someone last night; I didn’t, so leave me alone!”
And that’s really it, isn’t it? As the story goes, Sodom and Gomorrah would have been spared for just one righteous person.
The concept of a right is a purely moral concept, and if you can find where the Bill of Rights was to be dependent on statistics, I’d like you to show me.
The communists hate the concept of unalienable rights, and will use stats as a way of changing the subject– of completely reframing the conversation. I call them “tweakers” because all they care about is tweaking this and tweaking that, using the force of government ostensibly to get some predicted result in the statistics.
That’s a communist premise, and it stinks right from the get go. It puts us into disparate groups, each being ruled according to its status. Statistical arguments alone, either for or against a “right” imply the non-existence of rights by ignoring them. Conversely, if rights truly exist, stats have no bearing on them, and the discussion is purely about morals– right verses wrong.
Our premise is, or should be, that justice demands the respect of all human rights, all the time, that rights belong only to individuals, just as criminal prosecutions are of individuals. If you didn’t violate, or attempt to violate, someone else’s rights, you are to be held harmless in all regards. If there were only one, that is the American principle. If that ideal is not upheld, you have no rights and in that case your statistics won’t save you.
The communists know exactly how this works, and you all know that they know it, and of course they hate the very concept of rights. They will ignore it and fall back on statistics. It’s a pretty clever, evil trick. I’ll give them that, but what else have they got, being that they’re on the wrong side?
That is where we (I hope) differ. Not only is the moral rights concept all we need, it is all that can work in the long run to persuade good people. If we rely on stats, we’re relying on the weather, essentially, because stats, like the weather, are not only very fickle but are subject to interpretation, while rights are eternal.
Sure; bring out the human interest stories– we probably don’t do near enough of that, all told, but start them, and finish them, with the moral Declaration. There’s not a Republican alive, and very few in the NRA, who can do this, so it’s up to us.
Plenty of research, plenty of information, zero mention of the second amendment or the core principles behind it;
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2013/01/with-megyn-kelly-on-fox-news.html#comments
In other words, he didn’t make the case. Instead he argued purely within The Enemy’s framework, proving who had all the control over the conversation. Human rights, and the power relations between citizens and government, were apparently not even worth mentioning, yet those are THE points to be made. Listen to their words very carefully. Lott and Kelly both took the bait, hook, line and sinker, and ran with it. It’s sad. The term, “too clever by half” comes to mind.
In fact, a fundamental human right is being impugned and attacked without being mentioned– as though it didn’t exist– as though infringements on that right aren’t specifically prohibited. “Machineguns are already highly regulated, and aren’t used in crimes” as if that would matter– as if your rights depend on statistics– as if a certain set of infrigements to your rights is all we’re going to talk about. It would be like discussing how to cook your mother for dinner, with no mention of the mother’s moral right to life or the legal prohibition against killing her and eating her. Cannibals are arguing over the cannibal pot, and the audience is to see one chef as the more clever culinary tactician than the other. No doubt many of us on both sides are cheering along like mindless sports fans at a game. We are better than this. It’s not a goddamned game.
Many times I have heard, “Both sides can’t be right.” While there are certainly times when this is true there are also lots of times when it is not true but it appears to be true on the surface.
My classic example is the Civil War. If it were true the war was entirely about slavery and those fighting for the south were fighting to preserve slavery then sure, only one side can be right. But if those fighting for the south were fighting to preserve states rights while those in the north were fighting to end slavery then both sides could be right. They are “talking” past one another, but they could both be right.
A similar thing happens in some gun control debates.
One side (exaggerated to make the point) can claim, “Innocent children should not be shot! Ban all guns!” The other side can claim, “Banning guns will not make the children safer! Let good guys carry guns in schools to protect them.”
Although the proposed solutions are at complete odds with no possible compromise between the them both sides are fighting for what are almost for certain equally valid truths. Innocent children should not be shot and banning guns will not make children safer.
While I cannot claim any extraordinary expertise in this endeavor it is going to be far more productive to identify the things you do agree with one another on before engaging in a battle over the things you disagree on. Compromise may be impossible, but there might be solutions that are agreeable to both/all sides if you can realize you have a common goal. For example a orthogonal solution may work without stomping on either side.
What’s an orthogonal solution? In the case of the school shootings a solution to “ban guns” versus “good guys with guns” an orthogonal solution would be to “ban schools”. For example if children were to be taught online supervised by their parents or in much small groups there wouldn’t be such large groups of tempting, nearly helpless, targets.
There may be many solutions to a problem but without a clear problem statement and agreement that common ground does exist people are likely to get stuck pushing their solution rather than solving the problem.
Problem statements drive the solution. Incorrect and unarticulated problem statements limit the range of solutions.
In the case of school shootings examine the following problem statements, somewhat exaggerated to make the point:
Depending on the choice of problem statement the range of solutions are completely different. And there may be other problem statements beyond what I have enumerated above. Defining the problem correctly is frequently more difficult than finding solutions.
I know it’s tough but finding common ground and accurately defining the problem not only leads to a broader range of solutions but it also gets people working to solve the problem rather than fighting each other. Work on problem statements rather than fighting with others. We are better than this.
The NRA did a good job on this. They included some of the deliberate deception by Feinstein on her website:
On her website, Feinstein claims that a study for the DOJ found that the 1994 ban resulted in a 6.7 percent decrease in murders. To the contrary, this is what the study said: “At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders. Our best estimate is that the ban contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders between 1994 and 1995. . . . However, with only one year of post-ban data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this decrease reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a true effect of the ban. Nor can we rule out effects of other features of the 1994 Crime Act or a host of state and local initiatives that took place simultaneously.”
You know they know they are in the wrong when they have to lie in order to have any hope of winning.
We don’t need to lie to win. We are better than this.
except army and police no one should have a gun;violent films should be banned;constitution should be amended accordingly;
Krishna Murthy
December 20, 2012
Comment to After Newtown, Gun Control Steps We Can Take
[Why not do away with due process and the right to not testify against yourself since you are gutting the Bill of Rights anyway?
Not just anti-gun. Anti-freedom.
We are better than this.—Joe]
All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.
James Freeman Clarke
April 4, 1810 – June 8, 1888
[Clarke was an advocate of human rights. He was active in the abolition movement and the education of women.
Today the basic human right of self-defense is under attack. We have strong convictions but in some people they have been trampled so hard and so deep for so long that they have not been expressed. Now it is essential to find your voice, find your convictions, and stand up against a great evil that is attempting to destroy our right to keep and bear arms.
Don’t let that happen. Don’t let the last decade of progress be swept away because of one mentally ill young man and a million mental midgets who think yet another restriction on guns would have made any difference in the Newton, Connecticut tragedy.
We are better than this.—Joe]
A selection from Twitchy Staff:
All NRA members should be shot!!!! I thank you, that’s one of my own !!
Bitter Old St. Nick@90sRememberer
Murder every NRA member
Happy I live in Canada not USA. Land of handgun nuts.nra should be shot & put out of their misery. Not babies@school.
John Cobarruvias@BayAreaHouston
Can we now shoot the #NRA and everyone who defends them? #PrayForNewton
I see no difference between this and the people who would call for the murder of all members of the NAACP after someone of color murdered a bunch of people. These people are the moral equivalent of the KKK and should be treated as such.
Update: More death threats and wishes for us and our families to be killed.
Having a government agency to control and regulate firearms in light of the Second Amendment is like having a government agency to control and regulate people with black skin in light of the 13th Amendment.
This isn’t to say that the use of firearms should be unregulated. You still could, and should, be punished for causing harm to innocent people or the property of others regardless of the means by which you caused the harm.
People don’t trust government to do what’s right. They are very attracted to the idea of a nation of individuals, so they don’t think about what’s good for the collective.
Tom Mauser
Gun-control activist.
November 2012
The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)
[It’s good to have him explicitly say it. Mauser (how ironic!) is opposed to a nation of individuals and individual rights. The collective is what is important.
Mauser is opposed to not just a specific enumerated right called out in the Bill of Rights, but the very foundation of this nation. He should move to a country more closely politically aligned with his views. I’m thinking North Korea would be appropriate. The United States Constitution clearly was designed for people totally different from him.—Joe]
“What can we do about gun control?” is an open question on answers.yahoo.com.
Someone with the alias of Sal Paradise says:
Shoot gun owners with their own guns?
I find it difficult to interpret this any other way than this guy is advocating theft and murder of people exercising a specific enumerated right. Typical.
He must be a democrat. They have a very long history of opposition to civil rights:
…your right to speech, religion, assembly and redress of grievances. The Second amendment was supposed to protect the First. Both will be tested in ways you are not expecting. You will be blindsided. Expect it.
When someone doesn’t like what you’re saying and tries to do something about it, your Second amendment right says, “I don’t think so, Skippy”.
Uncle’s post here, if you listen to the broadcast, reveal a looming contest. There is an on-going attempt to marginalize you, through legal, economic, social and bureaucratic pressures. Pay attention. Pay attention also to who stands their ground and who caves. Don’t bother with the rationalizations, but stay focused on principles.
Roberta, Sebastian, and Tam report on the nanny’s in Indiana getting their panties twist over Tannerite.
A few years ago almost exactly the same thing happened. A T.V. station (WSBTV) made a video whining about, as Roberta said, “Scary–Go-BOOM!” They got a politician to talk about how terrible it was and how he was “going to do something” about it.
I sent them an email and within 24 hours the video was taken down and we didn’t hear anything more about it. Not even from the politician.
This is a little different case in that they didn’t use any of my video for their whine piece but the same principles apply. Here is a starting point for your letter to the T.V. station. Modify it a bit and you have one for your legislator:
You recently produced a video about a legal product used by thousands of people every year and found people willing to say it scared them and you. For you to engage in a such a biased and even bigoted attack on a legal product used in a legal manner is exceedingly offensive to me and thousands of other people.
I can’t imagine what you were thinking. Would you show video of people using guns to legally hunt, shoot tin cans, or put holes in paper targets and then contact the opportunist politicians because you were worried someone might use their guns to commit a terrorist act? Or how about showing someone having a glass of wine with dinner or drinking a beer in their backyard? Would you demand the government do something about this because of your concerns about drunk driving?
When I was growing up my family was able to, and did, buy dynamite, blasting caps, at the local hardware store with no special license or transportation requirements. We paid for it, picked it up out back, put in it in the trunk of the car and drove home with it. That the average person can still acquire explosives easily, legally, and safely is a testament to what a great country we have. It shows that not only the government is subservient to its citizens but that its citizens are responsible and can be trusted.
If you had demonstrated these explosives were used in thousands of crimes each year I might think you had reason to be concerned. But you did not do this. You could have used that same product and those same video to show what a great country we have. You could have shown what unique freedoms we have and how those freedoms are not being abused. Seattle King 5 Evening Magazine did that with this video: http://www.boomershoot.org/2005/KING5.wmv. But you didn’t do that. You merely demonstrated you are a Puritan–afraid that someone, someplace, is having fun.
I found your email when you were sticking up for that republican bitch michelle malkin. If you know whats good you will keep your fucking mouth shut about Obama or you will come up missing on the news.
Joseph C.
jcXXXXX@yahoo.com
November 10, 2012 8:43 AM
Original email and header is here.
[I suspect he was referring to this web page. I haven’t checked my log files yet but I suspect he found it via this blog post.
Additional information about Joseph C.:
Additional information for Joseph C.:
Yet another example of violent liberals. We are better than this.
And, yes, I sent an email to Ms. Malkin about it.—Joe]
Update February 19, 2013: He called me.
Update February 26, 2013: He called again.
I’ve said before that if you look, I mean really look, for the meaning in ads, political speeches, or anything else, you often come up short because there isn’t any, or it may be a clever deception, or purely an appeal to emotion. Often it works so well that people will attribute words to a message that weren’t there, and different people will attribute completely different meanings to the same message.
Look at how much of media (movies, books, music, all of it, even news) is an attempt to arouse emotions, and how little of it is aimed at calm awareness or true interest in a subject. That statement all by itself might even make you uncomfortable. Aroused emotions drive out calm awareness, don’t they? And yet we seek the emotional stimuli, and try to keep them going in other people. So what are we trying to drive out?
This post is aimed at reinforcing Rolf’s post below.
I watched a newish movie the other day. It came highly recommended. “Battleground LA” or something like that, it was called. There was so much emotional appeal, the story had to take several time-outs just so all the characters could emote at each other, even in the heat of battle with an RPG in midair, they took time out to emote. Get blown over a wall by that RPG, take more time out to emote, etc. I’ve complained for years now that every time I look to some program or other for information of interest, it turns out to be another damned, stinking soap opera. Soap operas with guns, soap operas in a machine shop, soap operas about nature, politics, you name it– emote emote emote.
Our culture has become one of buzzing emotions, looking for more buzz, reinforcing the buzz, getting buzz from others while trying to get a buzz going in someone else. It happens in our homes, at school, on the job, everywhere. Police (the little girls) love to emote, both at each other and at their prey, and they get us emoting back at them. Our local cops got all the kids at school at each other’s throats last week and this. It happens on both sides of the political divide, too, and it ain’t good. I don’t need to site any examples, because you can think of dozens without even trying. You’re probably emoting at your spouse or roommate right now. Most of us with an agenda spend most of our time preaching to the choir, rousing their emotions, while at the same time rousing the emotions of our opposition against us. What are we trying drive out of other people with our appeals to emotion?
So we have a problem. Is a good solution more likely to come from buzzing emotions or calm awareness? I don’t know; sometimes I have something “all figured out” because I wasn’t able to stop thinking about it, because it was knawing at me, only to find later that I had the much better answer come spontaneously after I’d quit fretting over it.
If your house is on fire, you have an immediate problem that needs an immediate response. If you’ve ever been in any kind of similar situation, and you ended up doing exactly the right thing against poor odds, and you still have a hard time explaining it, you will remember that what did the trick was focused awareness taking control. You know of what I speak. If you ended up handling it very poorly, you will probably remember that an emotional state took control, preventing you from focusing properly on the task at hand. I’ve gone both ways, so I can speak with some experience.
Washington state had a ballot initiative to “legalize” pot. Problem is had a whole new bureaucracy attached to it. It isn’t so much to take pot out of the hands of criminal gangs, as to have the state take over as chief criminal gang, taxing the stuff 25% at each stage (production, wholesale and retail). It ignores the federal law, and provides no means of keeping feds off one’s back, so getting a license to produce, distribute, or retail pot is tantamount to self incrimination on a federal crime. Oh goody.
So no– either a “yes” or a “no” vote is insane. I left that one blank, thank you. I will not actively participate in that level of stupid. Though it will be somewhat entertaining if it passes being as it will put the state at odds with the feds, it will still stink as bad as the current mishmash of morbid, deeply pathological and unconstitutional stupidity that is the War on Drugs. And 25%? Three times? That’ll guarantee a continued black market with all the attendant problems, even if the federal law were repealed or the Washington State Millita could keep the feds at bay. Don’t make me come over there to set you straight, damn you.
ETA: 11/06/12; The law takes up several pages in fine print, which alone is grounds for rejection. It’s near half the size of the U.S. constitution. All it would take is one sentence– “All state alcohol and drug laws, and rules and regulations related thereto, are hereby repealed.” Get that on the ballot and I’m with you.
Josh Horwitz went on a rant about gun bloggers who might download and read a book on making explosives. He named a number of gun bloggers and there was no mention of me! And I probably have a dozen books on explosives on my shelf already.
What do I have to do to get some attention from him? I publish instructions, test results, and teach others how to make explosives on a fairly regular basis. I even describe how to take down an airplane with explosives made from common household materials. What more do I have to do to make the cut?
I think there is some sort of discrimination going on here and there should be a law against that. He shouldn’t be allowed to exercise his First Amendment privileges unless he can pass a competency test. If he is going to rant about gun bloggers and explosives then it is clear I should be number one on anyone’s list. He should forfeit his license to write or speak in public. It’s only common sense. We can do better than to allow people that incompetent to spout their lies of omission in public.
Update: As pointed out in the comment by fast richard, Horwitz has corrected his error. But he did not apologize for or acknowledge his lie of omission. I have not yet forgiven him. I still have a lot of crying to do before I’m going to feel better about this. And there ought to be a law to help prevent others from ever going through what I have gone through.
Mayor Emanuel, like his former boss in the White House, doesn’t have a plan that works. Since he seems unwilling to follow the court’s wishes, and appears unable to lead his city out of despair, perhaps he should just get out of the way and give his citizens a level playing field against violent criminals.
Alan Gottlieb
October 30, 2012
CHICAGO MAYOR SHOULD SHARE BLAME FOR MAYHEM, SAYS CCRKBA
[I take a minor exception to the word “give.” I think it should have been “let.”
And if I were to have my way I would go further than Gottlieb and demand Mayor Emanuel be prosecuted under 18 USC 242. But I’m an extremist who believes those who violate rights protected by the Bill of Rights should be punished.—Joe]
sam tarling@sammyswordfish
Elizabeth V@cochisev