Political Pass

The 2nd reads:

“A well regulated Militia, BEING NECESSARY TO THE SECUIRTY OF A free STATE, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

It’s not about the wild west. It’s about being able to fight back against your government. The people that have made this about home protection have either lost sight of the original purpose, or are so indoctrinated with patriotism, they can’t conceive of a future where they may have to fight back.

Simply put, gun violence is a failure of this country in education and in the installment of basic civic virtue. Gun laws do not address the core of the problem, just the symptoms.

“The recent supreme court decision overturning DC’s ban on handguns will have two effects. It will make the NRA lawsuit happy”

It’s about time, just out of fairness, that the NRA should win some lawsuits, to balance the junk suits the other side has tried so many times; of course, the anti-gun extremists knew in advance they didn’t have a case, but our system enables crooks like that to cause trouble even when everybody knows they are wrong from the beginning.

“ and it will result in more injuries and deaths.”

Self-defense wins on 3 levels: common sense tells us, as Thomas Jefferson said over 200 years ago, that it is easier to rob or kill us if we are not equipped to defend ourselves. Anecdotal evidence shows the same, as we all know that some people have defended themselves successfully, and lots of others died while not armed. As Eowyn told Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, those who have not swords can still die upon them. Quite a few researchers in the last few decades have looked at the statistics and found that crime rates follow gun control laws, but crime goes up, not down, as gun control increases. Particularly during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s we passed thousands of gun control laws, to keep Lee Harvey Oswald from buying a rifle through the mail, and prevent honest people from carrying guns for self-defense, and ban handguns entirely in some cities; crime increased with great enthusiasm. Even today, some people, such as the writer above, like to say that the availability of guns causes crime, but, as guns became less available for various reasons - not all due to gun control laws, there are other demographic factors - crime increased. A scientist looking at that would say there is an inverse correlation, and that is what John Lott’s work has shown in more detail.

“Handguns like abortion, gay marriage, prayer in school, is an irrelevant distraction, but here is the baffling piece, it is an accepted distraction. Why?”

Here are two reasons. First, darn near 100 million Americans enjoy hunting and/or target shooting, or just going out to the sand pit and shooting the abominable tin can. We know, as discussed above, that we are not to blame for our terrible crime rates, and this Supreme Court decision only confirms what we have known for years - my right to have my fun is protected, here in our country, by our Constitution. We did not start the fight over guns, but when the politicians began to blame us unjustly for crimes that are not our fault, we responded with anger, as anyone falsely accused might well do. We continue to fight, and we have won quite a bit, although our enemies are far from giving up.

Second, the gun control issue has been just manna from heaven for politicians who are under a lot of pressure to do something about crime. IOW, gun control is something politicians do instead of doing something. Back around 1994, I heard a couple of Congresspersons debating about crime control on the radio, and after a few minutes one of them said that what they were doing was standard: we start out talking about crime, then we talk about gun control, then we talk about the NRA, and we have totally gotten off the subject of crime. A lot of liberals hate law enforcement, remembering that law and order used to be a code word for racism, and some say it still is, while some also say that laws against robbery are class warfare by the rich against the poor; all that makes it hard to take real action to reduce crime - but much less so now that Giuliani in New York has shown the way. State and local politicians have hidden behind the supposed lack of national gun control laws, justifying their own failure. This has kept the gun control issue alive in the face of abundant evidence that blaming us for crime makes no sense, and, again, as long as they attack us we will organize against them and vote them out of office.

Jon, Cauthon, thanks for your comments. The idea that in the 21st century citizens would fight against their government is an interesting one. It would be an insurgency similar to Afghanistan and the Russians or our occupation in Nam or or now Iraq. But I would hope given our democratic republic we would never come to that. I do disagree that guns would have much impact should the unthinkable ever happen. Power is too diffused in America imo. If you look at places where these sort of insurgencies occur you wonder if a Russia communist sort of collapse is not the better, clearer victory for better government.

I can’t buy the self defense argument and the statistics go both directions so I wonder about honesty of the statistics taker. If a robber were to assume everyone were armed and dangerous, then yes, it may work, but robbers don’t rationalize that’s why they’re robbers. And for mad men violence could be guns, rifles from a tower, bombs, or any other means to kill. We have so many gun deaths because we have too many guns in the hands of people who are not always rational in a heated or stressful situation. And controlling guns is not a bad idea. When I was in the service in the states I had to store my rifle with the MPs. When we needed it we had to get it from them as weapons were not allowed in the barracks. A pain but no one died. This piece is interesting as well.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e8997807-107b-461f-90d2-51a3ef91b508