Whenever God is formally excluded from anything, we should always suspect a power play. The “exile” of God, the “death” of God, the “silence” of God, are always seen by the unbelieving heart of man as constituting some kind of a job opening. The primal temptation was “you shall be as God” (Gen. 3:5). In that case, it was in respect of knowing good and evil, but there are other offices of Deity that unbelieving man aspires to as well. In fact, unbelieving man eventually aspires to all of them. 
“The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts . . . In the secret places doth he murder the innocent” (Ps. 10:4, 8).
We sometimes think that forgetting God means that we simply forget that He is the source of all law, that we forget that He is the foundation of all that is good. Forgetting this, we then slide into sinful behavior. It is true that this is how it frequently begins, but that is not how it ends. It ends with rebellious man wanting to become the source of all law.
While we do not yet know all the specific motives that drove Stephen Paddock into his particular form of moral insanity, we know the shape the insanity took. For the ten to fifteen minutes of active shooting, Stephen Paddock was a god of wrath, visiting destruction on the people below, just as he wished. He was above, high and lifted up, and they were below, walking around down there on the ground. He was not just famous for his Warholian fifteen minutes. For those fifteen minutes, he was a jitney-jehovah, coming in a day of visitation.
His choices were to be the final determination when it came to who would live and who would die. God was not within his thoughts, and so he determined to usher in his own version of judgment day. At the very end, he decided in an act of final defiance to turn the gun on himself. And that was the moment he discovered that while God was not in his thoughts, he was most certainly still in God’s thoughts. Not only did he think he could conduct his own final private apocalypse, he believed that he could escape the consequences of having done so. He thought he could, by an act of his own sheer will, escape justice. What he did was enter into everlasting justice, and nothing but justice.What he did was enter into everlasting justice, and nothing but justice.
Joseph Boot has written this:
“One further logical development of man’s dystopian will to power is the arrogation to himself of the power to judge and pour out wrath as the new god: in a world rejecting the living God, the need for judgment has not vanished” (Joseph Boot, The Mission of God, p. 179).
Now whenever a shooting like this occurs, the calls for gun control erupt while ambulances are still on their way to the hospitals. Those who are opposed to gun control retort angrily, and often an unseemly debate breaks out when we still should be grieving, helping, donating blood, and making public room for a careful investigation of what actually happened. Now when a debate over gun control occurs, there should be no mistake about which side I would be on. That’s as it may be. My concern here is to explain why feelings are so inflamed, why the debates in the aftermath of such events are so immediately full of hostility, and why so many ordinary Americans respond to the accusations by going out and buying more guns.
To the progressive, this pattern (repeated countless times) seems stupefying and mindless. Suppose there were a tragic incident where a group of children got into the Drano under the sink, drank it on a dare, and a number of them died. Suppose the story was widely reported, and the aftermath was that Drano sales shot up thirty percent. This is so counter-intuitive that liberals feel like conservative Americans must have some inexplicable fetish about guns, one that can only be explained in terms of mental instability. And so in the aftermath of events like this, the last thing we should want, they reason, is mentally unstable people with guns.
But there is a lot more going on. The inhabitants of fly-over country understand all of this differently, and I believe their instinctive reaction is much closer to a sane, biblical understanding than is the received wisdom at MSNBC/CNN on gun violence. Remember that in a secular state, when there is no God above the state, the state has become god. And normal people are perennially suspicious of anybody who wants to be a god.
“The terror involved in such a view is that this de-facto god, the power state, has no transcendent critique since there is no God in judgment over it” (Boot, p. 179).
But man cannot assume the prerogatives of Deity without assuming them, and one of the prerogatives of Deity is to manage and oversee wrath from above.
To take one pertinent example, the communists, in the course of their vile career, murdered approximately 100 million people. Whenever unbelieving man builds a Tower of Babel, it is so that he may make him a name, and so that the top can reach into Heaven (Gen. 11:4). And you cannot aspire to reach Heaven that way without aspiring to the prerogatives of Heaven. One of those prerogatives is to determine who lives and who dies—whether we are talking about famines aimed at Ukrainians, forceps aimed at second trimester babies, or death panels aimed at cancer patients in compassionate single payer countries. So whenever collective man sets his heart to reign from “that hideous strength,” the final result will somehow be to station “shooters” all around the upper rim of it.
So gun control is not about gun control, strictly speaking. Gun control is people control. Gun control is not about the abolition of gun ownership. Gun control is about a rearrangement of the gun ownership—where the people below give them up, and the people above keep all of theirs. But when you have had countless indicators that the people above despise you, and harbor nothing but contempt for your way of life, you will not be eager for them to gain any more power. For a very recent example of the mask slipping, right after the shooting a vice-president with CBS (since fired) said: “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.” Well, then.
Our government is a power cult already. Their aspirations are not small and insignificant. They really do want to ascend the sides of the north, and sit down above the stars of God. “Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit” (Is. 14:15). But God is in His Heaven, and instead of the sides of the north, like Stephen Paddock, they will only find the sides of the pit.
To all this it will be replied that I am hyper-ventilating again—America is just a little old democracy. “What kind of crazed loon would think that our federal functionaries want to be as God? Ho, ho . . .” Well, I don’t know. Maybe it is the way they are constantly demanding that I and all my fellow citizens behave all day long in ways that will help them out in their desire to control the weather.
So these debates do not explode because one group of citizens thinks we should turn left and another group thinks it should be a right turn. No. It is because one group takes any excuse whatever and turns it into an argument for immediately granting more control and power to those above us. And those below think that this is a very, very bad idea.
Episodes like this are horrendous, but they are horrendous in a microcosm. Normal folks are far more worried about the macrocosm, meaning the prospect of the government ever becoming an active shooter.
thank you, again. we need sighted guides with torches in this cold dark
Good post. While I’m not a big conspiracy type, things just aren’t adding up here. A 64-year old with no military/police or serious weapons/tactical background turns into Jason Bourne? He brings in guns and enough ammo for a 3rd world guerrilla team, 2 shooting platforms and knocks out 2 windows without being caught or investigated? And this guy was a wealthy, gambling Vegas retiree/bum…not a all the typical cold, calculating type that would take months and huge measures to carry this out alone. Very strange.
Been hanging out with Vox again, have you?
No, just using my brain again. I also have a military background and a better grasp of this than your typical emotion-driven, angst-filled “women good-men bad!” blogger.
As the details of all this unfolded I thought that there was a lot of fodder for the conspiracy theorists. I think the fact that he fired so many rounds and relatively so few were killed undermines the claims of conspiracy. Certainly a professional would have been more accurate.
As much as I am a proponent of concealed carry, it appears having a cc firearm in this situation would have been useless.
He doesn’t appear to be a sharpshooter, but there’s much more to it than that.
I don’t believe in conspiracies very often, but I can’t understand how he got 22 (if I heard that right) weapons into his hotel room without a bellhop or a maid noticing.
Travel with enough luggage and the bell hops will be too busy cursing you to wonder what you have in your bags.
^_^
Las Vegas is one of the, if perhaps not, the largest convention destinations in the world. That anyone would have excessive baggage would not be unusual at all. I am actually sure it’s quite common.
Is it a bellhop or maid’s job to notice, much less report, a guy carrying a suitcase or two into his room every now and then? If he kept up the DND sign, which obviously he must have, there would have been little to notice. There may be some weirdness behind this story but I absolutely refuse to start speculating and conjuring up conspiracies in my mind until we have some facts. And I say this knowing full well we may never get them. Even in that case, you can’t figure out what actually happened based on the fact that… Read more »
Well said…Speculation is nothing but distraction, and useless to truth. Authorities will not say anything until they have their facts, and even then likely not let out everything…the rest is just noise by those wanting a platform (media outlets are only about garnering audience, the worst kind of ambulance chaser.)
Speculation, at least for me, distracts me from thinking about the horror, the suffering of the victims, and the pain of the people who loved them.
When there are no answers we do tend to fill the vacuum with “something” to ease the suffering (both physical and spiritual.) Thankfully we have a caring and merciful God we can look to for solace and strength in these moments.
But next week (or maybe the following for this one) it’ll be a new tragedy, storm, or political wrangling…this horror will be forgotten by the masses as their focus will turn to something else. Thereafter the families and victims will be left on their own….just look at the updates on the storm recovery. Old news. Forgotten.
I know. My daughter said to me that she will be scared to go to public venues like music festivals. I think a lot of musical festivals are dangerous places for many reasons, so I think it is a healthy impulse. Nonetheless, I told her that a few months from now it will probably be a distant memory like every other tragedy that doesn’t affect us personally. I don’t like that trait, but without a certain level of hard-heartedness could we even survive? There is something very weird about human nature. I didn’t cry over Sandy Hook or Katrina victims,… Read more »
“There is something very weird about human nature. I didn’t cry over Sandy Hook or Katrina victims, but I do over watching a play?’
One is personal, the other isn’t…pretty normal. After these things I find myself wondering when God will have had enough watching the human race do evil to one another and come down to clean house?
But some people cry when watching a movie. That’s not much more personal than watching a news story about a mass shooting. I suspect the difference lies in presentation, and strong emotional cues (such as musical score). We are easily manipulated, emotionally, and seem to even enjoy it for entertainment.
Totally, Katecho. If I had been reading a Hamilton biography written by a constitutional scholar, I doubt that all the misery he inflicted on his family would have brought a tear to my eye. I don’t usually tear up over movies or plays (or news stories either), but I am sure that a musical production about the Sandy Hook children and their parents would leave me sobbing so brokenly that I would be escorted from the theatre. Sometimes I am easily manipulated emotionally, but I don’t enjoy it. Knowing what was coming in the second act, I spent the entire… Read more »
I would add that one is “local” entertainment while the other, a distant horrific event. Most people are risk adverse and tend to compartmentalize these sorts of things to minimize effect on their emotions.
That said, I got seriously weepy, both physically and spiritually, when I heard the news Monday morning (we do not have TV so missed the real time unfolding.)
By the accounts I’ve heard, he was a fairly high-rolling client. They would probably actively avoid questioning him as long as he was acting normal, for fear of losing a big customer.
It’s Las Vegas, when people are constantly going in and out of their hotels at all hours, and he was checked in for nearly two weeks before the shooting. It would have been pretty easy.
I saw someone note on another blog that Guns and Ammo recently ran a praise-filled story specifically on gun bags sold to discreetly sneak guns into hotel rooms.
Respectfully disagree. Useless for the man in the crowd? Probably. Useless for the man sleeping across the hall? Perhaps not.
touche! well-spoken
From the 2nd Amendment perspective, we have a timely illustration to observe. While US debates restrictions on the right to bear arms once again, the Catalonian’s are kinda wishing Spain had a more robust 2nd Amendment themselves.
Their last civil war was waged so viciously (on both sides) that I think we must pray they don’t have another one.
This is something people seem to have a blind spot for. They act like both sides having guns protects something, when in fact it usually just results in a major intensification of the suffering on both ends. Someone tried to claim that the massacre at Wounded Knee was an example of how horrific a shooting can be if one side doesn’t have guns. While the 150 or so deaths at Wounded Knee were horrific and should never be white-washed, I asked if they would have preferred the 27,000 deaths at Gettysburg. Not really seeing how adding more guns would have… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: They act like both sides having guns protects something, when in fact it usually just results in a major intensification of the suffering on both ends. On the other hand, disarming their opposition didn’t stop Mao or Stalin or Hitler from each killing their millions, so Jonathan should refrain from jumping to any conclusions. Apparently Jonathan simply doesn’t recognize any deterrence effect from a well armed populace. He seems only to want to talk about what happens when such a deterrence fails. Also, Jonathan doesn’t seem to recognize any role for just war, and the idea that some… Read more »
I strongly recognize the idea that some things are worth dying for. That is explicitly affirmed in 1 John 3:16-18, John 15:13, Mark 8:34-39, Matthew 20:28, and of course the entire story arc of the Gospels as well as the lives of Jesus’s apostles. I strongly dispute that you can warp that into saying that we Christians have sanction to kill our enemies. That is completely incompatible with Mark 12:30-31, Matthew 7:12, Matthew 26:52, Luke 6:27-36, Luke 6:37, Romans 12:17-13:10, and once again of course the entire story arc of the Gospels. Just War theory simply has no basis in… Read more »
We’ve previously addressed Jonathan’s distorted and selective appeals to Scripture. By way of reminder, Jesus and John the Baptist had opportunity to call for converts to leave the military, but neither did so. Jesus instructed His disciples on carrying swords, which are lethal instruments. Paul also refers to the civic magistrate as a minister of God’s wrath, bearing the sword of His wrath (again, a lethal weapon). Remember that Jonathan’s response to the latter was to suggest that Christians were to abstain from any civic service that might involve lethal force. Apparently the earthly “minister of God’s wrath” is not… Read more »
As we’ve said before, there is absolutely no justification for an argument from absence in Scripture, ever. Otherwise ridiculous conclusions would be reached, like Jesus supporting the Roman occupation of the Holy Land or Paul condoning slavery for perpetuity. We have also worked on Romans 12:17-13:10, in detail. Paul is clearly telling the believers how THEY should act, which includes a certain kind of submission to authorities. He never once tells them to take up the sword and rule like Gentiles – Jesus had already made that quite clear. The fact that God can use a Gentile doing Gentile things… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: As we’ve said before, there is absolutely no justification for an argument from absence in Scripture, ever. When we have examples of soldier converts, and they are being given various instructions and correctives against sin (sins that apply directly to their duties as soldiers), and there is no hint of Jonathan’s view (that these converts should cease to be soldiers in the first place), then we are pretty safe to conclude that Jonathan’s view is in error. Jonathan wrote: Otherwise ridiculous conclusions would be reached, like Jesus supporting the Roman occupation of the Holy Land or Paul condoning… Read more »
“When we have examples of soldier converts, and they are being given various instructions and correctives against sin (sins that apply directly to their duties as soldiers), and there is no hint of Jonathan’s view (that these converts should cease to be soldiers in the first place), then we are pretty safe to conclude that Jonathan’s view is in error.” There are exactly zero examples in the Gospels (or Acts, or the letters) of any soldier converting to Jesus and then being given various instructions and correctives against sin, much less an exhaustive list. “These are poor examples to use… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: There are exactly zero examples in the Gospels (or Acts, or the letters) of any soldier converting to Jesus and then being given various instructions and correctives against sin, much less an exhaustive list. Jonathan will note that I didn’t say converts “to Jesus”, but the soldiers that converted and repented and were baptized by John, asked John what they should do, and John gave them several admonishments that were specific to their continued vocation as soldiers. John the baptist did not tell them that they couldn’t remain soldiers when presented with a clear opportunity to have done… Read more »
And speaking of refraining from jumping to conclusions…
https://whistlinginthewind.org/2014/03/05/the-genocide-and-gun-control-myth/
Something he doesn’t include in that essay is how Mao repeatedly praised guns and credited them with bringing the Communists to power.
It takes historical ignorance to believe that regular citizens can resist brutality with lesser brutality and somehow win without increasing the total suffering all around.
I was hoping Jonathan would interact with my actual points. Instead he opted for an extremely shoddy article to counter to an argument that I didn’t even make. Jonathan wrote: Something he doesn’t include in that essay is how Mao repeatedly praised guns and credited them with bringing the Communists to power. Such praise is consistent with the political doctrine of “guns for me, but not for thee”, however this is hardly a rebuttal to my point. With out-of-control governments, we discover that it’s not really about the evil of guns, or making communities safe. That’s just a message that… Read more »
Why are you talking about Jonathan in second person instead of adressing him directly?
Technically, I’m using third person pronouns when referring to others. This is quite commonly done in critical essays, academic reports, and in formal debate (where it’s often a requirement). Some advantages are: It naturally enforces some identification of who the “he” or “she” is within the immediate context, in a way that “you” does not. This could be important if a paragraph is later quoted elsewhere. Third person pronouns allow for observations and criticisms to be made in a way that stands on its own, even if the other party chooses never to engage. Indirect reference can help to create… Read more »
It’s incredibly annoying, and I’ve asked him to stop doing it 15-20 times, as have others, and he still insists. One of the weirdest explanations he gives is that it helps him create “objective distance” between himself and other parties, even though he has consistently used more personal insults of me than almost anyone else on this board.
Notice that Jonathan has no principled objection to referring to me in the third person.
Jonathan is welcome to quote some of these alleged personal insults if he thinks they will get him any sympathy here, but I suspect that the effort, along with his continual whining against my valid form of grammar, might actually suggest to others that he is just trying to distract us from the substance of the issues.
Uh, Katecho, I refer to you in the third person when I’m having a conversation with Micael. I refer to you in the second person when I’m having a conversation with you. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
As I was saying, Jonathan has no principled objection to referring to me in the third person. His agenda to arbitrarily restrict commonly used forms of grammar remains a distraction from actual issues.
As surely as the night follows the day and the snows of winter give way to the darling buds of May, Katecho is going to write in the third person. Don’t be annoyed. Think of it as a harmless personal eccentricity such as you and I and everyone else around here display from time to time. Except for Jane, whose shattering level-headedness and common sense make the idea of any eccentricity laughable.
Jonathan, it’s incredibly annoying when you fish for sympathy, whine, and overuse/misuse the word “literally”. Yet no one here has asked you to stop any of those annoying behaviors because most of us here try to focus on the substance of the argument, not whatever hangups we have about the person making the argument. For example, it frustrates the crap out of me that Jilly is a far better writer than I am. No matter how hard I try, I will never reach her level of eloquent prose and Canadian civility, although I do manage the occasional “eh?” and “sorry”.… Read more »
Probably shouldn’t complain about whining and then continue once again to whine about my use of the word “literally” in the same sentence.
I didn’t read past “literally”.
Way to spectacularly miss the point, Jonathan. Looks like I’ll have to adjust my expectations of you downward since you’re too arrogant and self-righteous to deal in good faith with those who don’t necessarily see things your way.
I guess it’s back to insults, then.
Feel free to have the last word. I’ll not be reading it.
This: “Remember that in a secular state, when there is no God above the state, the state has become god. And normal people are perennially suspicious of anybody who wants to be a god.”
That is a strong candidate for quote of the day.
In an individualistic culture, when there is no God above the individual, the individual has become god.
I appreciate the post. Regarding the Drano illustration: What if there was really nothing else quite like Drano? What if it was really the best and maybe only way to face down a slow drain? And after the mass Drano ingestion scare, the powers-that-be began to make noises about eliminating Drano. Well, I would want to go get some first. I would hope never to need it, that all my drains would be ever-swiftly-flowing. But if I did need it someday, in a year or two, and it was off the market, I would be glad I had availed myself… Read more »
Greetings Lloyd,
Your Drano example reminded me of my teenage years. My step-dad bought surplus of Chlordane to kill ants just before the EPA ban. Now I’ll have to look up why it was banned – we only used it outside.
Now one time he used a .357 to try and kill a skunk rummaging through our trash…I think I was more scared/surprised than the skunk, but it didn’t come back.
Prayers for all those impacted by the shooting, may God draw them to Himself in the days that follow.
And we in the South have fire ants, readily killed by DDT and not much else. One lousy EPA regulation later and we’re now completely overrun with the dastards. Come to find out DDT wasn’t the toxic Armageddon everyone claimed it was…and that’s how come we keep thinking there’s a conspiracy behind every national government proclamation.
John, there is a very old man in a wheelchair in my neighborhood who often stops to chat with me. At least, you can’t really call it a chat because he does almost all the talking. He got in massive trouble with the law here for using a forbidden gun to shoot at a possum on his garden wall. I really don’t like possums so I was inclined to be sympathetic. Then he told me the law was so tough on him because he had a criminal record dating to the 1950s. He was out driving with his wife one… Read more »
If he was using a gun to shoot a possum on a WALL in an urban neighborhood then he indeed should have his guns taken away. That is a horrific violation of safety for anyone who knows the least about guns. There is no way he had a safe backstop for that.
It’s exactly how incidents like this happen. Google will show you dozens of similar ones:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/08/05/oklahoma-police-kill-5-year-old-boy-while-shooting-at-snake.html
Hi,, you’ve been gone for a while! I am quite sure that my reprobate old friend would have been in serious trouble with the law if anyone had reported him. Without looking it up, I am reasonably certain that you can’t shoot off your guns in public within Los Angeles city limits! In fact, I was in court once for something unrelated, and a man was sentenced for bringing his handgun onto his front lawn and pointing it at the neighbor with whom he was quarreling. He actually got time in state prison. The judge explained that when you point… Read more »
I’m not sure what the legal reasoning is, but in gun safety courses, you are certainly taught that you are never, ever to point your gun at something which you have not already decided you are willing to shoot. Pointing a loaded gun at someone with your finger on the trigger is a very hostile and dangerous act, and in a heated situation could easily lead to death (by accidental fire or by “self-defense” retaliation) even if you don’t “intend” it. As far as your neighbor, I wasn’t really talking about the legal consequences so much as the extreme recklessness… Read more »
He is very old and not entirely in his right mind. If he came to the attention of the authorities, I suspect he would find himself in a lock up board and care facility. I would not wish that on him as he seems happy riding his wheelchair around the neighborhood, but his gun does worry me. He is entirely capable of thinking that a child is a possum. I am glad that I don’t know where he lives, because otherwise my sense of social duty would kick in.
ugh. scary.
I know, but I have worked very hard on persuading him. He kind of likes me, so I am trying to work with that.
I grew up in a nation that doesn’t allow ordinary citizens to have handguns. Even so, there have been a few mass shootings in Canada in recent years. Having lived here over thirty years, I have lost my knee jerk opposition to all gun ownership. But I have a problem with the Drano example. Suppose that a lot of wicked or maniacal people were able to get Drano into the nation’s beverages undetected so that, when you bought a dozen Cokes at the grocery store, there was a slight chance that you might drink a poisoned one and die. Suppose… Read more »
I do think that some kinds of criminal or psychiatric histories should be a bar to ownership.
They already are.
And the bar to ownership for psychiatric cases must go through a court of law.
As it should, so that the government can’t simply declare Christianity or homeschooling or veganism to be mental illnesses and strip those classes of everything that would allow them to fight back against a government gone tyrannical.
I didn’t know that, Arwen, and I agree with you. However, my ineptitude with most dangerous objects is a reason why I shouldn’t have one! A hot glue gun has sent me to the ER on more than one occasion.
This is the problem — so many people don’t know that there are already a number of restrictions in place and it isn’t a free-for-all. So they advocate for restrictions to “make us safer” — not knowing that some those very restrictions they advocate are already in place. In many of these mass shootings, either such restrictions simply didn’t apply to the person in question, or he was already in violation of them. You can only do so much by making things illegal — that doesn’t make them not happen.
The restrictions are technically “in place”, but they are virtually unenforceable, by design, and will remain so if the NRA has its way. It’s a diversion tactic they constantly use to claim “the laws are in place!” while knowing full well that they have insured the laws remain virtually impossible to prosecute until AFTER something terrible has occurred, and often not even then.
Again, I’m not sure that Jonathan helps the situation by proposing yet more laws that are equally unenforceable.
How is it unenforceable to require background check and registration of sales? It’s incredibly easy to enforce. You no longer have to prove intent – if they sell the gun without registering the sale and performing the check, it is an illegal act. Where is the unenforceable part of that?
Jonathan wrote:
Private cash sales can be reported as theft. How does Jonathan propose to enforce a conviction for that?
That’s a great example Katecho, and might help you understand the benefits of my suggestion. Your example is EXACTLY what happens now, because such traces are one-off events when crimes are committed. People get to make up any excuse they want long after the fact, when it is needed. But under my suggestion, if the law requires the registration of every transfer of ownership, then someone who is trying to provide criminals with guns is going to have to file reports claiming that their gun was stolen over….and over….and over again. Anyone who reports that they are getting their guns… Read more »
Jonathan wrote:
What the authorities believe, or suspect, isn’t relevant to an actual conviction. So, as I was saying, unless caught in the act, how does Jonathan propose to convict the seller? He would seem to be dependent on the seller’s own confession.
Katecho, think it through. The gun-runner now has a few options. Which one you think they pick? 1. They run 1-2 guns a month. This nets them an extraordinarily small profit, perhaps paying their phone bill at most. For that tiny gain, they are going to voluntarily go to the police and file a false police report EVERY MONTH. In case the police investigate, they’ll also have to stage the break-in, make up a false supporting story, etc. And they are voluntarily giving the police the registration numbers of guns that they have just placed into the hands of criminals….criminals… Read more »
I also realized later that even under the incorrect assumption that you could avoid a gun-running conviction simply by claiming they were all stolen…over and over…in monthly reports to the government, being an obvious gun-runner and reporting such to the government would also open you up to be an obvious target of surveillance and a sting operation.
The idea that my simple proposed laws (already mostly employed in several states – which the NRA calls “Communist”) would result in gun-runners reporting obvious gun-running to the government without fear strains credulity.
And that’s fine. Nothing in the right to bear arms forces one to do so.
But just because one’s-self is inept, does not mean that everyone else (who may not be inept) should be forbidden from having those dangerous objects.
They are not a meaningful bar to ownership when in many states, anyone can go to a gun show, online, Craig’s list, etc. and buy a gun no matter what their criminal or psychiatric history is. Technically it is “illegal”, but it is impossible to enforce unless you begin regularly searching the homes of everyone with troubling criminal or psychiatric histories, which would be far more obviously unConstitutional. Until gun sales in general are registered and include a background check, straw purchases and the black market for guns will remain flooded, and pretty much any criminal or psychiatric case who… Read more »
Background check are in place.
Straw purchases are illegal – a felony, in fact.
What we need is not more laws, but the strict enforcement of the laws we already have.
Willingness to enforce the laws is in short supply in jurisdictions where it would do the most good.
The idea that “willingness to enforce the laws” is the problem is simply false. It would defy all reason to suggest that there’s just some magic unwillingness to enforce such laws in every administration from both parties and by attorney generals across the nation. The truth is that the laws are generally unenforceable. In most states, background checks are only in place for gun store sales, not gun show sales, private sales, internet sales, etc. That’s why straw purchases are virtually impossible to enforce, whether they are technically a “felony” or not. You can’t prove someone sold a gun illegally… Read more »
Jonathan wrote:
I’m not sure that Jonathan helps the situation by proposing yet more laws that are equally unenforceable.
Current situation: You have to prove intent and simply taking the 5th usually results in enough difficulty of a case that the judges simply have to drop it. Since the sales completely lack a paper trail, there is no way to build a case – you pretty much only catch people after the fact when the gun is used in a crime, if you manage to trace if through the ridiculous, computer-less tracing system that doesn’t even work most of the time. Proposed situation: You don’t have to prove intent, because selling the gun without registering the sale and performing… Read more »
As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, a private sale can be reported as a theft. Unless caught in the act, how does Jonathan propose to convict the seller? He would seem to be dependent on the seller’s own confession.
As I explain above Katecho, if the gun trafficker had to register each transfer of ownership, then they would have to report a theft EVERY time they trafficked a gun. They couldn’t wait until they were caught, they would have to be proactive in order to comply with the law. Otherwise, when the gun was later used in a crime, the fact that they had failed to report the theft at the time would be clear evidence against them, and conviction would be relatively easy. Anyone who was constantly getting their guns “stolen” would come to the attention of the… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: They couldn’t wait until they were caught, they would have to be proactive in order to comply with the law. Otherwise, when the gun was later used in a crime, the fact that they had failed to report the theft at the time would be clear evidence against them, and conviction would be relatively easy. I don’t see how this follows. All a seller would have to do is have a broken safe in the back corner of his warehouse and claim that’s where the gun had been stored, and that he had no knowledge that it had… Read more »
You imagine that there are people out there who buy hundreds of guns, keep those guns in simple safes that a walk-in thief can break into, and keep those safes in rooms that can be broken into without anyone noticing, and who never check on their guns? I already mentioned a potential law earlier that would make your scenario possible, but I’ll list that separately, because even as-is your “fake robbery” claim would be a hopeless case. This is how it actually proceeds. 1. Police catch a criminal in the act of committing a gun crime. 2. Police ask the… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: 2. Police ask the criminal where he got the gun, and the criminal admits that he bought it from so-and-so. The story checks out because the gun is registered to so-and-so, and the criminal is unlikely to claim he stole the gun and incur more charges. So even after all of Jonathan’s new gun sale registration laws, his theory of prosecution is still completely dependent on the accusation and credibility of a known criminal? I think Jonathan has made my point for me. Jonathan wrote: 3. Police obtain a search warrant and search the gun-runner’s residence. They find… Read more »
Katecho, earlier I listed what I think the best full set of laws would be that would seriously reduce gun crime and gun deaths. I’ll do it again here for clarity. Every transfer of ownership is registered Every transfer of ownership includes a 30-day waiting period and background check with character references One gun transfer can be processed at a time by a private individual. I think this would really dry up the gun-running market, because few gun-runners with clean records would be willing to stay in the business for the meagre profit of a single gun a month when… Read more »
Jonathan is simply demonstrating his ability to restrict his imagination to narratives that are self-serving. His list of required new laws is growing, but his ability to actually convict is not. First of all, he is the one who invokes the notion of a high volume gun-running industry, rather than hundreds of thousands of one-off private sellers who just aren’t in the mood to report all of their activities to the government. They realize that such reporting laws are not enforceable for the reasons we have already discussed. Jonathan wrote: And it makes your “hundred guns at a time” scenario… Read more »
Hey Jilly,
I think the one factor that changes this debate is the complete and total distrust of the government.
You point is well made and most reasonable people see what you say as true, including me. The problem is that our overlords are the problem and handing over to them the only means we have of stopping them is a nonstarter.
Durden wrote: I think the one factor that changes this debate is the complete and total distrust of the government. Along these lines, it’s highly likely that the correlation between psychotropic drugs and mass shootings will eventually be explored by government, not for the purpose of focusing on potentially more relevant factors, but for the purpose of increasing gun restrictions, particularly disqualifying many weapon-skilled veterans from gun ownership, as a disproportionate number of veterans could be expected to be prescribed for PTSD, etc. In other words, the purpose of exploring pharmaceutical influences would not be to remove the emphasis on… Read more »
I suppose that, from that point of view (which I agree with–no one should be unfairly deprived of his rights), it’s a good thing that so many Americans (one in six) are taking psychotropic drugs. Even in California, there would be an outcry against any such government overreach. There are simply too many medicated and law abiding people! I checked the California law just now, and use of medication isn’t an issue. Only things like involuntary 14 day holds (ban for five years unless a court overturns it), an adjudication for mentally disordered violent offender, and a finding of not… Read more »
Jill Smith wrote:
I don’t claim to have any special knowledge of the clinical effects, but I do suspect that the widespread use may be having the social effect of trading one form of violence for another.
This guy in Vegas was on Valium. I am very troubled by the number of mass shooters on psychotropic drugs. I am beginning to think that the push for more drugs and the seeming increase of mass shootings are not an accident.
I tend to agree. The pharm-cos really should be brought to bear on more of our problems–ADHD, autism, suicide, mass shootings, space cadets, Asperger’s, ED, restless legs, diabetes, perverted sexual proclivities, alien abductions…to name a few–have all been linked to the regular consumption of highly effective mood altering drugs…which can be bought for a song.
I think this is likely a complex debate, but my sympathies lie with you on this one. Our foster daughter had psychotropic drugs prescribed to her a year ago due to a personality disorder. She didn’t like the effects and quit after four days. Despite the fact that the drugs had been recommended by two doctors and that recommendation was affirmed by a trusted Christian friend who is also a psychiatrist, my own research made me very hesitant about it and I was supportive when she quit. She has shown incredible progress over the last year, progress that I don’t… Read more »
Jonathan, I am so glad that your daughter is doing better. Borderline is so hard to deal with, not just for the person but for those who love her. I am not surprised that she is managing okay without SSRIs as they are not always useful with the personality disorders unless there is a dual diagnosis such as major depression or OCD. Often a mood stabilizer is useful in order to calm the patient enough so that she can learn non-drug coping skills. Have I asked you before if you are familiar with Marsha Linehan’s work on treating BPD? She… Read more »
Jilly, our daughter is doing so much better it is a clear miracle. She is certainly not “symptomless”, but I doubt she would be diagnosed as borderline today. She has gone for being emotionally disregulated 5-10 times a week to only 1-2 times a month, and with far less intensity and duration. All other symptoms have dramatically reduced as well, especially her ability to self-regulate, and while she exhibits black-and-white thinking in relationships still it is not nearly as stark and reactionary as it was 18 months ago. She has held a steady job for 10 months now and only… Read more »
Jonathan, you and your wife must have endless amounts of love and patience to have achieved success with using DBT at home. It is difficult enough for therapists in hourly sessions! I am so happy that your daughter is doing well. Linehan has a very interesting story. She was so emotionally unbalanced as a teen that she spent a year in a psychiatric hospital, mostly in a padded cell because she was a head banger. Once she recovered, she entered a convent and stayed five years. (In the modern era of psychological testing and background checks, no convent would take… Read more »
I should be clear that we are not formally “using DBT” at home. We did consider that at one point and I got supplementary materials from a psychiatrist friend for that exact purpose, but after a session or two it was clear that it wasn’t going to work with her because she was not prepared to formally work on her problems (though a huge positive step was that I was able to present BPD to her in such a way that she acknowledged it as indeed her problem). Instead, what we did was take the principles from DBT, some advice… Read more »
Kilgore, it’s so hard to know what comes first.. What is cause, what is result. I know that without my daily happy pill, I have been known to speak in a slightly irritated tone of voice and to fail to smile at the pool cleaning guy.
Kilgore…I’m with you (Sandy Hook, Fort Hood, Aurora CO, etc). I’m thinking we need to hold the pop-psyche purveyors who feign immunity when one of their patients goes off the rails and kill a bunch of innocent people. A lot of the mental health industry is nothing more than snake-oil (Not saying there aren’t people who need help, but far too many people “need” therapy when instead mostly what people should do is fire the therapist and go outside for a hike or yard work – something physical always clears the mind and spirit.)
FWIW, there sadly is a great deal of violence among returning veterans. It is a serious issue that doesn’t get the attention it should – yet another casualty of war whose costs we very rarely count when making the decision.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-fort-carson-murder-spree-20091112
And they can’t say they didn’t know. Here is a local article from nearly 15 years ago which already anticipated similar issues:
http://gazette.com/fort-carson-fears-domestic-violence-will-surge/article/16380
Hi Kilgore, I’ve been gazing at this map based on data from the CDC and it makes no sense to me. http://www.businessinsider.com/where-americans-most-likely-die-gun-shots-las-vegas-shooting-2017-10?utm_content=bufferf861f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-bi. Why would Idaho, with its homogeneous population and lower crime rate, have a higher gun death rate than California? Do you think these are mostly hunting accidents? Why does New Mexico have a higher gun death rate than Texas next door? Why is Oregon’s rate four points higher than California’s? I have realized, in the discussion following this, how little I know about the issue. For a Canadian who comes to live in the U.S., it is strange… Read more »
Do you think these are mostly hunting accidents?
Probably, (or suicide) though one would think that this information would be in the CDC’s report, since they presumably get their info from local hospitals and coroners, and the exact circumstances of every injury have their own medical codes.
Jill Smith wrote: Why would Idaho, with its homogeneous population and lower crime rate, have a higher gun death rate than California? Do you think these are mostly hunting accidents? Proceed with caution. Apparently, suicide accounts for 63.5% of all firearm deaths in the U.S., whereas accidents only account for 1.7%. So those CDC numbers could simply reflect a cultural difference in the method that Californians use to commit suicide. States with lower population density also seem to have higher rates of suicide, for whatever reasons, and that seems to be primarily what is reflected by the map. Significantly, note… Read more »
Thanks, Katecho. It is amazing that suicide never crossed my mind, and obviously it is the likeliest cause. Otherwise, that would be a truly absurd number of careless hunters!
I’m thankful that suicide doesn’t cross Jill’s mind. However, I suspect that the purveyors of these “gun death” maps over at businessinsider.com are hoping that suicide rate doesn’t cross their readers’ minds either. Note that, while Idaho’s overall suicide rate is more than twice the rate of California’s, the rate of firearm homicide is still less than a third of California’s. It would be interesting to see a study of whether tighter gun restrictions result in any reduction in overall suicide rates, or simply shift the method used. There is already plenty of data to show that tighter gun restrictions… Read more »
Katecho, I want to learn more about this so I am going to dig into the figures. It seems common sense that if you don’t have access to a handgun, you are likely to jump off the freeway overpass or take a deliberate overdose or throw yourself in front of a train (which happens horrifyingly often, I was told by an Amtrak conductor). But Californians are generally able to have handguns in their homes. My guess, without having studied this at all, is that perhaps Californian Hispanics are less likely to commit suicide than white Idahoans. At one time, I… Read more »
I’m not familiar with various theories to explain the different rates of suicide among different groups, other than that isolation and old age seem to be major factors.
It is interesting that men are significantly more likely to commit suicide than women, and whites have a significantly higher suicide rate than other ethnicities. (See Figure 2 of https://archive.cdph.ca.gov/pubsforms/Pubs/OHIRsuicideDeaths1999.pdf and note that it’s data from 1999.)
In the long ago, I worked on a suicide prevention hotline and had some training before they let me handle calls. That is why it is so odd that I didn’t think of suicide in relation to the gun death rates. What I learned in training is that women attempt suicide more often than men do, but that their attempts are often much more half-hearted and involve much less lethal means (taking a Benadryl overdose, for example). Women are much more inclined to seek help. And, of course, in Canada suicide by gun was much less common even for men.… Read more »
Some warning Jill, for your admirable attempt to parse through gun statistics. When comparing different areas, most especially different nations’ statistics, a commonly played trick is to be deliberately misleading with your search terms. If for example, you compare U.S. “gun deaths” and U.K. “gun deaths”, you’ll obviously find mind more in the U.S. But we don’t want fewer gun deaths do we? We want lower rates of violent crime. It doesn’t exactly do anyone any good if we kill each other in equal number just with a different tool. Consequently, you’re (by my memory of FBI reports) 2.5x more… Read more »
Thank you, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I understand your point about the importance of reducing crime-related deaths as opposed to gun-related deaths. But I do have a lot of concern about reducing child-related gun deaths. Do you think California’s law that guns must be kept in a place inaccessible to children is reasonable even though it obviously hinders anyone’s ability to use a gun against an intruder? I do understand that responsible gun owners train their children. But I am not sure that training is always enough for the very young and for certain kinds of… Read more »
I have read anecdotes on the Internet (so more research would probably be good) wherein people who study these things looked at the behavior of children who had been taught gun safety versus the behavior of children who hadn’t. What they found was, apparently, children who had been taugh “this is a gun, if you see on lying around don’t touch it, and go tell an adult” did just that, and children who had been taught nothing would pick up the gun and try to play with it. Treating guns like any of the other hazardous objects around the house… Read more »
Violent crime is also extremely difficult to compare across countries, as they have very different definitions of what entails a violent crime. Look up knife assault statistics for London, and you’ll find that some of those counts include numerous cases where someone pulled a knife, but didn’t stab anyone, which would rarely qualify as an “assault” in America. Pretty much the only crime statistic that is reasonably useful to compare across borders is murders, and there is universal agreement on what constitutes death. But even then, some nation have differences between “murder” and “homicide” that can result in two sets… Read more »
The most sophisticated studies show that when all other factors are taken into consideration, having a gun in the home increases the likelihood that someone in the home will die of suicide by around 300%. Suicide is not a “once and for all” decision. Most people who attempt suicide and survive never end up committing suicide – the moment had passed. I personally had a roommate who tried to attempt suicide, was unable to get a gun in California, drove to Oregon, and then called us from a payphone there when he finally second-guessed himself. That was a “near attempt”… Read more »
Jonathan wrote:
Having a pool in the backyard increases the likelihood that someone in the home will die of drowning by much more than 300%. Is Jonathan going to reason from this that we should ban pools? I smell a double-standard approaching.
I don’t think we should ban pools any more than we should ban guns. I hope it is clear to you, though, that having a pool in the backyard increases the danger for your family, and you need to make the decision with that in mind. Pastor Wilson, on the other hand, continuously claims that owning a gun increases the safety for your family, something that has been proven false by study after study. I am not against owning guns. I own guns myself. What I am against is the false claim that guns make us safer, the desire to… Read more »
Jonathan wrote:
Given his misrepresentations of Wilson in the past, Jonathan needs to provide a reference for this claim, so that we can check the source and the context.
Katecho, I’m a bit tired of you repeating that mantra over and over followed by me sourcing the reference to Pastor Wilson’s own words. Your primary evidence that I have misrepresented Pastor Wilson are your constant assertions of the fact. Pastor Wilson has more than once claimed that gun ownership is a civic virtue, and he has stated that one of the reasons it is a civic virtue is because it is useful to protect your family and make them safe. He has even compared concealed carry to having safety features like sprinkler systems in the building. He cited “statistics”,… Read more »
Jonathan’s refusal to support his particular claim, with actual citation and context, is noted.
In the absence of any external threats, no one is claiming that guns, of themselves, make families safer. They are like backyard pools, in that sense. But at least with a gun, it can become invaluable to have one when an external danger presents itself. I know that Jonathan knows this distinction, because he just explained it with regard to backyard pools. What Jonathan needs to do is stop attempting to suggest that Wilson doesn’t know this distinction.
This is my case: Pastor Wilson believes that guns are safety features analogous to sprinkler systems Pastor Wilson believes that gun ownership is a civic virtue Pastor Wilson has cited false statistics claiming that carrying guns makes states safer Pastor Wilson has stated that universal gun ownership would make a neighborhood safer from crime Pastor Wilson has clearly implied on multiple occasions that gun ownership is a reasonable requirement for a man to keep his family safe Do you deny a single one of those five points? Do you actually believe that Pastor Wilson doesn’t think guns make a home… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: Pastor Wilson doesn’t need a White Knight. If I’m a White Knight, what does that make Jonathan? Jonathan wrote: But I’m not going to engage these silly attempts to make up new positions for him that are at odds with what he’s actually said. Jonathan has a history of misrepresenting Wilson. He has been given multiple opportunities, here, to provide a citation, so we can check the context of Wilson’s position for ourselves. Jonathan simply refuses. Jonathan wrote: Do you actually believe that Pastor Wilson doesn’t think guns make a home safer? In what context? In the context… Read more »
Generally, banned popular means of suicide, especially when those means are particularly effective, does tend to reduce the overall occurrence of suicide. I don’t believe it is an accident that states with the highest gun ownership tend to have higher suicide rates.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/struck-living/201012/can-obstacle-prevent-suicide
Jonathan, wouldn’t we have to include other factors to draw a direct connection? Such as, are there large numbers of ethnic populations which have lower suicide rates overall? Are there economic factors that might make people in a particular region more depressed? Are there higher rates of alcoholism and drug abuse that might push up the suicide rate?
Definitely! The general trends are only suggestive. The best studies that I seen which do careful household-to-household comparisons find that when all other factors are taken into account, having a gun in the home increases the risk of a suicide in the home by approximately 200-300%. That’s twice as great as the increase in risk of murder in the home from the presence of the gun.
Jonathan wrote:
What study? What factors? Why no citation? Jonathan should know by now that we don’t trust him with statistics any more.
Yes, I know “you” don’t trust me with statistics, but that has little to nothing to do with whether I cite and use them accurately. Here is a story from Fox News, looking at all studies that investigated the link between gun ownership and suicide or murder. “For the new review, the researchers analyzed 14 studies that looked at the risk of committing suicide among people who did and didn’t have access to guns and five studies that looked at gun access and the risk of being murdered. Four of the studies examined both suicide and murder risk. The studies… Read more »
Yet again, Katecho challenges just to challenge, then when provided with exactly what he requested, disappears.
Jonathan wrote: Yet again, Katecho challenges just to challenge, then when provided with exactly what he requested, disappears. Jonathan probably wishes I would disappear. His aspersions of my motives aside, I’m actually interested in the truth about what the studies may, or may not, actually show. While he may be correct, I no longer trust Jonathan (or the media) to represent such studies accurately. Consider it an experienced skepticism. Jonathan wrote: …when all other factors are taken into account, having a gun in the home increases the risk of a suicide in the home by approximately 200-300%. The authors of… Read more »
Jonathan wrote:
Banned? Hasn’t Jonathan tried to assure us that he is not in favor of banning guns? Or does Jonathan only want to ban guns from people who are going to commit suicide with them at some point?
Wasn’t Jonathan also complaining about unenforceable gun laws?
I don’t think one should ban guns anymore than one should ban swimming pools, as I have said frequently. You know this well. But arguing strictly on the facts, yes, such a ban would reduce the overall occurrence of suicide. I’m beyond tired of the game playing. I said exactly what I meant, and you’re just constantly making insinuations and trying to twist things into something nefarious even when you know it doesn’t represent my position. The articles I cited above detail multiple different ways that gun dealers, medical professionals, and families can all work together to help reduce the… Read more »
Jonathan, that is an interesting article. I watched a televised interview with a CHP officer whose job is to talk down would- be suicides from the Golden Gate bridge. People come from all over the world to jump there, and only the Golden Gate bridge will do. Most jumpers, whether from buildings, overpasses, or bridges, are men.
Women, even those with access to guns, typically choose methods which allow for a change of mind. Men usually go with instantly lethal. Whether impulsivity plays into that, I don’t know.
In my life I’ve known three men who attempted suicide and three men who were successful. All three who were successful were men with guns. Two of the unsuccessful were men with knives (one was stopped and the other got a nasty sucking chest wound but survived), and the other unsuccessful man tried to hang himself but was discovered in time and survived. Those six cases don’t count my friend who wanted to commit via suicide but couldn’t get a gun in California.
People who have more guns are far more likely to use, obviously. That doesn’t necessarily change the outcome of violence. Utah has more guns per capita than just about anywhere else in the world, and they have some of the lowest levels of violence. And their relationship to overseeing authority is interesting. Regarding their government, they have a very high distrust, for historical reasons. But their own religious community is governed very rigidly. Their ecclesiastical system is basically the same as Catholicism, only more like Catholicism in Rome in the fifth century. It is very tightly controlled. Yet, the Mormons… Read more »
Yet surely the Mormon hierarchy, being composed of fallen people, must also be subject to occasional corruption and errors that ought to weaken their followers’ trust. I wonder if their trust would survive something like the Catholic priest scandals–which dealt a devastating blow to individual Catholics’ trust in their local hierarchy. For me, it was not the abuse of the children that horrified me as much as the attempted silencing of the victims and the protection of the criminal priests. I don’t mean that child predation doesn’t horrify me–of course it does. But it is the cover-up that shook my… Read more »
Amen. This is so well stated, that I am left with nothing of significance to say in response.
” Normal folks are far more worried about the macrocosm, meaning the prospect of the government ever becoming an active shooter.” I would say that’s a bit of a generalization. Normal people look at videos from shootings like this and wonder why anyone would and more importantly should have what this guy had. THats normal. When you see 22,000 people running for their lives , people by their side dropping from bullets in the night like a scene out of saving private Ryan, normal people say – “Why does things like this continue to happen.” Clearly gun control is not… Read more »
What if we were to address the radicalization of men, the way our culture has left them behind, the perversions of masculinity going on, the lack of direction and focus? The urgency in getting the message of the gospel out? If we don’t minister to men the world does. There are these huge issues going, the opiate epidemic, the skyrocketing suicide rates,family disintegration, and by the time we get to gun violence it’s like trying to shut the barn door after the horses have escaped.
I don’t know of any other topic in our society that causes so much death that we are not willing to address it.
Cars.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Abortion.
Invasion by Foreign Criminals.
Government Corruption in Infrastructure Maintenance Leading to Catastrophic System Failures During Natural Disaster.
If I put any thought into it, I could probably come up with more.
Cigarettes.
Alcohol abuse.
Fentanyl and OxyContin,
A diet consisting of nothing but chicken nuggets.
Suicide among men over 60.
Government foreign policy and social justice experiments.
Preventable deaths due to human error in hospitals
I’m incredibly confused by your list. There are extensive measures to address car safety. Cars are very tightly regulated and those regulations are constantly updated. Every car on the streets must be registered and every car user must be licensed. As a result, the number of people killed by cars has been dropping continuously for decades, and they’re safer than they’ve ever been. Same goes for sexually transmitted diseases – there has been massive response and thus a major drop in them. Same goes for “invasion by foreign criminals” – there is an enormous amount of resources put forth to… Read more »
And yet, despite all the safety measures in place on cars, and despite all of the licensing requirements, more people die in car accidents every year than die by firearms.
STDs are on the rise, illegal aliens who commit crimes either aren’t deported, or reenter the US after having been expelled, and mayors of sanctuary cities are only enforcing the laws on citizens and other legal residents.
Are you sure you claim isn’t outdated? Because of those regulations, the fatalities due to cars have been dropping every year, even as there are more and more cars on the road, whereas the fatalities due to firearms hasn’t dropped. Thus the projections were that by 2015 or 2016, gun fatalities would surpass auto fatalities. At the very best, you can say that auto fatalities are equal to gun fatalities. And autos are something that the vast majority of the American population uses extensively the vast majority of the time for functions they consider essential to life, whereas most Americans… Read more »
As I’ve observed before, Jonathan can’t be trusted with statistics. Jonathan wrote: Because of those regulations, the fatalities due to cars have been dropping every year, even as there are more and more cars on the road, whereas the fatalities due to firearms hasn’t dropped. This claim is factually in error. Unfortunately, traffic fatalities increased 8.4% in 2015 and again by another 5.6% in 2016. Even the death rate (per million vehicle miles traveled) increased slightly. So it is not true to say that it has been dropping every year. Similarly, Jonathan is in error to say that fatalities due… Read more »
Katecho, when talking about safety issues and saving lives we are not talking about the crime of “illegal entry”, we are obviously talking about violent crime. Changing the discussion to “Illegal entry” rather than violent crime is another ridiculous red herring. You’re immediately admitting that the concern has NOTHING to do with the safety issues that are being discussed…unless you actually want to talk about violent crime, like I was.
Jonathan wrote: Changing the discussion to “Illegal entry” rather than violent crime is another ridiculous red herring. Speaking of red herrings, Jonathan was the one who attempted to change the subject from “illegal aliens who commit crimes” to immigrants in general. Note that he has refused to apologize to Arwenb for that misrepresentation. Jonathan had previously written: I would be interested in you showing me any data, anywhere, which shows that immigrants (illegal or otherwise) increase the rates of violent crime or violent deaths in America. If Jonathan really is so concerned about violent crime, perhaps he should stop trying… Read more »
As far as your poor attempt to play with stats, as far as I can tell you are trying to make your point by highlighting a brief uptick in auto fatalities that is only 2 years old (as opposed to 40+ years of declines), and then trying to point out a brief peak in gun fatalities from the early 1990s as if that means something. In both cases, you’re using a tiny peak of only a couple years, and twenty years apart at that, to dispute decades of trends. While auto fatalities did increase 8% in 2015, gun fatalities also… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: In both cases, you’re using a tiny peak of only a couple years, and twenty years apart at that, to dispute decades of trends. This is a perfect example of Jonathan’s flagrant misrepresentation of others. I didn’t dispute decades of trends at all. I acknowledged that “firearm fatality numbers have increased gradually from 2000”, and even gave a link to a graph showing it. I simply pointed to some very specific errors in Jonathan’s statements, and Jonathan has said nothing to redeem his original claims. Jonathan wrote: … as far as I can tell you are trying to… Read more »
Anthony says: ” I don’t know of any other topic in our society that causes so much death that we are not willing to address it.” Really? How about abortion, which causes death to the tenth power compared to shooting (figure of speech, not calculated statistics). Not that the statement is accurate anyway. The left constantly “addresses” the topic by calling for elimination of the Second Amendment while the right constantly “addresses” it by defending the Constitution. Likewise the right constantly “addresses” Roe V Wade by calling for its overturn, while the left constantly “addresses” it by defending the murder… Read more »
The gun control debate is had with the same talking points every single time, regardless of whether it would actually have made any real difference to make XYZ illegal. In this case, to my understanding, the shooter already had broken a number of existing laws; it is therefore a little hard to understand why “make teh bad gunzors illegals!” would actually help, unless the goal is in fact not merely to get rid of guns suitable for killing sprees, but to get rid of guns entirely. (Edit: to be fair, I’ve since heard that several components necessary to convert legal… Read more »
The Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution didn’t have in mind the kind of weapons this shooter used in Las Vegas. Read about the gun laws in Nevada. It is one of the most lenient states with regard to owning assault weapons, i.e. – semi-automatic rifles, and other killing machines. Also read the statement about the arsenal of weapons this mass murderer owned. They were legally obtained according to the laws in Nevada. How in the world is it government overreach to address the fact that no average citizen should be able to use these kinds of weapons whose sole… Read more »
Nonnadg wrote: It is one of the most lenient states with regard to owning assault weapons, i.e. – semi-automatic rifles, and other killing machines. How did semi-automatic hunting rifles suddenly become “assault weapons”? Or is Nonnadg allowing that a semi-automatic rifle might have another purpose than “murdering hundreds of people in minutes”? Nonnadg wrote: How in the world is it government overreach to address the fact that no average citizen should be able to use these kinds of weapons whose sole purpose is to murder hundreds of people in minutes? “Sole purpose”? I’ve already mentioned hunting, but what about the… Read more »
You must have missed the part of history class wherein it was noted that private citizens possessed military weapons up to and including cannons.
Before the government decided that it needed a monopoly on firearms, that is.
I believe the modern equivalent of an 18th century cannon would be something along the lines of a howitzer.
“The Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution didn’t have in mind the kind of weapons this shooter used in Las Vegas.” Totally irrelevant to the conversation…in their day death could come from a host of everyday things, bad water, a falling tree branch or kick in the head from a horse or cow, or a Native American for that matter. As ‘nathantuggy” expressed above, the right to bear arms was to protect against a tyrannical government, the ultimate citizen’s check and balance when government overreaches (although now they do it incrementally in order to hide their activity.) But then without… Read more »
The Founding Fathers also didn’t have in mind the kind of media outlets that we have today, when they wrote the First Amendment. Would that make it acceptable if they came and took away your Internet connection for life because they didn’t like the things you say?
The looniest explanation I have encountered so far is that he was influenced by the solar eclipse.
Jill…”he was influenced by the solar eclipse.”)
I was…only it added to my belief in an amazing God!
You think those doing the destruction will stop if we have no guns? Even more destruction could be done with bombs or chemical weapons. We would do better to search for ways to stop any WMD ‘s for mass destruction. The answer will not be to take guns away from the people who did not do the crime.
“…the original purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to arm the people against government overreach and tyranny…”
The purpose of the militia referenced in the 2nd Amendment was the opposite of enabling taking up of arms against the government. Along with repelling foreign invasion the militia was to be called up to suppress insurrection.
Ah John, never mind the truth. Let the gun enthusiasts believe they have every right to own arsenals of Ak-47s just in the event that Uncle Sam threatens their life. The idea that average American citizens can defend themselves against the might and power of the U.S. military is an absurd fantasy, but some folks love to cling to their delusions.
“The idea that average American citizens can defend themselves against the might and power of the U.S. military is an absurd fantasy…” Actually it may well be an absurd fantasy, but it is also kind of the entire structure and foundation of our democracy. It is not so much about owning a gun in a literal gunfight against the military, as it is about making sure the political fire power remains in the hands of the people. We are the government, we the people. Turning in our weapons makes us “we the subjects deemed unworthy to govern our own selves.”… Read more »
Nonnadg wrote:
Speaking of absurd fantasies and delusions, Nonnadg seems to be trapped in a Rambo movie of his/her own imagination. Perhaps Nonnadg completely missed JohnM’s reference to entire militias of average American citizens.
The idea that average American citizens can defend themselves against the might and power of the U.S. military is an absurd fantasy,
Oh, I don’t know. Illiterate goat-herders in the back end of nowhere seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.
I bet we could do better.
… Assuming, of course, that the “Might of the US Military” wouldn’t turn around and frag the commanders that ordered them to fire on the American people.
The Taliban resisted the Russian army. I don’t know anymore whether I am supposed to think that was a good thing or a bad thing.
The Taliban resisted the Russian army with the aid of the U.S. Now the Taliban resist the U.S. with the aid of Russia.
Al Qaeda resists the Syrian army with the aid of the U.S.
I’m seeing a pattern here.
We have always been at war with Oceania.
I’m afraid you miss the entirety of meaning intended in the Bill of Rights. Defense of basic natural rights, as understood by the founders, includes the right to defend oneself against intrusion, even from the government. Grab a copy and read them; the progression is a logical flow of protections for a politically free people. I find it curious that no one argues that the other nine amendments protect people from government overreach (limitations to speech, religious practice, disqualifying cruel and unusual punishment, etc.), but somehow the 2nd is an exception.
[nathantuggy] For those wishing reality wasn’t what it is, no amount of facts or convincing that this isn’t about guns will change their mindset, they will always believe guns are bad and regular folk shouldn’t own them. Yet in their inimitable fashion they are the very first to demand protection by said guns, unless of course they disagree how that comes about, often cherry-picking the tragedy to fit their current outrage. How come when it’s their behind in danger these same people who want “guns off the street” or “stricter gun laws” (a platitude) are lauding (as they should) the… Read more »
Existing laws are meaningless if they are unenforceable. There are some simple ways to make many current laws more enforceable, but the gun lobby blocks those.
Cars cause more death than guns. Oh yeah, and drugs – and the same people who want gun control want total legalization of drugs – go figure.
Cars used to cause more death than guns. Since constant improvements in the regulation and safety of cars and car users have led to fewer and fewer can deaths, gun deaths have now passed them up.
http://www.americanweaponscomponents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/guns-vs-car-deaths-2015.jpg
Jonathan wrote:
Can Jonathan provide a citation for this claim? His graph only includes data through 2011, and the rest is extrapolation. This extrapolation assumes a continued decline in traffic fatalities, but that assumption was in error. Traffic fatalities increased in 2015, and again in 2016.
Gun fatalities increased 8% in 2015 and gun murders increased nearly 12% in 2016. I can’t find total gun death numbers for 2016. If the overall gun deaths increased as much as gun murders did last year (and gun suicides have been increasing steadily for 15+ years), then gun deaths will indeed have passed auto deaths. You are certainly right that the passing may not have happened yet – I was unaware of the recent brief uptick in auto fatalities. But if 40+ year trends continue (auto fatality upticks have come before and almost immediately renormalize down, while gun deaths… Read more »
You’ve already been thoroughly raked over the coals, so there’s no particularly need for me to pile on (particularly with the “any other topic that causes so much death” line, disproved with any basic google search), but there is one bit here I thought noteworthy. “I would say that’s a bit of a generalization. Normal people look at videos from shootings like this and wonder why anyone would and more importantly should have what this guy had. THats normal. ” There are three points I would like to make here. First, that the two points, yours and his, are not… Read more »
“Third, and perhaps most importantly, you are not the arbiter of “normal”. A response isn’t “normal” because it’s the one you and your friends have.”
Exactly. Yet for them the facts do not matter, it’s about feelings…”I think guns are bad therefore no one should have them.” I don’t think it’s good to drive at 75mph, therefore I will drive 55 mph in the left hand lane.”
Paul, I think it would be nice if I became the official arbiter of normal. We would all have clean hair and well tended cats. There would be no need for guns because we would always be very polite to one another, even when expressing disagreement (if anyone bothered). Nobody would get very much done, but judging from what does get done these days, that might be a refreshing change. And while I would tolerate a great deal of courteously expressed free speech, there would be mandatory re-education for people who misuse “literally”.
You got my vote! You’d “literally” be “Queen Normal” {[:-)
yes! Another great man who has woken up!
I’ve read that this shooter had no criminal record, or affiliation with any cults or radical groups, but what I haven’t heard is whether he had been under any treatment with antidepressants or serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Rapidly coming off of SSRIs has been linked to a number of crimes of this sort. Has anyone heard any statement about his prescription history?
Not that it would excuse such crimes, but it might inform the nature of the debate that we should be having, and perhaps what needs closer regulation than guns.
Apparently the hotel room was booked months ago, which would rule out an immediate reaction like that.
Not necessarily. He apparently liked to gamble, and could have booked a room for that purpose originally, and only later came up with a new purpose. However, I agree that he did have to do a lot of prep to accumulate and transport the weapons and ammo, so I don’t think it was a spur-of-the-moment reaction. He also had explosives in his car, which suggests a grander plan, but somehow those never factored in to this shooting. I’m just aware of a growing correlation between other shootings and coming off of antidepressants, so I think that should be specifically looked… Read more »
I imagine they will do a postmortem and a search of his prescription records. The first mass shooting I remember from my childhood was Charles Whitman firing from the tower at the University of Texas. The Connolly Commission concluded that a small brain tumor might have contributed to his behavior. Whitman was also using amphetamines which can increase aggressive and paranoid impulses in some people. Do you remember that some of the school shootings were attributed to young teenagers’ use of SSRI’s? I don’t recall if any definite conclusion was reached, but I do know that most SSRIs other than… Read more »
I’ve heard initial reports that Paddock had been prescribed Valium, but haven’t heard about SSRIs in particular. If Paddock planned this whole thing as a suicide mission from the start (which appears to be the case), then it strongly implies a struggle with depression. He may have sought treatment for it at some point.
Neither pharmaceuticals nor availability of guns would be an excuse for what Paddock did, but it does reveal an irrational imbalance in the agenda to simply vilify guns.
Did you know it was actually, technically, true:
“God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”
Our ancestors didn’t think that prayer was enough to produce a peaceful society. It also took a lot of public executions to cull the population of criminals. If Papa Paddock had been hung in the town square after his first car theft then there never would have been any Junior Paddock around to massacre a bunch of people.
First, a grammar note: people are hanged, not hung (unless they are a man to whom God has been exceptionally kind).
Second, eye-for-an-eye is an upper limit for us as theonomists. Execution as a punishment for theft is disproportionate. The punishment for theft is paying pack the value of the stolen property, plus a percentage.
Thank you, asdf! Pictures are hung, people are hanged, and I wish this were still taught in elementary school. Only then can children appreciate the joke I used to tell my students: “What did the picture say before it got hung?” “I was framed.”
Restitution is an adequate and preferable solution for livestock disputes between neighboring land owners but completely inadequate and unworkable when applied to bandits or even common thieves without ability or inclination to make restitution. People in historical and social contexts much more theonomist than our own did not attempt such a thing. If you see ancient Israel as the only acceptable model then selling into slavery is the solution.
When laws are too draconian, they end up being unenforced–with a concomitant loss of respect for the law. We are often told that the English criminal justice system of the 18th century visited the death penalty upon paupers who stole anything worth more than a few shillings. But, when you look at the records, very, very few people were executed under these laws. Juries of normal, humane people are not willing to kill somebody for stealing a car.
Jill…”concomitant” had to look that one up. Nice word.
Mmmm interesting. There really is an overt paranoia in the US about governments isn’t there. Maybe that’s just as well. Whatever.
The single great thing John Howard (former PM) enacted here in Australia was the gun buyback scheme after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre where 35 people were killed. Since then we’ve had zero (that’s none, nada, nil) mass shootings. Gun control can and does work. But the country has to believe in it.
Alex, I highly doubt that you will convince any of the die-hard Conservatives in these parts. They will only interpret your statements something to the effect that you folks down under have been duped by your government. Don’t you realize that having the right to own arsenals of AK-47s is a right that ensures our freedoms? No right to own AK-47s and semi-automatic rifles equals governmental tyranny. That is the script among the Conservative Right-Wing Christians here in the good ole USA. Nothing you say about Australia’s efforts to thwart gun violence will convince this bunch. But someone reading who… Read more »
Nonnadg and Alex. Look at facts. Australia passes their “gun ban” and while gun suicides and gun murders declined… violent crime went up and is still higher now than in ‘96. So kudos, you just changed the crimimals’ weapon of choice. During that time frame (‘96-now) Americans have doubled our number of guns and yet our gun related deaths and crimes have dropped significantly. Obviously more guns doesn’t equal more crime. Harvard did a study a few years back saying gun control laws have no effect in reducing crime and only possibly an inverse relationship, and found cultural values to… Read more »
“All in all you’re seemingly inclined to blame tools rather than an evil heart. Evidence proves you can’t stop evil by banning objects. The Bible clearly shows this to be true.
Let’s not focus on laws that don’t work… let’s Pray for conversion, repentance and love!”
Micah, agreed. But in the meantime an evil heart with a knife kills a heck of a lot less people than an evil heart with 23 semi and fully automatic assault rifles and AK-47s.
Alex said:
But in the same meantime, an evil heart with 23 semi and fully automatic assault rifles and AK-47s kills a heck of a lot less people than an evil heart with a Boeing 767.
“But in the same meantime, an evil heart with 23 semi and fully automatic assault rifles and AK-47s kills a heck of a lot less people than an evil heart with a Boeing 767”
Which is one reason we regulate air travel.
@JohnM, are you saying we don’t regulate firearms?
Well meaning people can be surprisingly ignorant about this. I knew that California has tougher gun laws than many other states. But I didn’t know until I was informed here on this board that mentally ill people can’t buy handguns in other states, or that somebody in Nevada can’t walk into a gun store and buy an AK-47 without a background check.
Jill, I wonder as to how many people on this board find that degree of regulation unreasonable. I’m guessing you’re not one of them?
For me, it depends on the regulation. Blanket prohibitions without due process are generally not reasonable. But if someone has been convicted of a crime, for example, they can forfeit even natural liberties, including life itself if the offense is serious enough. A proper background check for a gun purchase would be reasonable to determine if someone has a serious conviction record.
I agree Katecho. I support background checks for all gun purchases, something that California recently implemented but most states do not.
All states require background checks.
You have to fill out a background check form every time you buy a gun.
Or give them your Concealed Weapon Permit number, so they can make sure it’s still valid. (You have to have passed a federal background check to get a CWP.
No, in most states you simply do not need a background check if you purchase the gun at a gun show, online, or in person from another private individual. Have you really never tried to buy a gun like this before or do you just live in California?
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-firearms-bankground-checks-state-laws-map.html
Another aspect is that background checks as done are woefully inadequate. In many states they are waived if they take longer than the required holding period. A great deal of information about criminal and mental disqualifying incidents never gets entered into the federal database through which such checks occur. And whereas character references can be one of the best means of preventing immediate gun violence so far as background checks go (because informing multiple people known to the purchaser that they are getting a gun can often be a critical lead in a pending crime or suicide), such character references… Read more »
I think some regulation is essential. I can’t understand why anyone would object to background checks, or to an insistence that someone be of age and apparently law abiding. I think that, for the purpose of solving violent crime, police officers should be able to trace the ownership of a gun used to commit a murder. I think there should be reasonable laws requiring parents to keep guns and ammo out of the reach of children. There should be no obvious insanity such as a recent psychiatric hospitalization for thinking that the neighbors’ dog is telling you to kill people.… Read more »
“If ownership of fire arms had not been specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights, do you think we might be more inclined to apply the same kind of reasoning as we do to drivers of cars?”
Good question. Proponents of reasonable regulation would still be up against perceived history, and money, but opponents of regulation would not have quite the same rhetorical leverage.
You can’t walk into a store and do it, but in most states you can walk into gun show or go onto the internet and get a gun without such a check.
You know there are videos of people who have tried to do just that.
They failed. Because they either wouldn’t take or couldn’t pass a background check.
I’m shocked that you have repeatedly claimed that you always have to get a background check when you buy a gun. That is clearly, obviously false, and suggests that you both have little experience with guns and have done little effort to research the question. Yes, in SOME states (like California) you need a background check to buy a gun at a gun show. That is fairly recent legislation, and the anti-gun control lobby typically refers to such state as “Communist”. But in MOST states, you do not need a background check if you buy from a “private” individual at… Read more »
I’m saying we do regulate air travel. And motor vehicles. And pharmaceuticals. And alcoholic beverages. And pesticides. And explosives. And dogs. And so on. Because irresponsible or malicious use of all those things is destructive of human life. Just like irresponsible or malicious use of firearms is. If we place a high value on human life and are sober minded adults about it we will not categorically object to the regulation.
The Australia case is usually silly on both sides, as the actual measures taken were minor, gun control was already much tighter than in the USA, and most of the gun buyback was legal gun owners getting cash for their own guns and then legally buying new ones. There are now more guns in Australia than before the buyback. Whether the gun control measures resulted in the lack of mass shootings is debateable…I think the occurrence of such shootings in Australia was already too low to evaluate this way. However, homicides, sexual assaults, and robbery are all lower now than… Read more »
It’s sick how leftists immediately politicize these events. Interestingly, they didn’t make a big deal out of a Sudanese immigrant’s recent shooting in a church–didn’t fit the narrative. The shooter’s note mentioned Charleston–as if it were retaliation. Of course, no one mentioned removing monuments/symbols afterwards. In fact, the story was quickly buried and forgotten. Like Charlottesville, there was 1 death involved (plus 7 injuries). Yet Charlottesville received about 10,000X more attention…including tons of posts/blogs/rants from SJW evangelicals.
I’ve lived in Australia all my life and can’t recall any mass shootings before the Martin Bryant one. In other words, a one-off event (carried out with a firearm that even under existing laws had been illegally obtained and wouldn’t have been permitted to be brought to the mainland) was the catalyst for a hysterical overreaction, and people are using the subsequent reversion to the previous normality as some sort of evidence that the reaction was necessary. There have been plenty of attempts at mass killings since, mostly foiled, involving bombs and cars. There have also been plenty of shootings,… Read more »
Well if you take ‘mass shootings’ to be 5 or more people then there have been quite a few before Martin Bryant. Hope Forest, Campsie, Wahroonga, Milperra, Hoddle St, Queen St, Strathfield etc.
That’s a very sad story about your friend Brendan. He was a very brave man.
Since then we’ve had zero (that’s none, nada, nil) mass shootings.
So? Are fewer people dying as a result, or have potential perpetrators shifted to using knives, acid, and trucks instead?
I’d be more concerned about my security in “gun control havens” like Paris or London than in open/concealed carry cities in the U.S. The bad guys can still get guns, along with trucks, explosives, acid, etc. like you said.
London has become a scary place. I suppose the one silver lining is that, due to the ubiquity of CCTV cameras, they are likely to apprehend your assailant. Since the IRA days, they are literally on every street.
Do you think these are government overreach or a necessary evil?
Tell us more about driver license photos your government wants to use to monitor it’s citizens
Doesn’t worry me in the slightest.
Which answers the liberty question.
I’m a Christian. A citizen of heaven. What is all this about? I don’t get it. Building a kingdom here on earth? Is that what we’re about?
No, it’s not what we should be about–at least, I am not interested in building a fortress on earth, and I am not passionately interested in my rights at the expense of everything else. But while we are here on earth, most of us have to live in community and under the authority of government. I think that gives us enough reason to be opposed to government overreach. It was said that the glory of English law was that king could not enter, uninvited, the hovel of the humblest law-abiding peasant in the land. This is as it should be.… Read more »
We live under the laws we find ourselves under. But we also support righteous laws. Law is for lawbreakers. Others should have liberty. Always remember that the laws you support can be used by a new government that is evil.
It doesn’t worry me in the sense that I have anything to hide, but I don’t like it. I don’t think the federal government should have access to my library records unless a judge gives it permission based on reliable evidence that I pose a threat. I don’t think the government should have access to my internet search history, or my DNA or my medical history, in the absence of proof of wrongdoing.
Ah….because the ‘gummit” is out to git y’all, the price of freedom is to make sure all American citizens have the right to own AK-47s and semi-automatic rifles whose sole purpose is to kill and maim hundreds of people in minutes. Another apologetic of Wilson’s for Right-Wingers to feel perfectly justified in building their arsenal of weapons, just like the mass shooter did yesterday. Mass shootings are the price of freedom we must pay in order that we can build up our own arsenal of weapons just in case the government decides to come after us. And yet somehow the… Read more »
Nonnadg wrote: Ah….because the ‘gummit” is out to git y’all … Paranoia on steroids! Nonnadg either hasn’t read the reasoning of the Founding Fathers concerning the threat potential of government, or else Nonnadg thinks the Founding Fathers were suffering from paranoia on steroids. What other options has Nonnadg left himself or herself? Nonnadg wrote: … the price of freedom is to make sure all American citizens have the right to own AK-47s and semi-automatic rifles whose sole purpose is to kill and maim hundreds of people in minutes Can Nonnadg explain how a semi-automatic hunting rifle’s “sole purpose is to… Read more »
Ketecho, I think you missed the part in Wilson’s thesis of why Christians should own these kinds of firearms, namely the ones the shooter used yesterday in Las Vegas. He thinks we need to be armed against the government who is against us, and seeks to take away our rights. The absurdity with this sort of thinking is that no Ak-47 or any other assault weapon (semi-automatic rifles for example) – that the average American citizen can legally own at this point, is sufficient defense against the weaponry of our military, which is at the beck and call of the… Read more »
They are trying to take away our rights….
….starting with the right to keep and carry weapons.
“….starting with the right to keep and carry weapons.”
?? Not so’s you’d notice.
Nonsense. This is a lie that has been told over and over again with no proof. I remember a certain paranoid sector of society warning us that Obama was going “TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY!!!” Obama has come and gone from the WH and it didn’t happen. Now, as far as certain weapons, like the kind that the shooters in Las Vegas, San Bernardino and Sandy Hook used – I can only hope that we can come to a sensible conclusion that such weapons should not be in the hands of civilians. No one needs AK-47s and other semi-automatic rifles to… Read more »
[nonnadg] So if, as you assert, Arwenb’s statement is a lie, then if you and your compatriots were able to obtain everything you wanted for this ONE social agenda, what would that look like to you? Would you trample the Constitution to get it?
Logical thinking people know there will be more criminals running roughshod in our streets if people didn’t have personal protection (which, incidentally, isn’t always a gun.) Someone goes after my wife and he’s going to meet his maker in a heartbeat, and I do not carry.
It’s not Obama.
This goes back to 1934. The government has been taking away our right to keep and carry weapons – to provide for the common defense – for more than 80 years now.
For your reading and learning pleasure:
https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2013/11/08/cake-and-compromise-illustrated-guide-to-gun-control/
Notice that Nonnadg didn’t answer any of my questions.
It’s true that no rebellion is going to win via a series of pitched battles against the US military, but this isn’t the form you’d expect a rebellion to take anyway. Even the founding rebellion saw the militia totally outmatched in the field, and they basically had to put together a regular army on the fly. That they even won was a fluke, and most of the time rebellions fail. If the citizens were to rebel against the government, and full disclosure I think the chances of this are infinitesimal, you would see a lot of covert military actions, attempts… Read more »
In other words Matt, even if we suppose a just cause the thing would be far uglier than most of the fantasizers imagine, and no one half way normal wishes it with eyes wide open. Of course you’re right about the AR bearing Tea Partiers too. They need to understand the vast difference between themselves and the well-regulated (by governments) colonial militias.
So you don’t think that there’s a slight anomaly between the time when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution when it took about the same time to reload a one shot musket compared to now when it took about the same duration for Stephen Paddock to kill 59 people?
Doug I read you all the time and highly respect you and treasure your insights. What was wrong with what I wrote? Please? I need to understand. I am seriously confused.
Alex, you have had no mass shootings since 96. But do you have more civic liberty now than you did twenty years ago?
And here again the *price we must pay for freedom* inserts its ugly head. Yep, we must not take away the right to own arsenals of Ak-47s because….Heaven Forbid….that would mean our freedoms have been stripped from us! Therefore, we must accept that mass shootings are a reality that we must deal with. How silly of me to think that no matter how many deadly weapons the average American citizen has the right to own, the U.S. military will always have the ability to overpower the average citizen by the deadly force available to them.
Before going all the way to the unreasonable after this tragedy, why not wait until the actual facts come out in the case before screaming more leftist propaganda (e.g. “And here again the *price we must pay for freedom* inserts its ugly head. Yep, we must not take away the right to own arsenals of Ak-47s because….Heaven Forbid….that would mean our freedoms have been stripped from us!”)
Give it at least a week, then start your argument to reduce people’s “arsenals”.
Nonnadg wrote: How silly of me to think that no matter how many deadly weapons the average American citizen has the right to own, the U.S. military will always have the ability to overpower the average citizen by the deadly force available to them. What is silly is the notion that an organized federal government should only be compared to an individual citizen. The power and influence of organized citizens, and organized cities and states, shouldn’t be underestimated, particularly in cases where a federal government is losing its resolve. Nonnadg may want to consider (discover?) the principle of lesser magistrates… Read more »
Fair question but I’m not sure of the correlation of that with Gun Control.
Douglas Wilson wrote: But do you have more civic liberty now than you did twenty years ago? It may be counter-intuitive, but in spite of the many threats that continue to assemble themselves against our liberty, there are actually some gradual trends and victories to take encouragement from. For example, there has been some ground taken back gradually in the area of education choice. There has also been significant progress (how progressive!) in concealed carry liberties (see this animated timeline: ) So, while I think Wilson’s overall point has merit, there is still some reason to be encouraged on the… Read more »
Doug, I’m a staunch supporter of the 2nd amendment. I must say, I am a bit floored by how easy it is for someone with a few thousand dollars and the will can kill hundreds or maybe even thousands of people . Imagine if ISIS staked out several hotels in NYC on New Years eve. With our culture being in such a sick state is this the new normal? The left thinks they can eliminate all these mass shootings through regulations. Any one who can think for themselves can see that is a fantasy. I don’t like the idea of… Read more »
When you get done being floored by how easy it is to shoot people, you can start thinking about how easy it is to bomb, poison and run them over, too. Not to mention arson.
If we’re going to restrict freedom until the world is safe, we’re doomed to live under tyranny. No doubt about it.
I am very much aware of how easy all those things are. I am surprised they haven’t happened yet with how many enemies we have.
When you are through being dismissive of the point made perhaps you can engage in the substance of the post.
As I understand it, the substance is this: 1) it’s easy to shoot people 2) that fact is horrifying 3) you suspect that Americans will insist on doing something to change this I pretty well agree with you about those three points. Nevertheless I continue to think “doing something” is a bad impulse because the fundamental situation is not in our power to change. The fragility of life is here to stay. As technology has progressed, tools of every kind – not just firearms – have become more powerful, while human bodies remain the same as ever. When individuals or… Read more »
Reports say this particular killer had a couple of planes too.
He could have killed everyone in the concert using one of those.
You have to have medical screening to get a personal pilot’s license. I wonder if he had let his lapse, or if he seemed okay on his last exam. I read a psychiatrist’s article this morning that speculated about a disorder among the elderly where something happens to the amygdala and rage takes over. That’s another lovely thing to wonder if I am going to get, along with losing my memory, my teeth, and my senses.
That’s actually an argument against your claim. It is MUCH more difficult to get a pilot’s license and access to a plane (not to mention the things it would take to somehow “kill everyone in the concert” with a plane) than it is to get a gun. Yet this guy had both a pilot’s license and two planes…and still chose to use guns. That’s some pretty strong evidence that guns are the thing to be concerned with. I keep hearing people bring up possibilities that have never happened, or almost never happened, and pretending they’re just as likely to deal… Read more »
Jonathan wrote: I keep hearing people bring up possibilities that have never happened, or almost never happened, and pretending they’re just as likely to deal death as the thing that happens over and over and over again. This is false, and misrepresents both the original argument and Arwenb’s counterargument. The anti-constitutionalists are not arguing that any given high-capacity rifle is “likely” to be involved in a mass murder. They know that this is not the case. Rather their argument is that every high-capacity rifle has the potential to be hypothetically involved, and so should be banned. Krychek_2 has used the… Read more »
Arwenb said “He could have killed everyone in the concert using one of those” even though that has literally never happened or even come anywhere close to happening.
That makes it a useless red herring. Sorry, but I’m just not going to take seriously any argument that relies on someone doing something that has never happened.
* ( originally wrote “literally” never happened, but then deleted that because it annoys FP)
Jonathan wrote: Sorry, but I’m just not going to take seriously any argument that relies on someone doing something that has never happened. The argument of the anti-constitutional gun grabbers does not rely on what will actually happen with any given firearm. Their argument is about what could potentially happen with any given firearm, based on its mere capabilities, considered in the abstract. That is why Arwenb’s point about airplanes stands up so well. It delivers their own argument to an absurd conclusion. No one is expecting Jonathan to swallow this reductio ad absurdum and take it to its conclusion.… Read more »
Gun control is just the only thing anyone can really come up with as having any relevance to stopping these kinds of things. But sadly for them it would take a Supreme Court reversal on the level of striking down Roe v Wade to make gun control a reality. For that matter, there are just way too many guns, it would take generations to weed them all out. Gun control always struck me as one of those issues where the two sides don’t understand each other and don’t care to. So little is known about this particular shooting that it… Read more »
Some have speculated that Leftists don’t want conservatives to have guns because the Leftists imagine what they would do, if they they had guns, and they assume that the conservatives would so the same. They trust the government to take care of their safety. What they forget is that the government they love so much has already vetted every one of their fellow citizens who does want a gun and has purchased it legally. One can not trust the government to issue weapons to its own agents, and simultaneously not trust it to properly vet private citizens to have those… Read more »
Where does Rom 13 come into all this? The authorities bear the sword. Should the population also be allowed to keep swords with a view to resisting this?
Now it may be right to allow citizens a means of self-defence in their homes, but why on earth should anyone need automatic weapons? This is hardly an expression of liberty. I can understand Alex above – from outside, Americans seem to have been brainwashed on this subject to the extent any restriction on the right to own certain types of guns will end up in a new Soviet Union.
That’s because we can read history. In the US, during Reconstruction, guns were confiscated from blacks, making it possible for KKK squads to kill and harass them in safety. In Germany, first the Weimar government and then the Nazi government disarmed all German citizens that they decided were a danger to public order. This meant there was no possibility of armed resistance to herding people into cattle cars. I don’t have time to look up more examples, but I’m fairly certain that it’s standard practice for governments the world over to disarm portions of the populace that they wish to… Read more »
That’s true. Who other than a committed pacifist, which I am not, could do other than wish that the people of the Warsaw Ghetto had been able to defend themselves? It might not have saved them, but they wouldn’t have been lambs to the slaughter.
The authorities bear the sword.
For what purpose do the authorities bear the sword?
The authorities are ‘the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer’. They are not a terror to good conduct, and we are to fear them. To resist them is to incur God’s judgement. Surely this would include armed resistance to them? I’ve lived in two countries where guns are not freely available unless you can show a need and that you are mentally stable. Britain still doesn’t have a routinely armed police force, and doesn’t need one. Germany does have armed police. Here though you can obtain a weapon for sport or hunting. You are also permitted… Read more »
Just a small point of order, it is death from homicide you need to compare, not death from guns.
Ken B wrote: They are not a terror to good conduct, and we are to fear them. To resist them is to incur God’s judgement. Surely this would include armed resistance to them? I’m happy to agree that citizens shouldn’t be popping off in individual acts of private insurrection and violence, but how does Ken B reconcile his sweeping claims with the armed takeover of the cities and tribes in the land of Canaan by Israel? Does Ken B permit that God sometimes uses one civil authority to judge another? Would Ken B permit that there are layers of civil… Read more »
And if the government, composed as it is of fallible human beings, should decide to overturn God’s law, and put in place laws requiring the violation of His created order?
Should we submit to such unjust laws, or should we take steps to remove the evildoers who put them in place?
Ken B wrote:
While He likely had other reasons in mind, Jesus was explicitly in favor of being allowed to keep swords. So I’m happy to discuss the question of why, and for what purpose, we might want to keep swords, if Ken B is willing to acknowledge that we have now moved past the question of whether the population should be allowed to keep them.
Sorry for the delay. I don’t doubt there is a right to self-defence, and in a culture with large-scale gun ownership in place having such weapons may be necessary. It is not necessary where guns are not freely available. The question to me seems to be what firepower is really needed for self-defence. Semi-automatic weapons are ‘weapons of mass destruction’, as seen in the recent tragedy. I don’t understand the fear of restrictions being imposed on the purchase of such weapons. Anything that might reduce the incidences of this has to be a moral good. I also cannot begin to… Read more »
Ken B wrote:
While the situation isn’t entirely “hopeless”, we see in Scripture that man’s nature is corrupt, and that man, when organized, can do powerfully corrupt things that no individual could accomplish. Another source of this basic understanding comes from the founding fathers, and their deep suspicion of government. There are also plenty of historic examples of government oppression and mass murder of their own populace.
Hi Arw en, I was mulling that over. I think that people who grow up with a horror of guns don’t necessarily imagine what they would do if they owned them themselves–although I can see that could be part of it. I think they (meaning me) tend to see guns as an entirely different category from other dangerous objects. When I married my husband and moved to the US to live with him, he kept a handgun in the bedside drawer (on my side of the bed). I used to stare at it as if it were a coiled serpent,… Read more »
Jill Smith wrote: I used to stare at it as if it were a coiled serpent, ready to strike. It was an object of real fear to me. … I know this sounds nuts, but I expect there are other people who feel that way. The fear of a loaded weapon is a very rational instinct. They are not toys. They are deadly when mishandled. This danger is what calls us — requires us — to become mature before we can safely approach and interact. Even practiced gun owners can be injured when they forget to fear and respect this… Read more »
However, he did that himself once he discovered that my visiting Canadian friends kept wanting to see one in real life!
I’m surprised he didn’t take them out shooting.
…admittedly, a low-recoil rifle seems to be a safer and more interesting weapon to start newbies on than a handgun does, but knocking water bottles off a rail is a fine way to spend an afternoon with foreign friends.
I don’t know for certain, but I suspect that shooting bottles off a rail in my high density, gang infested neighborhood might attract the unwelcome attention of the LAPD. I might even merit a few police choppers going thwacka-thwacka overhead.
Are you old enough to remember that Beaver Cleaver charged admission for his friends to climb a tree and watch their teacher eat lunch? Looking back, I should have done the same for exhibiting the gun. Another ten dollars for letting them hold it and play with the safety catch.
Ah, well.
Location does matter ^_^
“Gun control is just the only thing anyone can really come up with as having any relevance to stopping these kinds of things.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our discussion was actually about the existence of evil and our urgent need to spread the gospel, to share the good news? This was an evil act done by a man who chose to do evil. It doesn’t make sense, you can’t rationalize away the existence of evil and yet that’s what we always try to do, weaving elaborate conspiracy theories and trying to blame everything from guns to politics.
My right to self-defense and possessing/bearing the means to do so is an inalienable right. That means it is incapable of being surrendered or transferred to another. It also means unless I have committed a crime with conviction then I have not forfeited my right to possess/bear arms so should not/will not have that right infringed. Not even when a histrionic appeal to “preventing” future crimes is proffered. If the gun control advocates and those who seek a middle way compromise would realize that what they are really seeking is an incremental demand that I alienate myself from this right… Read more »
Very well stated…the left’s argument would be something along the lines of “since we do not believe in God then there is no such thing as inalienable rights”, they always attempt to redefine the definable — who a person “identifies” is another latest whacko concept being foisted on the rational thinking citizens of this great country – it’s the minority forcing the majority to bend.
Since mankind is inherently sinful; Since governments are comprised of such people; and Since history consistently demonstrates the abuses of government power, then having the right to protect yourself from the government is not only reasonable but a necessary conclusion. However, if one believes that governments are righteous and not inclined to evil, then such protection is considered not only unreasonable but also stupid. Self-defense and the possession of the means to self-defense is not only a litmus test politically but theologically and historically as well. Those who are historically, politically and theologically aware recognize the watchwords used by the… Read more »
I am going to see “Hamilton” in Los Angeles tonight. Is anyone willing to bet that I am going to have to sit through a lecture on gun violence (as well as a three hour play)?
No bet.
And my condolences ^_^
If you believe this will be the case (a sure bet) why subject yourself to the propaganda while supporting the propagandists?
Because I love the soundtrack and have waited patiently for almost two years for a ticket. Falling in love with “Hamilton” made my daughter read the entire Federalist Papers, heaven knows why. I have mentally crossed off the days until I get to hear King George sing to the colonists: You’ll be back like before I will fight the fight and win the war For your love, for your praise And I’ll love you till my dying days When you’re gone, I’ll go mad So don’t throw away this thing we had Cuz when push comes to shove I will… Read more »
Good on you! {[:-)
Well, I was wrong! Not a word about the Vegas shooting, and no impassioned pleas about anything. I found the show to be as good as I was led to expect. It presents the founding fathers in a very heroic light, and made this Canadian want to learn more about the origins of her new country. But I sniffled through most of the second act, starting with Washington’s farewell, moving on to Mrs. Hamilton’s heartbreak over her husband’s adultery, and continuing with the death by duel of their son. I didn’t sniffle over Hamilton’s death, even though I liked him… Read more »
Jill Smith wrote: I always thought that Jefferson was the idealistic, liberal founding father. Remember that progressives want an unconstrained, “living”, and evolving standard of justice that can react with the times. In spite of their rhetoric, progressives can be quite illiberal toward the people when they feel the government needs to assert new powers. The gun control debate is a case in point. Even though the founding documents are largely dead letters today, they still represent a cultural memory of fixed principles and unchanging rule of law that is an obstacle to progressivism. Jefferson stood for immovable liberty and… Read more »
Yes, that makes sense. Since I wrote that, it also occurred to me that perhaps Hamilton, while a poor and illegitimate orphan by birth, came to represent the urban elites. while the much better born Jefferson represented the ideals of the independent yeoman farmer. Viewed like that, I can see why Manuel would like Hamilton and see Jefferson as a product of the flyover states. From the play, Hamilton seemed like the ultimate pragmatist. Jefferson thought the US, though broke, had to honor its commitments to France; Hamilton is like, “Meh.” What I did not know is that Mrs. Hamilton,… Read more »
Dueling comes from honor culture, in contrast to virtue or dignity culture. In honor culture, one’s personal honor and status has to be continually defended. The taking of personal offense reaches an art form. Satisfaction must be demanded, immediately, without legal due process. The modern day “triggered” SJW and identity politics is a trend back toward honor culture. It’s a smallness of soul that must keep personal score and never let go. In dignity culture, one is able to overlook personal insults and offenses, in a way that Christ modeled, because our dignity is established by God, and not by… Read more »
Yes. I read a bunch of articles and got progressively more bewildered as I went along. So many of the duels described could not even be attributed to offended honor; it was more often pettiness, arrogance, and pride. Parson Weems tells a story that someone once seriously offended George Washington, and on the following day received an invitation to come see him. He knew this was likely to be a formal challenge, but instead Washington shook his hand and made peace. I really, really like Washington the more I read about him. A couple of historians attributed the antebellum South’s… Read more »
I agree with what you say about honor culture and the current easily triggered culture. It’s certainly a fair comparison.
I find it ridiculous to attribute a protest against police violence to that. Risking one’s own career in order to protest a systematic injustice in society is pretty much the exact opposite of wanting to shoot someone because they personally offended you.
Raping his slave might also figure into that of course.
Nimrod/progressive logic:
Trump is literally Hitler and should take away our guns.
They have failed Logic 101. How can they be gods?
I am beginning to despair about the public’s ability to grasp even the mildest forms of logic. I was talking to a highly educated woman who saw a bandaid on my arm and asked if I had just received a flu shot. I told her I had been pretty good about getting a flu shot since my last ghastly bout with flu a few years ago. She told me she adamantly refuses to get the shot. Now I would have understood if she were an anti-vaxxer, or if she had suffered an adverse reaction, or if she was convinced–as some… Read more »
The gun issue in America is a lot like abortion. In both cases, one side is stymied by the Constitution, so has to resort to throwing as many rules and regulations in the way as a substitute to a direct ban. Meanwhile, the other side argues that only unrestricted access successfully fulfills the Constitutional requirement; any restriction however mild is tantamount to a complete revocation of the right in question.
See, left and right aren’t so different after all.
Well one group is appealing to something actually contained in the document and the other to something not in there at all but claimed to be so by lying authorities.
A bit like the conservative and liberal approaches to appealing to Scripture.
Matt
The right to keep and bear arms is actually in the Constitution. The Founders placed it there.
The “right” to abortion was “discovered within the penumbra” not even fifty years ago. By an activist court.
Appealing to the Constitution in the first example is radically different than those who appeal to a court decision in the second.
Matt wrote: In both cases, one side is stymied by the Constitution, so has to resort to throwing as many rules and regulations in the way as a substitute to a direct ban. No, there is no equivalence. There is no right of “choice” or convenience that is protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, equal protection and due process are explicitly required by the Constitution to regulate the application of the death penalty. In facing their death sentence, unborn children are simply denied equal protection, denied due legal process, and denied a jury of their peers. Some may try to… Read more »
Katecho, AJ, and Bethyada, while I disagree with them, there are those who take the position that the Second Amendment is about state militias, and the idea that it protects private gun ownership is the invention of an activist conservative court. It seems that whomever is on the losing side of a Supreme Court case tends to claim that it was an activist court. So in that respect, left and right aren’t so different after all either. But I agree with Matt’s underlying point that there is a tendency in American politics in which whomever loses Supreme Court cases then… Read more »
Historically speaking numerous Founders affirmed the God-given right to self-defense and personal safety: [T]he said Constitution [should] be never construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms. Samuel Adams, Signer of the Declaration, “Father of the American Revolution” The right . . . of bearing arms . . . is declared to be inherent in the people. Fisher Ames, A Framer of the Second Amendment in the First Congress [T]he advantage of being armed [is an advantage which] the Americans possess over the people of almost every… Read more »
I doubt the framers anticipated a world in which 500 concert goers could be mowed down in a few minutes by guns that shoot 90 rounds in 60 seconds. The only arms the framers knew about were muskets and flintlocks.
And cannon filled with chain shot, or grape shot, or….
And you are in fact, wrong: https://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2014/08/early-machine-guns.html
“The only arms the framers knew about were muskets and flintlocks.”
They also knew that people were both responsible and irresponsible with those very weapons of that time, which were just as deadly to the individual. Modern weaponry as compared to muskets regarding scale is irrelevant.
Krychek, I am always a little wary about arguments based on what the framers could not have foreseen because they could be used to undermine rights that I don’t want anyone messing with. The framers couldn’t have foreseen drug cartels, organized crime, sex trafficking rings, and people creating and selling child pornography. Couldn’t that be used as a reason to weaken protections against unlawful search and seizure? When they guaranteed a free press, they envisioned newspapers with limited circulation. Someone might argue that technological advances require a rethinking of the first amendment–that the instant and universal dissemination of viewpoints hostile… Read more »
There is a difference between debating the subtleties of a text (guns for all or guns for the states) and making something up out of whole cloth.
This entire line of reasoning makes little sense to me. First, yes, gun control laws are about people control, but then so are laws against burglary. Every law is in some sense about people control. What’s your point? Second, unless one believes that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to own nuclear weapons, the argument is about where the regulatory line is to be drawn and not whether it exists. And whatever rights gun owners may have, the 500 people just shot in Las Vegas had rights too. Third, I am a gun owner because I like eating… Read more »
I propose we draw the line for law-abiding private citizens at the same place we draw the line for domestic law enforcement (up to and including SWAT, the FBI, the ATF, and the Secret Service).
Vva70, the problem with that approach is that the Las Vegas shooter was a law abiding citizen right up until he wasn’t. Some things are just too dangerous to have in general circulation. I can’t buy a pound of sarin for the same reason, even if I’m not planning to do anything illegal with it. Innocent bystanders have rights too, and I candidly question the mental health of someone who wants the type of arsenal the LV shooter had. I think there’s a good case to be made that the very fact that someone wants that kind of weaponry is… Read more »
Vva70, the problem with that approach is that the Las Vegas shooter was a law abiding citizen right up until he wasn’t. True. People aren’t lawbreakers until they break the law. Glad we agree. Some things are just too dangerous to have in general circulation. I can’t buy a pound of sarin for the same reason, even if I’m not planning to do anything illegal with it. So what’s the important domestic law enforcement purpose of sarin? Innocent bystanders have rights too Well, sure. And no one is arguing that it should be legal to take away their right to… Read more »
Vva70 wrote: So what’s the important domestic law enforcement purpose of sarin? Krychek_2 walked right into that one. Vva70 wrote: Perhaps the population being terrorized should be able to arm themselves as well as the drug lords? As they say, “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” Several officials have recently and publicly reminded us that law enforcement has no legal obligation to show up to defend citizens from violence. This is important in order to prevent irresponsible wrongful death lawsuits by crime victims, however, it means that people in high crime areas may find it wise to… Read more »
By banning military grade weaponry, it is that much less likely that the bad guys will have them either, and at the very least the operational costs of being a bad guy goes way up. That said, the statistics simply don’t bear out the idea that an armed citizenry is of any real use in fighting crime. Sure, there are occasional anecdotes, but it is statistically far more likely that a good guy with a gun will be killed or injured himself in a confrontation with a bad guy with a gun.
Krychek_2 wrote:
Citation needed. I’m curious what Krychek_2 is leaving out. How is “confrontation” being defined?
Well, to begin with, if you only consider “confrontations,” then you necessarily fail to take into account the effect on overall violent crime rate from deterrence. But yeah, citation needed.
I had a similar go around with Jonathan on this topic in the past. I don’t believe he ever did acknowledge the flaws in his study.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/01/good_guy_with_a_gun_myth_guns_increase_the_risk_of_homicide_accidents_suicide.html
Krychek_2 was supposed to provide citations to support his claim that: … it is statistically far more likely that a good guy with a gun will be killed or injured himself in a confrontation with a bad guy with a gun Unfortunately, this link to a Slate article suggests that Krychek_2 won’t be forthcoming with a supporting citation for this claim any time soon. Most of the studies mentioned in the Slate article don’t even distinguish between good gun owners vs bad gun owners at all, and no statistic was offered about an increased likelihood of a defendant with a… Read more »
The fact that you say, “his study” is silly enough by itself, because I provided you with around six to eight studies that all showed similar results. You then listed some “flaws” in some of the studies that clearly showed that you didn’t even know what the study was measuring. Every time I contradicted your claims with direct quotes from the study which proved that your claimed “flaws” were false, you either ignored me and just repeated yourself in blatant defiance of exact quotes from the study, or moved the goalposts to come up with a different flaw. Do you… Read more »
Katecho’s downvoting of my comment without rebuttal makes his position clear enough.
Jonathan hasn’t accurately described our prior interactions, or presented any new argument for me to rebut. While making similar claims, I don’t recall that Jonathan’s studies would be of any help to establish Krychek_2’s specific assertion.
Does Jonathan have a citation to salvage Krychek_2’s claim? Krychek_2 pronounced that:
Any study will need to clearly define what constitutes a confrontation.
I provided you with around six to eight studies that all showed similar results. You then listed some “flaws” in some of the studies that clearly showed that you didn’t even know what the study was measuring. Every time I contradicted your claims with direct quotes from the study which proved that your claimed “flaws” were false, you either ignored me and just repeated yourself in blatant defiance of exact quotes from the study, or moved the goalposts to come up with a different flaw. Do you really wish me to make a list here of the things you had… Read more »
As I was saying, Jonathan hasn’t accurately described our prior interactions, or presented any new argument for me to rebut. Rather than cut and paste entire previous conversations, Jonathan might consider just linking to the other thread and let folks decide for themselves if Jonathan is accurately representing what happened.
While making similar claims, I don’t recall that Jonathan’s studies would be of any help to establish Krychek_2’s specific assertion here.
It appears that Jonathan will not be offering anything to confirm Krychek_2’s specific claim.
Krychek, let’s consider the easy case, and see if we can agree on at least one. Let’s consider the Secret Service. We’ll only look at their role in protecting the President, Vice President, and families thereof (as opposed to their role in currency fraud). And we’ll only look at this protection when it’s taking place on US soil. Surely, you’d agree that it would be a bit perverse to demand that the President be protected, at taxpayer expense, by weapons that are forbidden to those very taxpayers for their own protection? Surely you’d agree that the Secret Service should be… Read more »
But in order to get a job with the Secret Service you have to pass an exhaustive background test, psychological evaluation, security clearance, and then go through a very rigorous training program, and then periodically go through it again. I suppose I could live with private citizens having the same weapons the Secret Service has if private citizens had to go through the same process to get them.
Splendid! Of course, the entry requirements for the Secret Service are not just about the weaponry, but also about protecting the President, so we’d need to sort out which requirements apply specifically to the weapons. Probably keep the background check, although a simpler, quicker one might suffice. No reason for the security clearance to apply to the weapons; that one seems purely focused on proximity to the President. I’d guess that most of the training is directly job-related, though some basic weapon safety might be pertinent, depending on the specifics. The psychological evaluation fits a bit of both, so we… Read more »
Well, we may not be that far off then, though I would also argue that the ability to get off 100 rounds a minute is more relevant to protecting the president than it is to anything an ordinary citizen is likely to need to do as well.
Katecho, you already know that I am what you would consider wobbly on gun control. But even I am becoming irritated by the stuff on my facebook feed. This morning I was reminded that it is easier to buy a handgun than to obtain a license to cut hair. Isn’t the most immediate and obvious retort that there is no compelling need to apply that kind of government regulation to hair cutting?
Hi Jill, How long before I can call you Jilly? Do you remember Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down? Gun control violates a clear Constitutional Right. Something that is fundamental. The ” it’s easier to get” argument is a non sequitur when the right questions are asked. Why should the law abiding citizen, in exercising their Constitutional right to abc to xyz, have obstacles placed in their way when no crime has been committed by that individual? Why should the individual in this instance be assumed guilty without due process? Why should they alienate themselves for their own or… Read more »
Please do call me Jilly. So the heart of the argument is that this is a clearly enunciated constitutional right, and therefore there are greater protections attached to it. I understand that when I compare it with other rights. I am very fond of some of the amendments, and I understand that if I feel passionately in favor of 1, 4, 5, 6, and 8, I have to accept number 2 as part of the package! I think that sometimes the people who post the kind of argument I mentioned about regulating barbershops actually do know the difference, and are… Read more »
Jilly,
“not to be horse traded to achieve some ephemeral outcome” is now written along side other verities.
Thank you for a great confluence of word pictures and ideas.
Jill Smith wrote:
But what if the government tells us that licensing to cut hair is for public safety? The public needs special preemptive protection from out of control barbers and stylists, right?
In America, we have the best laws that money can buy. MAGA!
Krychek_2 wrote: A simple ban on anything that doesn’t need to be reloaded after six shots (unless you’re in the military) would preserve the legitimate reasons for firearm ownership while at the same time making it harder for someone to take out 500 people at a concert, or 30 kids at a school, or 50 people at a nightclub. As others already pointed out, Paddock was a pilot, had more than one plane, and was prepared to commit suicide. A kamikaze airplane can easily “take out 500 people at a concert, or 30 kids at a school, or 50 people… Read more »
Katecho, if tens of thousands of people were being killed every year by kamikaze airplanes, or tainted peanut butter, you can bet your last dollar the government would have intervened long ago to prevent it. It only took one act of terrorism for liquids and box cutters to be banned by airport security, as well as pretty much anything else that could even theoretically be used to bring down a plane. If you’re going to make comparisons, try finding something that’s actually apples to apples.
Notice how Krychek_2 failed to respond to my questions to him. I have to conclude that he has no rational response as to why he wouldn’t have to ban airplanes using his own logic, or why he chose six-round magazines as the limit. Krychek_2 wrote: If you’re going to make comparisons, try finding something that’s actually apples to apples. I was going to give the same advice to Krychek_2. Why did he bother to mention tainted peanut butter if he doesn’t think it represents an apples to apples comparison? It’s not rational to blame us for a comparison that he… Read more »
No, Katecho, what you have to conclude is that your postings are so filled with logical fallacies and inapt comparisons that I don’t have the patience to untangle them. My silence doesn’t mean you win; most of the time it means I read your post, thought, “He’s got to be kidding,” and moved on. If we had a situation in which thousands of people were being killed by tainted peanut butter, I would expect the government to first figure out the source of the problem, and then evaluate all possible alternatives. Those alternatives probably would not involve selling peanut butter… Read more »
Once again Krychek_2 has failed to offer any rational argument to limit magazines to a six-round capacity. He appears to have arbitrarily latched onto the idea with no critical thought process of any kind, and seems unwilling to examine his impulse any further. Krychek_2 wrote: So by comparing one-ounce sales of peanut butter to six-round sales of guns, you’re mixing up a situation in which quantity matters with a situation in which quantity does not matter. What are “six-round sales of guns”? Does Krychek_2 think that guns are sold already loaded? I thought he was a gun owner? Apparently, by… Read more »
Six rounds is somewhat arbitrary. A bright line age of consent for sex is arbitrary. A speed limit of 55, 60 or 70 MPH is arbitrary. Traffic lights in which a red light means stop and a green light means go is arbitrary; whoever invented the traffic light could have made it the other way around or picked black and blue instead. Just about every rule is arbitrary to a certain extent, and there will be close cases on either side of the line. So yes, my rule of six could have been five or eight instead, but just because… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote:
My simple point was that his six-round limitation was arbitrary. After all the accusations, vain arguments, upheaval and dust have settled, Krychek_2 succinctly concedes the point.
It’s a bit like pulling teeth, but perhaps we can finally thank him for acknowledging the obvious.
So now you don’t like cats and you kill Bambi as well. That’s it.
Jill Smith wrote:
Wait, there’s more. He said he eats his firearm victims too.
You know, Jill, I have a hundred year old cookbook that actually has a recipe for cat. I’ve never tried it. You cut it into quarters, smother it with onions and peppers, and make a gravy.
That is abominable, and I can only hope that it was included as a joke in execrable taste. (Execrable is a lovely word, and I wish I could pronounce it without tripping over my tongue.)
Perhaps the recipe was referring to the cooking of polecats. May I ask how such a book came into your possession? A legacy, perhaps, from a cat-hating forebear? A gift instead of a check from a grateful criminal defendant? (“Reasonable doubt for a reasonable price” is my favorite legal ad from The Lincoln Lawyer.)
Actually it was a Christmas present from someone who knows I like to cook. And it is interesting to see what people ate and how they cooked it a hundred years ago.
So you say, so you say. Next thing you’ll be telling me the best way to roast baby seals.
Next thing you’ll be telling me the best way to roast baby seals.
You’d have to ask the Eskimos about that.
As a matter of historical curiosity, a skinned cat is apparently difficult to tell apart from a skinned rabbit, if the head and paws are removed. So you have unscrupulous merchants claiming their carcasses are rabbit…
And of course, if you’re under siege and starving, anything made of meat starts to look like food.
Eww. This bunny-loving, vegetarian crazy cat lady is starting to freak out. (I am not vegetarian as a matter of principle, and I have no objection to watching other people eat meat. As long as it is not Thumper and Bambi, let alone Felix the Cat. I taught in a school on the 60th parallel for some years, and of course, the people around me were avid trappers and hunters. The first day I arrived in town, lured by an amazingly generous isolation bonus, I was invited to the teacherage next door to meet some of my new colleagues. They… Read more »
I lived in Louisiana for three years. A Cajun chef explained it to me this way: “Cher, we eat anything what can’t get away from us.” Which was true; any critter that wandered into the yard was likely to end up in the stew pot.
, I don’t understand why *anyone* needs something that can fire off 90 rounds in 60 seconds
What’s that Chesterton quote about high-minded reformers not being allowed to change things until they can understand why the thing is necessary?
Fine, so explain to me why someone needs something that can fire of 90 rounds in 60 seconds. Preferably, a reason why they need it that’s more important than saving the dozens of lives that were just lost in Las Vegas.
Hmm…. let’s see. To stop, turn aside, or kill: – large numbers of assailants approaching at high speed – large numbers of animals attacking at a charge – small numbers of heavily armed assailants approaching at high speed – small numbers of large, thick-hided or armored animals, attacking at a charge. And no, “how many of us will ever see such a situation” doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have the capability to deal with the situation should it ever happen to you. Do you fully understand that if a man is absolutely determined to kill large numbers of… Read more »
My ever fertile imagination immediately pictured you hanging from some precipice over a river in the Congo, deadly crocodiles below you and a herd of angry rhinos on either side.
You forgot to mention the possibility of UFO invaders from Mars.
Or a renewed effort on the part of Xenu to get rid of those troublemakers once and for all.
“large numbers of animals attacking at a charge” lol
Watching too much Planet of the Apes, I guess?
Krychek 1st – Burglary is a crime – gun possession is not, it is a right. 2nd – who makes the argument that we should own nuclear weapons? The regulatory line is this: until I have been convicted of a crime then I do not forfeit my right to possess/bear arm nor should it be infringed to prevent some future crime. 3rd- Hunting, in the US, is a privilege and a conservation necessity, not a right protected by the Constitution. If hunting were abolished tomorrow that would not in any way cause the Second Amendment Right s to be lessened… Read more »
AJ, a crime is whatever the legislature has decided is a crime, subject to constitutional constraints. And the point of my nuclear weapons analogy is that the right to keep and bear arms is not absolute, for the simple reason that innocent bystanders have rights too. As with abortion, a flat ban on guns would be unconstitutional but that doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all with no regulation at all. You have the right to travel, but you don’t get a driver’s license unless you prove that you can safely operate a motor vehicle, and the more dangerous a particular vehicle… Read more »
Krychek, There are “malum in se” laws – those things evil in and of them themselves then there are “malum probitum” – those things wrong by statute/ legislation. Exercising a right is neither of those. Driving a car is not a right and can be regulated. I cant find it in the Constitution/Bill of Rights. I accept reasonable regulations and thank God for them. It is helpful when others respect my right to be the only one in the space I occupy in the lane I am driving in. So respecting the rights of others is not The issue. Their… Read more »
AJ, forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but what about the rights of the 500 people who were just shot at a concert? Don’t they have rights too, including the right to life? So long as you live in community, there will never be any such thing as an absolute right, because what you do impacts on other people. Free speech does not include the right to shout through a bullhorn under my bedroom window at 3AM. Freedom of religion does not include the right to marry a five year old if that’s what your religion teaches, or… Read more »
Krychek
You’re not a broken record. Just singing the same lyrics to a different tune.
Yes, the 500 at the Las Vegas Concert have rights. Which were violated when the shooter abused/misused a Constitutional Right. His abuse violated their rights. Not Before.
Using a bull horn under your window is an abuse/misuse of the bullhorn. Misuse and abuse are regulated not the possession/bearing of. Your confusing of these is hard to fathom.
How could the NRA please you or any of its detractors by showing sympathy?
Metcalf wrote:
Well said, but I thought Krychek_2 was supposed to be some kind of lawyer. Shouldn’t he be familiar with these legal distinctions?
Krychek_2’s solution would be to limit bullhorn battery capacity to 6 seconds, as this would “preserve the legitimate reasons for [bullhorn] ownership”.
If that were an actual legal distinction I probably would be familiar with it. The actual legal distinction is at what point on the continuum has the line been crossed such that the public is actually in danger. Automatic weapons are sufficiently inherently dangerous that their mere possession creates an unacceptable risk of casualties. If something is inherently dangerous — like dynamite, sarin, or automatic weapons — the government has the right to restrict their possession and use. If there’s a mishap, it’s too late. And if we were talking about anything inherently dangerous other than guns, this wouldn’t even… Read more »
The bullhorn isn’t banned because the stakes aren’t that high, so it’s fine to wait until someone actually abuses it before taking it away from him. With automatic weapons, however, the stakes are enormous, as was just demonstrated in Las Vegas. And that’s the distinction you’re not drawing: How high are the stakes? If something is inherently dangerous, on the order of nerve gas, dynamite, or automatic weapons, the stakes are too high to just wait to see if someone abuses it.
Krychek, IF, as your comments allow, we are to attempt to prevent future abuses/crimes then I could, based on your reasoning, argue that what I intend to prevent, in the future, is tyranny from either a foreign invasion or my own government tyrannizing me. We would then have offsetting points, in that case. But I have made none of those appeals. Based on political, historical and theological awareness: The rights in our Constitution are inalienable. I do not lose them nor are they diminished when another misuses/abuses them. I only forfeit them when I have been convicted of a crime.… Read more »
AJ, inalienable and absolute are not the same thing.
Inalienable and absolute in the same post: The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the state, is absolute. He does not derive it from the government. It is one of the high powers delegated directlyto the citizen, and ‘is excepted out of the general powers of government.’ A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the law-making power. The laws of nature and natures God have endowed every human being, (notice that I don’t say only Americans) without any regard to… Read more »
So if I want to own an anti-aircraft missile launcher, or a hydrogen bomb, you think the Second Amendment protects that?
AJ, the idea that private gun owners are going to be able to stop the Army is a fantasy. Yes, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians held out for a few days, but once the feds grew tired of them it was all over. Yes, the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto held off the Wehrmacht for a time, but only for a time, and ultimately they were crushed. In the meantime, the thousands of deaths every year from gun violence are not fantasy; they are very real.
Not my fantasy and not my point.
And your Warsaw Ghetto “illusion” ignores the facts. The Jews had willingly disarmed for years “for the children” or whatever the crisis happened to be most emotional at the time. The Warsaw Ghetto could have been prevented years earlier if it were recognized, as I do, that you do not alienate yourself from the means to prevent such a last stand. You utilize every means at your disposal such as education, the courts, sound principles , history etc et al
And again, I do not lose nor is it diminished by its misuse/abuse
Krychek_2 wrote: The bullhorn isn’t banned because the stakes aren’t that high, so it’s fine to wait until someone actually abuses it before taking it away from him. With automatic weapons, however, the stakes are enormous, as was just demonstrated in Las Vegas. And that’s the distinction you’re not drawing … Krychek_2’s “enormous stakes” legal theory is nonsense. Not even he believes it. You can tell because he isn’t calling for a preemptive ban on all private aircraft. He is still singling out guns because of some unstated private bigotry on his part. Will he apply his “enormous stakes” legal… Read more »
Without getting into this debate in detail I think it important to note that a plane, while potentially dangerous, is not designed as a weapon. A missile launcher or nuclear weapon is. As is sarin gas.
I suspect this modifies the argument slightly.
bethyada wrote: I think it important to note that a plane, while potentially dangerous, is not designed as a weapon. A missile launcher or nuclear weapon is. As is sarin gas. I’m happy to see that bethyada also rejects the “potential danger” argument offered by Krychek_2. Bethyada is rejecting it by appeal to original design intent, whereas I rejected it by reductio ad absurdum. Bethyada and I could certainly distinguish and discuss original design intent for the creation of various devices and tools, unfortunately Krychek_2’s “enormous stakes” legal theory must reject all consideration of original intent because that doesn’t determine… Read more »
Actually, Bethyada and I are talking about different things; there are two different legal doctrines involved, and the two are not in conflict. I was talking about balancing the equities, which goes to how high the stakes are. Bethyada was talking about products design, which is relevant (but not completely dispositive) of the equities issue. And by the way, why do you suppose Paddock chose to shoot his victims rather than fly his plane into the crowd? But that takes us, then, to the question of what armor piercing bullets and military grade weaponry were designed to do, and what… Read more »
As I already said, there is no rash of private aircraft being used for mass murder the way that guns are used for mass murder, and it’s not unreasonable to attack problems that actually exist. If and when someone uses a private plane to wipe out 500 concert goers, then we’ll talk. And the “stakes are high” argument is the well-established legal doctrine of balancing the equities, in which legislatures and courts do indeed evaluate how high the stakes are in setting policy. I didn’t call it balancing the equities, even though that is the formal legal name for it,… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote: But the argument that because the police get to tell a driver to pull over, that so do you, is just nonsense. That wasn’t my argument, but actually, citizens are permitted to perform a citizens’ arrest of law enforcement officials who are in serious breach of the law. As a lawyer, I’m surprised Krychek_2 doesn’t indicate awareness of that. Krychek_2 wrote: If and when someone uses a private plane to wipe out 500 concert goers, then we’ll talk. Apparently Krychek_2’s “enormous stakes” argument only kicks in after people are already dead by the hundreds or thousands. What if… Read more »
I’m joining late after skimming through most of this, but I must have missed the place where someone argued that Paddack had a right to shoot at people, because it seems that your argument implies that. Of course you didn’t argue that. No one is arguing that Paddock had a right to shoot at the crowd. Those who were injured and those who were killed were victims of the violation of their rights, and Paddock had no competing right that could possibly justify what he did. In such a case, the only legal remedy we have is through the justice… Read more »
aztomt
Well said and placed on the proper foundation : historically, politically and theologically.
Historically : the Constitution shackles the Government.
Politically: the people are the masters not the servants.
Theologically: total depravity applies to the magistrate and all its representatives. Therefore the people retain the power to resist, God forbid, if necessary.
aztomt, most of the left, including me, is fine with the people having guns; the idea that total confiscation is the goal is an NRA-inspired fabrication. What we want is reasonable limits on types of guns, mandatory safety training, background checks, and reasonable limits on capacity so a nutcase can’t get off 100 shots before anyone else even knows he’s shooting. As with most other things in life, balance is called for, and no rights are absolute. The Second Amendment does not give you the right to privately own an anti-aircraft missile launcher. It’s a question of where the line… Read more »
Krychek
Are you unaware that many on the left have stated their goal is abolition and confiscation? Are you unaware that, historically, rights are incrementally lost?
Are you unaware that the left has opposed the NRA and others from teaching gun safety in public schools? Would you be willing to sponsor and promote an Eddie Eagle program of the NRA on NPR?
AJ, I am a gun owner who despises the NRA because it makes all gun owners look like extremist nuts and has blood on its hands because of its hostility to reasonable regulation that could have prevented what just happened in Las Vegas. So I’m perfectly happy to keep them away from public schools. People and organizations who aren’t nut cases like the NRA can teach gun safety. And the problem with your incremental argument is that it has not been the case that gun regulations have led to bans in other countries. You can still get a gun in… Read more »
In Australia, after a horrific mass shooting in 1996, the national government introduced a mandatory buyback program which forced gun owners to sell certain firearms (mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump action shotguns) to the state, who promptly destroyed them.
This program, which resulted in the stock of civilian firearms in the country being reduced by approximately twenty percent, was effectively large-scale gun confiscation, as gun owners would have become criminals were they to withhold their firearms from the state
AJ, as you correctly point out, the Australian ban was directed at certain types of guns, not a total confiscation. I’ve been to Australia three times and I saw plenty of private gun ownership while I was there
An ordinary citizen can’t have a handgun in Canada. Getting a permit is difficult, and requires you to prove a demonstrable need. Most permits are issued to drivers of armored cars carrying cash on behalf of banks and stores. You can also get a permit to defend yourself from wild animals if you live and work in very remote areas (this puzzles me because I lived in such an area, and people used rifles/shotguns, not handguns, to deal with enraged grizzlies). I don’t think there are any circumstances under which an ordinary Canadian could buy an AK-47! There was an… Read more »
Krychek, you said: …most of the left, including me, is fine with the people having guns; the idea that total confiscation is the goal is an NRA-inspired fabrication. Check out the following statements from bona-fide, rock-ribbed conservative, card-carrying members of the NRA who absolutely adore the Second Amendment: “My view of guns is simple. I hate guns and I cannot imagine why anyone would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned.” -Deborah Prothrow-Stith (Dean of Harvard School of Public Health) “I don’t believe people should… Read more »
fp, I said most of the left. You can always find individuals who are more extreme, but if you look at polling numbers, you find most people who support the types of gun control measures I’ve been advocating are not in favor of actual confiscation. As for the last quotation, guns are not banned in Australia and Great Britain. They’re regulated, but they’re available.
Most Christians don’t favor child marriage, but that does’t mean I couldn’t find some who do.
Krychek, you also said, “The idea that total confiscation is the goal is an NRA-inspired fabrication.” In case you’ve forgotten, that’s the statement I addressed. So, unless you think the NRA was holding a gun to the heads of Obama, Feinstein, et. al., then I’m going to have to assume the thoughts of the people I quoted are their own. You also said: “You can always find individuals who are more extreme, but if you look at polling numbers, you find most people who support the types of gun control measures I’ve been advocating are not in favor of actual… Read more »
The Commenter Formerly Known As fp wrote:
Great response. Really calls out Krychek_2’s duplicity and misrepresentation.
No, what I think is that IIRC you didn’t give citations for any of those quotations, and I’ve learned by now not to trust the accuracy of quotes by people hostile to those being quoted.
But assume that each of those quotations is accurate, and in context. What is your basis for claiming that they are a representative sample of people who support gun control? I support reasonable gun control and those certainly aren’t my views.
Krychek_2 claimed that the goal of gun confiscation was “an NRA-inspired fabrication”. I’m not sure it can be overstated how delusional that accusation is, given the readily available evidence.
Krychek_2 expresses distrust of quotations and objects to incomplete citations, but we can go one better than that. Here’s a video that should be entertaining to see him try to squirm out of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVz2lHODQvs
Did the NRA fabricate this agenda, or make Rep. Schakowsky say those things?
After watching this, I don’t see that there is any other conclusion than that Krychek_2 is the one engaging in deep fabrication.
Krychek, you said: No, what I think is that IIRC you didn’t give citations for any of those quotations, and I’ve learned by now not to trust the accuracy of quotes by people hostile to those being quoted. Which format would you like those citations to be in? MLA? APA? Chicago? What if get asked like 15-20 times by Jonathan to stop being so formal because it annoys his delicate sensibilities? Next time you say something stupid like “The idea that total confiscation is the goal is an NRA-inspired fabrication”, shall I demand you issue a citation for that assertion?… Read more »
Krycheck “most of the left, including me, is fine with the people having guns; the idea that total confiscation is the goal is an NRA-inspired fabrication…” News to me…glad I got up this morning,..learned something new. (Yes, I am being intentionally smarmy because it is laughable anyone could say that with a straight keyboard.) “What we want is reasonable limits on types of guns, mandatory safety training, background checks, and reasonable limits on capacity so a nutcase can’t get off 100 shots before anyone else even knows he’s shooting.” And if a person on the left doesn’t think people should… Read more »
I actually read all the way through California’s gun laws this morning. I had forgotten that San Francisco voters had passed a measure banning ownership of handguns, which was subsequently overturned as unconstitutional. What shocked me was that the former sheriff of Los Angeles County was issuing handgun permits in exchange for hefty campaign contributions. There should be some mechanism, or oversight program, to prevent that kind of corruption.
Yes! The Fall; corruption; totaldepravity; them, you, me, all of us; magistrate, fox and chickens.
Constitution; Republicanism ; checks and balances; separation of powers; Liberty Freedom independence individual inalienable rights. All under and subject to law and no respecter of persons, nether rich or poor; justice;
” . . .the idea that total confiscation is the goal is an NRA-inspired fabrication.” K2@207517
Once again K2 attempts to skew the facts. Obviously he doesn’t want to notice the multitude of calls on the news to completely confiscate every privately owned weapon; or the calls to jail those who have firearms; or the antifa videos saying to kill those opposing their demands for disarming Americans. The latter is a great example of hypocratical communist thought.
I watch multiple news sources, both left and right, and I’ve missed the “multitude of calls . . . to completely confiscate every privately owned weapon.” What I’ve mostly heard are calls for the measures I’ve been advocating: Reducing the number of rounds weapons can get off, background checks, that sort of thing. I don’t doubt that you can find occasional radicals here and there who do support total confiscation, but they’re not the mainstream left. Even Chuck Schumer acknowledges that guns are a part of American culture. So Dave, I think you may be listening to caricatures of leftists… Read more »
Actually no K2. You need to read more and to acknowledge that your Communist friends do want complete confiscation of all personal weapons.
Nice try, but you get Maggies Drawers for that shot.
Most people who support reasonable gun restrictions aren’t communists, any more than people who supported equal rights for blacks were communists or people who support labor unions are communists. And even if they were, so what? Gun control, as with any other issues, stands or falls on its own regardless of who supports it.
“And even if they were [Communists], so what? K2 “What difference at this point does it make? Hillary Let’s see, an innocent man put in prison to cover up gun running and the murder of the American ambassador. Four good Americans killed because the Obama administration wouldn’t allow nearby support to assist them and keep them alive. Don’t go away there’s more. Pol Pot, a Communist, murdered about 25% of Cambodians when he seized power because they couldn’t fight back. Venezuelans are starving because of their Communist government. Cubans flee Cuba because of their Communist government which waz so bad… Read more »
I didn’t say communism is a good system — it isn’t — but rather that whether a specific idea is a good idea or a bad idea has nothing to do with who supports it. That’s Logic 101 — “X is a bad idea because a bad man supports it” is a logical fallacy called ad hominem.
Most communists oppose racism. Would you care to make the argument that racism must be a good thing because communists oppose it?
K2 the point is that Communists disarm the population and then exterminate those who they don’t like or who oppose them. You said it didnf matfer and yet it does.
No, what I said is that the fact that bad people support a particular idea tells us nothing about whether it’s a good idea. Sometimes bad people support good ideas. Sometimes good people support bad ideas. You have to look at the merits of the idea itself, and not who’s supporting it. Yes, communists disarm the population, but it doesn’t follow from that that disarming the population will lead to communism. Besides which, for about the tenth time now, I don’t support disarming the population. I support private gun ownership with reasonable regulation, just like cars. As do most people… Read more »
“As do most people who support gun control.” K2 K2 you should read the Daily Kos, the DNC blog. For years the Kos pushed for complete disarmament of American citizens. Before Gabby Giffords was shot the Kos had her picture with crosshairs on her. The Kos supported comments to dispose of her because she wasn’t in lock step with Hillary. As soon as she was shot the photos and comments were scrubbed from the Kos. The commentors on the Kos along with the DNC call for removal of all firearms from citizens. They are the majority of those calling for… Read more »
Assuming you are accurately characterizing what the Kos commentators are saying, what is your basis for claiming they are a representative sample of people who support gun control?
And yes, cars are protected by the Constitution. And the word “car” occurs in the Constitution exactly as many times as the words “military style weapons” appear in the Constitution.
There you go again trying to obscure both the Constitutional letter and the rulings. Travel is protected not necessarily cars. But slick lawyers allowed as to how stops against the 4th Ammendment are ok because of terrorism and such.
The 2nd Ammendment specifically protects military weapons, cannons, morters and the like. We have specific writings from the founders on that.
Keep trying. You are still shooting Maggies Drawers.
K2 if you read the Kos and read or listen to DNC directives it is easy to see the information flow and characterise it correctly. There is no mistake. This is the same as you saying that murder via abortion is not part of the DNC party platform. Even now the Communist Party of America is openly supporting the DNC.
Show me the lobby and hallway videos – they will show whether he made trip after trip with luggage. No videos have been shown, no mention of an autopsy for if his gunshot wounds were from himself. No forensics saying – there was massive gun powder residue on his hands, clothes, etc. I just want evidence. Real Evidence. Not, hey there is a dead guy in a room full of guns so he did it.
Our host, DW, stated”Gun control is people control. Gun control is not about the abolition of gun ownership. Gun control is about a rearrangement of the gun ownership—where the people below give them up, and the people above keep all of theirs. But when you have had countless indicators that the people above despise you, and harbor nothing but contempt for your way of life, you will not be eager for them to gain any more power. For a very recent example of the mask slipping, right after the shooting a vice-president with CBS (since fired) said: “I’m actually not… Read more »
If our host will allow, since I believe the following is pertinent to the discussion: America, with her Civil Liberties and Freedoms, are the fruit of, the application of, Biblical Christian Doctrines rediscovered and proclaimed by John Calvin and his disciples. Many of these were applied to the political realm by our Founding Fathers. As you work your way up the Theological pyramid to Level six “Practical Theology” and consider the application of Biblical Christianity to the Political, Societal and Historical categories what would be some principles, propositions and precepts and the ramifications and consequences of those be? About a… Read more »
The following was written by Dr. Laura Williams who teaches communication strategy to undergraduates and executives. She is a passionate advocate for critical thinking, individual liberties, and the Oxford Comma. Americans have grown too trustful of the State, too ready to assume bureaucrats have only our best interests at heart. Too many are seemingly eager to turn over individual liberty to those who promise to manage our lives for us. The United States was designed to be the smallest government in the history of the world, with no standing army, and little right to intrude in the private activities of… Read more »
Those are some scary facts. And any friend of the Oxford Comma is a friend of mine.
Jill…Oxford comma, always seemed like logical progression to me — an imperative for accuracy if the last two items in the list are not “together”. Maybe it’s an extension of the bit of British in my heritage coupled to the German precision part.
Well said. Thank you. Shared on Facebook.
Krychek It’s obvious you and I are polar opposites as to the foundational principles we stand on. Our host based his article on theological reasonings. Reasoning I have held for decades. DW stated “So these debates do not explode because one group of citizens thinks we should turn left and another group thinks it should be a right turn. No. It is because one group takes any excuse whatever and turns it into an argument for immediately granting more control and power to those above us. And those below think that this is a very, very bad idea.” This statement… Read more »
Mark Twain was right about many things. Including: “If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.”
AJMetcalf Jr wrote:
Good summary, however, as Abraham Lincoln once said:
Katecho
Thank you;
Somebody somewhere at one time said: ” A lie travels around the world …. “.
A pun which is a parting shot. From townhall.com Nothing Makes Liberals Angrier Than Us Normals Insisting On Our Rights I don’t agree with liberals often, because I’m not an idiot and because I love America, but when they once again say, “We must have a conversation about guns!” I still couldn’t agree more. And, since all we’ve heard is you leftists shrieking at us all week, I’ll start it off. You don’t ever get to disarm us. Not ever. There. It sure feels good to engage in a constructive dialogue. Now, we should have this conversation because in recent… Read more »
I expect you would consider some of my political stances to be pretty left-leaning, but I have come to wonder if the division is really between left and right, as we used to understand them. Many young leftists horrify me with their intolerance, their willingness to play fast and loose with the truth, and above all, with their malice toward anyone who disagrees with them. But so do some people on the far right, who sometimes talk as if anyone who disagrees with them is not merely wrong but evil. I think that perhaps the division is between people who… Read more »
I know this thread is probably winding down, but something just occurred to me. Yes, the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms. And the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects, or so the Supreme Court has told us, the right to make a living. But, that doesn’t mean I can make a living in any way that I choose. I cannot legally make a living as a prostitute, or by selling heroin to middle school students. I can’t open a medical practice or a law practice if I don’t have the necessary qualifications.… Read more »
K2 you forgot that you can legally run a cat house in Nevada. Oops.
The examples you listed are not Constitutional issues and once again your attempt to explain things misses the mark. You really should pay the other posters here for giving you online instruction.
Dave, there are people who think most or all government economic regulation is unconstitutional who would flatly disagree with you that the items on my list aren’t constitutional issues. In fact, that view had majority support on the Supreme Court until the mid 1930s; it was called “substantive due process”. And the fact that you can find a single exception to one of them doesn’t mean my point isn’t generally true. It’s generally true that Christians oppose pedophilia even though there are individual Christians who do. But that aside, the Constitution is about general principles, not specific line items. Where… Read more »
Ahhhh yes! K2 pours out the tried and false narratives that the Constitution doesn’t specifically mention automatic weapons. In fact, Americans used to be able to buy and sell arms of all types — cannons, heavy weapons, crew weapons, machine guns and the like. That is until lawyers twisted the actual words and meaning of the Constitution to fit something entirely different from what the founding fathers intended. Obamacare was forced down our throats as part of the interstate commerce clause. Well, where is the ability to purchase health insurance from an out of state company? If it were truly… Read more »
Dave, I don’t think we know what the founding fathers would have thought about automatic weapons that can mow down 500 people at a concert in a matter of minutes, and I’m not going to speculate. The point is, though, that whatever they thought, the words “automatic weapons” appear nowhere in the Constitution, so you and I are both doing the same thing, which is attempting to apply a general principle to a specific case. The Seventh Amendment provides for jury trials for any claim over $20.00. You want to argue that small claims court is unconstitutional and I’m entitled… Read more »
K2 you need to read more history because we do know the founding fathers thoughts. The founding fathers expected every man to be armed with appropriate military weapons to defend his city and state. Young men and boys were expected to be trained up not only in theory but also practical experience and martial arts. That was the idea from the start and included cannons, swords, heavy weapons and that which could be used for defense. Your mismanagement of facts won’t hit the mark here. You missed the part about improper use of the interstate commerce clause which is frequently… Read more »
Dave, thank you for demonstrating that a little knowledge is a dangerous things. There is no requirement that something cross a state line before the Interstate Commerce Clause kicks in, see Wickard v. Fillmore. And no, we don’t know what the framers would have thought about automatic weapons. You can’t mow down 500 people at a concert with a cannon for the simple reason that they would see you coming.
K2 you missed the firearms poit and you are still off the mark. The federal prosecutors are extremely clear that firearms manufactured in a state and that do not cross state lines do not meet the interstate test.
Thank you for ignoring the intent and written history of our founding fathers. Military grade weapons are what the 2nd Ammendment protects. Cind another tree to bark up.
Dave, find me a single actual federal prosecutor who says that being manufactured in state does not meet the interstate commerce test. Just one. I dare you. That sounds like fake news to me, but I’m willing to be proven wrong if there is such a prosecutor. So I’m waiting. Who is this mysterious federal prosecutor unfamiliar with the last 75 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the Interstate Commerce Clause.
“Interstate” increasingly means whatever the courts want it to mean. I’m more interested in what ought to be, rather than simply the appeal to whatever is. This is a distinction that puts Krychek_2 at a fundamental disadvantage, because his worldview excludes authoritative prescription and valuation.
In this case, interstate means that even though the gun may have been manufactured in-state, at least some of the materials or components used to make it came from out of state, as did the gasoline and vehicles used to get it to market, the factory equipment used to manufacture it, the paper used to run the factory, the computers used to order the parts, the grid over which the computer orders travel,etc. etc. etc. These days, almost nothing is truly intra-state. Food that you grow in your own garden for your own consumption maybe, but that’s about it. If… Read more »
K2 is really good about asking others to respond to the merits of an argument, but when he is cornered, he slides to another issue or avoids the questions that he can’t answer directly. Nice attempt to redirect counselor but it didn’t work.
All of us know that you need to come to the foot of the cross. You know that also, otherwise you wouldn’t be here sporting at Christians.
Indeed.
Krychek_2 wrote: … at least some of the materials or components used to make it came from out of state, as did the gasoline and vehicles used to get it to market, the factory equipment used to manufacture it, the paper used to run the factory, the computers used to order the parts, the grid over which the computer orders travel,etc. etc. etc. Krychek_2 forgot to mention that some of the air that the manufacturers were breathing may have blown in from out of state. It’s as if Krychek_2 doesn’t realize that he’s making my point for me. Seldom will… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote: You snark about my world view precisely so you don’t have to respond to the merits. It’s ironic to hear this complaint coming from someone who does nothing but run away from addressing the brokenness of his own worldview. I’ve pointed to several fundamental contradictions in Krychek_2’s behavior in relation to his materialism (such as his repeated laying down of moral expectations when there are no expectations of any kind in materialism). He is trying to dismiss these challenges as snark, but his whole agenda on this blog depends on him first getting out of that starting gate.… Read more »
K2 thank you for your fake pronouncement. In the North Idaho Federal District Court the prosecutors clearly and unequivocally stated if the weapon was manufactured in Idaho the interstate clause did not apply.
There were 5 of them in the district court several years ago and they all agreed. There are limits on the interstate commerce clause even though today’s attorneys and judges want to use it improperly for everything.
Dave, do you have an actual citation for that? I’m skeptical.
K2 I was there. You are skeptical because you are a slick lawyer who is caught trying to change things. Take a deep breath and give up your false history and false 2nd Ammendment arguments.
Krychek, I agree with you that each of the amendments is subject to some limitation. I also think that many people who insist that their second amendment rights be honored are willing to consider reasonable and fair restrictions. But I think that those of us who support such restrictions would be in a much better position to negotiate if so many of us were not perceived as holding gun owners in utter contempt. I am unlikely ever to own a gun, but you do. Were you not mildly irritated by all the memes of the last week suggesting that if… Read more »
Jill, not only do I agree with you, I myself am a gun owner. And yes, I think much of the rhetoric from both sides is unhelpful. It’s not helpful to claim that if you own a gun you’re facilitating mass murder. It’s also not helpful to claim that if you support reasonable gun regulations that you’re Stalin.
From Jeffrey A.Tucker at fee.org Will the Timeline of the Vegas Shooting Ever Stabilize? Why don’t people just accept the official story? The problem is that the official story keeps changing, and promises to change again. Key paragraphs: ((And what is the lesson for the rest of us? The government that has promised to protect us cannot fulfill the grandiose promise, and it is a mistake to conduct your life as if it is capable of doing so. We don’t know how all this Vegas stuff will shake out, but the broad outlines do not look flattering for the public-sector… Read more »