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This is a gun-control point scarcely made enough; I made a similar comment about the Founders' intent and how wrong they were about militias vs standing armies a day or so ago:
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This is a gun-control point scarcely made enough; I made a similar comment about the Founders' intent and how wrong they were about militias vs standing armies a day or so ago:
"Militia are hopelessly inadequate as a means of defending a free country. While "people's war" militia-based strategies have been employed to wear down invading armies in numerous countries over the past century, not one of those countries (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, southern Lebanon, etc) is "free"."
Probably true. On the other hand without militia would the countries like Estonia and Finland ever have been able to become independent and at least very much free compared to Stalinist Sovietunion.
Ofcourse Finland and Estonia had problems in the thirties with liberty which where partly connected to the the high role of the militia which had won the independence war. Estonia moderate right was forced to do revolution because the Militia Party (Vapsi) would otherwise probably have taken power.
Democracy had problems even in countries like Austria where there was no strong Militia. Austria was not democratic when occupied by Hitler in Anschluss. This is often forgotten. Instead it was governed by similar moderate dictatorship as Estonia. The motivation was probably partly the same: fear for the ultraright.
This anonymously radical nutjob invalidated his entire op-ed, and showed just how little knowledge he possesses on the subject of firearms, by including a quote with the made-up term "assault weapons". Very few people in this country own legal automatic weapons, as they have been VERY tightly controlled since 1937.
M.S. is hardly anonymous, for all that he abides by his employer's policy of only using initials to sign blog posts. Those of us who are around here much are quite aware of his name -- and anyone who is really interested can fairly easily skim thru the list of Economist writers and figure it out. (Hint: the M stands for Matt.)
And it is not necessarily the case that anyone who disagrees with you on the subject of guns is a nut job. They may be wrong, but that doesn't make them insane. Any more than the fact that you are wrong necessarily makes you insane. There is far more range of sane opinion (on this as on other topics) than you seem willing to accept.
I am beginning to suspect that this response "author is stoopid because he doesn't even know what an assault weapon is" is a talking point pushed by the NRA. I encounter it too often to be coincidental.
Anyway, the definition of 'assault weapon' is pure sophistry in this debate.
I didn't say insane, I said nutjob, which is not a term meant to make a medical diagnosis. And IMO, anyone who thinks that making the country helpless is a good idea is a nutjob.
It's not semantics when the technically meaningless term "assault weapon" (ALL weapons are "assault" weapons after all) is used to increase the level of fear in people unfamiliar with firearms, and to characterize a rifle with less power than any real deer rifle as some hideously evil super-weapon. Anyone who uses it is either ignorant of firearms or doing it purposely to ramp up the fear. That is why I point it out when I see it.
Gun control would make the country helpless?? Really? A nation who spends more money on their military than the next 24 largest spenders in the WORLD combined would be helpless if Ma and Pa didn't have their AR-15's? Wow, then congress could just simply cut their defense spending to $0 and allow the Timothy McVeigh's of town to defend the borders. If you wanted to look for the nutjob I think you need to find the nearest mirror.
I should have said make the population helpless. My mistake. But I'm fairly sure you know what I meant.
"I am beginning to suspect that this response "author is stoopid because he doesn't even know what an assault weapon is" is a talking point pushed by the NRA. I encounter it too often to be coincidental."
No, it the response from people who are actually familiar with weapons and the fact that the term "assault weapon" is an ambiguous term that can be applied to just about any weapon.
No part in the California law that makes a weapon an "assault weapon" effects the basic operation of the weapon and the design of an "assault weapon" can be modified so that it is no longer considered to be an "assault weapon" without affecting its functionality.
So, the label "assault weapon" is arbitrarily used to instill an emotional reaction in people.
12276.1 (a) Notwithstanding Section 12276, "assault weapon" shall also mean any of the following:
A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and any one of the following:
A pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon.
A thumbhole stock.
A folding or telescoping stock.
A grenade launcher or flare launcher.
A flash suppressor.
A forward pistol grip.
A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.
A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has an overall length of less than 30 inches.
My mistake. I thought that "insane" and "nutjob" both implied that the individual so described was blind to reality. If you want to define "nutjob" to just mean (disagrees with me on the subject of gun control," fine.
However, gun control is not going to make the country (or the population, as you clarify later) helpless. In the face of a government with modern weapons, the only difference between a population armed with lots of guns and a population with none is a little time and a lot more casualties (both among those involved and those merely in the wrong place at the wrong time). But the result -- government wins, mob with guns is dead -- will be the same.
It never fails, and I never fail to understand, the niggling over technical details of the guns mentioned in an article. There will be a lengthy article about the massacre of dozens of people, and multitudes of comments will state how the article is invalid because the author is a moron who doesn't know the exact trigger pull weight of the firearm mentioned.
A long time ago I heard some advice from an experienced lawyer to a novice:
- when the facts are against you, argue the law,
- when the law is against you, argue the facts,
- when both are against you, pound on the table.
Apparently a lot of those arguing the pro-gun position feel that pounding on the table is what they need to do.
Libya has proven, and soon Syria will prove you wrong
In Libya, the heavy military weaponry was taken out by NATO airstrikes. So that example proves nothing.
Syria may be a better case for you. However, as noted, Syria had no other mechanisms for the people to make changes to their government. Which gave a long, long time for popular outrage to build up before boiling over -- to the point that people were united in opposing the regime and willing to accept heavy casualties to get rid of it.
In the US, long before we reached that point, the government would be voted out of office. Or are you assuming that the government in the future somehow executes a complete change of how we are governed in one fell swoop? I confess that I don't see a realistic scenario for making that happen.
Then you're missing the point of these important technical distinctions and why people make them. The point is that the author, and most news organizations, keep telling people that these killers are using military weapons, that an AR-15 is right off the battlefield. They try to make you believe that these military-looking weapons are much much more powerful and deadly than a wooden-stocked, traditional-appearing "deer" rifle, when it is absolutely not the case. Casting a rifle stock out of black plastic instead of carving it from wood has no effect whatsoever on the deadliness of the rifle. Nor does a pistol grip, or a thirty-round magazine, or a flash suppressor. A semi-automatic rifle is a semi-automatic rifle, they both fire one bullet per trigger pull regardless of how they're dressed. And yes, if we are to take an author seriously when he speaks of gun control, we expect him to know something about guns, especially when the particular subject depends entirely upon the type of weapon involved.
What do the following recent events suggest to you?
The discovery of a U.S. government army manual giving instructions for setting up camps for political dissidents.
The U.S. government purchasing 1.4 BILLION rounds of hollow-point ammunition, which cannot be used by the military as it is against the rule of war.
This Obama quote: "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
The recent creation by the Dept. of Homeland Security of the "FEMA Corps", a full-time, standing army of FEMA youth.
I would be interested in some citations for each of those. Just so I am sure we are talking about the same thing. Thanks.
You make statements such as, "Nor does a pistol grip, or a thirty-round magazine, or a flash suppressor [has an effect on the deadliness of the rifle]" and you want to be taken seriously?
Perhaps in individual situations they may not. But in tight quarters, a pistol grip may allow for more maneuverability in tight quarters and faster target acquisition. A 30-round magazine minimizes down time. A flash suppressor in a night engagement could delay target acquisition of the shooter.
Your type of gun supporters speak out of both sides of your mouths. On one hand, there is a clear difference between the deadliness of an auto and a semi auto. Agreed. Yet on the other hand, all the other aspects of guns that increase their deadliness are thrown out the window as if they don't matter. You argue the semantics of the round being fired; yet if someone was running around with a M1 Garand with the ping of death, you think that the 30-round military-modeled AR15 wouldn't be more effective? Give me a break. There is a reason the militiary equips their troops with these style weapons - they are more effective at killing people.
Cowcharge, that propaganda from Alex Jones is nonsense. There are things to be worried about, but what you just cited is not it.
Hollow point ammo cannot be used by the military (well technically it can right now as the Hague Conventions only apply when all parties to a conflict abide by them, but we choose not to), but it can and is used by law enforcement, and you would be surprised how many law enforcement agencies there are.
That "discovered" Army manual is nothing and is not about rounding up political dissidents.
Infowars likes to get people riled up over nothing. They use the same tricks that the gun-control crowd uses to throw around obscure and scary-sounding terms, take things out of context, and generally prey on the ignorance of the average person about the subject.
There's a link to the .pdf of the manual right in the article.
The article is a little hysterical, but the points made are accurate, and there is a link to the government purchase orders.
The quote about a national security force is easy to google.
Sure, in a wartime firefight those incidental additions to the weapon can make a tiny difference. But we're talking about a lunatic shooting up a school full of helpless kids, not a sniper trying for an unseen night shot or a Marine being ambushed on a tight city street. It takes about half a second more to fire 20 rounds in two magazines loaded with ten each than it does to fire 20 rounds from one magazine, as a Youtube demo about "assault weapons" that I just watched shows. And the military equips their troops with full-auto weapons, not sport rifles dressed up like military rifles.
The ammo was bought by DHS, not the Louisiana State Police. And since it can't be used against foreign, it can only be intended for U.S. citizens.
Whatever you think of Alex Jones, the manual is right there to be read. I suppose digitaljournal is propaganda in your eyes too? http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/324268
The media gets stuff wrong all the time. You might as well point to an article that talks about high-powered military assault rifles.
I've read the manual. This manual is nothing new. It's been around for over a decade (I'm sure I could dig back further than the 1990s but I didn't feel like it) with only pretty minor changes. Manuals are guides for operations and training. No one is training to round up political dissidents. The author of the article is clearly clueless and has never served in the military and hence doesn't understand why it's written the way it is.
I already covered some of this in another comment, but why not do it again?
It can be used overseas, just not by our military (says nothing about armed law enforcement officials or aid provided to foreign forces). And it could be provided to state or local law enforcement agencies.
"But the result -- government wins, mob with guns is dead -- will be the same."
Or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29
Against a local government, and in a one-shot confrontation sure. Entirely possible that the mob wins. On the other hand, we were discussing the Federal government, with a military (as opposed to a police force) to call on.
As for the "Battle of Athens," I have to wonder whether there was no alternative to combatting the tyrrany in that county. Certainly today, the situation would pretty much guarantee a media circus, which would make stuffing the ballot boxes (assunming that was what the local sherriffs had in mind) undetected a challenge. I confess that I am perhaps guilty of underestimating how much toleration for corruption there may be in other parts of the country. But even reaching the level described in the linked article would be a real challenge.
Well that's the point, a militia doesn't have to be going toe-to-toe with the federal government to be doing its job.
Also, everyone likes to pull out the example of the military. In this case, the militia were veterans, and this was after the war when the military was all but gone (we have this habit of only keeping a small nucleus of an Army in peacetime, then doing some serious inflating in wartime, then cutting down once the war is over, not as bad now that we have a volunteer army but back when they could draft whoever was needed there was much less incentive to keep too many people around).
Also everyone conveniently forgets that little Posse Comitatus thing. The military can't just go around policing up people. And if things are that bad that his has gone out the window, martial law is declared, etc., well who's to say a lot of the military isn't now the militia? But honestly I see cases like Athens being far more likely, though still important.
Whether or not the same thing would happen today, I don't know. But we also don't know what will change in the years ahead. What may be possible one year may be impossible the next and then become possible again.
Since when does some journalist/writer (this article) get to use his column to advocate the destruction of the US constitution......obviously this person has not lived in countries in Africa or other parts of the world where people wish that they has some semblance of the US Constitution as a guideline for laws, individual and collective rights. I have lived in 3 countries in Africa and I will tell you from personal experience that if the population had the right to own any kind of gun and were able to form any kind of a militia they would be better off. The last country I resided in was Zimbabwe. Go and live there for a few years and come back to America and maybe you will appreciate what our Bill of Rights and Constitution have to offer....by the way, the other countries were Angola and Mozambique. Tell it to the people there and also in the Congo,Rawanda, Chad and a few others.
Think hard and fast before advocating surrendering the Constitution of these United States.
The author didn't propose destroying the US constitution. He proposed amending it just as has been done 27 times before.
Everyone does appreciate the fact that the USA has a constitution and the rule of law, and I believe everyone acknowledges that the African countries would be far better off if they had the same.
Africa has enough armed groups and enough violence. I really don't think adding in more guns and armed groups- such as people's militias- would aid in the development of the rule of law or constitutionalism or law of law. Rather widespread violence and lack of monopolies on violence contributes to the lawlessness and cycle of violence that you find in Africa.
It's wrong to say that the United States and those other states' peace and order situations are the same, because they aren't. Therefore, this argument is invalid.
I too lived in a number of African countries and I have the opposite opinion: a lot of the problems arise from having guns freely available. Zimbabwe, in particular, has a problem because armed militias take the law in to their own hands (farms repossession). In all case they would have been better off with the right to own (and knowledge about how to operate) ploughs rather than guns.
"In all case they would have been better off with the right to own (and knowledge about how to operate) ploughs rather than guns"
Well, they have the farms now (since they've killed or chased off the original owners), along with all of the tools.
So, how's that been working out for them?
I've read the constitution a few times, and I'm pretty sure there's no clause beginning "Amendments to this Constitution may only be proposed, suggested or advocated by the following persons".
It's called "freedom of speech", you should appreciate it more.
Not very well - since they were only trained with guns. Guns being destructive by nature. THis was a country that was teh 5th biggest producers of tobacco in the world, and whose milk & meat quality rivaled the best in the world.
Seems guns create chaos and not justice
So, I suppose guns also prevented them from learning how to farm, then?
You also forgot to mention that the president of the country encouraged those armed militias to kill or run the white farmers, who were doing quite a good job of providing food for the country, off of their land.
That same president could have at least made sure they were taught how to farm, right?
But I supposed it's easier to blame the guns and not the government that was hell-bent on revenge against the white farm owners, eh?
The issue is more nuanced than our 2 paragraphs can do justice to.
Why I personally would never carry a gun (I know I wouldn't use it) I do not believe in banning them. However I do go for education (like driving a car) and awareness training. Have you ever been stopped by a young (doped) 12 year-old armed with an AK47? Your views on guns might change (NB: you would be most likely killed if you were carrying a gun).
Clearly leadership is the primary issue (in Zim). But guns were the tool. Give a poor person a gun, tell them that a particular group are responsible for their situation, and they will use its potential to seek (their perception of) justice. Compound that with poor education (interestingly during the first decade of Bob's rule the country made huge advances in education) and those perceptions will focus on the short-term.
Ergo, without guns, farm takeovers would have been impossible, the chaos would have been minimized.
"Have you ever been stopped by a young (doped) 12 year-old armed with an AK47? Your views on guns might change (NB: you would be most likely killed if you were carrying a gun)."
Personally, no. But in any situation like that, you have to make a choice: Go unarmed and put yourself at the mercy of anybody out there or go armed and know the risks that go with it.
"Ergo, without guns, farm takeovers would have been impossible, the chaos would have been minimized."
The Hutus slaughtered tens of thousands of people in Rwanda, many of them with machetes.
And there is all of human history prior to the invention of the gun.
So, no, a lack of guns would not make anything impossible.
You should try living there....
Militias that are there today are being armed by foreign powers in order to achieve a desired purpose. They are not civilian militias formed out of a collective will to do something constructive.
Rather they have been armed and organized by outsiders like the USA, Russia and China because the countries in Africa have the best politicians money can buy. The current situation in Africa is a direct result of Foreign Policy run amuck. The Dictators and Despots have come to power largely by outside forces and have succeeded very well in destroying their countries since about 1959.
When a countries civilians have the ability to rise up on their own in a united manner such as in the United States successful attempt to throw off the yoke of the English, only good can come from that uprising. That is why the 2nd Amendment was written....you are missing the point of the whole argument.
All the Militias that exist in Africa today are primarily Tribal and backed by outside factions. To attempt to compare the US population to that of Africa is an insult. We are debating this matter in an educated manner and not running out to cut each others throats because we disagree, so do not presume to make the comparison between USA and AFRICA as they are worlds apart.
Africa is an entirely different scenario. The despots there have been installed by outside tyrants. In a few countries there has been at least one (1) free and fair vote, but for the most part each one of those countries have become ONE PARTY STATES and are mostly Marxist in their policies. The people in Africa today are certainly not better off due the meddling of foreign powers and their existing governments.
The argument is that if those civilian populations had started out with a right to bear arms, is it not conceivable that at least a few of those countries may have developed into first world nations instead of being the 3rd world tragedies that they have become.....they were not all as successful at throwing off their successive colonial powers as the USA was prior to and post 1776.
The violence in Africa is a direct result on the absence of an educated middle class, that has no rights and no self determination. .....those rights were either taken from them or never granted in the first place.
They never stood a chance!!!!!
You should try living in Africa before comparing the Militias there to the USA.
Militias that are in Africa today are being armed by foreign powers in order to achieve a desired purpose. They are not civilian militias formed out of a collective will to do something constructive.
Rather they have been armed and organized by outsiders like the USA, Russia and China because the countries in Africa have the best politicians money can buy. The current situation in Africa is a direct result of Foreign Policy run amuck. The Dictators and Despots have come to power largely by outside forces and have succeeded very well in destroying their countries since about 1959.
When a countries civilians have the ability to rise up on their own in a united manner such as in the United States successful attempt to throw off the yoke of the English, only good can come from that uprising. That is why the 2nd Amendment was written....you are missing the point of the whole argument.
All the Militias that exist in Africa today are primarily Tribal and backed by outside factions. To attempt to compare the US population to that of Africa is an insult. We are debating this matter in an educated manner and not running out to cut each others throats because we disagree, so do not presume to make the comparison between USA and AFRICA as they are worlds apart.
Africa is an entirely different scenario. The despots there have been installed by outside tyrants. In a few countries there has been at least one (1) free and fair vote, but for the most part each one of those countries have become ONE PARTY STATES and are mostly Marxist in their policies. The people in Africa today are certainly not better off due the meddling of foreign powers and their existing governments.
The argument is that if those civilian populations had started out with a right to bear arms, is it not conceivable that at least a few of those countries may have developed into first world nations instead of being the 3rd world tragedies that they have become.....they were not all as successful at throwing off their successive colonial powers as the USA was prior to and post 1776.
The violence in Africa is a direct result on the absence of an educated middle class, that has no rights and no self determination. .....those rights were either taken from them or never granted in the first place.
They never stood a chance!!!!!
Sorry if I am duplicating posts....this is my first participation in a forum like this.
You should try living in Africa before comparing the Militias there to the USA.
Militias that are in Africa today are being armed by foreign powers in order to achieve a desired purpose. They are not civilian militias formed out of a collective will to do something constructive.
Rather they have been armed and organized by outsiders like the USA, Russia and China because the countries in Africa have the best politicians money can buy. The current situation in Africa is a direct result of Foreign Policy run amuck. The Dictators and Despots have come to power largely by outside forces and have succeeded very well in destroying their countries since about 1959.
When a countries civilians have the ability to rise up on their own in a united manner such as in the United States successful attempt to throw off the yoke of the English, only good can come from that uprising. That is why the 2nd Amendment was written....you are missing the point of the whole argument.
All the Militias that exist in Africa today are primarily Tribal and backed by outside factions. To attempt to compare the US population to that of Africa is an insult. We are debating this matter in an educated manner and not running out to cut each others throats because we disagree, so do not presume to make the comparison between USA and AFRICA as they are worlds apart.
Africa is an entirely different scenario. The despots there have been installed by outside tyrants. In a few countries there has been at least one (1) free and fair vote, but for the most part each one of those countries have become ONE PARTY STATES and are mostly Marxist in their policies. The people in Africa today are certainly not better off due the meddling of foreign powers and their existing governments.
The argument is that if those civilian populations had started out with a right to bear arms, is it not conceivable that at least a few of those countries may have developed into first world nations instead of being the 3rd world tragedies that they have become.....they were not all as successful at throwing off their successive colonial powers as the USA was prior to and post 1776.
The violence in Africa is a direct result on the absence of an educated middle class, that has no rights and no self determination. .....those rights were either taken from them or never granted in the first place.
They never stood a chance!!!!!
Sorry if I am duplicating posts....this is my first participation in a forum like this.
Are you suggesting that you would just shoot the 12 year-old, before knowing what harm they intended? How would the gun help? They are so doped up they dont recognize fear (the LRA managed to convince the poor kids that they bullets would go through them without harming them).
Farm takeovers would not have been possible, I suggest, because key (to Bob's strategy) would have been low or no casualties (otherwise there would have been armed opposition and further chaos). Machetes wouldnt have cut it (pardon the pun).
Impossible was the wrong word, but you know what I meant.
The US has had a key role in creating and maintaining the worst of these dictators in Africa, Asia & Latin America.
(Without wishing to offend) the American war of independence was one of vested interest groups vying for control of business interests. No votes for women, no votes for 'slaves' etc. It was a caste society in all but name.
And talking of Militias: they were initially created by business men. And persisted up to the present day (thugs hired to break strikes). The Mafias, street gangs, and drug cartels also have their militias (under a different name). THey dont seem like a great idea.
Given that the US can claim 30,000 deaths from shooting each year, are you sure that is less than Africa?
By the author's logic, the right to practice religion is also just for "recreation" and should be taken away since religious people often push for wars against religious foes (e.g. Christians vs Muslims). By his logic we should also repeal the right to free speech because we just speak out for fun, it's the ballot box that makes the difference, not what is said by average citizens.
Frankly, I own a gun. I have never shot anyone or allowed anyone else to shoot someone with it. So why should the actions of a mentally ill nutcase mean I have to give up my gun? That's like saying we should all give up sex because there is a rapist on the loose somewhere. WTF does that have to do with someone else having consensual sex with their partner?
Using your parallelisms places the author's point out of context. Religious who push for war against other religions are either extremists or terrorists. What reasonable modern religious sect would advocate war? Wouldn't that just scare away members? Even if they advocate for war, they are kept in check by rule of law. And if you think about it, it's a lot better if extremists are not allowed to have guns.
Owning a gun means that the gun owner has a potential to do offense. There are rationally sound owners. There are those who aren't. Why treat them the same? Because even rationally sound owners may fall prey to the "heat of the moment" and offend rather than defend. Secondly, being a "nutcase" isn't always apparent at one point in time. Sometimes, it just takes a "trigger".
If you fear that you may not be able to defend yourself from bad elements, then advocate for a stronger police or better fiscal policies to abate unemployment or just make sure you don't make enemies.
Yeah, let's all hide under the covers and hope our government is there to take care of us. The common folk cannot be trusted to defend themselves. Only our police, who are all of the highest moral character (those departments that try to cover up the beating of a defenseless woman, for example), should be allowed to possess guns. What happened to self-reliance in this country?
What happened to self-reliance in this country?
Complete self-reliance was never a feature of this country. A few people exploring the edge of the frontier, yes. But anyone who was settling came as part of a group.
As for today, we all hire specialists to deal with a variety of things where they are more qualified (or just have more time) than we do. Do you raise your own crops (and make all of the tools required to do so)? Do you make your own clothes (let alone spin the threads and weave the cloth), or build your own house, car, or gun? Or your own cell phone? No.
Similarly, we hire specialists for general protection. It is hardly the end of civilization. More accurately, it is the fundamental characteristic of civilization.
Yes. Religious people who try to kill others are terrorists. And individuals who shoot children are freakin nutjobs. So keep guns away from THEM and not everyone. The point is that you don't need to let a fringe element or a whacko cause the rights of law abiding people to be taken away.
More guns = more massacres.
Either you are ok with the massacres or you are not. You have obviously picked which side of the fence you are sitting on.
Your support for more effective laws to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and nutjobs (and criminals and kids and...) is appreciated. I do hope the licensing of gun owners, the registration of guns, etc., will not prove very annoying. (We might all want limit our contribution to the solution to a few comments on internet discussion boards, but when the problem is serious enough, more is needed.)
Jouris: "Complete" was your adjective, not mine. More to the point, my statement was based on governmental reliance, not reliance on free trade. The former is in fact becoming a more notable feature of this country. Your analogy to reliance on free trade misses the mark. Yes, I can buy my clothes cheaper and of better quality from someone who specializes in such things than I could if I were to set to make them all myself. Similarly, if the wage disparity worked to my advantage, I could hire a housekeeper to enable me to put in more hours at the office. If not, I do that myself. As you imply, I could also hire a specialized bodyguard for my protection, but alas, I cannot afford one. Therefore, I provide for my own self-defense, which I find more reliable than dialing 9-1-1 and waiting it out.
Alex Kilgour: It is not fair to say "either you are ok with massacres or you are not." I could say that people who choose to drive a car are horrible people who have decided that they are okay with vehicle-related deaths. Such an all or nothing approach gives no consideration to the costs and benefits. Every benefit has a cost. When we allow people to drive cars, we have made a decision that the benefit of personal transportation outweighs the cost that people will die every day as a result of vehicles. We do not brush this cost to the side, but we similarly do not brush the benefit to the side either. Instead, there is a legitimate discussion about how we can allow people to drive themselves about in the safest manner. There is no reason that there cannot be a similar discussion which weighs the right of self-defense against the prospect of potentially making guns more accessible to criminals.
Apparently you are not familiar with massacres that have taken place with knives, machetes, explosives, etc. Someone bent on doing violence can do so. Your assertion that more guns means more massacres is patently false.
Actually, there is no fundamental difference between, on one hand, you (and, if required) a few friends hiring a bodyguard. And, on the other, you and the whole community paying for a police force. You can choose to be taxed more to get more police (and faster response times), or less pay less to get fewer -- but you are still paying for a service rendered. It's only a "dependence of government" if you think you are somehow getting policing free.
Let the Americans kill each other. It's their right.
And Brits don't? You don't need guns to kill someone.
The USA's homicide rate is 3.5 times as high as the UKs (4.2 per hundred thousand and the UK's is 1.2 per hundred thousand).
American's are obviously killing each other more frequently.
Taking away guns doesn't prevent homicides. I'm pleased to hear Brits don't kill eachother as often. The UK is also a homogenous society (relative to the US), thus lower crime. We have a different society in the US. The things that work for the UK won't necessarily work in the US. You can't even criticize the queen in the UK. With much less freedom, of course there is less crime. But we value freedom here. Yes, there is a cost of freedom. Maybe suggest stronger mental health controls for gun ownership. But we don't look to our government to fix everything. Indeed, it was the British gov't that convinced the founders to leave the bloody UK and not trust government. And maybe you advocate less guns since you're still embarrassed that average citizens forming militias chased you out of here once already.
That is pure ignorance spouting off. The UK was homogenous 100 years ago, but take a look through any major city there and you would wonder if you were in England or in Africa/Asia/India.
What's more, the homogenous remark is a hidden racist way of saying "we have more murders because of our black population" which is bogus crap.
Britain has fewer homicides per capita than the US because there are fewer guns. It is a straight parrallel. Canada has a lower per capita rate as well, and culturally the biggest difference between the two countries is gun control. We play the same video games, watch the same movies and tv shows. We live in a similar geographic region, and buy products made by the same companies. You have 5 times more guns (per capita) than Canada does. There is even a higher drug usage rate in Canada than in the US, so you can't even go down that road.
True, but the US has always had a higher murder rate than Britain, even when the gun laws in both nations were the same (i.e. nonexistant). This suggests a cultural or environmental factor besides guns is a major contributor to violence in the US.
"Britain has fewer homicides per capita than the US because there are fewer guns."
Nonsense. There are more non-gun homicides in the US than there are total homicides (including those that involve guns, and those that don't) in Britain. Make all the gun homicides in the US magically disappear, while keeping the gun homicides in Britain, and the US would still have a higher murder rate.
"culturally the biggest difference between the two countries is gun control."
Hard to know where to begin with this one ... but I'd say there is abundant evidence to the contrary, despite the many close cultural connections. Such as the fact that the US has a lot more violent crime, including both with-gun and without-gun. (Though, really, both countries have quite low crime rates compared with the not-so-distant past.)
The US has a much stronger frontier-individualist take-care-of-yourself streak, as one example of a cultural difference.
The UK is far from homogeneous. Latest census results put the percentage of "white British" inhabitants at about 83%, but that's an overall figure that masks huge variation between areas, particularly rural areas (overwhelmingly white) and the major cities (where the percentage of whites may be 50% or lower).
I don't know where this idea that "you can't criticize the queen in the UK" comes from, but it's just plain false. Of course you can criticize the queen. (You stand a good chance of being shouted down by others exercising *their* freedom of speech to say what they think of your "criticism".) You can't advocate killing her, but then I think you'll find that in America, you can't call for the murder of the president either.
(I don't know where that particular First Amendment exception comes from, but it's pretty clearly established.)
It's an unhelpful caricature to say that the British "look to their government to fix everything". More accurate would be to say that the British see "maintenance of law and order" as falling within the legitimate domain of government, and therefore they assume that it's basically the government's job - and not, by extension, anyone else's - to deal with wrongdoers.
I'm an American who simply acknowledges that the USA has the highest homicide rate of any high-income country. I have spent many years living and traveling abroad and I would like my home country to be as safe as the numerous other countries I have lived and traveled in.
People in the UK CAN criticize the Queen; perhaps you got the country confused with Thailand. France, Germany, and Italy are all republics and they all have lower homicide rates than the UK. So this has nothing to do with monarchy or form of government.
There is very little correlation between diversity (lack of homogenity) and violence. The USA has some of the most diversity in the world, but it is not one of the most violent countries. Russia and even Mexico are less diverse than the USA; but they both have significantly more homicide.
Less freedom means more crime because more parts of daily life are criminalized. The USA already has by far the highest prison population on Earth. The USA has harsher drug laws than the majority of western democracies, and our sex lives are also more heavily regulated than most if not all other western countries.
The comparative violence of the USA is most likely connected to two things: 1. The ready availability of guns. 2. The massive inequality that is closer to Latin American countries than to other western democracies. But it seems that the same groups of people in the USA want to avoid solving either of these problems.
Going back to the 1800s when gun control was nonexistant in Britain, I think it is easy to point to two environmental issues in the USA that led to the higher homicide rate in the USA: 1. A vast, lawless frontier filled with bandits and hostile natives. 2. Slavery and later the legacy of slavery which cultivates a tradition of violence, fear, and dehumanization.
At this point the USA has no lawless frontiers or banditry. The natives have long since been subdued. The USA is still suffering from the legacy of slavery to a certain extent but at this point this aspect of American history simply contributes to the enormous inequality in the USA (which the conservatives refuse to address) and the culture of fear.
Probably at this point the culture of fear is the cultural aspect that most seperates the USA from any other country in I have lived or traveled in. Reading the comments here and elsewhere, it appears that there are many Americans who genuinely believe that if they don't have guns criminals will break into their homes and perhaps kill their families. And other people who believe that their guns are the only thing that stand between them and tyrannical government or violent mobs or some thing along those lines. I have never meant anyone in any part of Europe or Asia that had a mindset even fainly similar to this. The USA, as dangerous as it is relative to say France, is really not as dangerous as it is in the minds of many American people. The determination of many Americans to perceive the USA as dangerous and lawless is making the USA so.
Britain had fewer homocides and firearm homocides even before they enacted their gun control laws. It's a cultural difference, not a legal one.
However, their gun laws did not prevent crime from increasing when the rest of Europe saw an increase in crime. It has not prevented them from seeing an increase in other crimes like robbery and rape.
I definitely think that guns are only part of the problem and I refer you to my above posts.
But I want to know specifically, what are the cultural differences between the USA and the western European countries that you believe contribute to the higher homicide rate?
Odd how the Author thinks the 2nd Clause of the 2nd Amendment is supposedly "nullified" by the 1st Clause, yet being part of the modern day equivalent of "the Press", I am sure he would say that the Clauses in the 1st Amendment are separate.
By his "logic" since the Government HAS made laws that are "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" religion, in regards to the State, then the other Clauses must be null and void..
One would also have to believe that the Founders were so stupid that they really meant "Right of the Militia to Keep and Bear Arms", not "Right of the People". The 2 different words were used in the 2 different clauses, for a reason.
It has been historically proven that the Founders did not feel the Bill of Rights GRANTED us rights, but merely Enumerated what they felt were pr-existing Rights. So much so that some of the Founders did not want the BoR even in the Constitution, because they felt that not only were those Rights so inherent to be obvious, but they also feared that those Rights would be cheapened by writing them down, and perhaps some day used against the People as the only existing rights, since those were the only ones listed.
The average response time of a 911 (emergency) telephone call is 23 minutes. The response time for my .357 magnum is 0.04 second. And it is extremely cost effective and economical.
"Rochester police say a grandfather shot and critically wounded his teenage granddaughter after mistaking her for an intruder.
Authorities say the man and his wife were asleep and awoke to a noise outside about 11 p.m. Monday, Dec. 10. The man grabbed his handgun and told his wife to call police as he went to investigate.
The grandfather saw a figure at the back door and fired at least two shots, Capt. Brian Winters said. He hit his 16-year-old granddaughter, who he thought was inside the house, once in the upper torso.
The teen had recently been living with her grandparents."
It is true that liberals have trouble handling firearms. The good news is this can usually be corrected with some range time. In the meantime, consider that more people die from abusing prescription medication than die from firearms. And bonus points if you avoid the typical ad hominem liberal response. Please try to avoid the Democrat party line responses, we grow weary of reading those. In the meantime, its in the US Constitution. Deal with it.
That is lovely: you mean he could have hit his daughter in the head with a bit more range time? Sir, you make me feel goed to be a liberal.
"It is true that liberals have trouble handling firearms...
... avoid the typical ad hominem liberal response...."
The irony is strong in this one.
If a liberal does not support ownership of firearms, then chances are good that the liberal has not had proper training in handling firearms, and would thus have trouble handling them. Nothing ad hominem there my friend :) Meanwhile, ponder this: per the FBI, more deaths occur from hammers and clubs than from rifles. So why don't we outlaw hammers?
It is very rare indeed when I come across an article so naive, so incorrect, so ignorant. Nearly every single sentence was wrong! This could not have been written by an American, I daresay it couldn't have even been written by a HUMAN, it was so bad! I don't often get to come across such literary diarrhea, bravo!
....yet you offer no counter arguments or examples, just insult the author and his supposed lack of patriotism and humanity, because apparently it is not humane to believe in regulating weapons that are consistently being used to commit mass murders. Oh wow, you've definitely convinced me! Bravo on your argumentative skills!
Right. Because to do so, since the entire article is wrong, would be to write an entire counter article. Frankly, the author is so off-base, even the effort to refute it would lend dignity to it, and it's not worthy of any. And assault weapons are not consistently being used to commit mass murders, media overreporting notwithstanding. Handguns and arson are used far more for the purpose, but everyone is on the assault weapons bandwagon to cut down on murders by a whopping, problem eliminating fraction of one percent. Once we get assault weapons out of the way, just 99%+ to go, now we're getting somewhere! Psh. It's liberal nonsense at it's finest. Get the FACTS, then spout your mouth.
When you have mass shootings happening in a span of less than two months from each other, then I'm sorry, the problem is becoming consistent. Media over reporting? Are you saying that these events are being exaggerated? I understand the argument that self defense gun use is being underreported and that honestly has to be looked into, but to say that MASS SHOOTINGS are being OVER REPORTED is quite frankly disturbing. BTW, why do you assume I'm advocating for a ban on assault weapons? I WISH we lived in a society where the gun culture wasn't so prevalent, but we don't, so banning any type of weapon will be highly difficult and won't result in any meaningful change. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look into actually ENFORCING current background check laws and closing glaring loopholes like the gun show one. It's really not that hard to keep these weapons from the hands of crazies, the problem is that people on both sides of the argument overreact and are quick to label the other as stupid and/or a brainwashed extremist. I'm a liberal, but I have a much more moderate view on the gun debate, just as I know that there are many conservatives with more moderate views than "YOU LIBS ARE STUPID GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE 2ND AMENDMENT ARGHHHH!"
Psssst those of us who are serious about the murder rate in this country want the handguns banned too. But this is America, we're only ready for baby-steps politically.
If it's so easy to refute the author, then by all means please do so, he/she is the one with an actually published article in a highly esteemed journal. You would be doing a disservice to us gullible readers by refusing to.
I've said it before, and I'll say it as many times as I have to to anyone who says you want a gun if there's a burglar around your house. I would trade you any gun (even a high caliber semiautomatic what-have-you) for a small, yappy dog, and I would be the safer one for it. Most burglars aren't sociopaths, and they don't want to burglarize a house where they'll be caught. A gun's no good to you until the burglar's inside the house, and certainly not good if he didn't wake you up. Guns aren't good for protecting anything and if anything only invite the burglar in for a needless confrontation.
A small yappy dog is good, a bigger one with a loud bark is better. Agree that the only thing gun ownership does for a homeowner is ensure that the burglar will also be armed.
To each his own. You trust your Pomeranian, I'll trust my Walther. That's the great thing about this country, we each have the right to choose. And it will stay that way, regardless of how many comments you make on foolish internet opinion pieces.
Please explain your logic here. Are burglars now also psychics, who magically know who is armed and who isn't?
Logically, one would think that if they did indeed know who was armed, they would avoid them.
Well since the newspapers are now publishing lists of handgun permit holders with their names and addresses, the criminals don't need to be psychic. Both the criminals who want to avoid getting shot, AND the criminals who want to steal guns when no one is home, can just read the paper to see which house they should break into.
Agreed. The point was more just to highlight the ridiculousness of the argument that a gun will make you safer, when even a small, yappy dog (which many people don't naturally associate with security) will work better.
Understood. Just trying to knock back a foolish argument that I hear repeated way too many times. The idea that somehow a gun is beneficial, never mind necessary, to personal security is, to me at least, utterly absurd. Pointing out that absurdity is important to me. However, of course you may maintain your own personal choice. The risks you take are your own (unless, of course, they aren't).
That's an extremely debatable opinion, that a dog is as effective as a weapon. What a dog is good for is warning you in time to get your gun out, and perhaps distracting the intruder so he can't shoot you while you're shooting him.
I was raised in a home full of guns, kids, dogs, and music. Myself and my eight siblings were familiar with guns from an early age, and taught their proper use. Several of them were kept loaded and easily accessible, because an unloaded gun is of no use to anyone. So what's absurd to me is the irrational fear that so many people display for an inanimate object, no doubt from a lack of exposure. When I was a kid the only comments that arose from a kid bringing his rifle to school was "how does it shoot?" and "Where ya goin' huntin' after school?"
"The idea that somehow a gun is beneficial, never mind necessary, to personal security is, to me at least, utterly absurd."
At least you recognize that as your opinion.
Too many people believe that their opinions should be law.
It is very debatable. I quite enjoy debate. This one is based on the concept of deterrence. However, your assumption that an encounter with a burglar by necessity of its existence must lead to confrontation, do not appear to understand that concept.
Good for you. However, you'll note that I never mentioned fearing guns, nor did I say anything in my post that implied it. If you're a dutiful and responsible gun owner, that's fine. But the security argument is ridiculous to me. I already explained the deterrence potential of a gun (not much), and there's also potential negative blowback to people living in the household. People can't commit suicide with a small yappy dog (which you are far more likely to do with a gun in the house), and that anyone who stole one wouldn't be able to go out and harm anyone else (except maybe for a nasty little bite that is pretty easily avoidable).
That's my mode of operation generally. Acknowledge my opinion as just that, but don't let answerable arguments stand unanswered.
I don't assume that every burglary will end in confrontation. But since I'm determined to defend my home, property and family as a matter of principle, if I'm home when they come, confrontation is virtually guaranteed. I'm not going to jump out a window and let some touchbucket rob my house.
Having guns might deter burglars who fear guns. Having guns might attract burglars who want guns. So either path might deter some criminals while attracting others.
Your assumption that a barking dog will deter them from continuing might be correct in some circumstances, maybe in a crowded apartment building, or a quiet neighborhood with nosey neighbors. But out in the country it might not stop them at all, especially if it's a small yappy rat-dog that can be eliminated with one good kick. A snarling Rotweiler's another matter, of course. But no dog is a match for a burglar with a gun.
My guns aren't for deterrence. I don't have a sticker on my door that says "Property Protected by Smith and Wesson". My guns are for those who are not deterred.
Thinking that the availability of a gun increases the odds of someone committing suicide sounds like fear to me. But use whichever word you like: concern, worry, any other synonym you choose, a gun is still an inanimate object that cannot harm anyone without a human causing it to do so. A lack of guns won't stop anyone from committing suicide.
I don't think the author understands the weapons that are being banned. What is a "military-caliber weapon"? Those same calibers are used in a number of weapons. Why is it important to ban a weapon with a pistol grip but allow an identical weapon that has a different grip?
These anti-gun people know absolutely nothing about firearms, that's why they're concerned with pistol grips and flash suppressors instead of relevant characteristics. As with all their political opinions, it is always image above substance. Like their proclaiming how they care about the poor yet give orders of magnitude less to charity than conservatives.
"Like their proclaiming how they care about the poor yet give orders of magnitude less to charity than conservatives."
Got a source for that? Because every study I've seen says that the amount of charitable giving is pretty much a dead heat between liberals and conservatives, but conservatives give, as you say, "orders of magnitude" more to religious groups. Did you mean "church" when you said "charity"?
Sure, the NYT:
Bleeding Heart Tightwads
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 20, 2008
This holiday season is a time to examine who's been naughty and who's been nice, but I'm unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.
Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.
Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, "Who Really Cares," cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.
Other research has reached similar conclusions. The "generosity index" from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.
The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.
"When I started doing research on charity," Mr. Brooks wrote, "I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views."
Something similar is true internationally. European countries seem to show more compassion than America in providing safety nets for the poor, and they give far more humanitarian foreign aid per capita than the United States does. But as individuals, Europeans are far less charitable than Americans.
Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of G.N.P., according to a terrific new book, "Philanthrocapitalism," by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent.
(Looking away from politics, there's evidence that one of the most generous groups in America is gays. Researchers believe that is because they are less likely to have rapacious heirs pushing to keep wealth in the family.)
When liberals see the data on giving, they tend to protest that conservatives look good only because they shower dollars on churches — that a fair amount of that money isn't helping the poor, but simply constructing lavish spires.
It's true that religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives.
According to Google's figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.
In any case, if conservative donations often end up building extravagant churches, liberal donations frequently sustain art museums, symphonies, schools and universities that cater to the well-off. (It's great to support the arts and education, but they're not the same as charity for the needy. And some research suggests that donations to education actually increase inequality because they go mostly to elite institutions attended by the wealthy.)
Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.
So, you've guessed it! This column is a transparent attempt this holiday season to shame liberals into being more charitable. Since I often scold Republicans for being callous in their policies toward the needy, it seems only fair to reproach Democrats for being cheap in their private donations. What I want for Christmas is a healthy competition between left and right to see who actually does more for the neediest.
Of course, given the economic pinch these days, charity isn't on the top of anyone's agenda. Yet the financial ability to contribute to charity, and the willingness to do so, are strikingly unrelated. Amazingly, the working poor, who have the least resources, somehow manage to be more generous as a percentage of income than the middle class.
So, even in tough times, there are ways to help. Come on liberals, redeem yourselves, and put your wallets where your hearts are.
A four-year-old editorial? Really? I'll see your opinion piece and raise you an actual piece of peer-reviewed scholarship:
Who Really Gives? Partisanship and Charitable Giving in the United States
Michele Margolis Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Political Science
Michael Sances Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Political Science
Charitable contributions are the lifeblood of many nonprofit organizations; however, little attention has been paid to how political attitudes affect donations. In this paper, we first show that conservatives and liberals are equally generous in their donation habits. This pattern holds at both the individual and state level, and contradicts the conventional wisdom that partisans differ in their generosity. Second, we show that while levels of giving are roughly equivalent, liberals are much more likely to donate to secular organizations, and conservatives are more likely to donate to religious causes, especially their own congregation. Finally, we examine the dynamic relationship between political control and individual partisanship. We find that charitable contributions fluctuate based on the political landscape: Democrats (Republicans) donate less money when a Republican (Democrat) occupies the White House. Conversely, having a co-partisan in the White House increases the average and total donations to nonprofits at the state level. In addition to furthering our understanding of partisan bias, our findings demonstrate that the results of a presidential election could have significant consequences for nonprofit organizations and the populations they serve.
But it was the NYT! That bastion of liberalism!
I think you'll find that in discussions with actual adults, citing serious sources over puff pieces will win you a lot more arguments than claims that your source is prone to be biased against your personal viewpoints.
We could, of course, talk about the fact that wealthy conservatives give to charity overwhelmingly for the tax deductions. Ari Fleischer just tweeted about how the tax code changes will mean that he gives less to charity this year.
Well if I cited any source that didn't fly the DNC flag from their roof you'd just say "fauxnewsblahblahblah", so I just picked a source that libs couldn't dismiss out of hand. It certainly isn't the only source out there that claims the same thing.
Anyway I'm in a discussion with liberals, so there are no adults upon whom to test your theory.
Ari Fleischer speaks for all conservatives, huh?
And the fact that you claim that it is a fact that wealthy conservatives only give for the tax deductions means I can safely ignore anything else you say, since you're not making serious comments.
So, the best answer to tyrants/invasion/unprovoked attack is what? Just not to try? Some of you folks are interesting. I do not hold it against anyone who curls into the fetal position and quits. Try not hold it against me that I prefer to go down swinging.
"the best answer to tyrants/invasion/unprovoked attack is what?"
The regular army.
Ask any professional soldier, in the unlikely event that N.Korea invades, whether they will welcome the help of camo-clad survivalists and overweight duck-hunters in their efforts to repel the enemy.
I expect they will regard the invader as less dangerous than their "allies".
Like the Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian armies did for their citizens?
Tell me, since hollow-point bullets are illegal for military use, who do you think that billion rounds the government just bought is intended for?
A lot of these "overweight duck hunters" whom you disparage were killing Nazis, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese before today's soldiers were a gleam in their daddies' eye. It's true, liberalism has watered down the self-reliance and toughness of this country to dangerous levels, but there are still enough of us left to get the job done.
I am a whole lot less concerned about North Korea than some mild disaster where FEMA decides to impose martial law. Tyrants do not have to speak another language or come from another country. Do I feel this is likely? I do not. I would rather have, and never need, than need once and not have.
I'm pretty sure that the people who killed Nazis, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese were part of the US military, not randomly organized militias.
And what job is that?
This notion always reminds me of the immortal quote of some arsenal owner in "Bowling for Columbine". So if you need all these weapons to protect yourself against a potential tyrannical government...
Michael Moore: What about nuclear weapons? Should you be able to have weapons-grade plutonium?
John Nichols: Well I think that oughta be restricted.
Michael Moore: Oh, so you do think there should be restrictions.
John Nichols: Well...there's wackos out there.
LOVE that line.
Way to miss the point. They ARE the militia now. Many of those overweight duck hunters have more combat experience than Fruit's troops that he thinks "will regard the invader as less dangerous than their "allies". As well as being well past the age where one feels the need to show one's machismo, and who also haven't been hyped-up by playing COD all night.
The job of defending ourselves, our families, and our country.
Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government..."
so go ahead and try to repeal the second amendment, but first ask the russians and our troops how "not effective" afghani insurgents are. Seriously I DARE you to try and disarm the law abiding gun owners of this country.
Just as long as the "solution" they seek does not infringe on the rights under the Second Amendment.
While the Heller case seemed to leave the door open for "reasonable" restrictions, we all know that the party in power tends to define reasonable.
But the Court did leave us with some guidance. From Justice Scalia's majority opinion:
Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844,849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.
So, for starters, an argument that the Second Amendment limits us to firearms in use in 1789 would not meet the reasonableness test.
To determine what is or is not reasonable regarding any Constitutional Right, prior case law would certainly be relevant. Prior to Heller, the only US Supreme Court case to deal with this issue was United States v. Miller decided in 1939. The issue in that case concerned the ownership and interstate transportation of a sawed-off shotgun and the restrictions imposed under the National Firearms Act. While the court did not get to the issue of whether the Second Amendment provided an individual right to keep and bear arms, it did provide some seemingly valuable guidance.
Unfortunately for Mr. Miller, the Court ruled against him. But their reasoning is enlightening:
"In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument."
Based on the language in Miller, if one owns a firearm that bears a reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, that firearm would certainly be protected by the Second Amendment. Like a rifle or handgun styled after those used in active military service.
Every adult able bodied citizen would be considered to be a member of the militia as that term is used in the Constitution. The last line of defense.
I have read and re-read the Second Amendment and the Constitution many, many times. And I have never seen a limitation on the right to bear arms related to hunting purposes only, nor have I found any commentary by the founding fathers expressing concern about repelling an invasion of ducks or other forms of wildlife.
And one more thought: Those that seek to restrict a Constitutional right should take heed, lest they invoke the "law of unintended consequences". No one right in the Bill of Rights is greater than the other, and any limitation, curtailment or revocation of any one right can be likewise imposed on any other right.
As the Second Amendment goes, so goes the Bill of Rights.
To all the dopes that think they can do what they want. Best read this last line. Then smell the coffee......
Yeah because no amendment has ever been repealed! Ever! Especially not the eighteenth! It would have been a disaster for democracy for us to modify the constitution to get rid of a bad policy!
The obvious problem with J. Scalia's "literalist" manner of interpreting the Constitution arises, precisely here, where he perverts a clear and direct statement of a right conferred on the States to a much broader, more diffuse and unbounded right conveyed to the average citizen, all because of his rightist ideology and his imperative to subserve that ideological purpose by denying the clear text of the Constitution, itself.
The text needs no interpretation where the words, themselves, are clear and readily understood. The 2nd Amendment conditions the private ownership of "arms" (meaning, in 18th century parlance, handguns, muskets, rifles and such other firearms as were known or readily foreseeable at that time) on these being held for the purpose of a "well-regulated militia". There is simply no other context in which any person may lay claim as a matter of right to the private ownership of any "arms".
J. Scalia wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He wants to take a literal interpretation of the US Constitution, just as it was written and understood at the time by those who wrote and agreed it, but only when this suits his personal ideology. At all other times, as with the 2nd Amendment, he proves himself all too ready to read into the Constitution any number of provisions, conditionals, exigencies, reasonable extensions and other perversions of the text as may be necessary to support his particular ideas.
Consistency in interpretation is certainly NOT one of J. Scalia's best traits. His interpretation of the 2nd Amendment will be overturned in due course by a later, more liberal and modernist Court, if the 2nd Amendment is not repealed and replaced in the meantime.
Cowcharge, I quite like your quote! But surely you must agree, if Yamamoto were contemplating an invasion today, he wouldn't say that. He would say "You cannot invade the mainland United States. They'll kick our butts before we get anywhere close!"
You and Cowherd share the same illogic. Any force which wished to invade the US today would require our surrender (including the surrender of the 300 million firearms circulating in the country) or would simply wipe us out from the air/from space, wherever we failed to timely turn them in.
The idea that the private possession and use of firearms protects anyone from murder, rape, pillage, civil insurrection or ultimate destruction is a Hollywood fantasy promulgated by watching too many episodes of Homeland, Mission Impossible or playing too many rounds of your favorite video game.
Time for you to learn something about foreign policy, military planning and the real reason that war is becoming obsolete as a tool of international discourse. Personal possession of firearms has absolutely NOTHING to do with it.
Not necessarily, not if they had prepared for war today as well as they did back then, and we were as unprepared today as we were back then. The Japanese military was a ferocious enemy.
Gosh it is hard to have an intelligent discussion here. I completely agree with "Personal possession of firearms has absolutely NOTHING to do with it" and didn't mean to say otherwise. Please read before rant.
Agreed, but I believe the right approach is to make sure we are never unprepared again. Lets put our faith in our strong military, still the strongest in the world, and ensure we provide funding to keep it that way. Then get rid of the guns inside the country since they wouldn't help anyway (as NdiliMfumu correctly but rudely points out).
First of all, wiping out a country from air or space is simply impractical. Second, they would have no way of knowing whether or not all guns were turned in.
Also, the idea that private possession and use of firearms protects from rape and other crimes is based upon the numerous cases of firearms being used to protect against criminals.
Anyone that thinks that guns inside a country would not protect against invaders has never studied history or never been to Iraq or Afghanistan.
And who exactly is there that could "simply wipe us out from the air/from space"? We couldn't do it to anyone else short of using nukes, and we have the strongest military on Earth. As history has proven more than once (to those who actually read any), you cannot win a war with air power alone. Anyway, the chance of there being anyone interested in invading us is next to zero. But if they tried they'd never have a chance.
Actually the media fails to cover this little tid bit of information, as it goes counter to the gun grab agenda. But a Liberal based review estimated that in 2011 civilian owned firearms thwarted crimes approximately 1.5 million times. The FBI estimated that number closer to 2 million times. How many more violent crimes would have happened is they were not repelled by a firearm?
NdiliMfumu you state: The idea that the private possession and use of firearms protects anyone from murder, rape, pillage, civil insurrection or ultimate destruction is a Hollywood fantasy promulgated by watching too many episodes of Homeland, Mission Impossible or playing too many rounds of your favorite video game.
You need to open your eyes and read. Out of the 2.5 million times a civilian gun is fired per year, only 130,000-150,000 is a criminal act. The rest are justified self defence, looks like you statement is flawed.
How logical is it to conveniently ignore the hundreds of cases of armed civilians stopping criminals? Two days after Newtown, a man in San Antonio shot and killed a man starting a shooting spree in a theatre. He killed two before he was stopped, instead of 20.
I'm honestly curious, what are more effective, the guns or the missiles employed by the insurgents in those countries?
"Two days after Newtown, a man in San Antonio shot and killed a man starting a shooting spree in a theatre. He killed two before he was stopped, instead of 20."
Funny, that wasn't blasted all over the major news networks for days.
"The idea that the private possession and use of firearms protects anyone from murder, rape, pillage, civil insurrection or ultimate destruction is a Hollywood fantasy promulgated by watching too many episodes of Homeland, Mission Impossible or playing too many rounds of your favorite video game."
The fact that you flaunt your ignorance for the world to see on this website is astounding and should be embarassing.
There's this thing, it's called "Google".
People who live in bubbles should use Google before they express their opinions to the world.
Yeah, real "funny", isn't it. The media is no longer the watchdog of politicians, they are the lapdogs.
Odd indeed, it looks like quite a story. But as the Snopes coverage points out, it's not big news when a big disaster doesn't happen.
The person who stopped the shooting wasn't a private citizen, or at least it was a little more complicated than that - she was an off-duty sheriff's deputy.
Quote "The idea that the private possession and use of firearms protects anyone from murder, rape, pillage, civil insurrection or ultimate destruction is a Hollywood fantasy promulgated by watching too many episodes of Homeland, Mission Impossible or playing too many rounds of your favorite video game." Are you on drugs or watching too much cnn? Every day there is protection from firearms in this country, we don't live in England....stop your foolish babble...
Firstly, show us where you found that statistic. Next, understand that the overweening majority of "gun shots" are those fired by licensed gun-owners on gun-ranges. That surely doesn't count.
What's important, here, is that using a gun against another person for any reason is far more deadly than, say, using a knife or a pair of fists, and the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF TARGETS ARE FAMILY MEMBERS, FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES of the gun owner.
While violent crime commited by unlicensed criminals using handguns, rifles and the rest is certainly a problem, this would NOT be the case WERE IT NOT FOR the existence of 300 million easily available firearms and the weapons for them in the US, today.
The Lanza case in CT is certainly on point: Mrs. Lanza was properly registered to own guns, but foolishly showed her mentally ill child where to find them, as well as how to shoot them. He took them, killed her and then slaughtered 26 other people, before killing himself. This is TYPICAL of gun crimes, in the sense that these deaths occurred first and foremost by the use of guns obtained by a family member and used first against another family member.
Flooding the country with guns is the problem. It comes from the gravely mistaken belief that giving everyone a gun makes us all safer, it clearly does NOT.
The 2nd Amendment deserves to be repealed and replaced with an unpdated policy of the kind I've set out, here. You have not posed any rational counterargument to those fundamental points, and your so-called "statistics" are quite suspect.
Show us the link to your stats, guy. As we know, quoting numbers out of context is a very easy way of distorting the truth. The Republicans did so with abandon during the recent election campaign, and gunslinging NRA members are quite fond of that, too.
Further, what's relevant is not the total burden of violent crime but the RATE per 100,000 population at which such crimes occur and, arguably, are mitigated by the victim by whatever response. The US is a vast country with 315 million inhabitants, but the crime rate, here, is lower than many places, even if millions of crimes are committed each year.
Finally, no matter whether a number of crimes are avoided or thwarted in action by an individual victim holding a gun, the public policy regarding gun ownership should be oriented to ensuring that ONLY those who MERIT owning a gun actually are permitted to own and use one. Clearly, putting guns (whether directly or INdirectly) into the hands of criminals and crazies is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG public policy.
When criminals, crazies and those empassioned sorts who run (temporarily) amok are deprived of the opportunity to lay their hands on guns, our society will be MUCH LESS VIOLENT, criminals will be MUCH LESS LIKELY TO CHOOSE TO COMMIT ANOTHER CRIME, and crazies will survive in their craziness, rather than shooting up the place like Mr. Lanza, did.
Got it?
@JMSZ: Clearly, you didn't study anything about statistics. Anecdotes of the kind that you propose as solid counterevidence to my many well-founded points merely show how baseless your own positions are. In point of fact, the number of victims of home invasions and armed robbery who are successfully able to interdict the crime and kill the criminal is VANISHINGLY SMALL in comparison with the number of violent crimes that are SUCCESSFULLY committed against those who DO have guns in their homes.
Google that, youself, before you speak on this issue again. The only one living in a bubble, here, are people like you who believe in such Hollywood Fantasies, who live by anecdote insteade of by science, and who envision that public policy should be a mere extension of whatever they would do for and by themselves, rather than what is good for the whole of the community.
@Stuffed: Clearly, you understand nothing about statistics or statistical inference. Anecdotes of the kind you propose (See Coward's postings, too) do NOT prove anything. The simple fact is that the overweening majority of gun violence is caused by family members upon other family members (such as the Lanza case, where a crazed son killed his mother with her own weapons, before going on to slaughter 26 other innocents). The fact that some lucky people are able to get off a shot and, so, defend themselves against an intruder IN NO WAY mitigates the proper conclusion that it is, in fact, the immense PROFUSION OF GUNS in America which is the ultimate source of the problem.
BUT FOR the 300 million firearms circulating in America, today, criminals and crazies would not be able to lay their hands on such weapons, gun violence would be an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE LESS COMMON in America (as it is, say, in Britain), and homeowners would be much more likely to leave their doors unlocked, rather than having to bolt themselves away in a panic room at night.
Get real. Take your foolish babble and smoke some more of it. It's obvious what drugs you've been doing.
See my other comments in this and related threads.
The issue is NOT the right to self-defense but, rather, the establishment of a constitutional right for EVERYONE to own and operate firearms.
Where anything is a matter of constitutional right in the US, that right cannot be limited in any way absent a showing of a CLEAR AND COMPELLING state interest. Obviously, when a person proves himself to be a criminal or, similarly, criminally insane, such a person has demonstrated a clear and compelling state interest in having his right to a gun fully and completely eliminated. So be it. No one questions this result.
The problem comes in the fact that the overweening majority of gun violence in the US is NOT caused by known criminals or the criminally insane. Adam Lanza's case is an excellent example of this: He was a "good boy", but ran amok, turned on his law-abiding mother, stole her guns, killed her and, then, 26 others before killing himself. His case is typical in the sense that he unleashed this torrent of violence without himself having had to buy a gun and submit himself to any supervision of its use, he committed his crimes first and foremost against a family member and, even so, with guns owned and operated by his family (mother). All of this is VERY TYPICAL of gun violence in America.
Your notion is that we should CONTINUE to permit the unbridled ownership of guns in America as a matter of constitutional right and despite the OVERWHELMING evidence that this is VERY BAD PUBLIC POLICY. You have no reasoned argument on which to stand.
Rather, we should repeal and replace the 2nd Amendment to make clear that private gun ownership (which I do advocate and should continue, mind you!) should be a PRIVILEGE and NOT A RIGHT OF CITIZENSHIP, it should be regulated by the States, it should be made rather difficult to obtain, including the requirement of individual licensure, responsibility and accountability, and those who maintain guns which are then stolen and misused in consequence of the negligent storage and handling of such guns by their owners (e.g., Mrs. Lanza) should certainly be held criminally negligent for whatever bad result occurs.
This change in policy would lead to a DRAMATIC REDUCTION in the number of guns and the amoung of ammunition in circulation in the US, and to an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE REDUCTION in the incidence of violent crime, death and maiming from gun shot, and all the attendant ills in our society.
You have no reasoned counterpoint to these facts. If you believe that you do, show your sources and your statistics, fully.
Drunk drivers kill more then firearms...are we so numb to the fact? Get a life...My job does drugs tests, how about your? I am a tax payer, not the 51% that has to have the gov pay their way, You? Its obvious where you obtain your facts.
What country are you from, you repeal the 2nd, and all the bill or rights go out the window, you can not be from the usa.....and you clearly do not understand the high courts ruling...
"I'm honestly curious, what are more effective, the guns or the missiles employed by the insurgents in those countries?"
The guns are much more widespread. Missiles are actually very rare. If all we had to deal with was missiles, we'd already be done. RPGs are more common, but are very inaccurate. The worst problem is actually IEDs, but they are often used to initiate an ambush. Yes, guns are being used very effectively by the insurgents.
I'll also point to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Yes, we did arm them with Stingers later in the game which is pretty much what sealed the deal. However, they were causing plenty of headaches long before we made that decision. In fact, had the Afghans not been doing as well as they had we would not have been willing to arm them with Stingers since that technology was a clear indicator of our involvement (and it could be captured and reverse-engineered).
"What's important, here, is that using a gun against another person for any reason is far more deadly than, say, using a knife or a pair of fists"
Well on the subject of an assault weapon ban, more people are killed by knives or bare hands than by all rifles (assault, hunting, whatever) combined.
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." Isoroku Yamamoto
Irrelevant poppycock. The article is about civil gun policy, not about whether the US would or could be successfully invaded. In today's world, an invading force would simply bomb the place to bit from the air. The fact that the citizens bore arms would be clearly irrelevant to whether they would also have to surrender those same arms to any invading force (they most certainly would) or be wiped away from the air where they stood, as were so many of Qaddafi's forces in Libya or Saddam's forces in Iraq, in their day.
What a pantload. You really should have some idea what you're talking about if you intend to make public comments without looking foolish. Japan did contemplate invasion, and our population being armed was one of the reasons they decided against it. And the only time a country has been bombed into submission was when we nuked Japan. We were expecting a million casualties if we had to invade, despite Japan's military having been decimated and their population being armed with pitchforks. So don't try and tell people that it would be easy to invade a country with an armed populace.
You clearly know nothing of military strategy or weaponry. As Cowcharge points out, we only bombed Japan into submission through nukes. Otherwise, bombing as a sole strategy of attack simply does not work.
Our air power did not end the insurgencies in Iraq or Afghanistan. It has not cured Syria's troubles.
I rather think that the reality of 5,000 miles of open ocean and Japan's rather meager transport fleet had more to do with heading off an invasion than any fear of Johnny Appleseed hiding behind a barn with his varmint-huntin' rifle.
I didn't say it was the only, or even the primary reason why they didn't attack. But it was a consideration.
Yep. There's an old military adage:
"Amateurs argue strategy. Professionals argue logistics."
Japan didn't invade the U.S. because it was too far (for them, at that time) to stretch supply lines. The California cowboys had nothing to do with it.
@Sean: Did you actually go to school, or are you fashioning your arguments merely from the backseat of the living room in which you find yourself??
You cannot validly compare apples and oranges, dearie. The world is a vastly different place since the time we dropped a few nukes on the Japanese.
As it was at that time, we had the option either of nuking them from the air or of directly invading Japan from the air and the sea. Had we not fully deployed nuclear weapons at the time, the Japanese would surely have hung on for many more months, even years, and many hundreds of thousands more lives would have been lost and billions more in treasure wasted in the effort. While nuking Japan was certainly a very sorry and sad thing to have had to do, ultimately, it also saved many, many lives and much treasure.
SINCE THEN, the idea of leading a large ground campaign for the purpose of subduing any foreign nation has largely been extinguished by the superiority of air power and missiles over every other means of warfare. This was clearly on display in the first Gulf War (hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers died in their bunkers in the sand under our missiles, with barely a shot fired against an American) and, again, when Bush 43's campaign of "shock and awe" was unleashed against Saddam. The Libyan action (at least from our perspective) was largely an air battle: No Western troops ever set foot in Libya, but Qaddafi's forces were brought to a sudden halt outside of Benghazi, hundreds of thousands of lives spared, and the dictator's ultimate defeat was set in motion.
NO ONE IN THE WORLD could successfully invade the United States by use of any traditional ground campaign, alone, and the thought that Americans could prevent such invasion through the personal and private ownership of 300 million rifles and handguns is madness. Rather, in order to subjugate the US, it would suffice to decimate our cities, our power plants, our ports, our intercontinental highways, railroads and transmission lines, to say nothing of our satellites, from the air. A successful invader would never have to set foot, here, to bring us crashing to our knees. All 300 million firearms, their billions of rounds of ammunition and their owners' pounding sand would be entirely for naught !!
This is what makes your incapacity to understand modern military strategy and tactic so obvious: Maintaining an armed citizenry adds nothing to the National Defense and merely costs lives and property by promoting the ready availability of weapons to criminals, crazies and those about to run amok. Time to repeal and replace the 2nd Amendment !!
Excellent article. The NRA types represent an extremist point of view, and they tend to want our society to devolve into a wild-west world full of gun-toting vigilante cowboys. The rest of America wants the country to be civilized.
That's utterly ridiculous. No one wants "our society to devolve into a wild-west world full of gun-toting vigilante cowboys." We just want to retain the right to defend ourselves.
Nice strawman. No one has suggested a wild-west nation of vigilantes. And the NRA has a higher approval rating than Congress or the President. I think your "rest of America" is smaller than you think.
Isn't that what the cowboys wanted with their guns?
Yes, to defend themselves and their families. Since like today, the lawmen were too sparse and too late to protect them. And unlike back then, nowadays the murderers are usually released from prison at some point to kill again.
The author's basic statements are false, so why believe anything else he writes.
Quote from his article: "Obviously, Joseph Story was wrong. Militia are hopelessly inadequate as a means of defending a free country. While "people's war" militia-based strategies have been employed to wear down invading armies in numerous countries over the past century, not one of those countries (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, southern Lebanon, etc) is "free". This is not an accident of history. Freedom is the product of orderly democratic governance and the rule of law."
A glaring case in point that the author fails to mention is the Republic of Ireland, which is free specifically due to the success of "people's war" against a foreign force. While he may not like or recognize this fact, as he doesn't like the 2nd Amendment (or the fact it reserves a right of the people), it is true.
The author can attempt to repeal the 2nd Amendment, as he mentions toward the end of his article, but based on his demonstrated poor command of facts and logic, he probably won't get very far with that endeavor. The closing line of the article about human rights and the founding fathers sums up both the author's arrogance and stupidity quite succinctly.
The Irish War of Independence is not a fundamentally sound counterexample to the author's points, any more so than the US Revolutionary War or any such war of self-determination. Why?
Because the 2nd Amendment does NOT empower the People to conduct a war against tyranny or against any government of the US or the States. Rather, it ONLY empowers the STATES to maintain their own militias and, in so doing, permits everyday citizens to own and bear arms. The further interpretation by the current SCOTUS that the 2nd Amendment further empowers individual Americans to own and bear arms as a matter of constitutional right for their own self-defense (this being an interpretation I steadfastly disagree with), nonetheless, does NOTHING to support your counterexample, as even that interpretation DOES NOT AUTHORIZE owing weapons for the purpose of resisting tyranny or the intrusion of the government at any level into one's private life.
Your thinking on these issues is manifestly paranoid, antisocial and unsupported by any modern court judgments. You really need to go back to school on this one, Mac.
It clearly empowers the people, and by extension the states, by the use of "the people". If it were only a state right, that could have been clearly stated, but instead it was worded as an individual right (and rightly so since militias were formed hastily to meet an immediate threat, people had to be able to bring their own weapons and they had to already be familiar with the use of those weapons).
@Sean: It took about 230 years for the SCOTUS to agree with your interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. For all the 230 years prior to DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, the SCOTUS had always agreed that the 2nd Amendment speaks only to a constitutional right of the States to maintain a militia and, consequent to that right, of a state's citizens to bear arms.
SCOTUS is dominated today on this point by right-wing ideologues. But not for long. It's quite likely that, within the term of Mr. Obama and his likely Democratic successor, most of the ancient right-wingers on the Court (Scalia and Thomas, in particular) will be removed and replaced by more liberal thinkers who do not view private gun ownership for personal self-defense as inherent and implicit in the 2nd Amendment.
Even without this salutary turn of events, however, the 2nd Amendment clearly was written as a statement of an 18th century public policy, one which sorely needs updating. It should be repealed and replaced with a more modern policy, as I've written in many other places in this commentary.
The court also once ruled that all of the rights granted by the Constitution only limited the federal government but state governments could trample those rights all they wanted.
Words from our Founding Fathers on; the right of keeping and bearing arms:
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people.... To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.... " --George Mason
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. " --Thomas Jefferson
"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion . . . in private self-defense. " --John Adams
"The Constitution s hall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. " --Samuel Adams
" . . arms discourage and keep invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. ... Horrid mischief would ensue were [the law-abiding] deprived of the use of them. " --Thomas Paine
"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...[where] the government s are afraid to trust the people with arms." --James Madison
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike...how to use them." --Richard Henry Lee
I think Hamilton considered standing armies more dangerous than banks.
So I would assume you are in favor of drafting all able bodied citizens into local militia and disbanding the armed forces.
You will note that the Founding Fathers also insisted on the charms of SLAVERY, reserving the vote to PROPERTIED WHITE MEN, and SUBJUGATING WOMEN to the will of their husbands.
Not everything said by the Founding Fathers is valuable and worthy in today's America, merely because it was spoken by one of them 223 years ago. This is why the US Supreme Court has repeatedly held that precedent is NOT controlling, merely guiding. Were it any other way, society would never be able to advance.
Again, what was good and proper public policy in the domain of gun control for the late 18th century is surely OBSOLETE, TODAY. Time to repeal and replace the 2nd Amendment.
I would agree. Perhaps, nowadays, there are alternatives to possessing arms. After all, today, there are alternatives to possessing and using horses to go from place to place. Today, we have learned that things like tobacco are harmful. Perhaps times have changed.
Spend two weeks hiking through the Rocky Mountains and the wildlife you see may change your mind about possessing arms being an antiquated notion. Sometimes I can't believe how quickly city dwellers forget about the parts of our country where it's easier to find predatory animals than it is to get a cell signal.
you need an assault weapon to kill squirrels?
Assault rifles have been illegal since 1937. An AR-15 is a glorified .22 dressed up to play army, nothing more. And no, squirrels don't typically attack humans. Grizzly bears, wolves, mountain lions and other animals do however, which you'd know if you ever took your nose out of your Iphone and looked around.
Slavery was wrong then and they all knew it. It was only for political reasons that it wasn't abolished in 1790. and it's a false argument anyway, because the two issues have nothing to do with each other. Sure, there were laws made back then that are irrelevant today. The Second Amendment isn't one of them.
Elly, do you know what an assault weapon is? It's a collection of features that have nothing to do with function or caliber. So yes, you have have an "assault weapon" that is pretty much just for shooting varmints (including squirrels). You can have a different "assault weapon" that you use to hunt deer. You can have a different "assault weapon" that you use for home defense. And you can have a weapon that does not qualify as an "assault weapon" but you use it to kill lots of people.
A pistol grip won't turn a .22 into a .50. It doesn't turn a hunting rifle into a machine gun. It's just a grip. A collapsing buttstock doesn't turn a gun into a killing machine. A barrel shroud doesn't negate a gun's use for hunting. None of these things change the basic, fundamental design of a firearm, yet they are the things that get singled out because they look vaguely military-esque.
those animals are sacred.
I am impressed with your knowledge!
Right up until they start chewing your legs off.
An AR-15 is a glorified .22 dressed up to play army
You could also characterize an M-16 as a "glorified .22", since it also uses .22 caliber ammunition. And the first three people killed in Viet Nam by M-16s were hit in the head, the chest, and . . . the big toe respectively. Those bullets carried some nasty hydraulic shock abilities, for all that they were merely .22 caliber.
Give me a .30-06 any day.
It does make a bigger bang. But dead is dead, regardless.
The writer of this story is an idiot and does not have a clue what they are talking about. As late as the 1990s, it was revealed after the fall of the USSR, that the main reason the Soviets did not invade the US was not because of our nuclear arms; but by the fact so many Americans owned guns. Every scenario their military played out; showed a great loss of Russian lives. The 2nd Amendment IS just as powerful today as it was 200 years ago to detour our enimies; both foreign and domestic. The day we give it up; is the day we give up our freedom!
If you're going to say crazy things like that, at least cite an incredible source. If I want to have a good laugh, where should I look? Stormfront? Jewish Defense League? The Onion? Please help.
The only idiot, here, is the one who penned the above blathering paranoid poppycock under an annonymous pseudonym, but not the author of TE's very appropros article.
The Soviets did not ever invade the US because they knew and AGREED TO our policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). They knew that all their major cities would be wiped from the face of the Earth by our nuclear weapons, if they tried such a stupid thing.
Being a child of the 50s and having been sentient, educated, informed and alive throughout the Cold War, I can assure you of the truth of the above.
The article makes the point very clearly that leaving the people in the possession of firearms as a matter of fundamental right causes far more harm than it prevents, surely has no place in the modern defense of the Nation, and constitutes merely a sop to paranoid personalities intent on arming every squirrel and other nut-case against the objects of their paranoid affections. The 2nd Amendment is BAD, BAD, BAD public policy and needs sorely to be repealed and replaced.
No, the Soviets did not believe in MAD. The idea that nuclear weapons were an end in and of itself was an American/Western idea. The Soviets planned to survive a nuclear attack and continue the war afterwards. They developed post-nuclear contingencies and implemented nuclear survival drills before we did. The effectiveness is debatable, and this mindset may very well have been the result of their lag behind us in the nuclear arms race, but nonetheless it remains true.
Since you disparage pseudonyms, "NdiliMfumu" is your real name?
Being a "child of the 50s" is hardly enough to "assure us" of anything to do with how the Russians thought about invasion, unless you were Stalin's child playing under his desk during Politburo meetings. You have no authority here, so you might consider using some references from people whose opinions hold some weight. As it is, you just make yourself look more foolish with every post.
The article states a personal opinion that the 2nd Amendment is outdated, that's all. It makes no points, and it's an incorrect opinion.
Congratulations, you win the award for most stupid and uninformed comment of this thread... and trust me, you have some mighty fine competition.
@Cow(ard): You certainly have no respect for those who lived through the Cold War. This demonstrates that you know nothing about it and are a child of a much later generation. My authority on the points I have made resulting from my own personal experience of history (as well as a lifetime of study) are undiminished by your ad hominems.
Arguing with you about the 2nd Amendment, like so many Tea Partiers, is like arguing with a wooden post: Very dull and ultimately useless. Try responding on point, for a change, to any of my very substantive points.
@Sean re MAD: Au contraire, they certainly did "believe" in MAD, as they clearly signed numerous treaties with us (beginning with the START I Treaty) which relied on mutually assured destruction. Whether they also went about the business of preparing themselves, otherwise, to withstand a nuclear attack (as was permitted by treaty) in no way serves to vitiate my point, here. The original comments are blatant, paranoid poppycock.
You should add a class in deduction to that remedial reading comprehension class (you're building up quite a class load here). I certainly did live through it, bomb shelter and all, with parents who both served in WW2. "Living through it" was not much of a burden, and being born at a certain time is certainly no reason on its own to demand respect. If your real name is Francis Gary Powers then that's another matter.
Since the Soviets weren't known for publishing their internal politics, I submit again that your age lends no credibility to your assertion that you know what the Russians were thinking. Your say-so makes you no expert.
The Soviets signed numerous treaties because it was in their direct benefit to do so. The treaties did not rely on MAD, they relied on the acknowledgement that constantly trying to outgun each other was a waste of both our economies. However, our economy and industry could win a numbers game so of course it made sense for them to sign.
We saw nukes as an endgame, they saw nukes as the opening of hostilities. Not only did they prepare to survive a nuclear attack, they made plans to continue and win the war after a nuclear attack.
Thoughts and opinions on America's kinetic brand of politics. The blog is named after Alexis de Tocqueville's study of American politics and society
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