How Homeland Security Works
Last night I went for a walk and was listening to the BBC morning news on NPR. The main topic, as one might expect, was the Virginia Tech tragedy; one of the main angles they were pushing, of course, was the US gun culture. I always enjoy listening to British people try to wrap their heads around this topic, and today was no exception. They really don’t understand why an event like this wouldn’t lead to a Virginia-wide or nationwide call for tightened restrictions - or outright ban - on firearms.
And, as one might expect, advocates from both sides of the debate were happy to step forward and provide information. A representative from Virginians for Public Safety talked about the problem of third-party and gun show sales in Virginia, which are unregulated. Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, informed the presenter that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will own guns. (And, like Michelle Malkin, he said that if college students were allowed to carry guns, this tragedy could have been lessened. I imagine that today’s predictable revelation that this tragedy was actually perpetrated by a college student carrying a gun had no effect on him.)
Now, no matter which side of the debate one comes down on, it’s fairly sad that a tragedy like this is seen as a chance to evangelize, both domestically and internationally. However, since the debate has been thrown open and shows no sign of slowing down, I want to inject another wrinkle. I’m actually fairly sympathetic to a version of the pro-gun VCDL’s argument: The horse is out of the barn. Whatever the cause, we are a culture absolutely flooded with guns. The Va. Tech shooter filed the serial numbers off the handguns he used, implying that they weren’t obtained legally; what good would a handgun ban have done if he bought them off the black market?
(The argument might be more compelling, of course, if the NRA and other pro-gun lobbying organizations weren’t actively trying to make it more difficult to crack down on illegal weapon sales. “We don’t need more gun laws, just enforce the ones we have” rings hollow from the cold, dead hands crowd.)
Moreover, of course, NRA et al. argue that matters of public safety aside, gun ownership is a right. The Civil Rights Defense Fund is dedicated to protecting the “First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments” from “[c]ivil actions against federal, state, and local authorities…enforcing unfair gun laws.” And let’s, for the moment, accept that as true. Let’s, for the moment, ignore the words “well-regulated militia” in the Second Amendment. Let’s, for the moment, assume that the founding fathers intended for us to have a pistol under every pillow.
That still wouldn’t mean the NRA is right.
3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, and the nation feared more were coming. In return, we were treated to an endless litany of all the reasons we should contract the Constitution in the interest of national security. No amount of “it’s anti-American”, “it wouldn’t work”, or “aren’t you at least going to use a local anesthetic” could dissuade the wingnut brigade from throwing their civil liberties at the government like a mother throwing ice cream money at her kids. “Here’s our communication privacy, and our right to due process, and habeas corpus, and our tripartite government! Bring them back when we’re safe!”
In 2001, 29,573 deaths were caused by firearms. While the executive branch was busy asserting its right to abridge liberties in defense of American lives, somehow they forgot to ask for the one right which is tied to more than five times as many deaths per year than terrorism has claimed on US soil in history. They forgot to ask for our guns.
The NRA makes the same arguments we made, some of which are just as valid: Gun bans don’t work! Once we give up a liberty, we’ll never get it back! It’s a slippery slope to a police state! But that’s not really the point I want to make, which is that the pro-gun lobby is exactly as “knee-jerk” in defense of their chosen priority as left-leaning civil libertarians are; for some reason, however, while gun defenders are generally lionized in their support of the Constitution, privacy defenders are generally seen by the right as fringe voices eager to capitulate to terrorists.
By the wingnuts’ own highly suspect framing, their refusal to allow a gun ban is begging gun criminals to strike again and again, killing Americans all because the loony right is too attached to some weird concept of “civil liberties.” Using their own reasoning on, say, racial profiling, gun bans are perfectly reasonable: We know it’s not fishing poles that are killing 30,000 people a year. So why should we allow a gun permit to be as freely available as a fishing license? It’s just common sense.
Update: Thanks to thebewilderness in comments, it looks like the gun culture isn’t the only thing the British are having trouble wrapping their heads around:
(Image blurred by me to avoid adding to the travesty)
127 Responses to “Guns: A Civil Liberty Too Far”
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Here you will see who the real murderer is:
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=45582&in_page_id=34
I warn you, if you are in any way a decent human being you will be pissed and disgusted at the same time.
Auguste says:
That’s part of the problem. We ARE prying way too many weapons from the cold, dead hands AFTER they’ve killed too many innocents.
I own one 20 guage sisngle shot, shotgun. Because my late father’s girl friend didn’t want my brother to have it. I sometimes think I should get some shells for it just because but haven’t gotten a roundtoit yet.
I honestly don’t have a well-formed opinion about gun control. I understand and respect the Constitution, including the Second Amendment, but the position taken by the NRA et al. about gun control worries me, and the “gun culture” you refer to doesn’t really seem to care about the philosophical issues, but only about having and using guns. And as you point out, these people who are so quick to throw away the rest of the Bill of Rights don’t seem to notice this inconsistency.
Having said that, I don’t know that we can blame the gun culture of this country for the shootings at Virginia Tech. The suspect wasn’t particularly raised in that culture, and he appears to have been deeply disturbed. Assuming that a person who is sufficiently motivated can always obtain a gun, can we really say that this is a uniquely American phenomenon? Couldn’t this have happened in, say, Norway, where guns are also common?
My goodness, thebewilderness! I guess some folks see anything as an excuse to indulge their misogyny. Mass murder? Must be the first female victim’s fault. Wow…just wow.
Let’s never forget that behind every evil act committed by a man there’s a woman we can blame it on.
No comment on the larger theme, but on the idea that if other students had been carrying guns, the tragedy would have been lessened…
As was pointed out elsewhere (I don’t remember exactly where…could’ve been at Feministe), what would have happened if other students had been carrying guns is a shootout in the midst of crowded classrooms.
I swear steam actually came out of my nose when I read that update.
Oh, f-word.
I know the debate is going to focus on over whether or not there should be more or less gun control. That’s gets colorful talking heads available easy and cheap for television, gory newspaper headlines (check out today’s front pages at www.newseum.org and ask yourself if most of the headlines ring more lurid than sympathetic), and echoed in some blogs. I support gun control but it’s the last thing on my mind in cases like this. Gun control wouldn’t have stopped this guy from getting a gun, it would have reduced his firepower but without an outright gun ban, which no one is advocating, he still would be able to get small arms and lots of bullets and have been able to do pretty much what happened yesterday, all other things being equal.
What I’m more concerned about in this case is how the various agents of college life and the community didn’t adequately respond to this guy spinning out of control into a condition where he wanted to go so out of his way to buy guns, stockpile ammunition, and go on a rampage.
In a sense he’s a lone nut, but he lived in a community that’s designed to serve a wide diversity of people who are going in many ways through massively stressful transformations in their lives. Hmm. Kind of like the March 2006 Seattle rave shootings, the Montreal shootings at Dawson College in September 2006 and École Polytechnique back in 1989, Columbine High in 1989, etc. Those shootings happened in communities which have awesome human services, from counseling to medical care to legal assistance, accessable to the widest diversity of humankind residing in any way in those communities.
As a prochoice activist and a guy I’m willing to say I accept responsibility on an individual and social level and in many ways I want to help people in trouble. I know these communities are trying to learn from these tragedies and do more to help troubled guys in their communities. I might also draw analogies to the many incidents of anti-choice violence which have mostly affected clinics in just those kind of communities - relatively liberal, tolerant communities with suburbs and rural areas that were underserved and maybe less able to reach or be reached by men with psychological problems. That was one of the things that various tasks forces conviened after incidents of clinic violence looked into, and it seemed like effective work was done to address those concerns.
The City of Seattle created a task force to respond to their tragedy, and back in July 2006 issued a through and helpful report which I’m told by friends in Seattle is being followed with close cooperation with youth and community organizations. I got a copy and would be glad to email it to anyone interested, I don’t believe it’s on the web anymore. I’m wondering if anyone here at Pandagon knows of similar task forces established to deal with the situations and individuals inclined to act out with extreme acts of violence like this, especially on college campuses and in relatively progressive communities. I’m familiar with the clinic task forces and some isolated task forces associated with incidents like I mentioned above, and I’d be glad to share references and insights on this.
Stephen Carter, Athens, GA
The anti-gun arguments paraded around for the last couple of days are the embodiment of willful ignorance.
Seraph, a shootout in the crowded classroom would have been IMMENSELY preferable to what actually occurred. How many would have been shot? 5? 10? It would have been less than 50, I can tell you that with great certainty. To pretend that the tragedy would have been somehow aggravated is to do just that: pretend. (Of course, with people carrying guns constantly, we might have a classroom shootout every couple of weeks… but that’s not the argument you’re pushing.)
Of course, there are GOOD arguments in favor of gun control, too. With strict gun control or an outright ban, there REALLY WOULD be fewer guns, despite the willful ignorance of the NRA crowd. I guess they think the guns on the black market are made out of two parts hatred and three parts magic: in fact, they are nothing more than formerly-legal guns filtered through the hands of a thief or a less-than-legally-meticulous gun show dealer.
I tend toward a permissive policy on guns, but I’m able to recognize good reasons against it. They’re all great reasons. The only thing that underwrites my opposition to severe gun control is this: As much as I am terrified by the prospect of a gun in the hand of every nutjob who wants one, I’m even more terrfied by the prospect of a guns only in the hands of the military and police.
After glancing at the Metro article, I immediately made my way to Cute Overload. Knut is a sanity saver, and bunnies on cotton? What can I say.
What was most disturbing was the image with the caption referring to her ‘pouting and relaxing’. WTF?
The problem isn’t the gun culture. Or at least just the gun culture.
The problem is the culture. Period. from top to bottom. Oh. And by the way. Violent media is only a teeeny-tiny part of that. Greed and selfishness? A whole lot.
Found the story and tried leaving a comment. Since they moderate their comments (and I doubt that I was the first one to try to take them to task for this angle, despite the lack of comments), I’m not expecting much. Here’s hoping their getting their chestnuts roasted over an open fire for this.
Karmakin,
I don’t know how you’re connecting up greed with all of this… There doesn’t seem to have been a profit motive.
Selfishness makes some sense, though the shooter seems to have crossed over from selfishness to malevolence. I guess you could say that a cultural atmosphere of selfishness (and greed, but this is me reconstructing an argument for you) is what allows individuals to become so alienated that they decide to kill not only themselves, but as many other people as they can manage, too.
However, while I think that greed and selfishness are big problems in American culture, I’m not really motivated to attribute this shooting to them. Seems to me, this guy probably just flipped his lid. It happens.
Of course, it happens a lot here, and maybe THAT’S a result of the greed and selfishness described above, but now we’re not talking about Columbine and VTech, we’re talking about the overall homicide rate… And that is shifting the subject a bit.
AND ANOTHER THING! Here’s my mini-feminist rant, dripping with sarcasm:
I’m so glad that they’ve decided to blame the ex-girlfriend for this. It’s about time you soulless succubi (i.e. all women) were taken to task for not sufficiently catering to men’s egos, thus enabling us to behave as responsible agents. I’m really glad that the Metro isn’t falling for this “I’m the one who got fucking murdered, here!” defense. That one is so old and tired. You women have been using it for ages, now, to escape your basic duty to keep all the men in your life peaceful and happy. Jesus.
(Note that I said this is sarcasm. I used punctuation, and that should be enough to tip you off that I’m not a real troll, but I though I’d emphasize it anyway.)
Well, I hate to rain on the gun-promoter’s parade, but nearly all of the slain were under 21. Which is the age you have to be in order to purchase a handgun or get a concealed carry permit. So shut your stupid fucking pie-hole, Dennis.
Sigh. I’m sorry. Please don’t take that personally. I work in Blacksburg, have been in the building where the murders occurred, and had met one of the victims socially. It’s not a good week.
Great point about how quick wingnuts were to cede the rest of the Bill of Rights in the aftermath of 9-11 but no amount of bloodshed will loosen the deathgrip on their precious, woefully misinterpreted 2nd Amendment.
Coming from male-dominated industries for many years, I can tell you that most gun rights enthusiasts are annoying, overcompensating, MRA dweebs. When I think about the fact that they are one of the most, if not THE most, catered to political blocs in this country, it’s all the more depressing. It’s not just occasional tragedies like this recent one, there’s a much bigger tragedy here.
Surely you realize that Bush is serving a second term, in no small part, because pathetic little losers were askeered that John Kerry was going to take their penis extenders away. Look at how all the Presidential contenders act like they’re bobbling a turd when they’re asked about this shooting and gun rights. All because they don’t want the gun bloc coming out in force against them. Because fucking annoying, limpdicked, MRA dweebs have that much fucking political clout.
nearly all of the slain were under 21. Which is the age you’d have to be in order to purchase a handgun or get a concealed carry permit.
That’s actually a good point, Hank. However, insofar as it damages my argument, it also cuts against the arguments of those who say that more people walking around with guns would have made the situation bloodier.
Also, don’t apologize and don’t ask me not to take it personally when you tell me to shut my stupid fucking pie-hole. If you were, in fact, sorry for saying that, you could have edited your comment so as NOT to tell me to shut my stupid fucking pie-hole. What you meant to say was, “Excuse me for behaving like an asshole, I’m experiencing stress.” You’re excused.
The Metro is owned by the same media group as the Daily Mail. FYI.
You think they’d have printed this headline about a male (stalking?)/murder victim?
Seems to me that what went wrong here was a failure to deal with signs of mental illness, which opens up a whole other can of worms than the gun control issue (which I agree is a problem). A disturbed individual who isn’t being reached in any way might just come up with another way of harming people, if the guns hadn’t been available.
I think the Metro article would totally get filed under Twisty’s Men Hate You category.
Dennis -
>(Of course, with people carrying guns constantly, we might have a classroom shootout every couple of weeks… but that’s not the argument you’re pushing.)
No, it wasn’t. It’s an *extremely* good point, though. Thanks for making it for me.
I will concede that your answer to the point I *did* make is valid. But then, SSFC’s is much more so:
>Gun control wouldn’t have stopped this guy from getting a gun, it would have reduced his firepower but without an outright gun ban, which no one is advocating, he still would be able to get small arms and lots of bullets and have been able to do pretty much what happened yesterday, all other things being equal.
In any case, I think your feminist rant is the real heart of the matter. Yet another asshole has decided that if he can’t own His Woman, no one will. And this particular one decided to lash out in all directions to make his point more vividly. Something to remember in the days to come when all the talking heads are making it *just* about guns.
Me thinks that if it would sell more papers to the general public, they would put a picture of my Aunt Lillie’s Liver after 9:00 mass. (Trust me, not a pretty site;) Blaming the paper certainly is a good start, but here we all are encouraging them by ticking over their web counter, and I bet we are not alone. Lets act like activists, and well, take no action by not going to the page, hmmm?
OK, start the flaming, … now.
First of all, guns are a constitutional right, not a civil liberty. This country was founded by men of genius who put the right to free speech as the first guaranteed right. Right after that one and presumably without thinking too long on it, they give citizens not only the right to own guns, but also the right to form militias.
The founding fathers knew first hand how this country was wrested from the British monarchy; it was by guns, not pitch forks or shovels. They understood well the means necessary for free citizens to maintain their freedoms from those ever present souls within any given population that have the will to oppress. Citizens having the right to own guns reduce the probability that those souls will find a way to power and oppression.
Do you really want to live in a country that has as its only means of negotiating with their government the right to vote? Don’t be naive. How do you think the civil rights of African Americans got so far, so fast? The threat of violence can move mountains.
This country is being run by career politicians who spend their whole lives in public office. They like feeling the power of governing people and spend a lifetime pursuing it. That worries me almost as much as I worry about an all volunteer army made up of career soldiers. I fear in the long run of this democracy, one or the other of those two groups will give us the same sort of trouble as they have in other nations past and present.
The ultimate sacrifice paid by the soldiers of the Revolutionary war and the subsequent wars to protect our freedoms has been the cost of maintaining them. The tragedy at Virginia Tech will have to be accepted as the continued cost. Not being willing to accept the price that inevitably has to be paid mocks and wastes the ultimate sacrifice of those who already made it.
Thanks for mentioning this Auguste, because (as you probably remember) I am from New Zealand, and I have solidly come to the conclusion that it has to be a cultural thing, because I JUST DON’T GET IT, and I know enough to know it’s not just about me.
For the record, I don’t hate guns, but neither do I like guns.
But I do think guns should be regulated tighter than possibly anything else on earth. If they were an anus, they’d be puckered so tight they’d whistle. I think there should be a complete and utter ban on all hand-guns, assault-rifles, semi-autos, and autos. Why? Because there is one thing and one thing only that they are designed for; to kill another human being.
I am willing to give professional cullers and farmers the benefit of the doubt for the need, and have anally controlled privilege-based licensing that can be revoked with a bad sneeze from the owner, for single shot rifles, possibly bolt-action. Cops of course, would be armed. But that would be it.
And don’t call hunting a sport, if you armed the animals, THEN it gets to be a sport, not before.
I am not going to debate this with anyone, I just SERIOUSLY don’t understand this aspect of American culture, and I don’t think I ever will. A mature civilised society has no real need of guns aside from a few controlled unfortunate necessities *shrugs*
wow, i had to go comment on that british article. how fucking horrible and sexist, blaming a victim like that. she didn’t create the guy’s issues.
Thanks for mentioning this Auguste, because (as you probably remember) I am from New Zealand, and I have solidly come to the conclusion that it has to be a cultural thing, because I JUST DON’T GET IT, and I know enough to know it’s not just about me.
Considering that the list of things that Americans just don’t get about other cultures is almost infinitely long, I’m glad that you don’t seem to have taken my tone as a slam on the British or, by extension, New Zealanders and other furriners.
Right after that one and presumably without thinking too long on it, they give citizens not only the right to own guns, but also the right to form militias.
Actually, the Constitutional Convention thought long and hard about pretty much everything. Indeed, the Bill of Rights itself was a compromise added late in the process (that’s why they are amendments)
And the Framers gave citizens the right to own guns as part of the right to form militias. These are not separate rights.
The constitution was framed following a series of popular rebellions (the Whisky Rebellion and Shays Rebellion) that notably worried the framers. Indeed part of the point of the Constitution was to create a federal government that would have the ability to respond to armed revolts with force. The notion that the Constitution was designed to in any way encourage armed insurrection is to seriously misread the document.
Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment is part of a compromise between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. The latter wanted enumerated rights in the Constitution; the former didn’t. Ultimately a Federalist, James Madison, wrote a series of enumerated rights in order to placate the Anti-Federalists.
In particular, the Second Amendment was a response to concerns over the creation of a standing army, which was seen as a dramatically less democratic institution than the militia. Of course, we now have an enormous standing army in this country, and the heir to the militia (the National Guard) is largely fighting in its service….and most folks who scream loudest about the 2nd Amendment seem perfectly happy about all that.
At any rate, the Second Amendment is not some generalized love-letter to armed violence as the key to liberty. The Framers were hoping to build a federal government that could more effectively resist (and thus discourage) armed revolt, not one that would promote it as a negotiating tactic.
I’ll stop there for the moment, but I could say a lot about the idea that African American civil rights have been vindicated with violence. The short version: though there certainly has been violence done in the name of African American civil rights, African Americans have historically been much more the victims of (then) Constitutionally recognized violence (from slavery itself through Jim Crow) than its beneficiaries.
lol, nope … there are certain things that one just won’t get about another culture, one just accepts that and moves on. I may not like the gun-culture here, but it’s not my country *shrugs*
Hell, I ran into the culture thing the other day, because amongst friends back home, affection is expressed through teasing and ribbing (PiatoR will tell you this - hell, if you DON’T tease over something THEN it’s a matter of concern) and I run into friends here thinking I am being mean.
Watching what you say becomes a constant companion when you live in another country, especially when you are white like me in a country like the US, where despite my ever-present accent, people seem to forget that I am just NOT american.
There are going to be things you just won’t get when you’re a foriegner (things like the cult of the individual, and public christianity in this country are others). The thing to do is to try to get as much knowledge about them, even though you know you’re not going to really wrap your head around it … hell, perhaps even BECAUSE of that.
“Because there is one thing and one thing only that they are designed for; to kill another human being.”
There is nothing inherently wrong or evil creating a weapon to kill humans. That is because humans are the most dangerous animal on earth. Read some history. Without guns people still manage to kill other people in staggering numbers. Remember the Tutsi massacred by the Hutu’s with machetes? There will always be a person or people who will see advantage in being violently aggressive. That is human nature.
“I think there should be a complete and utter ban on all hand-guns, assault-rifles, semi-autos, and autos.”
You know, I agree with you. We can ban them in the countries of our enemies first. And when they have complied we will ban them in the friendly countries. And when they too have complied we will ban them in this country.
We can ban them in the countries of our enemies first. And when they have complied we will ban them in the friendly countries. And when they too have complied we will ban them in this country.
Uh, I didn’t think anyone said the military wouldn’t still have any sort of gun it wanted, Jim.
Sheesh.
“And the Framers gave citizens the right to own guns as part of the right to form militias. These are not separate rights.”
Can you honestly say the founding fathers were giving us the right to only own guns if we belonged to a militia? That is absolute nonsense. The revolutionary thing they put in to the constitution was the right of the citizen to form armed militias.
Hmmm. Yet, Switzerland and Israel are two countries where EVERY HOUSEHOLD HAS A GUN, due to the nature of those countries’ military conscription laws. Yet, they have none of the violence found in the United Kingdom.
Again, hmmmmmmm. Could it be that there is an issue here that guns are but a symptom of?
“Uh, I didn’t think anyone said the military wouldn’t still have any sort of gun it wanted, Jim.”
Having a military and police force with sole access to weapons is inviting oppression. It wouldn’t start tomorrow but with human nature what it is, it will happen eventually.
It could also be read as the right of the citizens to maintain an armed militia, not to be able to spontaneously form one from the (privately heavily armed) populace. That’s not necessarily an unrevolutionary thing. The point of militias is that the soldiers are defending their hometown, so would have the defense of the area as a primary loyalty to any other, including their government. And as long as it was legally required to keep an armed militia serving at home, the government would have to continue to supply a well armed force whose first loyalty was to the people, not to them. And the militias would be much better supplied if they were funded by the government, not just assembled out of the local gun nuts.
I really wish the founding fathers had had better grammar.
Sarah in Chicago– the teasing of friends is also in American culture, but for some reason, is more often a guy thing and a youth thing. Probably the problem is Americans have so many subcultures, one learns to be sure the friend can “take it” before ribbing them. After all, I know have friends with Asperger’s and it would be totally inappropriate for me to expect them to tell the difference between friendly ribbing and a verbal attack, so I’ve stopped.
“Having a military and police force with sole access to weapons is inviting oppression. It wouldn’t start tomorrow but with human nature what it is, it will happen eventually.”
Well, I just argued that in theory, that’s what the National Guard is for, the idea being that you would defend your hometown even against your own government because, well, it’s your home.
And i’m not sure, especially in these modern times, with such a disconnect between the technology the military has access too and that of the private citizen (how many people really can afford a bomber jet and would want to buy it?) that individual citizens and their guns really increase the protection against our own government that much. Certainly not more than we’re hurting our chances by killing eachother.
“And i’m not sure, especially in these modern times, with such a disconnect between the technology the military has access too and that of the private citizen…�
Certainly a citizenry armed solely with rifles and pistols could not defeat a modern army, but it could make life hell for an oppressive government. Take a look at Iraq and what the motivated are doing with the resources they have.
Oh, I don’t doubt that Samantha.
The thing is, it’s difficult for me to TELL who can “take it” who can’t, as my cultural cues are screwed a tad. I mean, the obvious ones are obvious, but the rest, it’s a tad difficult. And as I get comfortable around someone I know, then that’s going to happen.
I’m working on it
Looking at the weight of the laptop computer, hardcover textbooks, notebooks, etc. that I carry to and around school every day, I doubt that you could pay a college student intent on their education to add the weight of a gun to that load.
Sarah in Chicago,
I know living in Chicago, you might not know about this, and I have absolutely no clue about NZ, except that Xena and Lord of the Rings were filmed there, but here in my home state, Kentucky, we have hunting seasons to cull back the number of deer and other animals. This is considered humane, b/c there would be too many to be able to live off of the land. We even have “Doe Days” were you are allowed to hunt does in season, so they can’t foal next spring. So there is a reason for hunting.
You can argue if it is a good reason or not, but there it is. For me, shooting(not hunting) is fun. I occasionally go to the range with friends and shoot their rifles or handguns. My fiance got his first rifle at the age of 12. But then he found paintball, and has pretty much given up live ammo. Here he can shoot people legally.
Having a military and police force with sole access to weapons is inviting oppression. It wouldn’t start tomorrow but with human nature what it is, it will happen eventually.
When was the last time you scared the cops or the military from oppressing you with your gun? When? I mean, the military? Sure, back in 1776 the British actually had to send some guys out who had basically the same weapons everyone else had to physically take what you owned so back then, having a musket of your own and claiming you were keeping the government from oppressing you made some sense. Today, I think it might be a little different - I doubt anything you have at your house would protect you if the government really wanted to screw you.
We are talking about a government that in the forseeable future will be able to make things invisible. What do you got?
And our civilized cousins in Britain and Australia have no problem with violence after their gun bans — with Tony Blair speaking at “knife control” conferences and Australians being more likely to be robbed while home?
As for guns being made for killing other people: A gun nullifies physical strength advantages so that, if your assailant has 100 lbs of body weight and upper body strength several times yours from pumping iron, you can defend yourself. And, if necessary, you can kill such an attacker rather than be a victim of brute force. Why should we be ruled or terrorized by those who have more muscle or physical strength?
The militia is defined in the civil code as all able bodied men between the ages of 18 and 45; it predates the National Guard by almost 150 years in use in the British North American colonies, then the Colonial Military, then the United States. The militia meant the rag-tag group brought to fight alongside the British Army, then, post Lexington, the Continental Army; it is the final bulwark against invasion — which was, until 1940, a real concern from both Canada and Mexico. (Ask the Canadians — they feared US invasion until WWII was over.) Because all able bodied men were considered part of the militia automatically, and everyone was desirous of our defenders being able to actually hit something in the event of conflict, we have the phrase “well regulated militia”, which provides a justification for the individual right of firearm ownership.
The fallacious argument that it protects state militias begs us to ask why a state would be given a right in only the language of the second amendment, when all other language of rights is specific to individuals, states having “powers”.
This guy who shot up VT shows that there is evil in the world, and that, when someone is set on committing an evil act, he will go forward with it. The gun laws protecting that campus did not stop him from acting — they stopped only the law abiding from being armed.
While it has been argued state or individual the present stat of law say individual. All the other rights are for individual speech etc.
“James Madison, a noted Federalist, wrote: “… still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.â€? States are forbidden in the U.S. Constitution from keeping troops independent from the Federal government but must rely on citizen militias for their defense.”
“Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Paper #29 [9], states: “This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.â€?”
“Ultimately, Federalists and Anti-Federalists negotiated their differences during the First Congress with the resulting compromise becoming the Bill of Rights.”
” Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum Opinion, August 24, 2004
On August 24, 2004, the Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel wrote a Memorandum Opinion for the United States Attorney General. It stated, “The Second Amendment secures a right of individuals generally, not a right of States or a right restricted to persons serving in militias.”?
Kyso K,
Nobody (at least, nobody worth talking to/about) seriously believes that they could actually take on the military with a bathrobe and a .38, but that’s not the point. The point is, an armed (or even potentially armed) citizenry is less easily pushed around than an unarmed citizenry.
Just imagine for a moment that you’re a sheriff of questionable civic virtue, and you’ve decided you’d like to run around demanding the right of lords with all the comely young lasses in your county. This plan seems much more doable if you know that every house you go to is at least unlikely to have armed residents, whereas you’re armed to the teeth. That’s a pretty outrageous abuse of power and a hyperbolic example, but seriously, in light of things like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyTrz4Fq1Ec), it doesn’t seem so far out to me.
And that’s to say nothing of the testosterone-fueled fantasy (and remember ladies have testosterone, too!) of dying with a warm gun in your hand if the world happens to turn to shit, in the case of a problem with the military.
JB,
Appeals to the authority of Founding Fathers won’t get you too far in a room full of feminists. We kind of think they made the wrong call on the whole women’s suffrage issue… and let’s not even get into the slavery debacle.
JimB:
If the founding fathers intended to give us the unrestricted right to own guns, why mention militas — well-regulated or otherwise — at all? If that were indeed the case, you’d think that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” would be perfectly sufficient all on its own.
As for your second claim, if you’d bother to crack a high-school history textbook every once in a while, you’d know that the right of the citizenry to own weapons and to form armed militias dates back to 17th century English common law, and the more general right of the citizenry to rebel against an illegitimate government goes all the way back to the Magna Carta in 1215.
And the people who tend to be the most gung-ho about gunsmilitiagunsmilitiaguns also tend to be pretty much the exact opposite of “well-regulated,” don’t you think?
Greetings JB of 10:46 pm from JB of 10:35 pm. Sorry if I stepped on your name.
Dennis What do any of those issues have to do with what the founding fathers intended when the wrote the right to bear arms, If we are arguing what the right is we go to the source. If we are arguing what it should be then that’s another matter.
All it means is that the names don’t carry any weight for most people here in terms of an argument from authority. What we are interested in, I think, is reasons for policies, not a history lesson or a book report.
JB1035 from JB1046 I guess we can keep them guessing.
Wait, is JB being impersonated here? (I am moved to ask by the 10:52 PM post.)
Okay, I’m done here. Somebody’s playing games. Not interested.
Dennis, The argument about the meaning of the right was in the thread before I entered.
On women’s suffrage, it was left to the states originally. New Jersey got it right, but, then, when women voted for Jefferson, the Federalist Party moved to strip women of the right to vote.
Appealing to contemporaneous language to understand the meaning of the second amendment as an individual right is certainly valid, even if you have problems with the Framers, since they wrote both the amendment and the cited pieces.
As for slavery, there was this problem: the south had a greater population of total people, although there was a large disenfranchised, subjugated class. If the non-slave states accepted slave states being “fully counted” for representation in the House of Representatives, there would have been no possibility of passing any legislation to curtail slavery because the House would be entirely dominated by representatives of the slave-holding white south — apportioned on the back of black slaves. The slave states would not join the union with an outright ban on slavery included in the constitution — the ratification of the constitution was contentious enough as it eventually was.
The 3/5ths compromise was designed to try to balance these competing interests of getting the slave states to accept the new constitution while not giving them total control of the new, stronger federal government. Given that electors for president were apportioned as per the House of Representatives, you would have had a pro-slave House and pro-slave presidency, with perhaps at best a divided Senate. The anti-slavery forces got as much as possible while accomplishing the goal of keeping the United States united. The United States was cut off from the Atlantic slave trade within a generation; the pro-slavery forces were reduced in power in the new federal government.
Although the constitution would have been more perfect had it eradicated the plague of slavery, it would have been impossible to do that at the time. Given that France had yet to have the Cahiers, with the first request of a sovereign to abolish slavery claimed by some tiny town I’ve forgotten completely to Louis XVI, there was no historical precedent for accomplishing the abolition of slavery in the West (or maybe anywhere — I only say the West because that is what I know). The forces against slavery pushed hard for what they could get, and they accomplished the goal of building a strong federal government that encompassed the slave states. There were then fights in the congress for years to restrict the spread of slavery. Finally, the troops of that same federal government imposed an end of slavery on the slave states.
Places where a great many people have guns and are in militias - like Afghanistan or Iraq - aren’t exactly beacons of liberty.
I also think it is the culture. Just as pop-culture portrayals of people ( I have no idea whether it corresponds to reality) show them imbibing alcohol to relieve least bit of stress, it also portrays them as picking up guns and turning violent at the least bit of problem. Maybe this extends to real life too.
Dennis, Apparently someone has taken up my JB, which I have used for some time. I don’t know who has priority. No games just two persons.
JB 10:35 I don’t think anyone here cares what the truth is about the right to bear arms.
Dennis: My error; no attempt to dissemble. I didn’t see JB on the thread and have used it elsewhere so jumped in with it. It’s just so nice and common. All that is mine is the 10:35 and the acknowledgment of the error; the better parts are by the real JB.
“If the founding fathers intended to give us the unrestricted right to own guns, why mention militas — well-regulated or otherwise — at all? If that were indeed the case, you’d think that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed� would be perfectly sufficient all on its own.�
Not really. For example, say a government gives the people the right to live and go about their business. On the other hand the government doesn’t give them the right to form large groups or gatherings.
Now suppose our constitution gives individual citizens the right to own guns, but not the right to organize into large groups, e.g. militias, whose purpose is to use those guns.
See the value in having both the right to bear arms AND be able to organize a well-regulated militia?
“ and the more general right of the citizenry to rebel against an illegitimate government goes all the way back to the Magna Carta in 1215.�
Can you pull out that right from the Magna Carta and post it?
I own a couple of weapons, becuase a) they are fun b) shit like Katrina or Mt. St. Helens happens and in those times it is better to be armed than unarmed.
The VT shooter had himself a pair of handguns. No amount of legislation is going to make it terribly diificult to procure a glock and a little .22.
If he was sporting a pump action shotgun or a mini-14 he could have done stuff like simply blow doors open and shoot at people behind desks and podiums with a reasonable expectation of causing casualties.
How do you protect yourself against that? Make CCL’s as common as Driver’s License? I know I’d really like to be able to shoot back at someone if they just randomly starting gunning people down.
Still not everyone is as cool headed and chill, a combat veteran. Heh, though it could be said that combat veterans are the last people you want walking around armed . . .
Try to look at this from a larger view: We live in stressfull times. Our country is really in bad shape, and people in the populace are starting to crack under the stress. Do we oppress the people or relieve the stress?
Well, what I think isn’t really that important. I mourn for the dead.
On August 24, 2004, the Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel wrote a Memorandum Opinion for the United States Attorney General. It stated, “The Second Amendment secures a right of individuals generally, not a right of States or a right restricted to persons serving in militias.�?
Right. This is the same office that advised the Resident that he is a Unitary Executive and can therefore ignore any law he wants. It’s the office responsible for our lovely “alternative interrogation techniques,” arguing that Geneva Conventions don’t prohibit torture if you redefine torture. The head of that office is now the current Attorney General, who is about to lie his ass off to the Senate Judiciary committee. Again. Gonzalez’s impeachment is likely before the summer.
Anyway, since when is the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel the last authority on the Constitution? Never heard of Marbury v. Madison?
Nice citation. Next time, try one with a shred of credibility left.
1) guns are fun.
2) I have five (I think) in the house (one or two may be in hubby’s work van….sometimes he stops to hunt on his way home from work, or shoot trap).
3) Guns fill my freezer with food most of the year
4) Having a handgun for personal protection, given the stats about same, is just plain ignorant.
5) No one needs an automatic weapon to hunt or for personal protection.
6) If Rwandans could slaughter a half million of their own in 2 months using crudely made machetes, why are we having a debate about firearm escalation? Seems to me someone should be making machetes.
In other words: some gun laws good, some gun laws bad, some people who use guns smart, some ignorant as hell. And guns can’t protect you in all situations.
I own a couple of weapons, becuase a) they are fun b) shit like Katrina or Mt. St. Helens happens . . .
Hang on, now we have people claiming that a few guns are going to hold off hurricanes and volcanoes?
Dan S.
No, A few guns will keep me from being a victim of the chaos and confusion such disasters invariably bring about . . . and maybe, if I am so inclinded, cause a bit of chaos myself.
Jesus Christ, I was going to leave a thoughtful reply with a link to my recent post on this thing, which is a little shrill (which is why I’m not posting it here but on my own blog), which you can read here, but after reading JimB’s nonsense I’m just throwing my hands up in disgust. Short point of my post: what regulations would have prevented this? In terms of proposed laws what exactly would have prevented this in terms of preventing gun ownership that wouldn’t simultaneously be a really bad invasion of privacy that would deny gun ownership to plenty of people who are not threats?
6) If Rwandans could slaughter a half million of their own in 2 months using crudely made machetes, why are we having a debate about firearm escalation? Seems to me someone should be making machetes.
Yep, none of those people were shot… [/sarcasm]
I think a better point might be: how many millions would have been killed in those 2 months if they’d had as many guns as they had machetes, like here? I mean, of course machetes can kill. It’s just that guns are just so much more efficient.
And, yeah, shooting is fun. That’s why I bought a pistol, to plink at cans out in the desert. Definetely didn’t get it for protection- I live in the real world, not an action movie. I have never carried it except unloaded in its case.
After yesterday though, I’m really not sure I ever even want to look at it. But I don’t want to sell it; who knows where it would end up? Do I want to be responsible for yet another loose gun on the street?
I dunno- I could toss it in a lake or something, but I paid $450 for the thing. I hate wasting money. I may just give it to my mother’s new husband- he’s got a collection which includes a pistol like mine, maybe he’d like a matched set. At least then I’ll know it will just sit in his locked cabinet forever, and I can always use it again when we go plinking in the desert. I’m always using his rifle and shotguns anyway…
Remember, every illegal handgun was originally a legal handgun, lawfully purchased new and registered. Then they get sold into the secondhand market and re-sold until finally a buyer “forgets” to register it.
Or it just gets stolen- when I was a kid, our house was burglarized. 2 guns were stolen, a pisto and a shotgun. So, my family contributed 2 more guns to the black market; just what Miami needed in the ’80s. (otoh, my father had probably bought the pistol illegally himself, the rogue…)
As for the scraped-off serial numbers on Cho’s guns (was that mentioned here or on another thread?): I remember a report yesterday that a receipt from a local shop for the 9mm was found among his things. Why he scraped it off, who knows? Maybe he thought he was going to escape. But the gun, apparently, was legally purchased and registered to him. And assuming what I read yesterday was true- lotsa rumors floating around.
I really like the idea of letting people have them, but requiring that they can only be in hot pink with sparkles.
and maybe, if I am so inclinded, cause a bit of chaos myself.
Are you often in the habit of refuting your own argument, or was that intended as snark?
“I always enjoy listening to British people try to wrap their heads around this topic, and today was no exception.”
Did they touch on the fact that British *police* don’t even carry guns? (with the exception of specialist armed response units.)
Restrictions on legal gun ownership reduces the total number of guns in circulation, which reduces the total number of illegal guns as well.
To jump in a bit late, there are a few school shootings in recent times that have been interrupted by armed civilians:
http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/04/when-mass-killers-meet-armed-resistance.html
There have been good arguements for stricter gun control made in the comments section of this entry, but one I find lacking is that because neo-cons who don’t mind wiping out the rest of the Bill of Rights support the second amendment, the second amendment lacks merit as a result of that support. It could just as easily be pointed out that on an international level, there are murderous dictatorships that support the U.N.’s gun control efforts (with the obvious aim of preventing any uprising within their countries from obtaining firearms from other countries), thus gun control must be evil. But neither address the merits of either side of the arguement on a policy level.
Ever been to Japan? Their regulations seeem to be doing a good job of preventing shit like this.
If you pro-gun people think that owning guns makes a population “harder to push around”, can you explain why America has so docilely handed all its rights back to the government? You have given up all your other constitutional rights even though you are armed. Meanwhile unarmed nations like Australia and the UK have kept most of their rights (except where you Americans take them from us, a la David Hicks) and haven`t had to fire a shot to do it.
The only protection US citizens need from your government is morality and a brain. You lack either, and in the vacuum created you think you can defend yourselves against tyrants with pistols? Stupid.
nothing new too add but wanted to say this, Dennis, you are a hoot! Thank you!
““I’m the one who got fucking murdered, here!â€? defense.”
I definitely needed a good dose of sarcastic dark humor.
Actually the vast majority of the people killed in the Rwandan massacre were killed by cheap machetes manufactured in China. My point was that the people who are so “pro gun” that they think they need automatic weapons and shoulder fire cannons in order to be able to foment revolution (which is what the constitution appears to specifically permit) are talking out their asses. A few hundred thousand motivated murdererers can do the job with their kitchen knives, if properly motivated and led. The Rwandan massacre was the most efficient genocide in history. No massacre committed primarily by fire arms (or even gas ovens) comes even close, in terms of number of people killed per unit of time.
I view both the irrational fear of guns and the irrational worship of guns as a huge problem in society. Guns are tools. They are tools that can be very useful for human survival or that can be misused. So are machetes. So are ball peen hammers.
I really think that the whole discussion of the gun control issue is inappropriate this close to the tragedy. Its using the lives of these victims as political footballs. Changing gun control laws will not bring those people back to life. They will not prevent another lone murderer from flipping his lid and trying again. Whether we hand out guns to every kid on campus or put metal detectors at every door, a person truly set on murder can carry it out. The University is right to focus on making sure that the campus is a place where people who feel like outsiders can have a home, and the issue of having two exits to every classroom is one that would have a more far reaching effect on human safety than any new gun laws, whether liberalizing those laws or tightening them.
Hmmm. Yet, Switzerland and Israel are two countries where EVERY HOUSEHOLD HAS A GUN, due to the nature of those countries’ military conscription laws. Yet, they have none of the violence found in the United Kingdom.
I don’t know about Israel, but I’m pretty darned sure that Switzerland has the third highest per-capita rate of gun homicide in the world.
Something people often overlook about the British gun control situation is that while it is possible to acquire guns and ammo on the black market, it’s damn expensive. You’re not likely to go on a major shooting spree if ammo costs you 10 dollars per round.
The Metro is a hateful rag really. I have a category on my blog devoted to ranting on its anti-woman agenda; just a sample of today’s edition includes a science piece about “fears over contraception increasing women’s promiscuity”. I particularly hate its ongoing campaign to name and shame women whose rape cases fail, as if that is evidence that they are liars. Sounds a bit like how the US media handled the alleged victim the Duke Lacrosse rape case.
As a Brit, I can’t “get my head around” why everyone would want to carry a gun, and aside from farmers, I think carrying a gun here is viewed as automatically criminal in a way it’s not in the USA. Of course making guns illegal doesn’t stop murders from being committed, but it does reduce the accidental gun deaths of children, to name but one statistic (found here: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ben_whitford/2007/02/unarmed_and_dangerous.html). Britain does have a higher murder rate than other countries where gun ownership is more common, but that’s probably due to other factors, which have to be taken into account - it’s not fair to use Norway’s low crime rates as a prop to support gun ownership in America, where murder rates are very high for a developed country.
Great post, Auguste. Being a Brit, I am indeed having a serious problem understanding this lunatic pro-gun position so many Americans seem to adopt. (And also my own lunatic countrymen’s readiness to blame the victim, though plenty of people here have been vociferous in condemning Metro’s appalling piece.)
I feel like stirring the pot on this one, so here goes:
1. The Constitution was written by people. It’s fallible. You’ve changed it and amended it quite a lot over the years. So the argument “but it’s in the Constitution” always seems to me a bit like “but I wrote it on this piece of paper.” So? Change it.
2. It says “well-regulated militia”. Not “arm every random psycho you can find”. “The people” means “the populace”, not “individuals”, a distinction made completely obvious by the bit about the well-regulated militia. How many kids are going to have to die before you master basic comprehension skills?
3. In any case, at the time of the Founding Fathers, there was no such thing as an AK-47. Do you really think they intended for everyone to be allowed semi-automatic weapons? If you were all stuck with 18th century blunderbusses, there would have been far fewer dead people on the VT campus this week. Technology has progressed, and it is reasonable to expect the law to respond. And, if you’re allowed semi-automatics, why does the right to bear arms stop there? Should you each be allowed your own scud missile launcher? Your own Harrier fighter jet? Your own nuclear warhead? Would that make you safer? After all, nuclear warheads don’t kill people - people kill people. In the words of Eddie Izzard: “The National Rifle Association says that, ‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ But I think the gun helps. Standing there going, ‘Bang!’ That’s not going to kill too many people, is it? You’d have to be really dodgy on the heart.”
4. The most risible point of all: the argument that more people should carry guns, and that would make things less dangerous. Don’t take my word for it: just spend an afternoon leafing through statistics from parts of the world that have low restrictions on gun ownership, and parts of the world that have high restrictions on gun ownership. See who has more gun crime. And more accidental gun deaths. Having a gun in your house increases, rather than decreases, the danger to your family.
5. The sport argument. Shooting is very popular in the UK. Licensed clubs are able to keep pistols and shotguns securely on their premises. No need for people to take them home. In the countryside, where shooting is a tradition on large estates, private individuals are able to keep and use a gun for sporting purposes only (not self-defence) as long as they meet extremely stringent background checks and regulations. Plus, of course, you’re only allowed shotguns - which are the only sort you need for sport anyway. Machine-gunning a load of animals to death isn’t sport. It’s sadism. Get an Xbox.
6. As for this amazing argument that has come up here - that you wouldn’t want to be in a situation where “only” the police and military had guns. For pity’s sake, do you even realise how insane you sound? Really, this just plays to my existing impression that the ownership of guns causes and exacerbates paranoia. If the military wanted to stage a coup, you would not be able to fight them off using your guns. They would just look at you blankly and press the big red button.
Incidents like this horrific shooting at VT are going to keep happening in the US far more often than they do in other comparable countries as long as you sit there happily supping Kool-Aid from the gun-producer-funded NRA teat. You can’t stop psychos going psycho. But you can stop arming them. Do something about it.
Precisely.
Simply put, if the populace is unarmed, there is nothing to stop the government from taking all freedoms away. What are the citizenry going to do? Protest against the armed police and armed army? Tianneman Square, anyone?
Sarah in Chicago:
In NZ, the threat of invasion is quite small, and NZ has not had an invading force on its soil since it’s creation as a nation in 1840. The U.S. has, twice. N.Z. no longer has an Air Force of note. Let us hope you never encounter a situation like the Kuwaitis did. They thought the security situation did not warrant an army and that all of their neighbors were peaceful. Look where that got them.
Who would stand a better chance against an invading force?
A group of 4.2 million armed citizens.
A group of 4.2 million disarmed citizens.
Which would give an invader more pause?
While residing in a nation as a non-permanent Foreign National, please respect United States citizens our rights, while visiting our nation.
You want to ban most guns? Fantastic! As you are a Foreign National, I politely suggest you let the citizens of this nation make policy, not the citizens of other countries, such as yourself.
If you want to live in an nation that bans most guns, return to New Zealand.
If you want to ban guns *here*, please apply for permanent residency or citizenship.
I would no more offer my opinions regarding N.Z. policy were I residing there as a non-citizen or permanent resident. It isn’t done. It is extremely rude and not what a guest should do.
If the United States is not a ‘mature civilised society’ then what are you doing here, insulting this nation?
I’m sorry to be so blunt, but if you are such an ungracious, unappreciative, rude and insulting guest, you really should leave. The U.S. is not everyone’s cup of tea, and it seems you do not like some of the foundational aspects of this nation and culture.
Your comments are simply uncalled for.
Our esteemed host wrote:
While there’s always a danger that subsequent information will change the supposedly known facts at the moment, the media are reporting that the killer purchased the guns legally.
The police found the receipt for the 9 mm in his backpack.
In response to the 115 murders so far in the City of Brotherly Love, the Pennsylvania state legislature is considering (and will probably reject) legislation limiting law-abiding people to being able to purchase only one gun a month. However, Virginia already has a one-gun-a-month law.
I haven’t read every comment, but it seems to me that Ann made the best one:
Perhaps information coming out in the future will invalidate this point, but from what we’ve heard so far, Mr Cho was a legal immigrant, had no criminal record, had no domestic abuse complaints against him, and had no reported-to-the-authorities mental problems. In a state with a one-gun-a-month law, and a federal instant background check requirement, he was able to purchase the guns legally.
How can you stop someone like Mr Cho from purchasing a firearm without making it illegal for completely law-abiding citizens to own guns?
I’m english and I’ve never even seen an automatic weapon nevermind been shot at or even the trhreat of being shot at, so I’m one of those trying to get my head around it.
The question I have is this; so someone blew off yesterday about if all the students carried arms then this massacre would have been avoided.
but they didn’t carry arms and, presuming they had the right to do so had they wished, they presumably and consciously chose not to. it would seem that the majority do not want to worry about the threat of being shot at or constantly be required to protect themselves. in other words, to go about their lives in a sane and safe society - which is a sensible attitude.
yet the law allows a mentally unbalanced individual with malice aforthought to walk into a store and buy a weapon merely on the strength of owning a credit card. this appears to be a rule pandering to the individual at the expense of the majority. it’s no wonder it appears to be a perverse democracy to some outside observers.
‘’outlawing guns means that only outlaws have guns'’. well done! at least you’ll know who they are. but with everyone armed who can tell who the next killer will be?
it seems that the gun-nuts haven’t been able to convince Regent University to dispense with on-campus gun restrictions.
Oh, yeah, that’s all the liberal’s fault, I’m sure.
The problem isn’t the guns. No, seriously. I’m not parroting the NRA line here. The problem is our culture of misogyny and patriarchy that says if the man doesn’t get every fucking thing he wants when he wants it (”people were MEAN to me!” or “she doesn’t love ME anymore!”) then shooting a school full of people is actually considered an OPTION! He can prove how much of a man he is by using his penis-surrogate to spray semen surrogate all over the people who did him wrong.
On second thought, I do have an idea about regulation. The second amendment is the only one with the word “regulated” in it. So, let’s regulate. I hereby propose that anyone who wants to own a gun has to take state-regulated gun safety classes that include n-hours of target practice and extensive background checks by local and federal authorities (this approach works for drivers, more or less). Any gun that is purchased has to be licensed as well, with a fee paid to the state for the ability to have that gun (works for cars, doesn’t it?) The fees can help offset the cost of police forces of the cities where the guns are being kept.
I imagine that today’s predictable revelation that this tragedy was actually perpetrated by a college student carrying a gun had no effect on him.
It’s not whether you need less or more gun control, but what gun control needs to achieve. If gun control can prevent homicidal people from acquiring or using firearms, that’s good. If it merely ensures that their victims are unarmed, that’s not so good. A shootout in a crowded classroom is undoubtedly bad, but it’s better than the alternative in this case.
Who would stand a better chance against an invading force?
A group of 4.2 million armed citizens.
A group of 4.2 million disarmed citizens.
Prior to the US invasion, practically everybody in Iraq was armed to the teeth. Did it help them much? No, it just got them bombed from altitude. Nobody invades on the ground first anymore.
At the risk of appearing callous, I have to point out that the fear of being shot by a stranger is irrational. It’s unlikely to the point of statistical insignificance. It happened, obviously, to a bunch of people at Virginia Tech, and it’s a terrible tragedy.
But the reality is, if you don’t own a gun, and aren’t involved in any kind of black market economy (especially the illegal gun trade), the chances that you will be shot are very low. Way lower than anything any rational person should be worrying about.
Now before the wingers start to think I’m agreeing with them, keep in mind that while what I’ve just written is true of guns, it’s far, far, far more true of terrorism.
Life in the modern United States is extraordinarily safe. The entire idea that FedGov should be trying to impose sweeping programs to make life safer for the general population is frankly silly.
There are populations for whom life is not particularly safe. In my hometown, there is a neighborhood where there are people, normal residents, who actually are statistically likely to be shot by a stranger.
There are ways of addressing that specific problem, that include spending on infrastructure, employment programs, encouraging economic diversity, and many other urban planning-type initiatives. Those measures have the primary benefit of improving people’s lives, and the ancillary benefit of making people safer from violence.
If you want to protect people, those types of things are what you should focus on.
Focusing on preventing school shootings, which are extremely rare, is a waste of resources that could easily be put to better use.
APS
seconding Dunc. The motives of the invader matter far more than whether or not the populace is armed with guns. If the motive is to kill half a million people, it can and has been done with knives. If the motive is to turn the country into a parking lot, no amount of small arms will help. If world opinion matters, the war will inevitably turn into a long insurgence, as historically it always has. Anyone with half a brain and access to a few common chemicals can build a bomb. Pro-gun arguments that are based on resistance are really archaic in some ways, as resistance no longer requires fire arms, and fire arms are completely irrelevant to some types of warfare now.
You know, I really don’t think it’s about guns.
We live in a culture where people with mental illness and behavioral problems are mocked and treated with suspicion, instead of humanity. Add to that that the health care system sucks when it comes to mental illness, even worse if you’re poor. People can’t get the help that they need, because they probably can’t afford it, can’t get adequate help from the state, and most of all, because people will mock and shame them for their condition. This is especially true if you live in the culture of hypermasculinity, to admit that you have a problem that you should get treated is considered a weakness. So you never go to get treated (if you can even afford it), and very possibly the symptoms get worse. Throw in the “guns=testicles=power” thinking that some people seem to display, and suddenly, you have a recipe for disaster. Maybe it never will happen…or maybe someone will finally snap and start shooting people, random or not.
A gun may be a tool, but some people see a gun as a tool for power. And they will try to assert their dominance with it. They get to “play God”, so to speak, deciding who lives and who dies, and in a hierarchal system, that matters to them, even if it’s just temporary. They have power, in the form of a gun.
Of course, that’s just my $0.02.
Ian ponders:
Trouble is, we know that Mr Cho was “mentally unbalanced” now, but absent any state-recorded and reported psychiatric evaluations (of which there were none), and absent a criminal record, how do you prevent someone like him from purchasing a gun, legally? Do you start with a presumption of guilt or insanity, and require people to prove otherwise?
This story from today’s Philadelphia Inquirer is great for telling us about all of the clues people had about Mr Cho’s mental state — but nobody actually did anything about it. Hardly surprising; the same types of stories circulated after Columbine.
Sporkey wrote:
It was (apparently) suggested that Mr Cho seek help — but we don’t know if he actually did. It doesn’t seem like anyone had the authority to force him to.
If the first thing that would get you a criminal record is that you shoot up a college campus in a rage-induced suicide attempt, then the only thing that we can do is mourn and learn and hope that the next ‘quiet, creepy’ guy finds someone to talk to about the rage and that we will have found an appropriate means of helping him regulate it.
The problem is within the culture, itself, where mental and emotional issues are ignored and stigmatized. Combine that with misogyny and a tendency to glorify violence and view violence as a means to resolve conflicts and you have created a lethal situation. The reason people start discussing this after tragedies like Columbine and now this, is because it’s actually relevant to the situation.
Dana,
What I heard on my (for once, regrettably short) drive to work on NPR is that several people had is that advisors and teachers had indeed suggested that, but that they were unable to force him to get treatment.
However, that doesn’t mean that our cultural fear of mental illness played no role in this: in all likelihood, it was Cho’s very own fear of mental illness which prevented him from going to counseling. Just about everyone I know who ever went to counseling struggled with the issues for which they went for years before actually seeing someone about it.
Of course, it’s also possible that he didn’t feel sick at all. Frequently, the violently mentally ill convince themselves that it’s everyone else that has a problem… and I don’t see how de-stigmatizing mental illness could help that. (Not to argue against de-stigmatization of mental illness… just saying it won’t magically solve every problem… which nobody thought, anyway, so I’m just talking out of my ass. I’ll stop, now.)
Also, Donna: Glad to be of service.
Actually, the argument about the ability of the people to rule themselves (and by extension to rebel against an unjust ruler) really got off the ground with Resistance theory after Martin Luther. A lot of the arguments were taken from writings by medieval jurists and canonists (particularly how the Church could rid itself of a Bad Pope)….and the whole thing goes all the way back to Roman law and the ability of the populace to revoke the Lex Julia.
I don’t see how you can, in any stretch of the imagination, claim that article is making the case that the ‘real murderer’ is that young woman.
The article posits that Cho’s obsession may have driven him to his actions.
That’s ‘his obsession’. Him. His emotions. His actions.
Just because Cho was apparently mentally ill and responded with violence, does not in any stretch mean that the young woman is responsible ‘if only she had’ done ABDC…
I don’t know anyone who is laying the blame on her, and I haven’t read anyone claim as such.
This is Cho’s doing. He couldn’t cope, and sadly those who attempted to intervene were unable to effect enough change within him in time. He may have been an early onset Paranoid Schizophrenic, who went on anti-depressants. Maybe he reacted poorly to the medications. We don’t know at this point.
There is so much more we need to find out about this.
Hava makes a great point. Here’s a stat from Harper’s - the percentage of Americans in custody has not changed significantly in the past 40 years, but the percentage of those people who are in prison (as opposed to being in mental institutions) has increased from about half to 97 percent.
In that time the crime rate has quadrupled. It’s not a trivial assertion, but I would say that the emptying of the mental hospitals is probably a big factor.
At the very least we can say that we have made no significant strides in dealing with mental illness over the course of the most prosperous half-century in the history of the world.
We need to reassess our priorities as a nation.
APS
Thanks for this, Auguste. I tuned into CNN as soon as I heard about the shootings, and was shocked that none of the talking heads who were attempting to explain why the shooting had happened brought up the issue of gun control. Now, I’m Canadian, and our gun control laws are strict - not as strict as they are in the UK, but much stricter than in the US. Many people in Canada own guns, but they’re for hunting. It’s illegal to own any kind of assault rifle, and hand guns are highly regulated (and can only be used in gun clubs, you need an extra permit to even transport it from your home to the gun club in your vehicle). It’s also worth noting that 1/3 of the illegal handguns that were used in homicides in Toronto in the past year or so were smuggled into Canada from the US.
So, can someone give me evidence that Canadians are being oppressed by our government? That we have less rights than our American counterparts? That the police and military have run amok? Because all of the evidence I have seen points to the opposite: Canadians have more rights, our police and military are significantly less likely to use deadly force, and violent crime rates are much much lower. And it’s not just Canada, as others have noted.
Meanwhile, scholars of international relations will tell you that the huge increase in the traffic in small weapons is directly related to the increase in civil wars and other forms of intra-state violence in the Third World.
As for those who wish that politics could stay out of it, the immediate response following these kinds of attacks is to ask why it happened. It seems obvious to those of us who don’t live in a hyper-militarized gun-crazed culture that gun control is one of the many issues here. On an abstract level, I get that this is a controversial issue in the US, but I can’t understand why.
It shouldn’t have so easy for this guy to purchase guns. And it wouldn’t have been almost anywhere else in the western world! I would have no idea where to buy a gun in Toronto, and I imagine that this is the case for the overwhelming majority of people in Toronto who aren’t involved in gangs and other forms of organized crime. Given the relatively low numbers of gun-related homicides in this city, it doesn’t seem so easy for those people to get them either.
Ape Man. The original plan for the deinstitutionalization was to provide community based services for the mentally ill which were both convenient and more free-choice driven than the institutions. Our government reneged on the promise of community based services… the money was siphoned off for other things. If there were good community based mental health services in our communities, the deinstitutionalized mentally ill would not have become the new criminal class.
odanu:
Agreed. One thing to get into our heads quickly now is that we are no longer howling in the wilderness about this. We have a Democratic congress. Call and write to them and tell them it’s time to empower communities to deal with their at-risk populations before they commit crimes.
“Bring the power back to the streets, where the people live!”
APS
I have coffee with my Representative about 4 times a year, and bring it up each time. Does that count? I also write to my new (Democratic) Senator on occasion.
Allowing concealed carry on campus would likely have stopped this killing early on. If faculty, staff, and those students over 21 could be armed, someone in that building would have been able to fight back. It only takes one.
You may be envisioning 25 people in a classroom suddenly pulling out heat, but that’s not how it would go down. It is madness to create college campuses as a guaranteed “no defense” zone. It guarantees a maniac that he can slaughter at will will no worries about anyone stopping him.
I have a daughter at college. I want her protected from this shit. Either post armed guards in each building, or give her the right to carry on campus.
Steven -
Politely; fuck you, you fucking fuck.
So, I am not allowed to have an opinion here? I should just roll over and say “hey, US, have your way with me, I don’t get to think here”? Just because I am staying in this country does not mean I don’t get to have a fucking opinion, dipshit.
Because, apparently, you can’t read, because I said “this isn’t my country” so I am not going to do anything about it. I said that’s what I would like, NOT what I was doing/pushing/working for. However, I will most fucking DEFINITELY have an opinion.
Hell, given the drowning levels of apathy, your country kind fucking needs such.
Your gun laws are fucked up. There, I said it. Just like above I said that I wasn’t here to debate this with anyone, merely to give my opinion. Look like the ‘free speech’ part of your ever-loving constitution got dropped a tad in your blather.
You know, I really don’t give a SHIT what you think. Go crawl back in your cuddly warm “everyone loves america and they really ARE welcoming us as liberators” hole.
There are some things about this country that I love, that I admire so much and think are unique amongst nations, but it’s fucking attitudes like yours that are screwing it the fuck up.
Oh, and btw, I AM leaving.
duck:
Shooting sprees are one (very, very rare) type of gun death. You’re aware, I’m sure, that there are other ways to die from a gunshot wound. Accidents, for example.
Allowing guns onto your daughter’s campus might decrease her (already statistically insignificant) chance of being killed by a madman on a shooting spree. It might not. What is essesntially beyond dispute is that it would increase her chance of being killed by a gun.
You don’t want that, of course. So I have to conclude that you haven’t really thought this through.
APS
FWIW, on another blog last night, there was a person from Utah who pointed out a very salient fact. When a shooter went off at a mall in SLC recently, there was an armed, off-duty cop who pulled his weapon and tried to stop the original shooter. End result was chaos with reports of “two shooters going crazy at the mall.” The responding officers did not know who were the good guys, if any, nor who were the bad guys. All they knew was that armed individuals were at large.
Now multiply this by having a large number of UNTRAINED individuals, armed with whatever variety of handgun they choose and imagine the resulting chaos. We’re talking realiity here folks, not the slow-motion with instant re-play of a Tarantino or Scorsese movie. Even trained individuals don’t necessarily repond well in these situations. I’d much prefer that my family members NOT get caught in a free fire zone in a classroom building.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people� is shorthand for the axiom that there are no material solutions for moral problems.
If you believe that law enforcement can totally eliminate drug use by removing all drugs from illegal commercial circulation, you probably also believe that the solution to the problem posed by people like Mr. Cho is to pass some nebulous, omnibus “gun control� legislation. You would, of course, be wrong on both accounts.
I’d simply like to inform those who have posted inane anti-gun statements that there are well over 250 million firearms in the United States that we are aware of. No prospective law would cause the desired rapid scarcity of guns, and would, in fact, create an even more lucrative black market for the kinds of firearms that I am certain you detest. Yes, lets provide Mara Salvatrucha with augmented cash flow. Prohibition did wonders for the La Cosa Nostra. Guns are traded like much like drugs, they arrive on cigarette boats in Miami, they are smuggled through the checkpoint at Tijuana/San Diego, they are flown in on crop dusters and hidden in the hulls of cargo ships. If all the Horses and Men of the United States Government cannot keep a Montecristo from Habana out of my hands, how will it keep a Chinese AK variant out of the hands of a dealer willing to pay thousands or tens of thousands for something with a wholesale value of $250? There is also the sticky problem of the fact that firearms can be manufactured with CNC machines in basements, or with other commonly available commercial tools capable of stamping sheet metal.
Attempts at confiscation of existing firearms would be ineffective, at best, and grossly violative of individual privacy – to the extent that it exists as a right independently - and specifically the provisions of the 4th and 5th Amendments of the United States Constitution commonly recognized by Right and Left as rather important. Of course, to be comprehensive enough to be even minimally effective, attempts at confiscation would require the violation of substantially every citizen’s privacy to get at the evil guns, but I am certain that none of you have given this fact, or anything else, very much deep thought.
Many should refer themselves to the myth of Pandora’s Box, and reflect on the eternal truth that it teaches. Alternately, directed to the intellectual timbre of the more vehement anti-gun posters, please remember: “You can’t put toothpaste back into the tube.�
As a tactical matter, not many have taken a sober look at the issue of initiative. Cho killed with impunity because he held the initiative for several hours until it was wrested from him by the presence of armed law enforcement. By all accounts he moved and acted calmly, deliberately, and in conformity with a plan of which only he was aware – killing innocents seriatim. Cho stopped killing only when the initiative was no longer his – when a sizable cadre of armed law enforcement curtailed his options, and suicide was his final resort. Had there been one or two citizens amongst the many in his vicinity who were armed and competent, the initiative could have changed hands before so many were killed. Simply confronting Cho with equal force (a sidearm) and by surprise would have changed his posture from one of a deliberate, planned killer to that of a target himself, without the ability to kill innocents so efficiently. Perhaps a campus of armed Ogres and Boogers is not in order, but one can be reasonably certain that there is a significant population of undergraduates and graduate students with military and law enforcement training and experience at virtually every campus that is not openly hostile to such nontraditional students.
I also suppose that many of you have given little to no thought to the fact that the events at Virginia Tech, and most particularly the ease of Mr. Cho’s massacre, have not gone unnoticed by adherents of the jihadi ideology.
I have read the part in the Second Amendment about “a well-regulated militia,” same as you have. I have also read the part about how the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be abridged.” I think even the gun nuts agree this particular Amendment does not appear to be well-written. However, the idea of only the military and police being allowed to own weapons makes me extremely nervous, in the same way only allowing white men to join the military or the police force would make me nervous.
I know a Colt 45 is no match for a thermonuclear missile, but the idea of the Second Amendment was to ensure citizens were not left defenseless against a government gone rogue. It had nothing to do with the right to hunt or even the right to make an ass of yourself while giving a speech at an NRA convention.
I don’t own a gun–can’t afford one–but as a single woman with a child I’d like the right to own one.
Also, it is worth noting that the less rabid of the gun nuts heavily emphasize proper firearms training and gun safety. I know this because I grew up around them and even dated a couple. I’ve KNOWN these people. I’m not theorizing about them from what I’ve read in stupid blogs.
I consider myself a leftist but sometimes my end of the spectrum embarasses me.
Dana,
Jefferson, Madison et al. didn’t “fuck up the wording.” These were men of extraordinary genius and facility with the English language.
The language of the Second Amendment is archaic, so it simply does not fall upon modern ears very well.
Try “Because a well-regulated militia . . . ”
Of course, militia referred not to a standing Army under the control of government, but rather every able-bodied man of military age.
As an aside, I appreciate the fact that you are open to the idea that the Second Amendment does in fact countenence a Constitutional Right. You, insofar as this issue is concerned, can be spoken with. I would caution the others that their Orwellian tendency to pretend that the Amendment right to arms “plum don’t exist” or is “outdated” can be similarly applied to rights more cherished by the Left. One could cite the Fourth Amendment as particularly vulnerable in the age of international terror, not to mention the many deaths which could be attributed to the “exclusionary rule” arising out of this Amendment, releasing perpetrators who go on to resume rape and murder.
Dana - “I consider myself a leftist but sometimes my end of the spectrum embarasses me.”
Dana, you REALLY consider yourself a “leftist”? While I wouldn’t have pegged you as a complete Kool Aid drinker, I really have a hard time seeing you as a “leftist”.
Explain?…
The comments that suggest that all the students should be armed reminded me of one of the commenters at jonswift:
“I’m sitting in class and I hear about the shooting. I hear the shooting get closer so I whip out my Glock and wait. Someone is running down the hall towards me and I see he is carrying a gun. BANG… got him! But only a few minutes later I hear more shots not too far away. I realize there is more than one gunman…there behind that table… he’s waiting to ambush someone else. He hears something and raises his gun but not before I blow his sorry ass away too. As I’m walking over to make sure he’s dead… ping! a bullet whizzes by me. I spin around and return fire, shooting wildly in the direction from where it came. DAMN- how many of them are there? I hear someone screaming from one of the classrooms that the shooter is an Asian. Mere seconds later, an Asian female carrying a pistol enters the room I’m in. No way some terrorist bitch is gonna cap me! I empty my clip in her and she goes down. I slowly make my way towards her… she’s dead alright… but wait, she looks familiar. SHIT, it’s Michelle Malkin, the columnist/comedian.
Yeah, this is a great plan Michelle. Let’s arm all the students and have them shooting at each other in a moment of crisis and confusion. Turns out the whole incident was just some kids setting off firecrackers in a classroom.”
(QUOTE) Apeman said:
Allowing guns onto your daughter’s campus might decrease her (already statistically insignificant) chance of being killed by a madman on a shooting spree. It might not. What is essesntially beyond dispute is that it would increase her chance of being killed by a gun.
You don’t want that, of course. So I have to conclude that you haven’t really thought this through.”(/QUOTE)
You would be wrong about that. First, if this is all statistically insignificant, we can all just drop the subject right now, since the topic of this thread would be meaningless. We can ignore 30 kids being killed because, well, it really doesn’t happen all that often.
You seem to think that allowing concealed carry on campus would increase the chances that my daughter would be killed by accident. Now please realized that those same potential concealed carriers can already carry across the street from the campus in the restaurants and businesses where all students shop every day. But this killer didn’t kill people across the street…. he killed them in a place where he could be sure they were unarmed.
I too am concerned about people carrying weapons if they are not well trained. The solution to that problem is to make training easily available and cheap. I don’t think many people would carry on campus even if they could and in any case it will only be faculty, staff, and older students.
Excuse me…. is there a page that shows what control characters to use for editing… like how to quote another post. Apparently, (QUOTE) didn’t work.
duck: Go here…
“Yeah, this is a great plan Michelle. Let’s arm all the students and have them shooting at each other in a moment of crisis and confusion. Turns out the whole incident was just some kids setting off firecrackers in a classroom.â€?
Of course she said CCW should be permanent. Of course she did.
“Of course she said CCW should be permanent. Of course she did.”
“Permanent” should read “madatory.”
MikeEss, thanks for the link. I guess there should be a permanent link to that from the homepage.
Dana, you REALLY consider yourself a “leftist�? While I wouldn’t have pegged you as a complete Kool Aid drinker, I really have a hard time seeing you as a “leftist�.
I think you’re thinking of a different Dana.
Publius Apr 18th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people� is shorthand for the axiom that there are no material solutions for moral problems.
I think the guns help - nobody is going to kill too many people by just saying BANG! loudly; not unless their hearts are very weak. [/end Eddie Izzard]
Auguste, then we need a “Dana Left”, and a “Dana Right”…
For decades, Democrats have been handing the NRA and the Republicans the perfect club to beat them over the head…gun issues.
Many left-sympathetic centrist voters are also gun owners - some by choice - some by necessity.
I am a resident of rural Alaska….Guns to me are a very useful and necessary tool. I wouldn’t consider going out in the Bush without an appropriate firearm. I fish and hunt … for food for my family … not sport. By the facts of geography and lifestyle, firearms are necessity for me.
For a resident of Washington DC or a student at VT, firearms are a threat - an evil, unnecessary, insidious threat.
The country is too large and vastly diverse to have a one size fits all Federally mandated solution of gun control. Too many people - such as myself - support Democratic candidates and goals, but are railed against by Left Wingers as “gun nuts” or “gun loonies”. I resigned my membership in the NRA when it became a political arm of the RNC, in the late 70’s. I’ve voted for only one Republican, and that was over 40 years ago. The issue of gun control has been an albatros around the neck of Democrats for most of my adult life….It’s time to abandon a failed party plank.
May I suggest that, rather than alienating normally sympathetic voters - the Reagan Democrats (?), etc. - let Sen. Jim Webb represent Democrats on this issue. Nobody will be able to portray him as a stooge or quizzling.
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HEY WINGERS:
Let’s say that in an effort to prevent gun violence like what happened at VT we put, say, 1,000,000 guns in the hands of decent, law-abiding citizens on college campuses in the US. And let’s say by doing that we prevent one shooting spree a year.
Do any of you realize that even under this dubiously optimistic scenario, gun deaths on college campuses would drastically increase under this scenario? This makes sense how?
Not talking about legislation here. Just want to know that you folks understand that proliferation of firearms as a way of preventing gun deaths makes no sense.
APS
But APS, there’s only .000188 firearm deaths per handgun owner, which under your scenario ends up with a measly…
…188 additional accidental deaths per year. Ah.
“HEY WINGERS:
Let’s say that in an effort to prevent gun violence like what happened at VT we put, say, 1,000,000 guns in the hands of decent, law-abiding citizens on college campuses in the US. And let’s say by doing that we prevent one shooting spree a year.
Do any of you realize that even under this dubiously optimistic scenario, gun deaths on college campuses would drastically increase under this scenario? This makes sense how?
Not talking about legislation here. Just want to know that you folks understand that proliferation of firearms as a way of preventing gun deaths makes no sense.
APS”
You are aware, of course, that people carry every day just across the street from VT and you don’t even know it? But alas, no one is forthcoming with the vast numbers of two CCWs shooting each other over a parking spot.
My concealed carry makes me even more of a gentleman, and certainly helps me discriminate between insults and legitimate threats.
Sir - are you deathly afraid of firecrackers and powertools as well?
However, the idea of only the military and police being allowed to own weapons makes me extremely nervous, in the same way only allowing white men to join the military or the police force would make me nervous.
Have you never traveled outside the US? Spend a few months in Japan and tell us how frightening it is to live there.
My concealed carry makes me even more of a gentleman, and certainly helps me discriminate between insults and legitimate threats.
Leaving aside the non-sequitor that having a gun on your person somehow makes you a better judge of strangers’ intentions… (since no cop ever shot the wrong person)
Remember this is a feminist site: here, “gentleman” is an epithet. It isn’t something to pat yourself on the back for. Especially when you basically confirm that your “gentlemanliness” is enhanced by the implied threat of the ability to inflict deadly violence.
Seriously, I really don’t understand anything about that sentence. Having the ability to kill anyone you meet gives you the power to be polite? Or what? What are you saying?
Jeez, the more times I read that sentence, the less sense it makes. Can you explain it? Can you even explain how being a condescending patrician with the potential to kill (i.e., an armed gentleman) is in any way a good thing? Remembering that we aren’t Freepers here…
Publius:
Your rejoinder does not address my point, which Auguste certainly fleshed out quite well.
If you reject my analysis, give me yours. How many guns do we need to put on college campuses to make them safe from crazed gunmen? How many deaths would that action prevent? How many additional deaths would it cause?
Give me your answers to those questions. If you can plausibly provide answers to those questions that support your position, you may convince me that guns are a net security benefit.
As I’ve tried to make clear, I have no use for gun control laws, as they seek to address a problem that, in a statistical sense, does not exist, at least not on a national scope.
My confusion is over the fact that your “solution” to this non-problem is likely to make the problem, inasmuch as it does exist, worse. Can you provide some clarification?
My main contention, which is amply supported statistical evidence, is that a person who owns or carries a gun is more likely than a member of GPop to be shot. With that in mind, there can really be no aggregate number of additional gun owners that would result in fewer gun deaths. It’s just not possible.
APS
Those who advocate the complete disarming of American society so that crazy foreign students can’t shoot up campuses and will, somehow, be forced to instead utilize baseball bats are sadly misled. Utopian ideals, and unworkable solutions, will not solve or prevent such incidents at schools, churches and malls.
Frankly, it is incredible that in a post 9-11 world that the citizenry of this nation are forced to be helpless and vulnerable by both the law and institutional ‘policies’ by people who cannot provide even the most elementary security to those it has disarmed. Virginia Tech has some 30,000 plus students and apparently no viable security measures at all. Yet one armed, law abiding citizen could have relatively easily halted this tragedy as it began.
The only school shootings that have ever been stopped were by armed citizens/teachers who had relatively quick access to a firearm (in several instances they had one stashed in a vehicle in the parking lot) and were able to take the necessary measures to save lives.
Yet this is what the all knowing nanny state has deemed to be unacceptable. One has to wonder why. Why would you disarm law abiding citizens in an attempt to stop criminals who neither respect the law nor abide by it? Logic and common should dictate our solutions and guide our hands, not misguided policies dictated solely by ideological nuances instead of the simple facts.
I (along with several thousand others) am a concealed handgun permit holder in the state of Colorado. I can (and often do) carry a firearm in McDonalds, Wal-Mart, the mall and most everywhere else the average citizen goes. A small bubble of public safety if you will, not just for me and my family, but for those fellow citizens that cross my path throughout the day. Yet I, or any other law abiding citizen, cannot carry on school campuses (though, oddly enough, it can be in the trunk if I am picking up my children from school).
I had initially applied for my concealed handgun permit a month or so before 9-11. The fee was $100 payable to the county and a $35 CBI background fee. As soon as 9-11 occurred the local sheriff waved the $100 county fee and proceeded to hand out concealed carry permits as expeditiously as possible. Mine is permit number 1768 and within just a couple months the sheriff issued about 5,000 more. In the five years since then, not a single one of permit holders has been involved in any firearm related infraction or crime. Those who argue against concealed carry permit laws or forbid them in certain areas are, at best, incredibly ignorant, and at worst purposelessly exposing their fellow countrymen to violent crime, assaults and even death for the sake of ideology and feel good policies. Shame on them and those who are taking this opportunity to pimp their gun control politics on the rest of us.
College campuses are the model of what the Left seek to turn the rest of the nation into. Bastions of political correctness, ideological conformity, white guilt, speech codes, thought police and public mockery of morals, values and Christianity. And all apparently at the mercy of the crazed, evil and dangerous among us.
One last thing, ever wonder why there seems to be so many school shootings, and yet so few attacks on police stations? The answer is very clear. Crazed gunmen and terrorists prey on the defenseless, not on the armed and protected.
There are many examples cross-nationally, where the gun ownership rate in a society does not explain the homicide rate (e.g. Switzerland). Similarly gun controls don’t automatically correlate either. The homicide rate in South Africa is horrendous compared to America, and yet gun controls are far tighter in South Africa than in America. Overall the correlation between gun ownership and homicide is weak cross-nationally, and possibly spurious, given that other variables correlate with gun ownership rates, and in turn homicide rates(such as inequality (measure by the Gini coefficient) and cultural heterogeneity). Unfortunately you can’t untangle these causal factors as there is no way to conduct a controlled experiment.
In terms of comparisons over time within a single nation: I see a few references to the U.K. above, so lets take the U.K. as an example. The homicide rate has steadily declined century after century since the middle ages (yes, English records go that far back). Gun controls were first introduced in a weak form in the 1920s (for fear of political unrest - not because gun related crime was a problem), and were systematically tightened in later decades. However, homicide suddenly increased again from the mid 1960s onwards and continues its upward path today (see:http://www.parliament.uk/COMMONS/lib/research/rp99/rp99-056.pdf). Levels now exceed those when the U.K. was awash with guns, and yet the gun controls are far tighter now. Conclusion: Other variables such as cultural heterogeneity, and income inequality appear to have a greater effect than gun ownership rates.
I agree with some of the afforementioned posters. Growing up and spending summers on our grand parents farm, I found that I liked to shoot. It wasn’t always about shooting to kill. It was a sport. My brothers and I would target practice almost anything. Our father liked to hunt and honestly we used to have very few vacatons with him so putting the two together was fantastic. Taking after him my brothers and I also became hunters, but mostly for water fowl. Recently, I have found paintball and paintball guns. Since my spouse does not like the taste of wild game meat, hunting has become a waste of time. Now with the help of those great paintball guns, we are able to enjoy weekends getting our shooting out of our system. Just like my father and I, my boy and I are out there playing all day on Sundays and having a great time doing it without touching the real guns.