The first thing I ask “peaceniks” who advocate gun control: Are you planning on voting to send armed government officials out as your agents to seize guns and kill those who refuse to comply?
 
How can you be in favor of ‘peace” and send out armed thugs to do your political will?

You are not a pacifist. You are merely squeamish, and want someone else to murder others for you.

Kristopher
August 29, 2011
Comment to why are they so eager to expose their bigotry?
[I like that!—Joe]

Both Heller and McDonald suggest that broadly prohibitory laws restricting the core Second Amendment right—like the handgun bans at issue in those cases, which prohibited handgun possession even in the home—are categorically unconstitutional. Heller, 554 U.S. at 628-35 (“We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach.”); McDonald, 130 S.Ct. at 3047–48.

Diane S. Sykes
July 6, 2011
Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
RHONDA EZELL, et al., v. CITY OF CHICAGO
[I am not a lawyer but the way I read this is that “common sense” gun laws are going to have a rather difficult time getting past the courts because ‘interest-balancing’ is likely to be a non-starter.—Joe]

As far as I’m concerned, you have about as much right carrying a gun around in your purse, or pocket, or whatever, as does one of my cats.

Jack Dunning
September 1, 2011
Comment to Another shooting death in Arizona: Gun legislation continue to fail.
[And there were people who, as far as they were concerned, insisted that people of different skin color had no right to marry either.

There is a reason this nation was intended to be a nation of laws and guaranteed rights, and not the preferences of whoever the current bigots in power happened to be. And we are much better off for it.—Joe]

I don’t believe modern gun control advocates are fueled by racists and xenophobic fears, I think they are largely afraid of anyone with a firearm, but they have continually denied history, and denied its relevance. This has been a great advantage to our side in this debate, as it allows us to have one. The reason our opponents don’t want to debate, is because they can’t. They can’t because they’ve had no serious intellectual challenge to the case we’ve built against them.

Sebastian
August 30, 2011
Quote of the Day: Federal Farmer Edition
[Remember that last sentence, “…they’ve had no serious intellectual challenge to the case we’ve built against them”. Most of them do not have a process by which they can determine truth from falsity. Furthermore, many of them do not care that they cannot determine truth from falsity. It is irrelevant to them and their goals. They flat out admit they are intellectually bankrupt yet they continue with their advocacy and have people that support them.

What is incredibly depressing to me about this is that instead of the debate being completely over in about 50 weeks (it takes a while for a few monthly magazines cycles to be processed) it has taken us 50 years to gain the upper hand and we still have a lot of work left to do.—Joe]

Note that there is no one that is trying to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. The left is only attempting to prevent guns falling into the hands of violent criminals and the mentally ill.

For some reason, Conservatives insist on the right of criminals and the mentally ill to have guns. I could not figure this out until it occurred to me that if the mentally ill cannot have guns, then the Conservatives could not have guns. Then I understood why they were so angry about that protection for the American people…

The Cruel Meatball of War
August 20, 2011
Answer to the question, “Guns, do we need more gun control or less?”
[The first paragraph is a lie. The Brady Campaign says the same thing (look in the FAQ under “Is Brady a “gun ban” organization?”), then in the next breath talks about the bans they approve of. That doesn’t even look at some of the more extreme organizations like the VPC who says, “handguns should be banned” and “A clear-cut plan to ban handguns should be developed and implemented soon.”

The second paragraph is the type of rhetoric used by the left throughout history before sending their opponents to mental hospitals, reeducation camps, gulags, and mass graves.

It’s no wonder he/she doesn’t use their real name.—Joe]

I am a trans woman. Because of that, I can reasonably expect the police to be as likely a danger to me in most of the United States as a source of protection from violence. The idea that the police should have the monopoly on the power to exert deadly force for my protection is completely ludicrous to me.

The scarcity model of gun control does not work for crime prevention, but does work to disarm social movements. If a person intends to murder or intimidate people as a means of support, a gun is of much greater value to that person than the cost increase caused by illegality. Most gun control legislation in recent history has been designed to induce price increases or difficulty of purchase, while having no impact on the operation of the illicit market. That has a greater impact on broad social movements, especially those by the poor.

Marlene
August 26, 2011
More About Guns
[There are two different and important points here.

The first is the clear example of the police not always being a force for good. At the current time I’m not too worried about the police, in general, being a direct threat to certain segments of society but it does happen. There are specific instances in this country where a few individual officers misbehave and some of those may even qualify for use of deadly force to defend against them. But those instance are very rare. Much more likely is that the police will “look the other way” or be slow to respond when individuals of certain social groups are attacked. I would expect situations like this to represent the vast majority of examples of the fallacy of a police monopoly on force. Regardless, Marlene is correct to state it is completely ludicrous for the police to have a monopoly on the power to use deadly force.

The second point is is the phrase, “The scarcity model of gun control”. I like that phrase a lot. It can be used when someone says something about “the easy availability of guns”. Names and concise accurate descriptions of things enables clear thought and understanding.

Thank you Marlene—Joe]