by Doctor Science
In the wake of the Aurora movie massacre, I noticed a couple of things about the firearms market in the US:
1. The proportion of American households owning a gun has been dropping since its 1977 high, and is especially low among people under 30:
2. Firearms are extremely durable goods:
While the automotive industry also has to compete against its own products over on the Used Car lot, no other industry—not even the jewelry business—has products with such longevity as the gun business.
A shrinking customer base for very durable products should mean that the market is contracting, right?
Yet,
3. Since Obama was nominated, firearm sales have surged to record levels:
The last time American firearms sales spiked like this (1994), Uncle Billy’s Boys were about to implement the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Also worth noting: during the period when the AWB was in effect, long gun sales far outpaced handgun sales. In the last three years, the gap between sales of the two genres has narrowed considerably. Thanks to liberalized concealed carry laws, it looks like handguns will outperform long guns (sales wise) in 2010—for the first time since these records were collated by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. No wonder Ruger’s stock is on a high.
What this all says to me is that the gun market is being driven by buyers who are stockpiling weapons. They probably don’t represent a very large proportion of all gun owners, but they are a large — and, I suspect, growing — proportion of all gun *sales*.
The last time we all rode the mass murder train I attributed gun-love to macho fantasy. Sprog the Elder suggests that it may be a type of obsessive-compulsive hoarding.
What people in the industry say is that it’s paranoia:
Within the firearms industry there is a quiet adage that defies the logic of politics. “Guns sell better when a Democrat is in office.”
It is a well-known fact that Republicans support the firearms industry, while Democrats legislate and limit it. So why would firearms sell better under a Democrat (if the adage is true)? The theory is that when Democrats hold the power, gun owners are scared for their Second Amendment Rights, and go out and buy more firearms, worried that Big Brother is about to take them all away. When Republicans hold more power, no one worries too much.
In reality-land, we know that no elected Democrat, anywhere, is planning “to take them all away”. The Earth is not flat, evolution by natural selection occurs, water is wet, Obama is a native-born US citizen, and Democrats do not believe all firearms should be confiscated. It should be obvious that this is paranoid delusion.
But this paranoid delusion is currently the NRA’s stock in trade. For instance, last year Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the NRA, explained:
how by not pushing for new gun laws, Obama actually revealed that he is engaged in a secret plan to “lull gun owners to sleep” so that they would not vote him out of office in 2012. LaPierre claimed that Obama’s “strategy” is to “get re-elected” and then “erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights.”
A similar paranoid delusion can be seen in the Fast and Furious scandal. Fox News, in particular, promoted the idea that
the ATF purposely let the guns go to the bad guys in Mexico so that, after the ensuing bloodbath, the feds could justify a crackdown on assault weapons and gun shows.
There are already similar conspiracy theories cropping up about the Aurora massacre.
So gun owners are stockpiling *more* guns, because they’re afraid they might lose their guns (or the ability to buy guns they “need” in the future) — a delusional fear constantly stoked by the NRA and its fellow-travelers. This is, IMHO, the chief marketing method the firearms industry is using for domestic non-professional sales, and it is doing a *bang-up* job. Seriously, who could have imagined that they could drive sales so high for the shrinking customer base of a durable product?
One consequence, I deduce, is that there is a growing number of firearms owners who are building *arsenals*: collections of weapons and ammunition that have no sane, legal use. And as you might expect, when normal, neurotypical people are encouraged to be paranoid and delusional, non-neurotypical actually insane people are going to be in the mix as well.
In the case of James Holmes, my amateur judgment agrees with that of clinical psychologist Michael Shaw:
I’m guessing we’ll discover that, within the past year or so, he either developed into a full-blown schizophrenic or that he suffers from acute depression with psychotic features.
The point is that Holmes’ behavior didn’t *stand out* enough: there are too many gun owners who are acting like he did — buying multiple weapons, mounds of ammo, and tactical armor for no sane reason.
Since the firearms industry is successfully using the NRA to gin up the home arsenal market, I don’t know where a realistic path to reasonable gun control might be. My Senators can propose things that’ll never get anywhere, Obama can come out against casual use of AK-47s, but unless the industry decides that paranoid-delusional marketing just isn’t worth their while nothing will change. The NRA wasn’t always in the business of making gun owners crazy with fear, but that’s what it does now, and it works. If by “works” you mean “makes a lot of money for some people, and results in several random slaughters a year.” And since gun sales increase after a slaughter, from a financial POV it works *really, really well*. It’s probably their fiduciary duty.
My personal feeling of cynical, raging bitterness is well-expressed by Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker:
The reality is simple: every country struggles with madmen and ideologues with guns, and every country—Canada, Norway, Britain—has had a gun massacre once, or twice. Then people act to stop them, and they do—as over the past few years has happened in Australia. Only in America are gun massacres of this kind routine, expectable, and certain to continue.
…
Every country has, along with its core civilities and traditions, some kind of inner madness, a belief so irrational that even death and destruction cannot alter it. In Europe not long ago it was the belief that “honor” of the nation was so important that any insult to it had to be avenged by millions of lives. In America, it has been, for so long now, the belief that guns designed to kill people indifferently and in great numbers can be widely available and not have it end with people being killed, indifferently and in great numbers. The argument has gotten dully repetitive: How does one argue with someone convinced that the routine massacre of our children is the price we must pay for our freedom to have guns, or rather to have guns that make us feel free?
As for longevity, the very strict German gun laws have a loophole that exempts firearms made and acquired before 1871. One can own those legally without a permit (provided they were in the family and not sold once since the founding of the Prussian led German Empire).
—
I’d have some modest but highly indecent propopsals that would violate the posting rules, so I’ll keep them to myself.
—
Btw, can anyone here tell me, whether rifle grenades are covered by the current 2nd amendment jurisprudence (early models were known when the US were founded, so there would be even an originalist argument)?
“In reality-land, we know that no elected Democrat, anywhere, is planning “to take them all away”.”
At this point, given the political realities, it’s more like a wistful day-dream, rather than a “plan”. Like a retired SS guard dreaming of genocide… It’s not paranoid to think he’d like to turn you into a lamp shade, perhaps paranoid to think he’s got a shot at it. But why hasn’t he got a shot at it? Only because you won’t let him. If you ever relaxed for too long, who knows? You might end up wrapped around a light bulb.
“Never again” is not the same as paranoia. A close relative, perhaps, but not the same. And eternal vigilance IS the price of liberty.
And the kind of efforts you deny were taking place, within the memory of way too many gun owners for your denials to have any effect.
Oh, and he didn’t have “tactical armor”. He had a “tactical vest“. Which is to say, a shirt with a lot of pockets, and the all the bullet stopping potential of a regular t-shirt.
Finally, “One consequence, I deduce, is that there is a growing number of firearms owners who are building *arsenals*: collections of weapons and ammunition that have no sane, legal use.”
This is the kind of “reasoning”, and I use the word loosely, that sets the teeth of gun owners on edge. Millions of guns people like you insist have no sane, legal use, and yet, somehow, defying all laws of nature, virtually none of their owners put them to insane, illegal uses.
The purpose here? To inspire paranoia on YOUR side, of course. To imply that people whose behavior, aside from owning more guns than you like, is perfectly innocuous, are threats to the community. To suggest that it’s perfectly reasonable to bring the jack booted heel of the government down on people who are minding their own business.
To make “take them all away” a little bit more possible.
So you’re doing your part in keeping up the paranoia. Colt thanks you.
Nice start of the conversation. Must be something of a record around here for the first ‘discussing gun control is equal to advocating for the Holocaust’ insinuation to occur in the second (non-spam) post already. Couldn’t it be Stalin for a change?
—
I think, I’ll get out of this before I go ALL CAPS again and start to quote actual German laws and regulations in the (non-NRA edited) original to no effect whatsoever.
See you next thread.
To suggest that it’s perfectly reasonable to bring the jack booted heel of the government down on people who are minding their own business.
paranoia: you’re dripping with it.
At this point, given the political realities, it’s more like a wistful day-dream, rather than a “plan”. Like a retired SS guard dreaming of genocide
And to think, sometimes we treat you seriously and try to discuss things with you.
I really can’t draw the conclusion you draw. One chart talks about percentages, the other about absolute numbers of guns. The text and chart shows a change in preference from long guns to hand guns. So less assault weapons?
In a country of 365M people the chart tracks about 3M guns per annum(so 1% of people or maybe 2% of those over 20?) could account for all of the sales with no one buying 2 in any year. That, of course, doesn’t count the new popularity of ranges where they provide guns to people who enjoy target shooting, so they have to buy some.
I just can’t get to a large number of fanatical hoarders from the information provided.
And I don’t own a gun, no guns were allowed in my house, even toy ones, until my children were old enough to recognize the difference, then they got to have toy guns as long as they didn’t remotely resemble a real one.
But the facts just don’t support the histrionics. Except that more people probably did buy guns when Obama was elected because he made it clear he would outlaw them given the opportunity. Or maybe other people heard “clinging to their guns and religion” differently.
Well, think about it. Pointing out the use of paranoia in gun marketing and its apparent success as evidenced by increased gun sales makes liberals feel paranoid, thereby making them more likely to advocate the confiscation of guns, thereby validating the fears of those who buy guns out of paranoia.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Furthermore, since your paranoia makes them paranoid, they’re more likely to be out to get you, because you’re paranoid, which means you aren’t paranoid at all, since you have good reason to believe they’re out to get you.
But if you aren’t paranoid, they have nothing to be paranoid about, so they might not really be out to get you, which makes you paranoid for thinking they are out to get you.
Oh, crap. Catch-22 infinite loop. Way to go, Brett. You crashed the thread.
he made it clear he would outlaw them given the opportunity
What is the basis for this claim, Marty?
After watching things like Waco play out, Holocaust analogies seem kind of natural, but I suppose nobody likes being on the recieving end of a Holocaust analogy. Being cast as Bull Connor doesn’t sit well, either, I expect. Though it’s natural when you’re opposing enforcement of a civil liberty.
It is a cycle of paranoia, on both sides, and I’d say the way out is to just Drop The Topic. STFU about it for a decade or two. Crime rates are dropping, mass murders are rare, would probably be rarer still if they weren’t a sure route to fame.
Just drop it, and let the next generation revisit the topic after tempers have settled, and memories of past attacks on this liberty have faded. My side will stop being suspicious of your side, if your side stops trying to use everything that comes along as an excuse to pass new legislation.
Aren’t there any other urgent causes that need addressing, that you have to spend your time hitting this hot button?
Well, on the basis of the “clinging to their guns and religion” remark, which led directly to the banning of all religious practice and the closing and raising of all churches and synagogues in the United States in 2009, owners of 100-bullet barrel clips can’t be too careful.
Mosques, natch, have proliferated deterred.
Regarding lampshades:
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1930650/pg1
Ack, comment eaten. Just as well. It’s like talking to a (Godwinized) wall.
More lampshades:
http://www.prothink.org/2012/07/22/aurora-colorado-movie-theatre-shooter-james-holmes-was-most-certainly-jewish/
If Holmes is Jewish, though he strikes me as more of a Presbyterian, maybe he confused the people in that particular theater (five miles from my apartment; Columbine High School was one mile from my former house and a one-half mile from my son’s elementary school) with the hopeless dim bulbs in the these two links, who were plotting to turn him into a lampshade and melt down the gold in his teeth, though it’s more likely to be porcelain these days, no?
Thus the justifiable stockpiling of guns and ammo and the preventative action.
It’s just like the Warsaw Ghetto. Isn’t it?
The re-creation of which is the ultimate goal of sneaky Obama’s nefarious plans, which we would take action against, were we not lulled to sleep.
There’s a lampshade alright, and someone’s wearing it on his head.
Last one to leave, turn out the light.
…mass murders are rare, would probably be rarer still if they weren’t a sure route to fame.
I have to think that mass murders would be a sure route to fame (or infamy) whether gun control was a controversial topic or not. It might change the nature of some of the conversations in the aftermath of a mass murder, but I think, well, all those dead people would still attract the same amount of attention.
Now, if we all were simply to STFU about guns, would the cycle (or circle jerk) of paranoia end? Probably, yes. Would that have much of an effect on the number of mass murders or crime rates? Who knows? Probably not.
So how would it help victims of mass murders and people who live in places where rates of gun violence are high (and maybe getting higher, despite the overall rates going down)? You can argue that stricter gun laws wouldn’t help, either, but then you wouldn’t be shutting TFU about it anymore than anyone else.
That, and no one’s going to STFU about it in these United States of America, so why bother considering that as an option?
Godwin is dead.
If your going to the movies tonight, you might want to take one of these with you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnrfq7nix-I
Drum (barrel) clip … which until the other day I thought was a short video regarding Keith Moon’s drum fills:
You never know when a wag in the back row is going stand up and start chucking spears over the heads of the moviegoers with an atlatl.
If you don’t mind, I don’t feel like shutting up and waiting to discuss arms control in the U.S. Everyone was told to shut up after the Giffords shooting too, but I noticed we were never given the green light by the usual suspects to resume discussion.
It always “Shh!” with Doctor Evil. Zip it.
What, we need a waiting period for discussion of these matters, but no waiting period to purchase weapons at gun shows?
Have things settled down sufficiently yet to permit First Amendment commentary on the Second Amendment?
I can very well hold the position that weapons for hunting and maybe even (on a good day) concealed carry pistols are good to go (leaving aside the fact that politically, banning them would be impossible), but that drum clips, as one example, should be banned.
Or, are they already, and the shooters (law-abiding right up until they are not; being law-abiding doesn’t seem to be a predictor of whether a guy’s going to shoot up a theater or not) are going to get them anyway, so what’s the use?
In which case, the Federal Government should call in an airstrike on the factories that manufacture this lunacy, with appropriate leafleting beforehand to give the workers and neighbors time to evacuate.
Wait, but then I’d become paranoid and need to start stockpiling portable personal anti-aircraft weaponry.
Concealed carry permits issued last weekend in Colorado doubled to 3000 from the 1500 issued the previous weekend, before the shooting.
O.K. but I notice none of the 1500 ever seem to be on hand when the shooting starts.
Of course, the crossfire in a dark crowded theater simultaneous with the conflagration on the screen and the Dolby surround sound could severely strain the ducking reflex.
My strategy vis a vis movie-going is the $50 five-gallon armored popcorn container which protects my lap and chest, although is it difficult to see the screen. I set up the 120-oz Pepsis to either side in the cup holders, like sentries in watchtowers and I’m good to go.
A happy camper in Texas (I found out last night that Texans appreciate some good fois gras, so the State might be salvagable … though I hear tell the wine produced in Texas tastes like urine %-) ) the other day accidentally let slip his only-partially concealed carry pistol in the grocery store checkout line and the thing went off, and the bullet bounced off his a@s (he was a hard-a@s), and the shards ricocheted around only to wound a baby and its mother nearby.
But don’t talk about it yet.
In fact, wait long enough for the next incidence of blind screaming all-American insanity to occur until you open your mouths, you tasteless people, have you no respect for the dead?
It won’t be long.
“Aren’t there any other urgent causes that need addressing, that you have to spend your time hitting this hot button? ”
Yeah, would you keep it down with the gunfire and the tear gas. We’re trying to watch the movie here!
I propose that healthcare in the U.S. ….
Shh! Unconstitutional!
Well then global warming’ link to weather events and drought on the ground may be …
Llalaalalala! I said zip it. Would you like a little zip from my zipple inside my tactical vest and necktie set?
I did this routine over at TIO the other day, and it was predictive.
“you’re”, not “your, and vice versa, wherever it applies.
Holmes could just as well have murdered 12 and wounded scores of others in that theater by stabbing them with a butter knife.
Still, the folks with permits to carry concealed butter knifes stay home and watch Netflix, being paranoid that someone’s going to steal their home theaters and ban butter.
When they take away our butter knives, only take away restaurants will have butter.
When they take away our guns, only criminals on the bug screen will have guns, and we can watch the movie in peace.
Have a good weekend, friends.
Stay in and keep all of this under your hat until the dust settles.
“bug screen”
I like it.
Leave it.
Well, if you don’t want to rationally discuss a topic, shutting up probably is the best contribution you can make, as Countme-In demonstrates.
Let us discuss this rationally: We live in a technological society, where individuals have easy access to large quantities of energy, to technology beyond what their efforts alone could produce. This has numerous positive consequences for our lives, it has one rather unfortunate consequence: Anybody, if they are so inclined, is capable of causing death on a large scale.
Forget butter knives or guns. He could have driven an SUV through a crowd, and racked up as big of a death toll. As a man of more than moderate intellect, the ways he could have dealt death are numerous. Bombs, poison, fire…
Squeezing jello, that’s all you’re proposing. Short of a return to the cave, the capacity to deal out death is unavoidable.
So, why not attack the real problem, that he was apparently an undiagnosed nutcase? That does appear to have been the root cause here, not the means he used, available to millions who conspicuously do not use it for mass murder.
As long as he was free on the street, he could have killed, even if you denied every non-murderous person in the world a gun. Institutionalized or effectively treated, he’s harmless.
So why aren’t we discussing mental health, instead of gun control? Because you want an excuse to deny guns to people who aren’t going to go on rampages, I would have to assume…
I believe in what the NRA says: Guns don’t kill people, gun owners kill people.
Because libertarians like you also don’t want to allow for adequate public funding for mental health treatment because it’s YOUR TAX MONEY AND NOT YOUR PROBLEM WAAAAAAAAAAH, that’s why.
Also, the dude who led with the Holocaust and got more offensive from there might not want to try to be the poster boy for rational discussion.
The Holocaust happened. That means it’s going to come up in even rational discussions occasionally.
I’d say this discussion started out failing a rather low bar, given the declaration that articles owned by millions of people have no sane or legal use.
So why aren’t we discussing mental health, instead of gun control?
WTF?
discuss away.
I’d say this discussion started out failing a rather low bar, given the declaration that articles owned by millions of people have no sane or legal use.
Or when you mischaracterized what declaration was actually made – that it appears that some subset of gun owners are amassing arsenals with no sane or legal use. The arsenals in question may be sanely and/or legally useless because of the quantity or quality of the articles constituting them, but that doesn’t mean that no gun has a sane or legal use. And whether or not someone has actually used them insanely or illegally doesn’t change that.
But the point was that people who amass such arsenals appear to be a bit paranoid about highly unlikely events, which doesn’t at all apply to a guy with a few hunting rifles for shooting deer or someone who owns a few handguns and enjoys target shooting as a hobby.
(Maybe I should change my handle to “Captain Obvious.”)
WTF?
You probably don’t know about all of Brett’s comments on mental health on this thread, which were deleted by the administrators of the site because such comments are forbidden.
Well, at least I suspect that’s what happened. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.
Mr. Bellmore, you say you want to discuss this rationally. I’ll take you at your word, despite my misgivings based on your posts. So, let’s start from the other angle – why, despite the wildly relaxed gun-ownership laws in the US, is the death toll by gunshot, and the incidence of ‘massacres’ (multiple, apparently random victims) so extraordinarily high here? Where else in the world do you see any numbers even approaching this level? Is there any world-wide correlation (screw causation at this point) between ownership laws and these numbers?
Incidentally, why is it that the NRA allows the government to restrict gun ownership in _clear defiance_ of the 2nd Amendment? After all, I may not own a variety of ‘arms’, and some ‘arms’ I may only own after going through a very onerous and uncertain application effort. All I hear is this constant drumbeat that right to bear arms must not be infringed [upon], and yet it already is, has been and presumably will continue to be. If the existing infringements are acceptable, why not others? Where does the line get drawn, and by whom? Is it based on public safety? Surely not. Is it based on desperate testosterone fantasies of men uncertain about their masculinity? Perish the thought! Please enlighten me – what are your considered opinions?
Brett’s comments so far have been a very useful illustration of how paranoid delusion has soaked into gun culture. The idea that gun control led to the Holocaust is an urban legend, aka a lie. One might even call it a Big Lie.
CCDG wrote:
I sure *did* hear it differently, and I think your leap from “clinging” to “outlaw them” is another illustration of what I mean by “paranoid” and “delusional”.
Obama was talking about people who try to make themselves feel better by clinging to security blankets, instead of working to change their situation or the things that are actually hurting them. Twisting that into a plan to “outlaw guns” is willful mis-reading: paranoid. illogical. delusional.
I think it would be best to stick with correction of misconceptions and the like. Psychoanalysis at a distance should be considered off-limits, IMHO.
I think that’s a bit much, I can assure you it is neither illogical nor delusional. Nor a willful misreading of the implications of the statement Jumping all the way to outlawing guns period is only a little paranoid due to the unlikelihood.(?)
Your facts still don’t support your conclusion all name calling aside.
“Psychoanalysis at a distance should be considered off-limits, IMHO”
Some professionals disagree, though I wonder if the psychiatrist in question sits facing away from the patient on the other end of SKYPE.
http://mentalhealth.about.com/library/weekly/aa120798.htm
Doctor, I’m concerned about my brother. He thinks he’s a chicken.
Dr. Quackenschvantz: That’s a common and harmless delusion. Why does it worry you?
Because he also carries an AK-47 with a drum clip around the hen house.
Dr. Q: Why don’t you turn him in?
Well, I could use the protection. Also, shut up.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/26/nugent-doubles-down-claims-aurora-shooter-could/187343
I propose a federal mandate that mentally ill individuals who stockpile weaponry and ammo also be forced to carry a watermelon at all times, the better to improve the aim of tough guys.
If you’re Vince Foster, make like a cantaloup.
It’s always melons with these guys.
Ted Nugent and Glenn Beck lament that they weren’t in the theater that sad day.
I’m sorry they weren’t there too.
Call me crazy, but I think Glenn Beck is a chicken.
I’m sorry I wasn’t in the theater the day Nugent stalked around stage with a machine gun on either hip and threatened HRC and BHO to “suck on these, motherf*ckers!”.
I would have had maybe just a few paranoid seconds to squeeze a few jello shots off.
Brett, keep track of your hat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9OUIk4Oaq4&feature=fvsr
work watchable and listenable.
In fact, invite everyone from the cubicles to watch too and then take the rest of the day off.
“So, let’s start from the other angle – why, despite the wildly relaxed gun-ownership laws in the US, is the death toll by gunshot, and the incidence of ‘massacres’ (multiple, apparently random victims) so extraordinarily high here?”
So, why does the death toll by gun-shot, if it’s supposedly driven by said “wildly relaxed” gun ownership laws, not more visibly correlate with those laws? Why do we have states with relaxed laws and low death rates, strict laws and high death rates? Why do the murder rates vary by several orders of magnitude between locations with the same gun laws?
And, what makes you think the US has a particular problem with mass killings? Just because we have, in some parts of the country, a problem with shootings, and a mass shooting occurs here every few years?
Maybe you want to find some statistics on this particular problem before assuming it’s worse here?
And, what makes you think the US has a particular problem with mass killings?
all the dead people
…and all the killers
But other than that, let’s wait until the dust settles and all of the conclusions get laid end to end, so we won’t be surprised.
he made it clear he would outlaw them given the opportunity. Or maybe other people heard “clinging to their guns and religion” differently.
If it is logical to infer that Obama meant “I’m planning on confiscating private guns” when he talked about people clinging to guns and religion, isn’t it just as logical to infer that Obama plans on eliminating religious practice in the US? If that is not a rational inference, why is it rational to infer that Obama plans on confiscating all guns?
So, CCDG, do you believe that Obama is planning on eliminating all religious practice in the US? If not, why not?
If I had 20 minutes to do it (instead of the 2 minutes I really had), I could write more words with a quill and an ink well than I could type out on a keyboard. You know, because 20 minutes to just too much time for keyboard use, but just the right amount of time for using a quill and ink well. Or something.
The Nuge is supposedly one of the few 70’s rock stars that didn’t use drugs. A lot of good that did him.
http://www.naturalnews.com/036536_James_Holmes_shooting_false_flag.html
hat tip Mother Jones
Tom Tomorrow often has useful and amusing things to say, including about this issue. It’s from the Gabby Gifford massacre, but these things do tend to run together in one’s mind.
http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j244/ColoradoGuy/TomTomorrowGuns.jpg
(You’ll have to copy and paste the url because I can’t get the link to work.)
Plans to or given the real opportunity would? I would guess yes on the second. For both. Anyone who can express such disdain for them so casually is quite suspect in my book.
delusion and paranoia and guns. what a great political movement!
A certain amount of paranoia is as American as apple pie, which is why I have a taste tester standing by when I’m in the mood for pie, but what I like is how America can leverage paranoia with the big political talk radio bucks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMv7XvOYPLs&feature=related
Allow me to engage my paranoia. The Colorado shooting was brought to you by Sturm and Ruger and other gun manufacturers, given the sales pop over the last couple of years and their fast and furious gun-running in the U.S.
hat tip ABL
Anyone who can express such disdain for them so casually is quite suspect in my book.
Er…where is the disdain? If I say, “miserable people often eat ice cream to feel better”, would you assume that I will eliminate all the ice cream in the world as soon as I get the opportunity?
The mass shooting thing is really a red herring. The numbers are tiny. It’s a tragedy, of course, but the real worry is the overall rate of violent assault and how guns play into that.
I’m not for banning guns. Really, I’m not. However, I cannot for the life of me understand how limits on, say, magazine size or requiring background checks and some training are liberty-destroying jackbooted fascism.
Brett: why not fully automatic weapons? Why not RPGs? Shoulder-launched surface-to-air missles?
Where can the line be drawn?
What objective information we have indicates that Obama is a religious person.
No lunatic carrying a pair of muskets and a beltful of flintlock pistols was ever likely to take out more than 2 or 3 people before being rushed and overwhelmed. The invention of repeating pistols and rifles 150 years ago changed that.
The dangerousness of firearms is based on three things: (1) rate of fire; (2) concealability; and (3) ammunition capacity. Let’s see if we can come to some reasonable common ground here.
(1) Rate of Fire: Under current law, automatic-fire weapons are illegal for civilian use, with exceptions not worth talking about. Anybody aganst that? Nothing more than that is feasible. Semi-automatic fire (one pull of trigger, one round fired, no working a bolt, pump, lever, or hammer for the next shot) is a technology more than a hundred years old with obvious utility, and I can’t see any support for anything that would restrict civilians to bolt action, lever action, or pump action rifles and shotguns, or single-action pistols. (I know, Old Slabsides, the 1911 “automatic” pistol is technically single-action, but if carried “cocked and locked” it is functionally indistinguishable from a double-action.)
(2) Concealability: Any objection to barrel-length restrictions and folding-stock restrictions on long guns for civilian use? (Let me add here that restrictions on things like bayonet lugs and flash suppressors, though they have no legitimate civilian use, are silly. Are we really worried that thugs will slap bayonets on their daddies’s WWI or WWII surplus rifles, often used unmodified as hunting guns, and lead bayonet charges?)Handguns are, pretty much by definition, concealable, and I don’t know how you would regulate that short of outright bans, which few support.
(3) Ammunition capacity: Can we agree that 100-round drum magazines have no legitimate civilian use and ought not to be available? In civilian self-defense situations, you almost never see a firefight for which large ammunition capacities are relevant. Usually the job gets done (or it doesn’t get done at all) either by brandishing the gun without firing a shot, or by putting a round or two — or maybe three — into or near the attacker. Six-shooters and 7+1 shot Army issue pistols have been around for over a century, and aren’t going anywhere. Although in principle I could support magazine limits, once you get past those numbers, the choice among feasible alternatives for handguns is essentially arbitrary. (I often suspected that the 10-round limit in the now-lapsed federal law was a sop to Colt Industries, competing with 13-14-shot 9mm. pistols from Europe.) We’ve probably hit the limit for ammo capacity in pistols without extended magazines (which sort of defeats the prurpose of a handgun), and I don’t see any value in fighting over 10 v. 12 v. 14. As for long guns, why extended magazines at all?
That brings us to background checks, training requirements (at least as rigorous as those required to drive a car), registration, and insurance. Can we work something out here?
“Plans to or given the real opportunity would? I would guess yes on the second. For both. Anyone who can express such disdain for them so casually is quite suspect in my book.”
Yes, and everybody complains about the weather but they never do anything about it.
Man, Dobe, and I thought I, Maynard, was the far-out one.
I think you misheard the President’s words. I guess he gets no credit for subtlety.
Listen to the tape again. I don’t think he said “They’d kill US if they could”, with the emphasis on “US”, which would imply intent on the part of the President to take action of some kind.
I think he said “They’d kill us if they could”, which is merely an accurate observation, to my mind, by a guy who noticed some fairly heavy gunning up among the usual suspects coincident and follwing the election of the first black liberal President, without any noticeable inclination on his part to do anything about it.
Although I admit to stockpiling broccoli after BUSH I threatened with obvious disdain to ban the bitter vegetable.
I figured I could sell it later into a captive market but now Judge Scalia wants to put the kibosh on that.
“So, why does the death toll by gun-shot, if it’s supposedly driven by said “wildly relaxed” gun ownership laws, not more visibly correlate with those laws?”
There is, in fact, a statistically significant correlation.
Anyone making either end of that argument (Brett, looking at you, here) should have cites. I mean, “in fact” sort of states outright that there’s data to support it. Why not point to that data?
If you regularly go to the firing range, buying a couple thousand rounds in bulk actually makes sense. I am told you can go through that much in a couple of weekends.
If the Aurora killer was wearing only plate holders, its only because he didn’t bother buying the armor plates since best I can tell they’re easily bought over the internet.
Short of banning all guns, AFAIK something no one credible advocates, I’m not sure there’s a gun law that can stop mass shootings. Generally these guys have no criminal or mental health record as their first criminal act is the mass shooting. Without a record there’s no reason to not sell them a gun.
That said, there definitely are ways to mitigate the damage done by these bozos. Magazine size limits for a start; while 1 is too small I’d definitely say 100 is too large. Restricting body armor seems like a good idea, Beefing up funding for mental health services sounds like a good idea too. This is not an exclusive list of ideas of course.
“That brings us to background checks, training requirements (at least as rigorous as those required to drive a car), registration, and insurance. Can we work something out here?”
Not if your starting point here is treating an explicitly guaranteed civil liberty like a mere privilege.
So you support a constitutional amendment explicitly limiting gun ownership rights so that we can enact a sensible policy, Brett?
“Not if your starting point here is treating an explicitly guaranteed civil liberty like a mere privilege.”
The second amendment protects the right of people to keep and bear arms (I’ll leave aside the issue of what the “well regulated militia part means). I think a key issue for most people is what “arms” means. The right to have a fully automatic weapon, for example, is already limited. As many posters have pointed out upthread, assault weapons and large magazines can legitimately be limited in the same way. The issue to me is the right to bear which arms?
No, I severely disagree with you about what constitutes “sensible” policy.
As I’ve repeatedly said, the dude could have hopped into an SUV, and racked up the same death toll by driving through a crowd. Might even have found it easier! He wouldn’t have had to park and walk into the theater, and getting the SUV would have been easier.
Why didn’t he? I suppose because Hollywood doesn’t endlessly spin off movies glorifying killing people with cars.
Doesn’t matter, he could have. So why endlessly obsess about his means, when the problem was his end?
“That brings us to background checks, training requirements (at least as rigorous as those required to drive a car), registration, and insurance.”
That’s what I was responding to.
To respond to you, the 2nd amendment is supposed to put American citizens at parity with American soldiers. To guarantee Americans “Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier”, in the words of Tench Coxe.
He could have driven an SUV through a crowd, and racked up as big of a death toll.
Brett, there is not doubt that this is true. So why is it that we have so many more cases of individuals deliberately using guns to kill lots of people than we have of individuals deliberately using SUVs to do it? There must be something behind so consistent a selection.
I have my own theories, of course. But I’d be really interested in your take on why this is so.
P.S. I’m not finding “blame Hollywood” particularly convincing.
But I realize you just sort of tossed that off. Surely you have a more solid reason than that.
I see no answer to the questions about fully automatic machine guns, rockets, missles, etc. Those are “every terrible implement of the soldier.” So are high explosives, artillery pieces and fully operational main battle tanks for that matter (though expense would limit the last two).
Where is the line for you, Brett, and why?
Then the soldiers who bought it in the theater were vastly outgunned.
Who were the smart guys who told them to leave their firepower at the base?
They ought to have rolled up to the theater in a convoy with air cover and swept the joint with grenades and mortar fire before approaching the popcorn stand, or in the sailors’ case, arrived in a carrier task force.
Whaddaya mean you’re out of Skittles? Geez, first there are no chemical weapons in Iraq and now this. Can somebody pu-lllease get some decent intelligence?
“Static …. Roger, snackboydown, the target is out of Skittles -static- awaiting orders .. over …
Holmes’ firepower was indeed “tremendous and irresistible”.
Mission accomplished.
And given Coxe’s dictum, the kid should have forgone any thought of an SUV, if that was a tactic he considered and rejected, and gone directly to a tank.
Let’s come at it another way, then.
Disarm the military and other government paramilitary units, including the FBI.
Then a slingshot will do ya in a pinch.
Or were you depending on them for protecting property rights.
Hell of a bind it’s put us in, that Constitution.
Regarding violence in movies, you may have a point, though I notice the weapons used in the movie the screen didn’t actually hurt anyone, or maybe they jammed.
Solution: Less violence and more sex, and then we’d have guys lubed up and ready for action down at the local 16-plex, sans murder.
More fun, less death.
Self-inflicted wounds, maybe, like Fred Willard, but that was a victimless crime, the poor sod.
I can do this all day.
Keep providing the material, though a guy’s gotta eat at some point, and I’m hungry, what about you?
What were Tench Coxe’s views regarding fractional banking, the I-PAD, and the quality of the weaponry available to the American Indian tribes to fend off the U.S. Cavalry, since he studied history all the way up to 3000 A.D.?
Was he up on the Higgs boson since he possesseds 20/20 malice aforesight?
However, just to show how open-minded I am about this subject and given to turning on a dime, I think the voters disenfranchised by Governor Corbett and his cronies in the Pennsylvania Statehouse ought to show up at the latter’s homes with all of the terrible implements they can muster, because I have no doubt Corbett would be happy to do a Kent State on the swarthy, liberal citizenry using the Pennsylvania National Guard.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/07/26/making-it-up-as-they-go-along-2/
“I have my own theories, of course. But I’d be really interested in your take on why this is so.”
I expressed my theory: Hollywood endlessly glorifies shooting people. The music industry has made celebrities of hoods. Our mass media are full of images of people shooting people.
The dude is now a celebrity. Shooting people got him the fame he probably craved. Would running people over have accomplished it? Hard to say, the occasional vehicular homicide doesn’t get pushed so hard by the media, no political salience.
And to point out it IS political salience driving this, look at reportage of incidents where somebody uses a gun to save lives. Or rather, non-reportage… Doesn’t deliver the “right” message, reporting on positive uses of guns.
Why obesess about his means? Because there is no reason why it should be legal for a private party to have the means he had. Saying that he could have used an SUV instead (which is not in a practical sense very realistic) dodges the issue: why is the means he used legal when there is not other purpose for a private person to have access to those means except to do what he did?
Cars are for transportation. The huge amount of ammo he bought was for killing large numbers of people.
Brett, how can you disagree with me about what constitutes sensible policy when I haven’t proposed a policy? Beyond that, do you have a sensible policy of your own in mind, or do you think it’s okay for people to have unfettered access to whatever manner of personal weaponry they desire?
And why are you so hung up on those who lose it and gun down a bunch of random strangers, as though this is the only problem with gun possession? There are plenty of crimes committed with guns, including murders, of an entirely different nature than random mass shootings. I don’t think I should have to tell you that random mass killings constitute a small percentage of crimes committed with guns, even if you limit it to murders. (And we can leave aside accidents for the moment.)
At any rate, do you think there could be any sort of legislation that might reduce the number of people killed or injured by guns, leaving aside for the sake of argument the current language in the US Constitution?
Well done, Doc. Perhaps there is another industry that employs the same marketing model?
As for gun control: Liberals must arm.
“Saying that he could have used an SUV instead (which is not in a practical sense very realistic)”
Oh, really? I invite you to go stand in front of a moving SUV, and demonstrate how it leaves you intact as it bounces off you. No, killing mass numbers of people by the simple expedient of driving a car through a crowd is entirely “practical”, it’s been done multiple times. (I could provide many examples, just don’t want to trigger the spam filter.) Doesn’t get a lot of press coverage when it happens, compared to shooting people, perhaps because few people in the media want cars banned.
What would have stopped him? Couldn’t get over the curb? Can’t find locales where large numbers of people congregate within reach of cars? The first body would bring the car to a stop? Tell me, since you’re so sure about this, why it’s not very realistic. (Even though it happens, and most people have the means readily at hand.)
“Brett, how can you disagree with me about what constitutes sensible policy when I haven’t proposed a policy?”
Because you’ve proposed amending the Constitution, and I believe the current one represents sensible policy.
“There are plenty of crimes committed with guns, including murders, of an entirely different nature than random mass shootings. I don’t think I should have to tell you that random mass killings constitute a small percentage of crimes committed with guns, even if you limit it to murders.”
And people who commit crimes with guns represent a tiny fraction of people who own those guns. I am generally opposed to laws which impact enormous numbers of people per actual problematic incident averted, and even more opposed to laws which in practice can’t actually avert the incidents, because gun control laws are about as effective at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, as drug laws are at keeping drugs out of the hands of users.
All gun control laws manage to do is alter the ratio of gun ownership between criminals and the law abiding in an unfavorable direction, making criminals more secure. They have practically no effect on the ability of criminals to arm themselves.
It’s all pain, and no gain, IOW. Unless you’re irrationally opposed to gun ownership by the decent and law abiding, leading you to put it all on the gain side.
Still nothing about where the line can be drawn. Automatic weapons (yes, no?, why?), RPGs (yes/no, why), shoulder-launched surface to air missles (yes, no, why)?
This is not an unreasonable question, Brett. Yet you keep ducking it. Why?
As for your media theory, I don’t think it checks out. I happen to agree that our movies & TV are terribly violent and that this is bad. But I think that’s the symptom, not the disease. The violence came first, then the entertainment, in other words.
Because you’ve proposed amending the Constitution, and I believe the current one represents sensible policy.
The second amendment isn’t a policy, but a statement of general principle. Amending the constitution isn’t a policy, either. We have existing gun laws, which do constitute policy. Do you agree with all of them, since they’ve thus far been allowed to stand as being constitutional?
I am generally opposed to laws which impact enormous numbers of people per actual problematic incident averted, and even more opposed to laws which in practice can’t actually avert the incidents, because gun control laws are about as effective at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, as drug laws are at keeping drugs out of the hands of users.
Do you think more people would do heroin if you could walk into CVS and buy it over the counter? Do you think fewer people would take percocet if it were banned? Well, never mind that. It’s probably not relevant.
So you believe there should be no restrictions on gun ownership whatsoever, as a practical matter of effectiveness, even without the second amendment? Is that it?
i’d probably be OK with regulating access and ownership of guns as strictly as we regulate access and ownership of SUVs.
All gun control laws manage to do is alter the ratio of gun ownership between criminals and the law abiding in an unfavorable direction, making criminals more secure.
sheer nonsense.
stricter gun access laws could have stopped Psycho Sideshow Bob from ever becoming a criminal – since, you know, he wasn’t a criminal until the moment he walked into that theater.
I’m working on an updated version of the board game “Clue” to reflect weaponry absolutism.
Colonel Mustard is in the billiard room with the gatling gun and a glass of sherry, struggling with his tactical cummerbund.
Mrs. Peacock is in the breezeway behind the wheel of the biggest SUV in the world.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+biggest+suv+in+the+world&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=dJgSUNDyBYno9ASM9YDQAQ&ved=0CIcBELAE&biw=800&bih=461
Professor Plum is in the kitchen testing the Brushed Stainless Prep 10 Food Processor with a carrot to prepare for his next victim.
Miss Scarlet is sitting in the conservatory lifting one cheek at intervals and issuing forth with absolutely deadly killer farts.
The butler is greeting Inspector Poncybritches, who is waving a single shot pistol around, at the front door and explaining: “Really, Inspector, you don’t expect us to be fooled by that thing do you. Be a good fella and just draw your chalk outline around the entire house and be done with it.”
I was in Colorado yesterday (where the company was more than agreeable) and missed the early stages of this.
1. Line drawing–I’ve done this before: “To KEEP and BEAR arms”, when written referred to a weapon that could be carried by one person and fired once with a single trigger pull. That’s where I would draw the line. Portable, one trigger pull, one shot. No grenades, missiles, F-16’s.
2. Would Obama and Democrats severely restrict gun sales and ownership if politically feasible? Sure, in a heart beat. He and they won’t because it’s political suicide, and not for any other reason. They say otherwise, but they don’t mean it. Kind of like Obama saying he believed marriage was between a man and a woman. Sure, that’s what he believed.
3. Paranoid gun owners? Maybe, some. In the early Clinton years, the first round of actual limitations on single trigger pull, single shot firearms was passed. The effect: the firearms industry did huge volumes of business before the law came into effect. I bought a dozen pistols myself, mostly for resale. One of my firearms clients had the best year, sales-wise, in company history as a result of that round of legislation (feel good legislation is often perverse: as a part of the anti-drunk driving campaign, many states, Texas included, passed a law making it illegal to serve a drunk. What happens when you quit serving a drunk? He/she hops in the car and drives to the next bar. Result? You’ve put a drunk on the road.)
Back then, it wasn’t paranoia that drove gun sales, it was reality. That was the first move toward true gun control. It was real and people reacted.
Which is not to say the NRA isn’t above waving the bloody shirt to raise funds and energize its base. Everyone plays hot button politics these days.
4. Assault-style weapons? I have friends who own these. I get it, but it’s not my deal. They lack the accuracy of a scoped-hunting rifle and I’ve never had the need to lay down a field of fire even at a rifle range. The analogy is a fast car or motorcycle. It’s fun, apparently, to fire off a bunch of shots at a target. There are competitions where this is precisely the goal. I’ve known Class II (or is it Class III) firearms dealers who collected functioning machine guns. Odd guys, everyone of them, but not a risk to the public or anyone else.
5. Owning large numbers of guns = paranoia? Ok, I was paranoid at one time, apparently, but have out-grown it. In the late 90’s, my gun collection (rifles, pistols and shotguns–mostly shotguns) was at or above 60. I hunted avidly then and would often shoot a dozen different rifles, pistols and shotguns over a single three day weekend. Now I golf and my gun collection is down to a dozen or so and I’ve used only a couple of shotguns sporadically the last 5 years. If I have a disorder, it’s OCD–whatever I do, I do a lot.
6. Self defense? When I was twelve and taking care of my younger brother and sister (at night, parents were out), someone kicked and banged on our back door. Our dogs when nuts in a way I’d never seen before. I loaded my single shot 20 gauge, scared out of my mind, while my brother called a neighbor. Whatever was going on that night, if it had been something really awful, I had a weapon, it was the right weapon for the situation, I knew how to use it and we were better off with it than without it.
Assault weapons are sh*tty home defense weapons. Shotguns or pistols are the ticket. The need comes up very rarely, but when it does, there is no substitute for a gun.
7. The 2nd Amendment–fortunately, has been construed to mean what I’ve always thought it said, that the right to keep and bear is a personal and not a collective right. Many on the left would have it otherwise, which is in keeping with my general view that that quarter of the left doesn’t think much of the constitution when it gets in the way of preferred policy solutions. I am with Brett on this, up to a point. The 2nd Amendment is not a constitutional guarantee that every citizen can match the military weapon-for-weapon.
8. The gun control debate–both sides are right. The ready availability of firearms includes ready availability to mass murderers. The flip side–the vast majority, millions and millions of adult Americans, own and use guns legally and responsibly. The practical side: the genie is out of the bottle. The number of guns in circulation is so large, not a damn thing can or should be done about it. It’s life in America.
the left doesn’t think much of the constitution when it gets in the way of preferred policy solutions
many on the left think the Constitution doesn’t say what you think it says. that doesn’t mean they don’t think much of the Constitution, they just think you’re wrong about what it says.
and many would be happy to change the Constitution to accommodate their particular policy preferences. but again, that’s different from not thinking much of it.
but, i suppose your fantasy left is probably easier to defeat in the little skirmishes you set it to.
1. Line drawing–I’ve done this before: “To KEEP and BEAR arms”, when written referred to a weapon that could be carried by one person and fired once with a single trigger pull. That’s where I would draw the line. Portable, one trigger pull, one shot. No grenades, missiles, F-16’s.
(…)
7. The 2nd Amendment–fortunately, has been construed to mean what I’ve always thought it said, that the right to keep and bear is a personal and not a collective right.
As someone who could easily be characterized as being on “the left,” I’d like to express my agreement on these interpretations, leaving aside the practical matter of the genie being out bottle expressed later in your comment.
Welcome back MckT. You’ve been missed.
“I am with Brett on this, up to a point.”
Pretty much everyone here is.
Sussing his precise demarcation point is the elusive game afoot.
We’ve flushed out intimations of limits on movie genres, but that’s neither a trophy nor a substantive meal.
I once brained a rattlesnake with a three iron on a golf course.
No, I didn’t.
But I’ve laid down a field of fire on the golf course with a series of unlimited rapid fire mulligans, so I’m not above stretching the rules, but I look around sheepishly when I kick the golf ball out of the rough, being paranoid that I’m going to be caught out.
On my rare golf outings, I stick a baseball bat in my bag and when my aim is off with the clubs and mass murder is right around the corner, I’ve been known to throw the golf ball up and whack it straight towards the green with a Louisville Slugger.
Any weapon in a pinch.
Sussing his precise demarcation point is the elusive game afoot.
I sometimes question my own sanity, given my efforts at such. Should I really care? Might I spend this time reading a good book, playing the guitar, exercising or, heck, working?
the left doesn’t think much of the constitution when it gets in the way of preferred policy solutions
You’ve edited my qualifiers.
Welcome back MckT. You’ve been missed.
Thanks. Been out and about.
I sometimes question my own sanity, given my efforts at such. Should I really care?
Yes, you should. I often want to know what limits lefties would put on X or Y because it helps define the debate.
Brett, it’s a fair question: where is the line, if there is a line, on what weapons a private citizen might keep and bear?
Objection, asked and answered. He’s answered in other forums, too. Every American should have access to anything a US foot soldier might carry on his person into the field, including grenades.
“Brett, it’s a fair question: where is the line, if there is a line, on what weapons a private citizen might keep and bear?”
As in most purely political negotiations this question is never answered by either side. The line is never where either side would like so any discussion of moving it gets the circular answers, or the extreme positioning.
Sure, it’s a great question. But any move to say “well guns are basically ok within limits” smashes the emotional lever for the left and any move to say “yes it’s obvious some significant limits are ok” does the same to the right.
Any hint of compromise gets interpreted as capitulation to the “logic” of the others argument.
So we get endless negotiation FUD.
Phil: Objection, asked and answered.
Brett: To respond to you, the 2nd amendment is supposed to put American citizens at parity with American soldiers. To guarantee Americans “Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier”, in the words of Tench Coxe.
This isn’t a line, or even an answer. It’s a vague allusion that avoids the question.
Soldiers have M-1 Tanks. How about citizens? Tactical nukes? Gas? Bunker busters? There’s a line out there somewhere, even if both soldiers and civilians are on the same side of it.
Yes, he’s answered in a forum where the theoretical is the hill we die on.
But I’ll bet you that if he’s walking through the parking lot at the local 8-plex with his family, licking his chops in anticipation of the latest 3-D extravaganza of violence and he see’s a guy in a tactical vest with a couple of wicked looking killing machines hotfooting it to the ticket counter, Brett’s dialing the government for back-up on his cell phone.
The 121 SUVs in arrayed in the parking lot like a phalanx of murderous potentiality, on the other hand, don’t phase him.
“But I’ll bet you that if he’s walking through the parking lot at the local 8-plex with his family, licking his chops in anticipation of the latest 3-D extravaganza of violence and he see’s a guy in a tactical vest with a couple of wicked looking killing machines hotfooting it to the ticket counter, Brett’s dialing the government for back-up on his cell phone.”
You’d lose that bet. I grew up going to science fiction conventions where people carried naked blades a yard long, and have mourned the cultural changes that ended that. I’m comfortable with open carry of firearms. I may have irrational fears, but they’re not yours.
I am comfortable with the knowledge that those about me are capable of killing me a hundred different ways, if they should chose to do so, but that they’re extremely unlikely to chose to do so. You’re apparently either comfortable with 99 of the hundred, or in denial about it.
Or, who knows, maybe you spend your days shivering in fear…
This isn’t a line, or even an answer.
Not only that, but it’s only a response, AFAICT, to the question of how he interprets the 2nd amendment. One could agree with his interpretation and still think it doesn’t allow for effective policy, which is why I asked him if he thought there was any potential policy that would be effective in reducing gun violence, putting aside the current language of the 2nd amendment, or allowing for further amending the constitution to accommodate such policy.
These are two separate, if related, questions – How do you interpret the constitution? and – What policy do you think would be effective, if any (constitutional considerations aside)?
So far, it seems Brett’s answers are: The constitution guarantees a free-for-all regarding personal arsenals and a free-for-all regarding personal arsenals is the only possible effective policy, anyway.
Perhaps he’d like to offer corrections on those points in the event that I’m wrong about his positions.
Or, who knows, maybe you spend your days shivering in fear…
I don’t personally, but there are people who do (perhaps not literally) for good reason, because they live or work in dangerous places, dangerous in no small part because of gun violence. But fnck them, right?
Sure, it’s a great question. But any move to say “well guns are basically ok within limits” smashes the emotional lever for the left and any move to say “yes it’s obvious some significant limits are ok” does the same to the right.
Fair point. It’s hard to get more than general agreement with this or that premise. I’ve asked, for example, for a left’ish consensus on the highest marginal rate that should be allowed. The response is pretty much in line with Brett’s, which I take to mean ‘some number less than 100%’.
Still, to stay on topic, saying ‘anything a soldier can carry’ implies that the purpose of the 2nd A is to put civilians on an equal firepower footing with the military. If that is the case, then either I can have an arsenal of tactical nukes and an aircraft carrier or the interpretation is wrong.
The 2nd A is a bit of an historical accident. The ‘well regulated militia’ language injects ambiguity. I think I have a decent sense of the drafter’s general intent, which included a personal right, but the larger purpose of the 2nd A has been rendered historically moot–secession was tried once and it isn’t going to happen again and we’ve put paid to Indian raids, so no need to call out the militia on that account. There just isn’t much call these days for a local defense force to act before the feds can arrive.
Now, with that said, in some quarters on the right, the ‘well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State’ has as its subtext the right to rebel or to secede. That’s quite a reach.
I’m comfortable with open carry of firearms.
Brett, can you give us the line? Is there a line? Can I own a nuke?
Are you comfortable with just anyone owning and openly carrying a nuke?
Thanks.
“If that is the case, then either I can have an arsenal of tactical nukes and an aircraft carrier or the interpretation is wrong.”
Or maybe the average soldier carries a select fire rifle, but not a tactical nuke.
“That brings us to background checks, training requirements (at least as rigorous as those required to drive a car), registration, and insurance. Can we work something out here?”
Not if your starting point here is treating an explicitly guaranteed civil liberty like a mere privilege.
I have an explicitly guaranteed right to free speech, but I can be required, sometimes, to get a permit to exercise it. That doesn’t make it a mere privilege. If you don’t actually want to have a good-faith discussion of these topics, or if you think that stating your actual position on anything specific would be scary or embarassing or both, that’s your right. Thanks for playing.
I just wanted to add a note about how insightful I’m finding Brett’s comments about what to do concerning mental health treatment in this country. Since he brought it up he’s been a continuous source of useful information and policy proposals. I’m glad he did so out of a sense of sincerity and not as a distraction.
“but I can be required, sometimes, to get a permit to exercise it.”
Yeah, and if the government wants to require a license to use government run target ranges, I’m fine with that. To own, period? No, that’s not how civil liberties work.
Like voting, right?
No, that’s not how civil liberties work.
So you’re opposed to voter registration and photo ID requirements?
Only in America are gun massacres of this kind routine, expectable, and certain to continue.
We’re a large country. In the last two decades, per capita, you were more likely to be a victim in a mass shooting in Finland, Norway or Great Britain.
Can you show your math on that one?
for a left’ish consensus on the highest marginal rate that should be allowed
Fair enough. My answer is that it depends on if there are other changes to the code. If we’re talking about only changing the marginal rates and leaving everything else just the way it is, I’d say the max I’d go for is 70% (with many others below it instead of our ridiculous current setup. More marginal rates is not complicated. There’s a handly little chart the IRS puts out. Not hard.). If I get to make other changes (adjust capital gains to inflation and then tax as normal income, reduce or eliminate various deductions, beef up the inheritance tax…) then my top marginal rate preference would be lower, possibly a lot lower. What I really care about is effective tax rate, and the top marginal rate is only 1 factor among many.
I want the effective tax rate to be progressive. I also think the distribution of income is important context. So, as we know, the past ~30 years has seen major gains made by the top ~5% (mostly concentrated in the top 1%, and most of that concentrated in the top .1%) of earners. In that context, I want the progressivity of the system to be pronounced. I think that’s a worrisome trend that warrants some counter-vailing force. If the trend were otherwise, I’d be fine with mild progressivity.
Of course, that’s me. Not “The Left.”
Now, back to guns:
I agree that the Constitution provides an individual right to keep and bear firearms. I’m less certain that this clearly means single-shot weapons, but I for one am happy that the interpretation even on the Right seems to be semi-auto ok, full auto not. I am not pleased with Brett’s idea about “anything an infantryman might carry, including grenades” but I cannot actually point to the text of the 2nd amendment and argue it precludes such. That requires interpretation.
I do not think magazine size restriction is a violation of the 2nd amendment, but I understand the absolutist argument on that (any restriction at all = infringement on the right to bear arms and thus it’s unconstitutional).
Hence, I’ve come ’round to the idea that in order to have some reasonable gun control measures that are actually constitutional, amendment is necessary (this includes, by the way, various restrictions already in existence that arguably run afoul of the 2nd). And yes, I know: this will not happen.
Also, too: if SUVs became the mass murders’ weapon of choice, I think you’d start more restrictions on getting a drivers license and purchasing a vehicle (though we already have some restrictions in place). And that, it seems to me, would be reasonable policy. The only reason comparable reasonable policy is not available for guns is, yes, the 2nd amendment.
I do agree that the root problem is not the gun by the violent intent. But the gun helps. A lot.
“Or maybe the average soldier carries a select fire rifle, but not a tactical nuke.”
One of his/her selections is fully automatic fire. And then there’s the grenade launcher thing. You’re really OK with that? I’m only here now and then, but it’s really hard not to regard your position as preposterous trolling.
“You’d lose that bet. I grew up going to science fiction conventions where people carried naked blades a yard long, and have mourned the cultural changes that ended that. I’m comfortable with open carry of firearms. I may have irrational fears, but they’re not yours.”
Do I have to use the word “context”?
Also, “Or maybe the average soldier carries a select fire rifle, but not a tactical nuke.
Maybe? This is not the brand of certainty I’ve come to expect from you, Brett.
Be specific. What’s the most firepower equal to the “terrible implements” the military uses that you are comfortable with in a civilian movie theater. The matinee.
Would you have been comfortable with the Denver shooter standing down front right up until he started strafing the audience, or was there a lag in your response while you decided where the line is?
Regarding science FICTION conferences, I attended a BeatleFest a number of years ago and there were a few John Lennon dead-ringers dressed to a T, but there were no Mark David Chapman ringers stalking them with handguns, that I know of, although come to think of it that would be one hell of an example of performance theater since many of the fest-goers were definitely into exact recreation.
I approached one of the Lennon stunt doubles in the lobby and his Yoko Ono double tackled me and set off on a high-pitched yodel that froze everyone.
Maybe she thought I was Paul McCartney.
At any rate, were there any real aliens, monsters, zombies, or ghosts at your science fiction conferences?
Do you have a problem with Trekkie conferences permitting the faux-Spock’s toy light phaser into the Raddisson, but having everyone check their real terrible implements at the door.
And, if you respond that faux-Spock could just as well start killing faux-Klingons willy nilly with the Vulcan Grip, I won’t shiver, but I will shake with laughter and go join hairshirthedonist with a book, a guitar, and some pushups.
I draw the line at work.
No work
The U.S. is only 4th?
Never mind.
Let’s take a wait and duck attitude.
Or maybe the average soldier carries a select fire rifle, but not a tactical nuke.
Again, Brett, you’ve thrown down the gauntlet, others have picked it up and now you don’t want to fight. “Maybe” is fudging. You are proposing a specific right. Many have asked good faith questions as to the limits, if any, you recognize as defining that right.
(Parenthetically, good points on voter ID [which I support, but that’s for another day])
If you can’t or won’t state your position, (1) you’re completely unpersuasive–no rational person will or should accept another’s claim of an undefined and therefore umlimited right, (2) you are running terribly afoul of the many instances in which you’ve challenged others in much the same way and complained of their lack of substantive response, (3) you do a disservice to 2nd A adherents by failing to respond and (4) you impeach your implied position by tacitly recognizing that nukes may be a bridge too far.
We’re a large country. In the last two decades, per capita, you were more likely to be a victim in a mass shooting in Finland, Norway or Great Britain.
Can you show your math on that one?
There have been mass shootings in New Zealand, Scotland, Norway, England and Germany that I can recall. Probably other places as well. My guess is that Germany and England have large enough populations that the per capita argument might be a close call. It is mathematically correct applied to NZ, Scotland and especially Norway.
Of course, you’d have to define ‘mass shooting’ and a bunch of other stuff to get the numbers exactly right. One underlying point is that even very strict gun control doesn’t prevent this kind of thing. The flip side being, with strict gun control, you can’t say how many instances have been prevented.
Slarti:
I’m using “delusional” and “paranoid” in a non-clinical sense, where “delusion” = “a false belief or opinion” and “paranoia” = “unfounded or exaggerated distrust of others”.
CCDG wrote:
Since I am one of the rank-and-file Democrats you implicitly say wants to “outlaw guns”, I’ll need more than your assurance to agree that your intepretation of my motives is better than my own.
Lay out the logic, please.
McK TX:
I can’t tell if you’re aware that the US has a *much* higher overall firearms death rate than other first-world countries. It would be surprising if the US mass shootings death rate *wasn’t* two or three or five times higher than that in Finland or the UK.
hey look, another average soldier, planning to kill everyone in his workplace.
I can’t tell if you’re aware that the US has a *much* higher overall firearms death rate than other first-world countries. It would be surprising if the US mass shootings death rate *wasn’t* two or three or five times higher than that in Finland or the UK.
Doc–we have to compare like to like. Death rate includes homicide, accident and suicide. The US has a 6X greater rate of homicide by firearms than Finland, but Finland’s rate of suicide by firearms is slightly greater than the US’ suicide by firearms rate. Finland has less accidental deaths but a decent factor.
*Further*, homicide is different from mass shootings. The proposition was the risk of death by mass shooting per capita. If you have a single mass shooting that takes 77 lives in a country whose population is 4.7mm (about that of Houston) and compare that to all of the mass shootings in the US for the last twenty years and then control for population size, I think the US still comes out ahead in *that* comparison. The country in question is Norway.
Which is kind of a meaningless comparison. The larger points are that strict gun control is no proof against a mass shooting and, as a practical matter, with so many guns in circulation here, it’s a moot point anyway.
when is the last time an armed witness stopped a mass murder in action ?
I saw Brett’s last just before going to bed, and coming back to this, I think no one has addressed his SUV parallel. I’m not able to google very much now, but the assertion of there being more mass murders by cars seems to be one amenable to some stats, in so far as there is a crime of aggravated vehicular homicide (I think) Unfortunately (for Brett) vehicular homicide doesn’t work becaise DUI and texting while driving get prosecuted under that (again I think) Can anyone find the stats to make a US or even a state comparison to the number of shooting deaths and the number of deaths where a car is being used as a weapon?
As for the Hollywood made them do it, I’d note that Hollywood films are popular everywhere, but no country has near the rate of gun death that the US does. In fact, Korean and Chinese cinima has even more paeans to guns (it’s where we get all the Yun fact Chow gun holding antics, right?) but I don’t believe that they have the kind of gun death rate the US has.
And, just in case anyone is interested, here is how we do it over in the Land of Wa This isn’t to argue that this is what I (or any other liberal) wants, just to note that the US seems to have some distance to go before it gets to where Japan is.
Cleek asked:
“when is the last time an armed witness stopped a mass murder in action ?”
http://articles.cnn.com/2007-12-10/us/colorado.shootings_1_gunman-security-guard-casings?_s=PM:US
The armed hero was a security guard at the church, but I believe she was off duty but carrying her weapon at the time of the incident.
Presumably she had some training.
I’m off for the weekend.
Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.
I wonder if this guy was presumed armed and dangerous, given the anti-American, sissified, loudmouthed company he keeps?
You can kill a lot of people with a golf cart.
You might not even need the booze and the concealed carry.
http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/09/12642955-ted-nugents-drummer-flees-police-in-golf-cart?lite
Doc, more on Finland, just as kind of an illustration: three mass shootings, total deaths are 22. Here’s one link, that picks up the first two instances: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8913432.stm
Finland’s population is 5.3mm and these mass shootings took place over a 5 year period. Mother Jones helpfully has done a summary of mass shootings in the US since 1982 (The first one I recall was Charles Whitman on the tower at UT-Austin in the 60’s). My rough math is 851 dead, give or take over a thirty year period and a population of roughly 300mm compared to 22 over a five year period and a population of 5.3mm. You can run the numbers several ways. If you limit the window to ‘any five of the last 20 years’ in the US to the last 5 years in Finland, Finland comes across as a scary place. If you say, “Well, doesn’t Finland get credit for not having any mass shootings for 25 out of the last thirty years?”, the response would have to be “Fair point”. So, comparing like to like, the rate of death by mass shooting in the US population for the last three decades is 3.5 per 100,000, in Finland, it is 2.4. Finland wins!!!!
when is the last time an armed witness stopped a mass murder in action ?
Cleek, here’s a link: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
In the very first of 56 separate mass shooting/shooting sprees documented by Mother Jones, two witnesses shot the shooter after he’d killed 11 (I think) people while he was trying to escape.
The more interesting statistic would be how many people have defended themselves in their home vs away from home. I don’t have that number, nor do I consider it relevant to the ‘keep and bear’ issue.
McKinney, in answer to cleek’s question, the instance you cited was 30 years ago, when the witness, who worked near the mass shooting, got in a car, and followed the fleeing murderer (who was leaving the scene on his bike), and shot him before ramming him with his car against a cement pole. Although they discovered that the gunshot wound was the cause of death, the witness claimed not to have been aiming at the perpetrator, but was firing a warning shot “over his head.”
Yes, it’s good that the witness stopped the guy but it wasn’t quite as straighforward as claimed by those who contend that armed victims would successfully be able to fend off an attacker.
“I’ve asked, for example, for a left’ish consensus on the highest marginal rate that should be allowed.”
Leaving all other public policies as they are currently? Unchanged? Hmmm. Well, then I’d say 99% on anything over $5 million. If we can discuss tweaking some policies that have been adopted to consciously promote wealth concentration, then we could talk about lower rates.
Consensusulally,
Mr. Left, T.H.E.
Finland doesn’t have strict gun control laws. You can own as many guns as you want.
It does have stricter gun control laws than the United States, but the United States’ gun control laws are a joke that isn’t funny in a more.
You can’t legally carry weapons in public in Finland, concealed or openly. That will cut down on people turning fistfights into gunfights. It will keep morons who start a fight with a black kid and then start getting their asses kicked from turning the situation into a homicide. But it won’t prevent mass shootings.
There is a requirement in Finland that you need to state a purpose for getting a permit (“defense” is not normally allowed), and that might have slowed down someone like the Aurora nut case, but he probably would have found a way around it.
There are some newly passed gun control laws in Finland, but I don’t see anything that would be likely to have deterred the Aurora shooter, unless his mental health issues were known by his doctor.
If you want to drastically reduce mass shootings, you need laws that ban public ownership of firearms. Japan has 0.6 privately owned guns per 100 people. In a country with 130 million people, there are, according to GunPolicy.org 77 civilian-owned handguns. Not 77 thousand or 77 million, 77. And Japan has a gun homicide rate of, to one decimal of precision, 0.0.
And even if the Japanese aren’t elected Democrats, or “credible”, I think it would be wise to adopt their gun control policies.
One underlying point is that even very strict gun control doesn’t prevent this kind of thing.
Has there been a mass shooting in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre?
I gotta say, though, I appreciate — appreciate? Is that the word I want? Sure, appreciate — someone who looks at a firearm homicide rate that makes the rest of the first world look like amateurs and says, “Nah, I don’t support more laws, this is just something we live with, no big deal”; but casually remarks that he supports Voter ID laws despite the laws’ own architects being able to point to a single instance of wrongdoing, ever.
s/able/unable
And even if the Japanese aren’t elected Democrats, or “credible”, I think it would be wise to adopt their gun control policies.
Right, understood. This is the actual default position of many on the left. They just don’t say so. Which is why Brett isn’t completely off base and Doc S somewhat overstates her case. It is one of the factors that makes running as a Democrat problematic outside large urban areas.
I am headed home now. My last bit of googling seemed to be leading toward this: if you don’t compare homicide by firearms but instead compare all homicides, it looks like the US has a homicide rate that is around 4 times higher than other western countries, rather than 8 to 10 times higher, which is what you get when you limit the comparison to firearms-related.
Has there been a mass shooting in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre?
No, but there has in Norway.
ok.ok…
a man in Utah just answered my question with “today”
Actually, my argument is that both voting and gun ownership are civil liberties, and the overlap between those whining about voter ID and those demanding hugely greater burdens on gun ownership is conspicuous.
Object to burdens on gun ownership, or don’t expect me to care about burdens on voting, because if the former doesn’t bother you, I will never admit you have a principled objection to civil liberties being burdened.
Let me return to a point I made earlier: The rate of homicide, by guns and other tools, varies from place to place by several orders of magnitude, even within jurisdictions having the same gun laws. Let me repeat that, because it’s really important: THE HOMICIDE RATE VARIES BY SEVERAL ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE FROM PLACE TO PLACE WITHIN JURISDICTIONS HAVING THE SAME GUN LAWS.
Do you understand the implications of this? Homicide rates are driven almost entirely by factors other than gun laws! By a factor of a hundred or more, gun laws are NOT the driving variable here!
And here you are trying to deduce something from a correlation between gun laws and homicide rates between countries, where the correlation is minute compared to the variation manifestly not driven by such laws?
Does the phrase “confounding variables” mean nothing to you?
Is that the word I want? Sure, appreciate — someone who looks at a firearm homicide rate that makes the rest of the first world look like amateurs and says, “Nah, I don’t support more laws, this is just something we live with, no big deal”; but casually remarks that he supports Voter ID laws despite the laws’ own architects being able to point to a single instance of wrongdoing, ever.
Phil, your persistently contentious, miscasting of what I say and what you claim to be your support makes useful exchange not impossible, but far more difficult than I have time for or interest in. So, you win. Have a nice weekend.
the overlap between those whining about voter ID and those demanding hugely greater burdens on gun ownership is conspicuous.
but one big difference is that nobody wants to restrict gun access simply because it will help elect more Democrats.
Do I care why they want to violate a civil liberty? No, I do not. I simply note that they have one standard for what constitutes an unconscionable burden for one liberty, and a remarkably different standard for another liberty, and refuse to take the double standard seriously.
In reality, both the push to make voting easier, and the push to make voting harder, are driven by partisan concerns. Roles would instantly swap if the presumed effects of the policies were found to be opposite.
Well, I don’t care, because the whole argument is taking place at a level of “burden” so much lower than I experience trying to buy a gun, that it doesn’t even begin to register as a burden. You want me to recalibrate my idea of what constituents a “burden”?
Stop burdening gun ownership so much.
You want me to recalibrate my idea of what constituents a “burden”?
nope. don’t care a whit.
Stop burdening gun ownership so much.
stop burdening voting so much.
Similarly, I don’t give a fig about people who whine about having to prove you’re John Doe before casting John Doe’s vote, but are eager to subject me to burdens a hundred times worse.
Hypocrites all, and I don’t care about their complaints.
You can’t have democracy without voting, but you can without everyone being armed to the teeth. The only reason gun ownership is a civil liberty at all is because it’s in the consititution, but we could change that without fundamentally changing our system of government.
McT, I think Phil has done pretty well, given that Brett started out invoking SS prison guards dreaming of genocide (which suggests that he really doesn’t know anything about the Holocaust).
At any rate, I believe that you caught the ire that was probably aimed at Brett, though I think that this is a situation that isn’t completely unknown to you. I do want to say that I appreciate you coming in here and trying to add the voice of a sane conservative, though I fear that Brett’s return, this time with “the civil rights for me but not for thee”, is going to have you lumped in with him again.
Are you ever going to get to any of this mental health stuff, Brett? Or was that the baloney that I expect it was?
McK, your entire comment was “Good points on voter ID (which I support, but that’s for another day.” If that means something other than what it says, by all means enlighten me. And if you have evidence that the problem which it purports to solve actually exists, enlighten me on that, too. I suspect you will have trouble doing the latter for reasons which are obvious, but if I’m wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Has there been a mass shooting in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre?
No, but there has in Norway.
Firearms policy in Australia fails to prevent shooting in country half a planet away, film at 11!
“I don’t care.”
Was that written by Plato? Hume? Locke? JS Mill? that cur Rousseau? Dewey? Some minor Enlightenment philosoph? Maybe Madison, or Jefferson in one of his spats with Hamilton?
More importantly, is it constitutional? Some wonder.
One thing I’ve never understood about the Second Amendment is this:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”
Of course IANAL, but aside from the argument that “militia” today means the National Guard, it does say “well regulated.” As in, with regulations. So why is it unconstitutional to have some of those? And what about “people”? Does that mean people as a collective? I think it does because it doesn’t say something like “right of all persons.”
Note that its the militia that’s to be well regulated, but its the people who have the right guaranteed to them. Two different words, because they are two different things.
And do you really want to claim that “the people” refers to individuals in the 1st amendment, a collective in the 2nd, and then goes back to meaning individuals by the 4th amendment?
Nothing about mental health policy, then? I mean, it’s OK if you just make something up.
[…]
The phrase “well-regulated” was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected. Establishing government oversight of the people’s arms was not only not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.
The meaning of the phrase “well-regulated” in the 2nd amendment
Well, I guess that settles it.
Was it the original intent of the Founders that citizens be capable of walking into a room and shooting 70 innocent people, killing a dozen of them?
Brett:
“And do you really want to claim that “the people” refers to individuals in the 1st amendment, a collective in the 2nd, and then goes back to meaning individuals by the 4th amendment?”
and, CharlesWT, quoting:
“Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected.”
I’m not an attorney, but I dined with one recently, so aren’t things a little muddier than these two statements imply?
To some extent, now, though I don’t pretend to know precisely, Citizens United gives collective corporate money the legal status of individual free speech.
In the second case, the 14th Amendment, if I’m not mistaken because I haven’t finished law school, and neither have I started, permits the government to regulate individuals and the collective, including the militia, as specified in the Second Amendment.
Also, I’m suspicious of passive voiced constructions like “something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected”.
It seems there is a noun, an “agency”, in the sense of an actor which does this calibration and has expectations of proper functioning, missing in that formulation.
My car is at present calibrated correctly and functioning correctly, but when it is not (and I’m sorry I’ve brought it up because knock on wood and all of that), what then?
I’ll required a noun, probably a proper one, to curse at it (my job) and then another (probably a collective of head-scratching mechanics) to fix it.
The noun is probably an individual “I”, or “he”, or “she”, but I’m suspicious that when the repair is botched, the “agency” in question will fall back on circumlocutions like “I’m sorry, but ‘we’ (the corporate collective) can’t give refunds”, and I’ll walk around saying, “I could strangle ‘them'”
Mr. Holmes, the shooter, may well have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, so he might well be a collective of personalities.
Does that make him a militia?
In closing, Mr. Franklin, what have you wrought?
Ben: I don’t know. I’d wait until the movie version comes out.
I’m also wondering about the reference to gun possession as an inalienable right rather than a privilege.
If so, why were Mr. Holmes weapons taken from him before he was judged guilty of these crimes?
Who knew an event could threadjack:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/07/a_shot_in_the_dark.html#more
A taste:
“Catie and Caleb Medley went to the doomed midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.” It was a movie they’d been looking forward to for a year, her father said. Gunfire rang out. The bullets missed Catie, who was pregnant. Caleb was shot in the eye. On Tuesday, their son Hugo was born. Caleb is listed in critical condition, and the cost of emergency treatment for his head wound has already reached $2 million. The Medleys were uninsured.”
Hypocrites all, and I don’t care about their complaints.
there’s a redwood in your eye
“Caleb was shot in the eye. On Tuesday, their son Hugo was born. Caleb is listed in critical condition, and the cost of emergency treatment for his head wound has already reached $2 million. The Medleys were uninsured.”
Even Drudge appears to be troubled by that. I am astonished.
http://www.drudge.com/news/159240/aurora-shooting-victim-uninsured
In point of fact, it IS a mote and beam sort of situation. My complaint is that voter ID is the mote, and the impositions on gun owners is the beam. And I flatly refuse to go along with being outraged over a mote in your eye, while you’re grinding the redwood in mine.
a reason to doubt the SUV=gun equivalency
. The assailants allegedly tore through the camp in a pickup truck, “narrowly missing several campers and staff,” while damaging fences, fields, and buildings, reports CNN. … The harassment took place over three occasions at Camp Bonim on July 14 and 15
Oh, gee. You mean you can miss with an SUV, not just with guns? Particularly when you’re not trying to kill? Who’d have thunk it?
Dodging a bullet from a .223 m4 at 3600 feet per second is like dodging a SUV at 2400 mph. I am reasonably sure I would prefer to try and dodge the SUV, which at worst might be 100mph, and is really big and obvious coming at me. This seems like a nonsense argument. Sure, SUVs can be dangerous, but they really are not as dangerous as guns. If they were, we would be training our Soldiers in the use of SUV assault, rather than the rifle range.
The difference between the ownership of an SUV and the ownership of an automatic or semiautomatice weapon is that one is desiged for transportation of people and the others are designed for the killing quickly of large numbers of people.
That’s why the restrictions on to the ownership of the latter should be tigher than on the ownership of the former.
As I believe I’ve remarked before, purpose is an attribute of conscious beings, not inanimate objects. The pathetic fallacy is particularly pathetic when it attributes to an object a purpose it is mostly NOT used for.
The pathetic fallacy is particularly pathetic when it attributes to an object a purpose it is mostly NOT used for.
What are assault rifles used for? What use do they have that does good? Are they like hammers, which people mostly use to build things, but also very rarely use to bash someone’s head in?
To begin with, an “assault rifle” is a select fire rifle of intermediate caliber. Their ownership is already very strictly regulated, so we’re not talking about them.
The arms we’re talking about here are semi-automatic, and they are mostly used for hunting and target shooting.
I think it’s a strange question to ask, whether they can be put to good purposes. Millions of people own them, and almost all of those people do NOT use them for evil purposes. How could you rationally doubt that they have some good purposes to which they can be put, when they’re almost exclusively put to such purposes?
I think it’s a strange question to ask, whether they can be put to good purposes.
I think that’s a strange thing to say, since no one asked such a question, if “we’re” not talking about assault rifles.
Speaking of assault rifles, which I was, they used to be banned. They aren’t anymore, which means they aren’t as strictly regulated as they once were.
What about 100-round drums? What do you do with them?
” The pathetic fallacy is particularly pathetic when it attributes to an object a purpose it is mostly NOT used for.”
This misses the point, although your statement is true in the abstract.
In this discussion, all that is being said is that more killers use a gun to kill than use an SUV.
More killers have attributed the purpose of killing other human beings to semi-automatic weapons, to observe your narrowing of the discussion, than to SUVs and reel lawn-mowers, although there’s a campy horror film in which the purpose of killing great numbers of people is attributed to the latter, and what a mess!
Inside the house and on the carpet no less.
It’s also true that jrudikis’ bullet from the .223 m4 at 3600 feet per second gets far superior gas mileage than an SUV traveling 2400 mph.
But neither Laura nor I are about to attribute the purpose of car-pooling and reducing greenhouse gases to the bullet.
The “particularly pathetic” rip at Laura also puts the lie to the tendentious concept that a well-armed citizenry fosters a polite, well-mannered discourse among said citizenry.
I’m pretty sure, however, that Laura will not be getting behind the wheel of an SUV any time soon and backing over the wise guys.
When I was a young man with a temper, I was not above flipping the bird at male drivers who attributed their dick size, or lack thereof, to their annoying driving habit of cutting me off in traffic.
That was pathetic of me.
I have to admit I stopped that behavior because it occurred to me that some of these guys might also be attributing and sublimating their pathetic inadequacies in the dick department, not that anyone is counting, to whatever weapon they might be carrying.
Two ways of looking at that: the threat of being shot has coerced me into teeth-grinding, well-mannered discourse — or — my first amendment rights, right down to sign language, have been stymied and trumped by their second amendment rights.
Anyway, Brett, I’m sure you are a responsible gun owner.
Although, if I was the IRS and you owed me money, I might put a boot on your SUV, just in case.
Smile emoticon.
“Speaking of assault rifles, which I was, they used to be banned. They aren’t anymore, which means they aren’t as strictly regulated as they once were.”
No, assault rifles are still banned. You’re confusing, as was intended, “assault rifles”, (A technical term for select fire rifles of intermediate caliber, the usual standard arm for soldiers.) with “assault weapon“, a PR term invented by the gun control movement, which has no objective definition beyond “we’d like to ban this”.
“ The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons, (anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun) can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.”
Basically, the gun control movement created the term, “assault weapon”, around 1988, with the aim of confusing the public into thinking the guns they were attempting to ban were “assault rifles”. But none of the guns banned by the 1994 “assault weapon ban were assault rifles, not one was fully automatic.
IOW, you’re merely demonstrating that you fell for a lie.
The lawnmower was a rotary and the movie was “Dead Alive”, Peter Jackson’s first go at it.
The “protagonist” is trimming back the zombies, so who can blame the guy.
Don’t watch at work. Don’t watch at home. There’s even a gruesome political ad up front:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC1d7dw24Gg
____________________
A nominal list of methods of dispatch attributed to a panoply of implements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jooler/List_of_films_by_gory_death_scene
______________________
Never bring a lawnmower to a gun fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-xQtdu6aOg
______________________
Some people prefer the atlatl, but this would be my weapon of choice, the bio-whip, I like to call it, from the movie “Slither”. The bio-whip has been used in killings roughly as many times as the SUV and the atlatl.
Not a great recording of the video clip, so rent the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWRZsvxbLBI
The nice thing about special effects is that you don’t need good health insurance to clean up the mess.
Note to self:
Going forward, place the descriptive adjective “assault” before the following nouns: global warming, Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, Bush tax cuts, quant, broccoli, Republican, conservative, (these two not to be confused with RINOs, who by Erick Erickson’s definition, just to do a little deer hunting, leaving the big two-legged game for him), SUV, Vespa, blog, FOX news, and guitar (for the benefit of Ted Nugent).
Nugent wants to replace “assault” with the descriptive “pheasant”, to describe the Colorado shooter’s weapon, which I’m willing to go along with, as long as we also replace the phrase “12 people dead and 40-some wounded” with “pheasant under glass”.
My complaint is that voter ID is the mote, and the impositions on gun owners is the beam.
point to the place on the Constitution where it says that impositions on rights are to be judged on a curve.
So, Brett, do you support an outright ban on fully automatic assault rifles, or even current restrictions on them? Do you acknowledge that the assault weapons ban did not ban all semi-automatic weapons?
Do you believe you have a constitutional right to target shoot or hunt specifically with a semi-automatic AK-47, or can your right to do those things be satisfied with the use of another semi-automatic that wasn’t subject to the now-defunct ban?
Given your criterion of parity with members of the military, I have to assume you don’t support any restrictions on fully automatic assault rifles with high-capacity magazines or any of the restrictions in the assault weapons ban.
If I’m right about that, is it just a matter of how you read the constitution as currently written, or is it also what you believe to be good policy? Do you think it’s a good idea to let people walk around with fully automatic assault rifles?
Also, sadly, “assault” coyote:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/rip-inkblot
Not to be confused with Rick Perry’s formulation — Barack Hussein Coyote.
Too bad Inkblot wasn’t driving an SUV.
Oh, Christ, noting that an engineered object has a particular function is not an example, by itself, of the pathetic fallacy. If someone asks you what a fork is for, you don’t respond “OBJECTS DON’T HAVE PURPOSES YOU’RE COMMITTING THE PATHETIC FALLACY,” you respond, “It’s for picking up pieces of food.” Can it do other things? Yes. Does that negate what it was designed for? No.
Just the same, guns are for killing other living things. Everything else is practice. Skeet shooting is for practicing killing flying things. Target shooting is for practicing killing things on the ground. People wouldn’t even own firearms if not for the expectation, fear or — in Bellmore’s case — hope that they will eventually have to kill something, be it a person or an animal.
It’s ASTOUNDING the rabbit holes you all let yourself be led down by this sophist. Note that, having established at the outset that the important factor to discuss vis a vis mass murderers and spree killers is mental health, he has gone on to say NOT A SINGLE WORD ABOUT IT. Not one. Unless he is engaging in some second level work by being or pretending to be an insane person, he threw a smoke grenade out to distract everyone, proceeded to ignore it, and now he’s got you all sitting on the heads of pins arguing about the merits of SUVs versus guns as murder weapons and whether it’s OK to grade civil rights on a curve. (Without noting that prohibiting ownership of a particular class of weapon no more negates the right to bear arms than prohibiting a particular class of speech [e.g., libel] negates one’s first amendment rights.)
Rather than being the man of principle that he imagines or pretends himself to be, he states outright that voter ID laws that are going to prevent as many as 43% of registered voters in Philadelphia from voting are not important because Y’all are brutalizin’ me!. He’s Ronnie Dobbs with an engineering degree.
And you fall for it every. Single. Time.
The only thing I think I’m falling for is my own (likely false) hope that I can get Brett to make a definitive statement in response to very specific questions I think are very much on point. The wisdom of spending my time that way is questionable, I will readily admit.
I don’t think I’ve fallen for any of the SUV/purpose/mental health diversions.
FWIW, Brett is apparently to the right of Scalia(!) on this issue. I didn’t see the show, but Scalia was on Fox this morning and was asked by Chris Wallace about his views on limiting 2nd amendment rights in some fashion by specifying what constituted “arms” (quote from HuffPo).
“Wallace asks how far the right to bear arms extends, in the wake of the Colorado shooting — does it absolutely allow for semi-automatic weapons and extended magazines? Scalia says Heller left open the possibility that future cases might proscribe limits on those rights. Here, Scalia allows that those limits will be dictated by whatever “society feels is appropriate at the time.” “My starting point and my ending point will be what limitations society felt were appropriate at the time,” he says.”
So Brett — do you think Scalia is another one of those progressives out to get your guns?
This wabbit says it’s duck season:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8uDGbRcQ1E
Shh, places everyone.
Here comes Elmer Fudd.
Don’t say mental health. Say “Looney Tunes”.
“So, Brett, do you support an outright ban on fully automatic assault rifles, or even current restrictions on them?”
No, I do not, and I am very much aware that this is a minority viewpoint. I am also aware that the gun control movement makes a point of confusing people into thinking that the guns they are going after now are the guns they’ve already had success in banning. And this is dishonest of them, even if I don’t like either sort of ban.
But lying is, and has been, central to the gun control movement’s strategy. They have no hope of persuading the majority in America without lying.
Likely, neither do I. Difference is, that hasn’t led me to lie about what I believe in, so I’m probably not going to get my way.
Do I acknowledge that the ’94 ban didn’t ban all semi-automatic arms? Sure, It was a start, not a finish. The people pushing it said it was a starting point! An arbitrary list which could have been extended, had it not had such catastrophic political consequences for them.
Now, do you care to admit it wasn’t a ban of automatic rifles AT ALL, that you were wrong? That, in fact, you were wrong because you believed the people on your side of this issue? Who routinely lie to you?
“Oh, Christ, noting that an engineered object has a particular function is not an example, by itself, of the pathetic fallacy.”
That’s true. And if one wants to assert that the function of a gun is to propel small projectiles, repeatedly and accurately, with great force, I have no problem with that. If one wants to assert that the purpose is to propel small projectiles through the bodies of other people, when most are used to propel them through pieces of paper or food animals, then I’ve got a problem. Function and purpose aren’t the same thing.
Short of minor things like bayonets, the characteristics which make a good tool for propelling small projectiles through paper targets or food animals are identical to the characteristics which make a good tool for propelling them through people. Because the difference between the uses happens after the bullet leaves the barrel, as a result of where it was pointed! What it takes to kill a human or a deer is pretty much the same, a tool to do one will be well suited to doing the other.
Finally, yes, I’ve said not a word about mental health, beyond noting that, if you really want to prevent mass murders, that’s where you’ll direct your attention. This is because most of the people here are still trying to use this incident as an excuse to attack my civil liberties, instead of dealing with the problem. I am far more concerned with fending off a renewed attack on my civil liberties, than doing something about a cause of death more rare than lightning strikes. More difficult to do anything about, too, because lightning can’t reason it’s way around lightning rods, while the murderous are perfectly capable of finding different tools with which to commit murder.
Now, do you care to admit it wasn’t a ban of automatic rifles AT ALL, that you were wrong? That, in fact, you were wrong because you believed the people on your side of this issue? Who routinely lie to you?
Honestly, the distiction between an assault rifle and an assault weapon was lost on me, but not at all critical to my potential support for the ban. I don’t really have much of an opinion on whether or not it was worthwhile, except maybe for the ban on higher-capacity magazines. But if I had really cared at the time, I would have found out that assault rifles weren’t subject to the ban. I don’t think it was a secret.
What I do have an opinion on is that there’s nothing unconstitutional about banning specific classes of weapons, provided that people still have reasonable access to a reasonably broad range of firearms with legitimate uses. We obviously differ on that point, given your minority of a minority opinion.
What I still would like to know is if your opposition to, say, restrictions on fully automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines is strictly a constitutional matter, or if you also think it’s good policy to allow the general public to have unrestricted access to such weapons, and, if so, why?
Good policy, because it is a general good to let people do whatever the freak they want, as long as the doing does not involve harm to other people. As owning a firearm can not harm another person, as the firearms in question do have perfectly legitimate uses, a ban can not be justified.
Letting people do what they want is a good in and of itself, the good called “liberty”.
I understand it is claimed that there’s a countervailing good to be gotten from restricting that liberty. The arguments for this are generally only found persuasive by people who already are inclined to deny people liberty in this area.
The government has proven incompetent to deny millions of people drugs. It cannot, (It claims!) prevent millions from sneaking across the border each year. And you think the government can keep somebody intent on crime from arming themselves? What a joke!
The only people gun control is effective at disarming are those who weren’t going to do anything wrong with the guns in the first place.
Further, and peculiar to America, is that so many people understand gun ownership to be a civil right, and gun control to be illegitimate, that any effort to ban guns is automatically subject to massive civil disobedience.
So, what do you want? Laws which are widely violated? Or some kind of massive enforcement effort, verging, (Optimistically!) on civil war? Maybe more Wacos, as the government tries to compel by fear obedience it can’t win by appeals to legitimacy?
I am tired of these specious international comparisons. America is, culturally, an outlier nation in many ways, some good, some bad. In my opinion our high homicide rate is driven by cultural factors, which a war on gun ownership can not change.
We differ from other nations on so many dimensions besides our gun laws, how can you sensibly be confident that the international differences in homicide are driven by this factor? So confident that you’d set out on a crusade that tears the nation apart?
I’m not really sure what sort of crusade or war you think I’d be willing to start over gun ownership, but it’s good to finally know in full where you stand, Brett. It’s pretty friggin’ weird, but at least I know.
It’s weird in a “millions of people agree with me” kind of way, just try to recall that.
Phil, a bit late in responding, apologies. I haven’t been able to follow this comment thread closely, but I think that everyone who has addressed something to Brett is well aware of where he is coming from and what’s up. Speaking for myself, I find myself interested in how far he’s willing to take whatever line he picks up, such as that he’s for all civil liberties (until he’s not) and the campfire story of the killer SUV, so I’ll ask a few questions, follow them up a bit and then leave it there and it seems like everyone else (other than the millions of (obviously American) lurkers who agree with him) treats him the same way, so don’t blow up at everyone, unless that’s what you want to do.
As a guy who does not own a gun and has probably fired maybe a couple of boxes of 9mm, tops, I’d like to weigh in.
I support reasonable regulation of weapons. I do not support unrestricted ownership of fully automatic weapons, nor do I support general ownership of other items such as grenades, RPGs, MANPADS, etc. I think semi-automatic rifles can be problematic but I don’t see that there is much to be done about that, as was amply (IMO) demonstrated by the feckless/uselessness of the assault weapons ban.
On carry laws, I am kind of keeping my own counsel. On one hand, the Beyond This Horizon armed-society-is-a-polite-society is a nice idea and all, but weeding the drunks and crazies out of the courtesy pool will be a long, bloody process with almost certain collateral damage, and may well not asymptote out to the libertarian paradise that Brett has envisioned. On the other hand, though, it might be handy to have some responsible armed subset of the public present in numbers that the police cannot supply. I don’t know how you’d do that in some organized (dare I say regulated?) fashion without presenting the spectre of ohmigodtheyaretrackingme.
There’s some middle ground between preparing for the zombie apocalypse/Mad Max postapocalyptic world and complete disarmament that I am likely going to explore personally, without really trying to push this conversation in one direction or another.
Maybe I should just call all of you Nazis for trying to harsh my mellow.
It’s weird in a “millions of people agree with me” kind of way, just try to recall that.
What’s weird about what you wrote, among other things, is your belief that I would advocate restrictions so strict as to cause a civil war (or that whatever restrictions I might advocate, strict or not so strict, would cause a civil war, despite the lack of a civil war over the AWB or the long-standing restrictions on fully automatic weapons – not entirely sure which it is).
You seem to react to anything short of your absolutist position as though it were the opposite absolutist position, as though I want to confiscate and ban all weapons not in the hands of the police or the military. Meanwhile, I could say I support, at least in theory, strict regulation of fully automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.
If that’s a crusade worthy of a civil war in this country, I’d better start looking seriously at Canada, because that would be, in technical terminology, just plain nuts.
Don’t worry, HSH, these guys tend to not be much good at organizing much beyond backyard turkey shoots. The one guy who actually was able to pull something off, McVeigh, they kicked out of their little club.
Phil, I don’t think for an instant you mean to start a civil war. Then again, I don’t think Janet Reno woke up one morning, and said to herself, “Think I’ll burn a bunch of people to death.” But she still did.
My real fear is that gun controllers will see their chance, go for it, and provoke a reaction they never expected, because they don’t take people who disagree with them seriously. And then the usual “Government can never back down” dynamic kicks in, and next thing you know you’ve got a shooting war.
All because you never took the opposition seriously.
next thing you know you’ve got a shooting war.
and next thing the clown with his AR15 knows, he has no gas, no electricity, no water, and there’s a Predator circling his suburban stronghold lobbing hellfire into his living room, while the 40 guys in SWAT attire lurking around the perimeter wait patiently for the screaming to stop.
good luck with your little revolution.
All because you never took the opposition seriously.
But you’re opposed to existing restrictions, Brett – all of them AFAICT. There is no shooting war going on now.
What I can’t take seriously is the idea that anything short of your preferred policy, which what we already have is, will result in a revolt, or that there’s a realistic possibility that anyone will enact something that amounts to much more than nibbling at the edges of what we have now.
You don’t want there to be a line at all. But there is a line. All I’m talking about is where the line should be, and can’t imagine that moving the line somewhat further will result in a bloody revolt. Maybe there’s some point at which that would become a possiblity. I just don’t see us getting anywhere near that.
So long as people can still hunt, target shoot and protect their homes with a reasonably good range of options, I can’t imagine more than a relatively few not-so-well-adjusted people are going to get overly upset about it.
How fundamental is owning, for example, a machine gun to anyone’s happiness or well being? If you simply want to make the argument that restrictions don’t help, that’s one thing. We can probably disagree reasonably about that. But all this shooting war talk is, at best, goofy.
(I probably should have just stopped a number of comments ago, but I’ll stop now. The horse is dead, and my foot hurts.)
“and next thing the clown with his AR15 knows, he has no gas, no electricity, no water, and there’s a Predator circling his suburban stronghold lobbing hellfire into his living room, while the 40 guys in SWAT attire lurking around the perimeter wait patiently for the screaming to stop.”
Ok, maybe some people DO wake up thinking, “Think I’ll burn some people alive today.”
Since upthread Brett was arguing logical fallacies, his stated position seems to me to be a pretty clear example of the fallacy of the excluded middle.
“and next thing the clown with his AR15 knows, he has no gas, no electricity, no water, and there’s a Predator circling his suburban stronghold lobbing hellfire into his living room, while the 40 guys in SWAT attire lurking around the perimeter wait patiently for the screaming to stop.”
Ah, and here we have the penultimate liberal fascist’s wet dream. An all powerful, unrestricted government ready, willing and able to act against its citizens in such a manner.
This is not a problem for liberal gun control advocates, because, afterall, we, The people, are the problem and govt is the benevolent solution.
I will note that you don’t have to be a clown with with an AR15 for this to happen. Just any old clown will do. A “clown”, of course, being synonomous with “citizen who doesn’t like our agenda” as far as big government fans are concerned.
^^^^ does not know what “penultimate” means.
Or, maybe he does, in which case I wonder what he thinks the ULTIMATE liberal fascist wet dream is?
Maybe some people are paranoid and deluded. I mean, who’s to say?
“Ah, and here we have the penultimate liberal fascist’s wet dream,” he said, pointing at a hastily-constructed man of straw. “An all powerful, unrestricted government ready, willing and able to act against its citizens in such a manner,” waving his arm at an army of similar strawmen standing on a nearby hilltop, awaiting orders.
“This is not a problem for liberal gun control advocates, because, afterall, we, The people, are the problem and govt is the benevolent solution,” he proclaimed to them. In his mind, they recoiled in horror.
Meanwhile:
It’s hard to say what will happen when the geeks are heavily armed.
Brett:
When you point out that most handguns and semi-automatic weapons are not actually fired at humans, but at targets or wildlife, you’re talking about uses that are not 2nd-Am. protected, IMHO.
The purpose of the 2nd Am. isn’t to give constitutional protection to target-shooting, or even to shooting your own dinner. These are not *rights*. The purpose is *specifically* to ensure the right to bear *arms* — weapons for use against humans. Devices designed and intended for murder.
What’s interesting is that neither you nor anyone else here has really addressed my point about how firearms are *marketed*. Though in fact what I see you doing is saying that guns are needed to protect civil rights. Which rights? The right to own guns, and that’s about it. It’s a perfectly circular, self-reinforcing process, and the NRA’s job is to push buyers around it as fast as possible.
People who claim to want to restrict abortions *really* are trying to ban them.
discuss…
Firearms should not only be safe and legal, they should be rare.
those who want to limit access to the voting booth, for some people, are really trying to make voting illegal, for some people.
It’s hard to say what will happen when the geeks are heavily armed.
I have some experience with 3d-printing and this strikes me as nuts. Guns are precision-engineered machines that contain explosions. A poorly designed or constructed gun can blow up in your face and kill you. 3d-printing part of a gun is a cute novelty. But in terms of safety? It is incredibly stupid.
Nevertheless, people might be interested if there was a real shortage of guns in the US, but…there’s not. Guns are plentiful and fairly cheap. Geeks that want guns already have them.
The purpose of the 2nd Am. isn’t to give constitutional protection to target-shooting, or even to shooting your own dinner.
“purpose” ! ruh roh.
People who claim to want to restrict abortions *really* are trying to ban them.
discuss…
We already restrict abortions and gun ownership. Outright banning of either will never happen. Neither one would be successful if it did.
These are not *rights*.
Not enumerated rights, at least.
Put the safety on your weapon and the condom on your ….. gun.
“People who claim to want to restrict abortions *really* are trying to ban them.
discuss…”
People who prefer their birth control safe, cheap, and accessible to all ARE trying to restrict abortions. Some of the same people who further limits on weapons that shoot lots of bullets in shorts amounts of time are trying to restrict very late-term abortions, by which I mean the 12 aborted adults in Aurora, Colorado last week.
About the only significance of the stereolithography reciever is that, potentially, running one off doesn’t require much in the way of skills. (Assuming the machines get developed further!) Running a milling machine does, even if it’s CNC.
The machine shop tools required to turn out top quality firearms from metal stock are remarkably common already.
Of course, the only part the guy made was one that didn’t have to handle high pressures; A peculiarity of firearms law that the “gun” isn’t a part which actually contacts the cartridge!
I’m creating a Lockheed-117 stealth fighter in the basement garage of my apartment building via the Stratasys thingamabub.
I keep it under a tarp; the landlord thinks it’s a boat.
15,000 pounds of fuel which I’ll be lugging in jerry cans for weeks in my car. Can carry a 5000 lb bomb payload; the elevator in my building just happens to have a 5000 lb. capacity, so I know what’s going to be happening in my living room over the next few weeks.
This outfit only needs to work after takeoff for maybe 45 minutes to cause some mayhem.
I think I’ve just figured out what that second comma in the Second Amendment stands for.
Shooting up the movie theater? Heall no! I mean, I COULD take out the 16-plex and the mall with it, not to mention six city blocks.
But I have bigger game in mind.
Here’s what I want: Universal healthcare insurance, administered by the Federal Government by, oh, February 1, 2013.
You can choose your own doctors.
Anyone want to f*ck with me?
Because, if you do, you may be starting one of them fights Brett mentioned, you know, that you can’t win.
“What’s interesting is that neither you nor anyone else here has really addressed my point about how firearms are *marketed*. ”
Well, you talked about the reality that anytime people perceive something may be harder to get they buy it now. This includes batteries before a storm, houses when interest rates rise, icandescent light bulbs, etc., and guns when a Democrat is in charge. They buy them simply because it is more likely to get harder to buy them. Expecting a complete ban on ownership is not required.
It is not paranoia or delusion that typically more Democrats would support additional gun control than Republicans.
As for marketing, I haven’t seen or read a single gun advertisement since the President was elected so I am not sure how that works.
The “marketing” aspect was hardly worth commenting on. Common gun controler trope, that the whole 2nd amendment thing is driven by the firearms industry, with the NRA an industry front. Per this, if gun owners fear confiscation, it can’t be because Democrats have given them cause to fear it, it’s got to be diabolical mind control rays eminating from gun manufacturers.
Truth is, the manufacturers are forced by their customers to be politically active. Colt was nearly destroyed by a customer boycott when they tried making a separate peace with the gun controllers.
Except the barrel part. If you can make a rifled gun barrel in your machine shop, Brett, I would be quite impressed.
Also, for some numbers, about 35M households owned guns in 1977 based on percentages of households, in 2007 that number was about 37M. Based on your percentage of households and the number of households from here.
So in 2007, with approximately 3.5M guns produced by the numbers above, 10% would have to buy one gun. (The ATF has about a million less manufactured and sold that year)
So even conceding the impact of a Democrat President and potential Democrat Congress, the paranoia may be overstated.
If you can make a usable rifled gun barrel on a 3d printer, I’d be even more impressed.
While the machine needed to manufacture high quality rifled barrels is somewhat specialized, it’s nothing you can’t build yourself if you have a milling machine and a lathe.
Which in turn you can build yourself, if you have to. Great resource, Linsday Publishing.
If it takes a gunsmith with decades of experience to build a precision-rifling setup given relatively common machine tools, I say this is a point without much point to it.
I would tend to pay more attention to such a statement if e.g. you yourself had reproduced such a setup.
See, for instance,
Bill Webb with intro and 36 page booklet by Guy Lautard. One DVD (approx. 3 total hours) plus booklet show you how to build and use a machine to make high-quality barrels from a raw steel blank. Webb built his machine from parts, scrap and surplus, using his lathe, mill and drill press. You’ll build the machine, piece by piece, and a barrel, step by step. Speeds, feeds, cutter head geometry, it’s all here. DVD format only.
I’m a mechanical engineer who used to spend half my time running a Haas machining center, among other tools. I think I am fairly acquainted with the difficulty of making specialized machines, even if I did sell my personal machine tools when I moved to SC.
Mitt Romney LOVES Israel’s mandatory universal healthcare system, where the costs are relatively low and the health is robust.
Israel’s top marginal tax rate is 45%.
Gun laws are stricter than here and the homicide rate per 100,000 is quite a bit lower, maybe because of those terrible military implements all over the place, which the Israeli citizenry don’t seem to feel the need to keep up with, though certainly the Palestinians must be visiting the gun range quite often.
Who is Mitt Romney?
Could I vote for him, considering his enthusiasm for Israel’s way of doing things.
Well, probably not, because of his attitude about the Palestinians, but one never knows.
Hey, going back to something upthread, someone finally managed to locate someone casting fraudulent ballots for a dead person. If you guessed before clicking the link that it’s a Republican politician committing the fraud, award yourself a No-Prize!
For festering paranoid delusion being nurtured on the macro scale, watch the Republican Negro Menace wants to kill the Jew ads in this Sullivan post :
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/07/ad-war-update-30.html
The second, by an outfit called Secure American Now, has the same policy implications of Hitler’s dog’s vomiting.
Peruse their website.
This is the right-wing of the Republican Party Mitt Romney kowtows to.
The murderous, expensive security state these killers desire will enslave America, including a prominent ancestor of the first slave.
These people love and worship the images of 9/11, which happened on their watch, the traitorous, pansy vermin.
They wanted it. They want it again. They hope it happens during the Obama Presidency to teach America the lesson that you never hire a slave’s ancestor to do a cracker’s job.
Heck, they don’t even give Obama credit for caving to the fascist Republican security state on the very issues for which liberals and other reasonable people hold him responsible and in contempt.
These people will kill.
Brett’s weapons are not the problem.
It’s the totalitarian neocon terror state that needs to be combated.
With big f*cking weapons.
Head axes — sorry, no can do.
Rocket launchers: we may be good to go on that.
From inside the originalist mind of a guy whose given name is “Justice”.
Welp, rocket launchers will make for a quicker job of taking out the terror state neocons when the time comes than will the head-ax.
Constitutional originalism: for when paranoid delusions will not suffice.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/dumb-justice.html
I don’t think many people have Haas machining centers in their garage, Brett.
It may very well be that you can build the tools to make rifle barrels with just a lathe and a Bridgeport Mill, Brett. I’d just like to see it, is all. I’d like to see it done by someone of, say, your knowledge of machine tools, as opposed to the aforementioned gunsmith with decades of experience.
Not saying it cannot be done. Just wondering if there’s more than a handful or two of people in the US that could pull it off.
“Common gun controler trope, that the whole 2nd amendment thing is driven by the firearms industry, with the NRA an industry front.”
Huh, I thought the real gun biz was driven by the mil/industrial complex. Nobel peace prize winner – and lib light worker hero – BHO has committed the equivalent of the theater shooting every other day for the past 4 years. What? No lib outrage? Dead wogs are just dead wogs. What are they worth? A 5th of an American human? a third at best? Probably more like a 25th of a human based on the lib outrage scale. Pathetic.
“Could I vote for him, considering his enthusiasm for Israel’s way of doing things.”
Seriously? The zionist are seaking to commence WW3 by atacking Iran. They (the Zionists, not Iran) have nukes. Gun control “yes”, but wmd control, “no” as long as it’s BHO or zionists? fascinating thought processes.
Libs want to flap their girly jaws about small arms and their occasional misuse once again (yawn) just because a bunch of people with a violence fetish watching their violence porn in the form of some silly batman movie actually encountered the real thing and, meanwhile, their prez and his jewish buddies are killing brown kids and anyone with a turban all over the world with drone attacks, artillary, airstrikes, etc, threatening millions with nuclear weapons and preemptive war to include said nuclear weapons.
Yeah. the gov’t sure is the right entity to be in possession of the real weapons. They sure have demonstrated morality and responsibility in owning and using them. Not like us stupid People.
How many Iraqis were killed due to our invasion? And the invasion, it seemed to me, was sold on a paranoid mantra. Why overloook that when talking about guns? Why trust the gov’t that sold you the line to have the guns instead of you?
Motes and beams…..sheeeeeeeeeeit. The splinter is gun owning US citizens. the f’ing giant red wood forest is the US gov’t and it’s close “allies”.
Yes, the penultimate lib wet dream. Promise to keep me safe and pain free and I surrender my freedom and ability to resist your will. I will be your zombie bitch.
The ultimate lib wet dream is to lie back in a govt supplied protective plastic bubble with a govt feeding tube and gov’t provided sensory stimulation, matrix style.
I am intrigued by your thoughts and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I dunno, black/balckhawk7’s 2 comments seem to focus on what the boy scouts referred to as nocturnal emissions. A big problem around puberty, iirc. I leave others to draw what conclusions they may.
whew. that was a pretty thorough airing of grievances, balckhawk7.
it must be Festivus in July!
I wanted to make a “balckhawk or tugboat?” joke but couldn’t really put it together.
That’s almost certainly av3di5, right?
Just so we’re straight here (in av3di5’s sense of beating the crap out of lesbians in gang showers), I need a 20-minute resting period between my penultimate lib wet dreams and my ultimate lib wet dreams, and even then I require a running start.
YMMV.
I suspect Balckhawk 7 received a Boy Scout merit badge for the most frequent nocturnal emissions achieved during broad daylight.
Unfortunately, he interrupted the atlatl whittling competition with his private enthusiasms, but he yelled in quick succession, alternating flapping his tough-guy lips and gripping his tongue firmly between same in furious concentration, “I love me some Jamboree!”,”J’ou love Jamboree?” Wog not what your country can j’ou for you, but just keep Jamboree coming!”, so they humored him with a merit badge, hoping he was a drama queen, not a serial killer.
Just in case, though, I don’t want to take Brett’s guns, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the ATF pay the guy a visit to kind of prize open those fascinating thought processes.
“pay the guy a visit”
Not Brett, but Balckhawk7.
Stop typing, Brett. False alarm.
Could fit, but I don’t remember our old, banned friend having so much of a problem with teh speling.
I’m unclear as to what Blackhawk7 said that would constitute any kind of probable cause for illegal activity. In the absence of which a visit from the BATF based on speech would be a clear violation of the 1st amendment.
So, let’s not joke about having the government bust in on people who say things you don’t like.
O.K.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_07/guns_trump_everything038918.php
“Doctor: How’d that cantaloupe sustain such brain damage?
Dan Burton: That’s not a cantaloupe, that’s Vince Foster’s head.
Doctor: Those look like bullet wounds. Do you keep firearms in the home?
Dan Burton (Florida state law enforcement, awaiting the high sign from Burton, breaks down the doctor’s office door, cuffs the doctor, and slips a black hood over his head).: That’ll teach you to ask about guns, you melon head.”
Brett, if we ever make a movie about our exchanges, such as they are, at OBWI, I hope Margaret Dumont is available to play you.
This guy is my favorite billionaire:
http://nymag.com/news/business/themoney/jeff-greene-2012-8/
Credit Balloon Juice via Krugman.
What’s he doing on this gun thread?
Well, besides the fact that EVERYTHING is on this thread, he makes a point about who, given current socioeconomic trends, will have the most weapons in the U.S. in a few years and what they might choose to do with them, if we keep doing what we’re doing.
Nothing funny there. Not a joke in sight, to keep with the apparently revised posting rules.
I did some extrapolation. That still permitted?
Speaking of the funny papers, one of Mitt Romney’s sidemen told a good one yesterday in Israel: “Kiss my a#s! This is a sacred site. Have some respect!”
I don’t know if he added that plenty of Iranian sacred sites should be disrespected via carpet bombing, but a person can only throw so many lit matches into a gas tank on one trip.
There is something about private citizen Mitt Romney on this foreign junket that reminds me of Jane Fonda, give or take a nuclear weapon or two.
av3di5? I’m guessing yes on that.
So, let’s not joke about having the government bust in on people who say things you don’t like.
You’re cute when you’re being all self-riteous, Brett. Let’s not joke at all, being the Masters of the Universe that we are. Who knows what might happen?
Has anyone seen my gh?
Scalia thinks there’s a case to be made for the right for people to carry shoulder-fired rocket launchers.
ah cleek, poor little lib with so many unexamined priors.
The unescapable question – though I’m sure you and your ilk will continue to try to avoid it – is why you trust a gov’t to have these weapons, but not the people. A better question is why you trust your gov’t at all considering you all know that it has lied to you in the most egregious manner repeatedly and that it has steadily eroded civil liberties in favor of a militarized local police establishment and an increasingly fascist federal system. Yet still you look to your gov’t for safety and comfort.
Another situation that I find revealing is that so many libs think this whole “Arab Spring” party is so wonderful, while avoiding some painfully obvious facts concerning the revolutions, most salient to the discussion here being that the people overthrowing their gov’ts are armed with assualt rifles, rpg.s, etc. – I won’t digress into the fact that the rebels are a bunch of islamic radicals that hate the US. That’s a different topic for a different day.
Why is it good for the wogs to have these weapons and use them to such ends, but not for us?
Could cowardice have something to do with it?
1. “Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.” ~Thomas Jefferson
2. Those who trade liberty for security have neither. ~John Adams
3. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
4. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
5. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
6. Gun control is not about guns; it’s about control.
7. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.
8. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.
9. You don’t shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
10. Assault is a behavior, not a device.
11. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
12. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.
13. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.
14. What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ do you NOT understand?
15. Guns have only two enemies; rust and politicians
16. When you remove the people’s right to bear arms, you create slaves.
17. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.
Why is it good for the wogs to have these weapons and use them to such ends, but not for us?
This is a warning. Continued colorful vocabulary will result in being banned.
17a. Boating in Wisconsin would never be half the fun without alcohol.
18. Seventeen aphorisms do not a white man make.
19. For whom the gay married wog tolls, he tolls for the membership rules of the Boy Scouts.
I can’t help but notice that most of those quotes are without attribution…
But to answer the question that prompted LJ’s ire, to suggest that Americans might be entitled to the means of revolt would be to suggest that American’s government might be appropriate to revolt against. Which is to say that Americans might be justified in revolting against liberals.
Obviously inadmissible.
LJ, I’d barely characterize that as pastel. Probably not so much intended as insult as faux British. But I suppose if you want to get away with using such terms here, you need to avoid using them in their proper context.
1. “Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.” ~Thomas Jefferson
“Those who plow their slave women shall have their oats sowed by tipsy, disgruntled wives.
“Those who spill their seed by the hand of Onan shall reap the whirlwind but spare their women much ikkiness, yet their fields shall be confiscated by the Soil Conservation service for bad hygiene.”
“Spare not thy rod, but keep it sheathed because bad boys don’t get dessert despite their eager flogging.”
“Thou may depose by violence the liberal in front of thee, but beware the libertarian behind who seeks thy ample parking.”
If we’re playing fast and loose with the categories, I could easily make the argument that liberals are far more aware of and likely to make a stink over our government’s lies and egregious use of weaponry, be it by the military or police. The same goes for the prison-industrial complex. If anything, views over such are the common territory between most liberals and libertarians. Accusing liberals of excessive trust in government in these areas seems a bit silly when there are plenty of military-worshipping, law-and-order conservatives who need to be challenged over their far more excessive trust of police and military power. What all of this has to do with gun control is questionable, fantasies of an armed revolt notwithstanding.
Well, I’d say that’s what I didn’t observe during the Waco standoff. Indeed, I see a lot of liberals who still swallow the government’s line on what went down there, hook, line, and sinker.
And when the subject of armed revolt comes up, I frequently see, from liberals, fantasies of government immolation of conservatives.
To the usual suspects:
“Thou may thinketh thou haveth the lasthe laugheth, but thy lithsp belieth thy failure to getteth up pretty early in the morning to fool the bird who hath dewormed thee.”
This place is beginning to read like the tortured English phraseology on the House Rules card posted on each door of a cheap Taiwanese hotel, not that it isn’t entertaining.
The corn wasn’t knee high in July this year, but the scything of the human crop shall sustain the bitter.
This time, just this morning, dead and wounded in a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, all no doubt Others mistaken for other Others by the usual suspects who have ladled out hate by the drum clip and by whatever measurement of bandwidth we like:
“According to an initial report from ABC, a witness to the shooting informed law enforcement that the shooter was a “white male, bald, with a heavy build.”
Joe the Plumber becomes Willie Horton in future political ads. If the profile fits ….
If I were Joe, I’d seek a makeover.
For the record, I fantasize about immolation (I’d contract it out to the private sector, just to be bi-partisan and save hard-earned tax dollars) of various John Birch, Ayn Rand and confederate grifting holy-roller types, too numerous anymore to mention, who have stolen, not without being invited to do so, the mantle of true “conservatives” and now infest the Republican Party to the disgust of the remaining, but oddly silent, for the most part, good conservatives everywhere who are the victims of the ongoing purification purge of this … armed, vomiting, death-loving …. thing … called the Republican Party.
To express my fantasies, I visit any number of right-wing websites and publications and mimic their hate rhetoric regarding their simple plans for dealing with the Other (an endlessly burgeoning population it seems, for the dear victimized white, male, bald guys with heavy builds, though the right wing in this country has fashioned a rather ecumenical gathering of a*sholes and jagoffs of every creed, color and gender, I must observe) in this world, add my own vaudevillian squirting lapel flower touches to the mix, and ipso fatso, there you have it.
Brett, in case you are wondering about my personal opinions, you are not the problem, though certainly we disagree on much.
But the problem, including the elected problem haters who have made a Serbia of our airwaves, the cybertubes, and the very halls of so-called representation in this country, are going to be dealt with.
How do they want it?
The First .. or the Second Amendment?
My gig is the first, but you sometimes argue the second, it would seem.
Wanna switch?
I want the government completely disarmed.
How about you?
Brett, the question did not provoke my ire (as I said, you have absolutely no idea what my stance is on this) it was the vocabulary used. Had that word not been used, I wouldn’t have said anything.
Well, shucks, someone thought to diagram my 3:35 pm comment:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/two-long-reads-for-sunday-afternoon.html
Thanks, Count. The link at your URL, the one that goes into great detail on the four types, has me thoroughly depressed.
You see, after my libertarian phase came my centrist phase, so I realized, along with the despair for this country’s (probably the world’s) future, some degree of self-loathing over my one-time need for the “both sides do it” and “reasonable people can disagree” narratives.
I should just hit myself in the head with a hammer and join the Tea Party. I’d probably be happier that way.
Conservatives or libs, what the difference? Both agendas result in the expansion of an oppressive federal system and, more specifically germane to the discussion here, both seek, and have achieved, expanded police powers and diminished civil rights.
It all reminds me of disfunctional relationships and the people that seem helplessly prone to becoming entrapped in them. The conservatives are the obvious abusive authoritarian personalities and the libs are the victim types that keep engaging, nay running into the arms of, abusers in relationships hoping that the abuser will change or saying, “Yes, but he really didn’t mean it”.
No. That’s not quite right. The relationship between libs and gov’t is more like mafia wives (libs being the wives of course). Whereas conservatives are more like the dons and capos.
All the bickering isn’t about whether or not the family ‘business’ is wrong or immoral. It’s more about how to do the shake down and how the shake down loot will be allocated. And how to enforce.
“…it was the vocabulary used.” Ah yes, sigh, always an excuse to dodge the substance and to reinforce some anti 1st amendment erosion. “Wog” is a reference to an era and a cultural outlook and it was intended to add nuance to the point. I think the attitude is alive and well in the “enlightened’ liberal community. Why is that violent armed revolution is viewed as positive when brown skinned third worlders engage in it, but primitive and retarded if a white skinned first worlder suggests it in his country? It’s not because you think of the third worlder as someone inferior? Come on.
All you gun hating libs out there, I’d really like an answer to this. What if some POTUS declared some kind of emergency under one of the laws in place since 9/11, called for martial law and suspended elections and civil rights indefintely as ong as the emergency – in this case a war – lasts (and we know that we are told we are enaged in multi generational war with lib light Obama perpetuating the concept).
Some of your neighbors are arrested and disappeared because they are “suspected terrorists”.
What would you do?
Too far fetched? Doesn’t deserve an answer? BS. Happens all over the world and every govt in history has used these tactics; including our own to some extent.
blackhawk7, let me make this clear. If you don’t have the linguistic chops to “reference to an era and a cultural outlook and it was intended to add nuance to the point”, without using a work like wog, you aren’t welcome here. As for the rest of your post, I’ll leave it to you to try and figure out that Oak Creek and Aleppo are two different places.
Although I have a certain amount of sympathy with the gun-owner POV in the battle for rhetorical elbow room that has become the gun-control debate, I think balckhawk7’s assumptions of bad faith on the part of pretty much everyone who disagrees with him is counter to posting rules, and as LJ has served him with warning, we will wait and see before banning.
However, this:
is just Not Thinking It Through. There are lots and LOTS of weapons that we permit the government to have and not the people. Follows is a short list:
*A-10, B-1, B-2, B-52, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, F-35, Cobra and Apache and Kiowa Warrior helicopters, etc, armed with various cannons, bombs both smart and otherwise, air to surface missiles, air to air missiles, etc. This includes a whole lot of devices like FAE bombs and WCMD; missiles like Maverick and Hellfire and HARM.
*Pretty much anything involving fissionables, which also includes all fusion weapons.
*M-1 Abrams, towed and self-propelled artillery and their ammunition load-outs
*Man-launched anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles
*Man-portable mortars and their ammunitions
*Vehicle-mounted missile systems such as (but not limited to) MLRS, PAC-3, JTACMS and THAAD.
*With rare exceptions: all automatic-fire weapons ranging from shoulder-fired to vehicle-mounted heavy machine guns.
There is probably a lot more that I missed, but the horse is still dead no matter how much more vigorously I beat on it.
All that aside, I (I am repeating myself, here) think any attempts to ban “assault weapons” will be doomed to repeat past efforts to ban “assault weapons”. I will neatly tie up the description of said failure with: no one knows what an assault weapon is.
Someone doesn’t understand what the 1st amendment does. Probably less lecturing and more thinking is called for, here.
FREE SPEECH FREE SPEECH I AM ALLOWED TO COME INTO YOUR LIVING ROOM AND SAY WHATEVER I WANT AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME! FIRST AMENDMENT SAYS SO!
This seems a strange quibble coming from people who seem to think the 14th amendment, (No State… any State…) applies to the private sector. 😉
Anyway, looking at that graph of the good Doctor’s, I got to thinking: That’s a graph of the percentage of “households” that own guns. But, households don’t own guns, people do. When my first wife divorced me, and I kept the guns, (As I’d owned them before I met her!) the percentage of households owning guns declined slightly, while the number of people owning guns changed not at all.
So, look at this graph.
Wow, it’s a miracle! The percentage of non-single households has declined by almost the exact same percentage as households owning guns! You could explain the entire decline by gun owners getting divorced/not marrying.
Not that I think that’s an accurate explanation. More to the point, how honest do you think paranoids are when they’re asked by a pollster if they own guns?
And when the subject of armed revolt comes up, I frequently see, from liberals, fantasies of government immolation of conservatives.
I don’t think anybody fantasizes about it, as opposed to being fairly certain of what the inevitable result will be. Perhaps people should have heeded Washington’s warnings about standing armies and Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex, huh?
But, households don’t own guns, people do.
in a household like mine, where my wife and i share all finances, it would be incorrect to say that I own anything – we own everything (and too much of everything, IMO). and since we have no children, we = the household. so, our household would own our guns (if we had any).
The unescapable question – though I’m sure you and your ilk will continue to try to avoid it – is why you trust a gov’t to have these weapons, but not the people.
August 05, 2012 at 12:28 AM: error C2271: “these weapons” : unspecified referent.
==== Build : 0 succeeded, 1 failed ====
“As for the rest of your post, I’ll leave it to you to try and figure out that Oak Creek and Aleppo are two different places.”
Gee. I tried and I can’t really see how they are different, except by shades of degree, where govt oppression versus freedom are concerned. And those shades can change and blur. But then I’m just a politically incorrect moron.
I’m sure that one of the people here so smart and so surfeit of language skills (as yourself) can readily explain. Please enlighten me.
“these weapons” : unspecified referent.”
Ok. Clarification: Any weapon the govt has.
yes. This includes tanks, jets, aircraft carriers………….
Let’s face it, the avg Joe cannot afford to purchase, let alone maintain and provide a crew for the larger and more complex weapons systems. If one could, then it would be, necessarily, something akin to a proper militia. So there really isn’t much to worry about. The whole argument of citizens not owning cruise missiles is just a lib gambit to demonstrate that restrictions are necessary and to then push those restrictions all the way down to handguns and rifles with high capacity magazines.
That said, there *are* US private citizens that do own a wide range of small arms to include not only full automatic military rifles, but also various anti-tank rockets, attack helo.s, etc Most of these citizens are able to do so because they are a)wealthy and b) have govt connections. c) sometimes call themselves ‘contractors” (whatever that means).
So the restrictions are arbitrary and not equally applied.
The whole argument of citizens not owning cruise missiles is just a lib gambit to demonstrate that restrictions are necessary and to then push those restrictions all the way down to handguns and rifles with high capacity magazines.
How is it a “lib gambit” to demonstrate that we’re arguing over where the line should be rather than whether or not there should be one? It seems to me a matter of basic logic, only necessary because of the lack thereof on the part of some of the people opposed to (existing, further, or any) gun control.
So the restrictions are arbitrary and not equally applied.
Do you suppose anyone here either denies this or thinks it’s okay? Does noting this serve to support or oppose gun control?
The whole argument of citizens not owning cruise missiles is just a lib gambit to demonstrate that restrictions are necessary and to then push those restrictions all the way down to handguns and rifles with high capacity magazines.
of course it is. it’s all part of our grand, multi-generational, plot to take away your fncking guns – as is organizing bi-weekly mass-murders in order to nudge public sentiment ever-so-slowly into our favor. sadly for us, you’ve uncovered the truth and now all our machinations are for naught.
alas.
so, fellow libs, what’s next? the imposition of Sharia law, or the imposition of the Gay Agenda?
I’m not expert on velvet revolutions, but I have the vague impression that the Czechs, the Egyptians and the people of India suuccessfully pulled off regime changes without use of or access to much in the way of firearms. I kind of think that if they had used weapons their revolutions would have ended in failure and bloodbaths.
Libya, on the other hand, had weapons and trained fighters on both sides.
The Russian revolution against the czar reached a critical tipping point when the trained armed government forces joined the revolution. I don’t think the untrained revolutionairies could have succeeded even with weapons without the help of the regular army.
Of course in our revolution onoy the openning slavos were carried out by ordinary fglks grabbing the family firearm. (And even the Lexington action had trained militia people involved). Most of the war was fought by people who had some training and were functioning as an army. In addition we had the advantage of knowing the territory, of being the defenders rather than the attackers (who had to travel an enormous distance and had to supplement their troops with mercenaries).
So this idea that ordinary people can balance the power of government by arming themselves is pretty naive.
I think it is a better plan to balance the power of the ordiary person against the power of the government by making sure that ordinary people aren’t prevented by voter supression actions from voting, aren’t prevented from working together to get better wages by anti-union legislation, and aren’t denied freedom to make their on personal decisions by legislators who want to micro manage other people’s sex lives.
If fact it seems really ironic to me that so many “anti-government” people vote for Republicans who have the worst record for decades of using power or abusing it agsinst the rights and interests of ordinary people. Wouldn’t it be easier to just stop voting for Republicans than to arm yourself to fight back against them, Blackhawk?
so, fellow libs, what’s next? the imposition of Sharia law, or the imposition of the Gay Agenda?
It just kind of stinks that we can’t do both. Crap!
Can we just skip ahead to the FEMA prison camps?
Laura, On the one hand you want to rely on the power of the vote to maintain freedom and equality. How’s that been working out? What if the vote doesn’t work any more? You sort of ackowledge this scenario by pointing out the irony of small govt types voting Republican (BTW I agree with your sense of irony on that point and I do not vote Rep.) That said, what is the other choice? Dem? They are big gov’t too. That is my point. No matter who you vote for the result is bigger govt and decreased respect for civil liberties, endless war, economic screwing of the 99%, etc, etc. This has been the trend for the past several decades.
Your understanding of “velvet” revolutions is not complete. There are many other variables involved. For example, re; India, the British were weary of maintaining empire. That is why Ghandi’s method worked.
“How is it a “lib gambit” to demonstrate that we’re arguing over where the line should be rather than whether or not there should be one?”
Because it seeks to obtain agreement that there should be a line drawn. From there it is merely a matter of pushing the line farther down to include just about everything anyone could use for self defense.
Are you aware that in New York city it is a class A misdemeanor, punishible by a year in prison, to possess things like sling shots and karate numchucks? Yes, people, have actually been prosecuted for this, simple possession, even though they weren’t using these silly instruments to attempt to commit a crime. So don’t tell me it isn’t some lib agenda to eliminate all guns. Mayor Bloomberg has been ranting and raving all over the media about how America needs to follow his example. Libs, like Bloomberg, want all killing power in the hands of gov’t. And how has that worked out? Hmmmm, innocent people still get shot, knifed, raped, etc by violent criminals in NYC. yes sireeeee, a model of gun control policy in action.
“Can we just skip ahead to the FEMA prison camps?”
Well, there is the Patriot Act and there is still GITMO and extraordinary rendition………..how much farther does the gov’t have to go before you start to become concerned?
Libs, like Bloomberg, want all killing power in the hands of gov’t.
exactly! it’s why the death penalty and an ever-expanding military are loved by all liberals.
Cleek, the point remains: Break households apart, if only one person in the household was ever interested in the guns, then the percentage of households owning guns drops, without any actual change in ownership.
And, legally, guns have to be purchased by specific people. They may end up marital property in reality, but legally individuals own them.
In point of fact, I wouldn’t be shocked if the actual rate of gun ownership had declined a bit from the 70’s. A great deal of the gun control movement’s effort has been put into petty harassement, aimed at discouraging the next generation from becoming gun owners in the first place. With the notion that, if they could just push rates of gun ownership low enough, even 100% mobilization of gun owners would not be enough. It’s got to have had SOME effect on ownership rates.
My point here is just that the stats are very questionable. Aside from the whole households vs individuals issue, you’ve got the notion that people who are supposedly buying guns out of “paranoia” are accurately reporting their ownership. I suspect actual ownership rates of firearms are substantially higher than any official figures would indicate, and nobody knows what the real numbers are.
Depends…
http://www.guncite.com/journals/krealsym.html
Brett, you would appreciate the linked article. It shoots holes in the anti-gun crowd’s arguments and supports some of the thoughts you have been sharing concerning households and gun ownership #s.
CharlesWT, thanks, Interesting. Actually these are not just illegal in NYC, but in all of NYS. But yeah, sure, we shouldn’t be worried that the govt wants to confinscate our guns.
Balckhawk has somehow managed to evade, without even a point-molecule adhering
Because it seeks to obtain agreement that there should be a line drawn.
I thought that was obvious.
From there it is merely a matter of pushing the line farther down to include just about everything anyone could use for self defense.
Except that very few people actually want to do that. If they do, then go ahead and argue against that. I’ll help.
Well, there is the Patriot Act and there is still GITMO and extraordinary rendition………..how much farther does the gov’t have to go before you start to become concerned?
Not at all. Those things already concern me (and lots of other liberals, AFAICT), even if I don’t have any immediate reason to fear FEMA prison camps.
because slingshots are guns?
(that was meant for BH7’s 01:53 PM)
“Not at all. Those things already concern me (and lots of other liberals, AFAICT), even if I don’t have any immediate reason to fear FEMA prison camps.”
They worry you. Good. They should.
So the question then is what you are willing to do about it and what you would be willing to do about it if things got worse, worse meaning you yourself and/or people you care about actually became materially threatened by an increase in that sort of fascism. Would you consider armed resistance/revolt? if the answer is “yes”, then how would you obtain weapons that would at least give you a fighting chance if all such weapons were prohibited by law?
Clearly, for personal protection under current national circumstances, a handgun – probably even just a six shot revolver – is sufficient. However, there are large swaths of the populated portion of this country (e.g. NYC) where possessing a handgun is a felony if one does not have the proper permit fir that jurisdiction. A number of individuals traveling to NYC have been arrested for simply possessing a handgun and they could not have obtained a permit because they are not NY residents and because, at least in NYC it is virtually impossible to obtain a permit unless one is wealthy and well connected. There are several other cities – even states – that have similar laws and regulations. So, yes, more than “very few people want to do that” – “that” being eliminate the ability of an individual to exercise his/her primary right to self defense (again, to the ludicrous extent of making some kinds of slingshots illegal).
Returning to the idea of an armed populace being a safeguard against tyranny, I’ve read the thread here. Just about everyone except brett wants at least high capacity rifles eliminated.
avedis wrote?:
“A number of individuals traveling to NYC have been arrested for simply possessing a handgun and they could not have obtained a permit because they are not NY residents and because, at least in NYC it is virtually impossible to obtain a permit unless one is wealthy and well connected.”
That sounds familiar. Phil’s hunch was correct.
Not that a feeding isn’t in order.
Alright, so New York City has been disarmed, even to the extent that you can’t (ostensibly) stand up in a theater and throw your 32 oz soda indiscrimnately at the audience mid-feature, though if I were a New Yorker, I’d be packing 32 ounces in both hands for when it goes down, either a madman tossing Pepsi at me or the Federal Government doing a sweep of Manhatten and the outer boroughs and GITMOizing the entire town from Harlem to Soho, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Holland Tunnel.
Say, a very large band of liberals want to nip the Patriot Act and GITMO in the bud (while we’re at it, I want universal healthcare and a high marginal tax rate of 39.5%, since we’re going to the trouble, not that I wouldn’t f&cking like to), via this armed revolt we are theorizing about at OBWI for all FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security fascists to read and record for determining black helicopter coordinates and such.
Welp, it occurs to me that the most fascist gunned-up environs and populations in this Serbia of Michelle malkin’s mind we call the U.S. — Arizona, vast stretches of Texas, give or take a reasonable conservative or two, most every hamlet of southern hospitality beneath the Mason-Dixon, and the Republican toilets in the House of Representatives are the very places that just LOVE then some GITMO, the f*cking murderous fascist vermin.
In fact, they seem to think GITMO is too pale and weak for real fascists and want to hurry our descent along, given their continued armed and arson assault on the Other, not those Others, the other Others, not that the former Others won’t be thrown into the pit still breathing as well by the Republican Party platform.
In fact, were the liberal 32-oz brigades from New York City (say it like they do in the salsa commercial) to descend on D.C. and convince the Obama Administration at Skittles-point to shut down GITMO and for good measure disarm the FBI, the ATF, and a good part of the Armed Forces, which after all will be the instruments of fascist fever dreams should it come to that, I’d expect full-scale armed, bloody revolution from the fascist Confederate viper-nests I just listed.
A good part of the fascist Cuban community of Florida, who have been dying to break into Democratic headquarters again after 40 years of laying low, would join the Wyoming Cheney fusiliers as they murdered Obama, his wife, and his children.
Maybe the New Yorkers could attach a super-soaker drum clip to their 32-oz sodas to even up the odds.
Civil War.
Blackhawk,
While, as slarti noted, you are within the posting rules, it is generally accepted here that one references specific things actual people say rather than assigning opinions to large swathes of people. Your repeated invocations of ‘libs’ bumps into this. For example, I’m a ‘lib’, but I am positive that you have no idea what my position on gun control or on Arab Spring is. So if you want to take issue with some point, I strongly recommend that you ideally quote or at least reference what other people have said. Your attention to that point is appreciated.
As for your request for my help in explaining, first, I can tell you that you are using surfeit incorrectly: it is either a noun or a verb, bur you are trying to use it as an adjective with a meaning of ‘excessively full’ or something similar. As I tell my students, don’t just use a word that you aren’t sure of the meaning, find some sentences where it is used. You should have written ‘with a surfeit of language skills’ which would have gotten across your meaning.
My linguistic skills are better than average, I think, but if you really believe that you “can’t really see how they are different, except by shades of degree, where govt oppression versus freedom are concerned.”, no amount of linguistic skill on my part can explain it to you in a way you can understand. And if you really believe that, then I could assert that there is only a degree of difference between you and Wade Michael Page and you would presumably agree, unless there is something that prevents the scale from moving in that direction but allows you to claim that a civil war is the same as a white supremacist shooter killing 7 at a Sikh temple. If you could explain why that is the case, it would be interesting to read.
So the question then is what you are willing to do about it and what you would be willing to do about it if things got worse, worse meaning you yourself and/or people you care about actually became materially threatened by an increase in that sort of fascism.
When the day comes that the ATF rappels into my yard, searching out my arsenal, I will kick my ass for not buying into this quacamole. But, really, is this on the horizon? Sure, there are some who would round up all handguns and require that rifles and shotguns be registered with the local police and ownership licensed (in a country of 300,000,000, you expect a diversity of views–pooping in one’s pants every time an outlier comes along will play hell with the wardrobe). And yes, Bloomberg doesn’t seem to get the 2nd Amendment. So, here’s my question: why isn’t the NRA finding a test case to take up to the SCOTUS? That’s the easy fix for Bloomberg & Co. Here’s my paranoid take on why the NRA won’t fight that fight: they need Bloomberg in the worst kind of way. He’s doing their job for them, scaring the crap out of Ave-Hawk and his buds and getting them to send in the wampum.
What the hell, if we’re talking creeping fascism, why does the State of Ohio (my birth state, not that it couldn’t use some carpet bombing now and again) want to let members of the military vote three days early, but allow no other American citizen the privilege?
Isn’t that the way they do things in Pakistan and various Ollie North murderous fiefdoms in Central America, not to mention I think Mussolini’s uniformed cadres cut in line first too, when they weren’t turning in Italian Jews to Governor Kasich?
Word has it that Hugo Chavez and Kasich are planning a military takeover of the entire Western Hemisphere.
See, when I see guys in fatigues securing more access to the voting franchise than I possess, I suddenly can’t tell the difference between them and the guys in fatigues who shoot the joint up on a steady bi-weekly schedule in Republican NRA-land.
Both types seem to be sponsered and armed to the teeth by the alien murderous Republican Party.
Obama is trying to right that wrong, but natch, HE’S the fascist, if you believe the howling bug-filth that somehow stumble around wearing the rotting weekend at Bernie’s corpse of the former Party of Lincoln … yeah, Lincoln, who would relocate the so-called Republican Convention to Atlanta and then would say adios to the entire bunch and burn Atlanta to the ground one more time, because the first time didn’t take, could he arise for a moment from the bullet John Erick Erickson Wilkes Booth put in the back of his head … Obama’s the fascist for wanting the troops back in their barracks until they are summoned to show up at the polls in street clothes by the rest of the citizenry?
Together, at the same time, like it should be in this idea called America.
You know, way back when, little old ladies in wheel chairs got to vote absentee, because they’d have trouble getting to the polls, and strapping young men like me were expected to show up in person. And I never took umbrage at this, because I understood they were under a handicap I wasn’t under, and the absentee ballot was just to make up for this.
Now soldiers posted far from home get to vote a bit earlier than other people, because the absentee ballot might take a couple of weeks to make it to their distant location and back. And you’re taking umbrage at this because?
This has nothing to do with absentee voting Brett – if the soldiers are posted “far from home” then voting, in person, 3 days early will probably be next to nothing, “Ohio has what is called “no fault” absentee. Active duty military (or any other Ohio resident) may vote absentee as they would in any other year.” (Kay, Balloon-Juice).
Yes, this has nothing to do with absentee voting, it has to do with in-person early voting, which Ohio instituted after the debacle of 2008, when polling places were absolutely overwhelmed on Election Day.
Until this year, ALL registered Ohio voters could vote early, in person, at their county Board of Elections, up to three days before Election Day.
Republicans in Ohio got the law changed so that the cutoff for everyone else to vote early, in person, is a week before the election; except for military personnel, who can still do it up to three days before.
This is so clearly an equal-protection violation that it’s unsurprising that Mitt Romney and the permanently-outraged 27%-ers are lying about it.
There are a lot of people concerned about NYC gun laws. It is, afterall, a city of several million people. More than one person is out there talking about it.
“When the day comes that the ATF rappels into my yard, searching out my arsenal, I will kick my ass for not buying into this quacamole.”
Fair enough. That’s what I figured, the attitude seems to be something along the lines of, “I got my slice of the pie so I’m happy enough to not make waves and, besides, It can’t happen here; or maybe it can, but I’m too happy with my pie to worry about it.”
By the time they’re roping in, busting your door down, etc it’s too late, as you know. You’re just gambling that it won’t happen, at least not to you.
“why isn’t the NRA finding a test case to take up to the SCOTUS?”
Ah, but they are. They have challenged gun laws in several cities/states and have enjoyed some victories. They are now using those precedents to challenge NY laws. Look it up. It’s right there.
“..pooping in one’s pants every time an outlier comes along will play hell with the wardrobe)”
I argue that the volume of anti-gun rhetoric and the number of actual restrictive and, hopefully, soon found to be unconstitutional laws out there clearly takes us past the point where we can use the term “outlier” with any honesty.
Whatever, it is clear that some people just don’t value gun ownership and seek to denegrate those that do – using faulty logic and emotional appeals. A lot of these same people have their own pants pooping triggers, abortion being one that immediately comes to mind. Any time some outlier tries to say that a fetus may have some rights and/or some humanity, a lot of the same people that hate guns and gun ownership, mess their pants and go running with their checkbooks to their favorite women’s rights organizations to ensure the enduring right to scramble a develping human.
Moral high ground? Meh. It’s mostly all just a matter of what kind of ugly reality one can live with mmost comfortably. Some of us can accept the occasional nut job using a gun to kill a statistically negligible number of innocents. Others can accept allowing physicians to kill a few million developing humans. And so on and so forth.
That’s what I figured, the attitude seems to be something along the lines of, “I got my slice of the pie so I’m happy enough to not make waves and, besides, It can’t happen here; or maybe it can, but I’m too happy with my pie to worry about it.”
Sorry for the subtlety. That isn’t my attitude. My attitude is more along the lines of: the chances of ATF giving two schnitzels about my rifles, pistols and shotguns are zilch. I don’t share your fears.
compare:
Some of us can accept the occasional nut job using a gun to kill a statistically negligible number of innocents.
and contrast:
“I got my slice of the pie so I’m happy enough to not make waves and, besides, It can’t happen here; or maybe it can, but I’m too happy with my pie to worry about it.”
oh look, we nearly had another one.
(not that a real true American ™ would have cared, of course. broken eggs being necessary for the making of a delicious cake, the people’s right to shoot holes in each others heads shall not be infringed )
he needed the eggs
Others can accept allowing physicians to kill a few million developing humans.
The developing humans that just happen to be inside the bodies of developed humans, which makes determining the soundness of the justifications for killing the developing humans a rather intrusive personal matter for the government to be involved in? As opposed to whether or not someone should be allowed to own this or that type of gun? Mistrust of government sure does get allocated in funny ways sometimes.
Others can accept allowing physicians to kill a few million developing humans.
Just when I was getting over feeling guilty about masturbation. And I never went to med school!
“The developing humans that just happen to be inside the bodies of developed humans, which makes determining the soundness of the justifications for killing the developing humans a rather intrusive personal matter for the government to be involved in?”
OK. But how is that different than a murderous maniac up in your home or in your face?
It’s less intrusive for the gov’t to deny us the ability to shoot and kill someone who has made the choice to harm us?
How is it different than a govt that has become intent on denying your freedom/liberty, perhaps your life itself? Other than the convoluted of the govt deciding we can’t can’t protect ourselves from itself.
There’s nothing more personal than being stabbed to death by a home invader.
You’re just drawing arbitrary lines.
“just when I was getting over feeling guilty about masturbation.”
Huh? But congrats on your personal achievement any how.
You’re just drawing arbitrary lines.
You’re just excluding middles and making things up. Keep a shotgun in your house. I’m all for it. If you can quote me advocating a ban on all firearms, go ahead. If you can give me an instance of actual government suppression that I could thwart with a gun, have at it. Otherwise, I’m not understanding what you’re on about here other than silly fantasies. Sorry.
I see that the Sick (sic) shooter in Wisconsin had a band.
I wonder if they played “Cat Scratch Fever”?
“We like to dedicate this cover to the man who wrote it, Ted Nugent. It was he who gave all of us distemper.
I’d like to introduce our Gatling gun rhythm section. I know you can’t tell them apart because all of them are white, male, bald, and on the pleasantly plump side. We have Dwayne out of Delta, Dwayne out of Duluth, and Dwayne out of Debbie.
Our AK-47 player just kills and I’ll be trilling the vocals through this gravel pit of a vocal box I inherited from my Daddy, Hermann Goehring Goebbels, Georgie for short, who I shot between the eyes in a completely unavoidable domestic disturbance and Second Amendment celebration in the back yard.
We had a Jews-harp player but he died in a little train accident on our tour of Eastern Europe. We’d get us a Palestinians-harp player but culturally speaking they’re all Semites, so who do you think we are, effing Joni Mitchell?
I wanna dedicate this song “Bite Me, Mrs. Obama” to all of the mud people out there who aren’t allowed into out little gathering here. So, please raise your flame throwers in tribute … uh one, uh .. um, what comes after one there, Dwayne?
I understand Mitt Romney will fronting a new band if he makes to the White House: Have … and the Have-Nots, though word has it that he will immediately fire the Have-Nots and start a solo career.
“Keep a shotgun in your house. I’m all for it.”
Thanks. I’m glad I have your permission.
How about when I am out of my house, perhaps going to a rough section of town? Should I drive around with that shotgun, perhaps causing a public disturbance by its visibility or am I allowed to have a more subtle concealed handgun?
How about if I live on a ranch down by the Mexican border and drug smugglers armed with assulat rifles are roaming in proximity to my home. Will you allow me to have a similar high capacity weapon?
“If you can give me an instance of actual government suppression that I could thwart with a gun, have at it.”
Men with guns have overthrown govts for hundreds of years. Why, this very country was created when farmers and ruditmentary militia decided to pick up their personal weapons (guns mostly) and fight the British. Read some history. Could (or will) our govt become that oppressive. Again, read history. It’s bound to happen. Sheesh.
Could I, alone, accomplish anything in this regard? of course not. Could a few hundred thousand like minded men? Yes.
Your problem is that you do not see yourself in that role. You are happy to be subjugated as long as they still toss pacifiers into your cage and let you gripe, ineffectually, about the state of things. Also, You simply have an egocentric view of life. Therefore, you cannot see anyone doing things that you yourself would not do.
The US military failed to secure Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. It would fail to secure the “homeland” if there was an organized insurection based on righteous and generally accepted cause.
Less invocation of the God’s-eye-view would probably make your arguments more effective, I think. Telling other people what they are thinking, rather than simply asking them, is rarely an effective rhetorical gambit.
You pretty much invited that, by declaring that you’d find it time to revolt when the BATF started rappelling into YOUR backyard. Implicitly admitting that it was ok if they were doing other people’s backyards.
The last time we had a real problem with people starting to organize against the government, when the militia movement was starting to go mainstream back in the late ’80s, early ’90s, it was precisely because the BATF was ‘rappelling’ into people’s backyards.
There was a whole series of incidents, finally reaching the point with Ruby Ridge and Waco that the MSM couldn’t keep a lid on it, where the government was having snipers shoot mothers while they held their babies, burning folks alive, and so forth. And while you were doubtless sleeping well in the knowledge that it wasn’t your home on fire, a lot of people weren’t quite so, as Blackhawk7 says, egocentric.
The government did eventually reform, it’s been years since the last time I heard of the government burning anybody alive. (On American soil, anyway…) But they didn’t change course because of civil libertarians, and certainly not because of liberals, who were actually egging them on.
They changed course because they got scared at how many Americans were starting to form militias. They changed course because a lot of people didn’t draw their line in the sand in front of their own, personal feet.
I’m glad of that.
You pretty much invited that, by declaring that you’d find it time to revolt when the BATF started rappelling into YOUR backyard.
Given that, to the best of my knowledge, McKinneyTX and Slarti remain two different people separated by at least three states in between them, you might have quit here before embarrassing yourself any further. But I suppose I should admire your tenacity.
(PS: I don’t.)
so, how did all those militias do? did they overthrow anything? did they even come close? no?
face it, gun fetishists, your weapons aren’t going to be enough to overthrow the office of county comptroller. besides, even trying would be illegal – and we all know how much you love the Rule Of Law.
How about when I am out of my house, perhaps going to a rough section of town?
He says to a guy who works in Camden, New Jersey – in a capacity that requires more than occasional driving and walking in rough sections of town (not that there are many not-rough sections of Camden). And, good lord, how many rough sections of Philadelphia have I driven or walked through? Never. Carried. A. Gun.
Small children and little old ladies live in rough sections of town and couldn’t handle guns even if they had them.
How about if I live on a ranch down by the Mexican border and drug smugglers armed with assulat rifles are roaming in proximity to my home.
I’d advise ranchers not to get into assault-rifle games of shoot-’em-up with Mexican drug gangs. If there looks to be trouble a’ brewin’, get inside and keep the shotgun handy just in case, while you’re calling the sheriff.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444405804577560901492837174.html
Well, Police seem to agree with Brett and me.
“He says to a guy who works in Camden, New Jersey – in a capacity that requires more than occasional driving and walking in rough sections of town (not that there are many not-rough sections of Camden).”
Well good for you. If that’s a risk you want take, that’s your choice. Why must I live by your calculations? Like I said, egocentric.
Well good for you. If that’s a risk you want take, that’s your choice. Why must I live by your calculations? Like I said, egocentric.
You don’t have to live by my calculations. Don’t go into rough neighborhoods if you don’t want to. And I’m not necessarily opposed to your having a gun of some sort, provided you’re not mentally unstable or a criminal.
My point is simply that, based on my experience, your rough-section-of-town boogeyman isn’t scary enough to persuade me of much of anything. You’d have an easier time convincing me that people should wear helmets while driving or riding in a car, if we’re considering the actual risks involved, which I thought your point was about.
I’d have to guess that, were someone to propose to you that he should be allowed to carry an assault rifle on a commercial jet, just in case someone tried to attack him, you’d disagree, based on your evaluation of the risks involved. Would that make you egocentric?
“Would that make you egocentric?”
No.
Based on the numbers you provided in your Camden link, there is almost a 2% risk of being the victim of a violent crime, per annum.
If we assume (not the best assumption, but probably not too far off base) that the same people are not the victims in the next years data, then, over a ten year period of continual living in Camden, you have a 20% risk of being the victim of violent crime. That is a very real risk.
Paranoid marketing strategy? Feh.
Compare that to the risk of being on a hijacked airplane.
Then there’s other issues revealing the abject silliness of your retort, like the fact that assualt rifles would shoot holes through the airplane and cause it to crash.
Paranoid marketing strategy? Feh.
was the marketing strategy only used in the Camden NJ area? no?
so what’s the crime rate where you live?
Phil, mea culpa; Note to self, think before hitting “post:.
“Will you allow me to have a similar high-capacity weapon?”
Well, there is Slart’s reasonable advice and then there is Dick Cavett’s advice to Norman Mailer near the end of this YouTube clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8m9vDRe8fw
Blackhawk7, you can count on a three-sided offensive in America, if I get my way. The American military pinned down in the middle, your militia, and my militia.
It’s going to be a long war, and before it’s over your army and the American military will find it mutually expedient to join forces.
Gosh, I’m sure glad OBWI posting rules specify checking ours weapons at the door, especially since guns and alcohol don’t mix.
If we assume (not the best assumption, but probably not too far off base) that the same people are not the victims in the next years data…
Actually, it’s a terrible assumption. A better assumption would be that the people who carry guns are the ones most likely to get shot, because they shoot at each other. Another would be that street prostitutes are very likely to be beaten or raped or robbed, and that they are likely to be victimized more than once – maybe a few (or more) times a year.
I thought you were concerned about passing through. I’ve worked in Camden full time for almost 12 years, and I’ve never come close to having anything happen to me. Nor any of my coworkers that I know of. So the particular argument that you need a gun simply because you might decide to drive through a bad neighborhood isn’t compelling to me, just as the argument that one might need an assault rifle on a plane isn’t compelling to either of us.
Now, you may have other perfectly legitimate reasons to own some guns of some sort or another. I doubt any of them would apply to assault rifles, but I’m not opposed to any and all legal ownership of properly registered guns, which apparently means I’m just being unreasonable.
Better a long war than a long enslavement to tryanny.
I don’t care who sides with whom. As long as at the end of the day the last fascist is left strangled by the intestines of the last political “face person”.
That said, my militia will win because we actually know how to use the weapons you dread. This is a situation where on the job training probably won’t make for a good outcome.
Agreed on the alcohol.
Our drug of choice will be a meth amphetamine/hashish mixture – load, unlock, point in the right direction and charge at the enemy guns. Great deeds in battle, most confirmed kills, results in the reward of your more desireable women.
See you on the field of battle.
Brett, if you deny entry to law enforcement who are attempting to execute a search warrant and exchange gunfire with them, describe what you think is going to transpire after a period of siege and negotiation.
Under any Constitution.
Use me as an example.
Now, put down the phone and quit dialing the FBI for a moment.
Pretend.
I have been known to make positive statements about Sharia Law and the basic human right of al Qaeda to overthrow the Princes on the Arabian Peninsula.
I have an arsenal of weaponry, not specified necessarily as prohibited by the Second Amendment under strict interpretation now abroad in the land.
For example, I have a basement full of white powder of unidentified but suspicious composition. Maybe I’m going to be doing some plastering; maybe not, but I’m definitely plastered and a little weird what with the cavorting with awfully young looking girls through the pot plants in the backyard and the occasional ritual howling at the moon and firing of heavy weapons into the air on Arbor Day.
I once returned the nice pie your wife baked for me untouched, the crust unmolested, with the exception of a swastika and the happy declaration “all mud people must be vanquished to avenge the killing of David Koresh and Randy Weaver” carved into it.
I need your help, neighbor, with this pesky siege of dogs, black helicopters and gummint snipers trying to serve me a warrant.
Sure, I’ve broken a few nuisance laws but what’s the point of freedom if you can’t have good lark every once in
a while, compadre?
Sneak through the tunnel I’ve dug to your basement and join me.
Or, did you alert the police?
Alert to NSA who might be lurking: We’re hypothesizing over here so get a life. Any resemblance to living, real people is only coincidence though given recent events, I understand you can’t be too sure. If it makes you feel any better, I’m white, but I’m not bald. I’m male, but I’m not your beefy thick necked type and my musical tastes run to the British Invasion.
surely this mother and 11 year old daughter should’ve been carrying weapons, in order to defend themselves against the woman who was using her 2nd amendment right to defend her chicken coop from stray pieces of playground chalk.
freedom!
“A better assumption would be people who carry guns are the ones most likely to get shot, because they shoot at each other.”
Which is a double edged sword because most people that carry guns and shoot each other od so for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons would be that most “victims” of “gun violence” are criminals themselves and the shootings are the result of criminal activities.
If the illegal drug trade were to be eliminated by making those drugs legal, the “scourge of gun violence” would significantly reduce to the point where the probability of dying from a food allergy would be greater. Then you could join govt interventionists in the campaign to make peanuts illegal.
“I thought you were concerned about passing through. I’ve worked in Camden full time for almost 12 years, and I’ve never come close to having anything happen to me. Nor any of my coworkers that I know of. So the particular argument that you need a gun simply because you might decide to drive through a bad neighborhood isn’t compelling to me…..”
Yes. But you live there. You know which areas to avoid, where not to get out of your car. This improves your odds. merely driving through and perhaps taking a wrong turn, getting lost, stopping for gas, etc, i would not have that knowledge advantage.
Still, your argument reminds me of the, “Cigarettes can’t be that bad, I have a great aunt that smoked 2 packs a day of non’filters and lived to be 97” approach.
cleek, I understand where that enraged, armed woman is coming from.
She raised those chickens to barter for health care. Further, and inevitably, she needed the eggs, especially from the chicken sitting on her head.
blackhawk7: I dread the weapons I’ve used, so once again, your presumption that you are talking to a faggotty, politically correct wog liberal (not that there is anything wrong with that, in fact, those are some of the true Americans who ought to be armed to the teeth to counter the ascendant scum ransacking the land) in a gang shower room is a little off the mark.
But that’s O.K. I tend to mouth off too before I realize who is concealed carrying.
So sit back on the stool and watch the game.
I’m no engineer, but I’m pretty sure that even standing inside an in-flight fuselage and firing a gun right through the skin would not simply cause it to crash. You have a vanishingly small chance, except perhaps in an extended exchange of gunfire, of hitting enough key avionics to matter, or of puncturing a fuel tank.
hsh, we’ve established in the past that this dude is pants-pissingly afraid of anyplace that might contain a large proportion of nonwhite people, places that I ride a bicycle through regularly with no problems whatsoever. The worst that’s ever happened to me is some crackhead asking me what time it was, then going on a rant about time when I said I didn’t have a watch. I probably should’ve shot him just to be safe.
If the illegal drug trade were to be eliminated by making those drugs legal, the “scourge of gun violence” would significantly reduce to the point where the probability of dying from a food allergy would be greater.
Now we’re talkin’.
merely driving through and perhaps taking a wrong turn, getting lost, stopping for gas, etc, i would not have that knowledge advantage.
Okay. So this is the scenario that justifies what, exactly?
The worst that’s ever happened to me is some crackhead asking me what time it was, then going on a rant about time when I said I didn’t have a watch.
Mostly I get asked for spare change. It’s crazy out there.
Just thought I’d drop by and see what’s going on down here. What’s with the d&ck measuring contest? Any shots fired yet?
It’s not safe on the internets, I tells yiz. Do carry (ahem) on.
“…we’ve established in the past that this dude is pants-pissingly afraid of anyplace that might contain a large proportion of nonwhite people, places that I ride a bicycle through regularly with no problems whatsoever. ”
mmmhhhhhmmm. I thought there were posting rukes (standtads), whatever.
Phil = blah blagh lagh blah.
Maybe I’m not white?
“Okay. So this is the scenario that justifies what, exactly?”
The legal right to self defense?
This is a very good article.
I am not sure if it is completely true in Ireland. You can be called a terrorist if you are white and Irish and in a paramilitary organisation eg. IRA and some other organisations that I can’t remember the name of.
My understanding about slavery among Native Americans is that it is only in the Northwest Coast that there was ‘true slavery’, so that the children of slaves would be slaves, and slaves would be killed at the funeral of the tribal leader. In other Native American groups, there were slaves who were taken as prisoners of war, but their children would not be classified as slaves (though this might be brought up to insult them) This article (from page 300) discusses it and the author has written a monograph about NWC slavery.
I’m not sure if this is an observation I have seen or one I am making, but one of the reasons slavery existed in a more organized fashion there was because it was easier to make raids and then escape via the coast and the other reason is that their societies were, as you note, based on ‘salmon ranching’, which created a massive amount of wealth that created a very hierarchical society. Another point to make about the amount of wealth they were able to amass, when it came time to negotiate treaty rights, they generally gave up most of their land as long as they were allowed to retain their fishing rights.
whoops, wrong thread.
“That said, my militia will win because we actually know how to use the weapons you dread. This is a situation where on the job training probably won’t make for a good outcome.”
The US civil war was largely a matter of on the job training. NB also the Allies in WW2.