I’ve long supported the Second Amendment. But, as the years pass and the body counts rise, it is fading. Like my support for marriage equality and gay rights, only in reverse.
So, the latest is in Milwaukee. The particulars hardly matter. If they did, they likely would not have an impact on my view of the Second Amendment. If they did, I could brush this off as an isolated case.
The Second Amendment was enacted as a means by which the populace could resist a government that had become too tyrannical. These days, I see our government as too disorganized to pull off tyranny and our populace as too complacent to resist if it did. That’s on one side of the scale. On the other, we just have story after story after story where a guy (and it’s almost always a guy) goes and shoots (and it’s almost always shooting and not mass stabbings or whatever) a bunch of people, and now they’re dead. Real people. Everything they ever had or might have had has been taken from them at the end of a gun.
I know folks have their Red Dawn fantasies that are precious to them And I’m willing to be talked back into supporting the Second Amendment. But, at this particular moment, its utility looks awfully questionable to me. And it will probably continue to look questionable to me until: a) mass murders stop happening; b) mass murders start happening with weapons other than guns; c) guns are used to forcibly resist prominent bits of tyranny; or d) some combination of the above.
Incidentally, I say this even as I recognize that gun control is dead as a political issue. If there were any questions, they were put to rest when, in the last political debate, President Obama could barely bring himself to suggest mildly that we should limit access to firearms by criminals and the mentally ill.
Let’s face it: The Second Amendment, as the Supreme Court interpreted it in the Heller decision, is here to stay for a very long while. One can only hope that Justice Scalia’s comment that there can still be be “reasonable regulations” can be flushed out to firm up some kind of common-sense balances before too much more senseless violence occurs.
As a pacifist, I recognize the moral indefensibility of the ownership of weapons. I also recognize the irony of using the armed men of the state to enforce that.
What we need is a society where the institutional and structural social preconditions of weapons production and possession are nonexistent.
I saw where someone quipped that treatment for mental illness should be as easy to get as, say, a gun.
I understand that film screenwriting used to be much more difficult and expensive than it is now, because dialogue was used to solve conflict. Now, the actors shoot it out or blow up the set. It’s presented as a cheap and exciting way to solve problems, but they neglect to show the resultant suffering or the simple fact that violence and bullets don’t solve conflict. Maybe people are learning from the films.
Whenever there’s a shooting, we get predictable knee jerk responses from the usual gun phobics, (usually Liberals). Examples: “Thanks NRA”. “Ban Guns”. “Repeal 2nd Amendment”. Less extreme: “To balance safety with gun rights, societies interest override “individual” right to own guns”. Sorry. That argument lost in “Heller v DC”. Yet they continue this Wet Dream, Delusional Fantasy of either a gun free society or one where such occurrences are preventable. What’s NEVER explained is HOW they’d implement this Utopian dream. Here are some “Inconvenient Truths” about guns: 95 MILLION gun owners. 1 in 3 homes has a gun. HALF BILLION civilian owned guns. And these numbers grow rapidly due to Obummer. In other words….you cant get the toothpaste back into the tube. So once again I offer this challenge to Delusional Wet Dreamers. Explain in PRACTICAL, REALISTIC terms how you’d implement this fantasy. Yet they continue believing such a society can be either peacefully disarmed, or socially “engineered” to prevent such occasional shootings. DREAM ON! Yes. There IS a social cost for an Armed, Free society. DEAL WITH IT! Don’t like it? … LEAVE!
For years I’ve offered the above challenge. So far no one’s successfully taken it. Anyone up for it now? Didn’t think so. Perhaps the reason is, there is no answer; NO Practical, Realistic solution. So once again we hear from these Delusional, Utopian, Gun Phobic, Wet Dreamers only… SILENCE! Why are we NOT surprised?
Maybe everybody is just intimidated by your use of all caps. It’s really very persuasive. And the exclamation points are also formidable.
Your intellect is amazing in its absence.
Why do you hate freedom and America so much?
747Driver isn’t polite or persuasive, but he is correct that no one is actually spelling out a solution.
“These days, I see our government as too disorganized to pull off tyranny….”
To me, the second amendment has more to do with self-protection than fighting off the government. We have a complete joke of a criminal justice system. We have a system that is trying to contain our third world areas in our major metros, but can only function as a catch and release system. Simple assaults, after multiple convictions, may get someone a five year sentence. The person is out in two years. Many really don’t have any sort of support system outside, and therefore re-offend yet again. We have no problem raising taxes to build billion dollar sports stadiums for team owners worth millions or billions of dollars, but yet we can’t keep dangerous people caged like we should.
I support an individual having the ability to own a semi-auto rifle with a standard 20/30 round capacity magazine, a semi-auto pistol, etc.. We can debate magazine capacities, number of guns owned, if they should be registered, etc., but people should have the right to have these tools available in their homes for self-protection. I don’t have “Red Dawn fantasies,” but I do have fantasies of government breakdowns that result in mass chaos, looting, rioting, etc.. The LA Riots, Benton Harbor riots, and New Orleans after Katrina are just a few examples. So it isn’t like my worries are based in never-never land. Sometimes things get bad, the government isn’t physically able to control the situation, and good people should have the ability to protect them and their loved ones.
We also need to realize a few things when it comes to guns. The chances of anyone not actively involved in black market dealings getting shot is really slim to none. We have thousands of people killed because Americans want the ability to consume ethanol in public places, which happen to be miles from their residences. These people, now intoxicated, operate heavy thousand pound plus pieces of machinery and end up driving on the wrong side of the road, killing one or more people who were doing nothing wrong. Where are the calls for banning alcohol? We have background checks for guns, why not to buy and consume booze?
As far as gun control being dead, clearly not. Obama said in the second debate:
“But I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets. And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced…”
So he clearly is for an “assault weapons ban.” If he means like the previous one, then he is for limiting magazine capacity to ten rounds, plus banning flash hiders, pistol grips, and collapsible stocks on certain styles of rifles.
Do you see any way of reducing access to firearms by the mentally ill?
We may want to revisit institutionalization policy and supporting infrastructure – the ‘de-institutionalization’ movement has had some unfortunate fallout.
The Second Amendment was put in place to give states the right to form militias to counter challenges from the federal government. One of the things the founders scared the most was a standing army. In fact, Article I provides that Congress fund the Navy but have the ability to raise an army.
But Heller v DC is the law, regardless of how strained the court’s decision.
This country does not seem to have too much trouble imprisoning people. The US leads the world in the number of citizens imprisoned, yet we have had falling crime rates until 2010.
Somehow, though, without apparently the equivalent of a Second Amendment, it seems as if a significant number of other democracies on this planet seem not to have the violent crime rate that we do, do a fair share of laws and regulations the NRA would consider unthinkable and onworkable, and otherwise look a bit askance at our romance with guns. But I guess that’s just part of American Exceptionalism….with or without the intimidation of using capital letters.
There are millions upon millions of firearms in this country. There are many mentally ill people as well. I don’t see any way, outside a door to door, tear out the drywall confiscation law, that we can seriously limit firearms to anyone who wants to get their hands on a gun.
And while the country is good at throwing people in prison, it is also good about letting dangerous people out over and over and over again. As compared to other democracies, things heavily depend on culture. Even without guns, many of these democracies have a much higher suicide rate than the US. I also spoke to a person who was from a European country and grew up/worked in a few of those counties before coming to the US. He said the areas around Paris are complete crime ridden areas where even the cops don’t care to go. Sounds like they have their own rule of law in these areas. Then you look at the recent rioting in Greece, Portugal, and Spain. How many arson crimes have been committed? How much property destruction? How many of these crimes were actually accounted for and documented in the government crime stats by overworked police forces on the front line? Crime states are 100% political, and just like corporations, even governments have reason to fudge numbers to make themselves look better.
We do have an issue with people getting a gun and going off. Outside of the black market killings, these are usually domestic related, as the one in Wisconsin was. For some reason, a few of these individuals decide to take other people down along with their target. In other incidents, people just start shooting others for no reason. The only way I can see possibly trying to make a dent in this is as follows:
#1: Change the law to only allow adults to own one semi-auto handgun and one semi-auto rifles. Keep the law as is for revolvers, bolt action guns, pump guns, and lever action guns.
#2: Limit magazine capacity to a reduced capacity of ten rounds.
#3: Given the number of guns and standard capacity magazines, instead of bailing out banks, let the government bailout gun owners. Offer a premium price for semi-auto handguns and standard capacity magazines. Given the state of the economy and the number of gun owners, I think you would have some takers. Even those who decide to keep their additional guns under the grandfather clause will have incentive to really secure their guns at home, helping reduce the number of stolen firearms that make it to the street.
This is probably a poor test case for, or against, gun control.
It’s notable for its cumulative value. But, like I said, the particulars aren’t that significant to the overall issue of gun control.
How has the war on drugs been working out?
Do you think the war on guns (if we repealed the 2nd Amendment) would have any better results?
I get that cases like this are disgusting and sad. What is a real, workable, solution?
Communism.
Awesome! I’m actually a fan of REAL communism, not the version we’ve ever seen where the political elite take the benefits of the workers.
How do we do this real communism where all are equal, regardless of station?