by hilzoy
This is horrific:
"A gunman invaded an immigration services center in downtown Binghamton, N.Y., during citizenship classes on Friday and shot 13 people to death and critically wounded 4 others before killing himself in a paroxysm of violence that turned a quiet civic setting into scenes of carnage and chaos.
The killing began around 10:30 a.m. and was over in minutes, witnesses said, but the ordeal lasted up to three hours for those trapped inside the American Civic Association as heavily armed police officers, sheriff’s deputies and state troopers threw up a cordon of firepower outside and waited in a silence of uncertainty.
Finally, officers who had not fired a shot closed in and found a sprawl of bodies in a classroom, 37 terrified survivors cowering in closets and a boiler room and, in an office, the dead gunman, identified as Jiverly Wong, 42, a Vietnamese immigrant who lived in nearby Johnson City."
"I felt fairly sure that if my friend ever did try to kill someone, it would be with a gun. He's not particularly strong or athletic, and he has very little physical confidence, so killing people by means that require either strength or dexterity seemed unlikely. That left, mainly, guns. Moreover, this particular person is not very street-smart; if I had to rank my friends by how likely they are to succeed at obtaining an illegal firearm, he'd be pretty close to last. And he didn't have a gun when this started. So it seemed to me that if I could keep him from getting a gun license, I would make it much, much less likely that he'd end up killing people.
So I called the gun licensing board in his jurisdiction. I didn't expect them to deny him a gun license on my say-so, and would in fact have been pretty appalled if they had. But I had a fairly extensive collection of emails in which he discussed what he wanted to do at considerable length, so I offered to send them the emails, and also to allow them whatever access they needed in order to verify that these emails had in fact been sent to me. If they couldn't spare the resources (this friend lived over a thousand miles away, so that seemed likely), I also offered to let them choose a forensic computer person to do it, and to pay the tab. I also offered to pay for a psychiatrist of their choosing to evaluate the emails and determine whether or not the person who wrote them was indeed a threat. Because I thought: while it would be awful if I could get them to deny someone a gun license just by making unsubstantiated claims about his sanity, surely there must be some provision for denying a gun license to someone who is demonstrably homicidal.
Guess what? There isn't. Or so that particular gun licensing board told me. If someone has committed a felony, they said, he can be denied a license. But if they are merely insane and homicidal, there's nothing anyone can do.
And that's just wrong."
I still think so. This is not about the general issue of gun control. I don't have strong views about gun control, at least if we're talking about rifles and handguns, as opposed to mortars or rocket-propelled grenades. I am not saying this as the opening salvo in a ban to criminalize the private possession of firearms. This is not the entering edge of any wedge, or the first step down a slippery slope. I just think that there should be some process, with safeguards and due process to guard against abuse, that makes it possible to prevent someone who from getting a gun when there is clear evidence that that person is homicidal.
I had my moment of horror some time ago, when I heard about one shooter, and recognized the last name. And I thought, my god, it can’t be.
But it was.
Second cousin, once removed; someone who was at family parties on that side. A kid who played with the other kids younger than I.
I hadn’t talked to him in many years, but I got cold, and my world turned darker.
We still don’t talk about what happened, only about what his father went through, after.
// I just think that there should be some process, with safeguards and due process to guard against abuse, that makes it possible to prevent someone who from getting a gun when there is clear evidence that that person is homicidal.//
Why just stop them from getting a gun? Other devices make murder easier. Knives, cars, power tools, various poisons, water, baseball bats, and many other objects can easily be used to kill someone. If there is “clear evidence” that a person is homicidal shouldn’t he be locked up? Or at least put into a mental institute for help.
We shouldn’t wait for the actual homicide to occur if the likelihood exists beforehand. Clearly intent is formed before the deed – in fact, intent is one of the elements necessary for a murder conviction, I believe. So we should weed out people when their is “clear evidence” that they have intent. What is clear evidence. Certainly if they say, “I’m going to kill you” they have expressed intent. Someone who says, “I could’ve killed him”, has not expressed intent but is close. That person should submit to retraining sessions at least. If someone says “I made a killing in Las Vegas” he should be detained until it can be proven that he did not kill someone.
It’s important that we do these things “with proper safeguards and due process” of course.
And lock the capitalists up too because they have been killing by proxy all their lives.
//I hadn’t talked to him in many years,//
Clearly it is your fault. He felt alienated from society. His own relatives wouldn’t even talk to him. You should be locked up too.
Lefty reads a paper: “Oh that’s awful, we should make a law.”
Righty reads the paper: “Oh that’s awful.”
d’d’d: “You should be locked up too.”
Be careful. The posting rules are watching.
In addition to the awful crime, I found this disturbing:
Police heard no gunfire after they arrived but waited for about an hour before entering the building to make sure it was safe for officers.
Is it just me, or has there been a noticeable up-tick in shooting/murder sprees lately?
Stuttering dave, apparently you missed this:
I felt fairly sure that if my friend ever did try to kill someone, it would be with a gun. He’s not particularly strong or athletic, and he has very little physical confidence, so killing people by means that require either strength or dexterity seemed unlikely. That left, mainly, guns.
I know it’s only the FIRST SENTENCE of the quote, so it’s easy to overlook… Sheesh.
Dave/Frank,
Go [posting rule violation] yourself. But before you do, answer me this: how many mass murders with “baseball bats” have you ever heard of?
I have known several NRA types in real life. I’ve seen them mount their RKBA soap-box after every mass shooting hits the news, usually before the bodies get cold and certainly long before any “lefty” proposes to “make a law”. Their snark is way better than yours, but their paranoia is similar: any law that might keep psychologically sick people from obtaining guns would be insupportably oppressive.
Well, [expletive]. If the big, bad government went into a public place every few months and shot a dozen random people, that would be insupportably oppressive. If the government had it in its power to prevent a mass shooting every few months, and refused to do it, sane people would be demanding to know the reason why. Gun fetishists, on the other hand …
–TP
Tony P – Just to be clear, your above post was not directed at me, was it?
While it seems perfectly logical for the average American to ignore Canada, it has always puzzled me why American academics don’t routinely compare the Canadian experience. After all, we essentially have the same British roots. I guess your base is those who rebelled, and ours the victims of the American revolution. Perhaps the fact that Canada evolved into an independent state accounts for some difference in perspective. Why is the homicide rate in Canada so much lower than US?
The answer seems obvious to me- the ready availability of guns. If you really wanted to stop these kind of atrocities you’d get rid of the guns that make them possible. Take away the guns and these multiple killings would be so much less likely to occur, because it would be physically impractical for someone to kill a dozen with the knife/baseball bat.
You also have a war going on in Mexico. How is it carried on? with guns which originated in the US. (Many gun deaths in Canada are caused by guns smuggled in from US.)
Cigarettes are taxed with the rationale that the tax offsets the health care costs of smoking. Has anyone suggested the same principle should be incorporated into the price of guns and ammunition? Those Americans who want their guns should pay the costs occasioned by the guns.
Dave C, I’m not Tony P, but I feel confident he was addressing D’d’dave, the Dave with the incendiary, hyperbolical, and counterfactual comments.
Johnny Canuck, I don’t know what the answers are about what causes the American murder rate, but even though I am not well informed I would pretty much guarantee that you’re not correct when you say that “American academics don’t routinely compare the Canadian experience.” I’m quite sure that American academics do frequently compare different societies within the US, compare the US to Canada, and make comparisons to still other countries. You might also be interested in this table that I found from a quick Google – according to the table, gun ownership is much higher in the US than in other countries examined (4x that of Canada), but gun violence is even higher (10x that of Canada) – which may only suggest that the problem isn’t so much widespread guns as it is essentially unregulated guns; but I’m sure that the academics you deride have thought much more deeply and with much more information than I have and have their own explanations; some of them may even agree with each other.
Good job you can’t kill someone with a strawman, or d’d’d’dave would finish us all off.
As a specific response to him, here is one contrast from from the UK in 1996. Mentally ill man with machete runs amok in school: seven children and adults severely injured. Man with handguns runs amok in school: seventeen children and adults killed.
Notice any difference?
We keep dancing around the mental health issues. If you think getting regular physical health care is often dicey, think about trying to find a psychiatrist or psychologist for someone who has troubles. And what managed care must have done to that.
For a mentally ill person, its a multiple whammy: the mental illness prevents regular employment which provides health insurance that provides payment for therapy and medicine. Sometimes even a working person can’t pay for insurance and therapy because the job doesn’t cover it. So people are untreated and people die.
With this recession, so many people who are tenously hanging on are losing their health insurance, their access to meds, their supportive daily routine, and subsequently their links to reality.
Carol: So true. A basic psychological test would be a very good idea for a firearm permit, but if it doesn’t come with the chance at care for those in need, it would become one more way to let people with privilege have their guns and others not.
The US’s extreme social inequality and its fascination with guns and violence feed each other. Claims of guns playing a major crime deterrence role are apparently all compromised when not outright fraudulent, leaving us with offensive uses. Guns multiply the gap between criminal and victim, strengthening whatever’s wrong in the perpetrator–mental illness, or allegedly sane bigotry and fear, or anything at all that thrives on the prospect of violence to other human beings. Health care goes right along with gun control in bringing about a society that’s good for most of the people living in it.
” Why is the homicide rate in Canada so much lower than US?”
Well, the US is a big, heterogeneous country, and you should remember that, while the homicide rate is insanely higher in some places in the US, it’s actually lower than Canada in other places.
And those other places tend to have high rates of gun ownership, so it’s hard to make the case that gun ownership is driving the difference, unless you deliberately do a rather crude analysis to avoid noticing those local differences.
“Claims of guns playing a major crime deterrence role are apparently all compromised when not outright fraudulent,”
They’re all disputed by people who like gun control. I’m not certain that’s quite the same thing as “compromised”.
Why just stop them from getting a gun?
Guns have exactly one use, which is to do grievous bodily harm. The other things you mention have other proper uses. None of them, in fact, make murder easier than a firearm does.
Point and click, dude. Nothing simpler.
But since you mention it, I’d be fine with denying homicidal people access to poisons, and I’d be fine with involuntary commitment to a psychiatric institution.
Talk about how all you can think about these days is blowing some folks away? Meet my friends in the white coats.
In fact, were I ever to get to that point I hope someone would make sure I ended up in the same place. I’d consider it a personal favor and an act of generous human concern.
Have you ever gone as far for a friend in distress as hilzoy did for her friend?
No need to make an answer here, just answer that for yourself.
As a personal aside, allow me to mention that you’re not bringing much to the table these days. Your comments used to be better than this.
it’s worth noting one typical piece of nra sophistry that the dumber dave duly dittoes.
it’s the differential-lethality two-step.
when someone kills a bunch of people with a gun, then all of the gun-nuts come out from under their rocks to tell us that guns are no more lethal than “knives, cars, power-tools, various poisons,” and so on.
but when they want to tell us why they need unrestricted access to guns, then all of a sudden guns are the only thing that can help stave off tyranny, defeat the evil invaders (wolverines!) and protect us from roving gangs of people who look different.
really? only guns stand between us and slavery?
i thought you said knives would do. or cars. or baseball bats. surely as long as we have free access to those lethal weapons, that gives us everything we need to keep tyranny at bay, doesn’t it? so having a gun is not vital to liberty after all, is it? so i assume that you will be happy to sell off your guns, provided you’re allowed to keep your baseball bats, various poisons, and rolled-up newspapers, right? and you certainly won’t mind guns being subject to licensing and registration similar to that other, super-lethal weapon, the automobile, right?
but, no; now it will be time for the other part of the two-step again. now they will tell us that when the jack-booted federal thugs come to oppress them, only guns will allow a lone patriot to defeat the army of statist enslavers.
let’s leave the nra and its robots to their two-step. what’s the real truth here?
guns are uniquely lethal. there is no other legal object that this guy could have put into a satchel around his neck, walked into a building, and killed 13 other people with such speed and ease. cars, bats, and poisons just won’t do it.
that’s why i support sensible legislation to keep guns out of the hands of crazies, and to license their owners as we do with cars.
guns are also uniquely effective and convenient. that’s one reason why i myself have owned guns (both long guns and handguns) in the past, and why i would oppose any general ban on gun ownership.
neither i nor any liberal that i know wants to “outlaw guns”.
but i sure wish we could get rid of that particular piece of bad, dishonest gun-nut sophistry.
Dave C,
Rest assured: it was d’d’d’dave (formerly, Frank) I was addressing.
kid bitzer,
To the “lethality two-step” we can also add another piece of gun-fetishist sophistry. The 2nd Amendment, my NRA friends tell me, is what guarantees the rest of the Bill of Rights. I keep asking them for examples of gun-toting patriots resisting government oppression such as Japanese internment or Jim Crow. No joy.
The gun nuts’ bottom line is: we need guns to defend our individual right to own guns. You have to admit, their logic is flawless on that.
–TP
“Well, the US is a big, heterogeneous country, and you should remember that, while the homicide rate is insanely higher in some places in the US, it’s actually lower than Canada in other places.”
Exactly. Toronto has a much higher murder rate than Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. I’d like to see some pointy headed academic try and explain that inconvenient fact, at least before they don their jackboots and try to replace my AR-15 with a butter knife.
Also, if ‘global warming’ were real, why was it so cold this past winter? Hmm…
Just a pet-peeve:
“shooting/murder sprees”
Shopping sprees certainly.
“Murder rampages” sounds about right.
Although sometimes shopping sprees at Wal Mart turn into trampling rampages.
I suppose a person could start out on a shopping spree one fine Spring day, lose their temper, go on a murder rampage, and finish their shopping spree while the sales are on, and then go home and hide d’d’d’ddave’s n’n’n’nail g’gg”g’ gun and act like nothing had happened.
During the Korean Spree, I took out an entire machine gun nest with nothing but a hacksaw and a plastic Honey-Bear dispenser filled with wild clover honey.
I remember the days when the Russkies tried to build an entire Home Depot of high-end power tools in Cuba. We had U2 photos of claw hammers and staple guns lined up ready to go.
“Guns have exactly one use, which is to do grievous bodily harm.”
I was all with the right liberal side on this thread, until I got here, but this is nonsense, Russell: guns are important in rural areas where there’s dangerous wild game, and they’re great for target practice, and they also have a place in limited circumstances for self-protection. Then there’s also the sport of hunting, which have no interest in, and many people find distasteful, but which is nonetheless an ancient tradition (and useful for some for food-gathering).
Lots of people just enjoy target practice; there’s nothing illegitimate about it.
There are plenty of excellent arguments for a number of sorts of gun control, and there are plenty of lousy arguments. “Guns have only one purpose” is one of the lousiest. Because it’s laughably untrue. (“I don’t like what you do, so it doesn’t exist” is not a good argument.)
To answer x’s question above, yes, there have been a number of mass shooting murders recently. Several of them have happened with almost no notice; none has stayed in the news outside the local area for more than a few days.
The only reason I’m aware of this is that I happened to read this column a few weeks ago, after the Alabama rampage.
hide d’d’d’ddave’s n’n’n’nail g’gg”g’ gun and act like nothing had happened
John Thullen Top Ten candidate.
If gun control eliminates one of these mass killings a year, wouldn’t that be worth it?
This isn’t about making it hard for hunters to hunt. This is about making it hard for killers to kill.
“If gun control eliminates one of these mass killings a year, wouldn’t that be worth it?”
This is a terrible argument, too.
First, it doesn’t define “gun control,” a term that subsumes an endless number of possibly policies, so it’s useless.
Second, it’s an argument that applies equally well to cutting off people’s hands, or any of an endless list of equal absurdities.
For instance: if making everyone register at their local police station, and have to carry identifying papers at all times, eliminates one of these mass killings a year, wouldn’t that be worth it?
If giving everyone an electronic ID tage, and making them have to wear it at all times, eliminates one of these mass killings a year, wouldn’t that be worth it?
Etc. No, that’s not an argument that does other than go a few inches and drop dead of uselessness.
Gary is right. A lot of the arguments being offered up here for various types of gun control are pretty bad. That’s not to say that there aren’t any good arguments, just that not many of them are being made here.
Of course, some of the pro-gun stuff is equally crap. I’ve encountered few issues where the arguments on both sides are so often so weak.
Unfortunately, this is one of those issues where it’s virtually impossible to have a calm, rational debate, because both sides are so passionate. And what makes this worse than other such issues is how it seems (to me, anyway) that if you’re not on one extreme or the other, both extremes will vilify and marginalize you.
“If you think getting regular physical health care is often dicey, think about trying to find a psychiatrist or psychologist for someone who has troubles. And what managed care must have done to that.”
This is true. One very lucky thing about my friend: he had enough money to be able to pay for psychiatric care. The problem was talking him into going, and making sure I had the name of a very good psychiatrist all ready (in a city a couple of thousand miles away), not arranging payment. If he had had to depend on community health centers or whatever the psychiatric equivalent of the care Gary describes on his blog — well, I don’t really want to think about that.
My own personal position on gun control gains me little favor with many: I don’t care very much. I don’t see any likelihood of any national laws much stricter than requiring registration and training/licensing, and mildly limited who can own a gun, and mildly limiting types of guns that can be owned in various circumstances, passing in the foreseeable future, and I don’t see even the most stringent likely such law having all that much effect on either the number of guns available, legal and illegal, to people who want them, or having all that much effect on crime.
So I don’t see it as an issue worth much energy or caring about, from either side. Unpopular as this view is.
Myself, I’m inclined to leave it to states and counties and muncipalities: circumstances in America vary wildly, and I don’t see it as making any sense to have the same gun laws for a rural county in Montana as in Manhattan.
And, again, because of this, there’s always going to be a lot of fungibility in guns flowing from one place in America to another.
So basically, I think those all hot and bothered about how their guns will be confiscated, and those all hot and bothered to ban guns or strictly limit them so as to save lives, are largely, other than on the margins, wasting their time and energy on an issue where there will be no likely large-scale change, other than on the margins, and what change that might happen will make little difference, other than on the margins.
Oh, and I’m personally fine with requiring people to pass a safety/usage test before being allowed to own a gun — I think that would be wise — but otherwise largely allowing people who aren’t in excluded categories (felons, people with severe mental illness), to be issued licenses for handguns, shotguns, and rifles, after passing such a test and background check, without further need to demonstrate “need.”
But that’s me, and as I said, I really don’t care all that much, one way or another.
Brett and the gun NRA/gun enthusiasts’ arguments about how they need their guns to stave of the government, and defend their rights, are nonsense. Personal arms are useless in such circumstances, and there’s never been a sign of anyone trying to use them to defend actual rights, let alone successfully.
But arguments for severe gun control in America largely aren’t much better: even if somehow a majority became convinced that a program of major confiscation was in order, it would work only mildly better than drug prohibition. You could noticiably cut down on ownership of guns, but most people who really really really want one will still be able to get one.
And, honestly, horrible as a massacre of a couple of dozen people is, and horrible as it would be if we had one a week, it wouldn’t come close to the 35,000+ people a year who die in auto fatalities. Wanna save lives? If you’re numerate, you’re going to look at plenty of other places than at guns.
“I keep asking them for examples of gun-toting patriots resisting government oppression such as Japanese internment or Jim Crow. No joy.”
The battle of Athens?
“Gary is right. A lot of the arguments being offered up here for various types of gun control are pretty bad. That’s not to say that there aren’t any good arguments, just that not many of them are being made here.
Of course, some of the pro-gun stuff is equally crap. I’ve encountered few issues where the arguments on both sides are so often so weak.”
Here’s a suggestion: Where the arguments on both sides are weak, the side that wants to be left the hell alone should prevail. In this case, that would be the gun owners.
“Exactly. Toronto has a much higher murder rate than Dixeville Notch, New Hampshire.”
Toronto has a much higher murder rate than a large swath of the US. Whole states are safer. But, you know what? Canada differs from the US on a long list of factors, not just the availability of firearms. Given that violent crime rates vary by several orders of magnitude from place to place in the US, even when the availability of firearms is roughly constant, the least that can be said about this, is that, even if availability of guns is “a” factor in murder rates, the US demonstrates that other factors are enormously more influential. As in, hundreds to thousands of times more powerful.
the side that wants to be left the hell alone should prevail. In this case, that would be the gun owners.
i will assert that not wanting to be shot by unhinged wingnut #2864 is a stronger form of wanting “to be left the hell alone”.
“If he had had to depend on community health centers or whatever the psychiatric equivalent of the care Gary describes on his blog — well, I don’t really want to think about that.”
I really really dislike Raleigh compared to Boulder: I miss the mountains, I miss the compactness, I miss the excellent bus system, I miss the caucus politics, I miss a lot of things. I hate the awful bus system, and the heat, here.
But here in Wake County, I’m seeing a psychiatrist for presciptions as necessary, and a therapist every week, who comes to where I live, paid for by the State (as run through the non-profit Easter Seals agency).
In contrast, in Boulder, the local poor people’s medical clinic was accessible, and one could get an appointment within a couple of weeks at worst, within a week or less at best, but here it seems to be every three months, and since the buses only run once an hour, so taking two buses takes two hours or so each way, it’s a long trip. But there was no long-term mental health care available that I could find (I was on a couple of wait lists that didn’t pan out).
But I’m immensely grateful for the mental health care here.
Gary: I’m glad. I was thinking of your recent post about having gone to an appointment now, and the next one, with the tests, being in June. I’m glad that shrinks, in particular, are less problematic.
“My own personal position on gun control gains me little favor with many: I don’t care very much.”
Exactly how I feel, in every detail. I could repeat Gary’s arguments, but I’ll just stick with “ditto”.
Re: Sensible gun regulation
When thinking of reducing gun violence through regulation think: automobiles.
Central registries for weapons; licenses and liability insurance for owners; and ‘rules of the road’ for safe storage and handling. This is low low hanging fruit that every automobile user can immediately identify with.
There are two types of gun violence that could be dramatically reduced: those facilitated by impulse; and those aided by opportunism. Impulse – suicide, domestic violence, immaturity, mental stability, etc. Opportunism – guns used in crimes are often obtained in car thefts or residential burglaries, where the weapon is inadequately secured.
Gun Risks are comparable to Car risks. Think about it.
“Gun Risks are comparable to Car risks.”
That’s my thought, save that cars cause ten times more harm in America. Of course, it can be argued that they do a hundred times more good, so that the trade-off is acceptable.
Personally I’d rather see a lot more mass transit, and a lot more zoning design to make it useful.
But the extremists on both sides of the gun issue will never accept the car analogy: the most gunphobic will continue to claim that guns “only have one purpose” and need to be banned, and a high proportion of gun-owners have been trained by the NRA to not agree to the faintest compromise, because they “know” it will lead inevitably to a slippery slope of confiscation. And, ideologically, it’s a limitation of their inalienable rights, etc.
Neither of these two mindsets is going away any time soon.
“Toronto has a much higher murder rate than a large swath of the US. Whole states are safer.”
Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Iowa and New Hampshire appear to be the only states with a lower homicide rate than Toronto.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-1996-2007
“[Toronto’s] metropolitan homicide rate in 2006 was lower than every American city with a population above 500,000…. And of the seventy-two American cities with populations over 250,000, Toronto’s 2006 metropolitan homicide rate (1.8 per 100,000) was lower than every other city except for Plano, Texas—the wealthiest city in the United States—which had a homicide rate of 1.6 per 100,000.
http://torontoist.com/2008/07/metrocide_a_tale_of_sixty_cities.php
” Why is the homicide rate in Canada so much lower than US?”
Well, the US is a big, heterogeneous country
Do you realize how “heterogeneous” Toronto is?
# The top five visible minority groups in Toronto were:
* South Asian at 298,372 or 12.0 per cent of our population;
* Chinese at 283,075 or 11.4 per cent;
* Black at 208,555 or 8.4 per cent;
* Filipino at 102,555 or 4.1 per cent;
* Latin American at 64,860 or 2.6 per cent.
…”extremists on both sides of the gun issue will never accept the car analogy…”
I wonder.
The Supreme Court has found a personal right to a gun under the 2d Amendment… removing the extremes on both sides – those who fear confiscation, and those who crave it.
Politicians will pass any legislation that advances a legislator’s prospects. A sleeping public made an easy target for the NRA. Let’s think about the NRA. It exists to extract money from its constituents. If liability insurance were required of gun owners, the NRA would be the most likely first entrant into that segment of the insurance market. It already provides liability insurance to gun ranges through some sort of captive.
ALL, literally all of us drive cars. We spend a lot of money and time going through the legal hoops that responsible car ownership entails. We do it because we understand the benefits of auto regulation.
(Picture a US without auto regulation. NYC had to cope with it early last century.) Comparable gun regulation should be an easy sale to the auto driving public, and to responsible gun owners as well.
This really would work.
“ALL, literally all of us drive cars.”
This isn’t true. Just saying. Many people in large cities don’t. I don’t. (I wish I did have a license, down here, and could afford even a junker.
it’s true, I am prone to exaggeration.
But still…..
35% of drivers responsible for auto fatalities are unlicensed. link 14% of drivers nationally are uninsured: in California, it is 25%. link
Even with required training, licensing, insurance, and registration, those who do not wish to follow the law simply don’t. And auto accidents are generally unintentional, as opposed to the intentional acts with guns. I would assume that the self selection of those who do not follow the law would be greater for the intentional acts.
I think that treating guns like cars and requiring licensing, training, and insurance would be next to useless to addressing situations like this.
Where the arguments on both sides are weak, the side that wants to be left the hell alone should prevail. In this case, that would be the gun owners.
Yes, those 13 dead immigrants should have just left the gun owners the hell alone.
Yes, those 13 dead immigrants should have just left the gun owners the hell alone.
meddling bystanders!
I think that treating guns like cars and requiring licensing, training, and insurance would be next to useless to addressing situations like this.
You might be right if we treat guns exactly like automobiles. But consider an alternative: what if possession of a gun, starting from its manufacture, required a license and insurance? Possession without insurance would be punished with long prison terms and the seizure of all assets. Committing a crime with a gun would lead to massive payments by the insurer.
Gun manufacturers would not sell to anyone without going to great lengths to ensure that those buyers were properly insured. If you’re a boring guy with no history of violence, getting insurance is cheap. But insurance can be revoked, so if hilzoy contacts the firearm insurance companies and starts voicing concerns, they now have a big incentive to investigate since they’re on the hook for millions of dollars in damages if her friend decides to go on a shooting spree. Likewise, if you start abusing your spouse and they get a restraining order against you, your insurance might go up. Presumably, you could get a reduction in exchange for getting evaluated by a psychiatrist.
The point is, having a gun increases risks. For some people, that increased risk is insignificant but for others it is extremely high. We need to price that risk and start transferring it through a market: that’s what insurance is all about. This will not eliminate criminal uses of guns or firearm accidents, but it will reduce them and it will ensure that the costs of those accidents are borne by people who insist on keeping guns in direct proportion to the danger they pose to society.
But consider an alternative: what if possession of a gun, starting from its manufacture, required a license and insurance?
Rubbish. If rich people have the right to own guns, poor people do too.
Rubbish. If rich people have the right to own guns, poor people do too.
I live in a state where insurance is required to drive. The voters here have decided that those too poor to pay for insurance do not have the right to drive. I see no reason why guns should be any different.
In any event, the sufficiently rich right now enjoy all sorts of privileges denied the poor, including access to weaponry of all sorts.
I live in a state where insurance is required to drive
I live in a state where I witnessed in court a judge refusing to impose penalties for driving without insurance because, as he said, he was not doing the insurance companies’ job for them.
If rich people have the right to own guns, poor people do too.
guns are important in rural areas where there’s dangerous wild game, and they’re great for target practice, and they also have a place in limited circumstances for self-protection. Then there’s also the sport of hunting
Wild game, hunting, and self-protection all fall under ‘grievous bodily harm’. If you disagree, ask any varmint that’s been on the wrong end of a AR-15.
Folks generally don’t hunt with baseball bats.
Target practice is arguable, although ‘practice for what?’ comes right to mind as a reply.
If rich people have the right to own guns, poor people do too.
Is having a right the same as having absolutely no restrictions on that right? Are poor people entitled to the same freedom of speech that rich newspaper owners are? Must the government ban newspaper printing if it is unable to provide every citizen with their very own printing press?
I think you guys are missing the point. My comments were not about gun control and neither were hilzoys. Her comments and mine were about discovering and squashing intent before a crime occurs.
Must the government ban newspaper printing if it is unable to provide every citizen with their very own printing press?
Every citizen has access to their very own printing press, they are available at any library.
If rich people have the right to own guns, poor people do too.
I think you guys are missing the point.
I would be surprised if anyone here still cares what you think.
“Target practice is arguable, although ‘practice for what?’ comes right to mind as a reply.”
For fun, for one thing. Lots of people shoot guns at targets for fun.
It may not be your thing (and I only did it a handful of times as a kid), but it’s a fact that tons of people do this.
Her comments and mine were about discovering and squashing intent before a crime occurs.
Oh absolutely, we would never squash intent before a crime occurs. That’s why if you call up the FBI/CIA/NSA and explain that you have strong reason to believe that a particular agent has been compromised, they’ll hang up the phone without even hearing you out. Just like if you called up a school and explained that one of the teachers had confided in you that they wanted to molest children, the school would do absolutely nothing. In both cases, it is much better to react to problems rather than investigate and avoid them in the first place.
As always dave, you bring such a keen insight into how organizations function.
Every citizen has access to their very own printing press, they are available at any library.
A photocopier is really not equivalent to the publishing power afforded to the owners of the New York Times for example. In some abstract sense, they both allow one to “publish”, but a guy with a copier has vastly less power to practically exercise his free speech rights than the owner of a large newspaper.
Then again, under my proposal, every citizen would have the right to own toy guns. A toy gun is to a real gun as a copy machine is to the NYT.
If rich people have the right to own guns, poor people do too.
If rich people have the right to fly airplanes, than poor people do to, even if they can’t afford flight school!
You can keep repeating this statement without actually engaging my arguments but it just makes you look silly.
A photocopier is really not equivalent to the publishing power afforded to the owners of the New York Times for example.
The guy with the photocopier isn’t going bankrupt as we speak, he has a business model that actually works.
If rich people have the right to own guns, poor people do too.
You can keep repeating your statements too, your reflexive defense of the rich and powerful.
I’ll keep fighting back, I’m that way.
“In some abstract sense, they both allow one to ‘publish’, but a guy with a copier has vastly less power to practically exercise his free speech rights than the owner of a large newspaper.”
This is true, but seems irrelevant to a consideration of free speech rights as traditionally and legally defined and used in the U.S.: there’s a guarantee of free speech, within various limits specified by the law, but there’s no guarantee of a right to a specific degree of publishing resources.
Just to be clear now_what, do you oppose all mandatory insurance laws? Including those for doctors and other professionals? Do you oppose all laws that impose any kind of financial requirement on workers (like laws requiring expensive medical school educations for those seeking to practice medicine)?
If rich people have the right to own guns, poor people do too.
Having a right is not the same thing as being permitted to exercise it. I have the right to voice my opinion, but not in your living room at 3am.
Just to be clear now_what, do you oppose all mandatory insurance laws?
The person being required to buy the insurance should be the person whose assets are at risk.
Poor people don’t have assets at risk. They don’t need insurance.
Having a right is not the same thing as being permitted to exercise it
That’s just stupid.
“You can keep repeating your statements too, your reflexive defense of the rich and powerful.”
Now you’re mind-reading.
The person being required to buy the insurance should be the person whose assets are at risk.
Why do you believe this?
Moreover, do you think that pedestrians should have to pay for insurance to protect them from the risks of bad drivers? What about people riding buses or taxis? Should I have to purchase bad doctor insurance to protect myself from incompetent doctors with insufficient assets?
That’s just stupid.
You’re right. I intended to write that having a right is not the same as being permitted to exercise it without any restriction. See the aforementioned TPM restrictions.
“Having a right is not the same thing as being permitted to exercise it. I have the right to voice my opinion, but not in your living room at 3am.”
Response: “That’s just stupid.”
It’s perfectly correct: there are many conditions under which your free speech rights are limited by law, such as when commiting libel, inciting to riot, violating noise ordinances, violating litter ordinances, marching without a permit where required, and so on.
Similarly, the recently found individual right to a gun is not at all held to be unlimited.
do you think that pedestrians should have to pay for insurance to protect them from the risks of bad drivers?
The person with assets at risk should pay the insurance. That’s the nature of insurance. Poor people have no assets. They need no insurance.
If I’m a rich pedestrian who normally walks around in an area frequented by bad drivers with no assets, yes, I’m going to buy the bad driver insurance.
Gary: there are many conditions under which your free speech rights are limited by law
See the above clarification by Turbulence.
I’m a gun owner, hunter of sorts (don’t go every year now that I live in California instead of Alaska) and just purchased a hand gun and am in the 10-day waiting period. I don’t consider myself a “gun nut” and support reasonable restrictions on purchasing guns. I didn’t mind the ten-day wait and am glad there are some questions asked.
Hilzoy’s point is well-taken. I do recall being asked if I had ever been a mental health patient but not whether I am actually crazy but just not diagnosed. A psych eval before every purchase seems a bit much, but it would seem fine to add a “if your friend thinks your homicidal and/or nuts and has reasonable proof you won’t get your gun anytime soon” clause.
In response to Tony P., the NRA “nuts” he describes are not typical NRA members or gun owners. There are many that simply enjoy hunting or target practice, enjoy the safety programs and education sponsored by the NRA and so forth.
Gary Farber is on the money politically.
And until someone weeds out the influence of gang activity (especially drug gang activity) and criminality in general, I don’t think general statistics do much good.
Regarding the automobile deaths argument, a large portion of those are alcohol related (around 40%, I think). Alcohol is often involved in violent crimes and homicides. But we don’t talk about prohibition.
I live in a state where I witnessed in court a judge refusing to impose penalties for driving without insurance because, as he said, he was not doing the insurance companies’ job for them.
It would be fascinating to know which state that was, given that
this chart implies that all 50 states have liability insurance requirements for car registration.
If the judge had said he wasn’t going to do the registrars’ work for them, or the motor vehicles department’s work for it, his statement might have made more sense. As it stands, I’m a bit puzzled to know what he meant. Is there a state where the law requires the insurance companies to monitor car owners and make sure they have insurance?
Also puzzling in this context is the statement that The person with assets at risk should pay the insurance. That’s the nature of insurance. Poor people have no assets. They need no insurance.
The liability insurance required for car registration is to protect other people’s assets. Maybe you meant that “poor people” shouldn’t be required to protect other people’s assets, but the fact is that if they want to own a car, the law requires that they do, because a car can wreak serious havoc on assets not owned by the car’s owner.
I should have written “if they want to register a car….” You can own a car without buying insurance for it, but if you want to take it on the road you’re supposed to register it, which — at least where I live — means showing proof of insurance.
Like everything else, people manage to circumvent this requirement and take uninsured cars on the road. That doesn’t make it legal, or (in my opinion) right.
Um, just how are you defining “assets”? A car owner’s insurance covers not only the car and the people and possessions in it, but also those injured by the car, and they certainly aren’t the car owner’s “assets”. If someone is using a gun unwisely, let alone maliciously, in my vicinity, then I consider my ass
etsto be very much at risk.It seems to me that on a public policy basis (if not perhaps on a NRA-tinged “the Tree of Liberty must be watered …” basis) a very good case could be made for strong regulation of gun ownership, including registation, competency tests for licensing, trigger locks or gun cabinets, and, yes, including insurance.
That said, for all that I find your disparagement of gun owners’ having any responsibilities profoundly unconvincing, I’m not sure how much such insurance would cost; although far too many legal guns are involved in horrific accidents and acts of violence, we are awash in a sea of guns, such that the per-gun cost of insurance for such incidents could conceivably not be too high – although if gun owners were forced to qualify for discounts by keeping their noses clean, much as car owners are, then some benefits might result.
Of course gun owners have responsibility: They have the precise same responsibility anybody exercising a civil liberty has: To not exercise it abusively. But what we gun owners don’t have, is the responsibility to submit to all sorts of crazy demands premised on the notion that we’re all ticking time bombs who have to be incapacitated because we can’t be trusted.
You don’t demand that people go around wearing ball gags on the theory that they might otherwise falsely cry fire in a crowded theater. Why think you’re entitled to impose firearms regulations of the same order?
“You don’t demand that people go around wearing ball gags on the theory that they might otherwise falsely cry fire in a crowded theater. Why think you’re entitled to impose firearms regulations of the same order?”
I don’t know exactly what you consider to be “of the same order,” but I’d suggest that guns are, in fact, much more capable of killing people by going off both accidentally and intentionally than mouths and typing fingers are.
There are actually discernible differences between guns and our tools of communication.
A domestic`disturbance in Pittsburgh, once my fair city, ended up with three cops shot dead, at last count.
The gunman apparently was afraid President Obama was going to take his guns away so he thought he’d go on a shooting/murder spree before it was too late.
You don’t want to waste bullets. They get moldy.
In other news, self-described rodeo clown Glenn Beck slipped and fell in his local Bed, Bath, and Beheaded while taking advantage of the two-for-one demagogue white sale and was accidentally scalped by a cheap but effective vegetable-slicing mandolin.
But seriously folks, Glenn Beck just encouraged and enabled the murder of three cops in Pennsylvania.
Bill O’Reilly is outraged because he didn’t think of it first and Beck is hurting his ratings.
Is Ann Coulter air traffic controlling any hijacked airplanes into the FOX studios tonight? The nose of an empty (only the guilty should be butchered) 747 coming through the window and plowing through the three solid inches of clown makeup covering Beck’s face would make for some fine live T.V… Ailes, thta’s a heads up.
Beck’s fantasy of FEMA rounding up conservatives and placing them in detention camps and taxing their estates has better come true soon before one of Beck’s minions puts a bullet in Obama.
I challenge Glenn Beck to a fight in the street. Any time, any place.
“There are actually discernible differences between guns and our tools of communication.”
They’re just not terribly relevant to the question of whether you can impose restrictions on innocent, demonstrably safe exercises of a civil liberty in order to inconvenience criminals.
You look at the list of regulations of speech, and the thing that leaps out at you is that they regulate speech conduct that directly harms, or has a high probability of harming, people.
Firearms related activities of that character have been heavily regulated or illegal for a century or more. Assault with a firearm, negligent discharge. Today we’re not talking about banning conduct that has a high probability of harm, we’re talking about banning conduct which almost never results in harm, in order to inconvenience people with criminal intent. Arbitrary design restrictions, things like that.
There’s an additional problem, which is that gun control has a history, and it’s not a history of good faith. It’s about as sensible to expect gun control to be rationally administered to avoid unnecessarily restricting gun owners’ rights, as it was to expect separate but equal to be equal.
I hope some day the courts will recognize that history of bad faith, the way they did with racial regulations.
The proposed regulations that I tend to hear about are firearm registration, competency tests for licensing, trigger locks or gun cabinets, and (though it seems to be less in vogue these days) regulation of the militarization of personal firearms, most prominently in clip size and certain types of armor-piercing weapons. I’m not sure how any of these constitutes “banning conduct which almost never results in harm.”, as irrespective of the harm question (and some of those are more obviously relevant than others) I don’t see how the first three of them ban anything, and although I’m aware they’re out there I have little sympathy with people who resent laws seeking to ban militarized firearms (and, yes, I have known people who fervently assert their Constitutional right to possess fully-automatic weapons with 50-round drums of armor-piercing ammunition).
“Today we’re not talking about banning conduct that has a high probability of harm, we’re talking about banning conduct which almost never results in harm, in order to inconvenience people with criminal intent.”
We are? Could you quote what “we’re” talking about, and clarify who said it, please? Because as usual, I’ve only seen you write in generalities, and if “we’re” talking about something specific, I’d like to know who here said it and what it was.
Hilzoy’s post, as a reminder, says this: “I just think that there should be some process, with safeguards and due process to guard against abuse, that makes it possible to prevent someone who from getting a gun when there is clear evidence that that person is homicidal.”
So what is it that “we’re” talking about that’s “of the same order” as making “people go around wearing ball gags,” and “banning conduct which almost never results in harm”?
Thanks, Brett.
Please forgive my ignorance, but I’m not aware of what you’re referring to: you’re asserting that gun-owners have been treated similarly to victims of Jim Crow laws?
What “bad faith” are you referring to, specifically, of such a nature?
There’s an additional problem, which is that gun control has a history, and it’s not a history of good faith.
please, share that history with us.
Should we also require some kind of mental evaluation of registered voters to insure they are not likely to vote for some insane renagade who as president will send thousands off to fight an illegal war?
I’m wondering where Brett will be moving to that has gun laws that are, from his perspective, better than the US.
There is something basically wrong with any school of thought that looks at the unprovoked murder of innocent people and rushes to say “Of course you can’t want to do anything that might prevent repetitions of this. We’re in favor of anything as long as we protect the right of unstable people to get the most effective force multipliers available in our society.” I remember when there were perfunctory and sometimes maybe even sincere expressions of grief at the losses and concern about helping improve troubled situations, but these days that’s all socialism, apparently.
“Please forgive my ignorance, but I’m not aware of what you’re referring to: you’re asserting that gun-owners have been treated similarly to victims of Jim Crow laws?”
Gary, gun control isn’t just “similar to Jim Crow”, it started out as PART OF Jim Crow, and only later did gun controllers get around to being equal opportunity deniers of rights.
“There is something basically wrong with any school of thought that looks at the unprovoked murder of innocent people and rushes to say “Of course you can’t want to do anything that might prevent repetitions of this.”
There’s something basically wrong with a school of thought that says, “Yay! An unprovoked murder of innocent people! Let’s use it to attack that civil liberty we don’t like, again!”
Do anything? We can do plenty of “things”. They just can’t be violations of civil liberties.
There’s something basically wrong with a school of thought that says, “Yay! An unprovoked murder of innocent people! Let’s use it to attack that civil liberty we don’t like, again!”
There’s something basically wrong with the school of thought that says unregulated gun ownership is a civil liberty.
The comparison to driving licenses and cars makes sense except for one basic problem: the 2nd Amendment forbids an outright ban on guns. There is no right to drive or register a car.
We have a constitutionally guaranteed right to gun ownership, which courts have found may be restricted by the state only under certain conditions where the state shows a compelling interest in doing so.
The sort of restrictions that can apply, I would think, would be much like the list Warren Terra describes: “firearm registration, competency tests for licensing, trigger locks or gun cabinets, and… regulation of the militarization of personal firearms, most prominently in clip size and certain types of armor-piercing weapons.”
Legally speaking, the question of whether any or all of these are legitimate restrictions on 2nd Amendment rights is a matter for the courts. I can certainly understand there are reasonable arguments for both sides.
Politically speaking, I agree with Gary: there just isn’t, hasn’t been, and likely won’t ever be, any significant constituency for any regulation beyond those and obviously a lot of bipartisan opposition to even going that far.
Anything further would probably legally require a new amendment to repeal the 2nd, and we all know that is just not going to happen.
We have no such right to drive; it is a privelege to be granted or withheld by any state as they see fit. The states are basically on their own as far as their requirements for drivers and all states have their various registration requirements to operate a motor vehicle on the state’s roads. Yes, people sometimes do break the law and drive unlicensed, unregistered, or uninsured. It’s pretty much always poor people, though it also includes people who really shouldn’t drive anyway- like multiple DUI’s, for example.
At one point in my younger years, I did all three. My reason in each case was economic: I was flat broke from working a crappy job, no employment prospects close to home, and living paycheck to paycheck. At one point, I couldn’t afford to meet the financial requirements to legally drive (couldn’t buy insurance, so couldn’t renew the registration, got caught with expired tag and couldn’t pay the fine so my license was suspended), but if I didn’t drive I couldn’t work at all.
I’m guessing that judge mentioned above is basically sympathetic to the idea that people struggling to make ends meet and let their car insurance slip because they’re broke are never going to be able to buy the insurance they need if he hits them with the max fine as well. I had a judge waive my fine for just that reason on the condition that I show 6 months insurance prepaid before the appearance date. (It helps to call the clerk’s office before any appearance. She steered me right. Thanks again, SLO county!)
Too bad we live in a country where a basic necessity, transportation to work, is a privelege and not a right and in most places there are no viable alternatives thanks to our public collective decision not to build any. But that’s a whole ‘nother issue, isn’t it?
So what were we talking about again?
As for Hilzoy’s original post, I’m a bit skeptical. I’d need a lot more detailed description of the safeguards mentioned before I’d be ok with our psychological care system making decisions about any of my rights- whether owning a handgun or not being involuntarily committed. Maybe my past diagnosis of clinical depression, now under treatment, wouldn’t be enough to trigger any alarms. For now.
We’ve already got a problem in Nevada about involuntary commitment: untrained medical personel or police can decide on the spot that someone poses a danger and that person can be held in psychiatric hospital for observation and evaluation for 3 days. At the end of that time, the hospital decides if he or she can be released. The problem is that these are private for-profit hospitals who have every financial incentive to commit people against their will, especially if insurance is paying. I don’t trust this state, at least, to make any decisions about my mental state without abusing that power.
And finally, on the homicide rate. That our gun ownership rate is 4x that of Canada’s but our homicide rate is 10x, that’s because, unlike Canadians, we’re basically scared $%$@less of each other all the time. In no small part thanks to our “if it bleeds it leads” news coverage and to the fearmongers who insist that anyone different is dangerous.
It’s a vicious circle: irrational fear of “the others” drives gun ownership. Rational fear of being shot in turn feeds it as well. We all live with a subliminal (usually) fear that at any time we could be killed by a gunshot. It could be a mugger, burglar, spouse or ex, drunk neighbor, crazy stranger, careless target shooter, or gangsters’ strays. Every stranger we encounter, whether on a city street corner or a suburban parking lot or a lonely country road, is a potential shooter. It’s not necessarily a consious fear, but it is there beneath the surface.
I noticed this last summer living in Japan. The week before I left, I literally dodged bullets in my old neighborhood when some idiot emptied a pistol down my cul-de-sac. Then while there, I got word that my own cousin, young, drunk, and stupid, had been arrested for killing an 18 year old over a dumb high school beef. With an AK 47. The next person I hear say that assault rifles aren’t used in crimes is getting kicked in the groin. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Japan. They’ve got crime, they’ve got violent crime even. But they don’t have guns- so their homicide right is lower than any large US city.
I have no solution. Guns are and will remain a part of American life and therefore gun violence will remain so as well. It’s sad but true. We either accept and find our own ways to deal with the fear or we leave.
And yes, rampages are becoming more common.
http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200904030025
Funny how each of them is an isolated incident and only a few bloggers have noticed that the increased incidence coincides with a huge upsurge in violent paranoia and even calls for civil insurrection, not just from the usual fringe cranks, but from mainstream commenters with TV and radio audiences in the millions. These a-holes are deliberately feeding the paranoia to ensure big audiences. Worse, knowing that the country is filled with unhinged, well-armed crazies who only need a target and a motive, they point to liberals as targets and patriotic duty as a motive.
Ok, just one more thing…
Gary, you cannot compare deaths from car accidents to deaths from murder. Frankly, it’s a bit disgusting.
There is a tremendous qualitative difference between the threat of dying in a car accident, which you can mitigate by wearing a seatbelt, driving defensively, or just not driving at all, and being gunned down by some random stranger. You have no protection against the latter and it can happen anytime anywhere. At work. At home. In your yard. On the street.
There is whole other level of fear involved: an accident, whether with a car or a gun, is just that. Stuff happens. The only blame, if any, is for negligence.
But a murderous rampage is someone, some human being, making a conscious decision that you need to die and then makes it so. Maybe because you’re a liberal. Or an immigrant. Or you’re dressed funny. Or you work for someone they hate. Or you just look like you do. How can anyone mitigate that threat?
AndYnot?: We’ve already got a problem in Nevada about involuntary commitment: untrained medical personel or police can decide on the spot that someone poses a danger and that person can be held in psychiatric hospital for observation and evaluation for 3 days. At the end of that time, the hospital decides if he or she can be released. The problem is that these are private for-profit hospitals who have every financial incentive to commit people against their will, especially if insurance is paying. I don’t trust this state, at least, to make any decisions about my mental state without abusing that power.
But we’re not talking about the state having the power to curtail your liberty, or put you a private for-profit hospital. Only about the state having the power to prevent you from buying a gun, if in the estimation of (say) a medical professional and a judge, you would use the gun to harm other people.
Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. Switzerland also has a low gun-related homicide and gun-related accident rate. In Switzerland, just as Hilzoy thinks would be sane were the case in the US, a person can be banned from gun ownership if due process determines that they will be a danger to themselves or to others if they are allowed to own a gun.
For some reason, the Swiss government feels that in a country with a citizen army where military service is regarded as an obligation of citizenship and where people routinely own guns, it makes sense to regulate gun ownership and gun use.
“There’s something basically wrong with the school of thought that says unregulated gun ownership is a civil liberty.”
Jes, this will shock you, but the definition of “civil liberty” is not “stuff that Jesurgislac approves of”. Contrary to the ACLU, it’s not even, “Stuff that Nadine Strossen approves of”. Civil liberties are rights guaranteed against the government by the Constituiton, and the Constitution damned well does guarantee a right to own firearms.
“But we’re not talking about the state having the power to curtail your liberty, or put you a private for-profit hospital. Only about the state having the power to prevent you from buying a gun, if in the estimation of (say) a medical professional and a judge, you would use the gun to harm other people.”
Again, owning a gun IS A CIVIL LIBERTY. And we keep getting told we shouldn’t fear it being taken away, but it would go a long way towards making that fear genuinely irrational, rather than just inconvenient to gun controlers, if ‘liberals’ would admit that it’s a civil liberty, and treat it like one.
You don’t have to go crawling to the government for permission to exercise a civil liberty. The government can’t take it away from you by a pro-forma action that doesn’t involve a jury trial.
Stop trying to treat this right like a privilege, and we’ll stop thinking you want to take it away.
Hilzoy, if you genuinely think an adult is too dangerous to own guns, then the appropriate response IS to seek their civil commitment, ideally voluntary, involuntary if that’s not possible.
A person who’s too dangerous to own guns is too dangerous to drive cars, too dangerous to stand next to people in line for the subway, too dangerous to be allowed to do umpteen different things that are routine parts of life.
Now, I happen to think that involuntary commitment is too easy for something that’s functionally indistinguishable from imprisonment for a crime, and so convenient to a government that wants to imprison people without trial. But that’s a separate matter from whether or not it’s the appropriate route to go with somebody who is genuinely too dangerous to be allowed out on their own.
Lots of people shoot guns at targets for fun.
Noted. I stand corrected, guns can be used for a purpose other than inflicting bodily harm. They can be used to shoot target.
Her comments and mine were about discovering and squashing intent before a crime occurs.
No, her comment was about responding to a clear statement of intent. The intent is to murder, and the response is to remove the ability to carry the intent out.
And yes, the best time to do that is before the crime occurs.
You don’t have to go crawling to the government for permission to exercise a civil liberty.
There are many, many jurisdictions in the US where it is dead easy to get a firearm. The places where it is difficult, or even just inconvenient, to get a firearm tend to be places where there are public safety concerns that argue against ready and unregulated access to firearms.
Net/net the US is one of the easiest places on earth to get a gun. To talk about the US as a place where you have to ‘go crawling to the government’ to get a firearm is an extraordinary overstatement, and just makes you sound like a crank.
There are very few rights granted in the Constitution and its amendments that are not subject to reasonable limits based on an overriding concern for the public interest. Maybe none. Speech, right to assemble, right for your person and property to be free from search and seizure, all can be and are routinely curtailed to serve a broader public interest.
To hilzoy’s original point: there are, in fact, lots of ways to recognize people who are prone to violence. There is no need to get all ‘Minority Report’ about it. Some folks have actual histories of violent behavior. Some folks are members of organizations that openly call for the violent overthrow of the US government, or call for and plan for programs of violence against specific other groups of people. Some folks telegraph their intentions quite clearly, through obsessive talking or writing about the violent damage they want to do.
I hold with a fairly conservative reading of the 2nd Amendment, and believe that the founders very much intended for private ownership of firearms to be a curb against tyrannical exercise of power by the state. Odd, that, for a lefty, but there you have it.
But I see absolutely no problem with denying gun ownership to people who clearly demonstrate a desire, willingness, or intent to harm other people. Not only is it, IMO, legitimate to do that before a violent act is committed, we should make every effort to do so before a violent act is committed.
It’s hard for me to conceive of an argument to the contrary.
Brett: Civil liberties are rights guaranteed against the government by the Constituiton, and the Constitution damned well does guarantee a right to own firearms.
No. The Constitution guarantees a right to a well-regulated militia – a situation similar to Switzerland, where they can and do deny people gun ownership if those people are incapable of making use of those guns sensibly. I seem to recall us having this discussion before, though.
russell: I hold with a fairly conservative reading of the 2nd Amendment, and believe that the founders very much intended for private ownership of firearms to be a curb against tyrannical exercise of power by the state. Odd, that, for a lefty, but there you have it.
I don’t see how anyone gets that out of the 2nd Amendment. I see how the firearms industry wants to get that out of the 2nd Amendment. But an amendment allowing for private individuals to bear arms in a well-regulated militia is in no way a means for individuals to curb the tyrannical exercise of power by the state. George W. Bush’s appointment by the Supreme Court was not challenged by private ownership of firearms; nor was his illegal program of warrantless wiretapping; nor was the sacking of US Attorneys for failing to do the will of the Bush administration. Where individuals attempt to challenge the power of the state with firearms, we don’t see a curbing of state power; we see people getting killed, without any damage to the power of the state.
You can more sensibly challenge the power of the state via free and fair elections and an independent judicial system: a nation, as they used to say, ruled by laws, not men. Rifles just won’t do it.
While I recognize that the Constitution was the result of political action which necessitated compromises that were, in places, unpalatable to most, it seems fundamentally unsound to argue that the 2nd Amendment contains some accommmodation to sedition by securing a private right to gun ownership – when it simultaneously spells out conditions under which criminal convictions for sedition may occur.
But these arguments are, for the foreseeable future, mooted by the SC decision which affirms that there is, albeit for another reason, a right of private gun ownership.
In retrospect, I think that the SC has done those who favor sensible gun regulation a favor by declaring this right of ownership.
The decision eliminates the NRA’s and gun owners’ fears of state confiscation. It has also resolved the drive, on the other extreme, to confiscate all guns. What remains of these fringes are unreasoning paranoia or the endorsement of illegal behavior.
Sensible gun regulation remains, more firmly than ever, the default middle position. The Car/Gun analogy is apt, precisely so.
Central registries/certificates of title; licenses for guns and owners with proof of financial responsiblity/liability insurance; and ‘rules of the road’ for safe storage and use of guns is, as they say, a no brainer.
E.g. I leave the keys in my car – the law imputes liability to me when someone drives it away and causes harm. I negligently entrust my car to an irresponsible driver, the law imputes liability for harm to me.
E.g. The private market for insurance will act as a significant moderator of behavior. Premiums for an Uzi will, presumably, be higher than a single shot.22. (Most building codes in the US are the product of the private insurance market.)
Consider it……please.
It is true that we have the right to own a gun and have it accidentally discharge and shoot someone.
It is also true that it is a privilege to receive healthcare for gunshot wounds.
Why can’t people get this straight, since it follows the internal logic of the universe as parsed by the Founders?
And we keep getting told we shouldn’t fear it being taken away, but it would go a long way towards making that fear genuinely irrational,
the fear will never go away because the GOP needs it as a tool to rally the party faithful.
“No. The Constitution guarantees a right to a well-regulated militia”
Jes, you appear to have missed District of Columbia v. Heller. (Here is a short news account version.)
I invite you to peruse the text of Federalist #46, penned by publius. It does tend to illustrate the thinking of Madison, and I doubt he was operating in a vacuum.
Excerpt:
So, it’s not as if no one was thinking about that sort of thing, back then. Nor is it that Madison was uninvolved in the process of composing the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
What the modern-day analogue of state militias might be is a slightly different topic.
Fine, Slarti. Obviously, if – say 150 years ago – the tyrannical power of the federal government had attempted to curb the right of individual states to leave the union, the right of individuals to bear arms would have stopped that from happening, and the states that wanted to secede would have done so.
Clearly proven by historical circumstance. Yes indeed.
*wanders off, shaking head*
She appears not to have actually read the 2nd amendment, either, which says no such thing.
John, I can understand the appeal of humor as a rhetorical tactic: It doesn’t require you to be in any way right to work, unlike reason and evidence. But I’m not sure I think that’s a point in it’s favor.
Unfortunately, Madison may have overlooked that a substantial portion of the citizenry might just agree with the government and support it in arms. He did say quite a few things about the government’s power stems from the people, though. I’m not sure that the northern states would have been successful in preventing secession, had they not had popular support in doing so.
I’m practically inviting some kind of correction from Gary, I know. Opportunities for learning abound.
Again, this is not an area that I know any regardable quality of opinion in, but: you’re changing your argument. First, it was that an amendment allowing for private individuals to bear arms in a well-regulated militia is in no way a means for individuals to curb the tyrannical exercise of power by the state. That appears not to be the case. Now your argument is (or appears to be): FALE.
Again, this is not an area that I have any regardable quality of opinion
PIMF. GTG.
Slartibartfast, my point was only that trying to argue that the right to bear arms protects your civil liberties against the federal government, without actually being able to point to any instance in, say, the past two centuries in which it has actually done so, does kind of – you’d think! – undercut that argument.
Or not. It could be a nuclear Iran kind of thing: it’s impossible to discuss because the facts become invisible. Ben is Glory. Glory is Ben. Is everyone here very stoned?
As Benjamin Franklin said, when asked what the Founders had wrought, after the Constitutional Convention:
“A punchline, if you can remember it.”
Sure. Political theory is notoriously tricky to prove, sometimes, in advance of actual implementation. Also notoriously tricky to prove decades after.
As ever, John, your wit enlightens.
brett x 2:
i: “A person who’s too dangerous to own guns is too dangerous to drive cars, too dangerous to stand next to people in line for the subway, too dangerous to be allowed to do umpteen different things that are routine parts of life” — does everyone else think this claim is defensible?
ii: “There’s something basically wrong with a school of thought that says, “Yay! An unprovoked murder of innocent people! Let’s use it to attack that civil liberty we don’t like, again!”” — suppose people believe this particular civil liberty, unmodified, is a significant cause of harm, and choose to campaign on a platform of repealing (or modifying) the second amendment (setting aside the likelihood of this campaign succeeding), what types of argument would you not think had something wrong with them? (i’m assuming you’re not arguing that it’s by definition wrong to campaign politically to amend the constitution, repeal amendments…)
The right to bear arms was mostly intended to secure us against federal government by enabling a militia system, which would render a standing army unnecessary. The standing army being a notorious threat to liberty by reason of it’s use in oppression of the citizenry. That’s why appropriations for the army, but not the navy, are constitutionally time limited: We’re not supposed to have an army all the time.
When the federal government discovered that the militia weren’t any use for foreign adventures, (A feature, not a bug!) it established a standing army anyway.
I think the armed citizenry still provides some defense of our liberties, by virtue of making use of the army against the people a dicey proposition, but it primarily serves as a test of the government’s intentions, in as much as it’s the first liberty a government intent on tyranny would want to eliminate.
Even if it were of no utility in that area, though, the 2nd amendment does not read, “IF a well regulated militia….”; The right is not contingent on the rationale behind it being correct.
You want to get rid of it, repeal it. Otherwise it’s as binding a part of the Constitution as any other.
Brett: fwiw, I did try to make it clear that I was not interested in any general assault on gun ownership, just in allowing some means, with any safeguards you please, whereby evidence — checked however you want — of being homicidal could prevent someone from getting a gun license.
The appropriate means are civil commitment. As I said earlier, anybody who’s too dangerous to own guns is too dangerous to be out loose. Trying to get their right to keep and bear arms taken away, but keeping them on the street, amounts to a preference that they do hit and runs, or some other form of non-firearm killing.
“When the federal government discovered that the militia weren’t any use for foreign adventures, (A feature, not a bug!) it established a standing army anyway.”
Funny, and I thought it was during the Civil War, and that the small remaining Regular Army remained for Indian fighting, and occasional clashes across the border in Mexico, with naval forces/Marines engaging in tiny foreign engagements, until the Spanish-American War.
Cite, as to what date and case you’re referring to as the establishment of a standing army, if not at the beginning of the Civil War, Brett?
“I think the armed citizenry still provides some defense of our liberties, by virtue of making use of the army against the people a dicey proposition”
But it isn’t, remotely. And there have been no such cases of said dicey proposition since the Civil War, have there? The Bonus Army didn’t put up a noticeable fight. So, again: cite, please?
“amounts to a preference that they do hit and runs, or some other form of non-firearm killing.”
I was going to differ with this statement, but upon reflection, when I’m being shot at by a guy with single-shot weapon I admit to preferring that over being shot by a guy with a machine gun.
John F.Kennedy preferred that Lee Harvey Oswald threw a butter knife at him from the book depository.
I hates peas and beets, but given a preference, I’ll choke down the beets.
I’d prefer being shot by a guy with a machine gun over being chased down dark hallways by fat, bald men wielding scissors.
Let’s see. It’s a tossup between a shark attack, a grizzly bear attack, and screaming and burning all the way to Earth in a crashing plane.
Did someone say shark attack?
I’d prefer being shot by a guy with a machine gun over being chased down dark hallways by fat, bald men wielding scissors.
Tough call, that.
How many fat, bald men?
I’d prefer to be chased down a dark hallway by mutant beets wielding peas.
Old, fat men can’t be beet.
There should be peas on earth.
Lettuce pray for peas.
God asparagus all. What will turnip next?
I implore people, when looking at our problems, don’t focus on the symptons, but get to the rutabaga. Please!
meh. peas is too chard to maintain. i’ll settle for a good leek before bedtime.
I’ve never understood this flaky lack of insight meme about “not having feelings about gun control” — well, after this past month of domestic gun terrorism, I’m glad you’ve sat up a bit. Jesus Christ. It’s taken this long for lazy-fair Andrew Sullivan to chime in — but not too much because then you have to face the bloody reality. The NRA are enablers of violence, along with FOX and talk radio.
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Gramatically, an absloute phrase conditions the independent clasue it also modifies as a result. The well regulated militia of the 2nd amendment was a citizen army for the protection of the federal goverment against those enemies (within or without) who would overthrow it. Now, it’s true many of the founders of the nation, not the least of whom were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, believed that it was important for individuals to have the right to bear arms. However, the meaning of the admendment itself is rather clear.
Now I have read legal debates that say the contrary, however, whatever the interpretation about the independent clause, the absolute phrase functions as an adverb for the verb shall (not) be infringed and specifies the condition of its meaning: for the purpose of having a readily armed citizen army, the right to bear arms shouldn’t be infringed.
But we do not have nor entertain a citizen army, and moreover, if the amendment were merely to protect the individual against armed force, then can anyone tell me why the right to carry hair gel onto an airplane, or at least a Swiss Army knife in case a bunch of thugs take the plane over, is infringed upon every day of the week.
“However, the meaning of the admendment itself is rather clear.”
These sorts of debates made sense before the Supreme Court spoke, but I don’t understand why anyone would now bother giving their own opinion: the Supreme Court has decided what it means. Their opinion is the only one that matters.
“A domestic disturbance in Pittsburgh, once my fair city, ended up with three cops shot dead, at last count.
“The gunman apparently was afraid President Obama was going to take his guns away so he thought he’d go on a shooting/murder spree before it was too late.
“You don’t want to waste bullets. They get moldy.”
Usually Thullen has to at least stretch the truth or exaggerate to make his point. But his second graph is exactly how straight news organizations were reporting the Pittsburgh shootings. In this case, life imitating Thullen is a sad commentary on the day’s news.
I don’t like those speed bumps they put in residential neighborhoods and some shopping centers. But then I see drivers not obeying the speed limits and driving wildly in these areas, putting pedrestians, especially children at risk, and I find myself wishing there were more speed bumps in some areas. A necessary inconvenience.
I view tighter gun control, stronger regulation, as a necessary inconvenience, too.
I watch the news about Binghamton or Pittsburgh and see how we are all randomly at risk in these shootings — mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters; families lost all of them the past two days.
I’ve read some of the commentary here and wonder what gun owner or the gun lover thinks when these mass shootings put a focus on firearm use: If it’s that his or her right to own a gun should not be inconvenienced, I pity that person.
Speaking of freedom of the press, by the way.
” Their opinion is the only one that matters.”
Not even remotely. Not even in the judicial system, where theoretically it ought to be the only opinion that matters, but where the lower courts can either enthusiastically carry out a Supreme court ruling, or fight it every inch of the way. I’m expecting the latter in the case of Heller, since the Court is setting out to reverse the consensus of the circuits.
Opinions also matter to a lesser extent in the legislative and executive branches for about the same reason. A lesser extent because people in those branches tend to not care all that much if their policies are unconstitutional, only if they can get away with them.
And, finally, it matters in the sense that the legitimacy of the government, the respect people have for it, is not a given. It really does matter in the long run if people think the courts are getting these calls right or wrong. Resistance to court rulings is a lot more intense if they’re viewed as mistaken.
My personal opinion is that the Heller ruling was about 60% right, maybe a bit more. As an exercise in originalist analysis it sucked, chiefly because they couldn’t bear to go where the constitutional logic led, to a right to own the same arms as the military carries around.
Which was the conclusion the Miller court had reached, sending the case back to the lower court only for a factual determination as to whether sawn off shotguns had any military utility, with Miller to win if they did. And he would have, too, if he hadn’t been dead at that point, with nobody representing him at the Supreme court.
Scalia even got Miller wrong on a basic point, thinking that he was appealing a lower court defeat, when it was the government appealing his total vindication at the lower court level. Really pathetic, that; Didn’t he have the ruling proof read by somebody who knew anything about the case?
@ddd dave wrote
“Why just stop them from getting a gun? Other devices make murder easier. Knives, cars, power tools, various poisons, water, baseball bats, and many other objects can easily be used to kill someone.”
Apart from the fact that Hilzoy indicated the friend’s lack of physical dexterity, confidence etc which would make killing with say a baseball bat problematic, here is the other distinction:
Baseball Bats are made for playing baseball.
Also
cars are made for transportation (and picking up chicks)
power tools are made for construction
knives are made for a Variety of cutting purposes other than just killing living things
various poisons exist (and occur naturally) for various non-homicidal purposes
water also exists naturally and has a 4 billion year history of peaceful co-existence with many life forms
Guns were invented to kill. Deer, rabbits, ducks, and humans. They don’t have much use outside of killing, or threatening violence (outside of masturbatory fantasies of the gun nuts). It is not a stretch to differentiate guns from other multipurpose objects that can be adapted into killing instruments.
Never sure why this was such a difficult thing to comprehend for the 2nd Amendment misinterpreter crowd
Personally I don’t own a gun, but I wouldn’t want to prevent a fellow citizen from having one, unless they’d proved by some action that they wouldn’t be a responsible owner.
I do think that one thing has made the whole debate a lot more complicated: amount of available ammunition and rate of fire. Yes, a .22 rifle will kill somebody just as dead as will an AK (or a dagger, or a pointy rock). But if someone goes berserk – an event which can be fairly unpredictable at the time of sale – they’re going to cause a lot more damage with an AK before the police bring them down.
Obviously using a military-style rifle is an extreme example. But this guy in Pittsburgh – they’re saying he fired, what, 100 shots in the whole encounter? What hunter is shooting 100 different deer in an hour? Whose home is getting invaded by such an army of gangsters that only firing 100 shots quickly would drive them off? It just seems to me that the sort of gun that could deliver that kind of power ought to be reserved for the military, and *possibly* SWAT teams. It’s a disproportionate response to all other threats or needs.
“But if someone goes berserk – an event which can be fairly unpredictable at the time of sale – they’re going to cause a lot more damage with an AK before the police bring them down.”
Especially if the police have a policy of waiting until the bad guy(s) have gotten around to killing themselves to enter the scene of the killing. Can we all agree that this trend of the police viewing their job as being to wait until it’s safe, and then clean up the blood, is a little troubling? More of a broad white stripe here, than a thin blue line. Anybody else see it as problematic for the government to demand that people be unable to defend themselves under a broad range of circumstances, AND refuse to provide that defense themselves? There’s a reason we call these places “defenseless victim zones”, instead of “gun free zones”; It’s a more accurate description.
Anyway, I’ve never been too fond of this whole “X is convenient to wrong-doers, so we’ll deny X to everyone, even though most of the people we’ll deny X to were never going to do anything wrong.” approach to slightly inconveniencing criminals. Whether it’s making people sign for their pseudophed, taking pay phones out of high crime areas, or denying everyone normal capacity magazines for their guns.
I mean, you could cut a lot of car cases short if it were illegal to have more than a two gallon tank in your car, too. And most people don’t need large tanks, the average commute doesn’t require it, you could just gas up twice a day.
You know, seeking a commitment order, at least a temporary one, as a “danger to self or others” might have been the best for the individual in question. It seems like a big step, and it is very serious, but at the same time, he will be getting help that he very likely wouldn’t have access to in other scenario.
I have personal experience with this. I know someone that went through a temporary committal. He didn’t like it, that’s for sure, but it definitely helped him. Of course, that was for “danger to self” not others.
Thullen, way upthread:
Was that the one in the catalog that had the pearl-inlaid fingerboard?
“They don’t have much use outside of killing,”
See, here we go again.
Anyway, I’ve never been too fond of this whole “X is convenient to wrong-doers, so we’ll deny X to everyone, even though most of the people we’ll deny X to were never going to do anything wrong.” approach to slightly inconveniencing criminals. Whether it’s making people sign for their pseudophed, taking pay phones out of high crime areas, or denying everyone normal capacity magazines for their guns.
I agree in general, but I suspect I have a bit of a different idea of what a “normal capacity magazine” might be, and what “inconvenience” is in this particular case. It may be the fact that I don’t own a gun that makes me ask this, but: do gun owners normally shoot off a hundred rounds at a time in close succession? In what circumstances would this usually happen? Again, I don’t own a gun, but I can’t think of any offhand.
If there isn’t one, it seems to me that on the one hand we have the threat (and often reality) of a very, very bad consequence, but people are allowed to do something that nobody actually does or has reason to do. On the other, you’d have a restriction on something that would decrease the bad consequences of a person going berserk, but everybody else would see a change that doesn’t affect the normal and appropriate use of their gun. (I do believe that there are normal and appropriate uses for guns!)
In the case of car chases, I can definitely think of some good reasons to have a larger tank – cross-country trips, people with longer commutes, less time wasted sitting in line for gas. And every person might conceivably need to use a car with a larger tank at some point. Car chases – even at their worst – rarely leave more than two or three people dead; the threat is less. The changes required would interfere with the normal and appropriate use of an automobile; the inconvenience is greater.
Just where to draw the line between real threat and obnoxious inconvenience is definitely debatable, and we ought to be very careful that we don’t regulate too far on one side. But that doesn’t mean that line doesn’t exist. It’s pretty clear to me that larger gas tanks and AKs are on opposite sides of it.
Brett,
Do you consider legislation that would require a person to demonstrate basic usage and safety knowledge of the firearm they are trying to purchase before being allowed to do so a restriction on their civil liberty? I have not been able to tell if this is the case.
As if the human carnage were not enough, our refusal to regulate gun ownership/use forces us to alter all other aspects of our lives instead.
Our children go to schools through electronic monitors, and enter social functions like sock hops and proms after thorough screenings….
We treat one another, in casual contacts, as if each new stranger is armed, and willing to use deadly force…
We photograph and tape public places and stores, not primarily to interdict gun violence, but to help us identify the persons who use guns after the fact…
Churches..churches..are discussing the need to arm ushers, as they have become more frequent targets…
Our prison system is ever expanding, filled with people who acted on impulse or when the opportunity presented itself..
And so it goes,
“Do you consider legislation that would require a person to demonstrate basic usage and safety knowledge of the firearm they are trying to purchase before being allowed to do so a restriction on their civil liberty?”
No more than a law requiring people to prove that they’re literate before voting.
‘No more than a law requiring people to prove that they’re literate before voting.’
As long as we get to pick our analogies…picture our world without any auto regulation. No traffic signals or speed limits; no temperance restrictions; no competence standards or financial responsibility requirements. For instance…
There is no rational excuse for refusing to regulate gun ownership and use under comparable conditions.
A little while ago, Google News displayed a CNN headline: “Shooter’s sister: I’m sorry.”
Which shooter, I wondered. There’ve been three mass murders in the last few days.
“As if the human carnage were not enough, our refusal to regulate gun ownership/use forces us to alter all other aspects of our lives instead.”
Most urban areas do regulate guns, and there are certain federal limitations, as well as station regulations.
“Our children go to schools through electronic monitors, and enter social functions like sock hops and proms after thorough screenings….”
More gun regulation won’t free of us this, because passing laws doesn’t magically make things happen. We have anti-drug laws, and yet our schools are not free of drugs. The idea that more gun control laws will make gun danger go away is magical thinking.
Ugh; I should proofreading more, myself.
“Most urban areas do regulate guns, and there are certain federal limitations, as well as station regulations.”
“state regulations.”
“won’t free of us this”
Won’t free us of this….”
“The idea that more gun control laws will make gun danger go away is magical thinking.”
Agreed. Sensible gun regulation would only lessen the risk. One seeks, through regulation, to reduce the risk to an acceptable level.
By the way, ‘more gun control laws’? The suggestion is regulation comparable to autos: central registries with certificates of title; licenses and liability insurance for users and for weapons; and ‘rules of the road’ for safe storage and use.
These regulations would significantly lessen gun violence sparked by impulse and by opportunity.
No more than a law requiring people to prove that they’re literate before voting.
Brett, this rejoinder of yours is just weird. You and I have the right to vote, just like you and I have the right to own guns. But neither you nor I have the right to vote any time we feel like it or in any manner that suits our fancy. Our right to vote is regulated in all sorts of ways, not least among them being registration requirements. Are you suggesting that regulations around voting, like regulations around guns, are both intolerable abridgements of fundamental rights?
Incidentally, the ‘Battle of Athens’ (which featured 14 fewer fatalities than the Binghampton Massacre) seems to have been a quite local affair. The fight was over local interests, not federal oppression. The victorious citizens seem to have armed themseves for the occasion; they were not, by and large, gun owners. The episode was, if not a one-off, then certainly less common than the mass murders which easy access to guns makes possible. So, proudly citing ‘The Battle of Athens’ in support of 2nd-Amendment absolutism is problematic at best.
–TP
I had good reason for chosing that particular analogy.
There are actually quite sound reasons for not wanting illiterates to vote. They tend to be uninformed, vulnerable to demogogic appeals. They make lousy voters. By reason of this, they degrade our politics. They are doing damage, at least as reliably as unskilled gun owners do. (Most untrained gun owners do no damage AT ALL, remember.)
But we don’t permit literacy tests. Why?
Because literacy tests for voting have a history. And it’s not a history of good faith, it’s a history of their use to exclude people the folks administering them don’t want voting, irrespective of whether they’re actually literate. Literacy tests aren’t really about making sure voters are literate.
Gun control has a history, too. It’s largely the SAME history, as a matter of fact; Gun control got it’s start as part of Jim Crow. And while the gun control movement has evolved from trying to disarm minorities, to trying to disarm everybody, it’s never really abandoned it’s fondness for bad faith enforcement.
What I’m saying is, gun owners aren’t nuts to oppose gun control. They’d BE nuts to trust gun controlers when you start raving about “reasonable” regulation. We’ve seen what you think is reasonable, and it’s D.C.. It’s a ban on ugly guns. It’s laws that say you can’t have a gun store within 10 miles of a school, when the only places that aren’t within ten miles of a school are in the middle of a desert or underwater.
It’s a history of bad faith, and we’re not going to forget that, no matter how much you wish we would.
Choosing to disregard the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller, is either paranoia or an invitation to illegal behavior.
The responsible gun owner has no reason to fear the confiscation of his gun. And the abolitionists who wish to seize all private weapons have no legal basis for trying to do so.
Look at it this way: if the NRA can no longer market fear, it can now start selling insurance.
“What I’m saying is, gun owners aren’t nuts to oppose gun control.”
They wouldn’t be nuts to oppose excessive and unreasonable gun control. The idea that any regulation at all inexorably leads to crazy excessive control is, in fact, nuts.
“They’d BE nuts to trust gun controlers when you start raving about ‘reasonable’ regulation.”
Talking about reasonable reguation is not “raving.”
“We’ve seen what you think is reasonable, and it’s D.C..”
Which “you,” specifically, on this thread, are you addressing? Because there’s no such thing as a generic proponent of increased gun regulation. If you think everyone you disagree with are members of one homogenous mass, and a mass defined by its extremes, at that, you’re, well, nuts.
If you want to not come across as nuts, draw the line at actually excessive gun regulation, and don’t insist that, say, requiring a safety training course, inexorably leads to confiscation.
(Btw, “it’s” is the contraction for “it is”; “its” is the possessive; not vice versa.)
Nobody commenting on this website is going to be drafting the gun control proposals we’ll be hit with over the next few years, any more than I’d be drafting abortion regulations under a Republican administration. They’re going to be drafted by the usual raft of characters who’ve been drafting abusive laws for years now, with some help from a President who supports Heller… And claims to believe it’s consistent with any city banning guns if they feel like it.
I repeat, the gun control movement has a history. One Supreme court ruling is not going to convince gun owners to forget that history. Ten years from now, if there’ve been no more assaults on our rights, if the usual suspects have stopped drafting bills to attack those rights, If Obama doesn’t go out of his way to nominate Justices who’d reverse Heller, we might start relaxing our vigilance. We’re not going to start trusting people who talk about “reasonable regulation” in five minutes, no matter how much you’d like it.
We’re not that stupid. When has a gun controller ever admitted they weren’t being reasonable?
How is it out there in Idaho?
“When has a gun controller ever admitted they weren’t being reasonable?”
When has a “pro-gun extremist” ever admitted they weren’t being reasonable? Or that they’re an extremist?
As always, you write in generalities. No answer to this question:
Brett, when someone constantly writes about unspecified people not present, and addresses generalities to the thin air in the second person, that’s generally considered “raving.”
Since you bring the word up.
That was unfair.
The Heller decision may be thin gruel for the NRA.
I can see how the organization would have preferred an affirmance of Miller.
By carving out the extremes on both sides, Heller, I hope, will encourage the middle to begin a dialogue on an appropriate method of regulation. Without all the wild eyed rhetoric.
The car analogy was just too good to pass up. It fits well with the issue. And, as prisons continue to fill, and the body count rises, it seems inevitable that some system of regulation is going to result.
And, viola, we have a system of regulation already worked out. For cars.
Has anyone’s gun ever actually been taken away? I’m talking here in the US.
I know, and have known, a lot of people who own guns, and I don’t know anyone whose gun has ever been taken away from them.
It may be that some folks’ guns have been taken away, I’m just asking.
“There are actually quite sound reasons for not wanting illiterates to vote. They tend to be uninformed, vulnerable to demogogic appeals. They make lousy voters. By reason of this, they degrade our politics.”
Brett: While you’re stripping away their right to vote, in your lovely literate world, do the illiterates have to pay taxes or is that left up only to the privileged bigots?
My 66-year-old mother is literate but I dare say she is not up on many issues of the day. Should we take away her right to vote?
“It may be that some folks’ guns have been taken away, I’m just asking.”
Lots of people get arrested for illegal possession of a gun, in areas where guns are more tightly regulated, such as New York City.
In NYC, the law is that Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree is a class C felony, Third Degree is a class D felony, and Fourth Degree is a class A misdemeanor, last I looked.
There are actually quite sound reasons for not wanting illiterates to vote. They tend to be uninformed, vulnerable to demogogic appeals. They make lousy voters. By reason of this, they degrade our politics.
Literacy is really a spectrum; there are many people that can technically read printed matter but from a practical perspective are unable to glean any useful information from written text more complex than a stop sign. Beyond that, literate people tend to be uninformed (or even worse: misinformed) and vulnerable to demagogic appeals.
Nonetheless, I look forward to exercising my fundamental right to vote by voting for President every day and twice on sundays.
PP,
Actually, thinking about cars is useful when you consider the elderly. My wife has worked for both eye doctors and vascular specialists, and both can call for a person’s driver’s license to be revoked, either due to poor vision or circulatory issues that have a high risk of stroke or fainting. Even with the high risk either type of patient can have to themselves and others, doctors she has known are extremely reluctant to notify the Secretary of States office that their patient is medically unable to drive, because for some their vehicle is their only real line to the outside world.
They tend to be uninformed, vulnerable to demogogic appeals.
in other words: Fox News viewers.
“When has a gun controller ever admitted they weren’t being reasonable?”
I only admit to NOT being reasonable when I’m talking to a Second Amendment champion, who might be carrying, for all I know.
Heck, I’ll even admit to being reasonable if that’s what they want, depending on the position of their hands and if my peripheral vision detects that they might have backup.
I get a really reasonable look on my face when my hands are raised, especially once the frisking starts, unless it tickles and I become all silly, which is when you’ve really got to be on your guard, because that’s when I’m the most dangerous and unpredictable.
On the other hand, when I’m not being reasonable, I leave my bullet in my shirt pocket, a move I call my Barney Fife cooling-off period.
We gun controllers can never win.
I get a really reasonable look on my face when my hands are raised, especially once the frisking starts, unless it tickles and I become all silly, which is when you’ve really got to be on your guard, because that’s when I’m the most dangerous and unpredictable.
…is it wrong that now I really want to see Brett tickling John Thullen till JT becomes dangerous and unpredictable?
It’s a good thing none of these folks are extremists.
“Has anyone’s gun ever actually been taken away? I’m talking here in the US.”
Yes. There have been gun confiscations in D.C., NYC, California, Chicago. And most recently in New Orleans.
On the federal level, there were all those victims of the Lautenberg amendment, though in those cases they were given the opportunity to sell their guns to somebody else, so I suppose you could argue the guns weren’t actually “confiscated”.
Speaking of the Lautenberg amendment, now that the Supreme court has gotten around to admitting that the 2nd amendment guarantees a civil liberty, I suppose it’s time to go to court again over that constitutional atrocity.
It’s a good thing none of these folks are extremists.
conservatives are never extreme. nor treasonous.
look it up. it’s in the bill of rights or something.
Brett, thanks for the reply.
I’m curious to know the circumstances of the confiscations in the cities you mention, but I won’t make you do my homework for me.
Regarding this:
there were all those victims of the Lautenberg amendment
The Lautenberg amendment made it illegal for people convicted of domestic abuse, or who were under a restraining order for domestic abuse, to own or use a firearm.
Personally, I have no problem with denying ownership or use of a firearm to folks who have been convicted of physically abusing other people. If someone has a restraining order taken out on you to harass you, you’ll get your gun back when the order is removed.
You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. If a prosecutor can make a good case that you may be involved in criminal activity, your person or property may be subject to search and seizure. Etc etc etc.
Rights guaranteed under the bill of rights are subject to reasonable limits on when, how, and by whom they may be exercised.
Guns, no different.
If your ownership or use of a gun poses a credible risk to other people, no gun for you. Hard to read minds, but I can’t imagine even the founders finding that hard to grasp.
I’m curious to know the circumstances of the confiscations in the cities you mention, but I won’t make you do my homework for me.
In NOLA, some guns were confiscated by civil authorities who found them in abandoned homes in the aftermath of Katrina. This was done to prevent looters from getting them. Since their owners got them back, it’s hardly a case of confiscation.
The “confiscations” Brett cites in DC, NY, CA, and Chicago didn’t really occur. Laws were passed that prohibited certain models of firearms or their variations. The NRA calls this “confiscation.”
Russel, the Lautenberg amendment stripped people of a basic civil liberty as a result of prior misdemeanor convictions, many dating back decades. Many of which involved guilty pleas at a time when the offense involved nothing more than a fine, which was cheaper to pay than the lost wages and legal expenses of fighting the charge.
It would be similar to Congress deciding that people with moving violations were too dangerous to be allowed to drive, and passing a law so that parking ticket you didn’t contest back in ’83 resulted in your losing your driver’s license for life.
The esential evil of ex post facto legislation is that it changes the consequences of your choices after you’ve already made them. The Lautenberg amendment did this in a pretty big way.
Jadegold, the civil authorities hardly restricted themselves to confiscating firearms which were found abandoned, and, no, they didn’t all get them back.
And your quibble about D.C., NYC, CA and Chicago makes no sense. Of course when the government confiscates guns, they do it as a result of laws they passed making it illegal to own them. What else did you think confiscation refered to?
You’re basically arguing that it can’t be called confiscation if it’s the result of a law, which is lunacy.
Russel, the Lautenberg amendment stripped people of a basic civil liberty as a result of prior misdemeanor convictions, many dating back decades.
Noted, and thanks for the clarification.
This thread is probably well played out, but there is one other thing I need to get off my chest. I don’t know where exactly you fit in all of this, Brett, so please do not consider this to be directed at you. It’s more in the nature of a general rant.
My recent involvement in any kind of political activity stems from my opposition to the USA Patriot Act. I sponsored a resolution against the act and presented it to my town meeting for their vote. That wasn’t a particularly dangerous thing to do, but it was at times kind of intense. During that effort, I received support from several churches, some local political organizations, the League of Women Voters, and my state and federal House Reps.
I’m sure there are members of the NRA in my town, but nobody from the NRA stepped up in any way, pro or con, on the issue.
The day after my wedding, I woke up, gave my wife a fond kiss, and headed down to Faneuill Hall in Boston to stand, along with a couple of thousand other folks, in protest of John Ashcroft’s address to the state and municipial police departments on the topic of the USAPA. Nobody got hurt, but it was kind of intense to stand toe to toe with riot cops and try to make some human contact through their mirror shades.
Groups in attendance were churches, political groups, some state office holders, the usual rabble of DFH’s, and a bunch of anarchist kids wearing black bandannas so Mom and Dad wouldn’t see them on the TV and cut off their school money. Not in attendance was anyone representing the NRA.
I also attended and to some degree participated in debates with folks from the DOJ who were out trying to build public support for the act. Again, folks attended from the ACLU, League of Women voters, some librarians. Noone from the NRA.
I have good friends who have been arrested and jailed as part of protesting government actions that they viewed as unconstitutional, tyrannical, or just plain wrong. I know other people who have chained themselves to buildings. I know folks who had their own blood drawn to pour on the steps of the pentagon in protest of US military actions in South America.
Church groups, Zen Buddhists, the ACLU, the Quakers, radical Catholic priests, Communists, the sensible and competent women in my local LWV, my local librarian. My state and federal house reps. Even some local libertarian rabble rousers.
But nobody from the NRA. Noone representing the NRA has ever, ever shown up at any action against unwarranted government action that I have ever attended, seen, or heard about.
Noone.
Civil and individual liberties are protected by folks who show up and put enough of their own personal ass on the line to shame the state into backing down from whatever insane criminal scheme they’ve cooked up this time. In every case I am aware of, those folks came without guns. They just showed up and got it done, or as close to done as they could manage.
While those folks were keeping big brother out of your life, the gun folks were running around Idaho and the upper peninsula of Michigan nursing their fantasies of apocalyptic battle against the One World Government and the niggers, jews, and mexicans.
Think that’s an exaggeration? Go to a gun show.
The only civil liberty the NRA stands for, or has ever extended itself to defend, is the right for their membership to own a lot of guns. They do not call for any curb on the expansion of the standing army, which was the *freaking point* of the 2nd amendment in the first place. They do not call for a restoration of habeas where it has been unlawfully denied. They do not call for an end to unlawful seizure and torture. They don’t object to political protesters being confined to “First Amendment Zones”, or to folks being tossed out of public political events because they wear inconvenient T shirts.
I could go on, and on, and on. Posse Commitatus, for f*ck’s sake. US military deployed in the US. “Standing army” will be standing in your own damned back yard.
Where the hell is the NRA on that?
They don’t object to anything other than somebody trying to limit their access to firearms in any way. The only right they will extend themselves to defend is their right to own as many guns, of whatever kind, that they like, without any reasonable restriction, no matter what consequences that position might have for public safety.
I’m actually a 2nd Amendment hawk. I think the intent of the 2nd amendment was for the armed forces to consist primarily of an armed citizen militia, rather than a large standing professional army, and that to support that the federal government was not to prohibit private citizens from owning and bearing arms.
I don’t think we should be in a hurry to give that right up. I’d like to see our military organized along the lines of the Swiss. My two cents.
But whenever I see people actually putting their own, personal skin in the game of defending individual liberty in this country, it is never, ever, ever, ever, ever someone from the NRA. And by “skin”, I’m not talking about writing a check, I’m talking about getting your ass in the street and doing something real, something that actually changes something.
Nobody from the NRA ever shows up. So I don’t take them seriously.
We all have our hobbies. Theirs is playing with guns. Mazel tov.
But a civil liberties organization, they are not.
Sorry for the length.
“Noone representing the NRA has ever, ever shown up at any action against unwarranted government action that I have ever attended, seen, or heard about.
And you know this, how? Because NRA members all have the letters, “NRA” tattooed on their foreheads? NRA members are over one percent of the population, it’s virtually impossible to get together any sizable gathering without some present.
I’ll grant you, the NRA undoubtedly did not have an official presence there. The NRA is a very large and narrowly focused organization, which holds together based on that focus being very narrow, and staying out of other issues. It’s not like the ACLU in that respect, which at least purports to be a one stop civil rights organization. The NRA does 2nd amendment, and nothing else. That doesn’t mean the members don’t. They just do other things outside the NRA.
And you know this, how?
Because nobody said “Hi, I am here representing the NRA”. Unlike every other organization I’ve named in my post.
Perhaps the NRA has taken a public position on ANY ISSUE I refer to here, and I’m just not aware of it. If so, lemme know.
Short of that, IMVHO they do diddly to advance the cause of liberty in any meaningful or pragmatic sense. I know sixth graders who have done more.
My two cents, take it for what it’s worth.
The NRA does 2nd amendment, and nothing else. That doesn’t mean the members don’t. They just do other things outside the NRA.
wherever they do it, they don’t do it anyplace i’ve ever seen.
i’m going to put the broken record back on:
where did all the self-described small-government conservatives protest the government’s recent abandonment of punishment without trial ?
it wasn’t here. it wasn’t on any other blog i’ve read in the past 8 years. no, the small-government conservatives uniformly cheered while Bush tortured US citizens and held them without trial.
frauds.
“Short of that, IMVHO they do diddly to advance the cause of liberty in any meaningful or pragmatic sense. I know sixth graders who have done more.”
Can’t really argue with that; If you don’t admit the right to keep and bear arms is a liberty, an organization focused on protecting that right does nothing to advance liberty in your view. Pretty much by definition.
The anomaly as I see it is this:
Brett: The NRA is a very large and narrowly focused organization, which holds together based on that focus being very narrow, and staying out of other issues. It’s not like the ACLU in that respect, which at least purports to be a one stop civil rights organization. The NRA does 2nd amendment, and nothing else. That doesn’t mean the members don’t.
But why the 2nd amendment? (As opposed to all of them, like the ACLU.) One argument consistently used by the NRA and its fellow travellers is that the right to bear arms is necessary to protect other liberties.
A case might be made for the right to bear arms without this justification, but it would be a much weaker one, and I’ve rarely seen an argument against gun control that does not incorporate this assertion.
So we have the anomaly of saying “I am all for A, because it protects/promotes B, C, D, and E, but I can’t be bother to support B, C, D, and E directly. Only A matters.”
And thus some feel that this anomaly rises to the level of hypocrisy. Or fraud.
The problem with regarding guns as the brown M&Ms of civil liberties, is that you’d expect someone who actually cared about civil liberties to, y’know, act as if they did.
Russell, that was a wonderful comment. I am somehow unsurprised that Brett has no answer to it beyond his favorite no brown M&Ms.
People who care about civil liberties work for civil liberties – even those that don’t personally affect them. Gay men defend a woman’s right to choose: black straights vote for gay marriage. They may not do much – everyone has their focus – but if you care about civil liberties, and the opportunity comes up to do something, you do it. If Russell’s description of what the NRA does and does not do is accurate, they’re no more interested in civil liberties than any industry lobbyist would be.
Pwned by Dr Ngo.
“But why the 2nd amendment? (As opposed to all of them, like the ACLU.)”
Because the ACLU LIES about doing them all. If, way back when, the ACLU had decided to take the principled route, and defend the whole freaking Bill of Rights, the NRA would still be a moderately large shooting club, instead of this 900lbs gorilla of a lobbying organization.
The NRA is filling in the hole the ACLU decided to leave, because it didn’t like all of the civil liberties the Constitution actually guarantees.
And it’s not the “Brown M&M”. Maybe you noticed that the NRA is much, much, larger than the ACLU? That’s because the civil liberty the ACLU chose to not defend happens to be very popular.
More popular than all the others?
Or is it the mistaken belief that this one liberty is the bedrock of all the other liberties, that is so popular? If so, then clearly the problem is one of education not interpretation.
Brett, if twenty years ago everyone in the NRA had joined the ACLU, the ACLU would probably by now have a different position on the Second Amendment.
Granted, it wouldn’t happen overnight… and it would mean that NRA members, to be active ACLU members, able to influence the policy of the organization, would have to be actively interested in defending civil liberties, not just wanting moar moar moar guns.
Wanting own a fleet of 40 cars even though you’ve never been able to pass a driving test, is not a “civil liberty” the ACLU would defend, either.
“That’s because the civil liberty the ACLU chose to not defend happens to be very popular.”
Of course, the whole idea of civil liberties is that the ones that need defending are the unpopular ones.
If an idea is popular, it doesn’t need much defending.
Defending the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, the rights of pornographers, the rights of those who engage in unpopular free speech, the rights of criminals, the rights of child molestors, the rights of the poor and downtrodden: those are the rights and people that need defending because they have so few defenders.
Popular folk with popular ideas: not so much in need of defense.
“If an idea is popular, it doesn’t need much defending.”
No, that depends on who it’s popular with. Our system of representative democracy isn’t all that representative at times, the political class have systematically different views than the general public on a number of issues. Gun control is one of them.
The rights that need defending are the ones that are under attack. And none of them have been under quite as vicious attack as the right to keep and bear arms. We’ve just come off a nearly 70 year period where the Supreme court relentlessly refused every last case where somebody tried to raise the 2nd amendment as an issue. The 2nd amendment is at about the same point where the 14th amendment was right after Brown.
The esential evil of ex post facto legislation is that it changes the consequences of your choices after you’ve already made them.
Wow. A rock-ribbed conservative who disapproves of 3 strikes law and just about every single change to criminal laws in modern times. (because this is exactly what these laws do — impose enhanced penalties for past conduct which, while illegal, has allegedly been fully paid off.)
ya know, when the most recent ballot initiative in California raising the bar on 3 strikes was kicking around, and the Governor changed his mind at the last minute, the NRA was nowhere, but nowhere, to be seen.
some single-purpose advocacy groups learn to build coalitions with other groups whose interests appear at first unrelated. It seems to me that the NRA, much like a lot of modern public conservatism, thrives instead on victimhood.
And none of them have been under quite as vicious attack as the right to keep and bear arms.
yes. so vicious.
i remember it well… there was one point in my adult life when i nearly couldn’t buy a gun at any of a dozen places within ten miles of my residence.
that horrible situation was caused due to a vicious lack of cash (and an overwhelming desire to not buy a gun).
on the other hand, i’ve never lived anywhere where the local govt wasn’t perfectly happy putting up religious idols every December.
some single-purpose advocacy groups learn to build coalitions with other groups whose interests appear at first unrelated. It seems to me that the NRA, much like a lot of modern public conservatism, thrives instead on victimhood.
I don’t think this is quite right. The NRA may be officially non-partisan, but it is de facto part of the GOP coalition. It may not care about the estate tax, or abortion, or global warming, but its political clout generally manifests itself as support for Republicans and opposition to Democrats.
Now, by and large, each party represents a bundle of positions. It’s not clear why support of gun rights belongs in the same ideological bundle as opposition to the estate tax, opposition to abortion, and denial of global warming — but it’s in the same partisan bundle.
I don’t know whether the global warming deniers are exploiting the gun nuts, or vice versa, or whether the Wal*Mart heirs are exploiting them both, or what. But the NRA is, as a practical matter, in coalition with those other groups.
For all I know, most NRA members are pro-choice on abortion, entirely in favor of taxing Paris Hilton’s inheritance, and more worried than Al Gore about climate change. But I kind of doubt it.
–TP
You know, Cleek, I can’t quite decide whether you’re genuinely ignorant of the facts, or just don’t give a damn what the truth is.
There really are places in this country where you can’t buy guns locally because the local governments have driven all the gun dealers out of business, and can’t buy one elsewhere and bring it home legally.
Congress really did pass a law that permanently took away the 2nd amendment rights of people who pled guilty to a MISDEMEANOR decades ago, at a time when all it involved was a minor fine. It’s an ex post facto law that’s still in effect, a real constitutional atrocity.
There really have been bills introduced in Congress, that got plenty of votes, that would have shut down practically every gun store in the country, by saying that you couldn’t run one within 10 miles of a school. (Almost the entire country except some of the western deserts and the middle of the larger lakes is within that distance of a school.)
Kennedy really did propose to ban the 30.06, the classic deer hunting round, as a “cop killer bullet”.
No session of Congress goes by without a serious assault on this right. Mostly we beat them back, but that doesn’t mean they’re not trying, and they’d be succeeding if we ever relaxed.
The 2nd amendment is THE civil rights fight of our time, with the American ‘Civil Liberties’ Union AWOL from the fight.
*********
Yeah, all things being equal, the NRA tends to back Republicans. Voting in Democrats means putting the Democratic leadership in power, and the Democratic leadership are uniformly anti-gun. So even if you vote in a pro-gun Democrat, he goes and votes in a leadership slate who are avid gun banners. So it makes perfect sense for the NRA to break Republican on the close calls.
“The 2nd amendment is THE civil rights fight of our time”
The reason a lot of people don’t agree is that a lot of people feel no need whatever to own a gun. Whereas, say, most people want the right to marriage, to rent or own property, to be employed without discrimination, to have their children schooled without discrimination, and in general not to be discriminated against by race, creed, religion, age, gender, sexual preference, and so on.
I think it’s fair to say that an awful lot of people, perhaps most people, think these things more important than their right to own a gun, because for most people a gun isn’t necessary, and probably isn’t even desirable.
It’s difficult to see how gun rights are “THE civil rights fight of our time.”
I have to say that I have tremendous difficulty seeing it. Guns are not used to defend other civil rights or liberties, and how many people need guns, as opposed to fancy or enjoy them?
(I’ll grant that a small number of people can reasonably be described as needing guns for self-defense.)
I’m not interesting in taking guns away from anyone who isn’t a criminal or mad, but I have trouble seeing a case for why gun rights are important, because all the reasons I’ve ever seen stated seem to rely on premises that don’t strike me as true.
That is, the arguments that guns are the way we defend other rights, that the right to guns is the fundamental right from which other rights flow, and so on, don’t seem at all true to me. The remaining argument gets circular: gun rights are in the Constitution, so if you care about the Constitution, you should care about gun rights. But that’s not actually good enough, if there isn’t a sufficient external good to be seen as coming from rights to guns, and that part is what a whole lot of people have trouble seeing.
“The reason a lot of people don’t agree is that a lot of people feel no need whatever to own a gun.”
I don’t feel any need to publish a newspaper, but if there were a nation-wide movement to censor newspapers, arguing that the existence of government printing houses satisfied the 1st amendment, I wouldn’t pretend that it wasn’t a civil rights fight.
Heck, I’m an atheist, but I’d get pissed off if the government started trying to shut down churches.
No, let’s be blunt: The reason so many liberals don’t want to admit this is a civil rights fight is because they’re on the wrong side. Gun control is the part of Jim Crow that the party of Jim Crow never gave up on.
But now you like to think of yourselves as the party of civil rights, and it just clashes terribly with that self image to admit that you’re on the wrong side of the fight.
So the 2nd amendment Can’t. Be. A. Civil. Right.
That’s what it’s all about. You can never admit you’re the bad guys in a civil rights fight, so it can’t be a civil right, it can’t mean anything, it just can’t.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people lost a basic civil liberty to an ex post facto law, and the Democratic party was responsible.
People go to jail for exercising a civil right, and the Democratic party is responsible.
People have been KILLED by the government as part of it’s off again, on again war on this liberty, and the Democratic party was responsible.
It’s not that the Democratic party doesn’t care, because if it didn’t care, the fight would be over. It’s that the Democratic party, cares, and is on the wrong side.
You know, Cleek, I can’t quite decide whether you’re genuinely ignorant of the facts, or just don’t give a damn what the truth is.
such an odd thing to say, given that you’re about to respond to an argument i didn’t make. take it away:
There really are places in this country where you can’t buy guns locally because the local governments have driven all the gun dealers out of business, and can’t buy one elsewhere and bring it home legally.
fascinating. but, i was clearly talking about places i’ve lived. you an tell by the fact that i used phrases like “within ten miles of my residence”. and i’ve lived all over the north east.
Congress really did pass a law that permanently took away the 2nd amendment rights of people who pled guilty to a MISDEMEANOR decades ago…
this does not bother me. “convicted criminals give up rights” is not an earth-shattering change.
There really have been bills introduced in Congress, that got plenty of votes,
though not enough to pass.
Kennedy really did propose…
but did not pass.
No session of Congress goes by without a serious assault on this right.
votes and proposals which have no chance of passage are hardly “serious assaults”.
“The 2nd amendment is THE civil rights fight of our time”
puhleeze. you people are co-opting the language used to describe the fight to get the government to recognize that humanity is not determined by skin color? shameful.
People have been KILLED by the government as part of it’s off again, on again war on this liberty, and the Democratic party was responsible.
the GOP cheered like girls at a Jonas Brother’s concert while Bush imprisoned, tortured, and drove insane, a US citizen, without a trial. but made not a peep about the Constitution, then. so don’t presume to hold yourselves up as any kind of defenders of anything but your hobby. i see no evidence at all that conservatives in general give a flying fnck about the Constitution except when it can be used to attack Democrats. you have lost your standing.
The reason so many liberals don’t want to admit this is a civil rights fight is because they’re on the wrong side.
And the reason so many gun fetishists say things like that is because they want to hide, perhaps from themselves, the costs of widespread gun ownership. Like Binghamton.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people lost a basic civil liberty to an ex post facto law, and the Democratic party was responsible.
The first civil liberty is “life”. When a dozen people at a time lose their lives, entirely because some berserker had access to guns as a matter of “civil rights”, does the NRA acknowledge any responsibility?
Look, Brett: I’d have considerable respect for your position if you frankly acknowledged that widespread ownership of guns has unavoidable costs — just like widespread ownership of cars does. We could then discuss sensible rules for minimizing the costs while preserving the benefits — just like we do with cars. Until then, spare me your self-rghteousness.
–TP
And your quibble about D.C., NYC, CA and Chicago makes no sense. Of course when the government confiscates guns, they do it as a result of laws they passed making it illegal to own them.
Nope, you’re quibbling. If the Govt. makes a law that prohibits certain models of firearms but allows one to replace that particular gun with a myriad of other available firearms, that’s not confiscation.
The great lie perpetuated by the NRA and gun extremists is there exists some great movement afoot to seize any and all firearms. There isn’t and never has been.
Gun control is the part of Jim Crow that the party of Jim Crow never gave up on.
Is that why blacks support gun control laws more than whites? Obviously, it’s a longing for the return of Jim Crow, right?
The ratification of the Constitution you pretend to revere was a close thing. And what bloc was most interested in seeing establishment of state militias? Hint: it wasn’t the North. Why? State militias were seen as protection against slave rebellions and uprisings.
There really have been bills introduced in Congress, that got plenty of votes,
though not enough to pass.
Kennedy really did propose…
but did not pass.
So, your point is, an assault is only an assault if it’s successful? That’s stupid. The ugly black gun ban passed. The Lautenberg amendment passed. The rules change during the Clinton administration that put firearms dealers who worked out of their homes out of business passed.
“Is that why blacks support gun control laws more than whites? Obviously, it’s a longing for the return of Jim Crow, right?”
I could theorize why blacks tend to support gun control, (If Democrats can ask “What’s the matter with Kansas”, an NRA member can surely ask what’s the matter with Harlem.) but it wouldn’t change the brute historical fact that the Democratic party came to support gun control as part of Jim Crow, and transitioned seamlessly into it’s modern support of that cause. The only thing that changed was an expansion of your victim class.
A random young blogger of wax
Cried “brute historical facts!”
Brett’s right to own guns
Civil rights spoil his funs
And alas, he forgot Dixiecrats.
but it wouldn’t change the brute historical fact that the Democratic party came to support gun control as part of Jim Crow
Is “brute historical fact” another way of saying “something I made up?”
If you were better versed in history, you’d know the Founders you so revere often implemented “character tests” so as to exclude folks (Jews, non-Christians, non-whites) they didn’t care for from militia service.
No, it’s another way of saying, open a history book, wanting to think gun control has savory origins is different from it actually having them. Modern gun control got it’s start as a way of leaving the freed slaves defenseless against the Klan.
And exclusion from militia service, while wrongful, wasn’t exculsion from the right to keep and bear arms.
So, your point is, an assault is only an assault if it’s successful? T
i’m saying “assault” is a silly hyperbole when describing something that has zero chance of becoming law.
The ugly black gun ban passed.
yes, that was a silly law. it has expired.
The Lautenberg amendment passed.
want a gun? don’t beat your spouse. this is an unacceptable prohibition ?
By all interpretations (yours excluded) the right to keep and bear arms was predicated on militia service. Even gun fetishists acknowledge this by claiming everyone has membership in the militia. You know, those pesky first words in the 2A.
I know you want to introduce Cramer’s “Racist Roots of Gun Control” as authoritative research–but it isn’t. It is fatally flawed in that it pretends Jim Crow was furthered or enabled by some vague and scattered local laws prohibiting gun ownership by blacks. In reality, Jim Crow was advanced by restricting access to the vote as well as restricting access to most public services and institutions.
BTW, the first federal gun control legislation was aimed at criminal activity–specifically, gangs in the ’20s and early ’30s. I suppose you’ll argue this demonstrates gun control has its roots in hating Italians.