Another mass shooting, this time in an elementary school in Connecticut. I am ill with horror.
Have some predictions:
- The shooter will turn out to be male.
- He will turn out to be white.
- He will turn out to be angry at a woman, or women in general
- If he’s angry at an ex (wife or lover), she either works at the school or he murdered her before going to the school.
- More than half of the victims will be female.
- The weapons will have been obtained legally.
- There will be no legislation to make such weapons harder to obtain, stockpile, or use.
- Most reliable of all: gun sales will increase, especially for the particular weapons used in the shooting.
I may not be right about all these predictions, but you can take that final one to the bank.
I absolutely think we need to talk about gun violence in America, and after this kind of massacre is no time to hold back. I also think we have to bear in mind that mass murder is different from normal American homicide:
- Normal American homicide is black-on-black; mass murder is white-on-white
- Normal homicide is male-on-male; mass murder is male-on-majority female
Read Mother Jones’ overview of mass shootings in America for statistics and details, I don’t have to stomach to wrap them up for you now.
Previously, I’ve talked about guns as macho fantasies, and paranoid delusion as a gun marketing strategy.
It is perfectly clear to me that the American Founders intended the right to bear arms to be the people’s bulwark against government tyranny, specifically the threat of a standing army. It is also perfectly clear that that is not how firearms are *used*.
Most firearms in America are actually used to make men feel better about their dicks — sorry, as symbols and reinforcers of masculinity. Men buy guns, telling themselves that they will use them in the masculine role of protector and defender. But in fact, guns are used to defend masculinity, first and foremost. Very occasionally, defending masculinity means defending others in your masculine role, but usually it means attacking other men for slights against your masculinity, or women for being uppity enough to disagree with you or reject you. Or children, for caring about anything other than Daddy. The god of masculinity is a very jealous god indeed.
Why else are gun defenders are so willing to water the tree of liberty with the blood of kindergartners?
The most respect I can show those of you who are gun defenders is to ask this: What would it take to break the cycle where every mass shooting leads to increased gun sales? What is the weak point in that feedback loop?
The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, by Jacques-Louis David. Because obviously when women kill their children they’re Medea, horrible and crazy, but a man who sacrifices children for the tree of liberty is noble and tragic. Right?
Supposedly it was the shooter’s mom that was the target. Just completely devastating. Just so horrible.
“Why else are gun defenders are so willing to water the tree of liberty with the blood of kindergartners?”
Why are defenders of the First amendment so willing to publish Hustler, and racist diatribes?
Could it be that people are responsible for what THEY do?
So.
As someone who has his CCW and intends to possess a large number of guns than he currently now has let me say the following:
1) Yes, let’s discuss this in light of the tragedy.
2) Yes, guns made it more convenient for the tragedy to happen.
3) I’m open to ways to institute reasonable, rational gun control/restriction laws.
4) By reasonable, I mean based on a reasonable good faith effort to prevent these style of incidents.
4a) Needs to take into account American culture of gun ownership. Outright bans aren’t going to happen.
4b) Needs to take into account the Supreme Court’s reading of the 2nd Amendment (unless you are of the “let’s nullify the 2nd Amendment, in which case, I say “Good luck and you deal with item 4a”).
4c) Deal with the reality that guns will be available for the manufacture at home via the use of 3d printers. Right now it is a niche market of a niche market and quality control is shoddy; but this will change dramatically in the next few years, IMO; and controlling the plans will be difficult to say the least.
My thoughts on the matter are simple –
1) arming everyone won’t work. Not everyone is trained shooter, and dramatically increases the chances of accidental/incidental incidents.
2) Background checks and investigations are good things to have; however, working in the industry I do, they are not full proof.
3) Tracking ammo sales/microtagging will prevent some types of attacks, but the suicide spree killers won’t much care if the bullets can be tracked.
4) Mental health awareness and availability seems to be the best options; however, this involves a huge change in our societal and political culture to function with, if someone becomes ostracized for having mental health concerns, people of that person’s social network will be less likely to do something about it.
I think the shooter was angry at his mother and his brother. Families have conflicts for sure. Most of the time they don’t kill each other. Something else going on here. I don’t know why he had to kill children either. Whatever. He was sick and crazy. Not normal at all.
I think video games, the violent ones which there are more of these days, are to blame for a lot of this. It programs young boys to become violent killers. I don’t know why a good parent would let a child play all of these gangster assassin games.
Are video games protected by the first amendment?
4c is not going to happen. You can only print parts of the weapon that can be plastic, and efforts to date have resulted in guns that break rather quickly. You still need the barrel and chamber, and those are not going to print anytime soon.
“Most firearms in America are actually used to make men feel better about their dicks — sorry, as symbols and reinforcers of masculinity.”
Can’t really respond in detail, as we’re about to leave for the company Christmas party. But a brief reply in regards to this:
You can’t really call this pop-psychology, pop-anti-psychology might be a better term. (Here’s a hint: Freud would have accused *you* of penis envy…) But it’s really no kind of psychology at all, just a puerile gutter insult anti-gunners like to level when they think they can get away with it.
I’d respond in kind, just to underscore this, but expect I’d be banned as a result, so I’ll try to keep to the higher ground.
A little time, as the babysitter was late.
8. You do realize that this is because it is normally anticipated that people like you will chose that weapon for efforts at enacting bans, right? Though I know you mean to imply sales pick up because gun owners say, “That was used for murder? Cool!”
Yeah, I expect you realized that.
Could it be that people are responsible for what THEY do?
Or what they passively choose to allow to happen.
It would seem having the position that holding individuals responsible for their actions AND observing that nearly all of the individuals responsible for these types of mass murder via firearms have dicks could be equally true and compatible.
It could be the “culture” that makes young white men into mass murderers via firearms, if it’s not the dicks.
There are cultures, as we have learned here, and there are cultures; the similarity between the two seems to that the bedicked members of both cultures like seeing the bullets fly.
I notice the dickless among us (Vive la difference!) rarely dick around with weaponry in schools.
True, they swat the kids with rolled up copies of Hustler (dicks unconcealed), occasionally, but the kids get over it.
Are we going to hold the entire individual responsible, except for his dick, which I guess is the only part of the male anatomy that doesn’t bear responsibility?.
So, guns and people with dicks don’t predominately kill people (despite the stats for the coincidence of guns and dicks), people kill people?
I could live with a national law that made it illegal for young people with dicks below the age of, say, thirty, to own or operate any kind of firearm, including rifles, which are for fighting.
They may keep their dicks, because those are for fun. The dickless of all ages may keep their firearms, because I have feeling many of the bedicked would resort to a substitution effect.
So, possession of fewer puerile gutter insults would lead to less umbrage and a safer world, but possession of fewer weaponry would lead to … what again?
It’s fun to hear the word “dick” go off like a gunshot and observe the startle reflex among grown men.
Dr. Science, I would add one further predickion to your list. Tonight on FOX News a bevy of bedicked and dickless, though dickISH, types will bemoan the exercise of the First Amendment rights of those of us who dare have the bad taste to talk about gun control so soon after 28 people are shot dead in an elementary school, where they could just as well have been stabbed to death with the cafeteria cutlery, like the fully bedicked do in China, as happened today, but with alarmingly deficient efficacy.
I’m not sure FOX has given the waiver of the statute of limitations yet on talking about the Aurora theater shootings.
We’re developing a backlog.
It just occurred to me that my keyboard can act as sort of a drum clip for spraying the word “dick” around limitlessly for a little recreational internet plinking.
Just by holding down the trigger. It only fires asterdicks.
I’ll refrain. I don’t own a weapon either because my dick tends to get the better of me by sending signals via glands and the brain to go off half-cocked when I’m angry.
I may change my mind if Grover Norquist doesn’t shut his trap because that bedicked one threatening armed force against the government from time to time (yeah) for levying taxes is growing tiresome.
No fair that he has a dick and a gun and I’m stuck with just a dick.
Look, I give up. There’s nothing to do.
Next week, I look forward to something deadlier in the way of school shootings, because I don’t really give a sh*t any longer and hoping we won’t have another one next week is fantasy for the dickless, according to the first rules of dicks.
So, bring it on. If it’s unsolvable, then it must be funny, I always say.
I’d say “F*ck it!” but that may be too large of a caliber for some.
Let’s have a thread on global warming, but close it before comments can begin, because there’s nothing to do.
And on and on.
I see now that Russell has requested a moratorium on this topic on the other thread and I’ll now shadup …. because Russell.
He fries different and more reasonable fish than FOX News.
All this talk about “dicks”……my guy definitely has nothing to compensate for. Nothing to woryy about in the man parts and service department, but he owns guns.
I like to shoot too once in a while at the range.
Now the news is reporting that the guns used in the school shooting were registered to the teacher who was the mother.
I like to wear dresses and have men open doors for me. I know that some women like to wear the pants and find traditional gender roles insulting. It’s usually that type that complains about men and their “dicks”. I think they are jealous.
I see now that Russell has requested a moratorium on this topic
To be honest, if folks find it useful to talk about it, I have nothing against that.
Have at it if that’s what you need to do.
I just don’t think I personally have much to say about it right now. I’m just really f**king sad.
I’m angry and sad.
I just cannot understand what kind of sick mind targets children.
I’m sad too.
The problem is, there are kids who will die tomorrow and the next day until we do something about it. It happens every single day, not in this spectacularly large way, but every day. But even these massive shootings happen more than once a month. This week, more than once a week.
I had given up for awhile, but that was wrong. We can’t give up.
More than half of the victims will be female.
Breaking news! Genital checks on kindergartners show 11 victims of the war on women and nine dead things that don’t count.
sorry, you can’t stop gun owners. the same old line about “guns don’t kill, people do” will be bandied about as an excuse. and it has worked everytime and will continue to work.
banning guns will not happen as long as men are out there wanting to kill whatever they choose to aim at. animals, people or whatever. the power of guns and their destructiveness is always going to win in America. the 2nd amendment has been used to excuse any type of gun related incident
and will continue to be. sad and predicaably American.
this kind of rationale allows sick people like today’s killer to get away with what he did and will allow tomorrow’s killer to do the same. all this talk about sadness and death is just inherent in the “guns don’t kill” paradigm.
guns are more important in America than people. like some armed militia, 2nd amendment types, are going to stop the Government with all it’s firepower from winning any battle.
that’s such a specious argument. so full of irrationality. but we are dealing with irrationality and the use of guns to “solve” problems. so we will continue to see more of this type of “2nd Amendment “excuses”. maybe these kindergarteners will die for some good, but i doubt it. more carnage in the war on America by some “Mad” gun owners.
“Most firearms in America are actually used to make men feel better about their dicks — sorry, as symbols and reinforcers of masculinity. ”
I have a .22 rifle; my wife has a .38 special. Is she more comfortable with her dick than I am with mine?
This post has some things in it that are less than what I would expect from Dr. Science; I am blaming the lapse on tragedy.
You know, I absolutely agree with slarti here. Cheap pop-Freudianism is not only nonsense, it detracts from attempts to solve the problem.
You do realize that this is because it is normally anticipated that people like you will chose that weapon for efforts at enacting bans, right? Though I know you mean to imply sales pick up because gun owners say, “That was used for murder? Cool!”
Brett, can you point to the specific bans that were enacted after each of the last 5 mass casualty shootings in the US?
I get that gun owners have this incredible fear that guns are going to get banned after mass casualty shootings. But at some point, when the thing you’re convinced will happen keeps not happening, your conviction becomes…evidence of delusion. I’m really not thrilled at the prospect of a large number of delusional people desperately hoarding lots more weapons because they’ve lost touch with reality.
“I have a .22 rifle; my wife has a .38 special. Is she more comfortable with her dick than I am with mine?”
That’s a loaded question.
I would guess the 22 is more for target practice, but the .38 special is more for self-defense against OTHER people with dicks.
I’d guess I’m off by some ridiculous margin, but since you asked.
The more relevant question is why do young bedicked men predominately in our “culture” murder indiscriminately with firearms and you and your wife, and other women, don’t, or least rarely do? Your wife and you never and other women rarely, of course, with all due apologies to other women.
“Dick”, if we follow the lesson provided us the other day regarding analogy, meaning not just an appendage but also a set of hormones and the mindset that goes with when coupled with the ready availability of guns.
For which a vaccine has not yet been developed.
Why don’t football players’ wives and girlfriends shoot the former instead of the other way round, nearly all of the time?
Also, why is castration sometimes recommended as punishment for male rapists by a segment of the conservative, gun-loving end of the spectrum if dicks and the violence of dominance have nothing to do with anything?
Personally, I believe today’s shooter should have been encouraged to play with his dick more and guns less.
But our culture prefers the reverse.
That the weapons apparently were registered in the shooter’s now-murdered Mom’s name merely illustrates the possibility of jagoffery in all sexes, races, and creeds, although young males in our culture seem to maintain a sizable lead in that category at all times.
I agree with McManus that the bedicked rarely discriminate between the genders of their victims in the event of mass murder, but seem to favor killing the dickless at home, when a wider range of victims aren’t available.
I could raise the question too of why oh why do some women yearn for the right to engage in war combat like their bedicked colleagues, but life is confusing.
The over/under on Bellmore is 54 comments on this thread.
Odd that he will acknowledge the validity of even one of anybody else’s points: No line. Prohibitive favorite.
200+ comments: Probability > 75%
Nate Silver told me so.
Bring this shit to a vote. That “right” has outlived it’s usefulness.
Repeal it.
All you amateur cowboys will have to find some other way to make believe. Because your hobby makes it too fncking easy for people to kill each other and the rest of us are sick of watching the bodies pile up.
“Bring this shit to a vote. That “right” has outlived it’s usefulness.”
I’m not sure what shit you have in mind. I suspect that Congress is probably also not clued in.
So: what, specifically, do you propose?
People are responsible for what they do. Employers should allow people to drink on the job, except maybe for AB’s beer tasters. They obviously can’t handle that responsibility.
People who aren’t highly functional are able to get their hands on guns in this country because there are so many fnkcing guns here. We have to live with that because Constitution! and 2nd Amendment!
Look, it’s really just about process, which is why an amendment rescinding or modifying the 2nd amendment is a-okay with conservatives. They’ll be happy that we’re dealing with the gun problem in a way that respects the constitution. It not just “I want guns.” It’s about the rule of law.
bobbyp:
Well, I was saving this because it is tangential, but here is something that Brett might at least nod agreement to, though others might take umbrage at the invocation of gender differences.
Generally speaking, there is a harmless engineering aesthetic that goes along with precision hardware and gadgets that seems to fascinate men more than it does women.
There is something about machined tooled metal and composites with their exquisite tolerances and delicious fitting together of crafted metal against crafted metal that more often than not is seductive to the male mind.
The crafting of a device that can accelerate a bullet to such velocities is an engineering marvel to men, mostly, but not exclusively, in my experience.
I’m not slighting function.
I, for one, despite my utter disinterest in engineering and tools and such, can watch and re-watch segments of movies like Mission Impossible, or The Professional, and similar films in which exquisitely engineered weapons and their accessories are revealed each in their cushioned compartments in a suitcase and then assembled with excruciatingly exact clicks noting the fitting together of the parts.
I love it aesthetically when the silencer is threaded onto the barrel of the weapon and then some intricate but elegant apparati unfold, the metal making its wonderful muffled noises, to form a butt and a sight.
“The Ipcress File”, starring a very young Michael Caine, featured a scene in his kitchen early in the film in which he prepares expresso, probably for a goil. The scene has little or no dialogue; it’s merely his silent, exact manipulation of the finely tooled parts of the very coolly designed European machine.
I imagine a comparison, in the meditative sense, with participating in the Japanese Tea Ceremony, with its aesthetic exactitude.
My Ipad. There’s something about the sound of my finger tapping against the gorilla glass of the screen and the all of the beveled, exact edges that makes me want to give up playing with my dick altogether.
None of this rises quite to the level of say, the sexual fetish of the human body meeting up at high speeds with the instrumentation on the car dashboard, as displayed in J.G. Ballard’s novel “Crash”, but there is something nearly sexual (here, Brett stops nodding, if not before) about technology and sex in many cultures.
I had a best friend, now deceased, in college who went on and on for weeks about the coolness of how firearms are engineered precisely to carry out their function.
He couldn’t wait to get home and try out a 22 rifle someone in his family had procured, a weapon that I excelled at using for target practice in high school on the rifle team.
Home he went for the summer and I visited him and asked about the 22. He looked at me kind of sheepishly (what, what, I asked) and explained that he had taken it out on his parents sizable rural property and winged a shot at a groundhog some distance away who was standing in some weeds.
The groundhog disappeared and my friend search for it and sure enough, the weapon performed exactly as it was engineered to do — one dead groundhog.
My friend looked at me and said “Yeah, guns are very cool technology, but they are made to do only one thing — kill.”
So then we went out and looked under the hood of his Dad’s diesel Mercedes, which was engineered to do only one thing — drive — like I care.
Despite the substitution effect.
So: what, specifically, do you propose?
You keep ignoring what people propose as if they didn’t say it. I propose a Constitutional amendment repealing the Second Amendment. And then then passing legislation banning assault rifles and passing whatever laws are necessary to regulate guns.
I’m not a fan of killing animals, and don’t get the thrill of hunting, but I understand the point of hunting for food. Other than that, you need a law to allow it, not to prohibit it.
“I think video games, the violent ones which there are more of these days, are to blame for a lot of this. It programs young boys to become violent killers.”
This must be why Japan has such regular and rampant violent outbreaks.
” I propose a Constitutional amendment repealing the Second Amendment. And then then passing legislation banning assault rifles and passing whatever laws are necessary to regulate guns. ”
This is the proper way to deal with Constitutional amendments that you don’t like.
1. Objecting to the dick comment can’t stand in for refutation of the underlying claim that the American concept of masculinity is deeply connected to fantasies about the use of Righteous Violence against one’s foes.
2. Pointing out that a gun ban is politically impractical is not a valid means of avoiding the question of whether one would, in the abstract, be a good idea. It isn’t politically practical to fund infrastructure maintenance in the United States, but that doesn’t mean that doing so wouldn’t be worthwhile.
3. These shootings are probably a cost of our national views on gun ownership, and of our national politics related to gun ownership. The ability to successfully use violence is of course related to decision making on whether to engage in violence- arguing otherwise marks you as a petulant child emotionally incapable of discussing serious matters with adults. And an unwillingness to acknowledge both the benefits and the costs of your political positions marks you a coward.
To borrow Brett Bellemore’s challenge from above, I acknowledge that the publication of racist screeds is a cost of freedom of speech. I think it is worth it. I can state this clearly because I am emotionally mature, and not a coward.
It would be nice if gun rights supporters could be capable of the same, instead of trying to distract the issue with infantile fantasies of law abidin’ citizens engaging in righteous shootouts with black hatted criminals.
Every gun is sacred. No right is more important than the right to own as many guns as one wishes, of any kind, and to carry them wherever one wishes.
Every gun is sacred. More than children and teachers; more than people shopping at a mall; more than folks going out to see a movie or down to the neighborhood coffeeshop.
Guns are sacred. The right to own and carry trumps the right to not have to own and carry. Non-gun rights stop at your front door; gun rights don’t stop anywhere.
You don’t like it? Too bad. Get a gun and be ready to defend yourself.
Delightful.
Generally speaking, there is a harmless engineering aesthetic that goes along with precision hardware and gadgets that seems to fascinate men more than it does women.
Count,
I’m not so sure it is harmless, but I would agree there is an engineering aesthetic that experiences near hallucinatory anticipatory pre-orgasmic pleasure from the precise and perfect execution of a planned and exquisitely engineered marvel, irrespective of how many and what types of parts are harmoniously rubbing against each other in sensuous perfection, ingeniously anticipated in all particulars to the gnat’s ass.
However, having dealt extensively with both male and female engineers, this observed behavior does not appear to be gender specific.
It’s an engineering thing, and it is the arrogance that really grates.
I could handle the dick thing well enough (you should have seen me!), but this engineer stuff is enough, and enough is too much.
I mean, first they came for the engineers, and no one said anything. Then they came for the physicists, and, still, no one said anything. Then they came for the mathematicians, and it was too late. Now no one is safe. You’ll see.
This must be why Japan has such regular and rampant violent outbreaks.
I’ve been trying to write a post about this, based on the fact that though I’m sure this isn’t anyone’s intention, the gun control debates are a sure way to make blogs more US centric. I’m not really sure how any non-American (I include myself in that) can participate in a thread like this, except like an anthropologist trying to explain some strange aspect of a recently discovered culture. Still, Sebastian’s comment gives me a hook, however small, to hang some observations on and recycle some of the post material
I’d like to try and suggest that there is ecosystem where gun laws are simply viewed as a portion of how crime, personal freedom, etc etc are dealt with. If people accepted that, it would be interesting to have non-Americans describe their ‘ecosystems’ and see what’s there.
On what I think was the same day as the Conn. shootings, I had to run home because I forgot something, and when I got to my cho (basically a town or city district), there were police all over the place. My cho is about a square kilometer (though I don’t think there is a standard size), and there were 3 black and whites with 2 cops and at least 4 cops on bikes simply going up and down the street, cars with their lights on and the bike cops looking in various nooks and crannies. I pulled into my driveway, and went in the house, so I didn’t ask what was happening. but it was in response to a report that a stranger was seen carrying a long tube like black object. (I found that out from an email that was sent to my wife’s cell phone from the school’s email notice system) I’m not sure if it was confined to our cho, or if the larger administrative unit was included and what the density of police was, but I thought that the ability to basically ‘flood the zone’ and respond to a report like that was an aspect of the japanese ecosystem. I went to find what the per capita of police were and apparently Japan is down the list, with 1.8 policemen per 100,000 residents, about 40 in the world.
In looking for that, I came across this pdf, which was a 2010 International Symposium on Crime Reduction
Anti-Crime Collaboration between Citizens, Communities, Governments, and Police. The first speaker, David Johnson, who wrote an interesting book called ‘The Japanese Way of Justice: Prosecuting Crime in Japan’ made some observations and his paper, which is first in the pdf, has this
Figure 7 shows that suicide has become so common in Japan that the country’s overall rate of “lethal violence” (homicide + suicide) exceeds that for every other industrialized nation for which decent data exist, and is about twice the average for all industrialized nations.
Men commit almost three-quarters of all suicides in Japan, and the big rise in the number of suicides after 1998 can largely be attributed to increases in the suicide rate of men aged 25 to 65. As mentioned above, 40 times more Japanese kill themselves than kill other people; the analogous figures for the US, the UK, and France are about 2, 8, and 20, respectively.
Johnson also cites Bayley, who wrote a book called Forces of Order, and he says:
According to Bayley, “the primary function of the Japanese police is not deterrence; it is crime prevention through enhancing the capacity of the society to discipline itself”… Bayley believes the police do this in three overlapping ways: by prodding, guiding, and alerting the public.
Prodding refers to the activities of the Japanese police in continually urging and encouraging the populace to report suspicious activities, buy security hardware, learn crime avoidance techniques, join crime prevention groups, and read and circulate crime prevention material. An important part of prodding the public is frequently telling people that “the situation is worse than they imagine,” which heightens public sensitivity to crime issues (Bayley 1991:184).
…
The second mechanism by which Japanese police prevent crime is guidance of the kind that the founder of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (Toshiyoshi Kawaji) stressed in the 1870s when he referred to police as “nurses of the people.” … Most notably, police enlist thousands of citizens to participate in crime prevention
activities by monitoring and supervising behavior in their neighborhood. …The result is “thousands of respectable ‘busybodies’…[who] work hand in glove with the police to
extend the boundaries of family and school discipline into public places”
…
The third crime prevention mechanism—alerting—refers to the Japanese police focus on “anticipating emerging problems of order” and then working with other actors and agencies to “take preventive action” (Bayley 1991:188). We have seen that many kinds of street crime are relatively infrequent in Japan, and that the police are hypersensitive to small changes in the “order” situation. They do not wait until a crisis emerges in order to respond. In their view, that is like trying to close the barn door after a horse has already escaped. Instead, Japanese police aim to stop problems before they become too hot to handle. This may also help explain why the police tend to exaggerate the seriousness of crime challenges. As Bayley put it, they, and the other actors in the crime-control network that they coordinate, “are like white corpuscles in the human body,” swarming around the first signs of infection in order to prevent society from getting more than a mild fever. In this way, “the Japanese police are always alert to departures from social order and are ready to take the lead in developing encompassing strategies of response” (Bayley 1991:189).
Sorry about the long quotes, but I put this in to try and describe how different things are here and to give some context to what happened to me the other day.
Looking at all this from here, it seems that there has to be a more global approach rather than simply the small question of gun control.
@Countme-in: I could raise the question too of why oh why do some women yearn for the right to engage in war combat like their bedicked colleagues, but life is confusing.
I assume that a lot of it is a desire for equal recognition. Like it or not, serving in combat has served as an important point of advancement for many minority groups. Denying women the opportunity to serve in combat denies them that avenue to advance the social standing of all women. And the individual women who want to serve in combat may be interested in personal advancement within the military, which tends to favor veterans with combat records. Keeping women out of combat will effectively keep them from making it to the top of the military, while allowing them into combat will open up those top jobs.
I fully subscribe to the idea of the extreme, bordering on fetishistic, pleasure about marvels of engineering with special emphasis on firearms. I marvel at the fact that it is possible to design and build something that has the precision of a Swiss watch but has to withstand violent powers equivalent to multiple sledgehammers in operation. But when I have violent fantasies, it rarely involves riddling bodies with bullets. The tool of violence for that is a blunt object or an axe. It’s not about the result of a person ending up dead but about the visceral act of killing or maimimg with a premature death of the victim being a serios flaw.
The definitive depiction of that is likely this scene (2:30 to 3:30). A mass shooting would be just a poor substitute trying to make up in numbers what the individual ‘cheap’ kill lacks. I do not deny the intermediate of the hunt* though where the mental torture of the hunted fulfills at least parts of the visceral ‘needs’ of the hunter. The problem (or part of it) is that this substitute is much more available and easier to execute. I assume (having no practical experience) that it is far easier (mentally and physically) to attack a random crowd with a semi-automatic than with a melee weapon. At home the frying pan may easily substitute for the bullet (in the heat of the moment, less so for deliberate murder), less so outdoors.
—
I remember mass stabbings having happened over here but they are quite rare. The most spectacular case was one where the perpetrator was strongly suspected of having tainted the blade with HIV positive blood. He also did not charge a crowd but was inside it and suddenly began stabbing around. Not overly wildy but with deliberate single stabs per person (into the back until he got noticed). Instant lethality was obviously not the main goal. Iirc he managed to hurt 20-25 people in total. I do not remember whether a motive ever got established or whether anyone got infected.
*I do not mean hunting for the simple act of acquiring food. Many countries even enshrine the old honour code of hunters in law making the swift and clean kill mandatory and the disablity or unwillingness to deliver it a disqualifier (i.e.your licence can be revoked temporarily or permanently if you make a mess of it, esp. if there is evidence that it is deliberate).
From an outsider’s point of view, the contrast between America’s willingness to make rather drastic changes (not entirely without constitutional implications) in the way you order your society, as a result of 9/11, and the unwillingness to contemplate even the possibility of a change in the easy availability of firearms, is deeply puzzling.
“From an outsider’s point of view, the contrast between America’s willingness to make rather drastic changes (not entirely without constitutional implications) in the way you order your society, as a result of 9/11, and the unwillingness to contemplate even the possibility of a change in the easy availability of firearms, is deeply puzzling.”
There was money to be made off a status quo change after 9/11. With guns, money to be lost.
I wanted to talk about the “every teacher should carry a gun” argument. Doesn’t sound smart. Let’s posit that this year is typical for “mass shootings” as defined in this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/us-mass-shootings-2012/
So 13 mass shootings, 81 dead excluding shooters, not sure how many injured.
Every gun comes with an error rate: teacher might use the gun when not justified, kid might get access to the gun, etc. Giving teachers guns will, at best, reduce fatalities from 13 mass shootings a year, and/or deter some of those mass shootings. So we’re talking a ceiling of 81 lives saved in the most wildly optimistic scenario, namely that teachers-carrying-guns stops ALL mass shootings as defined in the link above.
But now we have teachers carrying guns in thousands or tens of thousands of schools across the country. The error rate of usage and ownership applied to a huge pool is going to risk completely erasing or overmatching the 81 lives saved in the small number of cases where a teacher carrying a gun does any good.
Add to that the cost of arming and training all these teachers with guns.
I expect the rebuttal is that we’ll train the teachers really well so they don’t make mistakes, but that doesn’t convince me – since when can we eliminate errors? I mean, why don’t we just snicker at people who complain about car deaths and say we’ll just train people to be better drivers?
“You keep ignoring what people propose as if they didn’t say it”
Thanks for answering for cleek. Sorry for not having connected “this shit” to your somewhat more detailed description.
Sure, bring that to a vote now. It’s better that it fails sooner than later.
lol slarti
“Bring this shit to a vote. That “right” has outlived it’s usefulness.
Repeal it.”
the operative phrase was “Repeal it.”
please explain how you could both a) have bothered to read his post and b) failed to understand what “repeal it” referred to in this context.
I throw myself on the mercy of the court, Julian.
Roger Moore:
Yes, your observations are accurate.
Nigel:
I’ve been thinking along these lines as well.
Brett has pounded on the point in numerous threads about the “cultural” roots of black and Hispanic violence, mostly urban.
In fact, our crime prevention and penal industry has tailored specific remedies to deal with the culture.
Others decry the loss of God in our culture and the public sphere. Not enough God.
The country in its absolute security response to 9/11 has, especially in certain quarters, sometimes available for viewing on C-Span, been ready and willing to believe in a monolithic Muslim “culture” — too much God — as the root of a problem, and have been willing to stereotype every single one of the billion or so Muslims in the world as a dangerous carrier of this culture.
But, when it comes to the specific and repeated incidences of mass violence and murder with firearms by young, relatively affluent, white men and boys who generally speaking seem to suffer from variants of clinical depression, no cultural roots, especially in reference to the gun culture, are permitted.
No. We’re all autonomous individuals responsible for our own actions and there will be no cultural referents.
How dare we stereotype? How dare we ask impertinent questions?
How many tens of millions of Federal tax dollars have gone into shoring up mostly suburban and affluent police forces and public schools against the minute threat of attack by individuals who happen to be Muslim, when the perpetrators — young white men — are sitting a few blocks away plotting terrorism?
How many times does innocent me have to explain the size of the f*cking shampoo container in my airline carry-on, though not pulled aside because of shampooing while swarthy, before I’m permitted to ask a few f*cking questions about the gun culture and ownership, and the use of its most lethal instruments for mass murder, among the white middle and upper middle class, of which I was raised a member?
It’s a either a cultural problem in all cases or in none of them.
Either everyone on the planet is a culturally autonomous individual or none of us are.
Could be somewhere in the middle, maybe?
Well, for THOSE people. What are those vague paranoid signals of alarm going off in my (to put myself on the line) central nervous system when I hoof it through the wrong side of town or notice the vaguely Mideastern man standing in line for the airplane toilet, that don’t seem to occur when I’m in a school and I notice a young white teenager or man sauntering by on the sidewalk outside.
Knowing what we know about THOSE people, why am I not requesting their frisking at least and maybe even my own.
My house was 1.5 miles from Columbine High School. My son is a young white, middle class kid, now young adult.
But my people are all autonomous individuals, responsible for their own actions at all times, unlike those other threatening monolithic cultures.
This Connecticut deal has nothing to do with me.
lj’s comment regarding the Japanese culture’s approach to law enforcement plays into this too.
Slarti, your sham contrition is all the apology I need
It wasn’t a sham. If you like, I can apologize at length and in detail for this and all past and future shoddy reading.
But as shoddy reading is kind of thoroughly ingrained in me, it seems pointless.
this may be a boon to you in future human interactions: when you make a small mistake and someone else notes it, lavishly overapologizing comes off as sarcasm. A simple “oops, sorry about that” would’ve been splendid. I’ve misread many things here and elsewhere so I know how you feel.
I suppose we could put signs up on all schools that school personnel are armed, without actually arming Miss Janey down in Kindergarten.
But considering that most of these young white, heavily armed, depressed men all seem to end up dead, usually by their own hand, I think they’d be up, as in stoked, for the challenge.
I suspect, with good planning and training and equipment, these individuals could stalk and invade gun shows and do plenty of human damage before even the heavily-armed and innocent within could respond, despite the concentration of arms and training.
After all, it would be like war, where both sides take casualties.
I suspect the preference for schools and malls and is only partly because of the fear of being blown away from all directions by armed people, considering that being blown away one way or the other seems to be the fate of all of these perpetrators.
I suspect these guys are merely too lazy to plan a real military type of assault.
They’ll get better at what they do and hone their fantasies if trends continue and then more fortified targets will face the culture too.
The Second Amendment in its original wording is here to stay.
That’s one cultural artifact against which we may do nothing.
They’ll kill us if we do.
Some of them have said so.
I’ve seen Grover Norquist, the motherf*cking vermin, on C-Span say exactly that.
So, f*ck it.
I has nothing to do with me.
Thanks for the pointer, Julian. I really do suck at this kind of thing, and I no longer have the excuse of inexperience to fall back upon.
Thank you, sincerely, for being receptive. I screw these kinds of things up too so sometimes I’m oversensitive to them when I see someone else doing it.
I made a mistake in my math – that 81 killed in “mass shootings” as defined by the Washington Post isn’t just at schools. Which means arming the teachers has even less of a possible upside.
Back from the party, and internet working again.
“You keep ignoring what people propose as if they didn’t say it. I propose a Constitutional amendment repealing the Second Amendment. And then then passing legislation banning assault rifles and passing whatever laws are necessary to regulate guns.”
We’re ignoring it as though proposing it demonstrated an utter disconnect from reality. Ignoring it was the polite thing to do.
The great majority of state constitutions, (44 of them!) guarantee this right, often in terms more stark than the 2nd amendment. State constitutions are typically easier to amend than the federal Constitution. I can think of at least a couple of states which have recently added such amendments to their constitutions, none have repealed them.
You’re essentially raving about climbing Everest, when you live in a 1 story flat because stairs are too much for you to handle.
Gun controllers talking about this sort of thing by the legislative process are like Libertarians explaining their plans to repeal 95% of the legal code. Enlightening as to the movement’s goals, but if thought of as a serious plan, evidence of insanity.
The high water mark of the gun control movement was the 1994 ban, barely passed, and followed by a landslide election erasing the majority that accomplished it. You’ve been losing political ground ever since. Even when you manage to elect somebody who shares your views, doing so usually involved them publicly denying it in order to avoid going down to defeat.
Sure, you have sufficient political dominance in a few specific areas of the country to win elections, which is why Heller and especially McDonald were important. But as a political program for the nation as a whole, proposing repeal of the 2nd amendment and enactment of gun bans is stark madness.
We aren’t the gun nuts, YOU are.
Brett, abolishing slavery was politically unrealistic for a while too, which, by your logic, means an abolitionist stance on slavery (in the 1820s) was unreasonable.
Ignoring it was the polite thing to do.
I now resume my usual and better practice of ignoring Brett.
This isn’t politically unrealistic in an abolishing slavery way. It’s unrealistic in a restoring slavery way. People don’t lie down and let their rights be taken away, after finally getting them back.
Doctor Science is right that gun-nuttery is mostly masculine fantasy, but women are not particular objects. Most homicidal gun violence is among young men or among family members or neighbors irrespective of sex. And mass killings are a small fraction of gun deaths. Focus on mass killings can be misleading. It is not completely illogical to argue that if all the adults in the Connecticut school had guns and were willing to open fire the total death toll would have been smaller – maybe only a few students accidentally killed in the crossfile instead of 26 people methodically killed with no resistance. The argument against everyone carrying guns is not based on mass killings, it is based on preventing every minor argument from degenerating into a gun battle. It may be that mass killings occur in supposedly gun-free zones, but that is because these are places where there are masses of people and where any weaponry would be dangerous. People bent on mass killings don’t look for victims out in the country where there are no restrictions on guns. Mass killings are a special phenomenon and preventing them would not come close to preventing gun deaths in the US.
I think that the gun lobby has successfully polarirized the discussion in the coundry along irrational and (to themselves)self-aggrandizing lies in the same way that so-called pro-lifers have made it nearly impossible to discuss abortion.
Most Americans believe that abortion should be legal in some circumstances but our discussions always degenerate into the sin-of-priders claiming moral superiority without even accurately discribing their won positions (which mostly are pro-choice in reality) and other people responding emotionally to their self-rightwousness or rereacting by going to the opposite extreme and claiming that abortion should always be a choice.
Second Amendment extremists have done the same thing by treating to every discussion of gun conrl as if it was an either/ or discussion with them on the patiortic highground defending the Constituion which leaves everyoe else in the psoition of reacting negatively to their self-rightwousness by calling them gunnuts.
What we should be talking about is practical aspects of the situation: what sorts of laws and regulatios woudl keep guns out of the hands of crazy people, away from children, and in the hands of people who have training in safety.
Of course gun nuts further their reputation for nuttiness by discounting every sensible suggestion with “arguments” that aren’t really arguments at all.
BTW polling sata shows that gun ownership and violence crime in general is significantly down in the US as compared to twenty years ago and that most Americans oppose guncontrol in general but support specific guncontrol proposals. Which is why gun nuts don’t want a discussion of specific guncontrol proposals, of course, and derail such discssions with rhetoric about personal respsonbility, their interpetations of the Second Amendment and scarey stories about crime.
I expect the rebuttal is that we’ll train the teachers really well so they don’t make mistakes, but that doesn’t convince me
Yes, especially since the very same people who say that teachers should be armed and apparently trained to police levels of tactically assessing a combat situation and reacting appropriately also tell us the rest of the time that these teachers are overpaid, lazy, union-loving, merit-pay-rejecting, tax-dollar-gobbling, cushy-pension-having wastrels who can’t even be arsed to work 12 full months.
Laura, you’re right, but because the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment in a very gun-nut-friendly way, there’s now little opportunity for a meaningful discussion about rational gun laws until we do something about the Second Amendment. And any discussion of that, of course, drives the gun nuts into full crazy.
Everyone should read this. It couldn’t be sadder.
I wish I could get some of my cop and firefighter friends to post here and laugh at Bellmore, though, who because he shoots cans and used to play G.I. Joe with a bunch of wetbrains in Michigan fancies himself a tactical genius. It is more the job of the police to “just go charging in” than it is of firefighters to just show up and start spraying hoses at everything in sight.
“I think that the gun lobby has successfully polarirized the discussion in the coundry along irrational and (to themselves)self-aggrandizing lies in the same way that so-called pro-lifers have made it nearly impossible to discuss abortion.
Most Americans believe that abortion should be legal in some circumstances but our discussions always degenerate into the sin-of-priders claiming moral superiority without even accurately discribing their won positions (which mostly are pro-choice in reality) and other people responding emotionally to their self-rightwousness or rereacting by going to the opposite extreme and claiming that abortion should always be a choice.”
This is an interesting analogy, but the conclusion seems wrong. If you want to draw the parallel, the NRA and NARAL are precisely the same in how they have shaped the debate so that even very modest and very limited controls are effectively impossible to address. They are precisely the same in resisting compromises that work in other countries. They are precisely the same in using propaganda against the other side by claiming that any compromise toward the position held by the middle is impossible because the other side wants a total ban. They are eerily similar in their callousness toward the idea that a side effect of their policies means that innocent human children end up killed in certain low frequency but definitely occurring crimes. They talk about how important the right is such that we must ignore these low frequency but definitely occurring cases. And when they happen, see Kermit Gosnell for example, we are assured by them that the proper focus is a laser like look at the individual actors personal responsibility–with no interest whatsoever in how the laws and political climate they helped erect contributed to the problem.
You’ve made me think of the NRA in a different way. (That isn’t sarcastic).
“If you want to draw the parallel, the NRA and NARAL are precisely the same in how they have shaped the debate so that even very modest and very limited controls are effectively impossible to address.”
We have serious, and long-standing, controls, on anything you can do with a gun that actually hurts someone. This only leaves regulations prohibiting things which don’t hurt people. I would never characterize regulations doing that as “modest and very limited”.
The alleged parallel between the rights of people to carry death inducing instruments, and the right of people not to carry fetuses in their bodies (unless they are in their second trimester, when that right is regulated, or third trimester, when they have that right only if the fetuses are a threat to their health or life) is a bit of a stretch, since most pro-choice advocates are trying to preserve a woman’s right not to have this happen. So I’m not going to continue in the derailment of the discussion with any more of that ludicrous comparison.
But, as predicted, more random gun violence – this time in a hospital – happened today. Nobody dead this time, except for the shooter, thank goodness.
“We have serious, and long-standing, controls, on anything you can do with a gun that actually hurts someone. This only leaves regulations prohibiting things which don’t hurt people. I would never characterize regulations doing that as ‘modest and very limited’.”
Should iran be allowed to have whatever nuclear technology it wants because we can always regulate just the wrongful use of that technology?
Setting aside the fact that I don’t think governments have any rights, wouldn’t Iran be in the same position as somebody who has a history of violence, and has announced their intent to murder somebody?
“wouldn’t Iran be in the same position as somebody who has a history of violence, and has announced their intent to murder somebody?”
Arguably no. This would get into what was said about Israel and how it echoed something said about the USSR by a different Iranian (regimes can disappear without the people disappearing), and whether threats to bomb Iran from countries with more of a record of doing such things would count as intent, but all this is a distraction.
I’d favor much stricter gun control, but frankly don’t know it if would work. There should also be more focus on trying to help people with mental problems (I’m assuming that’s relevant here) and spotting the ones likely to do these things ahead of time. But maybe that’s also going to fail. I don’t have any confidence in any solution, but would be willing to try various things.
What did these loner types do decades ago? The US has always had problems with violence, but these utterly senseless mass killings (I mean killings not motivated by anything, not even fanaticism of one sort or another) are on the increase, or so it seems, and I wonder why. Is it just the weaponry?
“Setting aside the fact that I don’t think governments have any rights, wouldn’t Iran be in the same position as somebody who has a history of violence, and has announced their intent to murder somebody?”
This is a non sequitur.
You said
“We have serious, and long-standing, controls, on anything you can do with a gun that actually hurts someone. This only leaves regulations prohibiting things which don’t hurt people. I would never characterize regulations doing that as “modest and very limited”.”
Maybe this example will make a dent:
Why do we outlaw speeding? Speeding doesn’t hurt people. Only hitting people with cars hurts people. Any law that goes beyond outlawing “things that hurt people” is not modest or limited.
Or
Why do we outlaw private ownership of strains of the ebola virus? The ebola virus in laboratory isolation doesn’t hurt people. Only if the ebola virus escapes etc etc
One of my favourite bloggers once asked on a gay marriage thread that if you make a comment along the lines of “don’t have gay marriage, let’s get the government out of all marriage” then you need to back that up with links to your own activism for and advocating of that change, *outside* of discussions about extending marriage, lest your wise analysis be mistaken for derailing, tone trolling and attempts to silence.
I can’t make anyone, but I’d really like it if people tutting about the good doctor’s overreaction or the misguidedness of gun-control would take the same approach to supporting their comments here.
You really think it’s a mental health issue, truly? Or maybe you acknowledge that easy availability is a factor but don’t want it to change cos of the 2nd. Well, what are you doing about it? Surely you’re just as horrified by massacres like these – Where’s your campaigns and posts on the issue? Where is your TED talk? When did you last write your representatives on this and what did you advocate?
Cos presently your comments read like they’re just intended to silence the liberals. Like it’s up to them to come up with a proposal that’s acceptable to you before anything can be done.
Here’s a sort of leftwing libertarian viewpoint that was linked by “Thoreau” over at Unqualified Offerings–
link
I think most of what he says about our society is plausible and wonder if a serious effort at gun control would just lead to more government abuse (as with the war on drugs), but all the same, I can’t see the need for civilians to have automatic or semi-automatic weapons with large magazines. You can hunt deer or even large dangerous animals with just bolt action rifles (you shouldn’t be spraying the countryside with bullets anyway), and as for self-defense, it seems like a revolver would be good enough. (And slower to reload, which I think is a good thing.)
” you need to back that up with links to your own activism for and advocating of that change, *outside* of discussions about extending marriage, lest your wise analysis be mistaken for derailing, tone trolling and attempts to silence.”
I don’t agree with this. Accusing people of tone-trolling seems like another way of attempting to silence. Maybe this or that person is tone-trolling. So what. Nobody has to listen. Also, one should be able to argue for or against a position without having to prove a long history of consistent activism on a given topic. Otherwise most of us probably shouldn’t be commenting on most topics.
I haven’t noticed if anyone has linked to this yet, but James Fallows points out that coincidentally, a madman in China attacked children with a knife yesterday. Andrew Sullivan has also been making the comparison. The difference in the results speaks for itself–
Fallows article
“and wonder if a serious effort at gun control would just lead to more government abuse”
Why would you have to wonder this? Didn’t live through the late 80’s, early 90’s, maybe?
Making an exception here, not ignoring Brett.
Didn’t live through the late 80’s, early 90’s, maybe?
What? Were you injured at that time?
We really need to step up. That’s what government is for at its most basic, primitive, level – to protect people from the kind of violence that this shooting represents. I can’t imagine the pain these families must be feeling, and I don’t want to try. People’s gun lust is not worth this.
Hey Brett, would you mind answering the question I asked in this comment? Thanks.
Donald, you quoted part of (my paraphrase of) a request for that discussion at that time, and I suggest it reads nicer as part of the “if..then..else” where I put it. They had requested a particular discussion on an aspect of that particular, sensitive topic and questioning the premise would indeed derail that discussion.
I’m not doing that here. I note that I can’t make anyone, I’m saying what would help convince me of integrity and seriousness of those arguments.
Asking for activism is over the top. My apologies for that. I’d happily start with any examples of serious non-gun-control approaches outside of a discussion of guns.
What? Were you injured at that time?
Sapient,
I believe Brett is referring to Ruby Ridge and Waco, the two greatest crimes perpetrated by the federal government since its inception, the pure evil of which supersedes even the genocidal Roe v. Wade decision (If only Earl Warren had been impeached as the billboards implored).
Compared to these outrages, death by drone is a mere piffle.
Gary Wills weighs in .
Thank you, bobbyp.
Gosh, you missed the obligatory false equivalency–courtesy of Jeffy Goldstein–from the gunloons.
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=45993
“Obama, silent about union violence in Michigan, immediately reacts to Connecticut school shooting.”
Ah, the wisdom of conservatives.
SEb, you may be right that NARAL is as rigid in an expreme position on an issue as the NRA. I’m ot a member and don’t follow NARAL much. However, I don’t thik it can be denied that the anti-abortion folks by claiming moral superiority and by turnig every discussion of issues related to abortion and the prevent of it into an “us moral people vs those ot moral people” have unnecessarily degraded the debate over the issue.
And my point was that the same unnecessary polarization has dominated the gun control debatge because the, for lack of a better term, NRA side hasa consistantly imposed a false framing on the issue. The false framing is their specious claim that people are trying to take away the right to bear arms/the second amendment is under attack and so on.
In the case of the gun control debate I do’t think there is an orgainzation that is the equivalent of NARAL. That is, I don’t thik there is an organized effort to remove the second amendment or an organized effort to take away the right of poeple to the sortsof guns that normal people need for normal civilian purposes.
Which gets to this fromm Balloon Juice: (John Cole starts out by explainiing that his mother knew the father of oe of the kids killed.) “So in my town of 350 people, there are two connections to the horrible violence that occurred yesterday hundreds and hundreds of miles away. When these events happen, no one is left untouched. This sickness, the obeisance and fealty to the NRA, the tea party lunatics, and “gun enthusiasts,” has got to stop.
The right of Mrs. Lanza to own a shitload of guns and sire a child with mental health issues with easy access to those guns should not trump the right of Caroline Previdi to make it 2nd grade.
This has to end. This has to stop. And outraged blog posts are not going to do it. Money will. There needs to be a coordinated effort to fund the Brady Campaign and other gun control groups in the way that the NRA is funded, so congresscritters will listen. We have got to stop this violence. We need to shame gun enthusiasts who put their penis extensions ahead of sensible gun laws that might help keep their fellow citizens alive. We need to make it so have an NRA sticker on your car is as toxic as claiming membership in the KKK.”
The NRA position is that the elementary teacher had a right to weapons for which she had no normal purpose. She didnot need three weapons, nor did she need weapons of the type she had for self defense, or hunting, or target practice. If she had not chosen to over arm herslef with unnecessary fire power her son would not have been able to kill as many people as he did. He could have killed at the most six people if he had been on the spree with a revolver.
It’s the false framing of the issue that leads to this ridiculous notion that people have the “right” to arm themselves in a way that no rational person needs to be armed unless they are actually a trained member in good standing of a duly constituted militia and the weapons are owned as part of that service.
“Hey Brett, would you mind answering the question I asked in this comment? Thanks.”
Turb, this comes down to the difference between trying to do something, and succeeding at doing it. We’re not obligated to ignore everything gun controllers attempt and fail at.
“Compared to these outrages, death by drone is a mere piffle.”
I never asserted that these, and the lesser events that led up to them, were the worst government abuses in history. Do you care to assert that they WEREN’T abuses?
’cause I think burning dozens of people alive is at least a little bit abusive.
Ruby Ridge and Waco are worse than slavery, according to some.
“The right of Mrs. Lanza to own a shitload of guns and sire a child with mental health issues with easy access to those guns should not trump the right of Caroline Previdi to make it 2nd grade.”
Well, Sister, then can we agree that Doctor Science’s man hating post got it completely wrong? Because this seems like it is at the bottom line a case of a stupid irresponsible woman having guns unsecured in a home with a crazy son. She should have known better. A reasonable person would.
Reports say that the gun store acted responsibly and denied sale to the shooter. Then his mother bought guns.
The reports are that the shooter stopped to reload several times. I am having difficulty seeing why if he was limited to a revolver he wouldn’t still would have stopped to reload with speed loaders and killed just as many. I don’t think that small children could have rushed him and stopped him while reloading. Maybe he would have had two or three revolvers and that would make it harder to stop him as well as making the reload less.
On the other thread about guns blackhawk got banned because he said that russell was being dishonest by saying that no one wants to take guns away and that really people like liberals DO want to take guns away from US citizens. Now on this thread people are wanting to repeal the second amendment. Was blackhawk wrong then? Was he banned for telling the truth? Is that the kind of blog this is? Only the liberal “truth” is allowed?
I was just reading about how many people die as a result of abusing presciption pain pills like oxycontin. Huge numbers and an epidemic in places like Kentucky. What could be more regulated and hard to obtain than prescription narcotics? All the same people get them, abuse them and die leaving their mother or fatherless children as the victims.
They were worse than slavery for the people involved, who just incidentally ended up dead. Not, I suppose, for the people on the outside watching.
I think it pretty clearly indicated that, yes, beyond a certain fairly minor point, efforts at gun control in the US do seem to involve abuses. Atrocities, even.
Somewhat similar to the war on drugs, which had the Move bombing to it’s credit. When you’re trying to prohibit possession of something, you tend to end up committing abuses, because non-abusive law enforcement techniques just can’t get the job done.
So, for one, Doctor Science seems to be about 8 for 8.
Two, there are people who believe Ruby Ridge and Waco are worse than slavery, because you know, those were a little bit abusive.
Three, some people who live in towns where there has been one murder in the last ten years, and who have a mentally ill person living in the house, think that it is a good idea to keep semi-automatic weapons around the house.
What the hell?
Annit Laurie at Balloon Juice ahs a smart suggestion: frame the issue as gun safety rather than gun control. ANd then talk less about controlling guns and more about controlling people’s access to them and their use of them.
So, for one, Doctor Science seems to be about 8 for 8.
Other than predicting the dead woman as an ex, rather than this mother, Doc Science’s list was uncannily right on.
So, you know, however cheap shot Freudian folks may have found her analysis, its predictive power appears to be pretty f***ing mighty.
I’m damned if I can explain it away.
So in my town of 350 people, there are two connections to the horrible violence that occurred yesterday hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
A Boston area jazz DJ circulated this today. The performer is jazz saxophonist Jimmie Green. The piece is “Ana Grace”. Ana Grace is Green’s daughter. She was killed at Sandy Hook, she was six years old.
So one way or another, more or less closely, this touches a lot of people. Maybe even all of us.
I don’t really give a shit if you want to own a gun. Everybody has their hobbies.
What gun ownership advocates have to explain to the rest of us is why their right to pursue their particular hobby is worth the lives of thousands of people, each and every year.
Somebody, probably Brett, will respond that there is no real connection between the level of gun ownership, and the ease with which somebody can get their hands on a gun in this country, and the number of folks killed in this country, each and every year, with a gun.
My reply is, you need to prove that, because at a simple, intuitive, common sense level, it’s horseshit.
Somebody, probably Brett, will also point out that the right to keep and carry is also guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment.
My reply is, when I see your ass on a militia training field, preparing to defend the US of A from some threat of invasion or insurrection, you will have my full support.
Most people that own guns in this country are not involved in the defense of the country, will never be involved in the defense of the country, and frankly aren’t particularly interested in being involved of the defense of this country.
At most, they are interested in their right to keep and carry so they can defend their right to keep and carry. And even those folks are, frankly, damned few and far between.
Most folks like to hunt, or are just into guns, the way other folks are into cars, or coins, or fishing, or bass guitars.
In other words, it’s a hobby.
All of those folks need to explain to the rest of us why their right to pursue their hobby is worth the death of thousands of other folks, each and every year.
There may well be a case there, I’d just like to hear it.
And Brett, I’m still waiting for pointers to your criminological studies explaining how fewer guns doesn’t really equate to fewer folks killed with guns.
If you want to make the claim, you need to come up with the information. I’m not saying it’s not there, I’m just saying you haven’t been particularly forthcoming with it.
The scion of the 1%-5%’ers gets revenge against his own. Whats the mystery about this loser? Haven’t we all been urged to hate the well to do and blame them for the “inequality”? These self-satisfied and complacent people thought that they knew that violence, that Normal American homicide is black-on-black; This is not some “Southern Gun Culture”, this is about Killing Your Parents ++.
I’m not a fan of killing animals, and don’t get the thrill of hunting, but I understand the point of hunting for food. Other than that, you need a law to allow it, not to prohibit it.
sapient, there are three reasons for hunting:
1) because you really do enjoy it.
2) because you need to do so for food.
3) because it is a great excuse to shoot off your gun(s).
For those who fall into the first category, may I point out that you can equally get the thrill (maybe more so) by hunting with a bow and arrow. You probably won’t be as successful (in the sense of actually killing something). But you will take a lot more satisfaction when you do succeed.
I’m not convinced that there are a significant number of people in America that fall into the second group. Everyone feel free to prove me wrong.
Anybody in the third group gets no sympathy at all. If you just want to shoot off your gun, at least have the courage to admit that is what your real interest is.
So much for the “legitimate hunters” defense for gun ownership.
As for the self-defense argument, does anybody have statistics handy on the number of successful uses of guns for self defense? Vs. the number of people shot by the gun that someone in their home got for “self defense”? I have a guess as to which is larger, and by how much. But I’d really like to see some statistics, if they are available.
And finally, can anyone honestly say that they think that they (and their family and friends and neighbors) could succssfully stand up to the US Army? Because that’s what the defense against tyrrany position comes down to. Perhaps you could manage to inflict significant casualties — taking “significant” to mean at least wounding as many of them as there are of you. But at the end, you will all be dead, and the Army as an institution will still be just fine. As will the government which it supports. So who are you kidding? Yourselves, perhaps? Realistically, you have a far, far better chance of rallying enough voters to get rid of the government/policies that you dislike by a vote than you do of getting rid of them by force of arms.
So, for one, Doctor Science seems to be about 8 for 8.
Identifying the Patriarchy with misogyny is like confusing Capitalism with money.
wj, hunting with the bow is not legal everywhere (to my knowledge). Although a skilled archer can do the swift and clean kill (mandated by the hunting code in many places), the average guy is unlikely to achieve that. The reason for the ban is the ensuing cruelty to animals.
—
It’s a common misconception that revolvers are necessaryly slow to reload. In the old days of the West is was common to have several reserve cylinders preloaded, so an emptied one could be replaced in a few seconds. A bit heavier than a magazine for a semi-automatic but not that much of an inhibition.
—
A bolt or lever action pistol with a three shot magazine would make for a nice self-defense weapon, I think
As for the self-defense argument, does anybody have statistics handy on the number of successful uses of guns for self defense? Vs. the number of people shot by the gun that someone in their home got for “self defense”?
This study, cited at TPM, says that someone with a gun is 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than someone not possessing a gun.
Russel, I’m not sure this is exactly what you’re looking for, but Mark Kleiman has this:
“There’s simply no evidence that keeping guns out of the hands of those currently eligible to own them under Federal law (adults with no felony convictions, no domestic-violence misdemeanors or restraining orders, and no history of involuntary commitment for mental illness) reduces the level of criminal violence. Nor is there evidence that allowing anyone who can pass a background check and a gun-safety course to carry a concealed weapon increases the level of criminal violence. All that matters is keeping guns away from people who demonstrably shouldn’t have them. Present law does that, but the gun lobby has done many things to make that law impossible to enforce.
With any luck, taking the “gun confiscation” card out of the political pack might actually reduce the fervor of the opposition the NRA can whip up to sensible measures such as requiring background checks for gun sales by private individuals (the current rule that requires them only for purchases from gun dealers), computerizing data on which dealers are selling the guns that get used in crimes, and developing and deploying technology that would allow police to identify, from a bullet or a shell casing found at a crime scene, when, to whom, and by whom the gun that produced that metal was lawfully transferred.”
He is liberal and normally very reliable with statistics–which I don’t say often.
A more recent study.
Sapient, that study has a rather blatant sample bias problem: they did nothing to control for the concept that people who buy guns for self defense might be living in more dangerous circumstances than those who don’t. See also you’re more likely to die in hospitals than almost anywhere therefore hospitals create illness and you’re more likely to be in a car accident within two miles of home therefore people drive I safely near home (has to be controlled for how much more driving you do within two miles of home compared to 50 miles from home).
I was responding to your first link. The second one is statistically much worse. It conflates gun murder and suicide drawing most of the weight from the suicide (necessarily, because suicide is much more frequent than homicide). There is literally zero evidence that guns increase the suicide rate–only the method of suicide. See for example countries with much higher suicide rates but lower gun suicide rates: South Korea, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Finland and France.
Sebastian, thanks for the Kleiman cite, especially the first paragraph.
I don’t think the gun confiscation card can be taken out of the political pack, since gun confiscation is the assumption underlying the origin of the Second Amendment.
Further, gun sales and hoarding have ballooned since President Obama was elected (though I understand sales backlogs have diminished appreciably for the gun manufacturers since just before and after his re-election) despite his refusal to even mention gun control measures over the past four years, including the entirely reasonable measures Kleiman proposes.
IMHO, I don’t think politicians who favor gun control measures and/or confiscation and have been intimidated by the NRA et al into completely shutting up about the matter since the 1990s are afraid of NOT being elected over their stances, I believe they are afraid of being gunned down.
Sebastian, unfortunately it is impossible to take the ‘confiscation card’ out of he deck since it is the NRA* (or its even more radical split-offs) that put it back in each time the ‘liberals’ take it out. Their current schtick is to declare Obama’s refusal to do what they said he would do (i.e.confiscate all guns etc. etc.) as the proof of his sinister agenda to really, really confiscate all guns** (etc., etc.). As long as these organisations get enough money from the companies they shill for, they will press the message and impress enough people to believe it. And as we all know there is nothing that a few million citizens would not believe when bombarded with it long enough***.
*to be precise: the current (and imo totally corrupt) NRA leadership. The rank and file are far more moderate
**except those in the hands of his brownshirt army of course
***the US is slightly but measurably worse there than other Western countries. Iirc the value is 17% for the average but 21-23% for the US.
Sebastian, it’s impossible to control for all factors. The only way to do a fair study would be to randomly choose a number of people and to give them guns, compared to a control group without guns. Clearly, then there would be training, motivation, etc.
The statistics stand – guns are a lousy self-defense measure, and they stand as an incredibly convenient means for someone to commit suicide.
Seb, thanks for the link, I will check it out.
Also:
Sapient, that study has a rather blatant sample bias problem: they did nothing to control for the concept that people who buy guns for self defense might be living in more dangerous circumstances than those who don’t.
Of course they’re living in more dangerous circumstances! There’s a gun in the house.
The other half of the Newtown equation.
That’s difficult reading, Russell.
I’m so grateful the flesh of my flesh is such a balanced, well-adjusted individual.
I blame his mother.
That article reminds of a harrowing Doris Lessing novel “The Fifth Child”.
Thank you, russell. A lot of parents privately deal with their children’s mental health problems with very few options for help. Enlisting the help of the police is a scary decision, as its impact on the child is never clear. Having mental health professionals to do the intake on emergency admissions would be so much better than involving the police, but the resources for that don’t exist. My own community’s inpatient mental hospital closed years ago, and (as the article highlights) mental health patient beds in local hospitals are very limited.
One difference between this parent (it seems) and Nancy Lanza: Adam’s mother taught her child how to shoot automatic weapons and had several of them in the house. It’s insane to believe that the guns themselves were not a huge factor in this tragedy.
While a heartbreaking situation for this mother, her son isn’t the type that carries out a rampage killing.
Would you bet the farm on that, CharlesWT?
I wouldn’t (apart from me not having one of course).
Well, arguing from authority.
“One difference between this parent (it seems) and Nancy Lanza: Adam’s mother taught her child how to shoot automatic weapons and had several of them in the house. It’s insane to believe that the guns themselves were not a huge factor in this tragedy.”
If that is true, how did Nancy Lanza’s weapons offer her any protection?
Maybe she should have given some of those weapons to the local school, so they could have offered no protection to the 26 dead.
Maybe she could have given all of her household firearms to the school so that she’d be alive today, despite the stab wounds.
It’s clear that the guns had nothing to do with this catastrophe.
What guns? What about the knives?
Yes, the knives.
It’s lucky Louie Gohmert wasn’t visiting the Lanza household that fateful day to suggest to Nancy Lanza (in Texas-style good taste), as she lay bleeding to death, that she didn’t possess enough guns.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/louie-gohmert-guns_n_2311379.html
If, that is had been able to pull himself away from craning his neck out the Lanza kitchen window so as to monitor the government’s black helicopters circling overhead.
It’s worth noting that none of Kleiman’s proposals would have done anything to keep guns out of the hands of Lanza (or Holmes, or many other of these mass shooters).
More about the Lanza household:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/12/wow_waiting_for_the_apocalypse.php?ref=fpblg
Thank you, Ufficio. Also, regarding Mark Kleiman, he basically throws up his hands and says there is “no evidence”. In fact, there is a lot of evidence, but it’s difficult to interpret.
That doesn’t mean we have a correct answer, and that answer is that guns don’t affect the homicide rate, etc.
If we wanted to, we could be more philosophical about it, and ask, why do people want semi-automatic weapons in great numbers in their house? Hmmm. I get cars. People like to drive and be seen in cool cars.
Countme-in, that is truly scary. I’m so sorry for Nancy Lanza, but she was seriously deluded herself.
I suppose there’s a technical difference between “no evidence” and “hopelessly inadequate and mixed evidence”, but it seems a bit pedantic to get so exercised about the difference.
No, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a correct answer, just that you don’t have any reason to suppose the answer you like IS the correct one.
The whole country (possibly excluding the gun nuts) is mourning tonight. Perhaps you have something to offer them, Brett, except excuses for your god, the gun?
…
…
Why, I’m offering much more than you are, Sapient: I’m not using this tragedy as an excuse to advance my preexisting political goals. I’m not the one snatching up and waving the bloody shirt here, you might try to remember that.
It’s the other side doing that.
Since the Bushmaster apparently (we’ll see) belonged to the tragic Mrs. Lanza, I revoke her Man Card posthumously.
The Man Card is serious business, people —
on a manliness par with the street cred earned by fraternity men who stick the business end of a beer bong up their butts for the shorter route to inebriated manliness.
My dick is ashamed of any coincidental similarity to the dickishness, dicktitude, and dickliness displayed by the Bushmaster marketing and advertising shop and hereby revokes its own membership in a club of which it would rather not have been a member anyhow.
I’m sorry there is nothing we can do about this murderous, but whimsical, advertising campaign because the freedom of speech, especially that of the purple people eaters known as corporations, is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
I was thinking of a supply interdiction.
Is the right to manufacture enshrined in the Constitution?
Is it O.K. if I use my preexisting political goals to advance insurance coverage of my preexisting medical conditions?
I think waving the bloody shirt is covered by the First Amendment, unless someone can prove to me that waving bloody shirts leads to more bloody shirts, in which case I’ll stop.
If I picked up the bloody shirt, perchance to wave, on Eight Mile Road in Detroit may I wave it to bring attention to the cultural roots of gun violence between miles 0 thru 8 of said road?
Just trying to understand the fine points of the protocol.
Actually I see a significant number of §$%&! religious and otherwise rightwing personalities using the case to push their agenda. For example: mandatorily arming schoolteachers, immediately abolishing each and all (in any way restrictive) gun laws in the US, banning all abortions* and reintroducing mandatory school prayers**, abolishing all public schools (or at least all non-religious ones).
Btw, just a few days before the shooting one of the guys that called for one of the things above also had a good deal to say about why the 2nd amendment can be traced directly to the teachings of Christ and why consequently any opposition to firearms is in defiance of God Himself (for a change it was not David ‘the constitution is verbatim from the Bible’ Barton).
In case anyone thinks that I exaggerate, direct links can be found at (among other places) People-for-the-American-Way’s Rightwingwatch blog. I will not link here directly
*given reason: allowing any abortions teaches citizens that murdering children is not just tolerable but a good thing. This ‘obviously’ inspired the killer to target an elementary school
**given reason: God would have protected the children but since the secular school system told God that He was not wanted there God acted ‘as a gentleman’ and kept out of it
Is that why strip clubs are called Gentleman’s Clubs?
Brett,
I’m not using this tragedy as an excuse to advance my preexisting political goals. I’m not the one snatching up and waving the bloody shirt here, you might try to remember that.
It’s the other side doing that.
Whether you are or not, there are plenty on your side who are. What do you think all the people arguning we need more armed teachers, and more pistol-packing citizens and whatnot are doing?
And let’s not overlook the noxious Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer – yes, Brett they are on your side – blaming the whole thing on liberals taking religion out of the schools.
So cut the crap.
I’m so sorry for Nancy Lanza, but she was seriously deluded herself.
Yes, and now she’s dead. Her own son shot her in the face with the weapons she stockpiled to ward off armageddon.
So, her careful plans did not work out so well.
The whole prepper thing is a trip and a half. I have extended family members who are into that stuff.
All other things being equal, whatever floats your boat.
On the flip, when your hobby / obsession / what have you results in other people’s kids getting shot like dogs in their kindergarten class, the rest of us have something to say about it.
To become a card-carrying man, visitors of bushmaster.com will have to prove they’re a man by answering a series of manhood questions. Upon successful completion, they will be issued a temporary Man Card to proudly display to friends and family. The Man Card is valid for one year.
Seriously, WTF. I got nothing.
These @ssholes are a significant contributor to the NRA.
It’s the other side doing that.
I came into this with the intent of just shutting up and letting folks grieve.
I find that I’m too pissed off to hold to that.
In any case, sorry about that. I’ll try harder next time.
I’d still like to see the criminology studies demonstrating that widespread gun ownership has nothing to do with the high rate of firearm violence.
Seb’s Kleiman piece was nice, but it was still just an assertion. No numbers, no references to the literature. Just assertions.
I’m not saying it’s not there, I’m just saying you have, so far, failed to provide it.
I have done some homework of my own, but most academic stuff is only available on a fee basis. I’m not interested in paying JSTOR to make your point for you.
Floor’s open whenever you are interested in following up.
What the hell does “preexisting political goals” even mean? Should political goals only post-exist? (And what the hell would that mean?) Should I make up some new political goals so the ones I already have won’t align with recent events? Should I not point out that such events are the of the sort I would prefer to prevent through policy?
Should I not be incensed by 20 little kids being shot to death by a mentally unstable person who was able (illegally) to get his hands on the guns he used because it’s so fncking easy for other people to get guns legally?
This whole gun thing is a weird, weird thing in this country. It’s so pervasive that many, many people in this country can’t even see it. It’s like a national neurosis.
“And let’s not overlook the noxious Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer – yes, Brett they are on your side.”
In about the same sense Sharpton and Farakan are on your side. You identify with them, I assume? Think of them as best buds? Regret that you weren’t at Crown Heights to help egg on the crowd?
I can match you sickening loonie for sickening loonie, and raise, if you like. Or we can just accept that each of us is responsible for what we ourselves do.
What did I suggest in response to this? Examining the mental health system, that’s what.
Or we can just accept that each of us is responsible for what we ourselves do.
On its face, this is a reasonable point.
The problem is that each of us does not solely bear the consequences for what we ourselves do.
You know, Brett, the expression “waving the bloody shirt” seemed awfully crude in this context. Even more so when I looked up the origin of the term. You might want to rethink.
In about the same sense Sharpton and Farakan are on your side.
Let me know when one of them gets a significant number of votes in a Democratic presidential primary campaign, or is elected governor of a blue state. Let me know when Democratic presidential candidates troop dutifully to appear on one of their radio shows, as all but ROnet did in the 2012 GOP primary.
No Brett. No equivalence. It’s BS. There are loonies on the left, no doubt, but they are marginal. On the right, they run the show.
Loonies on both sides, yes, and I’ll be happy to sign toothsome gun control legislation which has tucked among its amendments measures to sanction professional news organizations that hire demagogic sh*theads like Sharpton, Huckabee, and Buchanan to provide commentary in the role of pseudo journalists.
Fischer and Farakhan would be names embossed in the network style books as beyond the pale and any booker would be fired and fined for inviting them to spew their bile.
They may enter televised cage matches as long as the fights are to the death.
I really don’t want to turn on the TV and catch Neil Cavuto swiveling in his chair to introduce Lester Maddox to plum his views on the role of ax handles in the hospitality industry.
Abbie Hoffman may do the weather and book reviews.
Bill O’Reilly may kiss my patootie on late night cable, but only once a month.
Henceforth, Brett Bellmore will replace Wayne LaPierre as spokesman of anything to do with guns because I’m a practical man and will take any marginal improvement I can get.
There are a raft of other colorful personalities on the celebrity news dole as well, too lengthy to mention, who will be shot at dawn before the strict gun manufacturing limitations I envision go into effect.
“mass murder is male-on-majority female”
The Mother Jones link doesn’t say that. In fact it reports no data on the gender of the victims.
I would like to see real stats on this. It sounds implausible to me.
I flagged this personal anecdote from Eschaton:
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/12/guns-kill-people.html
Ten bucks to the first guy who asks: “I suppose now we’re going to make it illegal to possess a sandwich and confiscate all of the fixings?”
I’m not using this tragedy as an excuse to advance my preexisting political goals
as if that has nothing to do with the fact that the current situation forces you into defense for all of your relevant preexisting political goals.
A primer of sorts on writing about the gun violence controversy:
http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/editors-pick/articles/The-Best-Reporting-on-Guns-in/12/17/2012/id/46724
Propublica is the source so balance it out with your unbiased Antipublica comebacks.
The background of it is interesting, although I am unsure whether it makes Brett look bad or not. Frankly: that part doesn’t interest me. It won’t copy/paste, so I transcribe part of it below; this is the source material used for the (brief) Wikipedia entry on the subject that sapient linked to. Typos are most likely mine.
There is, of course, a lot more to the story. And it is quite possible that people using that phrase aren’t entirely cognizant of its roots, or that they are deliberately ignoring part of its origins. Which is fair, because language evolves, as it should, because otherwise every word and phrase would be so freighted with ages-old meaning that we’d have to scrap an entire language and begin again.
So. Interesting, anyway.
As a curious outsider, I took a look at the NRA website.
http://home.nra.org/#
Even their ‘news & views” link http://www.nraila.org/ doesn’t even seem to acknowledge Friday’ events.
Reading this –
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/nyregion/in-newtown-conn-a-stiff-resistance-to-gun-restrictions.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&src=twr&pagewanted=all&
– did nothing to take away the feeling of cognitive dissonance.
This article has a very different view of the history of gun control and the gun lobby from what I thought I knew. Don’t know how accurate it is, but making Brett, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale brothers in arms is pretty interesting.
“but making Brett, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale brothers in arms is pretty interesting.”
Yes, and it puts me firmly in Ronald Reagan’s lap for some counter intuitive ventriloquy.
Who’s the dummy now?
In my radical purging and reordering of the media, posted above, I further propose a weekly shout fest on the subject of gun control between Ronald Reagan and Huey Newton for the audiences of today.
We can occasionally cut to the FOX blondes for reaction shots with their eyes spinning around in their sockets, Grover Norquist doing repeat-action spit takes, and your chosen liberal AM radio shock jock with cartoon bubbles over his or her head, each containing “WTF!!”
Wayne La Pierre will be wearing a neck brace.
Loonies on both sides, yes,
But Republican loonies are in the House and Senate, and are considered serious candidates for the presidential nomination – Bachmann, Santorum, Paul, Perry, Trump.
Not Romney, I suppose, though he played one in the primaries.
Agreed.
I try faux balance occasionally as a peace offering.
The rancid cream of the “modern” Republican Party rises to the top quickly and stays there in government and media, reinforced by purges.
Romney, to cut him slack, had a look on his face (and looked about as out of place as she did lugging heavy weaponry around) during the primary like Patti Hearst’s on the grainy footage of the first bank robbery after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
You learn something new every day; I thought the phrase was a reference to Jesse Jackson’s behavior at the death of Martin Luther King.
Of course you did.
I think we all need to cut Brett some slack here. The poor guy is trying to defend an untenable position in the wake of a highly publicized even which shows just how bad it is.
What would you have him do? Obviously he cannot admit that his position is wrong. But there are no sensible arguments against making the kinds of changes that he abhors. So what is he to do? Back off, already.
An “untenable” position which, you might notice, has been prevailing; I think you need to revise your criteria for declaring positions “untenable”.
Prevailing? So you can legally purchase any personal weapon that might be issued to any member of our military, Brett? Isn’t it your position that you should be able to do so?
untenable: Not able to be maintained or defended against attack or objection: “this argument is clearly untenable”.
Repeal of the 2nd amendment: tenable?
more than tenable; it’s a damned good idea!
I think that anyone offering legislative changes is holding the untenable position.
Setting aside the constitution for a minute, we
1. could ban all guns – all future sales stopped and all existing gns must be handed in to authorities.
result: a) only the most law abiding would hand in their guns and criminals would keep them.
b)97.5% of all guns in the US are never used in any crime. So the reduction in crime resulting from those handed in by law abiding citizens would be negligible.
c) Another result of prohibition would be that a black market would develop. There would be fewer controls around gun manufacture and ownership than there are currently (“bathtub” gin effect). Prohibition does NOT work and is actually counter podutive.
d) law abiding citizens now unarmed and totally at mercy of armed criminals and criminals emboldened to do B&Es and similar crimes risky in areas with armed citizenry.
e)Politically completely not feasible.
f) possibility of successful practical implementation approaching nill.
2. Ban certain kinds of guns and certain kinds of gun accessories (ex; so called assualt type rifles and high capacity magazines)
a) more politically feasible
b) only a small proportion of crimes committed with these items so a a minimal reduction in gun deaths
c) mass murderers learn to make do with pump action shotguns and revolvers (ex; 5 loads of double O buckshot = 5 killed and 6 shots from a magnum revolver = 6 killed for a total of 11 killed without even having to reload. Reload takes less than 30 seconds then another 11 killed)
d)black market still exists for those determined to obtain forbidden items
So the gun controllers’ vision is untenable in America.
Maybe a good balance of perspective is that each year around 250 children under the age of 5 drown in private swimming pools, but we don’t try to legislate away swimming private swiming pools.
This school shooting sounds like irresponsible parenting n top of irresponsible gun ownership. What kind parent of a troubled and clinically diagnosed child leaves unlocked guns lying around where the child can his hands on them. Who bonds with an autistic child by taking him shooting?
I think we will find that the child planned the killing for a long time and that the mother was too easily manipulated by the child into buying the guns; guns that already had a planned role in a sick plan before they were ven purchased.
You’d think there were no other countries in the world that have successfully banned various types of guns, given suzie_Q’s assertions. That, or we’re just special here in the good ol’ US of A.
Maybe a good balance of perspective is that each year around 250 children under the age of 5 drown in private swimming pools, but we don’t try to legislate away swimming private swiming pools.
and how many people are murdered by angry swimming-pool-wielding men? not accidents: straight up murder. does it even break into double-digits ?
that’s where these facile analogies always fail: guns make intentional murder trivially easy. nothing else even comes close in terms of lethality, portability, ease of access and ease of use. you need: a gun, a bullet, a hand that can hold a couple of pounds and one reasonably-good eye.
there were 52,000 non-fatal, intentional shootings, and 23,000 non-intentional non-fatal shootings in the US in 2009. we routinely get 8,000 handgun homicides every goddamned year.
you let us know when murder by swimming pool breaks 100/yr.
Suzie_Q, are you by any chance related to Blackhawk? There’s something about your writing style that reminds me of him….
So the gun controllers’ vision is untenable in America.
Banning high capacity magazines seems perfectly feasible to me. Requiring that all private gun sellers have to use the federal background check system seems quite feasible.
Maybe a good balance of perspective is that each year around 250 children under the age of 5 drown in private swimming pools, but we don’t try to legislate away swimming private swiming pools.
We don’t ban private pools but they make a big difference when it comes to paying for insurance, especially if you don’t bother putting in any safety measures at all. I think we should have a robust insurance regime where gun owners are required to get insurance to cover the risk that something awful will happen with their guns. That seems perfectly feasible. Rates would go up with risk factors. You need insurance to drive a car; heck you need insurance before you can be a travel agent.
What kind parent of a troubled and clinically diagnosed child leaves unlocked guns lying around where the child can his hands on them.
We don’t know that. Do you have a cite?
I think we will find that the child planned the killing for a long time and that the mother was too easily manipulated by the child into buying the guns;
Again, there’s no evidence of this at all. Cite?
Suzie_Q, are you by any chance related to Blackhawk? There’s something about your writing style that reminds me of him….
So the gun controllers’ vision is untenable in America.
Banning high capacity magazines seems perfectly feasible to me. Requiring that all private gun sellers have to use the federal background check system seems quite feasible.
Maybe a good balance of perspective is that each year around 250 children under the age of 5 drown in private swimming pools, but we don’t try to legislate away swimming private swiming pools.
We don’t ban private pools but they make a big difference when it comes to paying for insurance, especially if you don’t bother putting in any safety measures at all. I think we should have a robust insurance regime where gun owners are required to get insurance to cover the risk that something awful will happen with their guns. That seems perfectly feasible. Rates would go up with risk factors. You need insurance to drive a car; heck you need insurance before you can be a travel agent.
What kind parent of a troubled and clinically diagnosed child leaves unlocked guns lying around where the child can his hands on them.
We don’t know that. Do you have a cite?
I think we will find that the child planned the killing for a long time and that the mother was too easily manipulated by the child into buying the guns;
Again, there’s no evidence of this at all. Cite?
1. could ban all guns
Not on the table.
2. Ban certain kinds of guns and certain kinds of gun accessories
OK.
c) mass murderers learn to make do with pump action shotguns and revolvers
Fine. That will slow them down.
d)black market still exists for those determined to obtain forbidden items
Sounds like we need to tighten up how guns are bought and sold.
What kind parent of a troubled and clinically diagnosed child leaves unlocked guns lying around where the child can his hands on them. Who bonds with an autistic child by taking him shooting?
Those are really good questions. To the casual observer, Lanza sounds like a person with pretty much zero common sense, at least as regards her kid and her arsenal.
Unfortunately, the world abounds in people with zero common sense, especially as regards their families and their obsessions.
It behooves the rest of us to find ways to avoid having their bad judgement spill over into our lives.
That is, if we don’t want our five-year-olds hunted down and shot like rats in their kindergarten classrooms.
Maybe a good balance of perspective is that each year around 250 children under the age of 5 drown in private swimming pools, but we don’t try to legislate away swimming private swiming pools.
When I was a kid, we had a pool in the back yard. By law, we had to have a fence 4 feet high around the pool area, with a latching gate, so little kids couldn’t wander into the pool.
All I hear from gun advocates is “it’s impossible to control guns”. No, it’s not impossible. We’re one of very few countries with a reasonably robust and functional government that allows private firearm ownership to the degree that we do.
If you hunt, or have a firearm for personal defense, or like to shoot target, very very few people have an issue with you.
If you build a private arsenal of tactical firearms and your crazy kids gets hold of them and shoots up a grade school, a lot of people have a problem with you.
It’s not good, for about 1000 reasons, for people to be planning for the imminent collapse of civil society.
It’s double plus ungood, for an additional 1000 reasons, for their plans to be the stockpiling of what is essentially military grade firearms.
If you think the world is coming to a freaking end, and you plan on shooting anyone who resembles the zombie food-snatchers that haunt your imagination, please go live out in the freaking woods somewhere. Don’t bring that sh*t into places where other people have to live next door to you. Please. I’m trying to ask nicely, see?
If you want to handle military weapons, join the army. Or the guard. You will find that your use of the weaponry is quite tightly regulated in that context, which makes nothing but excellent sense.
Semi-automatic military and/or tactical firearms, let alone automatic, don’t belong in private hands. They sure as hell don’t belong in unregulated private markets like gun shows and private sales.
I can’t believe this is even something that needs discussion, but that’s life in the good old USA.
You are indeed special in the USA, exceptional even. You own, by some distance, more guns than anyone else on the planet.
Curiously, the number of gun owners seems to be dropping as the number of guns owned increases:
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/31/politics/gun-ownership-declining/index.html
Which kind of makes a nonsense of the self defense argument.
Why don’t you repeal the 2nd Amendment, and leave it to the states ?
If gun ownership is as existentially important as its advocates appear to believe, then surely that would be reason enough to move to a gun enthusiast state.
The 2nd Amendment takes away the right of the majority who don’t own, or wish to own guns to live in a gun free state. That seems to be the opposite of liberty to me.
Why the desire to force gun ownership on everyone else ?
(And the constant legal battles to limit any gun control laws, anywhere in the US are excellent evidence for that.)
Leaving whether it’s a good idea to one side: I am sure that you can can defend why you want to repeal the 2nd amendment, but I am much less sure that you can defend that doing so is within the current or near-future realm of possibility.
Which might be slightly different a thing than whether it’s tenable (in the sense of being a defensible idea) or not, I admit.
I don’t see that your suggestion that we could and perhaps would do so is realistic, though. But you might know differently. If so, please share.
Why don’t you repeal the 2nd Amendment, and leave it to the states ?
Repealing any bit of the constitution is freakishly difficult. And even if it could be done, leaving it to the states doesn’t help since the states have open borders. If NY wanted to ban private possession of 30-round clips and automatic weapons while PA allowed both, NY residents could just drive to PA, buy some M-16s with extended clips, drive back to NY and shoot up some elementary schools.
And it is quite possible that people using that phrase aren’t entirely cognizant of its roots
I agree that it’s quite possible. I was intrigued by the phrase which is why I looked it up. It makes sense, though, that people who subscribe to Brett’s general politics would pick it up during their immersion in neo-Confederate cultural literature.
russell when you this; Sounds like we need to tighten up how guns are bought and sold. I agree with you that it is a good idea. The problem is that you aren’t saying what we could do. The laws are already pretty strict.
I think about things like oxycontin. The laws around how it can be obtained are more strict than guns. A licensed doctor has to prescribe it and it has to come from a licensed pharmacy. All the same, there is an epidemic of abuse and a lot of the abuse is addicted people that shouldn’t have it in the first place and people are dying daily from overdoses. In places like kentucky and in our schools all over the country prescription drug abuse is a serious problem. Probably more of a problem than guns. But that is not the point. The point is that in spite of extremely strict regulation, people are getting their hands on this stuff because they want it. Prohibition and strict laws don’t work were their is a desire to obtain. Maybe we should be looking at that desire first before making or changing laws?
Also, my point is that some are arguing to eliminate the second amendment. It seems like to enforce the repeal without changing the desire to obtain we would then have to repeal other amendments to give the police and courts more power. Soon we would live in an ever greater police state, like the way the war on drugs has eroded some rights.
I know that some people really trust the government and some people don’t even care as long as they believe they will be safe from government abuse. I am not so sure I can be comfortable with that idea.
I am all ears though if someone can lay out a good plan about how to make it all happen right 🙂
Why don’t you repeal the 2nd Amendment, and leave it to the states ?
This is, frankly, sounding better and better to me by the day.
It’s impossible to have a rational discussion about *any* regulation of *any* kind of firearms in *any* context, because of how the 2nd Amendment is commonly read, at least by the current SCOTUS.
Nobody seems to notice the first half of the Amendment, only the second.
If we want to implement the original intent of the 2nd Amendment, we should disband the standing army and return to a militia model of self-defense. Every able-bodied male – probably person, now – should be required to own or at least have in their possession a gun. They should be trained in its safe and proper use in a tactical context. We should all be required to shape up on a regular basis for military training, and we should all be required to mobilize and go to war when the country goes to war.
No standing army. That’s what the Constitution calls for. That’s the historical context and motivation for the 2nd.
Any of you gun advocates getting out of bed early this weekend to go train in a citizen militia, under the command of either your governor or the President, according to regulations laid down by Congress?
No?
Then the 2nd is obsolete.
I don’t see it going away, because of who we are, but it’s obsolete. The conditions that it was intended to safeguard and ensure no longer exist. We put aside, rightly or wrongly, for a variety of practical reasons at least 100 years ago.
I’m in favor of repeal. Either that, or I want a real, Swiss style citizen military. All or nothing, but enough of this hobby-soldier BS.
times change.
if we keep up the same rate of mass killings as we’ve been holding to lately, the popular support Brett is depending on for his free and easy gun access might just wither away.
don’t forget: a black president named (as douchey wingnuts never tired pointing out) Barack Hussein Obama got Osama bin Laden killed, and was reelected while presiding over a five year recession/slowdown; gay marriage is being legalized across the country and pot was just legalized in two states.
ten years ago, all of that would seem ludicrous. but minds change with time. and few things change minds like the bodies of loved ones.
if gun nuts can’t find a way to police themselves, they just might find that the rest of the country has grown sick of what their toys enable and we’re going to put an end to it.
The problem is that you aren’t saying what we could do.
No exception on background checks and/or waiting period for gun shows or private sales.
If you sell a firearm to anyone without jumping through the background check and waiting period hoop, and the gun is used in a crime, you are an accessory and a felon. Go to jail.
That’d do it for me.
Instead of focusing on possession, sharply limit gun manufacturing.
(Yes, address mental illness, especially among young men prone to manic/depression, etc.)
Yes, yes, black market. I fully expect the NRA and the Gun Owners of America to be thick as thieves with the Mexican drug cartels and whomever else has the installed turnkey smuggling network.
After all, the American gun merchants on this side of the Mexican border had a Fast and Furious program funneling arms into drug thug hands in Mexico long before the NRA thought it was bad idea for the Feds to do it.
No way?
O.K. then, tax the living crap out of all guns and ammo.
A caliber tax.
Make guns items, like high-end Porsches, Rolex watches, etc.
We can have a workaround for single shot hunting weapons.
Then only the 1% and their drug dealers can afford to own the things. Just like now with most other luxury items.
Who said the more you tax something, the less of something there will be?
Some radical gun controller black hippie movie star type from the left coast did, I think.
Also heavily restrict advertising for weapons, like we do cigarettes.
Paragraphs of small print listing the negative side effects.
No way?
Fine. F*ck it.
I read the Sunday NY Times about the dead, especially those little kids, most of them shot a dozen times.
The End.
A major problem, conveniently ignored by the organized gun pushers, is that a successful gun reduction regime in one states gets undermined by the influx of guns from low-to-no regulation states next door and the notorious refusal of the latter to cooperate at hemming this flow.
Guns used in massacres tend to be legally owned, those in ‘common’ murder have a high level of illegality. What is needed is a draining of that swamp. Proposed rules (selection, could be expanded):
1.Any gun produced in or imported into the US needs to be registered and the ballistic marks put on file (federally).
2.Any sale of a gun has to be registered and at least the last two owners put on file.
3.Loss of a registered gun has to be reported immediately.
4.Repeated losses lead to a mandatory investigation. Proven negligence automatically leads to temporary or permanent forfeiture of the right to own/possess/handle firearms
5.If a gun is used in a crime and the legal owner is found to have neglected his obligation as per above, the legal owner is to be treated as accessory to the crime
6.Firearms used in crimes or found to not be on file are to be destroyed without compensation*
7.Possession of firearms not on file is a felony (and also leads to forfeiture… etc.).
Cue standard objections
1.gun registration defies the original intent of the 2nd A. and will inevitably lead to confiscation (bonus: that’s what the nazis did**)
2.Criminals will have no problem to get access to the database and will selectively target people without guns
3.The government is so incompetent, it could never implement any of this (but would be a genius in finding all your hidden stuff)
I openly admit that
a) the chances of this passing in the US is negligible
b) even if it would pass, it would take many years to drain that swamp and some fetid pockets would always remain
But smallpox was not defeated in a day either and there was an organized movement against it***
*as soon as legal proceedings do not require presence of physical object anymore
**they didn’t. It’s a zombie lie
***actually two, the ‘moral’ objectors that saw it as defiance against God and the anti-vaccinators concerned with side effects (the smallpox vaccine carried non-negligible risks, even today vaccination campaigns have to do risk-benefit analysis).
Instead of focusing on possession, sharply limit gun manufacturing.
Iirc SCOTUS was unambiguous about this being unconstitutional because it would be a backdoor denial of 2nd A. rights.
Although I hate to admit it, this even makes some sense.
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General excuse on my side for often seeming to ape other people’s comments: I type so slowly and the site refresh function is so faulty that there can be a large number of posts between the one I reply to and my own.
If you sell a firearm to anyone without jumping through the background check and waiting period hoop, and the gun is used in a crime, you are an accessory and a felon. Go to jail.
russell’s 5:18 pm comment makes a lot of sense to me. That’s a start, at least.
Look, I don’t eat much meat, but I know people who hunt, and I think that hunting (responsibly and humanely) is a wonderful, sustainable, way to obtain animal protein.
I don’t like guns for much else. If it makes people feel better to have a gun in the closet to kill an interloper, fine. It often has ugly results (such as killing a visiting adult child or whatever), but at least the fallout is limited. Nobody needs assault weapons, the kind that kill multiple people.
And yes, Countme-in, we should stop their manufacture.
And if repealing the 2nd amendment is necessary to accomplish these goals, so be it. As russell says, it is obsolete.
“SCOTUS was unambiguous …”
Figures. But ambiguity in the law ebbs and flows.
But I think I could manufacture a car with a turret on the top of it containing the very same weapons used in Connecticut, but remotely controlled via toggle switches on the dash, and concealed until needed.
Then I suspect ambiguity about the terms “manufacture”, “firearms possession”, etc would swarm down on me like a S.W.A.T. team.
“… makes some sense”
Yes, it does.
My two cents, on sense, not in reference to you, Hartmut, but in reference to the entire concept of “sense”.
Manufacturing grenades, making them available to the general public, fetishizing them as indispensable for personal defense and fending off grenade-throwing government agents, issuing Man Cards along with each one, and waiting for high I.Q. depressed white kids to imbibe the culture of grenades and start assaulting schools and other high-profile public places with them repeatedly over a number of years and then ruling that sharply limiting the manufacture of grenades (which Tench Coxe would criticize as going off half-coxed) is unambiguously a violation of the Second Amendment makes sense too.
If one says the names (first and last) of the 20 dead kids over and over again really quickly, they become the mere utterance of nonsense vocables, senseless.
Say “despair” quickly 20 times over and you’ll find in a few moments it makes no sense as well.
Senselessness is the only sensible conclusion.
I feel better now.
Using primarily Wikipedia as my source, I did some statistical research:
1. Annual firearms homicide deaths in the US are declining and currently are around 11,000 a year.
2. Going back to 1980, the aggregate number is well over 300,000.
3. Going back to 1980, the total number of ‘spree killings’ is 542.
4. The single largest number of people/children killed at a US school is 47. This happened in 1927, IIRC the article correctly. The mechanism was three bombs set off by a former school board member. Cite: http://listverse.com/2008/01/01/top-10-worst-school-massacres/
5. The foregoing cite shows that 4 of the largest spree killings at schools were in Europe.
6. Automobiles in 2009 produced 33,800 fatalities, of which 12,700 were alcohol related. That is to say, more alcohol related auto fatalities than firearms-related homicides in 2009 (south of 12,000).
7. There is no duty for treating physicians or drug/alcohol counselors or psychiatrist/psychologists to report (a) patients who are substance abusers or (b) patients who have the potential to commit an assault or a homicide.
9. How easy would it be to impose severe driving restrictions on known alcoholics? Answer: a lot easier than identifying, before the fact, a spree-killer.
8. Suicide by firearm is another class of firearms related death. The US leads the western world (defined by me as western democracies) in this category; however it trails the following western democracies in overall suicide rates: Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Japan and South Korea. The delta is significant in many cases.
I mention drunk driving for a reason. Personal story: in the early spring of 1999, my best friend and law partner (we’ll call him Bill) and I resigned from our much larger firm to open our own shop. Bill and I, and our families were very, very close. Bill and his wife’s first child was born on my birthday. We stood as godparents to him.
At ten in the evening, June 29, 1999, Bill’s wife called me from the hospital. She and the kids had gone to pick Bill up at the airport. On the way home, a speeding 18 wheeler driven by a man whose BAC was .10 flipped, crushing the three children, killing them almost instantly and pinning Bill, who was physically uninjured, inside his vehicle. Bill’s wife sustained injuries but was able to get free of the vehicle, which was underneath the 18 wheeler’s trailer. The vehicle, a Ford Expedition, caught fire. Other members of the traveling public had fire extinguishers and were able to fight the fire for a time, but eventually, the fire spread and Bill, who could not be extracted, died a very hard death.
So, four dead that night. I got the call a couple of hours later and spent the next three days in a blur, attending to Bill’s widow, his family, my family, the funereal, the eulogy and who know what else. I think about this whenever something like what we’re talking about here happens. Which is why I like to let a little time pass before diving in.
We have a much better handle on who our substance abusers are than we do as to who among us is so disassociated and desensitized and so angry and enraged that they can and will plan and execute something as monstrous as what happened in Newtown. But we do virtually nothing proactively to make a difference. The reasons for this are complex. As a lawyer, I have a pretty fair handle on what they are and they all, when boiled down to their essentials, emanate from the American brand of freedom, a brand that I prefer and that most of us prefer, even if we differ as to how it can or should be tweaked at the periphery.
The ‘freedom’ issue at issue here is the right of private citizens to own and use firearms in a lawful manner.
The proposition is that, in the immediate aftermath of a horror, that right should be curtailed to some degree if not entirely–views vary on this point.
Just last week, the sentiment at this site was far more tolerant, far less extreme, if you will, on this very same subject. Post-Newtown, a recurring theme is: gun owners should explain why their right to own firearms is superior to everyone else’s right to not be subject to spree killings.
Well, if the only firearms deaths we were talking about were as a result of spree killings, we’d be talking about a mortality factor that, on an annualized basis, would make firearms safer than step ladders or bath tubs.
IOW, the policy driver here, today and in the last few days, is a statistically freakish occurrence. It isn’t this occurrence that’s driving this discussion, it’s the horror, the incomprehension and the reflexive desire to ‘fix it’, to keep it from ever happening again.
That’s not going to happen and trying to find a solution to this precise kind of problem–spree killing–is truly the search for the pink unicorn.
I have to run, even though there is a lot more I would say. Plus, I’m out of gas right now, just thinking about this. I’ll try to have more tomorrow.
I am fully in support of a zero tolerance policy concerning drunk driving and am open about at least discussing mandatory substance abuse reporting (provided this is treated as a public safety and health issue not a criminal one). I think this would be both feasible and have an actual effect on the streets.
As far as guns are concerned, killing sprees are one thing and may not be fully preventable, but a broad front approach sustained long enough may significantly reduce the day-to-day shootings that kill many more than all massacres combined.
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Count, at least over here there is an easy way around the grenade ban: Polish firecrackers (illegal but easy to obtain). Each year our Eastern neighbours provide us with specimens that, according to the military, contain more than their own standard issue hand grenades. Not black powder (as in normal pyrotechnics) but industrial high explosives boosted with Al powder. Late revenge for WW2, I presume.
I second what McKinneyTexas said so very well.
All of this talk about eliminating the second amendment is just talk. You know it won’t happen. It is a guarunteed right and it is part of what makes us uniquely american.
All rights can be troublesome. The first amendment right can be pretty thorny what with hate peddlers and violent media and offensive media and so on and so forth. Inciting words have probably led to a lot of tragedy in this country. Maybe we should repeal the first amendment while we are at it?
How about due process? It can get in the way of law enforcment and can be used to find procedural errors that let violent criminals go uncaught or even get of the hook when they are caught. Should we repeal the amendments involved in that too?
Sometimes I think some folks would only be happy with our society if we threw away the constitution completely and got rid of capitalism and appointed Noam Chomsky or someone like as king.
I’m joking, but isn’t there just a leeetle bit o’ truth in that?
The founders of this country saw gun ownership by private citizens as protection against tyranny. Some folks don’t agree and some folks just aren’t fighters so they can’t understand. That’s ok of course, but America is America and its law is its law.
maybe we should have congress put a bill to change the constitution out there and when it is defeated the debate will end.
In the meanwhile, i don’t see how russell’s recomendations would prevent any of the crimes that have grabbed the nation’s attention recently. Those were all legal guns.
McKTx, thanks for sharing that story. Awfulness abounds in many forms, but hopefully the shared pain is lessened thing holds here.
Unrelated, I stopped drinking sometime Octoberish. I wasn’t a drunk, but I could feel myself sliding in that direction. Weird, that combined martial arts/recreational beerdrinking thing. But I needed to stop, for reasons I won’t go into just now, and things are just peachy.
But I crave Kasteel Donker on a daily basis, still,
McKinney’s sad story is irrelevant to the current discussion. Alcohol and driving is a completely different subject. Alcohol and guns is a different subject as well. Keep in mind that almost all adults drive (and many people have to drive in order to live in this culture). No one has to own a gun. Not a soul. To compare apples and oranges is ridiculous.
If we want to have a drunk driving thread, I’d be happy to open it up (not today, but before the end of the month). There’s a presumption, when someone has a bac over .08, that the person is responsible for a car accident – that’s true in my state, and in most (maybe all). It’s ridiculous, because studies have shown that all kinds of other factors are equally dangerous – mostly distractions such as texting, reading, fatigue, talking to someone, etc. So the statistics on drunk driving are grossly distorted, since, at any given time, a lot of people are drinking (up to .10) and driving, who don’t have accidents, or who aren’t actually responsible for the accidents they are in. Still and all and THIS IS IMPORTANT: we tolerate restrictions on drunk driving – i know of no one who resents the regulation of drinking while driving. I certainly don’t.
Yet, the gun lobby resents the hell out of restrictions on guns. It’s out of control, and these false comparisons cannot stand.
Sad for your law partner, of course. We all know victims of tragedy, even preventable ones. But, you know what? Guns are for killing. And the Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment to say that they can barely be restricted. Cars are for driving and getting somewhere. Yet, they are licensed, restricted, and considered a “privilege,” not a right. These two things are not the same, and don’t belong in the same discussion.
But we do virtually nothing proactively to make a difference
The argument that we have done nothing about the scenario you describe is ridiculous. Twenty years ago we didn’t randomly test drivers of 18 wheelers for alcohol. Now we do. The penalties for drunk driving have been increased almost everywhere. In some states driving a truck with a BAC of .10 was legal fairly recently, now the limit is .04. The laws get tougher all the time.
If you want to argue that we should be even stricter, go ahead and make that argument. We could breath test every truck driver before they get in a truck, at the end of their shift, and at at least one random point in between. Figure out how much that would cost and we can weigh that against the benefits we get from the trucking industry.
The day that insurance companies decide that machines can drive 18 wheelers more safely than humans, the problem will be solved for good, no arguments about personal freedom.
Now tell me what benefit we get when a woman in a city with virtually no crime decides to keep an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons in the same house that her mentally disturbed son lives in, and decides to take him target shooting.
Please explain to me the benefit we get from that. Then we can weigh the costs of gun ownership against the benefits and decide whether we need gun safety, gun control, or gun abolition.
On the contrary, his story is perfectly relevant: He’s pointing out how you’re responding to a smaller death toll with a much more extreme policy.
This makes it hard to defend the policy as a rational response to the deaths. Either drunk driving demands a vastly more expansive response, or you’re over-reacting to the gun deaths.
“a smaller death toll”
A smaller death toll for a hobby. I cook pancakes for a hobby. No death toll at all. Let’s compare that.
Deaths by pancakes versus deaths by guns. Hmmmmm.
Benefit to society from pancakes: somebody eats. Benefit to society by guns. Hmmmm.
Oh, other hobbies:
My music collection: kills no one! Guns? Kill lots of people!
Library? My books kill no one! Guns? Kill lots of people!
Knitting? Kills no one! Guns? Kill lots of people!
Gardening? Kills no one! Guns? Kill lots of people!
Hanging around on a blog? Kills no one. Guns? Kills lots of people!
John COle said something to the effect that it is immoral to suggest that a person’s right to own military style weapons is mosre important than a first grader’s right to live to be a second grader.
Either drunk driving demands a vastly more expansive response
Drunk driving has had a vastly more expansive response. We used to let people drive after drinking alcohol. Then we passed laws that said drivers could be arrested for drunk driving if they demonstrated they were a threat by driving recklessly. If you could handle your liquor, you were fine.
Later we said that a BAC of 0.15 was proof enough of recklessness, even if they were no other signs that the driver was dangerous. Then it was 0.12 or 0.10, now it is .08. For truck drivers it is .04, and if they are above .02, they have to wait and take a second test. In many states, if you are under 21, it is .01. We also raised the legal drinking age to 21 in all states. Anti-drunk driving laws have been getting more expansive, and you can expect many of these laws to get more expansive, not less.
Gun control laws have been getting less strict. You can buy guns now that you couldn’t 10 years ago.
We wait until gun owners living with mentally disturbed people allow their semi-automatic guns to be used to kill off classrooms full of elementary school children before we decide that it is too risky for them to be allowed to own those guns.
That is like allowing a visibly drunk person to drive an 18 wheeler on the interstate because they haven’t slaughtered anybody families yet.
Last first.
The founders of this country saw gun ownership by private citizens as protection against tyranny.
IMO it is considerably more accurate to say the founders saw a citizen militia, as opposed to a standing army, as protection against tyranny.
Those two things are not the same.
Some folks don’t agree and some folks just aren’t fighters so they can’t understand.
I think you flatter yourself and folks who you think share your opinion by quite a bit.
Tell me the last time you advocated for any matter of public concern with your time, your money, or by putting your behind in the street face to face with a cop or national security person, or by subjecting yourself to arrest, or by any of the thousand other ways that thousands and thousands and thousands of people have done, for decades and centuries, to make tangible the rights we all enjoy today.
No guns involved, mostly, just people putting their @sses on the line.
Tell me the last time you did any of those things, and we can talk about who is a “fighter”.
I’ve been involved in a handful of things like this, and very good friends of mine have been involved in a damned sight more.
Guess what? Each and every time, the number of patriots standing proudly in defense of our civil rights with gun in hand has been exactly zero.
Zero. Not one.
2nd amendment rights advocates will exert themselves to defend their rights under the 2nd Amendment, and no further.
Deeds not words, suzie_q. You tell me when you last put your @ss on the line, in any meaningful or tangible form, and we can discuss who is a fighter.
IOW, the policy driver here, today and in the last few days, is a statistically freakish occurrence.
I hear and recognize everything you’re saying.
I also recognize that, for instance, the 9/11 attacks were a freakish occurence. A rounding error.
Some things are sufficiently outrageous, and present a sufficient violation and affront to what we are willing to accept, that their statistical heft is sort of besides the point.
Here is a statistic for you:
One third of the guns *on the planet*, held in private American hands.
IMO that deserves our attention.
I don’t care if people hunt. I don’t care if people keep a firearm at home for personal protection. I don’t care if people shoot target. I don’t care if they collect guns as a hobby.
I don’t care if people carry a firearm with them as they go about their daily business, provided they can demonstrate a basic level of responsibility and an ability to operate their weapon with a basic level of capability.
What I care about are the thousands of people in this country who are stockpiling private arsenals of weapons, legal and illegal, with the idea in mind of killing their neighbors and fellow countrymen.
That might take the form of the kind of racist horseshit that made Ron Paul a rich man – the urban boogiemen coming to your town to steal your stuff and rape your women.
It might take the form of paranoid fantasies about when the “SHTF” and weird energy waves knock out the electric infrastructure and roving bands of hungry people come to steal the 1,000 cases of Spam you have in the basement.
It might take the form of delusions about crypto-Hitler Obama getting ready to round up all the white people into camps, after taking their guns, natch.
As I’ve mentioned many times, many of my friends and family members have guns. Some have serious gun collections, and some can compare muzzle velocities of various firearms from memory.
All fine with me. Everybody’s got their thing.
I’m extremely disturbed by the thousands of people, in this country, who have extraordinary private arsenals of weapons whose sole and exclusive purpose is killing other people, with military precision.
Adam Lanza was a FUBAR young man, who was able to kill a couple of dozen people, including 20 little kids, because his mother was getting ready for Armageddon.
That is some f**ked up stuff.
One third of the guns, in the whole god-damned world, are in private American hands. That’s not a hobby, it’s not self-defense, it’s not an exercise in patriotic defense of the nation.
It’s bizarre, f***ed up, anti-social paranoia, with (at a minimum) semi-automatic military ordnance.
That’s my issue.
Policy-wise, I don’t expect to live to see any meaningful attempt to overturn the 2nd. I’m not sure it’s necessary to overturn the 2nd, or even if it would be that great of an idea in the long term.
What I would like to see is:
1. No exception to the background check and waiting period
2. Come down like a ton of bricks on anyone – buyer or seller – who fails to observe that
3. If you sell a gun that is subsequently used in a crime and you failed to observe the background check or waiting period, you are an accessory and a felon, and you go to jail
4. No automatic weapons, and preferably no semi-automatics
5. No high-capacity magazines
In short, if you’re not a soldier, you don’t get a soldier’s gun. And if you’re not licensed to buy, sell, own, or carry, you don’t buy, sell, own, or carry.
Guns are an excellent tool, but the function they carry out is called “weapon”. They are dangerous as hell, and there should be nothing whatsoever extraordinary about requiring people to demonstrate a basic level of responsibility before they get to keep and carry.
As far as I’m concerned, this is not asking for a lot.
Frankly, I’d like to see the DOJ keep a close freaking eye on the “prepper” community as well, but all of the above is probably enough provocation for one day.
The 2nd Amendment *was not* intended to be cover for preparing to kill your neighbors or engage in political insurrection.
The point was not that citizens would be prepared to go to war with the US army. The point was that citizens would *be* the US army.
sapient, books, the ideas in them, have killed a lot of people.
After we get rid of guns the committee for public safety will have to take a look at your library and confiscate any unsafe books.
The pancakes are probably ok unless you eat too many. Obesity is a serious public health issue and kills millions each year. So we may have to confiscate your pancakes too now that I think about it. You btter start stocking up on batter fixings and syrup while you can.
suzie_q, that’s bullshit.
russell, thank you so much. You don’t know how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness, like this:
One third of the guns, in the whole god-damned world, are in private American hands. That’s not a hobby, it’s not self-defense, it’s not an exercise in patriotic defense of the nation.
I mean, that’s so beyond my world. I wonder how I’ve lived this long if guns are so vital.
russell, I don’t have a bunch of guns. I have a .38 revolver for personal protection. My boy friend has some guns that folks are complaining about. he was in the army and went to iraq, twice!
I do volunteer work, like a local hospice. That’s how I do my part.
I believe in peaceful protest and political activism. Not rioting and shooting up the establishment. Still, if our society falls apart and riots come to me and my family I would want to be able to be protected. It could happen btw. I think it is kind of foolish to think it couldn’t.
It could happen btw. I think it is kind of foolish to think it couldn’t.
If the “SHTF”, as the preppers like to say, their mountain of guns is not going to make things any better, for anyone. Not even for them.
The way people get through hard times is helping each other out, not f**ing shooting at each other.
Everybody should sit down with some old folks, folks who actually lived through hard times, and listen to how they got through it.
Stockpiles of guns were not a big part, or any part, of the equation.
Good for you for doing volunteer work, well done.
I have a .38 revolver for personal protection.
I don’t. But, sure. Keep it locked up just in case. I don’t have any problem with that, and neither do most other people.
Your “boy friend” on the other hand – what’ he doing with those weapons? What war at home is he planning to fight? He went to Iraq on behalf of GWBush. I’m sorry for him for fighting for such a dips$%t, and am happy for him if he came back intact. What’s his rationale for needing those weapons here?
My father fought in WWII (and in Vietnam). Somehow, he lost the memo about keeping his guns available at home though. He’d seen quite enough of blood and guts, and was committed to participating in a nonviolent civil society at home. Obviously, your “boy friend” is a bit paranoid, or doesn’t have much confidence in our Democratic experiment.
‘Just last week, the sentiment at this site was far more tolerant, far less extreme’
I tried posting this after McT posted, but it didn’t go thru. I’d just note that venting, be it in real life or on the interwebs, is part of the process of grief. Sure, the place has changed and maybe it will go back and maybe it won’t , but it is what it is.
And just to be even clearer, who is your “boy friend”? Is he your “room mate”? So, you live with semi-automatic weapons, or automatic weapons in your home, perhaps? This is interesting, and relevant, because your home is a problem if someone breaks in and steals that stuff. Just saying. Not that I blame you, because how are you going to leave your “boy friend” when he might be interested in shooting those weapons at you?
More on the Bushmaster Man Card:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/bushmasters-shockingly-awful-man-card-campaign
Sorry you have to paint, etc.
It’s sickening, and you must read the link to understand my point, but it got me thinking about Suzie Q’s (congrats on the volunteer work; I need to man up and try that myself) point about repealing the First Amendment because the words in books have killed plenty of people and the reference to the genocidal quality of sapient’s pancakes.
The Bushmaster Man Card ad campaign has as one its bullet points for revoking a Bushmaster Man Card the fear of looking a fifth grader — a grade school student — in the eye.
Really. Take a moment to retch.
The threats of revocation are accompanied by a centerfold of the Bushmaster, and she is a fetching-looking killing machine.
Now, I wonder if Lanza the Younger read that particular revocation threat.
But, to get back to Suzie Q., if Aunt Jemima had run an identical campaign to sell pancakes (your Aunt Jemima Man Card will be revoked, sissy, because you put blueberries and whipped cream on your mancakes, flapjack!), the combination and interaction of words, pancakes, a disturbed young white male, and 26 innocent people down at the elementary school is different …. you must realize this ….. than the combination and interaction of words, a Bushmaster killing machine, a disturbed young white male, and 26 innocent people down at the elementary school.
Can you tell which element is different?
Louis Gohmert protested any move to address gun control measures today, asking “Once you start to draw lines, where does it stop?”
At pancakes.
I’d like to address McTX sad experience and its relevance to gun control with some personal experience of my own, which I alluded to previously either here or on the other thread.
Tomorrow, I’m too whacked right now.
That’d be quite the special boyfriend if he had full auto.
I have two guns in my house. Soon to have 3. May max out at as many as 5. My uncle, a Democrat, has well over a dozen. He’s a collector, and a hunter.
This is not that unusual.
Slartibartfast, there are plenty of Democratic gun nuts. That’s why we’re not restricting them. I’m glad you like your hobby. Don’t compare it to driving though because it’s not a necessity. It’s a hobby.
It’s a “right” because of a perverse historical quirk in our Constitution. So luxuriate in the fact that your very dangerous unfettered hobby causes huge numbers of deaths and suffering. Go for it. Very, very cool!
Driving is necessary? Since when? You’d think there weren’t such things as bicycles and feet, not to mention trains and buses.
Not that I compared shooting to driving.
I used to do more dangerous stuff, but I’ve gotten older and more sedate.
Oh. To date, my very dangerous hobby has resulted in 0 deaths and 0 suffering. But thanks for your concern.
To date
That’s what Mrs. Lanza said on Thursday.
As I said Slart, go for it! And keep living in your dream.
(Do you rely on a bicycle and your feet, by the way? Hahahahah. I thought not. Of course, it’s possible to do that in urban areas, where there are typically many more controls on guns. )
Apropos of nothing, how do you politely express the opinion to someone that if they have had recent issues with alcohol – even possibly only very minor ones – that going on a gun buying spree is a choice that may ideally be postponed for a while?
I think you hint at it elliptically in comments, rather than come right out and say it.
“Spree”, though, is precious. At the rate I am accumulating arms, the gun safe might start getting crowded in another few years.
But beware of me because I am a drunk with weapons, right?
No you are someone who said that they were sliding in the direction of being a drunk, with weapons.
Yeah I would be wary. No offense.
Maybe you’re one of those people that hints at having an issue with alcohol without really having one. Never met one of those, but hopefully, that’s you.
You really have no idea what my situation is, though. Thanks for your concern, but there is no need for it.
It was actually pretty easy to quit. I’ve never been an alcoholic before, though, so I have no idea at all whether quitting is ever easy.
The gun-ownership part of my life and the beer-drinking part of my life have zero overlap. I definitely agree that alcohol and firearms are not a good combination. It’s not a combination that will occur in my house.
Slarti, I used to have more respect for you before you wrote: “Driving is necessary? Since when?”
I for one can make do without a gun a lot easier than I can make do without a car. You too, I bet. Even mass-murdering psychopaths find it more convenient to drive than to bicycle to their shooting sprees, in case you haven’t noticed.
To be honest, I even respect you a bit less than I otherwise would because you own guns. I’m less tolerant than Russell. I don’t respect every hobby people indulge in. Some people collect guns; other people collect kiddie porn. Both are hobbies. Both put me off. So far, to different degrees. But give it time — and the inevitable, predictable, body count — and that may change.
–TP
Tomorrow, I’m too whacked right now.
Not me….I’m in full whack mode, and on PST, a controlled state of being. The other Cleek shall not be turned.
Seb got me thinking about parallels, and I had this fiery vision of the hell that is the trenches of the endless internecine internet wars that wracked the 21st century: Guns & liberty-but only if the guns are in the ‘right’ hands; Abortion and more or less life-but only if permitted by the Communal Committee for the Sanctity of The Pre-born To Preserve Individual Freedom and Liberty-and we hate The State, yes-believe us-we really do; That hardy perennial, the question of the Palestinian question vs. the People Without a Land-but first the Other Guys need to unconditionally surrender and pass a full rectoscopy because their very existence is predicated solely on the notion that they have been brought into the world for the purpose of hating our freedoms, raising our taxes, and building community centers at Ground Zero….so
….are there similarities between NARAL and heavily armed anti-abortion militantly lunatic to the point of fascistic West Bank settlers? Obviously! (Russell has pointed this out more than once.)
But only those who can blow a BAC greater than .08 know for sure, or slyly, infinitely greedy bankers who, by the way, have stolen just about everything that is not nailed down (have you not noticed?); and last but not least, pancakes, evolved from a speck of dirt or created by the Supreme Intelligence who, inexplicably, forbids me the pleasure of just-so bacon.
The usual stuff.
Nasty dreams of unionized pregnant Palestinian women demanding the end of the zionist entity more neat whiskey, guns, and babies for the Revolution; Westboro Baptists screeching ‘death to gays’ and ‘stop the genocide’ yelling for Armageddon so the preggers Palestinians, armed with hockey sticks, can push Isreal into the sea as their victims pleaded for stricter DUI laws and a carbon tax, the Laffer curve be damned. It was a nightmare as Sapient droned on and on. Feverishly I thrashed about, thinking Freedom! Freedom! seeing myself broken on the wheel at the end of some execrably bad movie. Surely there is an answer. The Enlightenment, like Gore Vidal, told me so.
To no avail, I struggled to stop Countme-In from pushing me over the edge……
And then I passed out. Saved again by inebriation (wine, not beer…apologies to Belgium and Slarti).
But I didn’t get behind the wheel. It may have been your lucky day. You’ll never know (wink, wink), and guns would not have saved you in any event because Brett stole the keys to the SUV.
If you want to argue that we should be even stricter, go ahead and make that argument. We could breath test every truck driver before they get in a truck, at the end of their shift, and at at least one random point in between. Figure out how much that would cost and we can weigh that against the benefits we get from the trucking industry.
Duff, there are serious thoughts in Europe to have every car (not just trucks) equipped with breathalyzers by law. A drunk driver would not be able to start the engine. There are of course technical issues about manipulation (like having a sober person start the car before the drunk takes over) but the idea is less absurd than you might think. The cost argument will not be the one killing it, the car lobby* might (and in some countries it has a bit of a NRA attitude and influence).
*not the truck companies, it’s about “Freie Fahrt für freie Bürger” (freedom of the road for free citizens). It’s the guys that also consider any speed limits intolerable.
“I for one can make do without a gun a lot easier than I can make do without a car. ”
Level of convenience wasn’t my point. Having other people decide what you need was more the point.
I’m unconcerned that you respect me less for owning guns. I’m not doing it for anyone’s approval or respect, and I am currently not required to justify myself to anyone.
So.
” It was a nightmare as Sapient droned on and on. ”
Pun intended?
Having other people decide what you need was more the point.
That ship sailed long ago. My permits for building a real gun (150 mm shells baby), a grenade launcher, and a small nuclear facility in my back yard have all been denied. Somehow, I manage to live life without constantly throwing tantrums screaming ‘how dare you decide what I need?!’.
(Outsider’s perspective, again.)
I was wondering why there isn’t a proliferation of class action suits against the merchants of death (the Bushmaster stuff in particular reminds me of what big tobacco marketing used to be) – and I find that your congress recently legally exempted them from litigation:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN397:
Astonishing.
Yep, that’s me: kicking and screaming. People around me are staring.
Maybe this needed clarification.
I am not referring to the law of the land, here. I am referring to participants here, in this particular conversation, who behave as if their opinion somehow translates to what should be, and trumps mine.
So: that’s what I am referring to. If Congress passes some law or another constraining what firearms I may and may not own, I will of course have to comply. That’s the reality of it.
Until Congress does that, though, I can do as I choose. As I choose, independent of what you people think is right.
This debate, much sharper than any prior exchange I can recall on this subject here at ObWi, is not without irony or inconsistency.
Sapient, my personal experience is relevant only because it informs my reaction to the death of children.
Deaths on the highway due to substance abuse is relevant because these deaths outweigh spree killing deaths by orders of magnitude, and while cars/trucks are necessary, alcohol is not.
Yet, you would amend the constitution and confiscate what I assume is any semi automatic rifle and pistol from every citizen no matter how law abiding that citizen is. At the same time, you and many others would end the senseless war on drugs, which if ended, would have the known consequence (unintended, but still entirely predictable) of adding to the death toll on highways by a new class of impaired driver. Also at the same time, while the death toll in column A rises, you would declare a war on firearms, a war directed mainly at otherwise law-abiding citizens. Their crime would be possessory in nature, i.e. there is no actual criminal act and no victim to point to, simply the previously legal act of ownership.
And you would do this on account of statistically isolated, albeit horrific events. If a bus driver, impaired by marijuana, drove a bus full of children into a river or over a mountain side, would you do the same for marijuana as you would for guns?
Is it the end or the means that has you so engaged?
Duff, yes, you are correct, driving big rigs is heavily regulated and the penalties for noncompliance are fierce, as they should be. Driving a car is barely regulated, and similar to the disorderd Lanza, not having a license in no way prevents someone from getting behind the wheel. We do have stout penalties for drinking and driving. Some are deterred, others not.
But–I should capitalize ‘but’–all of the penalties you point to are after the fact. There is no prophylactic/preventative regime in place to reduce or eliminate impaired driving. The analogy to committing a gun crime is fairly direct–our direst penalties are reserved for those who commit murder. Like I said, some are deterred, others are not.
The USDOT regime for qualifying drivers, for limiting their driving hours, for alcohol and drug testing are unnecessary for responsible drivers and are simply obstacles to be overcome for the irresponsible. Necessary, but they leak like a sieve.
Russell, all of your proposals fall on those who already obey the law. None of them would have prevented what happened in Newtown. Ms. Lanza couldn’t be sent to prison for letting her weapons fall into her son’s hands because he’d already killed her.
Some other issues: I’d like to agree that it’s whacky to own a big pile of guns. The problem is, back when I avidly hunted and did a lot of target shooting, I owned at least 40 different rifles, shotguns and pistols. As seemingly insane as that might first appear, there was an underlying method to my madness: my son and I hunted together. You never go on a deer hunt with just one rifle each because if the scope gets knocked out of line, you need a backup, ergo 4 deer rifles. Sometimes, I would hunt deer by stalking–scoped rifles don’t work for that purpose, so I had two unscoped, lever action rifles. Pig hunting–environmentally, anything you can do to reduce the feral hog population is a good thing. Because pigs run in groups (sounders, I think they are called), I had two .223 semi automatics, to shoot as many as my son and I could without having to stop and reload or to work a bolt. I hunted deer with both a .44 mag pistol and a .357 and rabbits with a .22 pistol. Shotguns, even more complex. If you’re avid about something, it can get out of hand.
Now, it is whacky to stock up on guns, ammo, food etc in prep for the coming breakdown of society? Opinions vary on this point. Personally, I think it’s a bit much, but if you are a regular here at ObWi and the discussion turns to, say, income inequality, you might begin to worry about when, not if, but when the bottom 99% is going to take to the streets. Otherwise calm and reasoned voices here at ObWi have predicted this very phenomena. So, some folks out there are prepping for the day that some of our more reasoned commenters and even a headliner or two have predicted.
Now, whether someone stockpiles in fear of income-inequality-induced societal breakdown or for fear of the black helicopters swooping in or because, like me, they keep coming up with different angles to justify buying a new toy, none of these folks have been shown to commit spree killings.
In every instance, the spree killer is demonstrably and profoundly disordered. You aren’t going to reach that cohort with any kind of prophylactic measure, much less a threat of after-the-fact consequences, although you will surely make the lives of many others more difficult and expose otherwise law abiding citizens to federal prosecution.
As for regulating/outlawing certain classes of firearm, I get the sentiment. However, the sentiment demonstrably makes the situation worse, in several ways. First, to pick up on the bloody shirt sub-thread, it is THE bloody shirt of the NRA. Sapient et al’s demands to repeal the 2nd Am and confiscate all but certain types of ‘hunting rifles’ are the NRA’s Ex. A in fundraising. Those same demands fuel firearms and ammunition sales like nothing else in the real world ever could. Second, if you want to give credence to that slice of Americana who believes the feds are coming for your guns, keep talking–you’re making their point. Third, and this is a fact, in the run up to the assault weapon ban under Clinton, firearms sales boomed. I represented a firearms importer with a modest market share–its profits were 4 times what they had ever been in the company’s history.
I dislike the cosmetics of semi auto pistols and the military style rifles for the same reason I have reservations about some of these video games that people seem to play so much. I don’t worry about the reasonably well adjusted who own guns like that or who play video games, but I do worry about the severely unbalanced, marginalized young male who cannot reconcile his situation with the world he sees around him, the world that he’d like to be a part of but which wants no part of him.
War games, pornography and sexy looking weapons, IMO, are all visual cues that stew in this young man’s mind along will all of his other resentments, anger and isolation. In the very rare instance where the stew well and truly boils over, you get Newtown, or something perhaps less dramatic but just as tragic for the smaller number of people involved.
Final notes
1. Duff and Sapient seem to have a low regard for gun aficionados. D&S impute, it appears, some kind of shared guilt/responsibility to the broad range of non-hunting gun owners for events like Newtown. Any regulatory regime, no matter how oppressive, is ok because these are just not good folks and guns are bad. Very bad. This paradigm is transferable. It’s a knife that cuts both ways and probably not the best underpinning for policy making.
2. Let’s just assume there is an even larger number of gun stockpilers out there than we, in our worst moments, believe. Let’s further assume these folks are holed up in their survival camps, terrified of the outside world. Like the Branch Davidians. The underlying mentality is defensive, not offensive. They are not a threat, at least not the kind that Lanza was. Worrying about people who hide behind locked doors in a house full of guns is misplaced. Worrying that the next Lanza will get his gun from that house is only mildly less misplaced–there are too many other, much easier ways to get a gun.
And that isn’t going to change. Just like, as sure as anything, someone will die in Houston this weekend at the hands of an impaired driver. But, it will be only one or two people, and we’re used to that. Desensitized, as it were.
This debate, much sharper than any prior exchange I can recall on this subject here at ObWi, is not without irony or inconsistency.
Sapient, my personal experience is relevant only because it informs my reaction to the death of children.
Deaths on the highway due to substance abuse is relevant because these deaths outweigh spree killing deaths by orders of magnitude, and while cars/trucks are necessary, alcohol is not.
Yet, you would amend the constitution and confiscate what I assume is any semi automatic rifle and pistol from every citizen no matter how law abiding that citizen is. At the same time, you and many others would end the senseless war on drugs, which if ended, would have the known consequence (unintended, but still entirely predictable) of adding to the death toll on highways by a new class of impaired driver. Also at the same time, while the death toll in column A rises, you would declare a war on firearms, a war directed mainly at otherwise law-abiding citizens. Their crime would be possessory in nature, i.e. there is no actual criminal act and no victim to point to, simply the previously legal act of ownership.
And you would do this on account of statistically isolated, albeit horrific events. If a bus driver, impaired by marijuana, drove a bus full of children into a river or over a mountain side, would you do the same for marijuana as you would for guns?
Is it the end or the means that has you so engaged?
Duff, yes, you are correct, driving big rigs is heavily regulated and the penalties for noncompliance are fierce, as they should be. Driving a car is barely regulated, and similar to the disorderd Lanza, not having a license in no way prevents someone from getting behind the wheel. We do have stout penalties for drinking and driving. Some are deterred, others not.
But–I should capitalize ‘but’–all of the penalties you point to are after the fact. There is no prophylactic/preventative regime in place to reduce or eliminate impaired driving. The analogy to committing a gun crime is fairly direct–our direst penalties are reserved for those who commit murder. Like I said, some are deterred, others are not.
The USDOT regime for qualifying drivers, for limiting their driving hours, for alcohol and drug testing are unnecessary for responsible drivers and are simply obstacles to be overcome for the irresponsible. Necessary, but they leak like a sieve.
Russell, all of your proposals fall on those who already obey the law. None of them would have prevented what happened in Newtown. Ms. Lanza couldn’t be sent to prison for letting her weapons fall into her son’s hands because he’d already killed her.
Some other issues: I’d like to agree that it’s whacky to own a big pile of guns. The problem is, back when I avidly hunted and did a lot of target shooting, I owned at least 40 different rifles, shotguns and pistols. As seemingly insane as that might first appear, there was an underlying method to my madness: my son and I hunted together. You never go on a deer hunt with just one rifle each because if the scope gets knocked out of line, you need a backup, ergo 4 deer rifles. Sometimes, I would hunt deer by stalking–scoped rifles don’t work for that purpose, so I had two unscoped, lever action rifles. Pig hunting–environmentally, anything you can do to reduce the feral hog population is a good thing. Because pigs run in groups (sounders, I think they are called), I had two .223 semi automatics, to shoot as many as my son and I could without having to stop and reload or to work a bolt. I hunted deer with both a .44 mag pistol and a .357 and rabbits with a .22 pistol. Shotguns, even more complex. If you’re avid about something, it can get out of hand.
Now, it is whacky to stock up on guns, ammo, food etc in prep for the coming breakdown of society? Opinions vary on this point. Personally, I think it’s a bit much, but if you are a regular here at ObWi and the discussion turns to, say, income inequality, you might begin to worry about when, not if, but when the bottom 99% is going to take to the streets. Otherwise calm and reasoned voices here at ObWi have predicted this very phenomena. So, some folks out there are prepping for the day that some of our more reasoned commenters and even a headliner or two have predicted.
Now, whether someone stockpiles in fear of income-inequality-induced societal breakdown or for fear of the black helicopters swooping in or because, like me, they keep coming up with different angles to justify buying a new toy, none of these folks have been shown to commit spree killings.
In every instance, the spree killer is demonstrably and profoundly disordered. You aren’t going to reach that cohort with any kind of prophylactic measure, much less a threat of after-the-fact consequences, although you will surely make the lives of many others more difficult and expose otherwise law abiding citizens to federal prosecution.
As for regulating/outlawing certain classes of firearm, I get the sentiment. However, the sentiment demonstrably makes the situation worse, in several ways. First, to pick up on the bloody shirt sub-thread, it is THE bloody shirt of the NRA. Sapient et al’s demands to repeal the 2nd Am and confiscate all but certain types of ‘hunting rifles’ are the NRA’s Ex. A in fundraising. Those same demands fuel firearms and ammunition sales like nothing else in the real world ever could. Second, if you want to give credence to that slice of Americana who believes the feds are coming for your guns, keep talking–you’re making their point. Third, and this is a fact, in the run up to the assault weapon ban under Clinton, firearms sales boomed. I represented a firearms importer with a modest market share–its profits were 4 times what they had ever been in the company’s history.
I dislike the cosmetics of semi auto pistols and the military style rifles for the same reason I have reservations about some of these video games that people seem to play so much. I don’t worry about the reasonably well adjusted who own guns like that or who play video games, but I do worry about the severely unbalanced, marginalized young male who cannot reconcile his situation with the world he sees around him, the world that he’d like to be a part of but which wants no part of him.
War games, pornography and sexy looking weapons, IMO, are all visual cues that stew in this young man’s mind along will all of his other resentments, anger and isolation. In the very rare instance where the stew well and truly boils over, you get Newtown, or something perhaps less dramatic but just as tragic for the smaller number of people involved.
Final notes
1. Duff and Sapient seem to have a low regard for gun aficionados. D&S impute, it appears, some kind of shared guilt/responsibility to the broad range of non-hunting gun owners for events like Newtown. Any regulatory regime, no matter how oppressive, is ok because these are just not good folks and guns are bad. Very bad. This paradigm is transferable. It’s a knife that cuts both ways and probably not the best underpinning for policy making.
2. Let’s just assume there is an even larger number of gun stockpilers out there than we, in our worst moments, believe. Let’s further assume these folks are holed up in their survival camps, terrified of the outside world. Like the Branch Davidians. The underlying mentality is defensive, not offensive. They are not a threat, at least not the kind that Lanza was. Worrying about people who hide behind locked doors in a house full of guns is misplaced. Worrying that the next Lanza will get his gun from that house is only mildly less misplaced–there are too many other, much easier ways to get a gun.
And that isn’t going to change. Just like, as sure as anything, someone will die in Houston this weekend at the hands of an impaired driver. But, it will be only one or two people, and we’re used to that. Desensitized, as it were.
(I’ve tried to post this twice. It’s too long, so I’m breaking it up)
This debate, much sharper than any prior exchange I can recall on this subject here at ObWi, is not without irony or inconsistency.
Sapient, my personal experience is relevant only because it informs my reaction to the death of children.
Deaths on the highway due to substance abuse is relevant because these deaths outweigh spree killing deaths by orders of magnitude, and while cars/trucks are necessary, alcohol is not.
Yet, you would amend the constitution and confiscate what I assume is any semi automatic rifle and pistol from every citizen no matter how law abiding that citizen is. At the same time, you and many others would end the senseless war on drugs, which if ended, would have the known consequence (unintended, but still entirely predictable) of adding to the death toll on highways by a new class of impaired driver. Also at the same time, while the death toll in column A rises, you would declare a war on firearms, a war directed mainly at otherwise law-abiding citizens. Their crime would be possessory in nature, i.e. there is no actual criminal act and no victim to point to, simply the previously legal act of ownership.
And you would do this on account of statistically isolated, albeit horrific events. If a bus driver, impaired by marijuana, drove a bus full of children into a river or over a mountain side, would you do the same for marijuana as you would for guns?
Is it the end or the means that has you so engaged?
Duff, yes, you are correct, driving big rigs is heavily regulated and the penalties for noncompliance are fierce, as they should be. Driving a car is barely regulated, and similar to the disorderd Lanza, not having a license in no way prevents someone from getting behind the wheel. We do have stout penalties for drinking and driving. Some are deterred, others not.
But–I should capitalize ‘but’–all of the penalties you point to are after the fact. There is no prophylactic/preventative regime in place to reduce or eliminate impaired driving. The analogy to committing a gun crime is fairly direct–our direst penalties are reserved for those who commit murder. Like I said, some are deterred, others are not.
The USDOT regime for qualifying drivers, for limiting their driving hours, for alcohol and drug testing are unnecessary for responsible drivers and are simply obstacles to be overcome for the irresponsible. Necessary, but they leak like a sieve.
Part Two:
Russell, all of your proposals fall on those who already obey the law. None of them would have prevented what happened in Newtown. Ms. Lanza couldn’t be sent to prison for letting her weapons fall into her son’s hands because he’d already killed her.
Some other issues: I’d like to agree that it’s whacky to own a big pile of guns. The problem is, back when I avidly hunted and did a lot of target shooting, I owned at least 40 different rifles, shotguns and pistols. As seemingly insane as that might first appear, there was an underlying method to my madness: my son and I hunted together. You never go on a deer hunt with just one rifle each because if the scope gets knocked out of line, you need a backup, ergo 4 deer rifles. Sometimes, I would hunt deer by stalking–scoped rifles don’t work for that purpose, so I had two unscoped, lever action rifles. Pig hunting–environmentally, anything you can do to reduce the feral hog population is a good thing. Because pigs run in groups (sounders, I think they are called), I had two .223 semi automatics, to shoot as many as my son and I could without having to stop and reload or to work a bolt. I hunted deer with both a .44 mag pistol and a .357 and rabbits with a .22 pistol. Shotguns, even more complex. If you’re avid about something, it can get out of hand.
Now, it is whacky to stock up on guns, ammo, food etc in prep for the coming breakdown of society? Opinions vary on this point. Personally, I think it’s a bit much, but if you are a regular here at ObWi and the discussion turns to, say, income inequality, you might begin to worry about when, not if, but when the bottom 99% is going to take to the streets. Otherwise calm and reasoned voices here at ObWi have predicted this very phenomena. So, some folks out there are prepping for the day that some of our more reasoned commenters and even a headliner or two have predicted.
Now, whether someone stockpiles in fear of income-inequality-induced societal breakdown or for fear of the black helicopters swooping in or because, like me, they keep coming up with different angles to justify buying a new toy, none of these folks have been shown to commit spree killings.
In every instance, the spree killer is demonstrably and profoundly disordered. You aren’t going to reach that cohort with any kind of prophylactic measure, much less a threat of after-the-fact consequences, although you will surely make the lives of many others more difficult and expose otherwise law abiding citizens to federal prosecution.
As for regulating/outlawing certain classes of firearm, I get the sentiment. However, the sentiment demonstrably makes the situation worse, in several ways. First, to pick up on the bloody shirt sub-thread, it is THE bloody shirt of the NRA. Sapient et al’s demands to repeal the 2nd Am and confiscate all but certain types of ‘hunting rifles’ are the NRA’s Ex. A in fundraising. Those same demands fuel firearms and ammunition sales like nothing else in the real world ever could. Second, if you want to give credence to that slice of Americana who believes the feds are coming for your guns, keep talking–you’re making their point. Third, and this is a fact, in the run up to the assault weapon ban under Clinton, firearms sales boomed. I represented a firearms importer with a modest market share–its profits were 4 times what they had ever been in the company’s history.
I dislike the cosmetics of semi auto pistols and the military style rifles for the same reason I have reservations about some of these video games that people seem to play so much. I don’t worry about the reasonably well adjusted who own guns like that or who play video games, but I do worry about the severely unbalanced, marginalized young male who cannot reconcile his situation with the world he sees around him, the world that he’d like to be a part of but which wants no part of him.
War games, pornography and sexy looking weapons, IMO, are all visual cues that stew in this young man’s mind along will all of his other resentments, anger and isolation. In the very rare instance where the stew well and truly boils over, you get Newtown, or something perhaps less dramatic but just as tragic for the smaller number of people involved.
Final notes
1. Duff and Sapient seem to have a low regard for gun aficionados. D&S impute, it appears, some kind of shared guilt/responsibility to the broad range of non-hunting gun owners for events like Newtown. Any regulatory regime, no matter how oppressive, is ok because these are just not good folks and guns are bad. Very bad. This paradigm is transferable. It’s a knife that cuts both ways and probably not the best underpinning for policy making.
2. Let’s just assume there is an even larger number of gun stockpilers out there than we, in our worst moments, believe. Let’s further assume these folks are holed up in their survival camps, terrified of the outside world. Like the Branch Davidians. The underlying mentality is defensive, not offensive. They are not a threat, at least not the kind that Lanza was. Worrying about people who hide behind locked doors in a house full of guns is misplaced. Worrying that the next Lanza will get his gun from that house is only mildly less misplaced–there are too many other, much easier ways to get a gun.
And that isn’t going to change. Just like, as sure as anything, someone will die in Houston this weekend at the hands of an impaired driver. But, it will be only one or two people, and we’re used to that. Desensitized, as it were.
Or a drone pilot could kill some more civilians, and we would hear sapient stridently defending the President’s right to do that.
Which is one reason why I don’t really take sapient’s criticism in this matter all that seriously.
The underlying mentality is defensive, not offensive.
Right up until the county tax bill comes due. Or until the local sheriff shows up with a warrant. Or until someone on the inside sneaks a message to the cops complaining about being married at 13. Then they become quite offensive.
some kind of shared guilt/responsibility to the broad range of non-hunting gun owners for events like Newtown.
Getting sensible gun regulation laws passed would be a lot easier if gun owners would support them. But they don’t. So there’s your shared guilt right there.
To answer an earlier request about international gun-control frameworks:
In Finland, we have a very gun-heavy country. This is mostly due to the prevalence of hunting. However, until recently, government tacitly encouraged persons active in (legally regulated) national defence organisations to procure military-type semi-automatic rifles. In addition, our gun registrations were old-style paper card files. Both measures were, very likely, taken to increase the success probability of a guerrilla movement in case of a Soviet/Russian occupation, although this has never been an official political position. In addition to the 1.5 million legal guns, it is estimated that there are about 50,000 illegal weapons.
At present, you need a legal reason to get a gun license. It can be profession, collection, sport or hunting. If you apply for hunting or sport, the gun must be feasible for the purpose. For gun collecting, you need a clear plan detailing the types of weapons you are specializing on, and you cannot procure ammunition for the collection.
All new gun licenses require (I just got a gun for hunting, so I know):
* a police background check, including the check of the military service records
* a computerised “sanity check” (about 200 multiple choice questions). If you fail, you will be sent to get a medical certificate prior proceeding.
* an interview with a senior policeman, usually a criminal investigations person or a command-level police officer. There, your personal situation and the future uses and suitability of the weapon are discussed.
A few weeks after the interview, you can fetch your license from the police station. Then, you go to the gun shop (or a private individual) and buy the gun. The gun shop takes two copies of your license and sends one of them to the police. You go back to the police station with your gun and present the weapon there to the duty officer, who registers it and checks whether it matches the license. After a couple more weeks, you get a final license. (The whole process takes at least four visits to the police stations and costs some 70 euros in processing fees.)
If you are buying a “long” weapon, the license is indefinite, as a rule. For handguns, the first license is five years after which you must prove “active hobby”, meaning at least a one range visit per two months. If your hobby is still “active”, you are then issued subsequent ten-year licenses.
Personal defence is not a reason for issuance of a gun-license. In fact, even mentioning it as a reason to procure a weapon may be a disqualifier. It shows unsuitability to own a gun to even consider using it for self-defence.
Second, if you want to give credence to that slice of Americana who believes the feds are coming for your guns
Americana, they are coming for your guns. It’s not the feds, it’s the elementary school moms. You done pissed off the wrong crowd.
Yet, you would amend the constitution and confiscate what I assume is any semi automatic rifle and pistol from every citizen no matter how law abiding that citizen is
You’re not allowed to drive drunk no matter how well you think you drive when you are drunk. Blame those elementary school moms again. They must hate freedom.
Getting sensible gun regulation laws passed would be a lot easier if gun owners would support them.
This has been bouncing around a bit, the link is thinkprogress, but I first saw it somewhere else.
According to a poll conducted in May by Republican pollster Frank Luntz for the group Mayors against Illegal Guns, gun-owning Americans, including National Rifle Association (NRA) members, overwhelmingly support a raft of common-sense measures typically described as “gun control:”
From here
As I have said there would be lots of ways to reduce casualties from drunk or unlicenced driving that would not be overly inconvenient to the average person* and those measures are seriously considered by some countries. The fact that not more is done there cannot serve as a valid argument to demand the same inaction on the topic of guns, only as an argument to put pressure on deciders on both topics.
*none would involve substance prohibition. A minor side benefit could even be increased protection against car theft.
Cerebus venture capital is selling off Freedom Group, the makers of the Bushmaster, under pressure from CALPERS.
The NRA’s statement on the events in Newtown: silence.
According to a poll conducted in May by Republican pollster Frank Luntz for the group Mayors against Illegal Guns, gun-owning Americans, including National Rifle Association (NRA) members, overwhelmingly support a raft of common-sense measures typically described as “gun control:
This is the same Frank Luntz who predicted Romney’s victory, right? Maybe we shouldn’t take his work seriously given his demonstrated inability to perform basic addition.
More to the point, NRA members who support common sense gun control measures are either ignorant or dishonest. If they really supported those measures, they’d withdraw from the NRA and write a letter to their congressman explaining why. But they don’t do that: instead, they keep sending money to the NRA every year, knowing that the NRA will fight tooth and nail against sensible gun control measures that they ostensibly support.
Well, as I said, it has been bouncing around the net but the fact that it is a Republican pollster makes more rather than less likely, doesn’t it?
I’d like to think that this, coupled with the silence by Republican ‘pro-gun rights senators’ might be an indication that some tiny measure of sense is seeping into them.
That Salon piece was from me trying to find the David Gregory quote about trying to get gun rights spokesman to some on Meet the Press. This Salon piece is also interesting:
The polls have shifted since the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings — 54 percent of respondents in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll favor stricter gun control laws, a five-year high; 59 percent back a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips — and several big names in “pro-gun” politics, most of them Democrats, have stepped forward to say they’ve changed their minds. Here, five of them, and what they have to say:
Turb, please draw a line between any sensible gun reg currently on the table and preventing what happened in Newtown.
Duff , your non-responsive, non-substantive responses are less than compelling. If the idea is snark, well done. Otherwise, your case is simply ‘because you say so.’
LJ, those requirements are pretty much the law in Texas; however, regulating who can carry a concealed weapon wouldn’t affect people like Lanza. People who feel empowered to take others’ lives don’t worry a whole lot about process.
Which is not to say that regs like this don’t make a difference. They do, but it’s hard to measure. Some bad guys don’t get the CCW and that puts them on the wrong side of the law when they do pack.
Lurker, I’m liking that 200 question test. Cumbersome as hell in a country our size, but, at last, an actual proposal that speaks to the Lanza’s of this world. My proposal, just to begin the conversation: require the test to get a driver’s license, for any gov’t position, for a CCW, and who knows what else. This will require some thought.
More to the point, NRA members who support common sense gun control measures are either ignorant or dishonest.
Nothing like a self-righteous broad brush to thoroughly alienate those you might want to persuade. Well done. After all, who wants to see an organization change from within? It’s a lot easier to just degrade your opposition. In much the way Turb, Sapient and others welcome and respond favorably to people who degrade them.
restricting gun access to those with clean bills of mental health is one thing. i’d also make it impossible for anyone living with a mentally-disturbed person to get a gun. hell, i’d make a gun a household responsibility and require that everyone in the household (older than, say, 4) be required to take gun safety classes as submit to mental health screenings, annually. and, make the household liable for damages caused by someone using their gun.
or, just ban the things.
A decreasing number of American gun owners own two-thirds of the nation’s guns and as many as one-third of the guns on the planet
russell,
This is what makes nonsense of the suggestion that others have made that we would then have the sort of massive black market in guns that we have in drugs.
Guns (at least ones which work reliably) are a whole lot harder to produce than marijuana or cocaine. And to have a black market in guns, first somebody has to produce them. At the moment, that somebody is mass producing for the American market. No big American market, and suddenly you are reduced to much smaller scale production. And production which needs machine tools and skill at using them. Not just the sort of kitchen chemistry that you need to cook up meth, real skill. Certainly it’s more complicated than raising some pot plants.
Second, the black market in drugs is driven by lots and lots of people who use them recreationally. At home. The number of people who live in a rural enough setting where they can do the same is real small. So the market is reduced to those who are paranoid enough to want to buy guns that they can rarely use.
Third, you can buy drugs and use them — and then they are gone. If you don’t get caught between the time you buy them and the time you use them, you’re OK. But with a gun, use doesn’t use it up. So once you have it, you are at risk of arrest on an on-going basis. Even though you can’t use on an on-going basis without moving to the country, and buying a large enough property that the neighbors can’t hear you shoot.
Black market? Sure, one will exist. But it will be a tiny one. I’m guessing about the size of the black market we already have in hand grenades (currently illegal). What, you’ve never heard of the black market in hand grenades???? But it’s so enormous….
And never any third or fourth thing.
Otherwise: what McKTx said.
Turb, please draw a line between any sensible gun reg currently on the table and preventing what happened in Newtown.
OK. In a world where extended magazines weren’t available, the Newtown killer wouldn’t have been able to kill as many kids before the cops showed up.
My preferred solution where firearm possession is illegal without insurance would have also helped. It would have raised the marginal cost for the killer’s mother to have accumulated so many semi-automatic weapons in one place. Moreover, someone would have noticed that she had a disturbed individual living with her and her gun trove and they probably would have called an insurance tip line at which point the insurance company could tell her ‘either get your weapons out of your house or get our psychiatrist to sign off on your kid’s emotional state or we’re going to revoke your insurance and you won’t be legally able to keep your weapons’. That would have worked too.
Nothing like a self-righteous broad brush to thoroughly alienate those you might want to persuade.
If 20 dead kids aren’t enough to persuade you, I doubt anything I could say ever will.
Well done. After all, who wants to see an organization change from within? It’s a lot easier to just degrade your opposition.
Organizations start to change from within once people start abandoning them. If no one abandons them, they don’t have much incentive to change from within, now do they?
I tell you what: explain to me the efforts that NRA members are making to change the organization from within. Tell me what the metrics are for success, what their timetables are, how much support they have in making those changes, and what they’ll do if they haven’t made any progress. If you can do, then I’ll concede that there’s a serious effort underway. But if you can’t, we need to face up to the fact that NRA members aren’t interested in changing anything; that they like the status quo.
McT, I wasn’t suggesting that those 5 proposals were going to be the end point and fix everything, just pointing out the Luntz polling and suggesting that there is movement. And I think the argument that ‘hey we already have those things in Texas’ doesn’t really buy as much as you think it does. If those 5 points were nationwide and enforced across the country, it would make the public aware of a range of other possibilities along the lines of what lurker suggests. Of course, some gun rights advocates might complain of slippery slopes and propose things like Volokh’s arm the teachers or McArdle’s teach kids to rush shooters. (I won’t dignify those suggestions with any links, but you can find them if you look)
What took place in Sandy Hook was in some ways a perfect storm, a mother who seemed to be a prepper and also seemed to use guns and shooting as a way of keeping her son engaged, a son whose mental issues came to a head at this time for reasons that we don’t know, and the relative proximity of an elementary school, which was targeted for even more reasons we don’t know. But the way to stop a perfect storm is to make sure that at least one of the conditions that makes it happen is removed. In this case, some sort of requirement for gun storage in a gun safe that is only accessible by the owner may have slowed up or even stopped him may have been enough.
And I don’t mean to dump on the people of Sandy Hook, but this NYTimes story does bring another possible component of that perfect storm to light
As far as other points, Brett mentioned that he felt that dealing with the mental health aspect was something he had no problem with, and I agree and also think that the president should take this opportunity to address some of the mental health issues, and the pretty wretched state of the US mental health system. I could imagine a speech where he brings together mental health experts to propose a national system of mental health laws that would help deal with the thorny problems of dealing with adults who need to be hospitalized. I’m sure you’ve read the piece about the woman who describes her situation with her son (it is here) and it seems like reaching a point where rethinking of the laws related to these matters are necessary.
I will accept that there won’t be a law, or even a combination of rules that will automatically make things all right. But there has to be some first steps, and some of these things seem like likely candidates.
Turb, please draw a line between any sensible gun reg currently on the table and preventing what happened in Newtown.
The line I would draw would be:
10 bullet clip means Lanza has to reload. That means when Hochsprung rushes him, she succeeds instead of ending up dead.
Instead of 20 dead kids, we get 10, or 5, or 0.
It’s not an unreasonable request.
Turb–ok, those are proposals. Smaller magazines means more reloading. Not preventative, perhaps a convenience factor. Charles Whitman used bolt action rifles when he killed 18 or so and wounded many more in Austin in the late 60’s. I’m guessing you aren’t very familiar with guns. Or magazines, which can be fabricated without much difficulty.
But, it is a proposal that’s on the table.
As for insurance as a prerequisite to firearms ownership, that is new to me. Insurance tip lines? They are useful in preventing crime? Seems like a reach to me. I do see a lot of impaired driving in my business. Many impaired drivers have insurance. Hasn’t seemed to have stopped them.
The ubiquity of firearms in the US coupled with deranged shooters’ complete lack of regard for process makes pretty much every proposal, except Lurker’s, just so much ‘feel good’ busy work that, in the end, like defensive driving classes, accomplishes less than nothing.
A Glock 9mm carries 10 in the regular, non-extended magazine. A pair of autoloading pistols with spare magazines and there would be no question of being able to kill 20 or more people.
He didn’t need the Bushmaster to kill a lot of people. He was shooting those kids and teachers inside the classrooms, at close range. You don’t need a long gun for that.
Charles Whitman used bolt action rifles when he killed 18 or so and wounded many more in Austin in the late 60’s.
Not for nothing, but Charles Whitman was also behind a self-made barricade in a tower 27 stories above the goddamned ground, not standing in a classroom full of people. Meaningful comparisons, please.
The ubiquity of firearms in the US coupled with deranged shooters’ complete lack of regard for process makes pretty much every proposal, except Lurker’s, just so much ‘feel good’ busy work
The flip side of your reaction to Turbulence’s broad brush is my reaction to your insistence that the status quo is what we have to settle for, and there’s nothing else we can do about it.
20 little kids shot to bits by a maniac whose mother was building a private arsenal to prepare for some freaking imaginary Armageddon concentrates the mind quite a bit.
I am NOT anti-gun, for a lefty I am a borderline 2nd Amendment hawk. I’m more of a 2nd Amendment advocate than, frex, Brett, because I want the whole nine yards, not just the “leave my guns alone” part.
But I am, personally, outraged that folks think they can build private arsenals of weapons that are milspec in every regard other than being fully automatic, for the express purpose of killing their neighbors in the event of some social or economic calamity, and the rest of us have nothing whatsoever to say about it.
F***k that.
People who want guns need to demonstrate that they are sufficiently responsible to own, handle, and use them. If they can’t, they shouldn’t get them.
And the bar should be high, because guns are f***ing dangerous.
If you want a soldier’s weapon, you should go be a soldier. Don’t want to be a soldier, don’t want to submit to the discipline that comes with being a soldier, you don’t get a soldier’s weapon.
And to be perfectly honest I’m not interested in hearing about how personal gun ownership is the guardian of our liberty, because when the sh*t hits the fan regarding any civil liberty other than gun ownership, the citizen patriots are nowhere to be seen.
Newtown was an aberration and a statistical blip in exactly the way that 9/11 was an aberration and a statistical blip.
Some shit simply will not stand.
Thanks.
Added: Charles Whitman had nearly an uninterrupted hour and a half to re-load that rifle repeatedly. Lanza was in and done in less than 10 minutes.
One thing is clear, any measure will take significant time to show results. Gun ‘desaturation’ would likely take decades and any break could in essence nullify the efforts (cf. the failure of the polio eradication program because religious nuts and demagogues in a single African state broke the cycle and caused the disease to spread again to several neighbouring countries ruining the work of many years). Gun manufacturers are ready to flood the market immediately after there is an opening (and again when a restrictive law is rumoured to be on its way).
A Glock 9mm carries 10 in the regular, non-extended magazine. A pair of autoloading pistols with spare magazines and there would be no question of being able to kill 20 or more people.
Note that he had to shoot the door repeatedly to gain entrance to the school.
As for insurance as a prerequisite to firearms ownership, that is new to me.
I’ve brought up in the past. The idea is that possessing a weapon without insurance is an extremely serious crime.
I’m sure gun folk would reject this proposal, so there’s a sweetener: as part of the deal, we eliminate a lot of existing gun regulations. You want to take a gun into a bar: great. But your insurance contract probably prohibits you from doing that unless you’re willing to spend $2K/month on the waiver that lets you carry while plastered and people will be reporting to you to the tip line in hopes of getting a sweet payout….
Insurance tip lines? They are useful in preventing crime? Seems like a reach to me. I do see a lot of impaired driving in my business. Many impaired drivers have insurance. Hasn’t seemed to have stopped them.
That’s because the costs of drunk driving are relatively low. We could raise the costs by statute if we wanted to reduce drunk driving, at which point, yeah, insurance companies would be offering free money to anyone who reported a tip that allowed them to stop a drunk driver from getting on the road.
I mean, this is just basic economics: people respond to financial incentives and the free market can effectively perform risk management. If you don’t buy those ideas, you shouldn’t be arguing with me about my free market approach to reducing gun violence: you should be arguing against the existence of the FIRE sector in general.
I don’t see how further regulatory efforts to keep guns out of the hands of people with mental health issues are going to be successful. There are a lot of people with mental health issues who have no business owning a gun but who have never been adjudicated as such. Probably including the Sandy Hook shooter. As long as we insist on thinking of gun control as a purely government regulatory system, we’re not going to keep such people from buying guns because gun ownership is a right.
The solution is private insurance risk management. Insurance companies would have the financial interest in keeping unstable people from getting guns and they could base their decisions on a lot more than information than a government regulator process does. They’d start with the set of people who were adjudicated as mentally unfit but they could then send investigators to talk with family, teachers, friends. Finally, insurance companies are less likely to be captured by gun-nuts the way that some state governments have.
The one proviso is that I’m assuming we’re talking about high functioning state governments like CT. In places like MI where politicians have decided that they’re just not going to follow the CCW laws because keeping records is too hard, none of that applies. Just enforcing common sense laws in those places would make a difference.
I like all of the procedures that Lurker mentions. I would add one more thing: guns shouldn’t be stored at people’s homes where non-licensed people can get to them.
People can keep their guns at a local armory, and check them out for hunting (or for whatever purpose their intended). Another benefit of that is that other people would know who is using a gun at any given time.
He didn’t need the Bushmaster to kill a lot of people
He shot some of those kids 10 or more times. At that rate, he would have gotten two before having to reload.
So, there’s that.
At a certain point it’s kind of obscene to compare the tactical advantages of assault rifles vs. a handgun when shooting up a kindergarten.
Mass killings are facilitated by weapons with large magazines. You can shoot a lot more people before you have to reload. It’s a tactical advantage. That’s why they exist.
Seriously, any debate about that?
Turbulence, your idea is an interesting one, and would be politically feasible. Have you ever seen it discussed by policy makers?
In today’s news, four shot dead in Colorado.
For those who keep insisting on comparing shooting to driving: “According to a May report by the Washington, D.C.-based Violence Policy Center, Colorado was one of 10 states where gun deaths outpaced motor vehicle deaths in 2009.’ (That statistic appears to be all motor vehicle deaths, not just DUI related deaths.)
The ubiquity of firearms in the US coupled with deranged shooters’ complete lack of regard for process makes pretty much every proposal, except Lurker’s, just so much ‘feel good’ busy work that, in the end, like defensive driving classes, accomplishes less than nothing.
50,000+ intentional, non-fatal shootings every goddamned year. 10,000 intentional fatal shootings (aka homicide). tens of thousands of suicides. another 20,000+ non-intentional, non-fatal shootings.
insisting we catch everyone or it’s not worth doing is idiocy. anything that can be done to reduce those numbers is worth doing, even if we don’t stop all the lunatics.
In this case, some sort of requirement for gun storage in a gun safe that is only accessible by the owner may have slowed up or even stopped him may have been enough.
I keep a 9mm Glock in my bed stand drawer. Why? Our neighborhood experiences occasional ‘kick bandits’. A small, armed gang kicks in the door and holds the family at gun point, robbing, assaulting, etc. Statistically, the odds of our home being selected are fairly remote, maybe 1 in 1000, maybe even less. But, they are far, far greater than being involved in a killing spree. Because at least one incident occurred on our street, I like having a pistol handy.
Another issue is: who is the owner? Just me? My wife? I have several guns at the house that belong to my son, who is married and Texas is a community property state. Does our daughter-in-law have equal access? Should we impose the same limitations on car ownership and access to alcohol?
More generally, the common features of every proposal–other than Lurker’s–short of an outright ban and confiscation across the board involve speculative, wishful ‘maybe this/maybe that’ or address problems other than severely disordered individuals who go on spree killings.
That is the problem: people, in the aftermath of a horror, grabbing at after the fact straws. This is emotion cloaked in superficial logic. Anyone who hasn’t asked “what can we do?” has their own set of issues. Wanting to find a way, a fix, is the natural, correct reaction. That doesn’t make it right or good policy.
But there has to be some first steps, and some of these things seem like likely candidates.
The notion of first steps raises the fair question of ‘what is the end game?’
10 bullet clip means Lanza has to reload. That means when Hochsprung rushes him, she succeeds instead of ending up dead.
Russell, maybe, but probably not. You can swap magazines in seconds, less than five seconds. I used to shoot birds on high volume hunts in Argentina (yes, I went way overboard). I could and did fire at an average rate of well more than 6 aimed shots a minute with a semi-automatic shotgun plugged to limit magazine capacity to two rounds plus one in the chamber. Actually, the rate of aimed fire was much higher. I would typically fire off 1100-1200 shells in a 2.5 to 3 hour shoot. There would be some down time in between flights, and most of the shooting was in bursts of 10 or so shells in 30 seconds give or take. What I’m saying here is that shooting and reloading a relatively cumbersome long gun to achieve a high rate of fire isn’t any big deal. Which is still way slower than hitting a button, letting a clip fall to the ground and sticking another clip in. In my case, each shell is individually grabbed by my right hand from inside a shell bag hanging on my belt while my left holds the shotgun and then slid into a magazine on the underside of the gun. Then, I have to lift, aim and hit a bird moving at 40 or more MPH and jinking all the while. Just to round out the picture, after about a morning of shooting, I could shoot, aim, reload, shoot, etc and hit 75-80% of fast moving dove in flight.
Now, think how much easier it would be to hit a much larger, slower target. What Lanza did that morning could be done with a three shot capacity, perfectly ordinary gas-operated semi-automatic shotgun. If anything, he would have fired less and hit more because it’s harder to miss with a shotgun.
From the outside, ideas like limits on magazine size seem to be just plain old common sense. For my part, I don’t need a high capacity magazine for any shooting I am ever likely to do again and 10 shots is more than ample if something changes and I revert to helping out with the feral hog population.
But, magazine limits won’t do much to slow a shooter down.
If the goal is to slow a shooter–a goal prompted solely by the statistically rare and remote spree killing–then you do that only by an outright ban plus confiscation of all semi-automatic weapons: rifles, pistols and shotguns.
I don’t think that is going to happen. The more likely legislative result would be a prospective ban with a grandfather clause that would send gun sales through the roof. Just what we need.
Newtown was an aberration and a statistical blip in exactly the way that 9/11 was an aberration and a statistical blip.
Well, not really. There is no domestic al queda sending the Lanza’s of this world out to do their bidding; AQ had attacked Americans and American interests before 9/11 and continued to do so afterward as well as conducting attacks in London and Spain. So, not comparable.
I don’t like the Lanza situation either, but implicit in your proposal is that everyone who currently owns a gun and can’t meet your standard is subject to confiscation. As a practical matter, who is going to qualify 40,000,000 people in anything less than several decades?
Lanza outrages me too. The process, and it will be gradual, is to institutionalize something like the MMPI, which BTW, is fraught with its own set of issues. Semi-mandatory mental health screening is right out of 1984. But, it’s the only proposal on the table that has actual, practical application.
I used to shoot birds on high volume hunts in Argentina (yes, I went way overboard). Horrible, inhumane, disgusting.
I think I’m going back to my thought that people should keep their licensed guns in a neighborhood arsenal, checking them out for licensed hunting. I like to think of hunters as being in it for sustainable food, but obviously that’s not the usual motivation.
That is the problem: people, in the aftermath of a horror, grabbing at after the fact straws.
My insurance proposal long predates this massacre.
There is no domestic al queda sending the Lanza’s of this world out to do their bidding;
Note that Al Queda blew up their best strategists and operators on 9/11; that significantly reduced the potency of any threat they posed.
The solution is private insurance risk management. Insurance companies would have the financial interest in keeping unstable people from getting guns and they could base their decisions on a lot more than information than a government regulator process does.
It’s an idea, but not one that will ever get off the ground. No insurer is going to underwrite weapons ownership. Even if some insurer were to issue some kind of policy, the cost would be prohibitive and riddled with exclusions. Among other things, every auto/GL policy in the US excludes harm caused by intentional acts and harm as the result of committing a crime. Because the cost of a hypothetical policy would be so ridiculously high, the effect would be an outright ban on any firearms ownership. So, interesting concept, but it won’t happen.
I’d be pleased as punch if we could institute the types of things Lurker mentioned on a national scale in this country. It would probably be better than anything I could realistically hope for. So I find McKinney’s support for such measures to be reasonable. I also suspect that such support would prove extremely rare among American gun enthusiasts.
But all the talk about how one might kill a given number of people with this or that arsenal, I could do without. Like russell said, big magazines exist for a reason.
That is the problem: people, in the aftermath of a horror, grabbing at after the fact straws.
when is the appropriate time to talk about it? how many days do we need to go since the last gun-related murder before we can talk about this? because, statistically, we can’t even go a single fncking hour, on average, without a gun murder in this country. if things continue as they have, there will never be a day without a couple dozen gun-related murders every fncking day in this country.
Horrible, inhumane, disgusting.
Does it get lonely on your moral high ground? We still ate what we killed and in Argentina, where the dove hatch 4 times a year, they over populate and need to be thinned out. Plus there is the boost to the local economy. But, don’t let any of that stop you from leaping to conclusions. It’s what you do best.
I keep a 9mm Glock in my bed stand drawer.
Yes, but should someone keep a semi-automatic next to their bed? Wouldn’t legally mandated gun storage for weapons like that have been one way to at least reduce the death toll?
Also, (and this is speculative, but I don’t think I’m too off) someone who is shooting victims multiple times is not going to change his target selection and shoot each victim one time. You seem to assume that people who go on these rampages are going to have full control of their senses, and be able to handle a gun like a military trained soldier. One probable reason that Charles Whitman was able to shoot so many people was that he was perched on the 28th floor. Isn’t it a bit of a stretch to imagine that someone who is shooting kindergarten students multiple times would have been able to control that rage (and note that he killed himself as soon as he heard police coming)
I have a sinking feeling that the next thing you are going to be telling us is that what Lanza did could have been done with a baseball bat. I suppose one could, so it is a short step to the protagonist in Trevenian’s Shibumi, who masters the ‘Naked/Kill’ martial art where he can take any ordinary household item and kill with it. However, that book is a satire…
I do see a lot of impaired driving in my business. Many impaired drivers have insurance. Hasn’t seemed to have stopped them.
Your sample is exclusively from whatever percentage of people haven’t been stopped, if I’m understanding you correctly.
I know people who lost their licenses after DUIs, didn’t drive for long periods after that because they couldn’t get a license or insurance, and no longer are willing to risk driving drunk now that they are able to drive legally again.
As seemingly insane as that might first appear, there was an underlying method to my madness:
While what you described after the above might not sound insane, it does sound like a fairly esoteric pursuit of a hobby, not something so fundamental to your personal liberty that it should inform a discussion of policy involving the safety of the general public.
So, yes, I would be willing to sacrifice your rarified hunting experiences if I thought limiting the number of weapons an individual might own would make the world, or at least America, a safer place.
You can swap magazines in seconds, less than five seconds
Five seconds is better than zero seconds.
You tell me: somebody’s in your house with a gun. Is it better from your point of view if their gun has a 10 round magazine, or a 100 round magazine?
There’s a reason those things exist.
you do that only by an outright ban plus confiscation of all semi-automatic weapons
The Australians, a nation with a history and culture similar to ours, did it. They did it because they were horrified by a mass killing.
It’s neither unthinkable, nor unreasonable.
I doubt we’ll do it, which says as much about us as a people as it does anything else.
There is no domestic al queda sending the Lanza’s of this world out to do their bidding
No, there is a domestic Al Qaeda stockpiling as close to a military arsenal as they can get, so that they can kill their neighbors when the “SHTF”.
No insurer is going to underwrite weapons ownership.
They will if it is profitable. That’s how the free market works.
Even if some insurer were to issue some kind of policy, the cost would be prohibitive and riddled with exclusions.
Stop being so negative. I look at it this way: the cost of getting blanket no-questions-asked coverage for an arbitrary arsenal would be prohibitive. That’s the point. But the cost for getting coverage for a single gun or two of reasonable size for healthy people would be moderate. And if premiums were excessive, you could always trade off some privacy for lower premiums.
Just like people today can get cheaper car insurance if they drive very little or if they’re willing to let the insurance company put a device in their car that monitors how well they drive, you could get substantial discounts on your gun insurance if you were willing to submit to an interview with an insurance company psychologist every few months and maybe accept surprise home visits.
Among other things, every auto/GL policy in the US excludes harm caused by intentional acts and harm as the result of committing a crime.
This is a different type of insurance, so limitations on existing policies would not apply.
Because the cost of a hypothetical policy would be so ridiculously high
You don’t know that. You’re not an actuary.
the effect would be an outright ban on any firearms ownership.
I think premiums could be totally manageable for most people. After all, what is the risk that a 72 year old grandfather with no criminal history who lives in a rural area and owns a single 30 year old hunting rifle will commit a crime with it? Pretty damn low. Isn’t that your exact argument? So the premiums will be low too.
I keep a 9mm Glock in my bed stand drawer. Why? Our neighborhood experiences occasional ‘kick bandits’. A small, armed gang kicks in the door and holds the family at gun point, robbing, assaulting, etc.
Have you considered a reinforced door? Or is that something that the local hoodlums have already figured out how to deal with?
But all the talk about how one might kill a given number of people with this or that arsenal, I could do without. Like russell said, big magazines exist for a reason.
Yes, it is grim. It is also the answer–the practical answer–to magazine caps. You can do it, but it won’t matter much, if at all.
Yes, but should someone keep a semi-automatic next to their bed? Wouldn’t legally mandated gun storage for weapons like that have been one way to at least reduce the death toll?
Well, a Glock is a semi-automatic pistol and wouldn’t do me much good if it was somewhere else. Now, if you are suggesting that keeping long barreled, clip-fed, high capacity rifles at a separate location might mitigate spree killing: maybe. There’s a ton of subsidiary questions (how long can I check my gun out for before I get fined, punished, what have you?)
One probable reason that Charles Whitman was able to shoot so many people was that he was perched on the 28th floor. Isn’t it a bit of a stretch to imagine that someone who is shooting kindergarten students multiple times would have been able to control that rage (and note that he killed himself as soon as he heard police coming)
Whitman is a variation on the same theme: spree killing. The details vary in degree as does the shooter’s profile (Whitman had a brain tumor, IIRC).
This is a grim topic and I’m worn down for the time being. Final thought: 1-5 years in prison for any adult who intentionally or negligently permits a person who the adult knows, or by the exercise or ordinary care, should know know is, by reason of mental incompetency, a potential danger to him/herself or others if that person kills or injures him/herself or another with the firearm.
McKinney out.
I apologize to McKinney for not being aware of the details of Argentinian dove hunting. You’re right, McKinney, I was uninformed, and do have a knee jerk disgust for the idea of killing hundreds of doves in a day (which, though my apology is sincere, I doubt you ate – from what I’ve read, the birds are often left to feed various “carnivorous animals”). In this case, it was apparently unfounded.
All I have to say at this point is that the counter-arguments from the gun owner side of the house are convincing me that the ban on automatics should be extended to semi-autos.
And, that extended or high capacity magazines should absolutely be out of private hands.
Too much trouble to work a bolt-action? A revolver won’t get another bullet in the chamber fast enough for you to protect yourself or your home?
I’m just not seeing the need. All I’m seeing is the risk, for all of the rest of us who live here.
Folks who don’t own guns and aren’t interested in guns have an interest in this issue, not just gun owners.
Mama Lanza exercised what is currently construed to be her right to build up a fairly substantial personal arsenal. Now she’s dead, but more to the point, 20 kids and six adults who had nothing to do with, and who had no interest in, her weird obsessions, are also dead.
And not just because her kid was disturbed. Because her kid was disturbed, and had access to her arsenal, and was trained, by her, in its use.
Absent that, he’d just be a weird kid.
It’s not just about what you get to do or not do. It’s about the consequences of what you do or don’t do, for the rest of us.
Yeah, I’m all for gun restrictions and believe the 2nd amendment has been abused by right-wing “hobbyists” and paranoid lunatics. However, my son is becoming a “gun enthusiast” (more specifically, weapons enthusiasts; he likes knives, swords in addition to guns) and is learning to be responsible, with other relatives with the same interests, so I think “losing respect” for people who owns guns is a bit naïve.
The above statement was in response to the bottom post. I didn’t realize there was a whole third page of comments!
To be honest, I even respect you a bit less than I otherwise would because you own guns. I’m less tolerant than Russell. I don’t respect every hobby people indulge in. Some people collect guns; other people collect kiddie porn. Both are hobbies. Both put me off. So far, to different degrees. But give it time — and the inevitable, predictable, body count — and that may change.
–TP
Posted by: Tony P. | December 18, 2012 at 01:18 AM
” However, my son is becoming a “gun enthusiast” ”
I think that’s pretty common. I’ve mostly stayed out of this thread–Russell probably comes closest to my views. But I’ve always found weapons and military history interesting to some degree. When I read about the Atzecs as a child I found the macuahuitl fascinating for some reason and have always wanted to see one, not just depictions in some Atzec drawing–I guess it was the human ingenuity in creating something like a sword with just wood and obsidian. Anyway, the point being that for whatever reason, a lot of people (mostly men, I’m guessing , though this might be sexist) are interested in weapons.
So I don’t blame people for finding them interesting–same here. But all the same, when there’s a public health problem then sensible regulations might be part of the solution. I find man-eating saltwater crocodiles pretty fascinating too, probably for the same boyish reasons, but I don’t think people should be allowed to keep them as pets in their swimming pools.
Lurker and Turbulence have given some of the best suggestions I’ve read, making it more expensive and more regulated. I don’t know about the whole armory suggestion, though.
Lurker, I am curious to know what regulations if any apply in Finland for large magazines.
Define “large” any way you like, I’m just curious to know what you all do on that topic.
I generally like the insurance idea, and I think gun owners have a duty to secure weapons.
Like with cars, owners should be responsible for the actions of those who they allow access to the car/weapon.
If a gun owners’ “risk analysis” makes them decide to have a Glock in the drawer next to the bed, that should be legal, but the owner should be responsible for the harm that gun does if used by someone unauthorized to use it (as well as those authorized). The “risk analysis” the owner takes should take that into account. If, on the other hand, the gun was stored in a locked safe and stolen anyway, they should not have responsibility.
I think this is pretty similar to cars: If your car is locked and stolen, you are not responsible for the damage caused by the thief. Leave the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked, you have some responsibility because you were negligent (especially if the thief had diminished capacity).
And just like auto insurance, gun insurance only has to create the concern that failure to comply will cause financial havoc.
People without car insurance who have no assets are “judgement proof.” People with no assets and no “gun insurance” would similarly be “judgement proof.”
But it would be reckless, and public use of the car/weapon can be fined, harm caused by negligence can cause imprisonment.
And since most guns and cars are owned by those with some assets they care about, most don’t think they are judgement proof.
I also think that the subset of people who own both guns and cars are much more likely to harm someone with their cars than by their guns, so the insurance for guns should generally be less than cars. I base this on there being roughly the same number of cars as guns in America, and cars killing far more.
Many gun owners would either choose to secure thier weapons, get rid of them, or risk financial ruin if they had their guns stolen. But those who perceive a true need for protection have the right to choose to protect themselves.
I would expect that those worried about the zombie apocalypse will choose to secure their guns (expecting time to unlock the door if economic collapse occurs), and those with a real risk of daily home invasion will still keep it under the pillow. Having lived through the drug seeking door knockers at 2 am (because the previous resident apparently sold drugs) I like having options. Currently living in as safe a place as possible, I worry more about my kids finding a gun than I do about someone harming my family.
But I accept responsibility for my choices if I fail to secure both cars and guns.
Plus get rid of high capacity magazines/weapons. If you can’t defend yourself/family with 10 rounds or less, you are already screwed.
I can see the issue from both sides. I learned to shoot from my father as a child hunted with him. It was a significant rite of passage when I was given my first rifle, a .22 bolt action, on my fourteenth birth day. My father had taken seriously the task of teaching not only what is traditionally called gun safety but also that having a gun meant accepting immense responsibility. I was very proud, not of the gun, but that my parents had demonstrated such confidence that I would exercise adult judgement and self control. I have tried hard to live up to that judgement.
On the other hand, I realize my experience makes me statistical fluke. My only experience with the military was two years of Army ROTC during my college years. But I have been shot at twice. During my teen age years in California I had the experience of hiding behind a boulder during a sniper incident. I’ve hard the crack of supersonic bullet passing my head before the sound of the gun arrives. A few years later, on the way to go hunting, I arrived at a friends home for the planned early start. No lights, no answer to a knock on the door. I knew where he kept a spare key so I let myself in and headed for the bedroom loudly saying thing along the lines of “Hey sleepy head! We were supposed to be on the road half an hour ago! Up and at em!” Awakend from what was apparently a deep sleep and realizing there was an unexpected person in his house, he grabbed his bedside self defense pistol and fired one shot before realizing what was actually going on. Fortunately he missed by a good two feet.
Something to think about before keeping a gun for self defense.
But speaking of self defense, and defense of others, over the nearly fifty years since getting that first gun I have twice pulled a gun to interrupt criminal activity. The first time was while I was living in what was known as the student ghetto just off the UF campus. I was awakened by the sound of screaming that left no doubt that something terrible was happening. I grabbed the pistol I kept for self defence and ran to the sound. What I found was my neighbor being raped with a knife to her neck. I waved the gun and the rapist ran. I had time to take the gun home before the police arrived and my neighbor was kind enough to leave it out of her account. The second incident occured during that time when I was going armed all the time. I was approached by a (to my eyes) imposing young man who demanded my money. He did not display any weapon. Instead of producing a wallet, I produced a Firestar 9mm. He quickly backed away then turned and ran. End of incedent. A word about my years of going armed. In the eighties I wasn’t very policially active, and perhaps a bit out of touch. A coworker, who was a big shot in the local NOW asked if I would volunteer to help out by escorting women through the picket lines in front of the planned parenthood clinic. My wife had been to planned parenthood both for birth control and for cancer screening in our days before good jobs with good insurance, so I said “Sure”. A few lessons on how to get the patients though the lines without escalating the encounter or getting charged with assualt later I started escorting scared patients. These were the heydays of Operation Rescue. Of course they noted the license numbers of the staff and volunteers, looked them up, so the telephone death threats against myself and my wife stated. We took those threats seriously. Other staff and volunteers had shots fired into their homes while they were inside them. The Planned Parenthood clinic in a neighboring town was firebombed three times during the time I was a volunteer. So my wife and I applied for concealed weapons permits and started going armed all the time. It developed into a habit that lasted years after any real need. To this day I find the threat of Christian terrorism greater than that of Islamic terrorism.
Somewhere along the way I developed a sense of empathy with animals and lost my taste for hunting. I live on 88 acres and I watch deer, squirrels, rabbits, racoons, and possums daily. Last spring a pair of foxes raised cubs in a den just outside the close horse pasture. I’m probably guilty of applying human standards where they don’t work, but mostly they all look like they’re enjoying life. I just can’t see getting any enjoyment out of ending that.
So my guns are used as fantisticly expensive paper punches. But I still enjoy having them. Despite statistics, I feel safer having one handy for self defense.
I would support a ban on large capacity magazines on semiauto guns. Better, I would support banning semiauto weapons with interchangable magazines. As a work around for the millions of interchangable magazine weapons already in circulation, it seems they could be retrofitted with a tab added to one clip that would match a grove in the magazine holder that would allow only the one magazine matched to that gun to be inserted.
so much for this rambling and somewhat incoherent comment. Probably confused because my thoughts on the subject are still confused.
Actually Bassabo I thought your comment was thought proviking.
I think the approach to the issue of gun safety needs to be to identify first of all the reasons why a civilian might nnedd a gun (and I want one! isn’t a need), then list out all the types avaialbe plus atypes of ammo and sort them out from the least deadly to the most.
Then draw a line at some point in the area where the gun’s capacity or the capacity of the ammo exceeds what a civilian would need for a legitmate purpose.
I know that people could fuss over that a legitamate purpose is but it ihard to find an intellectually honsest justification fo the kinds of weapons Ms Lanza except that she wanted them and, as John COle pointed out, her right to wone what she wants does not exceed the right of a child to live.
Baskaborr, thank you for that.
My huge mistake with McKinney (and, frankly, I like being his adversary, so I hate having been knee-jerk wrong) is that I really have a gut distaste for hunting, but kind of an attraction to it too, because I realize that it can be a sustainable way to kill animals for food. I, too, see animals in my yard, respect them, respect my companion animals. And my early experience with people who hunted was that they were very careless about the lives and suffering of the animals they killed. I don’t think I’m wrong to believe that, although many hunters are good people and humane, many are sadistic. I knew people who approached it that way, and that’s where I got my disdain for hunting. The phenomenon of “hunting” for animals who are tame, of hunting for animals who were recently caged, of hunting by remote control – these are not respectful practices, and I was conflating those things with what McKinney was describing.
But let’s put aside hunting. Guns are dangerous and need to be regulated, at least as much as cars, which may be deadly, but their purpose isn’t deadliness. I think that it’s appropriate to allow, but regulate, hunting, and to disallow gun ownership for most other purposes.
Self-defense? Lock the doors!
Of course, some gun rights advocates might complain of slippery slopes and propose things like Volokh’s arm the teachers or McArdle’s teach kids to rush shooters
My favorite is the gun nuts who approvingly cite William S Burroughs’ anti-gun control quote.
William S Burroughs, the junky who got drunk and shot his wife’s brains out while playing a game of William Tell, trying to shoot a whiskey glass off her head from 6 feet away.
That’s who we are supposed to listen to on gun control now?
I keep a 9mm Glock in my bed stand drawer
The statistics say that by doing so you greatly increase the risk of your death, the risk of death for your family members and friends, and other people in your community.
You can swap magazines in seconds, less than five seconds
That’s less time than it took for people to subdue Jared Lee Loughner in Tucson when he stopped shooting to change magazines. Cops responded to the Aurora attack in 90 seconds, the first response to the shopping mall attack in Oregon was in a minute. A few seconds save lives. If it doesn’t make that much difference to you, why are you so dead set against it?
Of course the simpler answer is to ban guns.
Or here’s a better idea, we can pass Right To Own Guns laws. Gun manufacturers will still be allowed to manufacture guns, but they will no longer be allowed to require that anyone pay for one.
Conservatives will be all for it, the same as they are for Right To Work laws. It doesn’t outlaw gun ownership and it increases everybody’s freedom, right?
As a pure public policy matter (as opposed to the prism of ‘what is reasonable, given the politics’) it struck me that nobody here was forcefully advocating a total gun ownership ban. Allow me to recklessly jump in. Make it a capital offence. Let the Tree of Liberty be well watered. Gun ownership would go down. Fewer guns > fewer gun deaths. Social costs go down. Elementary stuff.
Now many conservatives would likely argue that a ban would not be effective. Why, look at Prohibition! Did in not fail miserably? Astonishingly, this assertion is MIA when it comes to the use of (some) drugs, and abortions, much less like sexes exchanging marital vows. Aren’t they the ones who oft declaim, “There ought to be a law?” Such a view also elides nicely the oft observed social oppression found in, let us say less populous areas where, OMG!, the social consensus is well neigh universal and “shunning” in one form or another, is quite effective as a means of insuring a stultifying conformity of behavior and opinion.
Ah, Liberty!
As for the politics, yes there is the comma ridden 2nd Amendment and the gowdawfulness of the Heller and like minded decisions recently rendered by the self styled “originalists” majority of the Supreme Court.
Nonetheless, we may have reached a watershed moment. Adults getting randomly slaughtered is one thing, but 5 year olds? The times may be a changin’. And if everybody is for it, how can it not succeed? (please, no mention of the 2003 war hysteria). The question is how far should the needle move?
So I’m willing to climb down to something akin to the policies they have in Finland, or Australia. Eminently sensible stuff, Lurker. My hat’s off to you. I think I’ve come a long ways here toward a reasonable compromise.
See you at the center of the road.
McT, I realize you bowed out, and I just wanted to say thanks for stating your case. Honestly, if I ever needed a lawyer, I would want you, or someone like you, who was going to make the opposition fight for every inch and every concession. I do realize that ability is a gift and is probably why you are a successful lawyer. However, I do think that in discussions of public policy, that ‘defend every inch of ground’ can be counter-productive, especially when people are speaking out when they are hurt or feel fragile. I don’t want to speak for others, but I certainly feel that way, an ocean away, and I imagine others do to.
At any rate, a thank you for participating, even if I disagree.
I can appreciate Baskaborr’s position. I think his situation would not be very different even under very tight regulations. E.g. the case of the work for PP would be a textbook example for legitimate ‘need’, something that gun laws in many countries require.
—
I share spaient’s thoughts on hunting. I respect hunters that follow the code of honour (that is also law in many countries) but I know that many are in it for (imo) despicable reasons. I also know that there are few things ‘true’ hunters despise more than those ‘shootists’. Since I know that I would fall into the latter category, I would not go hunting even if I had the opportunity. I did fish on occasion but only with someone who would do the gutting afterwards since I am too lefthanded and squeamish for that. The last time we were a bit too successful and had great difficulty to eat all of it (it was the last day of the holidays and there was no way to take it the 1000 miles home). But throwing fully edible stuff away was not something I wanted to have on my conscience either. It became a very fishy day diet-wise. It has been some years ago and my memory partially fails me but we may have left the remaining fishes with the landlord.
Imnvho pool fishers belong drowned or drawn with their own hooks (then drowned).
“I think the approach to the issue of gun safety needs to be to identify first of all the reasons why a civilian might nnedd a gun (and I want one! isn’t a need),”
Laura, it is a right. Not a privilege. The very definition of a “right” is that you don’t have to demonstrate need to do it.
You folks keep saying you don’t want to abolish the 2nd amendment. (Except, of course, for those of you who say the opposite.) But you keep demonstrating you mean to convert a constitutional right into a privilege. And converting a right into a privilege IS abolishing the right.
We’ve just come off about 80 years where there was a concerted effort to abolish this right. At times open, mostly covert. Very seldom as honest as repealing it, mostly pursued by “interpreting” it into a mere privilege, which privilege could then be denied without cause.
For all that (some of) you deny this intent, everything you folks say demonstrates it’s still what motivates you.
No. Just no.
We’ve just been through a rare atrocity, and are in the middle of the ensuing media effort to whip up public hysteria to the point where legislators will have the cover to do something stupid. It won’t last, the media can’t sustain this sort of onslaught forever. In a couple of weeks people will be thinking rationally again.
Says a lot about your positions here, that your only hope of enacting them is to act while people are still hysterical and not thinking clearly. This is not the mark of a rational cause.
So, again I say, no. Maybe we can revisit this topic in a couple of weeks, when there’s at least the potential you folks are thinking clearly, and you’ve had to give up on trying to exploit the grief. I think there’s not much more to say right now.
Maybe we can revisit this topic in a couple of weeks, when there’s at least the potential you folks are thinking clearly, and you’ve had to give up on trying to exploit the grief.
DNFTT please
In a few weeks there could well be the next event of this kind. Police had already to stop at least one copycat. And the ‘normal’ background of murder by firearm has not disappeared either. The ‘now is not the time’ has essentially become code for ‘we do not ever wish to discuss it’. Let’s put the cards on the table and see where they fall. My bet is still that enough congressbeings will fear the lobbyists more than their constituents (apart from the ‘we have to oppose everything’ GOP strategy).
Aww, lj, I was kinda hoping he’d present us with his surely detailed plan to “examine the mental health system” while we awaited his permission to speak again. Or maybe he’ll preemptively rise up against the government before they come for his guns. Who knows?
Heh.
I’m in a weird place in this debate. I’m a nascent gun enthusiast, looking at getting into the world of competitive shooting for the fun of it. I understand Brett’s position on “privilege vs. right”; but I also disagree with the USSC’s reading of the Second Amendment to ignore the “well regulated militia” portion of the amendment, which means as the law of the land, Brett’s view has a stronger legal basis.
The assault weapons ban is stupid for the most part – regulating cosmetics. I fully hold with the notion of regulating magazine size, as yes, a trained, unstressed shooter CAN reload quickly and efficiently; however, most folks who can pull this off are not the sort who would go on a spree shooting. Hell, my driving has gotten more conservative since I’ve received my conceal permit (most for ease of transport in my car, since I don’t have a locking trunk for storage) since I don’t want to deal with the issues if a cop pulls me over.
Honestly, keeping the maximum number of rounds to approximately 10-15 or so wouldn’t phase me, and would probably be the single most effective thing you could do combined with an effusive buyback program for the now “oversized” magazines to prevent the spree shooting. Background checks, waiting periods are both okay, though those are mostly aimed at prevent other issues.
As far as ammo purchases go? Well, I don’t shoot often, I don’t shoot a lot, and I burn 200-300 rounds easily in an hour or two. So yeah, bulk buys happen. Would I care if it got flagged for extra special investigation? Personally? No. However, I see the same sort of complaints we have for national security theater, “If you have nothing to fear, then you have nothing to hide.”
And I think that’s my biggest issue. I’m seeing the same sort of shock reaction now that I saw in 2001/2002. Which is understandable, just frustrating, cause I was against the over reaction then (invading Iraq? Really? You want us to do WHAT at the airport?), that I’m seeing now in the name of feeling safe against statistically unlikely things from occurring.
I think the statistical likelihood thing was an argument we saw on this very blog, as criticism of the Right for overreacting to terrorism.
And now we seem to be going the other way. Russell actually said something to this effect a few days back, and this was my immediate response, but I kept it to myself.
So. Weirdness. That’s really all I have to say about it, right now.
“but I also disagree with the USSC’s reading of the Second Amendment to ignore the “well regulated militia” portion of the amendment, which means as the law of the land, Brett’s view has a stronger legal basis.”
Eh, so do I. Lousy decision, Heller. The minority would have perpetrated a worse one, though, rendering the amendment totally empty.
The right is a right of the people, which means an individual right, just as it does in the other amendments speaking of a “right of the people”. It is a right meant to advance a “well regulated” militia. “Well regulated” meant, in the parlance of a time before the regulatory state, “well trained/equipped”.
Secondary sources make clear that the intent was that, by securing a right of citizens to own militia style weapons, a population owning them and familiar with their use would be guaranteed, allowing a militia to be expediently raised even if the government didn’t bother maintaining a militia system. Like guaranteeing a right to own firefighting equipment, because you worry that arsonists might get hold of the government, and disband the fire department.
So, I agree the Heller court blew the preface; The right is actually a right of the people, not the militia, to own and carry weapons suitable for militia service. Assault rifles, in short. It had nothing to do with hunting, and only secondarily anything to do with self defense.
But the intent of the founding generation is too explosive for today’s political class to stomach, it evinces too much trust of the people, and too little trust of the government. So the majority replaced the right to military arms with a right to whatever civilian arms the government hadn’t gotten around to banning during 80 years of Court neglect.
Better than the minority, which would have simply rendered the amendment a dead letter, but still not a very good ruling.
Just a brief note, here: I don’t see that Brett is a troll. Brett actually believes the things he says, and isn’t necessarily arguing for the sake of stirring shit up.
I don’t think Brett always make good, well-substantiated arguments, but the same could be said of me.
And if I’ve been trolling you all these years, that makes me the Troll King, or something.
I’ve never met you, Slarti, but based on the fact that you seem to keep in pretty good shape I’m pretty sure you don’t look like this.
Anyway, if anyone wants to do something constructive with his/her time, Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns & Money has been made the latest loony-right Two-Minute Hate victim for using the bog-standard metaphor “head on a stick” in reference to Wayne LaPierre. (Start here, then go here and here.) Loomis is a tenure-track professor at URI, and the administration already shows worrisome signs of doing the wrong thing and caving to the likes of Malkin, Trevino, Godlstein, et al.
Sorry Slart, got to disagree on this. Here is the trolling parts boldedyou folks are thinking clearly, and you’ve had to give up on trying to exploit the grief.
Says a lot about your positions here, that
The deployment of ‘you’ in Brett’s comment makes it clear that he isn’t interested it what various people have to say, he is just trying to provoke a reaction. What do proposals for insurance, bullet taxes, calls for upgrading the mental health system, bans on automatic and semi automatic weapons, and required gun safes have in common? Oh, ‘exploiting grief’, I guess. That’s trolling and a person who does it is a troll. Maybe there will be another subject where he won’t be a troll, but he hasn’t let the mask slip, he’s pulled it off along with the rest of his wardrobe. I hope that folks just ignore him as it is not worth responding to.
Sapient–enough said, we’re good and I too enjoy banging heads, or keystrokes, or whatever.
LJ–I do not regret my views, but I do regret and apologize for any and all hurt or discomfort caused by the means and manner of how I express them. I prize civility, which is why I’ve been here so long and it is incumbent on me to err on the side of over-extending that and not the other way around. Again, my apologies to everyone.
The fact that rights are not absolute never ceases to not sway Brett on this matter, and the way that Tenthers tend to mysteriously disappear when it comes to their pet social control policies never ceases to amaze.
As for our decrepit mental health system….Ronnie Reagan initiated its dismantlement.
“Well regulated” meant, in the parlance of a time before the regulatory state, “well trained/equipped”.
“Well regulated” could equally likely mean “under the command of the governor and complying with the rules set by Congress”.
Perhaps even more likely, my language, unlike yours, is actually in the Constitution.
I’m not sure we need to speculate, what the founders thought a “well regulated militia” meant was implemented by them, almost immediately, in law.
Everybody has to have a gun, everybody is in the militia, everybody shows up to train, everybody serves when called into service.
If you want to know what a well regulated militia looks like in the context of citizens rising up against a tyrannical state, I refer you to Shays Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.
As an aside, Jefferson’s famous comment about “watering the tree of liberty” apparently was a response to Shays Rebellion, which apparently didn’t bug him at all. He was in France at the time.
Jefferson: beautiful words, deeds not so much.
The response of the other founders, the ones who were not in Paris, was to call out the militia and rain grape shot on the heads of the “patriot citizen” rebels. Using ordnance built and stored, under guard, in the Springfield Armory. Which is where the Shaysites were headed, because all they had were their rifles and pitchforks.
And it’s not like the Shaysites and the western farmers involved in the Whiskey Rebellion didn’t have legitimate gripes. They did.
And the militia, authorized and organized and called into service as specified by the language of the 2nd Amendment and the law, crushed them like bugs.
So, there’s all of that to account for in your reading of the text and the history.
If you want to argue that it’s good for people to own guns so that they can take up arms against their own government if they feel the need, that’s an interesting point. If you want to argue that that is what the 2nd is all about, that’s less clear, to me, from either the history or the text.
If you want to know what the founders’ idea looks like in the modern context, I refer you to the Swiss.
I don’t see that Brett is a troll.
Nor I.
I would be hard pressed to name a single point of public life or policy where Brett and I agree, but he’s never doing anything but arguing for what he thinks is right.
We all make bad arguments, that’s the value of the discussion.
I think the statistical likelihood thing was an argument we saw on this very blog, as criticism of the Right for overreacting to terrorism.
I’m not sure the two situations, or the responses to them, are really good analogues.
I imagine if a case could be made for reducing the risk of terrorism by regulating access to bombs, most folks on the left would be fine with it. In fact, if I’m not mistaken we already do more or less that.
Likewise, if someone argued for addressing domestic acts of mass murder by wiretapping the phones of anyone who owned a gun, or knew someone who owned a gun, or initiating a secret investigation of anyone who checked a book about guns out of the library, or starting a war against Norway because OMG Norwegians own a lot of guns per capita, there might be some objection from the left.
Maybe we can revisit this topic in a couple of weeks
Sounds good to me.
If folks lose interest before then, then I agree that it’s fair to say most of the current argument is due to the heat of the moment.
Hate speech is hate speech, right?
Except when it isn’t.
Who gets to decide? I do. Because I say so.
As an open manic depressive, I am appalled by the conflating of violence and mass murder with mental illness. People are shockingly ignorant about the US mental health system and the nature of mental illness.
All we know about the SH killer is that he isolated himself, loved guns, played video games, was a geek, had mother issues. He possibly had a developmental disability. Since he destroyed his computer and has no online presence, we might never know more.
The first reaction of people who know mass murderers usually is “I can’t believe it.” Too often the second reaction is “I saw the warning signs all along.”
Can even a brilliant psychiatrist know whether a geeky 15 year old will become a mass murderer or start Facebook?
A young child gets it. “Bad men can’t have guns.” We could outlaw guns that kill 20 first graders in 15 minutes this year. The human race has never eradicated violence and evil and never will. Concentrating on mental illness is falling into the NRA idiocy that guns don’t kill people; people kill people.
I blog on mental illness as Cassandra Woolf. I am Mary Joan Koch, Katherine Hawkins’s mother.
Lisa Long (I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother) needs to stop trashing her son’s reputation for his entire life and submit herself to intensive family therapy and individual psychiatric care. If I were her son, I would hate her and fantasize about killing her. She has ruthlessly exploited her son and a national tragedy to win worldwide fame and sympathy. Some of her other posts are chilling.
I am a therapist. I don’t believe in treating children without family therapy. Parents should not be reassured their child’s emotional problems are entirely caused by a broken brain.
Regarding the parallels to 9/11:
First, the comparison doesn’t really work because all the gun control improvments we’re discussing would reduce gun deaths beyond the rare mass shooters.
As cleek ably explained (repeatedly), we have a lot of gun deaths and seriously addressing that could save a lot of lives. That just wasn’t true of 9/11; we were not losing thousands of lives every year to air-safety or terrorism deaths pre-9/11 in a way that could be helped by post-9/11 security improvements.
Secondly, there’s evidence that the incidence of mass shootings has increased substantially over the last decade or so. We’re not talking about one freak accident; we’re talking about a pattern of horrific events that is escalating.
Third, people expect their government to respond to threats, but the NRA has systematically undermined our government’s responses. For example, the NRA worked like mad to make sure that violent mentally ill criminals could get access to guns. They are committed to an ideology of gun ownership without limits.
Hate speech is hate speech, right?
You know, I only ever hear aggrieved conservatives talking about hate speech.
Liberals talk about hate crimes, which, you know, require an actual assault. But by all means, keep talking in code about bizarre things that make no sense to anyone outside the conservative bubble.
I don’t mind bad arguments, I got a million of them. I do mind when someone fails to note the range of opinions generated by a group of people, regardless how they are classified. It’s lazy and it pisses me off to no end and Brett has been around here long enough to know that it’s not part of the culture here. Brett doesn’t get a no-troll card because he doesn’t always behave like a troll, a thief doesn’t steal all the time, and a liar doesn’t always lie. It wasn’t a ‘well, we aren’t getting anywhere so I’m stepping back’ it was ‘you folks’ this and ‘you folks’ that. Yes, I saw the parenthetical insertion for his first invocation of the 2nd person, but if he doesn’t have the ability to identify specific arguments and address them rather than wielding a rather large brush (something you’ve complained about from time to time, Slart?) I strongly recommend that folks ignore him until he learns how to identify individuals and their arguments and address them.
Turbulence,
To be fair – “Liberals” have complained about hate speech to – discussing the use of “targeted” in the wake (or lead up) of the Gifford’s shooting for example, or other similar symbolically violent language used in what I would consider the same way the “Head on a pike” was used.
I pray for the SH killer’s mother and hope she wasn’t awake when her son murdered her. From all accounts she had devoted her life to him.
I cannot understand why anyone would encourage their son to learn to shoot guns. She is quoted as saying she wanted to encourage him to be responsible. He had no police record whatsoever.
His father seems to have been missing in action after the divorce, and his brother hadn’t seen him for several years. How easy it is to blame his mother who was always there for him.
I would be very curious if the killer was taking antipsychotics, commonly prescribed for autism. Their side effects can be worse than the symptoms they were treating.
I think the statistical likelihood thing was an argument we saw on this very blog, as criticism of the Right for overreacting to terrorism.
overreacting??
WTF?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
there are a few orders of magnitude of difference in the numbers killed by guns and the numbers killed by terrorism. even using the broadest possible definition of “terrorism” (which means any situation in which a brown non-American who kills or hurts an American) it’s not even close.
Every one of your eight predictions came true. Scary but brilliant.
If folks lose interest before then, then I agree that it’s fair to say most of the current argument is due to the heat of the moment.
The heat of the moment might explain why we’re arguing about this, but it hasn’t changed my thinking and, from what I can tell, that of most others here. It’s not like we haven’t gone through this discussion before, and I don’t recall many different arguments in the past.
Yes, we’re making reference to a recent incident that had yet to occur when we’ve dicussed this before. And, yes, this incident has raised people’s passions on the subject, but it’s not a problem of clear thinking. What happened was the very worst sort of thing I and others always would have liked to have avoided before it ever happened.
But it happened.
Hate speech is hate speech, right?
Except when it isn’t.
Who gets to decide? I do. Because I say so.
Using the phrase “head on a stick” is not “calling for someone’s assassination” or “making threats,” which is what someone called first the FBI then the Rhode Island State Police on Loomis for. But nice try.
But don’t be shy, Slarti. If you think Loomis deserves to lose his job, feel free to say so. Make an argument of some kind. Don’t be coy.
And, of course, for this whole kerfuffle against Loomis to have been started by Glenn Reynolds, who a) has, literally, publicly called for the CIA to assassinate Iranian scientists, and b) within the last month has asked whether or not he would get to see Susan Rice’s and others’ “heads roll” over Benghazi is simply par for the course.
From what I got from the latest Rachel Maddow (18th Dec) there were and still are organized efforts to prevent the state from even assembling and publishing data concerning gun violence. Preemptive suppression of invonvenient data is not the hallmark of good faith or winning arguments (not just on this topic).
Redstocking Gran, always nice to see you. There was a heartbreaking article in the NYTimes, I think about the steps a son had to take to be able to have his father receive needed psychological help. While I see your point about Lisa Long’s piece, but it seems that the notion that the courts can only take action when a person is a danger to themselves or others is at the root of some perceptions of mental illness and violence. I realize that there are really difficult problems in requiring treatment, but it seems that something needs to be done. Is that impression mistaken?
To be fair – “Liberals” have complained about hate speech to – discussing the use of “targeted” in the wake (or lead up) of the Gifford’s shooting for example, or other similar symbolically violent language used in what I would consider the same way the “Head on a pike” was used.
I don’t think this is true at all. Liberals criticized Palin because they thought her ad was stupid. But “hate speech” is about making some forms of speech illegal — this is not compatible with the 1st amendment and is not supported by American liberals.
Now, there are tens of millions of American liberals so I’m sure a few of them believe any absurd notion you can think of, but the idea that American liberals, as a group, strongly endorse “hate speech” laws is just silly. They don’t.
Liberals thought Palin stupid because they disagreed with her, and have a severe problem with the notion somebody might do so and not be stupid. And yes, Reynolds is not entirely serious about the “Head on a pike” line being hate speach, he’s just throwing a very common liberal complaint right back at you. He does that quite a bit.
I mean, liberals have gone so far as to identify the use of bullet points as violent, when other people employ them.
I haven’t said anything like that, Phil. I’m not sure why you’d even bring that up.
Words matter, or they don’t matter so much. Pick one, and stick with it. That’s my only point.
Once upon a time, I didn’t know who Grover Norquist was. Time to come up to speed, man.
he’s just throwing a very common liberal complaint right back at you.
But this is not a common complaint made by American liberals. I tell you what: Loomis writes at Lawyers Guns and Money. Find me a blog post there that specifically advocates for hate speech laws that would criminalize speech and we can talk. I don’t think you can because I just looked and I’ve found post explicitly criticizing the idea. But go ahead.
Pick one, and stick with it.
Who should pick one? Who is being inconsistent. You seem convinced that lots of people (liberals presumably?) are being inconsistent here but you won’t say who or what about….
Sarah Palin actually is very, very stupid, not because she’s not liberal, but because she’s . . . stupid. Like, literally not very smart.
Just in case it’s not clear, Glenn Reynolds aside, there is currently a coordinated effort by the right-wing noise machine to get Erik Loomis fired for using the phrase “head on a stick.” I’m sure ardent civil liberties supporter Brett Bellmore will be shooting a note over to the dean and president of URI in support of Loomis any minute now.
Liberals thought Palin stupid because they disagreed with her, and have a severe problem with the notion somebody might do so and not be stupid.
Your mindreading, fallacy of composition and projection skills are as strong as ever, I see.
I mean, liberals have gone so far as to identify the use of bullet points as violent, when other people employ them.
This is almost certainly false.
“Once upon a time I didn’t know who Grover Norquist was.”
You’re welcome. 😉
We’re talking about increased weapons regulation because:
a) Tens of thousands of firearm injuries each year
b) 20 kids killed in Connecticut
Pick one. From the contents of this thread, I am concluding that b) is holding much more sway. Similarly, the terrorism conversation took place not because of thousands of people killed in the ME over decades, but because of thousands of people killed in NYC and other places in one day.
That’s really my point. You can disagree with it all you like, but don’t make it into something else.
So…there’s a petition or something? Where?
Do you think tightening the regulation of guns is at all comparable to the myriad things (including starting two wars, one of which we are still fighting and the other of which had no relationship to 9/11) we’ve done in reaction to 9/11? Do you think the details and scope of the reaction have any bearing on whether or not it’s an over-reaction?
I mean, if we were talking about rounding up gun owners for interrogation or implementing an intenstive electronic monitoring network to track their every communication, you’d probably have a point. But, since we’re just talking about regulating the sale and ownership of guns, not so much, IMO.
Brett,
some here may, as you say, want to abolish the Second Amendment, and the right it enumerates. But some of us merely have a (very) different view of what that right actually is.
As I understand you, you see it as a right to own pretty much any weapon that you can afford — without restriction. But others can see it as, for example, a right for a state government to maintain a militia (i.e. the National Guard). And yet others may focus on the “well-regulated” phrase and see it as actually requiring rather a lot of training, and controls on who owns what kinds of weapons.
Which, I suppose, gets us into judicial philosophy. Does one believe in “original intent”? And how (and on what basis) does one divine that intent?
For example, is the intent simply to arm the citizens? Or is the intent to resist tyrrany, with arming the citizens merely the late 18th century means to that end? And if the latter, is that an effective means any more?
Alternatively, one may have a judicial philosophy which considers that the intent of the authors of the 2nd Amendment (or any of the others) is not particularly relevant when determining how to apply the rules that they wrote to our very different circumstances. In which case, we have a whole different discussion of what we ought to be doing.
Now we are at the point where I have a serious problem with some “liberals”. No problem repealing or subverting the second amendment, but become up in arms about infringements of the first amendment.
Surely no one can doubt the negative impact on society of abusive use of brain washing kill games like call of duty. Can anyone doubt that some forms – or maybe all – of hard core porno lead to acting out of what is seen? Certainly some violent crime is the result of impressionable people listening to the propaganda Nazis, racists, anarchists and the like. Words incite. Brainwashing incites.
I accept that in a free society we have to endure exposure to speach and media we don’t like and that might even be harmful because no source should be allowed to become the arbiter of the truth. I also accept that in a free society we have to endure the misuse of guns because guns put the same lethal coercive power enjoyed by the government in the hands of the people. No single source should be allowed to become the arbiter of coercive power. See what Madison had to say about that one.
wj,
Here’s the problem with you taking this track with Brett – he believes in his view as the only reasonable, rational view, and anyone else is double thinking/lying about it; or hasn’t thought about it in any depth. So if you are claiming to have thought about it at length, then you are lying.
When he made that statement a few years ago is when I realized there was little point is engaging with him, he believes I’m a liar and thus there can be no good faith discussion, just shouting.
Pick one.
um, no.
we’ve been talking about gun control on this blog for as long as i’ve been coming here: year after year after year, high-profile incident or not. we do it so often i suspect most of us have keyboard macros set up to echo the default replies to the standard arguments.
yes, the discussion gets more heated, every other week, after someone murders a bunch of people at once, instead of killing just one average person, like most gun murders do.
From the contents of this thread, I am concluding that b) is holding much more sway.
Sandy Hook was the latest reason to talk about guns, but we’re nearly all back to talking about guns and gun control in general, or at least in-general-from-a-Sandy-Hook-POV.
we’ll be talking about gun control here, with a different POV, before the end of the year. count on it.
So, this recent urgency for more stringent gun control laws is what? Coincidence?
Pull the other one.
So, this recent urgency for more stringent gun control laws is what?
the answer you seek is in the part of my comment that you didn’t blockquote.
Surely no one can doubt the negative impact on society of abusive use of brain washing kill games like call of duty.
Yes, surely no one could possibly doubt it, aside from the fact that it’s baloney.
(BTW, guys, if new commenter and idiosyncratic speller “suzie_q” is not an avedis/blackhawk sock, I’ll eat my hat.)
No problem repealing or subverting the second amendment…
Repealing amendments is a legitimate process. And there is nothing inconsistent about wanting to repeal one amendment while wanting to defend another. Whether or not one is subverting an amendment would depend on how one interprets what that amendment means, which is largely what’s at issue here.
No single source should be allowed to become the arbiter of coercive power.
What the hell does this mean, exactly, in today’s world?
See what Madison had to say about that one.
Thanks for the advice. Maybe I think Madison was a twit. And maybe I don’t. But I’m pretty sure I might disagree with him on some things. He wasn’t a deity.
So, this recent urgency for more stringent gun control laws is what? Coincidence?
Um…
I know, it’s really off the wall for people to discuss gun control in the wake of the mass shooting of first-graders.
I do mind when someone fails to note the range of opinions generated by a group of people, regardless how they are classified.
IMO an extremely fair point.
For example:
Liberals thought Palin stupid because they disagreed with her, and have a severe problem with the notion somebody might do so and not be stupid.
And for the record, I personally found Palin stupid because I frequently conflate bone ignorance and stupidity.
In fact, they are not always the same. Palin may, in fact, be intelligent, yet bone ignorant. Happily so, for that matter.
If so, my mistake.
I am still waiting for, and would still be interested in, references to criminological studies demonstrating that there is no meaningful relationship between the amount of guns held in private hands in this country, and the unusually high rate of gun violence.
Surely no one can doubt the negative impact on society of abusive use of brain washing kill games like call of duty.
Yes, surely no one can doubt.
(Am I the only one who thinks new commenter and . . . idiosyncratic speller/grammarian suzie_q is a blackhawk/avedis sock?)
Here are some country-specific comparative historical stats for gun violence per capita:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Here are gun ownership stats AND Murder rates per capita country by country:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
I’d like to view stats for the number of weapons (all of which could be used on citizenry) in the hands of all levels of individual country governments (country by country — law enforcement and military) around the world to learn if Tench Coxe was getting American government violence against its citizenry mixed up with Albanian, Zimbabwean, or Filipino violence (for example) against their citizenries.
The U.S. government is gunned up pretty good (both in caliber and number) compared to its citizenry, but my impression is that it is relatively restrained in the oppression game.
Question for suzie_Q, just for fun and out of curiosity with no intent to counsel suppression or oppression, is your boyfriend’s name spelled a-v-e-d-i-s or B-l-a-c-k-h-a-w-k?
Here is my daughter Katherine’s opinion on the second amendment and gun control. Katherine Hawkins wrote for OW while she was still at Harvard Law School. She concentrated on Maher Arar, extraordinary rendition and US torture. If you google Katherine and torture, she is the first hit. Here is what she has been up to.
Katherine Hawkins is Investigator for The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment. Katherine joined The Constitution Project after working with the firm Burke PLLC researching detainee issues and serving as co-counsel for former Iraqi detainees in civil cases. Katherine received her undergraduate degree in political science from Yale University, and her law degree from Harvard Law School. After graduating, she clerked for the judges on the Boston Immigration Court through the Department of Justice’s Honors Program.
Her writing on rendition of prisoners to Egypt, Syria, Libya and other countries has been published in Foreign Policy, Middle East Report, the Georgetown Immigration Law Review, and The American Prospect. She also assisted with research on detention and counterterrorism policies for two award-winning books, The Dark Side by Jane Mayer and Guantanamo and The Abuse of Presidential Power by Joseph Margulies, as well as several human rights reports.
Here is her take on the Second Amendment. She is speaking for herself, not the Constitution Project. She dashed this off in minutes in a family email.
“The founding thing was for the purpose of avoiding a standing army. That ship has sailed. As a meaningful protection of liberty, it’s about as obsolete as the Third Amendment, but this one has a dangerous cult attached to it. I’d rather it be eliminated but that will never happen. Also, the Second Amendment only applies to the federal government, and IMO it flunks the test for whether it applies to the states under the 14th amendment but courts probably disagree with me. Also, other constitutional rights can be overridden in the face of a compelling gov’t interest like preserving life–e.g. exigent circumstances exceptions and various others to the warrant requirement (some of which are actually crazy, like the absence of protection for email), the restrictions on free speech from the whole classified information regime and from overbroad laws about “material support for terrorism”, etc. etc. Even absent the national security angle the first amendment is subject to “time place and manner” restrictions–some of which, again, probably go too far (protest “free speech zones”, total bans on postering, etc.) Courts have recognized the right to travel as a fundamental right but we still have drivers licenses, airport security, no fly lists (this is another one that’s being abused) etc.
I think banning semi-automatics and restricting high capacity magazines (automatics are already banned) would be fine even without changing the Constitutional text, as would extending background check requirements to all gun sales, tracking gun sales to further criminal investigations (Congress has banned this at the NRA’s request), etc. I’d argue that licensing would too.
It seems really irresponsible not to lock up a gun around a son whose sanity you doubted, and he didn’t buy it himself, so the licensing/background check stuff might not have made as much of a difference in this case. But it’s not as if this was a one off event–IIRC the guys who shot Gabby Giffords, the Sikh Temple, and the movie theater in Colorado all bought for themselves.
Other countries with stricter gun laws have, presumably, an equal number of “bad guys” but far fewer homicides. But between the Constitutional amendment and the 270 million guns already out there (and the likelihood attempting to confiscate them would likely lead to armed insurrection), unfortunately I don’t think we can get to numbers comparable to the UK, Germany, Scandanavia, Japan, etc.”
Ah, now I see why my comments didn’t post and got filtered; didn’t realize the words themselves would trigger the filter, but Countme-In knows what’s going on here.
So anyway, about there being “no doubt” about videogames, wellllllll . . . yeah. If anything, people have their causality backwards. We’re a sick and violent society, and we make videogames that reflect that.
Does one believe in “original intent”?
This assumes there was some unified original intent to discern.
The founding generation of the US did not speak with a single voice. They disagreed with each other, a lot, about a lot of things.
The language of the Constitution, far from being a crystal clear expression of some unambiguous “original intent”, is in many places a weasel-worded expression of what the authors thought, after lots and lots of argument, would get the document ratified by enough folks to actually get a nation formed.
Arguing about what the “original intent” was by flinging founding generation quotes back and forth is, to me, like discussing the nature and intent of god by flinging favorite bible quotes back and forth.
You can always find something to support your preferred point of view.
As far as the founder’s intent, I generally look to what they actually *did* as much as what they actually said.
What they actually *did* does not clearly argue for an individual right to own a military grade firearm outside of the discipline of an actual militia, commanded by either a governor or the President when called into national service, and operating according to rules set down by Congress.
That’s how it looks to me.
In particular, arguing that what the founders really wanted was for the citizens to be able to take up arms against the government itself if they were so inclined seems more or less not supportable.
The founders were suspicious of standing armies, so they wanted the US military to be made up of a citizen militia. What a “citizen militia” looked like, to them, was expressed quite clearly in law, see the aptly named Militia Acts.
We moved away from a militia based military because it didn’t really work out that well. The militia’s ass kept getting kicked, among things by Canadians, which simply wouldn’t do.
That’s the history, as I read it.
The 2nd has been read in a variety of ways, for a variety of reasons, over the history of the nation. The current reading, and (not to pick specifically on Brett, but) Brett’s reading, are not the only one, and not even the most typical, historically.
I’m all for not doing violence to the original intent, and I’m all for not just making sh*t up, but I also think the idea of some holy grail “original intent” in the sense of any kind of consensus among the founding generation is a chimera.
OT somewhat, so enough from me on that for now.
russell, I don’t think it’s off topic at all. The whole argument is about gun ownership/availability, and what is or is not allowed/required by the Constitution. (Nobody is arguing that shooting kindergarteners is a right.) And that comes down to what the Constitution, specifically the 2nd Amendment, means. And how we determine that.
My comment disappeared. Katherine Hawkins, my daughter, a human rights lawyer who used to blog for OW, dashed off a provocative opinion on the second amendment in minutes on a family email. If you want to read some of Katherine’s posts, look under Maher Arar.
“The founding thing was for the purpose of avoiding a standing army. That ship has sailed. As a meaningful protection of liberty, it’s about as obsolete as the Third Amendment, but this one has a dangerous cult attached to it. I’d rather it be eliminated but that will never happen.
Also, the Second Amendment only applies to the federal government, and IMO it flunks the test for whether it applies to the states under the 14th amendment but courts probably disagree with me. Also, other constitutional rights can be overridden in the face of a compelling gov’t interest like preserving life–e.g. exigent circumstances exceptions and various others to the warrant requirement (some of which are actually crazy, like the absence of protection for email), the restrictions on free speech from the whole classified information regime and from overbroad laws about “material support for terrorism”, etc. etc.
Even absent the national security angle the first amendment is subject to “time place and manner” restrictions–some of which, again, probably go too far (protest “free speech zones”, total bans on postering, etc.) Courts have recognized the right to travel as a fundamental right but we still have drivers licenses, airport security, no fly lists (this is another one that’s being abused) etc.
I think banning semi-automatics and restricting high capacity magazines (automatics are already banned) would be fine even without changing the Constitutional text, as would extending background check requirements to all gun sales, tracking gun sales to further criminal investigations (Congress has banned this at the NRA’s request), etc. I’d argue that licensing would too.
It seems really irresponsible not to lock up a gun around a son whose sanity you doubted, and he didn’t buy it himself, so the licensing/background check stuff might not have made as much of a difference in this case. But it’s not as if this was a one off event–IIRC the guys who shot Gabby Giffords, the Sikh Temple, and the movie theater in Colorado all bought for themselves.
Other countries with stricter gun laws have, presumably, an equal number of “bad guys” but far fewer homicides. But between the Constitutional amendment and the 270 million guns already out there (and the likelihood attempting to confiscate them would likely lead to armed insurrection), unfortunately I don’t think we can get to numbers comparable to the UK, Germany, Scandanavia, Japan, etc. ”
What is Katherine doing? Here is her work bio. “Katherine Hawkins is Investigator for The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment. Katherine joined The Constitution Project after working with the firm Burke PLLC researching detainee issues and serving as co-counsel for former Iraqi detainees in civil cases.
Katherine received her undergraduate degree in political science from Yale University, and her law degree from Harvard Law School. After graduating, she clerked for the judges on the Boston Immigration Court through the Department of Justice’s Honors Program. Her writing on rendition of prisoners to Egypt, Syria, Libya and other countries has been published in Foreign Policy, Middle East Report, the Georgetown Immigration Law Review, and The American Prospect.
She also assisted with research on detention and counterterrorism policies for two award-winning books, The Dark Side by Jane Mayer and Guantanamo and The Abuse of Presidential Power by Joseph Margulies, as well as several human rights reports.”
I doubt anyone is surprised.
on original intent:
“We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors”
-Thomas Jefferson
“The militia’s ass kept getting kicked, among things by Canadians, ”
Never thought of it that way, but having our butts kicked by a bunch of future supporters of government-run health care, some of whom speak French, must have been humiliating.
McKinney, thanks for being so gracious.
Hey, don’t worry, folks – the National Review has this one all figured out. The whole thing was the fault of weak, passive women, and also husky young boys are bulletproof. Think I’m joking?
American conservatism in 2012, ladies and gents.
Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.
then they, too, would be dead.
Huh. Turns out I know the shooter’s father.
Tennessee wants to arm jackbooted, unionized, government agents who loaf during the summers to tyrannize gun-owning trespassers.
Megan McArdle suggests 5-year-olds be trained to rush heavily-armed assailants en masse.
Heavily armed assailants are at this moment planning to dress like the ice cream man or Santa Claus the next time around.
I have a few stupid ideas myself but they all have to do with fewer guns.
Try to get anyone hospitalized. I was shrink/mommy/grandma for 2 months at OWS last fall. We could not get suicidal kid hospitalized. Irtwas just as well because a bunch of friends swore to spend every minute with him.
There are very few psychiatric beds, and insurance companies want patients out after a few days. They run the show. Someone seriously mentally ill would benefit from a psychiatrist/therapist, but that hardly ever happens. Social workers are cheap, but most are too intimidated by psychiatrists. There is a terrible shortage of child and teen psychiatrists, so the family doctor is prescribing the psychiatric meds.
We don’t have a mental health system. I could go on about this for about 200 pages. At 40 I was diagnosed as a manic delressive and have been “treated” for 27 years. I did much better before I was diagnosed. I would not recommend one of my shrinks.
I have finally come out of the manic depressive closet for good. At 67 what do I have to lose. I know I can give memorable voice to the voiceless. Cassandra Woolf and Redstocking Grandma are writing for the same blogs. My cat is dancing on my keyboard, so I won’t attempt html.
http://manicmagicalmysterytour.blogspot.com/
It is unfortunate that my starring roles as a 60s radical in the loony bin were not videotaped. Loony bins are jails. Their function is to prevent suicidal patients from killing themselves. She who laughs lasts, but I still have trauma from them.
60s Radical in the Loony Bin http://manicmagicalmysterytour.blogspot.com/2012/11/60s-radical-in-loony-bin.html
is more amusing than Descent Into Hell
http://manicmagicalmysterytour.blogspot.com/2010/08/descent-into-hell-st-vincent-new-york.html
Next time I will master HTML. I promise.
No worries redstocking, it’s good to see you around here again.
I’m not intimately familiar with the mental health system here, but have some small indirect acquaintance with it through friends and family members.
I think it’s fair to say the following:
1. A thoroughgoing reform of the mental health system, sufficient to address the concerns raised here, is no more or less likely than reforming laws concerning guns
2. Mental health issues raise civil rights issues equally important as those raised by gun control
3. Many of the people who object strongly to being told they might not be able to have, for instance, large capacity magazines or assault weapons or semi-automatic firearms would object equally if not more strongly to being told they would have to submit to some government mental health test in order to keep and carry at all.
Folks don’t like being told they can’t do something they want to do. That’s all understandable, but other folks don’t like being told they have to live with what is, to them, an unacceptable risk so that the first folks can enjoy what they like.
A *lot* of people in this country are killed, each and every year, with firearms. That’s not something to brush off. Stuff like Newtown shines a spotlight on it, but there are many, many people in this country who are extremely concerned about it all the time, Newtown or no Newtown.
Boy, good thing that stuff I said upthread about everyday arguments escalating into gunfights thanks to CCW holders was just crazy talk.
RedstockingGran, great to see you here and best wishes to Katherine!
I think that it sould be up tothe people who want assualt weapons to be availabe to find and intellectually honest reason that doesn’t come down to “Because people want them”. Because, as John Cole pointed oput, “I want one” doesn’t stand up tothe damage people wdo with them;
Yes, guns don;t kill people; people do. And people with assualt weapoons can kill more people that than people armed with regular pistols or knives or heavy objects.
Aside: I read a newspaper artilce in a Montana paper one summer. The artilce was about some slob hunters whowere using assualt rifles on elk. They set up their trap for the elk with the guys on either side of a valley and shot at the elk from both sides. Too stupid to realize that they were shooting at each other. Sad part is elk died. Good news: they d succeeded in shooting each other, too.
The right is a right of the people, which means an individual right, just as it does in the other amendments speaking of a “right of the people”.
The “right of the people peaceably to assemble” is hardly an individual right.
I challenged anybody to “assemble” by himself, peaceably or otherwise.
–TP
Maybe everyone is too tired, but this, via a former front pager, is really good, by Susan Ginsberg at Mark Kleiman’s blog.
“The “right of the people peaceably to assemble” is hardly an individual right.
I challenged anybody to “assemble” by himself, peaceably or otherwise.”
You don’t have to be part of a government approved organized group to peaceably assemble, and especially not to petition the government for redress of grievances. The government can’t set up approved “peaceably assemble clubs”, or “redress of grievance associations”, and then prohibit anybody outside of them from exercising those rights. That makes it, in the relevant sense, an individual right.
I’m working up some stuff over at my place, on the subject of gunz and the loonz who gotz to haz ’em.
One of the things I’m seeing is correlation (not causation) between the states that are anti-science, anti-choice, anti-immigration, pro-gun, pro-bible and pro-“Stand your ground” and the states that were members of the former CSA.
I know that there are plenty of people in Manhattan, NY and San Francisco, CA (as well as other “Liebral” enclaves) that are of a similar mindset to those in the former CSA. The difference is that in those places, their elected officials and church leaders are not batshit KKKrazzee people–in the main–who want to outlaw a woman’s right to control her own body and stop the teaching of legitimate science (hello, JesusOop and the Dinos)and history courses that include information about the more shameful parts of our nation’s history (e.g., the niggling problems in contemporary U.S. society that trace back to a period when people were OWNED by other people or the extirpation of native americans in their “native habitat”) that sorta thang.
Sorry, I get carried away.
Gunz aren’t bad, assholes with gunz IS bad, dealing with assholes with gunz by making MORE gunz available seems, to this unscientifically trained observer, contraindicated.
At Tony P.:
I am so stealing that.
“You don’t have to be part of a government approved organized group to peaceably assemble, and especially not to petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Really? You’ve had experience in that regard? You DO have to get permits from the government to peacably assemble in public space, most everywhere I’ve ever lived–the tacit permissions granted to unpermitted demonstrators (think the “Occupy—” movement) and will tend, at some point to stop that demonstrating when it is determined to be a public safety problem or, simply, an embarassment.
People like you, Brett, like to hold the 2nd Amendment to be irrevocable, eternal and immutable. Many people in the former CSA felt that way about “States Rights” (a euphemistic phrase substituted for “We are ordained by GOD, and forced by the free market to own people, black people, people who actually LIKE working the fields, keeping house, warming the beds and enjoying the job security and “benefits” offered by Massa).
I don’t know you Brett but I’ve “debated” GunRIGHTS! with enough people that use the same buzz phrases and exhibit the same intransigence on the subject over the last six or eight years to know when I’m talking to one of the “Type 2A Tru Bleevers”.
I like this:
“I think that it sould be up tothe people who want assualt weapons to be availabe to find and intellectually honest reason that doesn’t come down to “Because people want them”.”
from Laura Koerbeer’s comment above.
That doesn’t mean I think that you or anyone else has an inalienable, unmitigated right to ANYTHING, because we live in a society where we must, perforce, get along at some level, or dissolve our relationship. But, I would love to hear your reasons that don’t include, “Because it’s a RIGHT (without limits)…”.
It’s not the guns, it’s our gun culture….Gary Wills wrote this excellent article back in 1995 at the height of the militia crazy. Well worth the read.
I’m working on a comment regarding the comparison of drunk-driving laws and gun control raised, or at least very eloquently addressed, by McKT and others way upthread.
But the effluvia of my free-associating brain keeps distracting me.
This morning’s roundup of crap floating to the top:
John McAfee, the libertarian paradise of Belize where crime has no purchase, gun control, gun violence, and Brick Oven Bill, the solitary but entertaining theoretician in West Whackaloon who puts all of the ingredients on the pie, shoves it in the kiln, and calls it mystery pizza.
I’m also wrestling with two images: the next school shooter, probably in late January after the Xmas holidays, with a heretofore clean criminal record and no reported mental illness popping down to the local elementary school, registered weapons in hand under the absolute language — despite the unConstitutional registration laws — of the Second Amendment for some peaceable assembly (this is the assumption because he hasn’t broken any laws yet) … AND 20 lower elementary school students gathering up their backpacks, putting their mittens on, and heading out in the opposite direction to peaceably assemble in the living room of said shooter and wondering who’s going to get arrested first under our completely and rationally thought out system of rights and privileges.
A third image: Next year, the NRA, having convinced a cutting edge school district to permit training of elementary-school students in weapons operation, sends their rep into the classroom for a presentation, and unbeknownst to him the kids (having spent the past weeks waking up with nightmares merely from anticipating the training, dare we call it indoctrination) have been undergoing parallel nightmare-inducing training (for the parents, I expect, “look, Mommy, here’s what we in school today about how to tackle a guy with three weapons, 1000 rounds of ammo, and body armor — gouge the eyes like this while susie q. kicks him the nuts — who has already mowed down the Principal, the custodian, and Asa, the armed security guard, in the McArdle swarming technique employed in the event of a white man presenting in their school with weapons —
“Now children,” the NRA rep intones, “let me show you what a Bushmaster looks like.”
The twist to this last image is that it’s a zombie thriller, in which the 20 kids, each already riddled with bullets, rise from their desks and peaceably assemble around a convergence point, the NRA spokesman’s neck.
“People like you, Brett, like to hold the 2nd Amendment to be irrevocable, eternal and immutable.”
No, I hold it to have not been revoked. You want to revoke it, Article V tells you how to go about it. Until you do, its still the highest law of the land.
Gary Wills is a nitwit, with a reputation for brilliance because he says things the left likes. We don’t, as I have pointed out, have one gun culture, we have several. Anti-gunners just love blaming one gun culture for the sins of the other, while doing all they can to destroy the first.
I read the Wills response, and was left with the question: am I a part of the gun culture, or not?
Or is there some middle ground left unexplored, there?
We don’t, as I have pointed out, have one gun culture, we have several.
Brett makes an excellent point. And one that those who think we need some more constraints on gun ownership would do well to not only recognize but work with.
For one, there are the real hunters. They tend to own shotguns and/or rifles (either single shot or with at most a half dozen round magazines); frequently nothing more. They have nothing but contempt for anyone who goes “hunting” with a semi-automatic. If you want to restrict assault rifles (whatever you call them and however you define them), they will be on your side if you make clear that you are not interested in restricting their existing hunting options.
And you have those who just like to go out and fire off a few rounds occasionally. Generally at a range (although some think heading out into the (to them) uninhabitted countryside is good enough. For those who use ranges routinely, a lot of restrictions will be OK, as long as they can still go out and enjoy their hobby.
Convincing those who like to go out in the country and shoot will be a bit harder. But strongly supported by those who live in rural areas, and get tired of having some urban nitwit come out and send bullets whining across their front yards because they don’t pay any attention to what may be down-range. (Can you tell I’ve had some personal experience being on the receiving end of such?)
Then there are those who feel that the police are incapable of effectively preserving the peace, and so they need a gun (usually a handgun) for self defense. A lot of them could probably support a law which kept those who they fear will attack them from having high-capacity weapons. If only because that way they wouldn’t be so out-gunned.
And finally there are those who believe that owning guns is their only defense against government tyrrany. Either they don’t seem to understand the kind of fire-power that the government can actually bring to bear if necessary, or they want to have every household armed with RPGs and AK-47s. Either way, there isn’t really any way to reach them, and once you have pointed out where their rationale for gun ownership logically takes them, there isn’t any real point in trying to convince them.
Someone more involved in the various gun cultures can doubtless come up with a few more sub-types. But the point is, if you really want some improvement in gun control, you are going to have to convince at least some of the nearly half of all households which own a gun that you understand that they are reasonably responsible people and won’t be seriously impacted. Even if you personally think that all guns should be banned, that isn’t going to happen. And if you let the perfect (as you see it) be the enemy of the better, you are asking to get nothing.
“Or is there some middle ground left unexplored, there?”
Yes, prominently explored in this thread.
In content, perhaps not in tone.
“Gary Wills is a nitwit, with a reputation for brilliance because he says things the left likes.”
No, Gary Wills was once a nitwit, with a reputation for brilliance because he said things at one time that the Right liked.
http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/print.aspx?article=516&loc=b&type=cbtp ..”
Taken in sum, over time, the issue of Gary Wills’ nitwitticism contains middle ground too.
” Until you do, its still the highest law of the land.”
I think enough of you, Brett, to believe you will occupy somewhat middle/right ground (legal, peaceful, electoral action, perhaps some stockpiling of pancakes) if that eventuality ever came to pass, which it won’t, but I recall noises you’ve made here in the past warning of armed insurrection against the government if it crosses some Constitutional line in the sand, so I read your statement as:
” Until you do, its still the highest law of the land. But remember, there is a sizable minority of Second Amendment absolutists in the gun culture who will kill you with their guns if you try and/or succeed at such a move.”
Here’s an article about how the NRC was highjacked by sociopaths and how the NRA and the Repubican party helped to build a culture of paranoia and violence:
http://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/newtown
I neighbor of mine, an NRA member, posted a little picture on her facebook with a snappy little quote about how people who don’t like guns change their minds if someone is breaking into their house.
What utter bullshit on so many levels. This woman lives in a gated community and has three German SHepards as house dogs. Her chances of being broken into are zero.
Not only that but most robbers prefer to do their robbing when people aren’t home–and like to steal guns, if they get the chance. And rape is almost always eithr an act between people who know each other or an act committed out side.
Self defensse is mostly a matter of common sense and preventive messures thus making gun ownership unnecessary most of the time.
A big dog in the house, doesn’t even have to be a mean dog, will deter most of the very few people who are inclined toward breaking inot the homes of NRA members. The guns are an attradction to thieves, not a deterent.
Besides the violant crime rate has been dropping for the last twenty years.
So what are these white people (the NRA is overwhelmingly white) so scared of?
AS John COle points out the clingers to guns are a bunch of scarey cats. Really. Shaking in theri shoes, so scared that something bad is going to happen and they ahve to have their great big gun to keep them safe.
I wrote a comment oon her face book to the effect that that discussion wasn’t a a black and white one about guns/no guns. I wrot e that the discussion was about whether or not civilians need assualt weapns, which were designed for to kill lots of people quickly and efficiently, for normal purposes which could be served by more appropriate weapons.
Of course she did not respond to the comment.
But badk to the myth of needing guns for self defense. There are people who have that need in a very real sense. A woman being stalked by a violent ex, for example. OR someone who lives in a neighborhood with a high rate of violent crime. But, as DR. Science pinted out, those are not the people with fetishes for assault weapons and not the people who kill a lot of innocent bystanders.
Nor do regular criminals, even really violent ones seem to have a fetish for assalut weapons.
How many people did Willie Horton kill and what weapon did he use? Compare that to the criminal acts of rightwing nutcase Ms Lanza’s son.
I love that Brett’s criteria for whether people are smart or “nitwits” is whether they say things liberals like or not. That explains A LOT. Sarah Palin = smart, Gary Wills = dumb, QED!
I think enough of you, Brett, to believe you will occupy somewhat middle/right ground (legal, peaceful, electoral action, perhaps some stockpiling of pancakes) if that eventuality ever came to pass, which it won’t,
You can disabuse yourself of that notion, Count.
Laura, my house was broken into and robbed while my wife and I were asleep upstairs and I never for a moment considered buying a gun, although I did sleep with an aluminum bat next to the bed for a few weeks.
This topic really makes it obvious to anyone capable of sitting back and thinking objectively just how different and how entrenched subcultures are in our society.
Liberals are so angry about the right to bear arms and want to encroach on that right because, they say, they are upset about children being killed. Even if we are to believe that there aren’t other reasons at play – like being hateful of traditional male culture and utopia seeking – there is still so much irony.
Can liberals not see that as unwavering advocates for the killing of millions of unborn babies each year that a lot of Americans can’t take their objections to guns all that seriously. Abortion is a right for liberals even though it is not named in the constitution, but guns, which are named, are not a right.
Killing unborn babies is freedom. Self defense is harmful because sometimes the tool of self defense is misused by criminals.
I mean a lot of people are looking at you liberals in that light and you don’t look righteous to them, or not as righteous as you think you are.
Something to think about?
maybe not, huh.
Also, there are some rude people on this blog. My bf is going to kill me? I am commenting for some other person because you don’t agree with me? Come one now.
I haven’t been appointed by the Left to negotiate the abortion/gun rights tradeoff, but what the hell, I’ll agree to a federal law outlawing all abortions except in the case of the mother’s life being endangered by the pregnancy (with a fully taxpayer-funded entitlement program to underwrite the prenatal care, birth and child-rearing expenses, college education, and job training, if needed, of every conceived unwanted fetus … in exchange for a Federal law limiting every American to one single shot weapon and one bullet in their home, and two weapons for hunting which will be held under lock and key in an armory some miles away and the bullets held in Barney Fife’s shirt pocket in a separate facility, with an equally generous Federal program to recompense gun owners, dollar for dollar, for their guns, ammo, and manufacturing facilities being confiscated and destroyed.
Capisce?
Next up, an agreement on the fiscal cliff. Bob’s your uncle! (by which I don’t mean that you have an uncle named Bob, or that you are actually Uncle Bob, or that Uncle Bob is making you write your comments at gunpoint and sign them susie_Q, … Bob)
No doubt, by the time the gun lobby gets done with our grand compromise, both mother’s and fetus’s’s’s will be concealed carrying AK-47s and pancakes to solve the abortion issue the old-fashioned way — with a gunfight at the pancake-warming table corral.
I didn’t ask if you were some other person because I don’t agree with you, I asked the question good-naturedly because your writing style, syntax, and phraseology remind me of someone.
Plus, the praise of your boyfriend’s gun, or was it his dick, in your first comment on this thread, sounded just like something the person you remind of would say about himself if he was cross dressing and blogging simultaneously, not that your Uncle Bob, should he exist, is a cross dresser, not that there would anything wrong with that … unless he was armed, perhaps, with a derringer tucked in the garter belt securing his nylons, which would sound kind if hot if I that was my thing.
This is how we do a national conversation about XXX here, suzie_Q.
It’s amazing to me that people aren’t just falling all over themselves to take part in the debate.
like being hateful of traditional male culture and utopia seeking
Heh. a-v-e-d-i-s/b-l-a-c-k-h-a-w-k approaches P=1.
Abortion is a right for liberals even though it is not named in the constitution, but guns, which are named, are not a right.
Privacy is a right. And abortions are restricted, perhaps moreso than the right to privacy should allow. Try again.
“It’s amazing to me that people aren’t just falling all over themselves to take part in the debate.”
I’m a poor judge of Slart’s dead-pan irony most times, but just in case, the thread IS 345 comments strong as we speak, and if people would just stop falling all over themselves to comment, and thus distracting me, I could finish the three comments I have in the hopper and post them.
😉
As much as I like Creedence, I think we have to say goodbye to suzie_q.
Also, there are some rude people on this blog
Yes, that’s true.
And one form that rudeness takes is lumping folks into great big categories and making broad statements about what they do or do not think.
FWIW, here is what I think the 2nd was about.
We had won independence, we tried the Articles of Confederation, they sucked, so we wanted to try a stronger central government.
A lot of folks were afraid, not without reason, that a strong federal government might overstep its legitimate limits and use federal military to impose that on the population.
So, they wanted to make sure that the existing citizen militia was preserved, and retained the right to keep and bear arms.
I don’t think it occurred to folks then to make careful distinctions between public and private use and ownership of arms, as regards the right to keep and carry, because the two were of a piece. Part of participating in civil life was participating in the militia.
Most folks who could afford firearms had them, because they were essential for self-defense and for getting food. And, if you were eligible to participate in public life – i.e., if you were a free white adult, mostly but not exclusively a property owner – you also participated in the militia.
If you had a firearm, you probably used it while serving. If not, or if your militia decided to standardize on a weapon you didn’t happen to own, you might use public arms. Whatever made sense.
Note that “militia” here does not mean a hypothetical or notional militia, but a real one, involving military training, and requiring that you would turn out when called to participate in public defense.
Which is a tradition that goes back in English-speaking culture at least to the Assize of Arms in 1181.
The right that is conferred, as I see it, is the right for anyone who is eligible to participate in public life to own a firearm.
The motivation for the right – the reason it is specifically called out and included in the list of rights belonging to the people – is so that citizens could continue to participate in the defense of the community.
Not “community” meaning “my gated community”, or “my gun club”, but “community” meaning the political community.
That doesn’t rule out *also* using firearms for hunting, or self-defense, but those purposes are not included in the 2nd. By which I mean, the 2nd says, literally, nothing about them.
So I see, frex, Brett’s point when he says it’s a right, but what I don’t see from keep and carry advocates is a recognition of the other part.
There’s talk about “well regulated” meaning “you have a gun handy and you know which end the bullet comes out of”. And there’s talk of “militia” meaning “me and my buddies when we dress up and play soldier”. There’s even talk of “I’m a militia of one”.
To say that any of that is supported by the text of the Amendment or the history is, IMVHO, utter crap.
Likewise, claiming that you have a right to exercise a “2nd Amendment solution” to laws passed by the legally elected representatives of the people of the US is, IMVHO, utter crap. It is certainly unsupportable from the actual history of the country, which includes many examples of pissed off citizens rising up against laws they thought were bad or unfair, and having the real, live militia put them down quite promptly.
My point of view on this is that insisting on your right to keep and carry private firearms that are the equivalent of milspec firearms, without also submitting to the discipline and responsibility of participating in national defense is, from the point of view of the original intent of the 2nd, nonsense.
If that’s your point of view, IMHO you want your cake, and you want to eat it, too.
I have no problem with people owning firearms to hunt, to defend themselves in their home or on their property, to shoot target whether on a range or in any safe place. I have no problem with people carrying a firearm on their person, provided that they aren’t criminals or demonstrably irresponsible, and that they respect folks who don’t want a firearm carried on THEIR property, for whatever reason.
I think the idea that the 2nd Amendment means you have an inalienable right to privately own an automatic weapon, or a semi-automatic weapon, or an extended or high capacity magazine, or any form of firearm designed and intended for tactical military use, outside of the context of actually participating in a military commanded by an elected civilian government, just because you want one, is just not what was intended by the 2nd, and as a practical matter is plain nuts.
Likewise, IMO the idea that you have an inalienable right to own milspec firearms so that you can take up arms against the duly elected government of your country because you, personally, don’t agree with outcomes of the legitimate political process is not only wrong, it’s 180 degrees wrong. That is called “treason” and “insurrection”, and will deserve and be met by forcible resistance, not least from the modern day equivalent of the actual citizen militia.
Just as it was in the founder’s day.
If you like to shoot, shoot. You don’t need a f***ing 100 round magazine to hunt, defend yourself or your home, or shoot target. The rest of us have a readily demonstrable interest in not having that sh*t floating around the civilian population.
That’s my take on the whole sorry mess.
WRS
Well put, russell
Just for the record, I disagree with banning suzie_Q, not that I have a voice, which is fine, too.
But I think OBWI needs more commentary from womens’ points of view, even if it’s not from a woman, IF that’s what just happened.
Likewise, claiming that you have a right to exercise a “2nd Amendment solution” to laws passed by the legally elected representatives of the people of the US is, IMVHO, utter crap. It is certainly unsupportable from the actual history of the country, which includes many examples of pissed off citizens rising up against laws they thought were bad or unfair, and having the real, live militia put them down quite promptly.
And, as I pointed out at another blog, when confronted with two 20th century examples of real, honest-to-goodness, beyond-the-pale government tyranny — the Japanese internment and the Jim Crow South — not only did the Brett Bellmores of America not rise up in defense of citizens, they were actively complicit in perpetrating the atrocities.
John Wilkes Boothe, the Founder of the Modern Republican Party, rose up against government tyranny using the full force of the Second Amendment, I’ll have you know, so there is that.
Oh, he was a Democrat at the time, yeah, but he followed Strom Thurmond into the Republican Party mid 20th Century when he finally realized how liberal RINO Abe Lincoln really was.
The Constitution is not a living document, I’m told, but the words of Tench Coxe live on and the actions of Boothe keep kicking.
Public Service Announcement:
IP evidence suggests that suzy_q has no connection to Blackhawk/avedis, and see no reason to ban her.
Argue with the arguments, people.
What was it someone once said about Americans “clinging to guns?” Boy, does that guy have egg on his face!
Liberals are so angry about the right to bear arms and want to encroach on that right
Oh dear me. But, but, but…what if it is clearly not the “right” you believe it to be?
Where does that leave us?
Gary Wills…..is a nitwit… Eloquent? Perhaps, depending on the context. Closely and unassailibly reasoned? Have we reached the Godwin limit?
And what Russell & HSH said.
I read the Wills response, and was left with the question: am I a part of the gun culture, or not?
That depends.
Public Service Announcement:
IP evidence does not suggest any connection between suzy_q and Blackhawk/avedis, nor do I see any reason to ban her.
Argue with the arguments, people.