An Opinion on Gun Control, repost

Everything I need to say about mass shootings has already been said in this post from December 2012. I wrote it in response to Sandy Hook. It went viral and was read by over a million people. I also did a segment on FOX News about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzyuvl5Ry4g I am reposting it here now because the original link has 2,600 comments, so the page often doesn’t load correctly.

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I didn’t want to post about this, because frankly, it is exhausting. I’ve been having this exact same argument for my entire adult life. It is not an exaggeration when I say that I know pretty much exactly every single thing an anti-gun person can say. I’ve heard it over and over, the same old tired stuff, trotted out every single time there is a tragedy on the news that can be milked. Yet, I got sucked in, and I’ve spent the last few days arguing with people who either mean well but are uninformed about gun laws and how guns actually work (who I don’t mind at all), or the willfully ignorant (who I do mind), or the obnoxiously stupid who are completely incapable of any critical thinking deeper than a Facebook meme (them, I can’t stand).

Today’s blog post is going to be aimed at the first group. I am going to try to go through everything I’ve heard over the last few days, and try to break it down from my perspective. My goal tonight is to write something that my regular readers will be able to share with their friends who may not be as familiar with how mass shootings or gun control laws work.

A little background for those of you who don’t know me, and this is going to be extensive so feel free to skip the next few paragraphs, but I need to establish the fact that I know what I am talking with, because I am sick and tired of my opinion having the same weight as a person who learned everything they know about guns and violence from watching TV.

I am now a professional novelist. However, before that I owned a gun store. We were a Title 7 SOT, which means we worked with legal machine guns, suppressors, and pretty much everything except for explosives. We did law enforcement sales and worked with equipment that is unavailable from most dealers, but that means lots and lots of government inspections and compliance paperwork. This means that I had to be exceedingly familiar with federal gun laws, and there are a lot of them. I worked with many companies in the gun industry and still have many friends and contacts at various manufacturers. When I hear people tell me the gun industry is unregulated, I have to resist the urge to laugh in their face.

I was also a Utah Concealed Weapons instructor, and was one of the busiest instructors in the state. That required me to learn a lot about self-defense laws, and because I took my job very seriously, I sought out every bit of information that I could. My classes were longer than the standard Utah class, and all of that extra time was spent on Use of Force, shoot/no shoot scenarios, and role playing through violent encounters. I have certified thousands of people to carry guns.

I have been a firearms instructor, and have taught a lot of people how to shoot defensively with handguns, shotguns, and rifles. For a few years of my life, darn near every weekend was spent at the range. I started out as an assistant for some extremely experienced teachers and I also had the opportunity to be trained by some of the most accomplished firearms experts in the world. The man I stole most of my curriculum from was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Special Forces, turned federal agent SWAT team commander. I took classes in everything from wound ballistics (10 hours of looking at autopsy slides) to high-speed cool-guy door-kicking stuff. I’ve worked extensively with military and law enforcement personnel, including force on force training where I played the OpFor (i.e. I got to be the bad guy, because I make an awesome bad guy. You tell me how evil/capable you want me to be, and how hard you want your men to work, and I’d make it happen, plus I can take a beating). Part of this required learning how mass shooters operate and studying the heck out of the actual events.

I have been a competition shooter. I competed in IPSC, IDPA, and 3gun. It was not odd for me to reload and shoot 1,000 rounds in any given week. I fired 20,000 rounds of .45 in one August alone. I’ve got a Remington 870 with approximately 160,000 rounds through it. I’ve won matches, and I’ve been able to compete with some of the top shooters in the country. I am a very capable shooter. I only put this here to convey that I know how shooting works better than the vast majority of the populace.

I have written for national publications on topics relating to gun law and use of force. I wrote for everything from the United States Concealed Carry Association to SWAT magazine. I was considered a subject matter expert at the state level, and on a few occasions was brought in to testify before the Utah State Legislature on the ramifications of proposed gun laws. I’ve argued with lawyers, professors, professional lobbyists, and once made a state rep cry.

Basically for most of my adult life, I have been up to my eyeballs in guns, self-defense instruction, and the laws relating to those things. So believe me when I say that I’ve heard every argument relating to gun control possible. It is pretty rare for me to hear something new, and none of this stuff is new.

Armed Teachers

So now that there is a new tragedy the president wants to have a “national conversation on guns”. Here’s the thing. Until this national conversation is willing to entertain allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons, then it isn’t a conversation at all, it is a lecture.

Now when I say teachers carrying concealed weapons on Facebook I immediately get a bunch of emotional freak out responses. You can’t mandate teachers be armed! Guns in every classroom! Emotional response! Blood in the streets!

No. Hear me out. The single best way to respond to a mass shooter is with an immediate, violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble. Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over again.

Police are awesome. I love working with cops. However any honest cop will tell you that when seconds count they are only minutes away. After Colombine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for overwhelming force before going in. Now usually as soon as you have two officers on scene you go in to confront the shooter (often one in rural areas or if help is going to take another minute, because there are a lot of very sound tactical reasons for using two, mostly because your success/survival rates jump dramatically when you put two guys through a door at once. The shooter’s brain takes a moment to decide between targets). The reason they go fast is because they know that every second counts. The longer the shooter has to operate, the more innocents die.

However, cops can’t be everywhere. There are at best only a couple hundred thousand on duty at any given time patrolling the entire country. Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range. We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is far worse. They simply can’t teleport. So in some cases that means the bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible things with nobody effectively fighting back.

So if we can’t have cops there, what can we do?

The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.

The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already. Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve as your immediate violent response. Best case scenario, they engage and stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction, and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more children.

But teachers aren’t as trained as police officers! True, yet totally irrelevant. The teacher doesn’t need to be a SWAT cop or Navy SEAL. They need to be speed bumps.

But this leads to the inevitable shrieking and straw man arguments about guns in the classroom, and then the pacifistic minded who simply can’t comprehend themselves being mandated to carry a gun, or those that believe teachers are all too incompetent and can’t be trusted. Let me address both at one time.

Don’t make it mandatory. In my experience, the only people who are worth a darn with a gun are the ones who wish to take responsibility and carry a gun. Make it voluntary. It is rather simple. Just make it so that your state’s concealed weapons laws trump the Federal Gun Free School Zones act. All that means is that teachers who voluntarily decide to get a concealed weapons permit are capable of carrying their guns at work. Easy. Simple. Cheap. Available now.

Then they’ll say that this is impossible, and give me all sorts of terrible worst case scenarios about all of the horrors that will happen with a gun in the classroom… No problem, because this has happened before. In fact, my state laws allow for somebody with a concealed weapons permit to carry a gun in a school right now. Yes. Utah has armed teachers. We have for several years now.

When I was a CCW instructor, I decided that I wanted more teachers with skin in the game, so I started a program where I would teach anybody who worked at a school for free. No charge. Zip. They still had to pay the state for their background check and fingerprints, but all the instruction was free. I wanted more armed teachers in my state.

I personally taught several hundred teachers. I quickly discovered that pretty much every single school in my state had at least one competent, capable, smart, willing individual. Some schools had more. I had one high school where the principal, three teachers, and a janitor showed up for class. They had just had an event where there had been a threat against the school and their resource officer had turned up AWOL. This had been a wake up call for this principal that they were on their own, and he had taken it upon himself to talk to his teachers to find the willing and capable. Good for them.

After Virginia Tech, I started teaching college students for free as well. They were 21 year old adults who could pass a background check. Why should they have to be defenseless? None of these students ever needed to stop a mass shooting, but I’m happy to say that a couple of rapists and muggers weren’t so lucky, so I consider my time well spent.

Over the course of a couple years I taught well over $20,000 worth of free CCW classes. I met hundreds and hundreds of teachers, students, and staff. All of them were responsible adults who understood that they were stuck in target rich environments filled with defenseless innocents. Whether they liked it or not, they were the first line of defense. It was the least I could do.

Permit holders are not cops. The mistake many people make is that they think permit holders are supposed to be cops or junior danger rangers. Not at all. Their only responsibility is simple. If someone is threatening to cause them or a third person serious bodily harm, and that someone has the ability, opportunity, and is acting in a manner which suggest they are a legitimate threat, then that permit holder is allowed to use lethal force against them.

As of today the state legislatures of Texas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma are looking at revamping their existing laws so that there can be legal guns in school. For those that are worried these teachers will be unprepared, I’m sure there would be no lack of instructors in those states who’d be willing to teach them for free.

For everyone, if you are sincere in your wish to protect our children, I would suggest you call your state representative today and demand that they allow concealed carry in schools.

Gun Free Zones

Gun Free Zones are hunting preserves for innocent people. Period.

Think about it. You are a violent, homicidal madman, looking to make a statement and hoping to go from disaffected loser to most famous person in the world. The best way to accomplish your goals is to kill a whole bunch of people. So where’s the best place to go shoot all these people? Obviously, it is someplace where nobody can shoot back.

In all honesty I have no respect for anybody who believes Gun Free Zones actually work. You are going to commit several hundred felonies, up to and including mass murder, and you are going to refrain because there is a sign? That No Guns Allowed sign is not a cross that wards off vampires. It is wishful thinking, and really pathetic wishful thinking at that.

The only people who obey No Guns signs are people who obey the law. People who obey the law aren’t going on rampages.

I testified before the Utah State Legislature about the University of Utah’s gun ban the day after the Trolley Square shooting in Salt Lake City. Another disaffected loser scumbag started shooting up this mall. He killed several innocent people before he was engaged by an off duty police officer who just happened to be there shopping. The off duty Ogden cop pinned down the shooter until two officers from the SLCPD came up from behind and killed the shooter. (turned out one of them was a customer of mine) I sent one of my employees down to Trolley Square to take a picture of the shopping center’s front doors. I then showed the picture to the legislators. One of the rules was NO GUNS ALLOWED.

The man that attacked the midnight showing of Batman didn’t attack just any theater. There were like ten to choose from. He didn’t attack the closest. It wasn’t about biggest or smallest. He attacked the one that was posted NO GUNS ALLOWED.

There were four mass killing attempts this week. Only one made the news because it helped the agreed upon media narrative.

Oregon. NOT a gun free zone. Shooter confronted by permit holder. Shooter commits suicide. Only a few casualties.
Texas. NOT a gun free zone. Shooter killed immediately by off duty cop. Only a few casualties.
Connecticut. GUN FREE ZONE. Shooters kills until the police arrive. Suicide. 26 dead.
China. GUN FREE COUNTRY. A guy with a KNIFE stabs 22 children.
And here is the nail in the coffin for Gun Free Zones. Over the last fifty years, with only one single exception (Gabby Giffords), every single mass shooting event with more than four casualties has taken place in a place where guns were supposedly not allowed.

The Media

Every time there is a mass shooting event, the vultures launch. I find it absolutely fascinating. A bunch of people get murdered, and the same usual suspects show up with the same tired proposals that we’ve either tried before or logic tells us simply will not work. They strike while the iron is hot, trying to push through legislation before there can be coherent thought. We’ve seen this over and over and over again. We saw it succeed in England. We saw it succeed in Australia. We’ve seen it succeed here before.

Yet when anyone from my side responds, then we are shouted at that we are blood thirsty and how dare we speak in this moment of tragedy, and we should just shut our stupid mouths out of respect for the dead, while they are free to promote policies which will simply lead to more dead… If the NRA says something they are bloodthirsty monsters, and if they don’t say something then their silence is damning guilt. It is hypocritical in the extreme, and when I speak out against this I am called every name in the book, I want dead children, I’m a cold hearted monster (the death threats are actually hilarious). If I become angry because they are promoting policies which are tactically flawed and which will do the exact opposite of the stated goals, then I am a horrible person for being angry. Perhaps I shouldn’t be allowed to own guns at all.

But that’s not why I want to talk about the media. I want to talk about the media’s effect on the shooters.

Put yourself in the shoes of one of these killers. One nice thing about playing the villain and being a punching bag for cops, soldiers, and permit holders is that you need to learn about how the bad guys think and operate. And most of the mass shooters fit a similar profile.

The vast majority (last I saw it was over 80%) are on some form of psychotropic drug and has been for many years. They have been on Zoloft or some serotonin inhibitor through their formative years, and their decision making process is often flawed. They are usually disaffected, have been bullied, pushed around, and have a lot of emotional problems. They are delusional. They see themselves as victims, and they are usually striking back at their peer group.

These people want to make a statement. They want to show the world that they aren’t losers. They want to make us understand their pain. They want to make their peer group realize that they are powerful. They’ll show us. The solution is easy. It’s right there in front of your nose.

If you can kill enough people at one time, you’ll be on the news, 24/7, round the clock coverage. You will become the most famous person in the world. Everyone will know your name. You become a celebrity. Experts will try to understand what you were thinking. Hell, the President of the United States, the most important man in the world, will drop whatever he is doing and hold a press conference to talk about your actions, and he’ll even shed a single manly tear.

You are a star.

Strangely enough, this is one of the only topics I actually agree with Roger Ebert on. He didn’t think that the news should cover the shooters or mention their names on the front page of the paper. So whenever the press isn’t talking about guns, or violent movies, or violent video games, or any other thing that hundreds of millions of people participated in yesterday without murdering anybody, they’ll keep showing the killer’s picture in the background while telling the world all about him and his struggles.

And then the cycle repeats, as the next disaffected angry loner takes notes.

They should not be glamorized. They should be hated, despised, and forgotten. They are not victims. They are not powerful. They are murdering scum, and the only time their names should be remembered is when people like me are studying the tactics of how to neutralize them faster.

Mental Health Issues

And right here I’m going to show why I’m different than the people I’ve been arguing with the last few days. I am not an expert on mental health issues or psychiatry or psychology. My knowledge of criminal psychology is limited to understanding the methods of killers enough to know how to fight them better.

So since I don’t have enough first-hand knowledge about this topic to comment intelligently, then I’m not going to comment… Oh please, if only some of the people I’ve been arguing with who barely understand that the bullets come out the pointy end of the gun would just do the same.

Gun Control Laws

As soon as there is a tragedy there comes the calls for “We have to do something!” Sure, the something may not actually accomplish anything as far as solving whatever the tragedy was or preventing the next one, but that’s the narrative. Something evil happened, so we have to do something, and preferably we have to do it right now before we think about it too hard.

The left side of the political spectrum loves it some gun control. Gun control is historically extremely unpopular in red state and purple state America, and thus very hard to pass bit stuff, but there’s a century’s accumulation of lots and lots of small ones. There have been a handful of major federal laws passed in the United States relating to guns, but the majority of really strict gun control has primarily been enacted in liberal dominated urban areas. There are over 20,000 gun laws on the books, and I have no idea how many pages of regulations from the BATF related to the production and selling of them. I’ve found that the average American is extremely uneducated about what gun laws already exist, what they actually do, and even fundamental terminology, so I’m going to go through many of the things I’ve seen argued about over the last few days and elaborate on them one by one.

I will leave out the particularly crazy things I was confronted with, including the guy who was in favor of mandating “automatic robot gun turrets” in schools. Yes. Heaven forbid we let a teacher CCW, so let’s put killer robots (which haven’t actually been invented yet) in schools. Man, I wish I was making this up, but that’s Facebook for you.

“We Need to Ban Automatic Weapons

Okay. Done. In fact, we pretty much did that in 1934. The National Firearms Act of 1934 made it so that you had to pay a $200 tax on a machinegun and register it with the government. In 1986 that registry was closed and there have been no new legal machineguns for civilians to own since then.

Automatic means that when you hold down the trigger the gun keeps on shooting until you let go or run out of ammo. Actual automatic weapons cost a lot of money. The cheapest one you can get right now is around $5,000 as they are all collector’s items and you need to jump through a lot of legal hoops to get one. To the best of my knowledge, there has only ever been one crime committed with an NFA weapon in my lifetime, and in that case the perp was a cop.

Now are machineguns still used in crimes? Why, yes they are. For every legally registered one, there are conservatively dozens of illegal ones in the hands of criminals. They either make their own (which is not hard to do) or they are smuggled in (usually by the same people that are able to smuggle in thousands of tons of drugs). Because really serious criminals simply don’t care, they are able to get ahold of military weapons, and they use them simply because criminals, by definition, don’t obey the law. So even an item which has been basically banned since my grandparents were kids, and which there has been no new ones allowed manufactured since I was in elementary school, still ends up in the hands of criminals who really want one. This will go to show how effective government bans are.

When you say “automatic” you mean full auto, as in a machine gun. What I think most of these people mean is semi-auto.

“Okay. We Need to Ban Semi-Automatic Weapons!”

Semi-automatic means that each time you pull the trigger the action cycles and loads another round. This is the single most common type of gun, not just in America, but in the whole world. Almost all handguns are semi-automatic. The vast majority of weapons used for self-defense are semi-automatic, as are almost all the weapons used by police officers. It is the most common because it is normally the most effective.

Semi-automatic is usually best choice for defensive use. It is easier to use because you can do so one handed if necessary, and you are forced to manipulate your weapon less. If you believe that using a gun for self-defense is necessary, then you pretty much have to say that semi-auto is okay.

Banning semi-automatic basically means banning all guns. I’ll get to the functional problems with that later.

“We Should Ban Handguns!”

Handguns are tools for self-defense, and the only reason we use them over the more capable, and easier to hit with rifles or shotguns is because handguns are portable. Rifles are just plain better, but the only reason I don’t carry an AR-15 around is because it would be hard to hide under my shirt.

Concealed Carry works. As much as it offends liberals and we keep hearing horror stories about blood in the streets, the fact is over my lifetime most of the United States has enacted some form of concealed carry law, and the blood in the streets wild west shootouts over parking spaces they’ve predicted simply hasn’t happened. At this point in time there are only a few hold out states, all of them are blue states and all of them have inner cities which suffer from terrible crime, where once again, the criminals simply don’t care.

For information about how more guns actually equals less crime, look up the work of Dr. John Lott. And since liberals hate his guts, look up the less famous work of Dr. Gary Kleck, or basically look up the work of any criminologist or economist who isn’t writing for Slate or Mother Jones.

As for why CCW is good, see my whole first section about arming teachers for a tiny part of the whole picture. Basically bad people are going to be bad and do bad things. They are going to hurt you and take your stuff, because that’s what they do. That’s their career, and they are as good at it as you are at your job. They will do this anywhere they think they can get away with it. We fixate on the mass shooters because they grab the headlines, but in actuality your odds of running in to one of them is tiny. Your odds of having a violent encounter with a run of the mill criminal is orders of magnitudes higher.

I do find one thing highly amusing. In my personal experience, some of the most vehement anti-gun people I’ve ever associated with will usually eventually admit after getting to know me, that if something bad happened, then they really hope I’m around, because I’m one of the good ones. Usually they never realize just how hypocritical and naïve that is.

“We Should Ban Assault Rifles!”

Define “assault rifle”…

Uh…

Yeah. That’s the problem. The term assault rifle gets bandied around a lot. Politically, the term is a loaded nonsense one that was created back during the Clinton years. It was one of those tricks where you name legislation something catchy, like PATRIOT Act. (another law rammed through while emotions were high and nobody was thinking, go figure).

To gun experts, an assault rifle is a very specific type of weapon which originated (for the most part) in the 1940s. It is a magazine fed, select fire (meaning capable of full auto), intermediate cartridge (as in, actually not that powerful, but I’ll come back to that later) infantry weapon.

The thing is, real assault rifles in the US have been heavily regulated since before they were invented. The thing that the media and politicians like to refer to as assault rifles is basically a catch all term for any gun which looks scary.

I had somebody get all mad at me for pointing this out, because they said that the term had entered common usage. Okay… If you’re going to legislate it, DEFINE IT.

And then comes up that pesky problem. The US banned assault rifles once before for a decade and the law did absolutely nothing. I mean, it was totally, literally pointless. The special commission to study it said that it accomplished absolutely nothing. (except tick a bunch of Americans off, and as a result we bought a TON more guns) And the reason was that since assault weapon is a nonsense term, they just came up with a list of arbitrary features which made a gun into an assault weapon.

Problem was, none of these features actually made the gun functionally any different or somehow more lethal or better from any other run of the mill firearm. Most of the criteria were so silly that they became a huge joke to gun owners, except of course, for that part where many law abiding citizens accidentally became instant felons because one of their guns had some cosmetic feature which was now illegal.

One of the criteria was that it was semi-automatic. See above. Hard to ban the single most common and readily available type of gun in the world. (unless you believe in confiscation, but I’ll get to that). Then what if it takes a detachable magazine! That’s got to be an Evil Feature. And yes, we really did call the Evil Features. I’ll talk about magazines below, but once again, it is pretty hard to ban something that common unless you want to go on a confiscatory national suicide mission.

For example, flash hiders sound dangerous. Let’s say having a flash hider makes a gun an assault weapon. So flash hiders became an evil feature. Problem is flash hiders don’t do much. They screw onto the end of your muzzle and divert the flash off to the side instead of straight up so it isn’t as annoying when you shoot. It doesn’t actually hide the flash from anybody else. EVIL.

Barrel shrouds were listed. Barrel shrouds are basically useless, cosmetic pieces of metal that go over the barrel so you don’t accidentally touch it and burn your hand. But they became an instantaneous felony too. Collapsible stocks make it so you can adjust your rifle to different size shooters, that way a tall guy and his short wife can shoot the same gun. Nope. EVIL FEATURE!

It has been a running joke in the gun community ever since the ban passed. When Carolyn McCarthy was asked by a reporter what a barrel shroud was, she replied “I think it is the shoulder thing which goes up.” Oh good. I’m glad that thousands of law abiding Americans unwittingly committed felonies because they had a cosmetic piece of sheet metal on their barrel, which has no bearing whatsoever on crime, but could possibly be a shoulder thing which goes up.

Now are you starting to see why “assault weapons” is a pointless term? They aren’t functionally any more powerful or deadly than any normal gun. In fact the cartridges they normally fire are far less powerful than your average deer hunting rifle. Don’t worry though, because the same people who fling around the term assault weapons also think of scoped deer rifles as “high powered sniper guns”.

Basically, what you are thinking of as assault weapons aren’t special.

Now, the reason that semi-automatic, magazine fed, intermediate caliber rifles are the single most popular type of gun in America is because they are excellent for many uses, but I’m not talking about fun, or hunting, or sports, today I’m talking business. And in this case they are excellent for shooting bad people who are trying to hurt you, in order to make them stop trying to hurt you. These types of guns are superb for defending your home. Now some of you may think that’s extreme. That’s because everything you’ve learned about gun fights comes from TV. Just read the link where I expound on why.

I had one individual tell me that these types of guns are designed to slaughter the maximum number of people possible as quickly as possible… Uh huh… Which is why every single police department in America uses them, because of all that slaughtering cops do daily. Cops use them for the same reason we do, they are handy, versatile, and can stop an attacker quickly in a variety of circumstances.

When I said “stop an attacker quickly” somebody on Twitter thought that he’d gotten me and said “Stop. That’s just a euphemism for kill!” Nope. I am perfectly happy if the attacker surrenders or passes out from blood loss too. Tactically and legally, all I care about is making them stop doing whatever it is that they are doing which caused me to shoot them to begin with.

The guns that many of you think of as assault rifle are common and popular because they are excellent for fighting, and I’ll talk about what my side really thinks about the 2nd Amendment below.

“We Should Ban Magazines Over X Number of Shots!”

I’ve seen this one pop up a lot. It sounds good to the ear and really satisfies that we’ve got to do something need. It sounds simple. Bad guys shoot a lot of people in a mass shooting. So if he has magazines that hold fewer rounds, ergo then he’ll not be able to shoot as many people.

Wrong. And I’ll break it down, first why my side wants more rounds in our gun, second why tactically it doesn’t really stop the problem, and third, why stopping them is a logistical impossibility.

First off, why do gun owners want magazines that hold more rounds? Because sometimes you miss. Because usually—contrary to the movies—you have to hit an opponent multiple times in order to make them stop. Because sometimes you may have multiple assailants. We don’t have more rounds in the magazine so we can shoot more, we have more rounds in the magazine so we are forced to manipulate our gun less if we have to shoot more.

The last assault weapons ban capped capacities at ten rounds. You quickly realize ten rounds sucks when you take a wound ballistics class like I have and go over case after case after case after case of enraged, drug addled, prison hardened, perpetrators who soaked up five, seven, nine, even fifteen bullets and still walked under their own power to the ambulance. That isn’t uncommon at all. Legally, you can shoot them until they cease to be a threat, and keep in mind that what normally causes a person to stop is loss of blood pressure, so I used to tell my students that anybody worth shooting once was worth shooting five or seven times. You shoot them until they leave you alone.

Also, you’re going to miss. It is going to happen. If you can shoot pretty little groups at the range, those groups are going to expand dramatically under the stress and adrenaline. The more you train, the better you will do, but you can still may miss, or the bad guy may end up hiding behind something which your bullets don’t penetrate. Nobody has ever survived a gunfight and then said afterwards, “Darn, I wish I hadn’t brought all that extra ammo.”

So having more rounds in the gun is a good thing for self-defense use.

Now tactically, let’s say a mass shooter is on a rampage in a school. Unless his brain has turned to mush and he’s a complete idiot, he’s not going to walk up right next to you while he reloads anyway. Unlike the CCW holder who gets attacked and has to defend himself in whatever crappy situation he finds himself in, the mass shooter is the aggressor. He’s picked the engagement range. They are cowards who are murdering running and hiding children, but don’t for a second make the mistake of thinking they are dumb. Many of these scumbags are actually very intelligent. They’re just broken and evil.

In the cases that I’m aware of where the shooter had guns that held fewer rounds they just positioned themselves back a bit while firing or they brought more guns, and simply switched guns and kept on shooting, and then reloaded before they moved to the next planned firing position. Unless you are a fumble fingered idiot, anybody who practices in front of a mirror a few dozen times can get to where they can insert a new magazine into a gun in a few seconds.

A good friend of mine (who happens to be a very reasonable democrat) was very hung up on this, sure that he would be able to take advantage of the time in which it took for the bad guy to reload his gun. That’s a bad assumption, and here’s yet another article that addresses that sort of misconception that I wrote several years ago which has sort of made the rounds on firearm’s forums. http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/45671-My-Gunfight-quot-Thinking-Outside-Your-Box-quot So that’s awesome if it happens, but good luck with that.

Finally, let’s look at the logistical ramifications of another magazine ban. The AWB banned the production of all magazines over ten rounds except those marked for military or law enforcement use, and it was a felony to possess those.

Over the ten years of the ban, we never ran out. Not even close. Magazines are cheap and basic. Most of them are pieces of sheet metal with some wire. That’s it. Magazines are considered disposable so most gun people accumulate a ton of them. All it did was make magazines more expensive, ticked off law abiding citizens, and didn’t so much as inconvenience a single criminal.

Meanwhile, bad guys didn’t run out either. And if they did, like I said, they are cheap and basic, so you just get or make more. If you can cook meth, you can make a functioning magazine. My old company designed a rifle magazine once, and I’m no engineer. I paid a CAD guy, spent $20,000 and churned out several thousand 20 round Saiga .308 mags. This could’ve been done out of my garage.

Ten years. No difference. Meanwhile, we had bad guys turning up all the time committing crimes, and guess what was marked on the mags found in their guns? MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY. Because once again, if you’re already breaking a bunch of laws, they can only hang you once. Criminals simply don’t care.

Once the AWB timed out, because every politician involved looked at the mess which had been passed in the heat of the moment, the fact it did nothing, and the fact that every single one of them from a red state would lose their job if they voted for a new one, it expired and went away. Immediately every single gun person in America went out and bought a couple guns which had been banned and a bucket of new magazines, because nothing makes an American want to do something more than telling them they can’t. We’ve been stocking up ever since. If the last ban did literally nothing at all over a decade, and since then we’ve purchased another hundred million magazines since then, another ban will do even less. (except just make the law abiding that much angrier, and I’ll get to that below).

I bought $600 worth of magazines for my competition pistol this morning. I’ve already got a shelf full for my rifles. Gun and magazine sales skyrocket every time a democrat politician starts to vulture in on a tragedy. I don’t know if many of you realize this, but Barack Obama is personally responsible for more gun sales, and especially first time gun purchases, than anyone in history. When I owned my gun store, we had a picture of him on the wall and a caption beneath it which said SALESMAN OF THE YEAR.

So you can ban this stuff, but it won’t actually do anything to the crimes you want to stop. Unless you think you can confiscate them all, but I’ll talk about confiscation later.

One last thing to share about the magazine ban from the AWB, and this is something all gun people know, but most anti-gunners do not. When you put an artificial cap on a weapon, and tell us that we can only have a limited number of rounds in that weapon, we’re going to make sure they are the most potent rounds possible. Before the ban, everybody bought 9mms which held an average of 15 rounds. After the ban, if I can only have ten rounds, they’re going to be bigger, so we all started buying 10 shot .45s instead.

“You Don’t Need an Assault Weapon for Hunting!”

Who said anything about hunting? That whole thing about the 2nd Amendment being for sportsmen is hogwash. The 2nd Amendment is about bearing arms to protect yourself from threats, up to and including a tyrannical government.

Spare me the whole, “You won’t be happy until everybody has nuclear weapons” reductio ad absurdum. It says arms, as in things that were man portable. And as for the founding fathers not being able to see foresee our modern arms, you forget that many of them were inventors, and multi shot weapons were already in service. Not to mention that in that day, arms included cannon, since most of the original artillery of the Continental Army was privately owned. Besides, the Supreme Court agrees with me. See DC v. Heller.

“Well We Should Just Ban All Guns Then! You Only Need Them to Murder People!”

It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually banning effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more to stop crime than to cause crime.

I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time when a gun is produced in a legal self-defense situation no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop.

Clint Smith once said if you look like food, you will be eaten. Criminals are looking for prey. They are looking for easy victims. If they wanted to work hard for a living they’d get a job. So when you pull a gun, you are no longer prey, you are work, so they are going to go find somebody else to pick on.

So many defensive gun uses never get tracked as such. From personal experience, I have pulled a gun exactly one time in my entire life. I was legally justified and the bad guy stopped, put his gun away, and left. (15 years later the same son of a bitch would end up murdering a local sheriff’s deputy). My defensive gun use was never recorded anywhere as far as I know. My wife has pulled a gun twice in her life. Once on somebody who was acting very rapey who suddenly found a better place to be when she stuck a Ruger in his face, and again many years later on a German Shepherd which was attacking my one year old son. (amazingly enough a dog can recognize a 9mm coming out of a fanny pack and run for its life, go figure) No police report at all on the second one, and I don’t believe the first one ever turned up as any sort of defensive use statistic, all because no shots were fired.

So how often are guns actually used in self-defense in America? http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

On the high side the estimate runs around 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year, which dwarfs our approximately 16,000 homicides in any recent year, only 10k of which are with guns. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm Of those with guns, only a couple hundred are with rifles. So basically, the guns that the anti-gunners are the most spun up about only account for a tiny fraction of all our murders.

But let’s not go with the high estimate. Let’s go with some smaller ones instead. Let’s use the far more conservative 800,000 number which is arrived at in multiple studies. That still dwarfs the number of illegal shootings. Heck, let’s even run with the number once put out by the people who want to ban guns, the Brady Center, which was still around 108,000, which still is an awesome ratio of good vs. bad.

So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. Or to put it another way, the Brady Center hates guns so much that they are totally cool with the population of a decent sized city getting raped and murdered every year as collateral damage in order to get what they want.

“Doesn’t Matter. I Don’t Like Them. We Should Ban Them and Take Them All Away Like a Civilized Country”

Well, I suppose if your need to do something overrides all reason and logic, then by all means let’s ban guns.

Australia had a mass shooting and instituted a massive gun ban and confiscation (a program which would not work here, which I’ll get to, but let’s run with it anyway.). As was pointed out to me on Facebook, they haven’t had any mass shootings since. However, they fail to realize that they didn’t really have any mass shootings before either. You need to keep in mind that mass shooting are horrific headline grabbing statistical anomalies. You are far more likely to get your head caved in by a local thug while he’s trying to steal your wallet, and that probably won’t even make the evening news.

And violent crime is up in Australia. A cursory Google search will show articles about the increase in violent crime and theft, but then other articles pooh-pooing these stats as being insignificant and totally not related to the guns.

So then we’ve got England, where they reacted swiftly after a mass shooting, banned and confiscated guns, and their violent crime has since skyrocketed. Their stats are far worse than Australia, and they are now one of the more dangerous countries to live in the EU. Once again, cursory Google search will show articles with the stats, and other articles saying that those rises like totally have nothing to do with regular folks no longer being able to defend themselves… Sensing a trend yet?

And then we’ve got South Africa, which instituted some really hard core gun bans and some extremely strict controls, and their crime is now so high that it is basically either no longer tracked or simply not countable. But obviously, the totally unbiased news says that has absolutely nothing to do with people no longer being able to legally defend themselves.

Then you’ve got countries like Norway, with extremely strict gun control. Their gun control laws are simply incomprehensible to half of Americans. Not only that, they are an ethnically and socially homogeneous, tiny population, well off country, without our gang violence or drug problems. Their gun control laws are draconian by our standards. They make Chicago look like Boise. Surely that level of gun control will stop school shootings! Except of course for 2011 when a maniac killed 77 and injured 242 people, a body count which is absurdly high compared to anything which has happened America.

Because once again, repeat it with me, criminals simply do not give a crap.

That mass killer used a gun and homemade explosives. Make guns harder to get, and explosives become the weapon of choice. Please do keep in mind that the largest and most advanced military coalition in human history was basically stymied for a decade by a small group using high school level chemistry and the Afghani equivalent to Radio Shack.

The biggest mass killings in US history have used bombs (like Bath, Michigan), fire (like Happyland Nightclub) or airliners. There is no law you can pass, nothing you can say or do, which will make some not be evil.

And all of this is irrelevant, because banning and confiscating all the scary guns in America will be national suicide.

“You Crazy Gun Nuts and Your 2nd Amendment. We Should Just Confiscate All the Guns”

Many of you may truly believe that. You may think that the 2nd Amendment is archaic, outdated, and totally pointless. However, approximately half of the country disagrees with you, and of them, a pretty large portion is fully willing to shoot somebody in defense of it.

We’ve already seen that your partial bans are stupid and don’t do anything, so unless you are merely a hypocrite more interested in style rather than results, the only way to achieve your goal is to come and take the guns away. So let’s talk about confiscation.

They say that there are 80 million gun owners in America. I personally think that number is low for a few reasons. The majority of gun owners I know, when contacted for a phone survey and asked if they own guns, will become suspicious and simply lie. Those of us who don’t want to end like England or Australia will say that we lost all of our guns in a freak canoe accident.

Guns do not really wear out. I have perfectly functioning guns from WWI, and I’ve got friends who have still usable firearms from the 1800s. Plus we’ve been building more of them this entire time. There are more guns than there are people in America, and some of us have enough to arm our entire neighborhood.

But for the sake of math, let’s say that there are only 80 million gun owners, and let’s say that the government decides to round up all those pesky guns once and for all. Let’s be generous and say that 90% of the gun owners don’t really believe in the 2nd Amendment, and their guns are just for duck hunting. Which is what politicians keep telling us, but is actually rather hilarious when you think about how the most commonly sold guns in America are the same detachable magazine semiautomatic rifles I talked about earlier.

So ten percent refuse to turn their guns in. That is 8 million instantaneous felons. Let’s say that 90% of them are not wanting to comply out of sheer stubbornness. Let’s be super generous and say that 90% of them would still just roll over and turn their guns when pressed or legally threatened. That leaves 800,000 Americans who are not turning their guns in, no matter what. To put that in perspective there are only about 700,000 police officers in the whole country.

Let’s say that these hypothetical 10% of 10% are willing to actually fight to keep their guns. Even if my hypothetical estimate of 800,000 gun nuts willing to fight for their guns is correct, it is still 97% higher than the number of insurgents we faced at any one time in Iraq, a country about the size of Texas.

However, I do honestly believe that it would be much bigger than 10%. Once the confiscations turned violent, then it would push many otherwise peaceful people over the edge. I saw somebody on Twitter post about how the 2nd Amendment is stupid because my stupid assault rifles are useless against drones… That person has obviously never worked with the people who build the drones, fly the drones, and service the drones. I have. Where to you think the majority of the US military falls on the political spectrum exactly? There’s a reason Mitt Romney won the military vote by over 40 points, and it wasn’t because of his hair.

And as for those 700,000 cops, how many of them would side with the gun owners? All the gun nuts, that’s for sure. As much as some people like to complain about the gun culture, many of the people you hire to protect you, and darn near all of them who can shoot well, belong to that gun culture. And as I hear people complain about the gun industry, like it is some nebulous, faceless, all powerful corporate thing which hungers for war and anarchy, I just have to laugh, because the gun industry probably has the highest percentage of former cops and former military of any industry in the country. My being a civilian was odd in the circles I worked in. The men and women you pay to protect you have honor and integrity, and they will fight for what they believe in.

So the real question the anti-gun, ban and confiscate, crowd should be asking themselves is this, how many of your fellow Americans are you willing to have killed in order to bring about your utopian vision of the future?

“Boo Evil Gun Culture!”

Really? Because I hate to break it to you, but when nearly six hundred people get murdered a year in beautiful Gun Free Chicago, that’s not my people doing the shooting.

The gun culture is all around you, well obviously except for those of you reading this in elite liberal urban city centers where you’ve extinguished your gun culture. They are your friends, relatives, and coworkers. The biggest reason gun control has become increasingly difficult to pass over the last decade is because more and more people have turned to CCW, and as that has become more common, it has removed much of the stigma. Now everybody outside of elite urban liberal city centers knows somebody that carries a gun. The gun culture is simply regular America, and is made up of people who think their lives and their families lives are more important than the life of anyone who tries to victimize them.

The gun culture is who protects our country. Sure, there are plenty of soldiers and cops who are issued a gun and who use it as part of their job who could care less. However, the people who build the guns, really understand the guns, actually enjoy using the guns, and usually end up being picked to teach everybody else how to use the guns are the gun culture.

The media and the left would absolutely love to end the gun culture in America, because then they could finally pass all the laws they wanted.

Let’s take a look at what happens when a country finally succeeds in utterly stamping out its gun culture. Mumbai, 2008. Ten armed jihadi terrorists simply walked into town and started shooting people. It was a rather direct, straight forward, ham fisted, simple terrorist attack. They killed over 150 and wounded over 300. India has incredibly strict gun laws, but once again, criminals didn’t care.

That’s not my point this time however, I want to look at the response. These ten men shut down an entire massive city and struck fear into the hearts of millions for THREE DAYS. Depending on where this happened in America it would have been over in three minutes or three hours. The Indian police responded, but their tactics sucked. The marksmanship sucked. Their leadership sucked. Their response utterly and completely fell apart.

In talking afterwards with some individuals from a small agency of our government who were involved in the clean-up and investigation, all of whom are well trained, well practiced, gun nuts, they told me the problem was that the Indian police had no clue what to do because they’d never been taught what to do. Their leadership hated and feared the gun so much that they stamped out the ability for any of their men to actually master the tool. When you kill your gun culture, you kill off your instructors, and those who can pass down the information necessary to do the job.

Don’t think that we are so far off here. I recently got to sit down with some fans who are members of one of the larger metro police departments in America. These guys were all SWAT cops or narcotics, all of them were gun nuts who practiced on their own dime, and all of them were intimately familiar with real violence. These are the guys that you want responding when the real bad stuff goes down.

What they told me made me sick. Their leadership was all uniformly liberal and extremely anti-gun, just like most big cities in America. They walked me through what their responses were supposed to be in case of a Mumbai style event, and how their “scary assault weapons” were kept locked up where they would be unavailable, and how dismal their training was, and how since the state had run off or shut down most of the gun ranges, most of the cops couldn’t even practice or qualify anymore.

So now they were less safe, the people they were protecting were less safe, the bad guys were safer, but most importantly their leadership could pat themselves on the back, because they’d done something.

“Well, Okay. You Make Some Good Points. But I’d Be More Comfortable If You Gun People Were Forced to Have More Mandatory Training.”

And I did actually have this one said to me, which is an amazing victory by internet arguing standards.

Mandatory training is a placebo at best. Here is my take on why.

https://monsterhunternation.com/2008/05/20/mandatory-training-for-ccw/

In conclusion, basically it doesn’t really matter what something you pick when some politician or pundit starts screaming we’ve got to do something, because in reality, most of them already know a lot of what I listed above. The ones who are walking around with their security details of well-armed men in their well-guarded government buildings really don’t care about actually stopping mass shooters or bad guys, they care about giving themselves more power and increasing their control.

If a bad guy used a gun with a big magazine, ban magazines. If instead he used more guns, ban owning multiple guns. If he used a more powerful gun with less shots, ban powerful guns. If he used hollowpoints, ban hollowpoints. (which I didn’t get into, but once again, there’s a reason everybody who might have to shoot somebody uses them). If he ignored some Gun Free Zone, make more places Gun Free Zones. If he killed a bunch of innocents, make sure you disarm the innocents even harder for next time. Just in case, let’s ban other guns that weren’t even involved in any crimes, just because they’re too big, too small, too ugly, too cute, too long, too short, too fat, too thin, (and if you think I’m joking I can point out a law or proposed law for each of those) but most of all ban anything which makes some politician irrationally afraid, which luckily, is pretty much everything.

They will never be happy. In countries where they have already banned guns, now they are banning knives and putting cameras on every street. They talk about compromise, but it is never a compromise. It is never, wow, you offer a quick, easy, inexpensive, viable solution to ending mass shootings in schools, let’s try that. It is always, what can we take from you this time, or what will enable us to grow some federal apparatus?

Then regular criminals will go on still not caring, the next mass shooter will watch the last mass shooter be the most famous person in the world on TV, the media will keep on vilifying the people who actually do the most to defend the innocent, the ignorant will call people like me names and tell us we must like dead babies, and nothing actually changes to protect our kids.

If you are serious about actually stopping school shootings, contact your state representative and tell them to look into allowing someone at your kid’s school to be armed. It is time to install some speed bumps.

How Authors Get Paid, part 2
My novel Into the Storm, now available in paperback

563 thoughts on “An Opinion on Gun Control, repost”

    1. I’d quibble. The media don’t help, but part of the cause is dopeheads developing delusional thinking. Sure, most of them are only harmful in ways that do not involve spree killing. Insofar as I’ve found stories that touch on this, the spree killers have recreationally abused marijuana or psychiatric meds, which I categorize similarly.

      Of course, this could also be understood as a complaint about the media. We have this problem more because we have not grappled with it much as a society. We haven’t grappled with it much in part because we as people do not understand the brain chemistry matter. Part of that lack of understanding is due to the media thinking that drug use is incidental to the reporting of criminal incidents, as opposed to race, poverty, or perjurious narratives about oppression or innocence.

      1. The thing is, drugs have been used for most of human history. Guns have been widely available to the American public since its inception and fully automatic weapons were legal and available for decades. Yet you didn’t see mass shootings often before the 90’s, and they were still rare until the last decade or so. Now, what changed?

        Drug use is about the same, so that’s unlikely.

        Guns availability has not increased, so that’s out.

        Mental health issues may be a factor, but they’ve been around for as long as humanity, so why didn’t this happen sooner?

        Loss of traditional values? Every generation has bemoaned how ill-mannered the next is.

        But Cable News and the internet began in that time frame, and they give these assholes plenty of examples of attacks and attention they want.

        Get rid of the media coverage, or at least make mass shootings as uninteresting to the media as the daily murders in Chicago, and I would reason that mass shootings would drop substantially.

        1. Bullshit drug use has been the same over short term and long term history.

          Prehistoric use was heavily undistilled spirits and natural pesticides in plants. These pesticides were optimized for killing or sickening creatures enough like us that that it had some effect, and not enough that we flat out died. Though we did do a lot of dying, or at least inefficient breeding, as shown by the specialized enzymes developed in certain population.

          The advances in chemistry associated with the industrial revolution are a major change on the thousands of years scale. They made new substances available in large volumes at an affordable price.

          As for the decades scale, since the ’80s, there have also been a number of changes. Selective breeding of Marijuana has changed the composition of Marijuana. The mix and maybe the volume of prescription psychiatric drugs being abused recreationally has also changed.

          Furthermore, it is unlikely that the increased support for legalization of Marijuna does not correlate with increased use of Marjuana and increased social tolerance for Marijuana.

          Here’s where ‘changes in drug abuse since the eighties’ touches on ‘potential changes in mental health’. Mental health essentially divides into psychology(talking about your problems) and psychiatry, derangements in brain chemistry. Psychiatric problems can natural or artificial.

          If given to healthy people in large enough doses, pretty much any substance used to treat psychiatric illness will make some fraction nuts, perhaps permanently.

          Chemicals found in Marijuana have been deemed to have enough efficacy to be useful in treating certain psychiatric conditions.

          So, those two areas are not constant. The work Speaker and others are doing is probably not complete enough to make any absolute statements about cannaboids and spree killers.

          However, we do know that Roof got in legal trouble for using prescription psychiatric drugs, which means he didn’t have a script and was not under the supervision of a competent psychiatrist, and they almost certainly didn’t do him any good. The ‘pot is harmless, it cures cancer and everything’ idiots in media and elsewhere probably won’t pay that any attention, anymore than they did similar details in the biographies of other spree killers. (A harmless panacea is pretty much scientifically impossible in a modern understanding of medicinal chemistry.)

          1. Hello Bob, sorry for the thread necromancy-I know I’m late to the party but I can’t help myself.

            First, Cannabis(Marijuana is a Mexican slang term) is no different now than it was in the eighties, the sixties, or thousands of years ago. It is literally impossible to cause a phenotype change on the level you are talking about in such a short amount of time, barring extreme use of genetic manipulation. The kind that costs millions of dollars.

            Second, trying to link the use of cannabis to both psychotic breaks and cold-blooded murder is iniquitous. There is no correlation between these three things let alone there being evidence enough to prove causation. I’m not sure what made you believe this.

            Third, it’s ironic to mock Cannabis as,”a harmless panacea…”. Cannabis actually is as close as one can get to harmless. No one has ever died from an over-dose of Cannabis. It is impossible. Now, I’m not saying that there are no negative effects. I don’t know the answer to that question, if someone says they do they are lying. The only way to get a decent idea of the short and long term affects of a drug are to test that drug vigorously. In the current political climate that simply isn’t possible.

            I hope that cleared a few things up.

          2. Ascher, thank you for further making my case.

            In reverse order, panacea is a mystical term, meaning a drug that treats all illnesses. The idea behind modern medicinal chemistry is that a specific illness is associated with a specific internal chemical state; introducing another specific chemical might alter the chemical state, which then might change the illness. A medicinal chemist cannot make a drug to treat every illness, because it would have to make very many different changes. Well, dead is a lot of changes, but that is assumed not to count.

            The human body is very resistant to chemical changes, and does not tolerate them well. Chemistry is not magic. If you are forced to drink a pint of neat HF, it will not respond to your desires and not react with you. A chemical that can alter the chemistry of the body, which all drugs are, is never harmless at every dose. There is always some dose that causes a change that goes beyond safe. All medicines are poisons, and toxicity is in the dose.

            The plant that makes people like you too stupid to live is made out of chemicals. It is easy enough for a chemist to analyze a sample, and figure out what these chemicals are. Research on rat models is easy enough to do. As for more complicated research, that is also legal for people who are not scientifically worthless, and can actually follow the procedure. A fair number of people here know a guy that does that work with the NIH.

            As for pot and violence, two of the issues are the known impairment of risk assessment, and the reputed mellowness. The mellowness would not be an obstacle to violence for someone becomes so used to hurting others that it is cold blooded and casual. The impaired risk assessment would tend to get such killed, when they escalate things beyond what they can handle. Go see Branca’s coverage of the Mike Brown incident. It is plausible that pot smokers lethally endanger themselves and others in incidents and accidents.

            As for Roof, I’ve checked what Xanax does since then. Xanax is an anti-anxiety medication. So suppose that, as a recreational user, he takes a large dose. It causes a change in his brain chemistry that makes him less anxious. The body adjusts to the change, altering the resting state of the chemistry to compensate. The dose wears off, and maybe he is now more anxious than he was before. Roof’s statements suggest that the thinking behind the killing might be fairly described as anxious.

            Much of modern agriculture suggests that you are also simply incorrect in your statements about what limits selective breeding has for plants. Agriculture supposedly goes back ten thousand years, meaning that much of the domestication of modern grains would have happened over thousands of years. There have also been fairly substantial changes made over the smaller time scales.

            The active chemicals in Marijuana are originally pesticides. They are potent in small amounts; significant variations can be small and would not strongly impact the viability of the organism. Which means that variability in dosing could easily be large simply from growing conditions, much less selective breeding.

            Your arguments, and your claim to be unable to resist making them do not speak well of stoners, if you are representative.

          3. Wow Bob, I thought your name was ironic. Now I see it is entirely accurate. I was courteous and respectful in my response-I wasn’t arguing, my only intention was to inform you of a few things. Not change your opinion. You responded by calling names. Right back at you pal.

            1. I don’t use cannabis. Never tried it and don’t care to.

            2.Yes cannabis is composed of chemicals. So is the food you eat. So are you. The “OMG THAT STUFF IS MADE OF CHEMICALS” routine is tired. As if the only chemicals in existence are the ones you find under a sink.

            3. You seem to have a shockingly poor grasp on the legality of the situation. It is illegal to study cannabis in every state. Only the federal government can study it, and then only under special conditions. I should add that there are a plethora of labs studying cannabis throughout the country at the moment, but most of them are breaking federal laws(but in compliance with state laws) and risking judicion. None of them are conducting human trials on the level required for the data to be accepted by the FDA-even if it was legal.

            As a caveat- Studies on mice are of low value for data collection. They are only a stepping stone used to confirm that the drug is ready to be tested on an animal more similar to humans. It’s ironic that someone who calls other people “scientifically worthless” has such a poor grasp on the scientific process. Especially FDA process which is the only one that matters in The United States.

            4. I don’t know why you brought up pot and violence. I didn’t. You never mentioned it in your first message. I’m not sure what the point your trying to make is either sense your thesis seems to be, and I’m paraphrasing,”people high on cannabis can still hurt people and commit crimes”. No shit Sherlock. Cannabis is a plant not G-d. It doesn’t have the power to deny or give free will. Who even said that cannabis removes free will? No one. You are nuts.

            5. Your comments on agriculture are embarrassingly ignorant. The plants grown by farmers today have been genetically modified. We have been doing that for decades. It is actually illegal for subsidized farmers(so every farmer pretty much) to grow and use what’s called “heirloom” strains and are required to buy their seed from a single company who has a legal monopoly on the industry. They call them heirlooms because they are old plant phenotypes that were in use before genetic modification became the rule of thumb(for a lot of good reasons).

            6. “The active chemicals in Marijuana are originally pesticides. They are potent in small amounts; significant variations can be small and would not strongly impact the viability of the organism. Which means that variability in dosing could easily be large simply from growing conditions, much less selective breeding.”

            I’m just gonna put that in quotes and leave it here. You made your argument better than I could have. It’s like you just strung a bunch of words together and thought it would prove your point.

            7. I’m just messing with you, I can’t leave that alone. If someone happens to read your comment they might think those strings of unrelated words have meaning. The active “chemicals”(there you go throwing that word around again) in Cannabis are cannabinoids. Specifically THC, since that is the primary acid which causes your brain to release serotonin. There’s nothing to say about the rest of your statement. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s literally like you just sat on your keyboard. Time to start backpedaling. Or if you like you can borrow my shovel and keep digging.

            8. I know what panacea means, thanks though. I was actually wondering about the context not the definition since, as I stated in my first comment, it is literally(as in not figuratively) impossible to overdose from cannabis. It isn’t a “matter of dosage”. It’s a matter physiology.

            Also Bob, Fuck you.

            I’m an adult, I’m assuming you are(although your actions speak otherwise.) I’m going to assume you were just having a bad day when you responded and we all have those, so here is an olive branch. Apologize for insulting me, and I will do the same.

          4. Ascher — even aside from heartbreaking stories like the one below (can’t even imagine that father’s pain before trying medical marijuana) it’s now very well-established that our bodies produce “endocannabinoids.” That’s why the toxicity is so low, the compounds are remarkably similar. Any recreational drug can be abused but it’s much safer than alcohol or tobacco, which are both deadly poisons.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XDcsnxrX0g

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system

          5. @TallDave- I’m afraid I don’t understand what your driving at… There is nothing wrong with the information in your links, I’m just not sure what the thesis of your statement is. Sorry, I’m probably just extra-dense today :D.

          6. Sorry, I didn’t really have a thesis there, just thought you might find those links interesting.

          7. @TallDave- Well I certainly don’t have a problem with information for the sake of information. In that case, thanks for the links! The wiki link was interesting and the youtube story nearly(that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) had me bawling.

          8. Additionally, Ascher, THC neural receptors have been found in the human brain.
            BobtheRegisterredFool claims the active ingredients in Cannabis are natural pesticides? Yes, he is a fool. What animal is going to create neuroreceptors for toxins/poisons?

          9. Psychology is the study of behavior. Duh!
            Yes, cannabis may contain substances that can treat mental illness IN SUFFICIENTLY INCREASED DOSES. Duh!
            Alcohol is sufficient in commercial doses to cause violence and murder. Disagree? Read criminal history. Duh!

        2. Mass shootings happened long before the 1990s. The main difference between then and now is people had the common sense to realize disarming everyone wasn’t going to help, so they tended to be limited by the proximity of armed response from civilians.

          Also, you have to realize that even as late as 1915, a hundred years ago, most people still lived on farms. Population density is far higher today.

          http://www.globalresearch.ca/mass-shootings-in-america-a-historical-review/5355990

    2. I remember after Sandy Hook there was a lot of talk about how it was time to stop publicizing the names of these killers, analyzing every bit of writing they ever did, and going over their personalities and motivations ad naeseum on cable TV as if they were the most important people in the world.

      Then, what was it, two months later, the LA sniping attacks started. And the cable networks spent so much time going over the killer and his motivation that he actually turned into something of a folk hero.

    3. I know many police in my state (New Jersey) will side with the law-abiding gun owner. New Jersey, as you know, has some of the most Draconian laws in the nation. But if police ever do so, it’s usually in secret. For example, I’ve never seen a “letter to the editor” in the local paper written by a police officer, active or retired, extolling the virtues of sensible gun ownership or concealed carry for citizens of this state. They know where their bread is buttered, so they keep silent. Until that changes, and they announce they are on our side; nothing will ever change in the state of New Jermany.

  1. The way one channel (CNN) -alone- has fetishized, fixated on, and spread the fame 24/7 of the suspected killer since the news broke is no doubt even now spawning dozens of copycats. 🙁

    Because the media doesn’t care about justice, it cares about getting as many eyeballs as possible.

  2. Thanks for the re-post; I missed it in 2012. As a trained debater, I really appreciate having all the arguments in one place.

    As a left-liberal turned libertarian, and from terrified of guns (do not underestimate the power of simple fear of guns among the anti-gunners) to an enthusiastic member of gun culture, I can understand both sides better than most. But you nailed it–the anti-gun position is either a fantasy or a power grab, fueled by ignorance and ideology in both cases.

  3. Wow. This…it wasn’t the first thing that I read on this site, but it very well might have been the second. Bringing back memories.

    Extremely sad that it has to be reposted, though. Both because of the tragedy that assholes keep killing other people, and because we’re forced to have the same argument after every single one of these mass murders.

  4. And I’m wondering if you passed universal concealed carry laws for teachers, how much of a deterrent factor it would have. Knowing that they could run into armed resistance soon after opening fire. Of course we are dealing with individuals who are not right in the head to begin with.

  5. This is good. He agreed 100% with me. The sole answer to a budding mass shooting, and what keeps it from meeting the definition, is IMMEDIATE counterfire. It matters not whether the defender is a civilian, security guard, or police officer. The incoming fire CHANGES the dynamic and forces the murderer to stop his killing and switch to hiding from the bullets aimed at him.

    1. Which is one reason why even support troops (such as cooks) are armed. It’s not that the Army really thinks that a charge of the cooks and clerks will save the day in close combat (they generally carry pistols or rifles, and are not exactly marksmen); it’s that if they were unarmed, any enemy that fell among them could wreak fearsome execution upon them. Even small arms force the foe to close more cautiously.

  6. When I said “stop an attacker quickly” somebody on Twitter thought that he’d gotten me and said “Stop. That’s just a euphemism for kill!”

    And this is reason number one why Saturday morning cartoons should not be forbidden from using the words “kill” and “die”.

  7. “However, approximately half of the country disagrees with you, and of them, a pretty large portion is fully willing to shoot somebody in defense of it.”

    errr… that kinda represents a criminal failure on your side i think.

    totally agree with you on the sad puppies thing and i’m a liberal. but for gun control, you say that you’ve heard the arguments against guns and it sounds like you have simply chosen to ignore most of them and still use arguments that our side points out are fallacious.

    1. criminals use automatic weapons. see how well a ban works? – murderers murder. shall we not ban murder then? outlaws will be outlaws… so let’s not have any laws.

    2. sure, guns are used in self defense. – how many legally owned guns are used in accidental killings? how many are used in crimes of passion? how many are used in the commission of deliberate crimes?

    3. 2nd amendment appears to authorize guns for a militia and as a defense against tyranny… doesn’t seem to argue for general notion of self defense any more than it does for sport. does it?

    4. a gun as defense against tyranny against the federal government is patently absurd. remember those armed ranchers “standing up” against the feds? wanna wager how that would have turned out if one of those yahoos decided to pull the trigger? do you think that their having weapons at that point would make an ounce of difference in their fates? 2nd amendment is antiquated if, for no other reason, because it is currently NO defense against tyranny – it is DELUSIONAL. ruby ridge, waco and an unending account of other futile stand offs testify.

    5. a home gun (collection), in the midst of a political uprising does ZERO good without munitions coming in country from a friendly interest. you will run out of ammo and you will be dead. but when the friendly interest starts supplying, they start with the rifles. note that all warring belligerents all over the world get armed up within an instant of a revolution or civil war starting. point is, having the guns in the first place does no good against tyranny and when the fight against tyranny starts, the guns will start flowing anyway.

    6. gun proponents are usually talking about having a proliferation of guns in places akin to a wild west farm. rural or suburban areas. do ya really think a proliferation of guns in crowded city centers already over-run with gangs will make things better?

    ——————————-

    imo, there’s a naivete for gun proponents… the notion that human beings are intrinsically good and responsible… or at least the ones that you hang around with.

    that’s kinda proved false every day isn’t it?

    human beings are stupid, ill-tempered and malicious. a look at any internet comment board is enough to prove that.

    question becomes, just how deadly of a weapon you permit stupid, ill-tempered and malicious people to have.

    you dismiss the nuclear weapons thing as absurd but THAT would be the current level of deterrence needed to fight “against tyranny”… but we agree that nuclear weapons for every man woman and child is a stupid thing… because we recognize how stupid and irresponsible and malicious we tend to be.

    sure, you can use that argument to ban kitchen knives. but we can be sensible.

    a line needs to be drawn SOMEWHERE. just because we don’t draw the line at kitchen knives doesn’t mean we have to draw the line after artillery either and it doesn’t mean that drawing the line at fire-arms is somehow intrinsically illogical.

    we don’t let children walk around with sharp pointy things or thousands of watts of electricity running through them… we do that for a sane reason.

    we like to pretend that we adults are much better than children… but i gotta say, whether it’s in our willingness to “pull a trigger to defend” our hobbies plus more, we don’t seem to be.

    ——————————-

    if it were up to me, i’d give you guys a chance to prove me wrong. say, 5 decades?

    let’s make the gun laws exactly as you would have them and see what happens.

    i think we argue too goddamn much in this country. fuck all this chit chat.

    to every side that thinks it has a “solution”, i say give em a chance to prove their point.

    and if it doesn’t work out, they have to stfu forever after.

    1. I’m terribly sorry that my essay didn’t address every single aspect of the human condition on planet earth.

      1. That isn’t a question.
      2. Actually not very many. Less than pools and bikes by far. The next two are addressed in the essay.
      3. It is right there in it. Security of a free state. Unless you think the founders thought we should have guns to fight off tyranny of governments, but NOT tyranny of individuals? Fantastic. Run with that.
      4. The big picture is already addressed in the essay above. I’m sorry that I can’t justify the hypothetical blood bath that happened in your imagination.
      5. Who said we didn’t have ammo too? Derp. My personal rule of thumb is to have on hand a few weeks worth of water, two years worth of food, and one Black Hawk Down worth of ammo. 🙂
      6. Yes. Already in most of your crowded city centers, the gang bangers have guns and the citizens are legally disarmed. How is that working out for you? Or how about this. Compare Chicago to Houston. Similar in size. Houston is actually more ethnically, socially, and economically diverse, and bordering high crime Mexico, while Chicago is bordering low crime Canada, Chicago has strict gun control and Houston has loose gun control, yet Chicago has a far higher violent crime rate. Or do the same comparison with El Paso and Detroit, same list applies.

      As for the rest you didn’t number:

      You want to ban guns from everybody, even though it doesn’t work here and can’t work here, because you see bad people on the internet, even though really really actual evil people continue to do bad things regardless of laws. And I’m the naive one because I don’t want to disarm and make decent people helpless?

      And you are really going to lecture a firearms safety instructor about how people are too stupid to use guns? Ha!

      As for that last part, we have actually tried two separate ways for fifty years. That’s why most of these mass shootings keep happening in gun free zones, and your crowded urban city centers with strict gun control are so safe. So who should stfu forever again?

      1. 1. it’s not a question. i’m saying that your logic is flawed. you’re saying there’s no point in banning because people hellbent on breaking that law will break it anyway. in that case, why have any law according to your reasoning? this is the weakest argument your side makes – again and again. imo, your case would be stronger by getting rid of dumb arguments.

        2. so more or less than the private firearms used in self defense?

        3. you’re blase in your answer but you’re not proving your point at all. the language is pretty specific and seems NOT to indicate defense from bandits as opposed to political enemies. context seems to indicate a narrower target while your “common sense” reading expands the scope farther than seems valid.

        4. no it doesn’t. again, no personal arsenal is defense against tyranny. explain it to me – how does gun ownership, in this day and age protect anyone from tyranny? i’m REALLY, GENUINELY CURIOUS. many blacks would consider themselves under tyranny from law enforcement. do you feel like their situation could be made better by the possession and use of fire-arms against their oppressors? honestly, i’d love for you to answer that.

        5. i didn’t say you didn’t have ammo. i’m saying in a real war, you will run out. your arsenal is IRRELEVANT. if no one else starts shipping arms in, you’re dead. and if someone else DOES start shipping in arms, you’ll have the tools you need when the need arises.

        6. so your argument is that the crime differential is as a result of personal fire arms? 😛 got any evidence of that? or could it be that different regions have different tensions and issues?

        ———————————–

        imo, you’ve made some pretty stupid points. and i could have begun this conversation in a snide way.

        but i respected you for your take on sad puppies so i posted respectfully in good faith and would have accepted good answers to genuine questions.

        you’re right that there are lunatics on the left. i agree. i see them too. but gun nuts have issues as well.

        the difference between left and right is one of trust. you are wrong to say that liberals TRUST the government. we don’t. they should be scrutinized and watched over to within an inch of their lives. we don’t trust ANYTHING. but recognize that things like government have a place, as opposed to no place.

        but it is true that conservatives TRUST… whether it’s capitalism or the ability for folk in society at large to wield deadly weapons.

        all we’re saying on the left is that we have to draw a line somewhere. even you people agree we shouldn’t have field artillery and tactical nukes. the SAME reasons pertain for guns.

        i’ve lost respect for you in the dismissive way that you’ve responded and would also point out that you respond in a way that alienates people against your points rather than persuade people to agreement. i was amenable to a discussion and to be persuaded. good job in shutting that down.

        alright then. as i figured then – between the left and right – not friends. never friends.

        just useful enemies when the cause is right.

        1. Just for your number one?

          We have laws so we can codify punishments for breaking the law. Because laws don’t prevent crime. None of them do. They let us arrest the criminals and punish them.

          This is why presenting “make a law, outlaw guns” as a way to *prevent* gun crime is utterly ridiculous. Murder is against the law; Criminals kill people. Stealing is against the law; Criminals steal. Rape is against the law; Criminals rape. The laws let us arrest a twisted murderous racist asshole and put him in prison or put him to death, they don’t stop him being a twisted murderous racist asshole.

          You are guilty of a “does not follow” logical fallacy, and you think that “our side” is weakest here?

          All gun banning would do is turn a significant subset of currently law abiding responsible citizens and not-murderers into felons. It would do nothing else at all. It would prevent no crime. It would take guns away from no criminal. It would add the ability to prosecute and punish to no already criminal activity.

          And what do we get for redefining the law abiding non-murderers into felons? Someone gets to enjoy some moral righteousness FEELZ. And frankly, your warm fuzzies just aren’t important to me.

          1. And I should mention that the biggest reason we have a criminal justice system and courts isn’t to prevent crime, it’s to prevent vigilantism. The State agrees to see to the punishment while the people agree not to take it into their own hands.

        2. you are wrong to say that liberals TRUST the government. we don’t. they should be scrutinized and watched over to within an inch of their lives. we don’t trust ANYTHING.

          This isn’t in line with the gun-control position that most liberals advocate, which is “Guns should only be in the hands of the police, the army, and//or other government agencies (the FBI, etc.)”. Which amounts to saying “Only the government can be trusted with guns.”

          You say you don’t trust the government… but your willingness to put guns ONLY in government hands, and in no other hands, shows that you trust the government more than you trust Random Joe Citizen. In practice, you are willing to put levels of power in government hands that we conservatives consider insanely dangerous: e.g., letting them be the only ones with guns.

          As for whether Random Joe Citizen should be trusted with guns: estimates show that there are about 300 million guns in private hands in America alone. (I don’t know the # of gun owners off the top of my head, or I’d cite that too.) How many of those guns got used in a crime last year? How many gun owners were involved in a crime? What’s the percentage of gun owners vs. people who commit crimes with guns? If 99.99% of the members of group X have the ability to commit violent crime but never do, does that suggest that group X can generally be trusted?

        3. On point 1, the logic is not flawed. The laws against murder and robbery and the like are intended to deal with actual damage to people. You may not be able to stop all crimes of that nature, but when you catch the people who do them, you can remove them from society and at least temporarily stop them from being in a position to commit those crimes.

          Now take a law that prevents someone from walking their dog on a Wednesday. What damage does that prevent? I’m not talking about preventing your dog from making a mess. A person who cleans up after their pet and doesn’t let them do any damage to property as they walk down the sidewalk. But a law against doing that on a Wednesday will be followed by law abiding people, to the detriment of their personal enjoyment.

          Now the law restricting automatic weapons. Since the National Firearms Act was passed in 1934, there has been 2 murder committed with a legally owned fully automatic weapon. The person who committed the one in 1988 was a cop.

          However there have been quite a few crimes committed with illegally owned fully automatic weapons. In a 2 year period in Detroit, they seized 16 of them.

          http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcfullau.html

          This is century old technology. Yet the people who jump through all the hoops don’t break the law. The ones who do break the law aren’t stopped.

          Disarming the law abiding only puts them at a disadvantage against the lawless. Especially when guns are really, REALLY easy to make.

          The main reason there aren’t more homemade guns in criminal hands is that it is easier to get them through the same channels that supply the illegal drugs that are easily available most every major city.

          Also, if the justice system would focus on appropriate sentences for crimes against people, you wouldn’t need to worry that having a gun lets them add on a few years.

          And from what I hear on the news, (at least in Philadelphia, near where I live), they charge for gun crimes, but don’t prosecute. Instead they trade them away in a plea-bargain for a guaranteed conviction for a minor crime that lets the criminal back on the street in a few months without a felony conviction.

        4. In the 10 year following the Port Arthur bans, the homicide rate fell by a greater percentage in america than australia. There is zero evidence of any strong to medium correlations between increased gun control and reduced violence rates.

          1. On the contrary, there is a slight negative correlation between gun ownership rates (a proxy for the opposite of increased gun control) and violent crime rates. Correlation is not causation (i.e. we can’t prove that more guns equal less crime), but you cannot have causation without correlation (i.e. the negative correlation utterly disproves the “more guns means more crime” assertion).

            More guns does NOT equal more deaths OR more violence.

            http://www.wallsofthecity.net/2014/10/graphics-matter-year-the-fifth.html
            http://www.wallsofthecity.net/2014/10/graphics-matter-year-the-fifth-part-two.html

        5. “4. no it doesn’t. again, no personal arsenal is defense against tyranny. explain it to me – how does gun ownership, in this day and age protect anyone from tyranny? i’m REALLY, GENUINELY CURIOUS. many blacks would consider themselves under tyranny from law enforcement. do you feel like their situation could be made better by the possession and use of fire-arms against their oppressors? honestly, i’d love for you to answer that.”

          How does gun ownership protect against tyranny? Well, there’s the obvious: politicians and government minions don’t tyrannize very well if they get shot in the head when they stick their heads out of their front door in the morning. How many of them will quit when that happens? Or do you think they’ll do it for the love of a country you leftists have demonized for 50 years, as opposed to the security and benefits of a government paycheck? Which will also stop pretty damn quickly, since the people you are going after also happen to be the people who actually work and make things.

          Then there’s the whole question of what’s euphemistically called collateral damage. Our assault rifles just happen to be in your neighborhood, probably next door. Think your house will stand up to the drone launched Hellfire missile that just took out the gun owner next door? or just the rounds that go astray during a no-knock? Hint: even your brick fireplace won’t.

          We won’t even go into the amount of infrastructure damage that will shut down a city. Do you know where your food (power, water, medical supplies, etc.) comes from?

          Continued below.

          1. I like how he jumps right into how super scary it would be if black folks had guns, thus illustrating once again the racist roots of gun control. Time.com did the same thing this week, pining for the days of Jim Crow, when local authorities could just deprive people (in other words, blacks) of their rights on a whim. Let’s see, of these people who feel they are living under government tyranny, where is that taking place exactly? Oh yeah, again, liberal dominated urban areas with strict gun control. Where the criminals simply don’t care and get guns anyway, and the government becomes more tyrannical to enforce their draconian laws to keep them from having guns, and good people who obey the laws are stuck defenseless in the middle between hyperactive militarized law enforcement and super violent gangs who don’t give a shit. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

            But this is the same dude who thinks if we were to split the country in half, and my side could have guns everywhere (which we pretty much do), it would be my side would be the ones to “eat the STFU sandwich” 😀

          2. I recommend anyone interested look up Deacons for Defense, a group of black citizens chose to arm themselves to protect the homes and lives of freedom marchers during the worst of the civil rights era in the South.
            And as we all know the UK has rather draconian gun control. According to a 2010 UN crime report the violent crime rate there is five times that of the United States. The once Great Britain is the poster child for how to turn a free people into cowering victims in their own homes.

          3. If the left decides to divorce itself from the US, they are not getting ANY counties without a pro-secession majority. I have no problem with declaring war on them to settle the matter, if needed.

            They can take their urban crap-holes and secede. They are not getting the rest of the country, the military, or the nukes. They can have the Federal Reserve, we’ll use gold.

          4. That’s actually the origin of gun control laws. After the American Civil War, the Democrats wanted to make sure that the black veterans of the Union Army couldn’t resist the Klan. So they made it illegal for them to keep their guns in the laws passed after Reconstruction. Of course, such laws would NEVER be used against white folks …

          5. I must’ve missed it, where does he say how scary it would be for black people to have guns? All I got was ” many blacks would consider themselves under tyranny from law enforcement. do you feel like their situation could be made better by the possession and use of fire-arms against their oppressors? ” Don’t get me wrong, I think justanobody is wrong pretty much across the board, just wondering what I missed.

          6. Basically, he’s operating on the belief that we’re so reflexively racist (projection, much?) that if he can frame the debate in terms of blacks exercising equally the right to bear arms, we’ll be willing to give up ours as long as theirs are taken away.

            Never mind that there are recent studies showing that self defense rights tend to be used more by blacks than whites, probably for the same reason most of the murders of blacks are committed by blacks.

          7. Possibly because white anti-black racism was how gun control oozed through the Constitutional safeguards the last time, in the 19th-20th centuries.

        6. I observe that the suggestion that gun owners would in the face of blanket ban and confiscation stand against such a law potentially with force to be rather vexing to you.

          What you fail to recognize is the imposition of the ban to be contrary to the rights widely exercised by a large proportion of the population. Therefore a ban is indicative of a serious failure for the interests of gun owners to be represented and considered.

          Furthermore the total elimination of ones self defense ability, and forcing dependence on the state for such is a gross deprivation of an individuals rights. The threats to life wielded by assailants armed with fists to illegal full auto machine pistols and beyond does not cease on removal of legal firearms from the population. And nor does the removal provide any action by which police response time and dependability to meet those threats.

          That pushes the entire community towards a system that will be deemed a success or failure on the basis of statistic. In which a number of people will be hurt or killed by criminal action for which they had no defence, and police where not expedient in delivering defense of the victim.

          Now that rather impersonal example of the protocol post ones ability to exercise self defense with a firearm is in contrast the same with legal personal firearms in the community.

          The only points that are different, is the dependency and the ability to meet a threat with effective force or deterrence to mitigate said threat.

          But before I continue too much further into this, you must realise that all human systems. are imperfect. That as with all things not everything or everyone can be entirely accounted for or depended upon in any system. There will be outliers in the results there will be totally separate actors that disturb any system such as armed criminals, all far from ideal.

          Acting in good faith for all people in the community is to act to ensure a positive for life and quality of that life. It would appear that only in a vacuum does banning guns support that statement.

      2. oh and for point 3, another tack i can take in the argument is that the bill of rights is a document that speaks of the people’s relationship to its government… not to each other.

        so the provision for firearms, in proximity to language about militia and oppression DOES seem to stretch (as it does for firearms for recreation and sport) for defense against criminals.

        seems reasonable… but probably not what the 2nd amendment actually says.

        1. Probably not what it says? Probably?

          The language isn’t that difficult. In order for the “absolute phrase” to be interpreted as tying “bearing arms” to the “militia” only as long as we’ve got one and only for members, it would have had to have been conceived as a temporary condition, which would have been entirely nonsensical as part of a document meant to describe permanent rules.

          Such as… “Rain having flooded the park entirely, we moved our picnic indoors.” Thus, when there is not rain nor floods we can move our picnic outdoors again. It makes grammatical sense but it makes no real world sense at all to apply this to the second amendment. The Constitution was and is not a *temporary* document describing *temporary* conditions. This leaves only the interpretation that the first clause, the necessity of a militia to maintain a free state as a permanent principle. Always and forever. So the main part that the people have the right to bear arms is also permanent. Always and forever.

          The other way that this type of clause can be understood is that the first clause is just one of the many reasons, just an example, and the main statement stands fully on it’s own merit even without it. The people have the right to bear arms. Period.

        2. The US Supreme Court disagrees with your sophistry. According to them, the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, and the 14th Amendment requires states to obey it.

          We have already had a dialog on this. You lost.

          1. lol. that’s not how our laws work sport. things get interpreted and re-interpreted all the time.

            i don’t see any anti-abortion activists saying, “oh well, the supreme court ruled. i guess we’ll give up…” 😛

            same thing with obamacare and same thing with gay marriage to cite recent events.

            the right gonna just roll over and…. let it go?

            i lost? sure. FOR NOW.

            🙂

          2. Forever, so long as the US continues to exist as a constitutional republic. We WILL NOT allow you to take us over.

        3. “but probably not what the 2nd amendment actually says.”

          The Second Amendment is NOT about government PERMISSION given to the CITIZENS. It’s about the government being RESTRICTED from obstructing a RIGHT of the PEOPLE.

          Or… give us YOUR translation of the Amendment. Cite to legal and historical evidence.

      3. final two points:

        “And you are really going to lecture a firearms safety instructor about how people are too stupid to use guns? Ha!”

        you misunderstand me either out of convenience or some other malice… the point is this – imagine any bar brawl or sports riot or mass parent scuffle at a little league game. you think any of that would end better if they’re all heavily armed? THIS is the people of the real world. also this guy – http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/florida-man-life-prison-killing-teen-loud-music-article-1.1978021 .

        yes that just one anecdote… but it beggars belief that you can’t imagine a lot of people doing really impetuous, stupid things if they had weapons on them at an inopportune (or opportune) time.

        “As for that last part, we have actually tried two separate ways for fifty years. That’s why most of these mass shootings keep happening in gun free zones, and your crowded urban city centers with strict gun control are so safe. So who should stfu forever again?”

        it always amuses me when conservatives yell, “SEEEEEE?!?!?! it doesn’t work!!!!” after they’ve played a huge role in gimping the measure so that it’s not even 5% of what it would have been.

        honestly, if it were up to the two of us, i’d give you your way without meddling… you can make the laws on firearms… make them as free as you and your ilk would have it – not the watered down, compromises that we can only ever have in the real world.

        as i say, fuck the arguing. you could have your way.

        but i’d wager very much indeed that it would be you eating the STFU sandwich.

        1. “it always amuses me when conservatives yell, “SEEEEEE?!?!?! it doesn’t work!!!!” after they’ve played a huge role in gimping the measure so that it’s not even 5% of what it would have been.”

          As opposed to watching communists say, “We can make a communist society work. We’ve never really tried it properly before. We’ll do it right this time and we’ll only have to kill a few hundred thousand people, not the millions that were killed when we didn’t do it properly.”

          1. You: We didn’t try this bad idea enough to prove it works.
            Communists: We didn’t try this bad idea enough to prove it works.

            In both cases more people will die because you let social engineers try bad ideas.

        2. imagine any bar brawl or sports riot or mass parent scuffle at a little league game. you think any of that would end better if they’re all heavily armed?

          People keep making that stupid prediction every time the idea of allowing more people to carry in more places is brought up. And the results keep failing to live up to that prediction.

          Do bad/stupid people do bad/stupid things sometimes? Yes. They do. But there’s a reason that the same handful of examples of that kind of behavior are trotted out again and again–usually with a lot of the details swept under the rug that show it’s not so simple as portrayed. (a common one, frex: not mentioning “went home and got a gun and came back” so that “legal carry” wasn’t even a factor)

          But the truth is that some previously law abiding citizen who “just snaps” and starts shooting is hens teeth. It’s turtle fur. It’s the raw material of Gleipnir.

          1. imagine any bar brawl or sports riot or mass parent
            scuffle at a little league game. you think any of that
            would end better if these Negros were all free men?</blockquote

            Here you go, I edited justanobody's quote for clarity. Remember, the Democratic Party is the party of slavery and Jim Crow. All of these gun laws are racist in origin.

          2. When predicting the future, always consider the nature of people to be good and stay alive. If there is more occurrence and awareness of CCW in the community it will significantly alter exceptional behaviour events, such as outlined in the ball game example.

            People are more willing to mediate and to calm down than escalate to violence in the face of immediate punishment. Tendency to give into impulsive drives to use a weapon one is carrying is balanced in the knowledge that they maybe immediately gunned down as a threat, having just escalated and initiated the use of firearms.

            I would hope that most people who CCW are mentally capable to understand they have the choice engage in social behaviours that tend to spiral out of control. And do the wise thing and remove themselves and the weapon from core of such a situation for the safety of everyone involved.

            As for the Bar brawl and sporting event situations, I maybe disagreeing with the Posts author. I wouldn’t think it wise to go drinking and take a gun if I was expecting to do so in excess. This part of the world most bars and clubs put your firearms in a locker on entry anyways, something similar might work in the American centric environment too.

            Sporting events, see above.

            Both situations are edge cases, one because drugs is involved the other as it is a mass human gathering (could also involve drugs depending on the sport).

            And as edge cases, they are exceptions, and seems a bit strange to argue against CCW with an edge case. That does not represent normal situations or environments.

        3. You keep saying, what you THINK, and what you INTERPRET, and what you IMAGINE.
          We keep responding with what IS.
          And then you get angry that you lose the argument, every time?

          1. who’s getting angry?

            i’m just saying that the interpretation seems like a huuuuuge stretch… that’s amenable to amendments… 🙂

        4. I’m not interested in your utilitarian arguments. The Democratic Party had similar utilitarian arguments in favor of Slavery in 1861.

          1. you’re hung up on picking sides.

            argue the point rationally instead of getting hung up on labels.

        5. “As for that last part, we have actually tried two separate ways for fifty years. That’s why most of these mass shootings keep happening in gun free zones, and your crowded urban city centers with strict gun control are so safe. So who should stfu forever again?”

          it always amuses me when conservatives yell, “SEEEEEE?!?!?! it doesn’t work!!!!” after they’ve played a huge role in gimping the measure so that it’s not even 5% of what it would have been.

          How draconian are you going to make the gun control laws that they will actually deter people willing to rob, rape and kill from doing it with guns? If simply making the laws draconian works, then why not simply pass draconian laws against theft, rape and murder? If it doesn’t work against theft, rape and murder, why will it work against guns? Why is the law, in your view, impotent at deterring violent crime, but potent at preventing it from being committed with a particular class of devices?

          1. “Why is the law, in your view, impotent at deterring violent crime, but potent at preventing it from being committed with a particular class of devices?”

            again, that’s the dumb argument.

            that’s not an argument against gun laws, that’s the argument against ALL laws.

            i assume you’re not an anarchist.

          2. That’s an argument that gun laws will not, in point of fact, prevent violent crimes. If gun laws do not, in fact, prevent violent crimes, then what is the purpose of such laws?

            What is worse, since the violent criminals will retain their guns, but the honest citizens be deprived of them, it will encouragerather than prevent violent crimes. The law will be worse than useless.

          3. Possession of an object harms NO ONE. Killing someone does. Guns are the ONLY hope the law abiding have of defending against the lawless. We’re not giving them up.

    2. 1) The act of owning an automatic weapon causes harm to no one. Using a weapon improperly should be and is a crime just like murder is a crime.

      2) Accidental shootings are a tragedy and that’s why I’m against mandatory gun ownership. Are you pro banning alcohol too because drunk driving kills way more every year and alcohol has zero positives at all?
      parts b and c) how many of these would be accomplished anyways with other means. Not to mention guns are more of a strength equalizer in struggles.

      3) A form of tyranny is not providing proper defense, basically going the cops will look the other way at crime on these people or will be extra slow to respond because of political beliefs. Note this can very much apply to some bad parts of inner cities where the response rate is very slow.

      4) Athens, Tennessee. Plus sure you have the tech to win…but this isn’t a little war game this has a thing called morale, where if you start running hard campaigns against these groups, innocents will be killed and the people that were more passive before will become violent.

      5) You must not know many gun people. Some don’t have much ammo…others have stockpiles.

      6) Gangs don’t fight in the middle of times square for the simple fact that it’s not helpful. Plus again it’s like what Correia said about looking for an easy target. It’s stupid to risk your life robbing someone you know has a gun when you can rob someone who doesn’t. If a neighborhood is known for packing a lot of heat but it’s not revealed who actually has guns…that is a factor that lowers incentive to be a criminal in that area.

      1. 1. according to that logic, you would be in favor of people owning and keeping NBC weapons as long as they don’t misuse them. just pointing out that that point alone is invalid unless you really do believe private citizens should own and keep NBCs.

        2. alcohol has known benefits. i’m not necessarily in favor of banning all guns but i think it’s not above the pale to talk about it and put it at issue.

        3. i don’t know what you’re trying to say here. as i amended in my response to correia, the bill of rights speaks to the people’s relationship to its government. and the totality of the language of the 2nd amendment seems in keeping with that.

        4. 1946… do you really think that’s the way it would play out today? i don’t. also, a tricky question for most gun propos: much of the black community feels oppressed by police and with video taped incidents where a black man is choked to death for selling cigarette singles, i’m inclined to agree. would those situations have turned out better or worse if instead of cameras, the people witness to the event had guns? my position is that in today’s world, ANY use of a gun in defense against “tyranny” worth the name is signing your own death warrant. it WILL kill you. it will NOT stop tyranny. just imagine a black bystander killing an oppressive cop and play that scenario out in your head.

        5. as i said to correia, i never said you don’t have ammo. what i’m saying is no matter how much you have as a private citizen, in situations for which the 2nd amendment seems.

        6. this is under the assumption that it’s impossible to stop guns. that may be the case. but we really have not tried. what we can say is that societies that illegalize guns have INFINITESIMAL amounts of mass shootings compared to the u.s.a.

        1. Please tell me exactly what that second amendment says. Please include in your answer, for full context, what a militia was considered at the time of writing, AND, what weapons were considered to be perfectly acceptably privately held. (Hint, even in 1812, there were privately owned warships with cannons….)

          Also – make sure you interpret the right of the people/etc. in the second amendment the same way you’d interpret it in the rest of the amendments, and “arms” in a way that doesn’t suddenly allow us to ban computers because they are not mechanical printing presses.

          1. No, don’t bother with his little nuclear strawman. He’s trying to get you to agree to a line so he can “negotiate” it down to a level he wants. It’s a sign that he’s incapable of arguing against ownership of regular weapons so he has to go to a ridiculous extreme to try to salvage his position. Because he’s so “reasonable” after all…

            Either way, as soon as privately owned spacecraft become cheap enough, quite a few people will have an ability equivalent to nuclear weapons. Though I doubt
            “justanobody” bothered to think that through.

          2. you’re afraid of the “strawman” because you don’t have an answer.

            ANSWER: if you pull a gun on a fed, you’re dead.

            ANSWER: a gun is no defense against tyranny.

            ANSWER: 2nd amendment is obsolete.

            you want a defense against tyranny? NBC weapons would hold them off for a while….

          3. Answer: Who’s going to pull a gun on a Fed? We’re going to emulate the Founders and shoot them in the head when they step out the front door for the paper, to go shopping, etc. How many times do you think that will happen until they decide the pension and bennies ain’t worth it? Every Fed still has to sleep, eat, etc., and there’s way more of us than them, as pointed out above.

          4. No, I know you are an ignorant fool who thinks he’s clever.

            Which is likely why you think your unsupported assertions are answers.

            Nice of you to use the troll “wait a few days to make a ‘devastating’ response and hope no one sees it” method of counter-argument.

          5. Guns are the ultimate defense against tyranny, as history has shown us over and over. You’ve heard of this “history” thing, right? And if the 2nd Amendment is obsolete, then the entire Constitution is. Neither is true, and you only look extremely foolish making the claim.

          6. Nope.
            Nope.
            Nope.

            You keep insisting stuff based upon your feelings, and people who know more than you do about the topic keep telling you that you are wrong.

            I’ve worked with lots of feds, trained with them, shot with them. They’re human. They don’t want to get shot either. They don’t have magical powers. And sadly for you, a gigantic chunk of the trigger pulling side of federal law enforcement agrees with me, not you.

            You keep citing things like they are these super amazing problem solving tools, when you fail to realize that there are limitations to everything. There is a huge tactical difference between bringing in a tac team on a dangerous subject, and using a tac team to fight a war. When you’ve got an armed and dangerous subject, you can bring in a team, and form a perimeter to contain them. You can’t contain “Idaho”.

            A gun is no defense against tyranny, except for when tyrants get shot.

            The 2nd Amendment is obsolete, says the guy who doesn’t understand how guns or fighting works, to the people who do.

          7. Michael Williamson wrote an excellent article about how much of the left uses different interpretations to suit its purposes, and showed that by using the standard many of them advocate to ban anything more advanced than a musket, they effectively destroy the basis of argument in favour of gay marriage.

            Many of the more… enthusiastic… left crowd leapt upon that article as being PROOF HE’S A RACIST MISOGYNIST HOMOPHOBE HATER NAZI OMGWTFBBQ!!!! They completely missed the codicil wherein he points out that if they want to use modern interpretation of the Constitution in order to support gay marriage, they can’t get all upset when their philosophical opposites use that same modern interpretation to support modern firearms being protected by the 2nd Amendment.

            (http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/gay-marriage–this-discussion-is-a-waste-of-time)

          8. i admit, that as a liberal it is amusing to be behind enemy lines.

            fyi, i totally agree with the sad puppies campaign and abhor the extremist left of radical feminist social justice warriors. i haaaate hypocrisy as well. but i seem to be the rare breed that acknowledges hypocrisy and stupidity on “my side”. rarely if ever have i seen righties call out other righties…

            i get why you guys write us off. we’ve done no less to you. and it’s true – we fucking hate you guys.

            it’s why wars will never end. people will disagree and it gets ugly – whether it’s through politics or violence.

            c’est la vie.

          9. You’ve never seen “righties call out other righties,” eh? It happens much more frequently on our side than it does on yours. As for hate, we don’t so much hate you as feel contempt and pity for you. But we certainly won’t let you control normal people.

          10. the thing with hermeneutics is that you can parse things down to meaninglessness. someone could write a clear sentence and in a hundred years, there’ll be assholes arguing what it means.

            i’m just reading the words i see and interpreting it as i do every other word. and whatever else militia means, the highly organized part seems to pertain non trivially.

            as for warships with cannons – you guys are great at getting off topic… i assume you don’t believe that we should own artillery and NBC weapons? so what’s the point about bringing that up?

            you guys accept that 2nd refers to fire arms. that’s what we’re talking about.

          11. Setting up another strawman, are you? If the Founders were alive today, they would likely be upset that military ordnance is too expensive and resource-intensive for private individuals or groups to maintain.

          12. i’m just reading the words i see and interpreting it as i do every other word. and whatever else militia means, the highly organized part seems to pertain non trivially.

            There you go changing words. It is ‘regulated’ as in ‘in good working order’.

            Also, if the ownership of arms were restricted to the militia, why does it say “the right of the PEOPLE to KEEP and BEAR arms” instead of “the right of the MILITIA to KEEP and BEAR arms”?

            The Heller decision by the SCOTUS held that it was an individual right of the people, not an organization. So until you can pack the court with liberal puppets and then put another case in front of them, YOU ARE WRONG on this.

        2. 1. according to that logic, you would be in favor of people owning and keeping NBC weapons as long as they don’t misuse them. just pointing out that that point alone is invalid unless you really do believe private citizens should own and keep NBCs.

          You already do. Not the “N” perhaps, but the “B” and “C”. Oh, the “B” may take a little work, but you’ve got it if you want it.

          That said, there is a qualitative difference between what most people think of as “NBC” and firearms. A firearm is no threat to anybody unless you put a round in it and pull the trigger. With NBC you have to take special steps to prevent their being a threat.

          In one case it takes positive action to pose a threat.
          In the other it takes positive action to restrain/contain a threat.

          So throwing the case of the second back at us does not refute the first.

          1. It answers it for those interested in answers

            As Larry is wont to say, argument is a spectator sport. You’re not going to convince the “true believer” on the other side. You’re going to 1) lay out your arguments for those who haven’t settled into a “true belief” position and 2) hearten those on your side by showing that that they’re not alone.

        3. according to that logic, you would be in favor of people owning and keeping NBC weapons as long as they don’t misuse them.

          *snipped after the first strawman was hopelessly slaughtered*

          Sad thing is, you think it was a clever and devastating response. Except your claim is like saying a free speech advocate wants everyone to have their own satellite broadcast network, because they don’t want “reasonable” restrictions on speech. Some other silly exaggeration that might panic the ignorant into jumping on your bandwagon, but breaks down rather quickly under mild scrutiny.

          1. you’re as lazy as you are self congratulatory. christ, rarely have i seen such masturbatory self affirming rhetoric.

            and EVERYTHING’S a strawman…

            can’t be bothered to actually counter the logic… you just dismiss with labeling.

            you’re not worth it.

          2. When we see logic, we’ll counter it; For you, it’s mockery all the way down.

          3. I’m as lazy as I’m self congratulatory. christ, rarely have you seen such masturbatory self affirming rhetoric.

            and EVERYTHING’S a strawman…

            can’t be bothered to actually counter the logic… I just dismiss with labeling.

            I’m not worth it.

            FIFY

            Run along home, sorry little troll. Buh-bye.

          4. Definition of STRAW MAN 1 : a weak or imaginary opposition (as an argument or adversary) set up only to be easily confuted.

            No, “everything” isn’t a strawman, just your lame attempts at arguing against ownership of weapons by claiming it means they want nuclear weapons. Or any other view you make up and attribute to your opponents under the mistaken belief that it’s a clever counterpoint.

            Now continue with the flounce and exit and then come on back for more mockery.

        4. Ah, you’ve brought out the Nuclear Strawman. Automatic loss, there cupcake.

          That would be like attempting to make a 1st amendment case for snuff films.

          1. people are quick to label their foils as strawmen around here huh?

            tip: godfrey’s law isn’t as ubiquitous as it is because it’s irrelevant. when people make sweeping, universal claims, a single exception undermines the entire position.

            usually, invoking the actions of hitler and nazis does the trick.

            here, the nuke stuff pertains because the ostensible point to the 2nd is self defense against tyranny.

            said it before, i’ll say it again – you pull a gun on a fed and you’re a fucking dead man.

            some defense.

            so cry your bitter little tears about strawmen wah wah… but 2nd amendment is obsolete and only delusional losers like everyone here apparently, can’t see that.

          2. Again, you betray your total inexperience with tactics. We won’t “pull a gun” on anyone. However, Mr. Fed has to sleep sometime. And unless you are believing that you can maintain order by saturation bombing (and we’ve pointed out why that is unlikely), you simply won’t be able to govern. Which is the point.

          3. Yes, yes… only wise and noble folks like yourself can see the true state of the world.

            Except the Emperor is still nekkid, little one.

            Keep up the e.e. cummings act, since the shift key is so oppressing.

          4. Amazing. You try to redefine Godwin’s Law (which you don’t even know enough about to name correctly) to fit your needs and evidently unknowingly make it apply to exactly what you’re doing. Are you really so un-selfaware as that?

          5. Brother, Larry snipped your nuclear bomb strawman in THE ORIGINAL article. Reread it again please. You lefties lose whenever this is deployed. Man, I wish critical reasoning and logic was taught in schools.

        5. 1. according to that logic, you would be in favor of people owning and keeping NBC weapons as long as they don’t misuse them. just pointing out that that point alone is invalid unless you really do believe private citizens should own and keep NBCs.

          In the long run, private citizens will own nuclear explosives, or even more destructive devices. Of course, the implications of energy that cheap also include human expansion across the Universe, so this is not necessarily a bad thing.

          In the short run, have you ever considered how expensive are nuclear weapons? How many people do you think would want to own them, and what are you imagining them doing with their nuclear explosives that does not violate other laws and treaties?

          2. alcohol has known benefits. i’m not necessarily in favor of banning all guns but i think it’s not above the pale to talk about it and put it at issue.

          Guns have known benefits — stopping criminals with guns, who cannot be deprived of their guns by mere laws. Stopping dangerous animals, who don’t give a damn about the law. Making fun bang-bang noises. And, oh, deterring murderous totalitarian tyranny. That too.

          Your speech, on the other hand, is dangerous. You’re threatening to deprive Mr. Correia of a Constitutionally-guaranteed right. I’m not necessarily in favor of banning all speech, but in the case of your speech I think it’s not above the pale to talk about it and put it at issue.

          1. lol.

            in trying to be clever you condemn your own point by your own hand.

            bravo.

      2. oops didn’t finish point 5 –

        in which the 2nd amendment seems to pertain, whatever you have will not be enough.

        gun proponents think about this standoff in abstract terms but bring it to today’s reality.

        with the amount of arms and ammo that you have in your house right now, how long can you hold out against half a dozen swat teams and the the FBI?

        that’s my point.

        and as i also said to correia, looks at any guerrilla action anywhere in the world – the central point is NEVER about arms that the populace had on hand. that’s actually completely irrelevant. what matters is a third party willing to smuggle in weapons and ammunition to you and a will to fight.

        again – the point is without the third party arms shipments, you’re dead. WITH the third part arms shipments, it didn’t matter that you weren’t armed to begin with.

        1. in which the 2nd amendment seems to pertain, whatever you have will not be enough.

          The usual “lightly armed irregulars in the US cannot defeat the US military” generally presented by people who claim “the US military cannot defeat lightly armed irregulars overseas.”

          gun proponents think about this standoff in abstract terms but bring it to today’s reality.

          Actually, gun proponents understand today’s realities quite well. It’s folk like you who seem to have this strange idea that armed resistance to a government turned tyrannical would consist of gun owners lining up on one side of a field, the military with their tanks and jet fighters and what have you lining up on the other and everybody shooting until all the rebels are dead or fled.

          That’s not how it would go down. Instead think Beirut, Northern Ireland, “weaponizing” the South Side of Chicago etc. It would be ugly, a war of assassination and terror. “4th generation warfare” (if we don’t invent whole new generations–Americans can be clever that way) writ large.

          It would be ugly enough that I routinely argue very strongly against it:

          http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2014/06/second-american-revolution-i-hope-not.html

          with the amount of arms and ammo that you have in your house right now, how long can you hold out against half a dozen swat teams and the the FBI?

          I, by myself, can put together a combat load for about a squad. A rather eclectic squad but one where everybody has something to shoot.

          I have a friend who could outfit a company or maybe a light platoon. He liked to describe himself as having military supremacy over Barbados and being currently in an arms race with Bermuda.

          There are over 80 million of us. That’s more than all the world’s militaries, reserves, and paramilitary forces combined Between us, we have enough weapons to arm every adult in the US. And a lot of those are crew served weapons. And a lot of those who don’t have those things know how to make things like explosives and IED’s (I know of three high explosives, off the top of my head, that can be made using readily available supplies for home and garden.)

          What I, personally, can do is not in question. What we as a people can do? That’s the thing.

          1. Huh. The “what if they send the military to get you” question… (or SWAT teams or the FBI or ATF). Those people have to believe that you’re a nefarious criminal first. In some instances where people are isolated, either geographically or ideologically, from their neighbors, the “standoff with the FBI” has gone very badly. This was also before widespread internet. When information can be controlled *to* the agents it’s easier to convince them that you’re a Danger to America. But the vast vast majority of gun owners in the US aren’t isolationists. They’re gregarious Joes with neighbors and friends and blogs who shoot with the local cops at the municipal range.

          2. If they send the military or police out to get me, they will find an empty house when they bust in the door.

            Why should I take on the police or military? They aren’t the retards that voted for this stuff. He might want to scrape that Obama sticker off his car after they attempt confiscations.

          3. Oh yes … if there was a program of mass gun confiscations, morally speaking there would no longer be any good reason not to kill, injure or vandalize the property of anyone who supported it — since by supporting it the people would have signaled that they were giving up on the US Constitution, which is the very same social contract which acknowledges their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What … they dont get that?

          4. amendments happen bub.

            i guess you’re just on the side where you’ll die for america and the constitution when it only gets interpreted the way you like…. supreme court be damned.

          5. The Supreme Court has consistently upheld the Second Amendment. With what particular interpretation of the Constitution on their part do you imagine I disagree?

          6. then amend away. Glad to see you finally decide to opt for a course of action I can endorse. I will vote against you though. You you favor a complete gun ban? That should go swimmingly.

          7. then your guns have done exactly zero good against tyranny.

            good lord it’s dense in here.

            : P

          8. Projecting again, I guess. You really have no idea what you’re talking about, that’s very clear.

          9. Also, I’m extremely lightly armed by community (here) standards, but I have more guns than I can shoot at once and more ammo than I can carry. (Not because I’ve got a lot, but because it’s freaking *heavy*.)

          10. The other thing they always seem to assume is that the military would be completely under the control of the government in such a situation. I strongly suspect that many units would somehow decline to take the field, and not a few would openly side with the American people against the government. After all, they all swore to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, not to protect and defend the government against the citizens of the country.

          11. The usual “lightly armed irregulars in the US cannot defeat the US military” generally presented by people who claim “the US military cannot defeat lightly armed irregulars overseas.”

            Indeed. Why do the very same type of troops become invincible abroad yet ineffectual on American soil, in the minds of the Left?

          12. Worse: It’s exactly in reverse. Lightly-armed irregulars here in the US could do horrible damage, especially if they’re US citizens and/or are even former US military. The factories, depots, etc. that support our military could be badly damaged.

            Lightly-armed irregulars overseas don’t usually have that sort of reach.

          13. you’re arguing my point.

            how many of those lightly armed irregulars had arms to begin with?

            how many of those lightly armed irregulars could hold out for any amount of time without regular influx of munitions from friendly interests.

            the gun nuts claim having arms ON HAND is important for some reason.

            i’m saying that it is NOT important. if irregulars are going to have a chance, having guns on hand meant NOTHING.

            having munitions smuggled to them regularly means EVERYTHING.

          14. the gun nuts claim having arms ON HAND is important for some reason

            The reason is that guns owned but physically-unavailable to oneself do one no good when one is fighting to defend one’s life.

          15. Now you are arguing that our military and police would have to impose martial law on the people themselves. Now you will have to protect your own supply lines, when you cannot trust your own citizenry. The military problem just became more difficult. And we thought the Iraqis were hard?

          16. you avoided my last points –

            how long can you or ANY resistance hold out without arms coming in from friendly interests?

            if they’re shipping in ammo, they’re also shipping in guns.

            you guys make it seem like having guns ON HAND is important. when every revolution anywhere in the world for decades has proved that’s not the case.

          17. No, what every revolution anywhere in the world has proven is that weapons are already and always available, because you’ll never take them ALL.

          18. You clearly have no understanding of how such things work. It’s not even worth trying to pound understanding into your head; you would just reject it out of hand.

          19. you avoided my last points – how long can you or ANY resistance hold out without arms coming in from friendly interests?

            And you ignore the fact that there are more armed citizens, with more ammo, then all the militaries of the world combined. And those armed citizens have enough weapons to arm every man, woman, and child in the US. (And I provided links at the time. Go uptopic and find them.)

            Just for giggles once in a discussion about ISIS and their threats (71 “trained soldiers” in the US? Color me quaking in my boots) I compared those numbers to the combined adult populations of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. (If they armed every single person and sent them over, we’d still outnumber them.)

            Arms need to be shipped in to places where they aren’t. We don’t need arms shipped in when they’re already here.

          20. Yeah, there was a good reason why Japan didn’t want to invade the US mainland.

            And Australia was too far.

          21. Our Sun Tzu wannabe also fails to consider the concept of resupplying from the enemy’s fallen.

            Then again, he seems to attribute superhuman powers (“if you pull a gun on a fed, you’re dead”) to the government side, so I’m sure he dismissed the idea with a sniff.

            Maybe he’ll give drones the powers of the Insight Helicarriers from Captain America: The Winter Soldier next?

          22. To ignorant lefties, guns are magic wands: you wave one and everyone obeys your will. That’s a prime reason why universities and schools have high casualties from mass shootings: they’re gun-free zones, run and populated by lefties who see the magic wand and obey the command to wait to be killed.

          23. Our Sun Tzu wannabe also fails to consider the concept of resupplying from the enemy’s fallen.

            It also ignores the concept that guns really aren’t that difficult to make. And I’m not talking about using an expensive, high tech 3D printer with special ‘toner.’ Ammo is even easier, and there are also a lot of reloaders in the US making it even now.

          24. They can fight for a pretty long time what what is on hand, especially as the military and police use calibers very similar to what we own. What was your point again?

        2. Regarding guerrilla warfare, you had forgotten that the most simplest way to get regular arms shipment is from the inside especially when both the military and law enforcement personnel are supplying not only the weapons but also the training and the critical intelligence and these scenario will be the obvious case here if it ever happens.

          Here is the supreme irony of your post, it will be the US government and not the gun rights supporters who will have a problem with third party arms shipments even when the former are well armed to begin with.

        3. “with the amount of arms and ammo that you have in your house right now, how long can you hold out against half a dozen swat teams and the the FBI?”

          Alone, or with a Lexington and Concord’s worth of friends and fellow supporters. One BIG reason the Feds backed down at the Bundy’s is that unlike Waco and Ruby Ridge, the word had gotten out and several hundred people with guns were on the way.

          1. You ever note in every discussion about the topic of the 2nd Amendment being powerless against a modern government, it is always the peacenick afraid of guns with zero understanding of fighting, combat, logistics, or tactics arguing about how easy national confiscation would be against the trigger pullers, veterans, and people with a clue?

            In real life, the people who would have to go door to door in places like Texas and Utah enforcing this hypothetical confiscation law are all like, nope, ain’t gonna happen. I’m calling in sick. I’m calling in sick FOREVER.

            Hell, in New York state they only got like a 5% compliance rate for their assault weapons registration. NEW YORK!? They’re estimating at least a million unregistered “assault weapons” in Bloomberg’s home state. One of the bluest of blue states in the US, and everybody outside of Manhattan said eat a bag of dicks, Cuomo. See the essay above? Where I was super generous and gave them 90% national compliance? Yeah… No. 😀

            But, but, but, drones! Tanks! Aircraft carriers! Oh really? Because the guys that drive those or work in the super evil military industrial complex that you liberals love so much tend to be so overwhelmingly on your side and in favor of gun confiscation?

            There are 700,000 cops in America. The ones in places with super strict gun control can’t even enforce it in those tiny urban areas, and you think you’re going to go into Idaho or Tennessee and say give up all your guns or else, and that’s going to work? Then what? The US Military gets called up and told to go shoot their friends and neighbors because of a law most of them are fundamentally opposed to?

            Yeah, go ahead and start dropping Hellfires on people’s houses in Kentucky or Colorado. I’m sure the resulting backlash will be nothing but peaceful candle lit vigils and sit ins…

            See, one thing you derpy wishful thinking unicorn enthusiasts miss about the 2nd Amendment isn’t just the bit where the regular people can have guns to fight tyranny, but everybody in the military swears an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from enemies foreign, and DOMESTIC. So, how do you think members of the US military (who again, are overwhelmingly not progressive statist gun control enthusiasts) are going to react when given the order to go blow up American citizens because they are not complying with a law that violates the US Constitution?

            Not to mention that most of the US military’s bases are in red states, where people live next door to, and barbeque with, and go to church with the people you expect them to go slaughter for your utopian vision. And on that note, all those big scary super weapons you keep citing that the “milita” would be helpless against? Yeah. They are parked and maintained at places like Cannon or Hill, where nothing but a chain link fence separates them from the neighborhoods of the people you expect to massacre with impunity. Except wait… They don’t need to climb the fence, because we already WORK THERE. And the people who took an oath to defend the Constitution who fly those things are more than likely to tell you to shove it, right before they frag their one general officer dumb enough to order them to bomb their home towns.

            The Civil War was a giant bloody mess, and that was with geographic boundaries and causes worth fighting for. This is a cause that only people who haven’t really thought it through, wishful thinkers, and control freaks buy into, with no front line, no safe areas, no secure supply train, and the enemy controls the territory that produces all the food and energy.

            Your MOST secure areas are the ones that melt down into violent riots when your over militarized police forces get caught on video doing something questionably violent. All the “insurgents” would have to do is shut off the electricity for a few days and most of your side’s backing would evaporate. Oh, but you’ve got places like Berkley in your camp. I’m sure they would be willing to tough out another Civil War. Look out Fort Hood! This is going to get rough!

            A single US red state has more territory and can produce ten times as many insurgents as one of the greatest military coalitions in history fought for a decade in Iraq. Only ours will have a clue, and know how to fight better.

            But, but, but feels! Drones! Drones are magic! You feel SO HARD. Because of hypothetical problems that may happen in the future, your imaginary army is willing to kill millions and destroy the whole country, because FEELINGS.

            Brilliant. Tell us more about how smoothly this gun confiscation will go, Von Clauswitz!

          2. Mr. Correia, I have missed your epic rants. I eagerly await your published work, but know how much your fans enjoy your take down of trolls and tools. Much appreciated.

          3. Larry
            Justanybody conveniently forgot that blue states like California, Illinois, Missouri, Vermont, New York , Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Virginia among others are actually Red States being ruled by people in blue cities and suburbs in those states. Hell, cut the water, food and energy supply of LA, San Francisco and Silicon Valley and deny them the use of air and water space and they will be screwed in less than a month . Cut off Manhattan and Staten Island from the rest of New York City by destroying the bridges, tunnels and denying them the use of airports and water ports and the adjoining warehouses. Heck, then cut off communications, food, water and energy supply in the middle of winter and I am willing to bet to justanybody that when spring finally arrives that New Yorkers in Manhattan and Staten Island will sell themselves and their mothers at any price.
            Washington DC ? It will make the British burning of Washington DC two centuries ago look like an amateur bonfire .

            just anybody like every progressives I know does not take careful thought of what might actually happen when all out gun confiscation and silencing of their conservative foes becomes a political necessity for the Liberals and Progs. It will not end well for them.

          4. Thank you Larry!
            Once again your powers as a word-smith explain SO much more clearly my standard reply of, “Who is gonna bell that cat for ya, Tinkerbell?” Just because one side has all the top brass in their pocket doesn’t mean what they think it means. The American fighting man (and woman) isn’t some third world peon with a gun, blindly obeying el heffe’s demands. The term is CITIZEN soldier (or cop, FBI SWAT team member, National Guardsman, ect). Often one who sees past the PC BS, and has no more tolerance for bullies and tyrants that the rest of us, and will probably just stay home when the leftists demand world domination, NOW! And, would all of us ignorant gun huggers please report to the nearest FEMA gulag.

            I haven’t met the leftist, tough guy, internet only intellectual that I couldn’t take in a knife fight, let alone a gun fight. These wannabe world elite can sharpen their blogging skills all they want, I’m going to the range.

          5. They might get a few folks who try to have a front yard Alamo, but everyone else they target will disappear. And then the carnage will really get under way.

            These unarmed idiots do not realize that the rule of law protects them from ME. They should think long and hard about abrogating the law for their political ends.

          6. Minor side-point: My Little Pony is mostly conservative, rather than liberal. The “derpy-eyed unicorn enthusiasts” are very likely to be part of the same gun culture as yourself, especially since they also tend to be fen.

          7. In real life, the people who would have to go door to door in places like Texas and Utah enforcing this hypothetical confiscation law are all like, nope, ain’t gonna happen. I’m calling in sick. I’m calling in sick FOREVER.

            Yes, most of the gun owners would turn in their weapons, because they want to keep on living. The weapons which the government knows about.

            Of course, the gun owners who were the most suspicious of the government would have guns the government didn’t know about. How would the government propose to find them? Warranted searches? Warrantless searches? Torture the possible gun owners or their families or pets until they either give up the guns or the government gave up on finding them?

            What sort of mood would these people be in after the government wrecks their homes or tortures their families or kills their pets? Remember, these are people who have guns?

            What happens when the gun grabber patrol runs into the gun owner who is dying of cancer or whatever, and takes the Constitution very seriously. What happens when the next gun owner decides to pre-emptively start killing members of the government who is engaging in this oppressive behavior?

            As for heavy weapons, these are useless unless one has a very good idea against what and whom to aim them. What does the gun grabber propose here, nuking whole cities and towns to get the gun owners? That wouldn’t aven destroy cached guns save in a fairly small geographic area!

          8. Admittedly, Larry, Obama is well aware of those facts about the US military, which is why he’s trying (and succeeding, to a certain extent) to change that by purging the officer corps of any officer who displays any belief in something other than Comrade Obama, discharging US citizens, and at the same time allowing illegal aliens to join the military. As John Ringo would put it, he’s changing it into a regime protection force.

          9. just one point and i’m done here.

            you are not amenable to rational discussion. you are so entrenched and so passionate in your beliefs, that nothing contrary to your ideology gets through.

            sound familiar?

            it’s the exact same thing as the radical feminist left wing social justice warrior brigade.

            passion is not an ally to rationality.

            you see it pretty clearly in your enemies. do yourself a favor and turn the lens honestly on yourself as well.

            as i said before – we are enemies. we will always be enemies. you are useful to me in the fight against the radical left. but seems left and right are irreconcilable.

            and i’m not even saying it’s your fault or your side’s fault.

            but it does kinda make you despair about humanity.

          10. Wow. You pretty much exactly describe yourself and your cohort, and then attribute that description to the rest of us. This is about the most classical example of psychological projection I’ve ever heard.

          11. can’t help myself, last dig on the way out:

            “but everybody in the military swears an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from enemies foreign, and DOMESTIC. So, how do you think members of the US military (who again, are overwhelmingly not progressive statist gun control enthusiasts) are going to react when given the order to go blow up American citizens because they are not complying with a law that violates the US Constitution?”

            that’s an argument for you not needing guns in the first place you twit.

            😛

          12. Absent the guns, the order would be “take them into custody,” something far more morally-palatable to the troops in question.

          13. No, it isn’t. It’s an argument that we already have guns, because it’s our Constitutional and inherent right to do so, and your kind will NEVER manage to take them away. Now, run back to momma’s basement, pajama boy.

          14. I’d like to think you can’t possibly be stupid enough to believe what you just said. But the evidence is that you can.

          15. that”s an argument for you not needing guns in the first place you twit

            And there’s the pathetic little wannabe dictator we all knew was hiding right below the surface. The mask is off now, Nobody, LET YOUR FASCIST FLAG FLY.

            It’s amazing how fast it got from ‘you’ll never stop an oppressive government with your guns’ to ‘how dare you stop an oppressive government with your guns.’. It’s almost as if it was being dishonest all along.

            Jeremy, Bugmaster, any other trolls or antigun lurkers, this is why you get such a limited amount of rope from even the most patient of us. You come here and wave around your misconceptions, your nonsensical talking points, and your mind-boggling ignorance as if they’re some sort of Received Wisdom. And maybe you’re actually sincere. But when your reaction to your fact-free notions being refuted by data and real world examples is to double-down on them, there’s no more doubt for you to benefit from. You’re either lying to us or you’re lying to yourselves, either way, you’re insulting our intelligence thinking we’re going to buy the bs you’re peddling, and we will continue to mock you until you grow up or get out.

          16. I’ve noticed that our troll hasn’t engaged your response.

            Of course not. It’s stamping its feet and running away crying because it didn’t get its way. Poor widdle twollikins. Awww.

          17. I’m sure he’ll wait a whole month next time to make some “devastating” retort and show us all.

        4. So exactly where did ISIS and the Taliban in Afghanistan get weapons? Santa Claus? How is that tanks and bombs thing vs. guerrillas idea working out there?

          Someone will always sell weapons.

        5. As he again brings back to the original article, for the the first day your confiscation of firearms will go quite nicely. Day 2 might be a different story. Assuming all the police are hob-nailed fascists, the word will eventually get out as the government is not as all seeing as you might imagine. When SWAT teams start disappearing, brother cop might reflect on the hazards of his chosen profession. On day 2, the citizens will have machineguns too. How many Americans are you willing to kill to achieve this fantasy of yours? And have you spoken to a therapist about it? Maybe written a manifesto. You can tell us, we don’t judge.

    3. Hoo-boy.
      1. Criminals actually don’t often use automatic weapons, that was one of the points. But there’s a big difference in laws banning possession of something ( so very hard to enforce; see the drug trade/war, which is a HUGE waste of resources), and banning an act *against another person*. If you can’t see and recognize that, go ahead and stop reading.

      2. Gun deaths, counting murders, accidents, and suicides, are roughly equal with car deaths in the last year data is available (or was, when I had this argument a month ago). Cars aren’t even guaranteed in the constitution, so…

      3. The Supreme Court disagreed — it is an individual right with many purposes. This point is settled, there is no point in discussing it.

      4. No it isn’t, but even if it is, that’s not the sole purpose of 2A anymore than 1A is only about speech about the government.

      5. A home gun collection is not solely for tyranny. Who are you to tell me how to spend my money?

      6. Yes, in the hands of the law-abiding.

      —–
      “imo, there’s a naivete for gun proponents… the notion that human beings are intrinsically good and responsible… or at least the ones that you hang around with.”

      And the naivete on the other side is that the government is peopled with people who are intrinsically good and responsible. Hint: It seems that there’s a higher percentage of good and responsible people outside the government than in.

      Human beings built civilization. I’d say we’re trending more toward good and responsible than away from it. Crime has been on a down swing.

      “question becomes, just how deadly of a weapon you permit stupid, ill-tempered and malicious people to have.”

      Seeing as how there are more guns than people, and there are very few crimes-of-passion involving guns…

      “you dismiss the nuclear weapons thing as absurd but THAT would be the current level of deterrence needed to fight “against tyranny”… but we agree that nuclear weapons for every man woman and child is a stupid thing… because we recognize how stupid and irresponsible and malicious we tend to be.”

      Nobody is going to hunt with a nuke. Nobody is going to defend themselves with a nuke. Nobody with any sense wants to nuke a country they plan to live in. A nuclear accident would be far worse than a gun accident. Also, nuclear fuel is expensive, and hard to work with.

      Finally on this topic, there is a huge difference between ordinance and arms.

      “sure, you can use that argument to ban kitchen knives. but we can be sensible.”

      You guys banned guns that looked scary. We don’t trust you.

      Also, based on your assessment of people and their anger reactions, I am very glad you are not likely a gun owner.

      1. ” But there’s a big difference in laws banning possession of something ( so very hard to enforce; see the drug trade/war, which is a HUGE waste of resources), and banning an act *against another person*.”

        that’s not as good a point as you seem to think it is.

        the gun propo argument is talking about the futility of illegalizing something that people are still going to do.

        you’re hung up on semantics but we can make the law behavior based – acquiring and keeping a gun. there. now it’s on the same level as murder.

        so according to you guys, if bad guys are gonna do bad things ANYWAY… what’s the point of illegalizing it?

        that’s not an argument against gun laws. that’s an argument against ALL LAWS.

        as i said to correia, this is a DUMB argument. you guys aren’t doing yourselves any favors by defending it. you have better ones. go with those.

        1. You seem very devoted to the idea that all of us who own guns are wrong, and you who do not own one are right.

          Has it not occurred to you to wonder why socialist governments the world over keep coming back again and again and again to banning guns, a prohibition that even the Japanese on their island cannot make stick? Why do they keep doing something that has never worked and in principle cannot work?

          I propose to you sir that instead of thinking up new rules lawyering arguments, maybe you should THINK about why your government is so desperate to enact a law which will be so utterly futile.

          1. You seem very devoted to the idea that all of us who own guns are wrong, and you who do not own one are right.

            …and he must save people from the tyranny of grammar as well.

        2. Clearly, there is no productive solution to our disagreement. You are hung up on some odd details; I was saying banning possession of an item is hard to enforce and also not the same sort of crime as a crime against a person. There are different types of laws. But it appears we are stuck on this point.

          Good luck with your debating.

      2. dammit, didn’t finish. sorry.

        “And the naivete on the other side is that the government is peopled with people who are intrinsically good and responsible.”

        this is not the case. as i argue with correia, the notion of “trust” usually lies with conservatives, not liberals. conservatives trust that people are capable of gun ownership. conservatives trust in the free markets. on the other hand liberals don’t TRUST the government. we believe it has its place but as set out in the constitution, it has to be checked at every turn.

        the government is not filled with good wholesome people. but they ostensibly answer to us.

        i trust the government with fire-arms like i trust the government with nuclear weapons. i don’t. and i hold them accountable for their actions.

        conversely though, just because the govt. has nukes does NOT mean that the citizenry should.

        “Human beings built civilization. I’d say we’re trending more toward good and responsible than away from it. Crime has been on a down swing.”

        and is that CAUSED by more people owning guns? or not? and if not, doesn’t that just mean that one of the rationales for owning gun is becoming less rational?

        “Nobody is going to hunt with a nuke. Nobody is going to defend themselves with a nuke. Nobody with any sense wants to nuke a country they plan to live in.”

        again, the 2nd amendment is not about hunting and i argue is not about self defense against criminals either. it’s a paranoid (understandable for the framers at the time) protection against a tyrannical federal government.

        and as i argue truthfully and unequivocally, a gun for that purpose is null and void. no matter how many fire arms you have stockpiled, you will not win against the federal government. no matter how many of your cousins and relatives and block party attendees you can gather together. if that ever really became a point of contention, you are a dead man.

        so the 2nd amendment rationale for firearms is, as far as i can see, null and void.

        a NUKE however would be a deterrent against the feds.

        so there’s the dilemma – according to express purpose of the fire arms in 2nd amendment, guns aren’t enough. nukes are too much?

        “You guys banned guns that looked scary. We don’t trust you.”

        actually i understand that argument you guys make and i agree. but i’m not just talking about banning automatics and machine guns… i’m opening it up for banning all personal firearms period…. or if we’re really going to stick with the 2nd amendment concept, maybe muzzle loading rifles. i saw one on an alaska reality show and those look pretty nifty and difficult to go on a kill crazy rampage with….

        “Also, based on your assessment of people and their anger reactions, I am very glad you are not likely a gun owner.”

        i recognize that i’m the odd man out here… i’m in enemy territory. still, i would have figured that we could have a conversation without resorting to insults and snideness.

        color me disappointed.

        1. Perhaps people insult you and are snide because they are tired of your condescending attitude. You have made liberal (pun not intended) use of logical fallacies in your arguments, (one example: “you’re saying there’s no point in banning because people hellbent on breaking that law will break it anyway. in that case, why have any law according to your reasoning?” This is a logical fallacy called reductio ad absurdum. Also, Synova answered this question, without even calling you out on the fallacy. Did you bother to read her answer?) and have on several occasions repeated questions that others have answered, seemingly ignoring their answers as irrelevant to the narrative you seem to wish to deliver.

          1. This is a logical fallacy called reductio ad absurdum.

            Actually the reductio ad absurdum is a legitimate rhetorical device that enables one to force one’s opponent to admit the foolishness of his own position, by running it out to its logical(ly absurd) conclusion.

            The rhetorically inept who attempt this tactic usually end up creating a strawman instead, as we see above.

          2. Rhetoric and Logic are two entirely different things.

            A competent rhetorician will try to undermine logic that disagrees with his side.

          3. Rhetoric and Logic are not completely different things.

            Logic enables one to construct strong arguments that are congruent with reality.

            Rhetoric enables one to express those arguments in a winsome and convincing manner.

            That aside, the point I was trying to make is that reductio ad absurdum is not a logical fallacy.

        2. Mr. justanobody,

          You sir have me completely confused.

          You say liberals distrust the government. Why then do they continue pushing forth policies that expand the size and scope of government?

          You say you hold the government accountable. Can you please elaborate on that? Exactly how? Because from what I’m seen, the bastions of liberalism (big cities) are utterly corrupt cesspits.

          An armed person can directly defend himself against most forms of physical aggression he may encounter. Thus, he has a certain amount of personal sovereignty. Conversely, an unarmed man must appeal to the state for protection. Why do you prefer helplessness to self reliance?

          Building on the above, when a person appeals to the state for protection, there’s a necessary delay before the state acts (assuming it chooses to act). That delay may prove fatal. Let me give you an analogy. Suppose a man’s house is on fire. Ordinarily, he could have used a fire extinguisher, but unfortunately, they were banned by “concerned citizens” (too dangerous, can be used as a weapon, will somebody think of the children, etc.) He called the fire department, but unfortunately they were busy putting out other fires, so his home burned down with his family in it. What do you personally think is the moral position of the “concerned citizens”?

          I eagerly await your answers.

          P.S. Sorry about the insults and snideness. I’m afraid you’ve struck a nerve. You’re trying to stifle what many of us see as one of the last vestiges of actual liberty left in this country. Because you see, thanks largely to people like you, what kind of toilet a man can buy in Alaska is controlled by people in D.C., and that doesn’t sit well with some of folks. Your post must have triggered them, and they couldn’t make it to their safe space in time.

        3. “conversely though, just because the govt. has nukes does NOT mean that the citizenry should.”

          This is a straw man. None of us are saying that.

          “and is that CAUSED by more people owning guns? or not? and if not, doesn’t that just mean that one of the rationales for owning gun is becoming less rational?”

          Civilization as a whole has little to do with individual gun rights. However, individual safety is proven to be improved by them.

          “again, the 2nd amendment is not about ”

          The government has said 2A is about an individual right to keep and bear arms (not explosive ordnance or nuclear bombs). Your interpretation is irrelevant.

          It means what it means.

          Also, if 2A only applies to muzzle loaders, 1A inly applies to quill pens and printing presses. That’s a bad path to start down.

          Also, you come in talking about how stupid people are and how dangerous gun owners are, and you get mad when you get told I’m glad you don’t own a gun? I’m just saying if you think guns make people dangerous it’s probably good you don’t own a gun.

          And you’re also advocating the government forcibly remove my property and my rights. You’re lucky that comment is the worst of it.

        4. @justanobody (if you’re still paying attention): If you don’t like our arguments for private gun ownership, try this guy’s: http://www.thepolemicist.net/2013/01/the-rifle-on-wall-left-argument-for-gun.html

          A lot of his arguments are the same as ours, but his have a nice left-wing flavor. There are also explicitly left-wing appeals in it. I particularly liked, “The problem with radical right-wing populism isn’t that it’s radical, or populist. and the little cartoon at the top of the article tells you right away where he’s coming from.

        5. Consider this: Some of us have been having this conversation for thirty years.

          You show up with the usual collection of tired strawmen, shopworn fallacies, and badfeels about guns and are disappointed that you aren’t shown more respect?

          Where in the world (or the Internet) can you show up with a lack of experience in debating the topic and a lack of basic knowledge about it, and expect your words to be treated as brilliance and wisdom?

          Believe me, what you got here was mild in comparison to what you’d’ve gotten on any half-dozen gun blogs.

          In a way, you remind me of a commenter who trolled a popular gun blog for the better part of a decade (and if you’re him, hiya Mark Ward/Markadelphia!) He used to show up, throw out fallacious arguments, reveal his factual ignorance of the subject, drop thinly-veiled insults, refuse to answer questions, ignore refutations, move goal posts, stretch definitions, screw up the math, etc., etc., and then complained about how mean we where to him when called on it.

          1. My favorite part? You just accurately described justanobody’s behavior…and it (his/her behavior) matches up perfectly with the definition of (delusional though the term is) “mansplaining” as described by those same lesbian radical feminazis he claims to despise! Delicious! If the “Dunning-Kruger-effect” wasn’t so much malarky, I’d call him/her a perfect illustration of it! Awe inspiring ignorance from this dude/gal. Truly delightful, if one can get past the understandable irritation it causes.

        6. You know… one day you people will come around and say that knowing martial arts is bad because you learn how to hurt people. Because fuck all the benefits exercising has.

          Why don’t you people ban needles? I mean, it’s not so difficult to kill a person with a needle.

          There is an insane count of possibilities how to cause permanent bodily harm or death to a human. Even with your bare hands. It’s actually a lot easier than pacifying someone without doing damage [ pain is not damage, pain is just pain ]. I consider using a gun cheating, but that’s just a personal opinion.

          I live in a country where you can’t own a gun or ammunition without special permit. I’m not really a gun enthusiast but as long as there is no one pointing a gun at my head, I don’t really mind them. They are tools. It depends on the person who uses them, how they are used.

          btw… you can throw hammers and bricks, wanna ban those?

          Another thing: I used to carry knives with me. I mainly used them to cut cables at work or similar, but since I kept forgetting them at home, I simply had them on me wherever I went. I did get into several conflicts during that time. And do you know what? I never used the knives on anyone. Granted, the thought did occur to me every so often, if there were problems, but it was just an instant panic reaction.

          Nowadays I don’t carry knives with me anymore. I still like them a lot, but I have a different job [ better one, I might add ] and I don’t need to cut cables anymore.

        7. “i trust the government with fire-arms like i trust the government with nuclear weapons. i don’t. and i hold them accountable for their actions.”

          You’re going to “hold them accountable”?! HOW?! But threatening to vote against them next time?! By writing a sternly worded letter? A nasty editorial in the NYTimes?!?! Do you not get (well obviously not…) that “holding the gov t accountable” is the entire actual POINT of the 2nd Amendment?!

    4. Yeah right, justanobody.

      White supremacists in Baltimore just took advantage of the disarmed population there to freely burn property whose loss disproportionately impacted minorities.

      History and prehistory tells us in all empires that disarmed minorities get treated such. The only way to arm minorities is to arm everyone.

      The armed populations in the United States more than offset the spree killers because a) political factions are limited in the areas they can carry out atrocities b) the scope of atrocities is limited by what they can pass off as just c) they can’t go too overboard because otherwise their victims will entirely disperse and live among populations that won’t tolerate that sort of large scale atrocity.

      You come here and expect us to believe that gun control is motivated by anything other than white supremacism and the desire to murder minorities and burn down their property?

      1. if you genuinely believe that the reason there are not genocidal atrocities in the u.s. is because of private gun ownership….

        good luck to you.

        1. It may not be the reason, but the history of populations that don’t have arms, and what happens to them when they’re disarmed (especially when the government goes out of their way to disarm them) is… educational.

          See hitler and jews (note the cries of panic in the warsaw ghetto uprising that the jews were actually armed…). See the history of gun control regulation in large northern cities (hint – it was to keep those blacks from having weapons…..)

          Massacring a population is much easier when one side has all the weapons.

          1. It’s probably less of a cause and effect and more of an indication of non-concurrent conditions. The *condition* of widespread gun ownership by citizens is concurrent with the *condition* of not having a tyranny. The citizens with their personal armories aren’t fighting off genocidal atrocities because “personal armories” and “genocidal atrocities” can’t happen in the same social/political space time continuum.

          2. That may be part of it, but a heavily armed populace is no bar to endemic genocidal warfare. The latter might be said to be the typical state of mankind. I think the real issue is our low level of grudges.

            It was never politically expedient for the Democrats to get rid of populations, as opposed to keeping them in line. They use abortion, welfare, and when they did terroristic killings, they were more specific than genocidal. That doesn’t exactly make the Balkans.

            As for the Indians, they no longer have stomach for anything more offensive than whining, and it has been so long since they have carried out an atrocity that Americans have mostly forgiven them.

          3. Not just the Jews. How many liberal, pacifistic, politically neutral counties were invaded during WW2? How many partisans had to make do with pretty much any bodged together weapon they could lay their hands on?
            It is rather interesting to count the total number of First World countries who have not been invaded, besieged, suffered a nasty civil war, or been under a tyrannical government in the last two hundred years.
            The answer is pretty much just Switzerland… and they have lots of guns.

          4. Simo Hayha, aka “The White Death.”

            700 to 740 kills, depending on who’s counting. In under a hundred days.

            Hayha and other (sadly almost unknown) Finnish snipers didn’t stop the Red Army cold, but their efforts certainly demoralized it enough for Finland to keep existing as an independent nation.

            Unless you meant Karl Mannerheim, under whose direction the Finns bitch-slapped the Red Army so hard that teeth in the Kremlin rattled…

          5. I’ve got to look them both up, I’m ashamed to say. Looking forward to reading about their exploits! This Simo fellow sounds like Rambo/Earl Harbinger only real! (Nobody tell Earl I said he wasn’t real. I like my head *connected* to my body, tyvm) *rubs hands together*

          6. It’s also interesting to note how the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, starting with a handful of pistols, ended up causing so much of a ruckus it took multiple divisions to bring them down.

            Something a military genius like “justanobody” might want to think about.

        2. Do you say that there are no genocidal atrocities in Germany, because the camps were shut down seventy years back? I submit to you that if I have one mass grave filled with US person minorities incident in the United States during a similar time frame, that you are full of shit.

          Which is to say a bit over ninety years back, the Democrats did it, the city was quietly frightened into the 1980s, and every bit of Democrat ‘skepticism’ reminds me of Holocaust denial. Except that the Nazis are not only willing to concede that such things happened when they are pretending that it was the British or the Americans who really did them.

          Gun control was originally used in America to manage the risk of slave rebellions. After the war, the Democrats used it so that they would have a free hand to murder Republicans.

          1. BobtheRegisterredFool,

            Which incident are you talking about? I’m more or less familiar with the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, but that doesn’t sound like what you’re describing (the “the city was quietly frightened into the 1980s” line in particular doesn’t sound like the Japanese internment is what you’re talking about). Could you link to a description of the incident you’re referring to, or explain it a bit more fully?

          2. Robin, I think Bob may be talking about the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921. Killed somewhere between 39 and 300 people (including several of the initial white rioters before black defenders were driven off) and bascially wasn’t recorded officially until a few years ago.

          3. Robin, Peter is correct. I once met someone looking for the mass grave.

            The Democrats owned the state then. A major figure in the internal politics of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, Gene Stipes, joined in the thirties. When he was forced out by federal indictment last decade, he had the pull to be sentenced to community service advising the state legislature. This was around when the state government officially admitted what happened.

            Peter, I once found a LGBT SJW, possibly a third wave feminist, who claimed thousands.

            I also heard, via an unreliable source, that both sides were initially armed, but the whites were the ones who didn’t run out of ammunition.

        3. Quite a many of us do believe that, yes. After all, ’twas a liberal president that put over a hundred thousand American citizens in concentration camps.

    5. “1. criminals use automatic weapons. see how well a ban works? – murderers murder. shall we not ban murder then? outlaws will be outlaws… so let’s not have any laws.”

      Criminals use automatic weapons or “assault weapons” in about 2% of gun crimes. You can claim this is because the ban works, but I have found little evidence that automatic weapons were used in more than about 5% of crimes before they were regulated. Handguns represent the vast majority of guns used in a crime.

      “2. sure, guns are used in self defense. – how many legally owned guns are used in accidental killings? how many are used in crimes of passion? how many are used in the commission of deliberate crimes?”

      2013:
      Accidental Deaths: 505
      Homicides: 11,208, of which about 50% are connected to an argument.

      2011:
      478,400 incidents of firearms violence (fatal and nonfatal)

      “3. 2nd amendment appears to authorize guns for a militia and as a defense against tyranny… doesn’t seem to argue for general notion of self defense any more than it does for sport. does it?”

      Wrong, the supreme court disagrees with you.

      “6. gun proponents are usually talking about having a proliferation of guns in places akin to a wild west farm. rural or suburban areas. do ya really think a proliferation of guns in crowded city centers already over-run with gangs will make things better?”

      People always speak of the “Wild West” as if it is extra violent. Studies indicate the western frontier was likely less violent than the urban eastern settlements.

      ——————————-

      “imo, there’s a naivete for gun proponents… the notion that human beings are intrinsically good and responsible… or at least the ones that you hang around with.

      that’s kinda proved false every day isn’t it?”

      Not really, there are approximately 80 million legal gun owners in the US. As noted above there are less than 500,000 gun crimes in the US. Means that a gun owner has a .6% of a chance to use a gun illegally.

      “human beings are stupid, ill-tempered and malicious. a look at any internet comment board is enough to prove that.”

      That assumes people act in real life like they do on the internet. That simply isn’t true.

      “question becomes, just how deadly of a weapon you permit stupid, ill-tempered and malicious people to have.”

      Most people aren’t malicious, or stupid, or ill-tempered.

      “you dismiss the nuclear weapons thing as absurd but THAT would be the current level of deterrence needed to fight “against tyranny”… but we agree that nuclear weapons for every man woman and child is a stupid thing… because we recognize how stupid and irresponsible and malicious we tend to be.”

      300,000,000 million guns is a hell of a deterrent against tyranny. The US army has about 1 million active members. The math doesn’t look good for the US armed forces.

      Additionally the fight against tyranny is a worst case scenario, for the most part it is about self defense. Where the lowest number shows 50,000 defensive gun uses, high is something like 1.5 million.

      “a line needs to be drawn SOMEWHERE. just because we don’t draw the line at kitchen knives doesn’t mean we have to draw the line after artillery either and it doesn’t mean that drawing the line at fire-arms is somehow intrinsically illogical.”

      Accept guns stop crimes, and cause much less damage than many other things society accepts.

      “we don’t let children walk around with sharp pointy things or thousands of watts of electricity running through them… we do that for a sane reason.”

      And most gun owners don’t let there children play with guns without supervising them.

      “we like to pretend that we adults are much better than children… but i gotta say, whether it’s in our willingness to “pull a trigger to defend” our hobbies plus more, we don’t seem to be.”

      By this logic we can keep people from voting, drinking or driving. Because adults aren’t that much better than children.

    6. 1. criminals use automatic weapons. see how well a ban works? – murderers murder. shall we not ban murder then? outlaws will be outlaws… so let’s not have any laws.

      We have laws to punish things that we consider “bad”. Murder is bad so we, as a society decide to punish murder. In a best case, the threat of punishment for murder will deter some people from trying and we have less murder. However, once you have murder being illegal passing additional laws against things that aren’t themselves bad (having an automatic weapon is not bad it is only what you fear someone might do with it, that’s already illegal, that’s bad) serves no additional purpose. Anybody who’s going to be deterred from committing murder because a gun is illegal would already be deterred by murder itself being illegal any more than someone who robs a bank is going to be balked by speed limits in the getaway.

      So, unless you believe in “evil gun rays” that somehow turn people who would not otherwise commit crimes into deadly killers who ignore laws against murder, laws restricting guns serve absolutely no purpose when it comes to deterring crime.

      At best it’s an argument that shows the person making it has not thought through the purpose of law and the effects one can expect from passing laws. At worst, it’s just plain sophistry trying to deceive others who haven’t thought it through.

      1. I have a Soviet rifle and Yugoslavian pistol; they haven’t me Commie yet. Probably won’t turn me into a mass killer either.

          1. There’s an edit function now, but you have to reload the page to see it. Gives you five minutes to fix any typographical or grammatical errors you notice.

    7. Regarding point 2, the original draft was actually surprisingly conclusive
      That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own state, or the United States, or for the purposes of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power. That any person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms ought to be exempted upon payment of an equivalent to employ another to bear arms in his stead.
      http://constitutionalrights.constitutioncenter.org/

    8. “1. criminals use automatic weapons. see how well a ban works? – murderers murder. shall we not ban murder then? outlaws will be outlaws… so let’s not have any laws.”

      Oh FFS.

      I suggest you investigate the difference between malum prohibitum laws and malum in se laws before you go and make a further ass of yourself.

      Murder is a demonstrable, measurable harm to another human being. Simply owning a piece of metal configured in a certain fashion is not. Given you can’t seem to grasp the difference between those two concepts, there’s hardly any point bothering with the rest of your rambling, barely-coherent comment.

    9. 1. How often? This is a statistical concern? Show your data, prove it’s a danger… THEN we can talk.

      2. You can actually look these stats up, but you are too lazy or stupid to do so. Google WISQARS (CDC data), DOJ data or look to any of the pro-gun pages citing actual studies and raw data. Here’s a good one. http://www.gunfacts.info/ Now do your own homework.

      3. It is “the right of the people”, not a right of the militia.

      “well regulated” applies to the militia, not “the right of the people”.

      Membership in a militia is neither a requirement nor a prerequisite to exercise the Right, through simple grammar, history, legal precedent or intent of the authors.

      http://www.libertygunrights.com/4pg2A%20Diagram.pdf

      http://www.largo.org/literary.html

      http://www.constitution.org/mil/embar2nd.htm

      http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm

      P.S. The militia still very much exists.
      https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/311

      When called up, you can regulate the hell out of it. (And we do so.)

      Arguably, security of a free state begins with security of the individual, i.e. self-defense. And YOU don’t get to dictate my tools for that… unless you are going to be there to help defend me.

      Right……

      4. History, you PHAYLED it. Big time.

      5. See #4. Also, Afghanistan. I have approx. 20 THOUSAND rounds of various ammo. And I consider myself badly under-stocked.

      6. Your “wild west”… wasn’t. Again, see #4. Also: http://www.guncite.com/wild_west_myth.html

      Next, prove that the lawful guns have been a problem ANYWHERE.

      We’ll bottle unicorn farts until you get back to us.

    1. Thanks for the link. That may be one of the most hysterical things I’ve read in a while.

      Someone desperately needs to fisk that. I know that our esteemed host is busy writing things that will actually get him money, but if he feels like taking a break to shoot some fish in a barrel, it’s a target-rich container. Or if someone else felt like doing some fisking?

      Seriously, any article whose first sentence is a dramatic statistic and whose second sentence is, “Just kidding, I totally made that up, but you should act as if it’s real anyway” is just begging for it.

    2. Actually… I think I’d like to see Hollywood try that.

      They’ve got the cultural hegemony and the person to person influence, let’s see if they can actually do it.

      I bet they can’t. And if they can’t in a tyrannical, perverse cesspool like Hollywood…

  8. I know this is off topic but it’s linked together. Just three months ago a white cop shot a black man in the back in North Charleston SC and last week a disgusting little prick slaughters 9 people in a church a few miles away in Charleston SC. If this had happened in any other state there would be burning, looting, and destroying public property. But it didn’t happen. Why? Because unlike the people of the other cities whose instinct is to turn to hate and to destroy their neighborhoods and businesses we the people of SC chose another path. Love. Love for one another, and love of community. Ironic, isn’t it? When you consider the opening shots fired in the Civil War were fired in Charleston.

    1. Damn. Nicely put. I don’t know if NC is anything like SC, but I’m moving to North Carolina soon, and you’ve just made me feel even more confident that I’m going to enjoy living there. Thanks.

  9. I’ve a friend who is a retired forensic psychologist and has spent time as a beat cop and working as a profiler and for the DEA. He does understand the mental health issues and does what he does with that knowledge. He carries a 1911 and his truck gun is a short barreled AR in 6.8 SPC with a suppressor. He spends thousands of dollars yearly on ammo, training, and equipment even though he’s almost 70. His actions speak a lot louder than the words of a lot of naysayers. That’s good enough for me.

  10. Sad sack little loner losers trying to make a mark by killing people is nothing new. Most famous political assassinations and attempts were done by sad sack little losers looking for fame- all the way back to Czar Alex III and before.
    The thing is, the political types are now better protected. Thus, the losers now have to go with quantity over quality, and shoot up a school, bomb a footrace (or subway), or run a car into a crowd.
    What do we then do?
    First, you got to protect yourself. And sorry to tell you sunshine, you are responsible for your own protection.
    Second, you cannot nerf the world.
    Third, stop publicizing these losers.

    1. Unfortunately,. there are people who believe we can nerf the world, and if we wrap everything in bubble wrap no one will be hurt ever again.

      1. Defeating bubble wrap is easy. Cut a notch into your baseball bat and insert a length of sharp, rusty metal. Slices right through the wrap and smacks the thumb-sucking SJW right in the noggin’.

        The point is that the justanobody types will always be with us. You can lead a horse to facts but you can make him stop covering his eyes and ears and going NAH NAH NAH NAH once you get there.

      2. And if you wrap someone in enough bubble wrap to protect them from everything they will suffocate and die. A rather apt analogy I think.

  11. I read this the first time, back in 2012.

    It hasn’t lost any validity for being two-and-a-half years old. The arguments for increased government control (of everything, not just firearms) haven’t changed. We’ve heard them all. Luckily, the counter-arguments haven’t, either. Why should they? Facts are facts. What is true today will be true tomorrow, the next day, or any time there’s a mass murder by an armed psycho in a Gun Free Zone.

    (BTW, Mr. Correia, I finally got around to reading MHI. Epic. Looking forward to the rest. Thank you for writing!)

        1. Yeah, kind of makes me pause sometimes when I want to make a particularly sarcastic suggestion. They might take it.

          “What about pointed sticks?!”

          1. ROFL I love that sketch! It is, however, terrifying that Britain’s politicians took it as a guide on what they should do and how they should legislate, though…note to self: satire+stupid people=bad bad things. *kidding…mostly*

    1. That’s a real thing btw, Christopher. The knife ban is an idea that’s starting to gain traction among the upper crust in British government. I’ve been following it for years. They’ll probably do it before 2025.

      1. Write The Guardian and tell them they should ban Mechanical Engineers and the practice of Mechanical Engineering. ‘Mechanical Engineers make weapons, Civil Engineers make targets.’

    2. I was actually stationed over in England for 5 years as a security forces member, and a fun little domestic my flight dealt with put much of the gun control debate in perspective.
      A patrol was dispatched from housing to deal with a domestic dispute over a love triangle, only to discover that the husband had fled. Before they took off after him, they received a tip from investigations that the individual had a gun. They tracked him down, pulled him over next to the commissary, and searched the vehicle. sure enough, they found a little snub nosed revolver in a Nintendo ds case. So just to recap, all of this took place in a gun free zone inside a gun free utopia, and I’m supposed to trust the system regarding my right to safety because?

      1. You didn’t answer the most important question your post raised, lol: was it two women, and one man, or two men, and one woman? This is vital information, Av! How can we-*bursts into uncontrollable chortling* Anyway, good anecdote, and excellent point.

        PS: a Nintendo DS? Seriously? That is dedication! Also a tiny gun, but still…impressed by the ingenuity.

        1. Two dudes, one chick,iirc, it was his best friend, in interest of full disclosure, I was twiddling my thumbs at a gate through all of this so my information is second hand from the arresting airman. The funny thing that after all was said and done, they released him to his first sergeant and was put up in temporary housing. As it happens, he was bileted in the same building as the third wheel.

    3. The British do not seem to grasp that it is completely impossible to ban knives, since knives are basic tools. How do they intend to cut up their meat and vegetables?

        1. Or selling the food pre-cut.

          Ew, there I go making a sarcastic suggestion that someone will embrace. 😮

          Perhaps they should look up “flint knapping” before trying to ban one of the oldest tools ever created.

          1. Yes, but they also need to ban clubs. Basically any long, heavy and decently well-balanced object. I figure that if we raze all human structures s as to avoid providing pieces of wood, cut down all the trees, and dispose of the spoil in Antarctica, that’ll handle the clubs.

            Now, the rocks — I’m not sure, maybe teams could scour the British Isles, tossing everything about the right side for people to lift into the sea?

          2. …and fresh fruit.

            (Let’s see if this one vanishes into the aether or not. Is there some limit on the amount of postings you can make in a minute or so?)

    4. As I’ve been going through these old posts, I can’t help but resurrect some of these points.
      This is one of the early things Obama administration did that got my dander up. A lot of people didn’t seem to notice because it didn’t involve guns. But many martial arts and knife related professions caught wind of it maybe back in 2008 or 2009? Similar to gun control laws, all of a sudden a massive percent of regular old pocket knives would become illegal.
      http://www.wnd.com/2009/06/100679/
      http://www.kniferights.org/

      All I can say is, I feel as strongly about my Benchmade knives as I do my guns.

  12. Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. So far, I’ve been banned from almost every SJW blog that I’ve participated in, so I thought I should give you conservative guys a chance 🙂

    Anyway, I personally would love to see more gun control measures (and thus fewer guns in the hands of ordinary citizens), for the same reason why I would love to see self-driving cars: most people are incompetent, and can’t be trusted with deadly machinery. This includes myself, especially.

    I managed to learn how to drive fairly well, but even so, my daily commute terrifies me at times. I see people chatting on their cellphones, cutting each other off, changing lanes without signaling, swerving wildly for no reason, etc. etc. And these people are using cars, which are explicitly designed to be at least somewhat safe. I shudder to think what would happen if, instead of cars, the same people were using guns. And I include myself in that bunch; if you gave me a gun, and pointed me at a spree shooter, I would most likely hurt a lot of innocent people before accidentally shooting myself in the foot. The difference between me and some others is that I’m smart enough to know it.

    So, what I would like to see is a set of much more stringent training requirements for gun ownership, with mandatory yearly re-certifications (to make sure the skills do not rust). The answer to a bad guy with a gun is not just a good guy with a gun, but a good guy with a gun who actually knows how to use it.

    1. Fair question. See the essay above. I wrote a whole article about the placebo of mandatory training already. And when I wrote it I was making my living off of training people.

      Cars are very dangerous, yet we still use them. So are drugs, and power tools, and fire. Because sometimes the useful nature of the item outweighs the associated risks.

      1. As I said above, I would be all for either increasing the barrier to entry for being allowed to operate a car (more stringent exams, etc.), or making the cars themselves safer (which is already happening, so that’s good) — or, ideally, both. The same applies to power tools, but to a much lesser extent, because they pack a lot less energy than a moving car or a flying bullet (though, of course, I don’t want random people to freely operate large pieces of earth-moving equipment).

        As for drugs, if you mean the recreational kind, then I think we should absolutely legalize most of them precisely so that they can be regulated. The days of getting blind from regularly drinking moonshine are pretty much behind us, because alcohol has been legal for quite some time. If you mean the medical kind, then I confess that I am undecided on the subject.

        1. You never met a Quickie Saw (Concrete Saw). If it slips it can and will go through either your leg or your head, the former likely quickly enough you won’t realize that you’ve been hit till you fall over. There’s a whole lot more energy there than you seem to realize. Source: Husband the mason. (Not much scares him… these things terrify him.)

      2. Didn’t the City of Chicago just lose another round at that Supreme Court within the last few years on citizens arming themselves? After being ordered to allow citizens to own handguns. the City then mandated training at a certified City approved gun range, which had to be inside the city limits, as a prerequisite to hand gun ownership.
        Then banned all gun ranges within the city limits? And, Chicago labeled that as a “reasonable” limit to gun ownership, because who could possibly object to “common sense” restrictions like mandatory training?

        1. Has no one filed a lawsuit about that yet? I mean…it’s like the Illinois government *wants* its non-criminal citizenry to be helpless victims. How many are going to have to die (or be raped) before they get surgery to reverse their collective case of rectal-cranial inversion?

    2. I shudder to think what would happen if, instead of cars, the same people were using guns.

      Another of the “if we let people carry guns, blood will run in the streets!” persuasion. This argument keeps getting made whenever the idea of allowing more people to carry in more places to possess/bear firearms. And when the people are allowed to do so it keeps. failing. to. happen.

      I would most likely hurt a lot of innocent people before accidentally shooting myself in the foot.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

      I’m smart enough to know it.</blockquote

      And yet what you "know" is not what actually happens when one or more armed citizens are present when someone attempts spree killing.

      stringent training requirements

      I’m a big proponent of training. However, I’m not a proponent of legally mandated training. The truth is, we’ve got some states that require training to carry. Some that don’t. The legal mandate has no effect on either “bad shoots” or accidents. It’s pretty simple, really. Most people who decide to carry realize that they need training and will get it on their own. Those who won’t, who require a legal mandate to force them to, won’t benefit from it; it will be “in one ear and out the other” forgotten as soon as the course is passed.

    3. for the same reason why I would love to see self-driving cars: most people are incompetent, and can’t be trusted with deadly machinery.

      Would those “most people are incompetent” be the same people whom you are trusting to properly program the self-driving cars?

      1. @Feather Blade:
        I am a programmer myself, so, hell no ! This is why I’m hoping these cars to go through many, many rounds of safety testing. Fortunately, this is a lot easier than putting every driver through such tests.

        By the way, many features of self-driving cars are already here. Features such as Lane Keep Assist, Auto Braking, Auto Follow, Automatic Parking, etc., have become standard on luxury cars, and are making their way down to the consumer market. I see this as a good thing.

        1. And you don’t see those features as things which enable (or even encourage) bad driving habits?

          1. And you don’t see those features as things which enable (or even encourage) bad driving habits?

            No, I don’t. Do you see an automatic transmission as a feature to enable (or even encourage) bad driving habits? All of these features just make the task of driving (or the more general task of transportation, in the case of self-driving cars) easier. Yes, they can create something of a dependency, but since the trend has been/will be for these features to become more & more commonplace, thus increasingly easy to satisfy the dependency, and so a dependency is not a problem. I know several people who really can’t drive w/ a manual transmission. I myself won’t buy a car w/ one (although I do know how to drive w/ one).

            Personally I’m looking forward to when I can get a self-driving car – not because I think “most people are incompetent,” but mostly because I’m lazy & drive for necessity, not enjoyment. I do also think that (at least eventually, & continually increasingly) self-driving cars will be safer (obviously not perfectly safe) in most situations; that’s just not the biggest selling point for me.

            However, none of the above leads to the conclusion that we should outlaw cars w/ manual transmissions, or cars w/out computer-assist features, or non-self-driving cars. Those people I know who can’t drive cars w/ manual transmission just don’t. Those people I know who can (& want to) just do. We don’t need laws to dictate common sense.

            And I also think guns w/ computer-assist features are just as awesome as cars w/ computer-assist features.

          2. Clearly you all are mouth-breathing right-wing troglodytes so steeped in car culture you’re willing to bathe in the very lifeblood of children so you can indulge in your foul fetish. Why the eminent and respected organization Everyclown for Road Safety has compiled statistics proving that many thousands of people are killed or crippled by those vehicles of death every single day. Anyone who says different is clearly in the pocket of the Auto Club, or watches Fox news, or both.

            Nobody should be allowed to have a car! Except government, for ambulances and firetrucks and stuff, because they’re all responsible and expert drivers or they wouldn’t work for the government. duh! Cars in the hands of private citizens means blood in the streets! A horse and buggy is all anyone needs. Nobody needs to travel more than 10mph. It’s excessive, absurd, and unsafe. For women and children especially.

            You all should be ashamed of yourselves. Did I mention the threat to the children?

      2. There was an anime about computer-controlled cars taking over all transport (even for police and fire department?!) in cities. But sometimes a car would go haywire and it took a team driving manually-controlled cars to chase it down and disable it with some special device.

        I think it was more of an excuse for the creator of the series to draw cute girls driving sports cars, but once again I wonder if someone saw that series and thought of it as a manual.

        Edit: It’s called eX-Driver.

    4. There’s the additional problem that any such mandatory training would inevitably be used as a defacto gun ban (and likely extortion scheme) by the usual suspects. “Sure you can exercise that fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. You just need to complete this course. It’s only 1000 hours. And the instructor’s fee is $50 an hour. By the way, there are only two licensed instructors in the state — my son Gabby McGrabber and my cousin Pearl Clutcher (they’re both really backed up, btw, the waiting list is out to 2 years now, so you’d better sign up fast). Then you just have to pass a 72-page test on everything from the chemical composition of gunpowder to the price of tea in China … scoring 100%. Then you’ll be good to go. At least until next year, when you have to re-certify.”

      See also “poll literacy tests”

      1. Like most gun control proposals, it would be unfair to poor people. But let’s be honest. Leftists see that as a feature, not a bug.

        1. I can’t speak for “leftists”, but personally, I would focus more on exams than the courses themselves. If a person wants to own a gun, then, IMO, he should demonstrate that he knows how to safely carry it; store it; and of course use it to actually hit something he’s aiming at (and also, to refrain from using the gun unless absolutely necessary). Taking a training course is obviously one of the easiest ways to achieve that, but there’s no point in taking the course unless you a). actually pass, and b). actually studied relevant things (unlike the history of gunpowder or whatever). Such tests obviously would not be free, but they should not be too onerously expensive, either (and besides, if they are tax-funded, then they’d be unfair to the rich more than to the poor).

          I think this may be a cultural difference between the state where you live, and my state. In my state, every time I go out to a gun range, I see people who are clearly hearing the basic safety lecture (“never point your gun at anything you don’t want to kill”, “always empty the chamber”, etc.) for the first time. In every group, there’s at least one person who immediately starts pointing a potentially loaded gun at living things, and needs to be intercepted by the instructor. I imagine that in places like Texas, things may be different, but of course I could be wrong.

          1. In my state, every time I go out to a gun range, I see people who are clearly hearing the basic safety lecture …. for the first time

            So? Everyone has to learn the basics sometime, and it’s always good for those who know to have a refresher. (Have you tried going to the range when the beginners classes are not going on?)

            That’s the thing about teaching people to have skills: the skills have to be taught, and everyone that you teach is going to pick the skills up at a different rate.

            Those who have been taught a skill at a young age will necessarily have more competence than those of a similar age who are just starting out.

            Taking a training course is obviously one of the easiest ways to achieve that, but there’s no point in taking the course unless you a). actually pass

            “There’s no point in trying unless you know you will succeed”? Seriously? How stunningly defeatist.

      2. To be fair, I am approaching this issue from the strictly practical point of view. That is to say, I don’t think there’s anything special about the Constitution, other than the fact that it (for the most part) had stood the test of time. There are some good ideas in there, and maybe some bad ones, like the Prohibition for example (which was later repealed, so the system clearly works).

        So, for example, I’m a huge fan of the First Amendment, but only because I think it’s a great idea, not merely because it happens to be the first one on the list or anything like that.

        1. And this is where you part ways from the rest of us. There is most definitely something special about the Constitution. You don’t get to pick and choose the bits you want to obey and ignore the rest. And from a practical point of view, you’re still wrong. The right to bear the means to defend ourselves against any threat is not given by the Constitution, but recognized as preexisting by it, and the government is enjoined from abridging that right. It’s not even remotely vague or questionable.

          1. > You don’t get to pick and choose the bits you want to obey and ignore the rest…

            Well, obviously. You should, generally speaking, obey the law of the land even if you disagree with it. But, we are speaking explicitly about changing laws here, so I don’t see the problem.

            > The right to bear the means to defend ourselves against any threat is not given by the Constitution, but recognized as preexisting by it, and the government is enjoined from abridging that right.

            Yes, broadly speaking you are correct, but as I said before — from my point of view, the Constitution is just a set of laws, there’s nothing magical about it (again, other than the fact that it stood the test of time, which is actually pretty important). That said, the Constitution is being interpreted all the time, as it runs up against real-world situations.

            For example, I am a big fan of the freedom of speech, but even so, I think that if someone (hypothetically) live-tweets our troop movements to ISIS, then this specific form of speech should not be free. You are obviously in favor of the Second Amendment, but presumably you would draw the line somewhere, even if it’s only at nukes.

            So, I don’t think our disagreement is a matter of principle, but merely a matter of degree.

          2. And again you’re wrong. Our disagreement is most definitely a matter of principle. Your position on the Constitution is both untenable and distasteful to most of us here, I’m sure.

          3. I think that if someone (hypothetically) live-tweets our troop movements to ISIS, then this specific form of speech should not be free.

            It might surprise you to learn that over the 200+ years since the 1st Amendment was promulgated there’s been considerable jurisprudence addressed to determining what forms of speech are not protected by it. The lawblog Popehat has a very good overview here.

            ‘Speech’ is also not analogous to ‘keeping and bearing arms.’ The former is an action affecting one or more others (except in instances of ranting at the bathroom mirror, I suppose), the latter is not. As Synova and others have explained to that nobody idiot, this is an important distinction.

          4. (my previous comment was addressed to David MacKinnon, sorry, I did not realize that threading depth was limited)
            @Achillea:
            > It might surprise you to learn that over the 200+ years since the 1st Amendment was promulgated there’s been considerable jurisprudence addressed to determining what forms of speech are not protected by it.

            Not at all, I actually had that article bookmarked. This was kind of my entire point. I agree with your statement here, and with that article; and it seems like both of us disagree with Doug Loss, above.

            > ‘Speech’ is also not analogous to ‘keeping and bearing arms.’
            Agreed, I did not mean to imply that they are the same; but rather that the process we use for interpreting and implementing the First and Second amendments is the same (though obviously the interpretations could be very different).

          5. This was kind of my entire point. I agree with your statement here, and with that article; and it seems like both of us disagree with Doug Loss, above.

            I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that I disagree with Doug Loss, or on what point. He’s indicated that the Constitution is special on more than just a ‘practical’ level, and that’s correct. It’s also special on a moral level as well as on a morale level. You, on the other hand, appear to be of the opinion that it’s basically nothing more than a piece of paper with some possibly-useful ideas written on it. If you have any grasp of the principle involved, I’ve yet to see you articulate it. I would have chosen ‘shallow’ over ‘untenable and distasteful,’ but those are viable adjectives, too.

            Agreed, I did not mean to imply that they are the same; but rather that the process we use for interpreting and implementing the First and Second amendments is the same

            If by process you mean ‘judicial review,’ in the most general sense then yes, though even there the distinction of ‘effect/harm’ comes into play. Otherwise it’s not even apples and oranges, it’s apples and pet rocks.

          6. There’s a historical sense in which the Constitution is merely “a piece of paper with some possibly-useful ideas written n it.” Of course, the “possibly useful ideas” are an operating manual for Natural Right; violating those ideas is generally about as smart as building a four-lane mile-long bridge out of caramel taffy, and it’s also the main expression of the social contract that holds this country together.. But, if you want to drive across the river on caramel taffy, be my guest. There are any number of Third World countries where you can attempt the crossing. I’d rather we not try it here, though.

          7. “From my point of view, the Constitution is just a set of laws, there’s nothing magical about it ”

            Ever hear the old saw that;
            “The enemy gets a vote”?

            You may dismiss the Constitution of the United States of America as you may, however, there are ALOT of people of whom were willing to die, or what might be more important to you, to kill to protect. I’d suggest you take care of whom you so casually discount from the equation. Your opinion is not as valuable as you suppose.

            You might run afoul of another old saw ;
            “Don’t write a check with your mouth that your ass can’t cash”.

          8. I’m not entirely sure what you are driving at, here. You seem to be saying that, by calling the Constitution “just a set of laws”, I am somehow dismissing it — but why ? Laws are important. People have indeed sacrificed their lives to defend their laws. In many ways, our laws are the foundation of our society, and our very way of life.

            That said, laws are not immutable, nor are they some sort of a dictates imposed upon us by some outside force. Despite the name, they are not even laws of nature. Instead, they are rules that we, as a people, broadly agree to abide by (*). New laws get passed all the time, and even the Second Amendment is just that — an amendment, to a document that was originally written by a bunch of (admittedly, very smart) humans.

            I have a feeling that you might disagree with something I’ve said above; but if so, can you tell my what precisely you disagree with, and why you disagree with it ? I appreciate that something I’ve said may make you angry, but “I’m angry, grr !” is not a very convincing argument.

            (*) Well, here in the US, at least; in places like Saudi Arabia, the people don’t get a meaningful vote. I like our way better.

          9. Ah, I see where you (intentionally?) missed the point.
            It is not you dismissing the Constitution as a set of laws (which it most certainly is not), it is your, classically liberal, dismissal of what an other finds value in. I guess that one way street of Liberal tolerance can be hampering.

            The Constitution enumerates Rights (note the capitalization of the word, its a noun), not laws. Laws are easily mutable from day to day mood swings by the easily offended. Rights are Immutable. Hence, my opinion on the rather worthlessness of your own opinion of the Constitution.

            Additionally, where you ignorantly state; ” Despite the name, they are not even laws of nature. Instead, they are rules that we, as a people, broadly agree to abide by” The Constitution does not bind individual Americans to some arbitrary “agreement” among ourselves as if they were proper etiquette at a Progressive kool-aid sipping party.
            The Rights in the Constitution, in fact, bind the GOVERNMENT in what it allowed to do, and what its is NOT. “Shall not infringe” makes its pesky way into the whole ban the bad, bad,scary, hatey hate guns debate at this point. Like it or not.

            Yes, I know. To a Liberal that worships at the alter of Big Government, the thought of limiting your deity in any way is blasphemous. Too bad.

            Kudos on the; ” I appreciate that something I’ve said may make you angry, but “I’m angry, grr !” is not a very convincing argument.” tactic. Its almost like that was part of an internet arguing check list………. (That sound you hear is the regulars of this blog giggling at you in your ignorance)

            And finally, wandering clueless around “The enemy gets a vote” saying is both revealing and entertainingly enlightening of your mass obtuseness.
            ” places like Saudi Arabia, the people don’t get a meaningful vote”….Man, that’s just too funny. Dare I ask you if you have Prince Albert in a can?

          10. @David MacKinnon:
            Once again, I can only speak regarding my own beliefs, not regarding the beliefs of “Liberals”. If you have issues with stuff they say, you should take it up with them. That said, you do bring up several meaningful points of disagreement:

            > It is not you dismissing the Constitution as a set of laws (which it most certainly is not) …The Constitution enumerates Rights (note the capitalization of the word, its a noun), not laws. Laws are easily mutable from day to day mood swings by the easily offended. Rights are Immutable.

            I wish it were so, but sadly, that’s not how rights work. For example, I think both you and I would agree that people have a right to live (barring certain exceptions, such as soldiers in a war, criminals shot in self-defence, etc.). However, if I were to fall of a cliff, gravity would not respect this right. It will kill me. Similarly, if some unscrupulous person decided to murder me, he could very easily violate this right, unless someone (perhaps even me) stopped him. You say:

            > The Constitution does not bind individual Americans to some arbitrary “agreement” among ourselves as if they were proper etiquette at a Progressive kool-aid sipping party. The Rights in the Constitution, in fact, bind the GOVERNMENT …

            But the GOVERNMENT is not some eldritch entity, it’s just a collection of people. When the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, etc.”, it does not mean, “prohibiting the freedom of speech is physically impossible”. Clearly, it’s possible. Instead, it says, “We make a solemn vow never to abridge the freedom of speech, religion, etc.” Simiarly, when it says, “…the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within … is hereby prohibited”, what it means is, “we will punish anyone who is selling or transporting alcohol”.

            The “we” in these statements refers to those people whose job it is to run the government. It is not a force of nature or a magic spell; it’s just something that people voted on. In other countries, people voted on different things, or maybe they did not get to vote at all. In our own country, people later voted to repeal something that their predecessors agreed on (e.g. 21st vs 18th Amendments).

            Believe it or not, I actually do prefer this process of organizing societies (also known as “Democracy”) to all of the alternatives. Historically speaking, other approaches to the problem — such as Theocracy, Monarchy, Anarchy, etc. — don’t have as good of a track record.

          11. Okay Bug, you’ve noticed that the supposedly “inalienable” rights are, in fact, quite alienable, by both nature and man. So the logical conclusion of that line of thinking is that your rights extend only so far as you, or another acting in your stead, are willing and able to defend them. But to defend your rights against the depredations of those who would strip them from you, you must needs be armed, agreed?

            Surely then, you can see that any attempt to remove or even reduce my right to bear arms is an attempt to remove or reduce my ability to defend my rights from further infringement. Thus, the only reasonable interpretation of such an initiative is as the first step in an attempt to eventually strip me of all my rights. Once i lose the right to bear arms, by default, i now have no rights at all, since i have no way to defend them. Agree or disagree?

            You also note that *The Government* is not some eldritch entity but rather comprised of people. Would these be the same people you previously indicated were stupid and irresponsible and thus could not be trusted with even the minor power to defend their own rights? Yet you seem to trust them with the much greater power to defend, or revoke, should they so choose, everybody’s rights. Please explain.

          12. Thank you Sjonnar.
            Buggsy brings to mind ol’ Benny Franklin’s quote that; “Those who trade their liberty for security will not receive, nor deserve, either”. (kinda sorta to paraphrase this late at night)
            Guy refuses to Grok that there is a difference between a Right and a Law. Someone else can spare me from pounding my noggin against this impregnable wall of stupid. I’m for bed!

          13. @Sjonnar:
            > So the logical conclusion of that line of thinking is that your rights extend only so far as you, or another acting in your stead, are willing and able to defend them.

            Yes, I think this is a great way to put this statement, you said it better than I could. However, I somewhat disagree with your next paragraph:

            > Surely then, you can see that any attempt to remove or even reduce my right to bear arms is an attempt to remove or reduce my ability to defend my rights from further infringement…

            I could be wrong, but here you seem to be implying that every person is solely and personally responsible for defending his own rights (and if that’s not you’re saying, I apologize). However, I would argue that this model is unsustainable for large groups of people.

            Instead of each of us doing our own thing, we humans have chosen to create communities; and communities involve compromise. For example, while it is your right to enjoy any kind of music you want, maybe you’d agree to stop playing your death metal music at full volume at 3am. In exchange, I will agree to stop breeding hornets in my back yard (being a seasoned apiarist, I am immune to their stings). Each of us give up something we want in exchange for mutual protection, sharing of resources, and expertise. So, if you are an experienced plumber, then when my pipes break, I don’t need to fix them myself — I can just hire you. Meanwhile, when you need a new piece of software, you may hire me instead of learning how to program yourself. Now, you spend most of your time plumbing, and I spend most of my time programming, and we’re both happier and wealthier for it.

            Similarly, when someone is breaking the rules we have all mutually agreed upon (no loud music at 3am, no deadly hornets, no stealing stuff), we don’t need to find the perpetrator and shoot him down ourselves; we can hire a professional to do that for us. This brings me to my next point:

            >You also note that *The Government* is not some eldritch entity but rather comprised of people. Would these be the same people you previously indicated were stupid and irresponsible and thus could not be trusted with even the minor power to defend their own rights?

            Not quite, because “The Government” is just a name we give to the people whom we hire to manage our country, arbitrate our disputes, and to protect our rights. While you have spent a lot of time learning plumbing, and I have spent a lot of time learning how to program, a certain subset of people (the police) have instead specialized in enforcing our mutually agreed upon rights; and another group (the military) has learned to outright kill people who are not members of our little club and want to kill us . These people do not merely have a passing familiarity with guns — they dedicate a large portion of their lives to firearms training (along with other military hardware).

          14. >I could be wrong, but here you seem to be implying that every person is solely and personally responsible for defending his own rights.

            You are quite correct. If you choose not to, that is your right, however, unless someone else defends them for you, you now have no rights.

            Example: Whilst walking down the street, you are accosted by a man with a knife, who expresses his intent to kill you and rape your corpse. Why? Who knows, maybe he’s high, or maybe he’s a serial killer. Either way, he has a knife, the ability to use it, and has expressed intent to do so.

            Now, if you’re a responsible free citizen who has accepted his right to bear arms in defense of his other rights, including his right to life, you can legally shoot the maniac. He’s dead, you’re safe, game over.

            If instead, you have surrendered your right to bear arms, either of your own free will or because your government made you, you’re defenseless. You can holler for help, and hope someone arrives to defend you before the villain guts you in the street. Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t. If they too have been forcibly disarmed by their own government, they’re probably in no better shape to defend you than you are, in which case, you die. So much for your so-called “right” to live, huh?

          15. Actually, i feel the need to go further here, because your ridiculous fallacy about death metal and hornets has well and truly pissed me off. Surrendering one’s right to bear arms in defense of one’s rights is not at all comparable to agreeing to not play music at 3AM in exchange for not being set upon by bees.

            First, because i don’t have to agree to a goddamn thing in exchange for not being attacked by bees. If you attack me with bees, i’ll sue you for damages and press criminal charges for assault.

            Second, to surrender the defense of your rights to a third party is to allow that third party to decide whether or not you have rights. After all, if they decide you don’t, what are you gonna do about it? A man whose rights are entirely dependent on some third party’s good will is called a SLAVE.

            I will not be a slave, Bugmaster. Not because you really, really want me to. Not because you think it’s only reasonable that i should. Not even because you’re afraid of me having the power to defend my own rights.
            Fuck off, you despicable little leftist shitbag.

          16. Seems I’m not the only one at wits end with the half-wit.

            Sjonnar, valiant attempt but you just can’t win an argument with a troll. They are immune to logic, truth and honesty. You are also not alone, so don’t get sucked sucked up in the “inevitable” conclusions they draw.

          17. I know. And i understand that i probably gave him exactly what he wanted when i lost my cool. But i (foolishly, perhaps?) didn’t accept? acknowledge? that he was just a troll until i got to the “death metal and bees” argument.
            Hell, he’s probably Clamps.

          18. Nah. He’s more coherent than Clamps. Besides, he didn’t bitch about Vox Day.

          19. “The Government” is just a name we give to the people whom we hire to manage our country, arbitrate our disputes, and to protect our rights. While you have spent a lot of time learning plumbing, and I have spent a lot of time learning how to program, a certain subset of people (the police) have instead specialized in enforcing our mutually agreed upon rights; and another group (the military) has learned to outright kill people who are not members of our little club and want to kill us . These people do not merely have a passing familiarity with guns — they dedicate a large portion of their lives to firearms training (along with other military hardware).

            So much fail, all in one paragraph. I’ll begin at the beginning.

            We hire the government only to do what managing, arbitrating, and protecting that’s on a scale we can’t do ourselves (and even then there’s a good chance the government will f*ck it up — see the VA, for just one example).

            You mention the police. The police are not there to protect my — or anyone’s — rights. They’re there to enforce the law, which they do only after someone’s rights have been violated. Maybe. If they happen to be able to figure out and arrest whoever did the violating. They’re not even under any obligation to protect your right to life. That is on you, cupcake.

            You mention the military. We ‘hire’ them to protect the country. Yet there are 3,000 people dead in New York at the hands of foreign invaders, which the military utterly failed to stop. And who was it protected the Pentagon itself from the 9/11 hijackers? I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t the military. By your reasoning, the passengers of United 93 should have just said ‘oh, we’re not qualified to do anything, we need to leave it to the professionals?’

            You mention plumbing. If my toilet backs up, I don’t stand there with my thumb up my ass while I wait for Roto-Rooter to fit me into their dispatch schedule, I get to work with the plunger. If a pipe bursts, I use the shutoff wrench, and then I pick up the phone. But you want to say ‘no no no, those are professional tools that only specialists should be allowed to have or use.’ Screw that.

          20. @Achillea:
            > We hire the government only to do what managing, arbitrating, and protecting that’s on a scale we can’t do ourselves

            Yes, I agree. But I would argue that, in a large society, the scope of things that we cannot manage individually is actually pretty large (more on this below).

            > You mention the police. The police are not there to protect my — or anyone’s — rights. They’re there to enforce the law, which they do only after someone’s rights have been violated.

            Here I disagree somewhat, because enforcing the law is a necessary step on the road to protecting people’s rights. The law says that you may not murder me, or steal from me, or raise killer bees that will sting me; but the law by itself is just a piece of paper that a bunch of people signed. They may have had the best intentions in mind when they signed it, but without someone to enforce it, the law is just an empty promise.

            > You mention the military. We ‘hire’ them to protect the country. Yet there are 3,000 people dead in New York at the hands of foreign invaders…

            I never claimed that the people whom we hire to find and kill foreign invaders are somehow perfect. I didn’t even imply that they are very good at their jobs (although I think that the US armed forces are better than those of many other nations). But that’s a minor point, the major one is this:

            > By your reasoning, the passengers of United 93 should have just said ‘oh, we’re not qualified to do anything, we need to leave it to the professionals? … You mention plumbing. If my toilet backs up, I don’t stand there with my thumb up my ass while I wait for Roto-Rooter to fit me into their dispatch schedule, I get to work with the plunger.

            You seem to be conflating the statements: a). “access to guns should be reserved to people who have demonstrated to be competent at using them, and some of those people are police and soldiers”, vs. b). “only police and soldiers should be allowed to use guns”. I would agree with (a) and disagree with (b). I would further argue that, without a police force and a military, we would be really screwed. There’s simply no way a bunch of hobbyists can effectively fight in WW2, nor in any modern war, just to name one example. You can’t learn to pilot an aircraft carrier on a weekend.

            Furthermore, while I would absolutely support your right to fix your own plumbing, I would oppose your right to mess with my plumbing (or to dig up the street), unless I could be assured that you really knew what you were doing. And guns are devices that are explicitly designed to mess with other people’s plumbing (so to speak).

          21. You say:

            “> You mention the police. The police are not there to protect my — or anyone’s — rights. They’re there to enforce the law, which they do only after someone’s rights have been violated.

            “Here I disagree somewhat, because enforcing the law is a necessary step on the road to protecting people’s rights. The law says that you may not murder me, or steal from me, or raise killer bees that will sting me; but the law by itself is just a piece of paper that a bunch of people signed. They may have had the best intentions in mind when they signed it, but without someone to enforce it, the law is just an empty promise. ”

            You don’t seem to realize that you’re giving the best possible argument for the absolute necessity for the populace to be armed. Enforcing the law means that when someone commits a criminal act, they are punished for doing so. It doesn’t mean preventing those acts; enforcing the law doesn’t do that. What does prevent those acts is the active and forceful resistance of the intended victims.

            As to “a bunch of hobbyists” (you don’t seem to realize that a very large number of those “hobbyists are experienced military veterans) not being able to fight a modern war, I give you the current Middle East. Our “hobbyists” are much more experienced and capable than any of the forces involved there. As to your aircraft carrier red herring, look up the term “assymetrical warfare” sometime.

          22. > We hire the government only to do what managing, arbitrating, and protecting that’s on a scale we can’t do ourselves

            Yes, I agree. But I would argue that, in a large society, the scope of things that we cannot manage individually is actually pretty large (more on this below).

            Of course you would argue that (or you would try, anyway, you’re failing completely so far). You are, however, incorrect. The scope of things we cannot manage individually and/or cannot manage without the government is really very, very small. Many of the things the government ‘manages’ it is not necessary for, has no business being involved in, and handles very badly.

            > You mention the police. The police are not there to protect my — or anyone’s — rights. They’re there to enforce the law, which they do only after someone’s rights have been violated.

            Here I disagree somewhat, because enforcing the law is a necessary step on the road to protecting people’s rights.

            And here you are wrong again. Enforcing the law is just that — enforcing the law. Most of the laws on the books have nothing whatsoever to so with protecting rights, they’re there to acquire revenue for the government and/or better enable the government to exert control over the population. In the case of laws that actually do criminalize violating one or more of someone else’s rights, their (effective) enforcement by the police is generally helpful in the protection of those rights, but it is not necessary. Had you been armed and shot the guy who disemboweled you and sodomized your mutilated corpse, the cops would have been completely irrelevant to securing your right to life. Instead, you’re lying there dead in a pool of your own blood and he’s moved on to his next victim.

            The law says that you may not murder me, or steal from me, or raise killer bees that will sting me; but the law by itself is just a piece of paper that a bunch of people signed. They may have had the best intentions in mind when they signed it, but without someone to enforce it, the law is just an empty promise.

            Exactly. You do realize you just blew your own argument out of the water, yes? Unless you’re really, really, really lucky, there’s not going to be a cop there when someone ‘forgets’ to be law-abiding. The only person who’s going to be there to enforce the law that says ‘no murdering!’ when the would-be murderer comes after you is you.

            > You mention the military. We ‘hire’ them to protect the country. Yet there are 3,000 people dead in New York at the hands of foreign invaders…

            I never claimed that the people whom we hire to find and kill foreign invaders are somehow perfect. I didn’t even imply that they are very good at their jobs (although I think that the US armed forces are better than those of many other nations).

            Finally, you get something right. At least partially. Our armed forces are very damned good, but they are not perfect. What you continue to fail to grasp, though, is that protecting the country is not a role exclusive to them any more than protecting our rights is a role exclusive to the police.

            But that’s a minor point, the major one is this:

            > By your reasoning, the passengers of United 93 should have just said ‘oh, we’re not qualified to do anything, we need to leave it to the professionals? … You mention plumbing. If my toilet backs up, I don’t stand there with my thumb up my ass while I wait for Roto-Rooter to fit me into their dispatch schedule, I get to work with the plunger.

            You seem to be conflating the statements: a). “access to guns should be reserved to people who have demonstrated to be competent at using them, and some of those people are police and soldiers”, vs. b). “only police and soldiers should be allowed to use guns”. I would agree with (a) and disagree with (b). I would further argue that, without a police force and a military, we would be really screwed. There’s simply no way a bunch of hobbyists can effectively fight in WW2, nor in any modern war, just to name one example. You can’t learn to pilot an aircraft carrier on a weekend.

            And back you go to your fail like a dog to its vomit. *sigh*

            1) The correct answer is c) access to guns should be available to anyone who has not been proven to be incompetent or violently criminally inclined.

            2) Please show me where I have — or anyone here has — said we should do away with the police and/or military. What you continue to fail to grasp is that a) they are not always sufficient to the task and b) sometimes they’re not even applied to the task.

            3) A bunch of ‘hobbyists’ did fight in WWII, and damned effectively, too. There’s a bunch of ‘hobbyists’ sawing off heads and setting people on fire in the Middle East even now, and they’re being fought by another bunch of ‘hobbyists’ because the ‘professional military’ turned tail and ran.

            4) How the ever-loving f*ck did we go from firearms to aircraft carriers? Seriously? Are you on drugs or something?

            Furthermore, while I would absolutely support your right to fix your own plumbing, I would oppose your right to mess with my plumbing (or to dig up the street), unless I could be assured that you really knew what you were doing.

            And that’s why laws against committing a crime with a gun is (correctly) against the law, but owning a gun is (again, correctly) Constitutionally protected. You are in no more danger from my Dan Wesson than you are from my pipe wrench. Unless of course you start swinging a hornet’s nest at me, in which case I’m taking you down with whichever happens to be closest.

            And guns are devices that are explicitly designed to mess with other people’s plumbing (so to speak).

            My guns are explicitly designed to mess with the plumbing of anyone trying to mess with my plumbing. But your plumbing has a K-Bar sticking out of it because you didn’t have one. Sucks to be you. I’ll take up collection to have a representation of the USS Ronald Reagan carved on your tombstone.

          23. And the “failure” on 9/11 was not the military’s failure. Rather it was a failure of 8 years of Bill Clinton to put effectively dealing with threats to the United states ahead of getting his rocks off in the Oval Office. The military is no more effective than the civilian leadership (including a Congress who hamstrings them through unrealistic ROE) allows them to be.

          24. The scope of things we cannot manage individually and/or cannot manage without the government is really very, very small.

            “It has been said that society has grown too complex for self rule. Well, if none of us has the capacity to govern himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” Ronald Reagan

            True words.

          25. Government are we talking of the public Service or the people you vote for to exercise the power vested in the people as a proxy?

          26. Similarly, when someone is breaking the rules we have all mutually agreed upon (no loud music at 3am, no deadly hornets, no stealing stuff), we don’t need to find the perpetrator and shoot him down ourselves; we can hire a professional to do that for us.

            (Just back from LibertyCon so a a bit late coming to this.)

            I actually discuss this in Part 2 “Liberty” of my three essays on Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.

            http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2014/04/life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-happiness.html

            One of the issues is that being able to get on my roof with a rifle and defend my neighborhood from barbarians (imported or home grown, actual invasion or “riots”) is in keeping with Liberty. Having to spend all my time up there because that’s the only way to keep the barbarians now isn’t.

            So we gather together, pool resources, and hire people to keep the barbarians pruned down so we can go about our lives most of the time without having to worry about them. (“To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men” describes it well.)

            However, there’s a catch. History has shown that the very people we hire to keep the barbarians at bay frequently (frequently enough that those that haven’t are more a case of “haven’t yet) become threats to the people’s liberty in and of themselves. Thus, in order to defend against that threat, the ultimate power must remain in the hands of the people so that they can, at need, counter or even replace, those people they hired to secure their liberty.

            I need to be able to get up on that rooftop (metaphorically speaking, although it could well be literal) to defend against threats to my liberty. If I can’t then my liberty is dependent on the attitudes of the supposed gardians of it, which attitudes I cannot guarantee.

          27. Bugmaster, You may wish to refer to https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf with regards to free speach and its limitations and for an understanding as to how the supreme court has approached the matter. The document is full referenced if you wish to explore the subject further.

            That aside, when it comes to the scope of the Second Amendment and to the degree of its scope. One must not forget the real world, at what point would a business or an individual have the means to obtain via purchase, gratis or manufacture the rather excessive examples of arms.

            In successful states currently in existence, I find it difficult to imagine the acceptability amongst its communities to welcome such things. There is rather a big divide between a weapon wielded by a person that can be used against a person and that which engages machines and large numbers of people by locality. A heavy machine gun for example would potentially be the extreme upper limit of a such a weapon.

            Would anti tank weaponry in the form of guns and guided missiles be welcome. Clearly not weapon for defeating a person, same goes for anti aircraft, do I needlessly need to waste electrons on nuclear devices.

            Communities seen rather capable at recognizing arms with the purpose of war. And most decent people in my own experience who support the right to bear arms, come to draw the line at weapons and machines of war. Though confusion is dominant at any discussion of weapons at the scale of knife to aforementioned heavy machine gun.

            While the scope of the constitution may of been unlimited in reference to type of arms, there is a definite cliff in the scope by modern acceptability standards. That which the risk, purpose, utility, use case of some weapons places their availability in a time and a place outside of civic life. And consensus being what it is, the arguments at all points rages on, and in that degrees of something aren’t to be so easily dismissed as they are material, be it a weapon or any of the points of the views outlined in my post or others.

          28. The right to bear the means to defend ourselves against any threat is not given by the Constitution, but recognized as preexisting by it, and the government is enjoined from abridging that right. It’s not even remotely vague or questionable.

            The right to bear arms follows inescapably from the right to life (and, please, I’m not talking about any debates over where exactly life begins or ends but “right to life” as listed in the Declaration of Independence). To deny the right to keep and bear arms is to deny the right to life itself:

            http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2014/04/life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-happiness.html

            Likewise, the right to bear arms follows from the right to liberty. To deny RKBA is to deny the right to liberty:

            http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2014/04/life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-happiness_4.html

            And, just to round out the trifecta there’s the right to pursuit of happiness:

            http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2014/04/life-liberty-and-pursuit-of-happiness_5.html

            Governments don’t grant these rights. They are formed to secure them. It is to that end that their just powers extend. No government can take these rights from you. If a government denies you exercise of them it isn’t taking the rights. It is merely infringing them and is wrong to do so. Doesn’t matter how many people get together to agree to do it. It’s still wrong.

            This is what “unalienable” means.

          29. “You don’t get to pick and choose the bits you want to obey and ignore the rest.”

            Why not? The Obamination does it all the time! {frown}

    5. According to this, since most people are incompetent, then I should have no problem dispatching them in self defense under my 2nd amendment rights.

  13. Not to worry, it appears instead of enacting knee-jerk gun control, it’s knee-jerk shunning of the Confederate battle flag which is in fashion this time. I’m sure this will prevent similar shootings of this kind.

    1. The little piece of filth also burned the U.S. flag. Any bets that the left will suddenly want to ban that now?

    2. “I know my pulse quickens when I see the hammer&sickle-4, symbol of the Fourth International, because of all that it means in history and in defiance and in hope. I know that I clench my teeth on seeing the Confederate flag because of all that it means in violent, organized opposition to freedom.” – Steven Brust

      1. …which is one of the reasons I don’t buy his books anymore. If Steve Brust wants to raise his pulse rate, he can do so without my hard-earned capitalistic dollar.

        1. I figure selling my Brust books to a used bookstore will get me some pin money, cut a tiny bit into his back sales, and clear space on my shelves for more Bujold and Butcher. Win-win-win.

      2. OK, anybody want to do a comparison and contrast between all the people killed and enslaved by Communism, and all the people killed and enslaved by the Confederacy? Because the Commies are ahead by a minimum of several orders of magnitude, even if you cheat and run the numbers for the Confederate states all the way back to the 1700s.

        But Che t-shirts are OK with the trendy Left, along with burning the American flag and sinking crucifixes in urine at taxpayer expense.

        I’m just wondering what symbols of American culture will be the next to get banned; I hear there’s already a movement afoot to ban “Gone With The Wind.” (Which was the first movie to garner an African-American an Oscar, but never mind.)

        These people are like the goddam Taliban or ISIS, if not Pol Pot supporters: Everything that disagrees with their worldview must be destroyed, and history begins at the moment Dear Leader ascended to power; all else is illusion and dross.

        1. Plus, the American slave system was actually more humane than the Soviet one, because slaves were private property (and hence the owners had an interest in keeping them alive and healthy). In the Soviet system, they were state property (and hence disposable). Of course, Brust probably doesn’t get that the system he’s admiring was a system of slavery.

        2. I have a book somewhere titled “The Black Book of Communism”. It made me so sad I never made it out of the Soviet Union chapters. And it is also alarming to see all these ideas being tossed around in our government in their previous Soviet forms.

          But I don’t see what this has to do with the Confederate flag.

    3. FWIW, I personally don’t see the point of raising the Confederate flag; isn’t that like saying, “I support the losing side, woo” ? On the other hand, people should be able to display whatever kinds of flags they want; banning the display of the Confederate flag is clearly a rights violation. A flag is not a gun, you can’t kill someone with it… er… well I’m sure you could, if you tried hard enough, but there’s nothing about the Confederate flag that makes it especially murderrific 🙂

      1. I’m not a southerner (unless you count Southern California), but my impression isn’t that it’s saying ‘I support the losing side,’ it’s saying ‘my side lost, but I’m proud to be on it.’ I don’t know if you care about anything enough to fight for it (maybe that’s too ‘impractical’ for you), but people who do, if they lose, don’t just shrug and say ‘oh well whatever.’

        1. It is the exact sentiment as Captain Mal: “May have been the losing side. Not convinced it was the wrong one.”

          It only becomes the wrong one if you buy the argument that most Southerners fought for slavery. Not by my research.

        2. Fair enough, but the Civil War ended in 1865. Anyone who actually fought in that war is surely dead by now. I would fight for what I believe in, sure, if it was necessary; but this is not the same thing as venerating the flag of a faction that my grandfather fought for, and which ceased to exist before I was even born.

          As for that whole slavery thing… well… like it or not, that was the major issue that the Civil War was fought over, and the Confederate flag is very strongly related to that. By analogy, I think that Russian peasants in 1917 maybe had some legitimate grievances, but if you fly the hammer-and-sickle flag, those legitimate grievances are not going to be the first thing that pops into people’s minds.

          So yeah, I do think that flying the Confederate flag is silly at best, disrespectful at worst. I also think that people should be free to act as silly and as disrespectful as they like. If my neighbour on the right flew the Confederate flag, and my neighbour on the left flew the Soviet flag, I wouldn’t like it, but I would fully support their right to do that.

          1. I agree the flag represents the only country in the world to ever specifically contrast itself against other countries as first and foremost a slaveholding nation. It’s also pretty clear that since the late ’70s a lot of folks have used the flag in a pop culture or militarily historic sense divorced from slavery. I can’t read minds and I see no reason to go straight to racism when I see someone use that flag today although many obviously do use it in that sense – but who? If you can have Melissa Harris-Perry on TV and give N. K. Jemisin 4 Nebula nods then you can keep the flag.

    4. I’m sure that someone willing to commit the mass murder of inoffensive strangers will be so awed by the majesty of a law banning “a colorful rag” that he will back down before its might!

      1. Complete side note here. Larry – Like the look of the new site. The email notification sucks. I don’t mind the relative lack of formatting, except that it doesn’t include the person making the reply’s name, or paragraph breaks.

        Also, the link back to the post works in chrome, but not Safari. May need to check into the code on that.

        THAT said…..

        Wasn’t there a time when the argument against censorship was that if you censor it, you drive it underground, but if you don’t , you at least know where the nut jobs are?

  14. I think this may have been the first thing I ever read on your site, because rereading it now, it reads as a familiar thing.

    It needed reposting. Thank you for doing so.

  15. Cribbing from my own blog… wrote this at the beginning of May.

    The most salient fact of the existence of the 2nd Amendment is that it declares all citizens trustworthy adults who the government MAY NOT decide are too untrustworthy to be armed.

    Throughout History, in every culture on every continent, those deemed trustworthy go armed and those deemed untrustworthy are disarmed. Full citizens in one culture after another signify their full citizenship with weapons. The very names of some cultures are those of the weapon that full citizens carried. (ie, Saxons). Subordinate people, serfs and slaves, were disarmed because (and for good reason) letting them have weapons was dangerous to the ruling class. A significant portion of Asian martial arts are directly derived from people learning to fight with things that were not weapons, but mere tools, because the common people were systematically disarmed. The rulers? The rulers always have weapons.

    The primary “message” of the gun control in major US cities is… we do not trust law abiding black adults. This lack of trust is a direct statement that the people subjected are subjected and therefore a threat. Now maybe in other countries people are used to having rulers and a ruling class but we’re not supposed to have rulers here, and our whole society and philosophy, the whole notion of democracy, is that citizens are trustworthy. When we treat the average law abiding guy as a threat… we’ve violated that idea of equality and self-rule in a fundamental and profoundly damaging way.

  16. Thanks for reposting this. I’d looked for it earlier but couldn’t find it (being one of the 12 people in the world who hadn’t yet read it).

    These mass shootings are not what most people think. Rather, they are loud, messy suicides. “I’ll show you! I’ll hurt you as much as you hurt me! You’ll be sorry when I’m gone!” Back when Columbine happened, the only person on all the media who got this was a Canadian priest who works with troubled teens.

    I not only agree with you about CCW’ing willing teachers — I’ve proposed that all existing airline security be done away with, and instead should be fulfilled very simply — give a small discount to anyone with a CCW who travels armed. (No fair bringing just the permit.) That puts several CCWs on every flight at a probable net savings, and makes in-flight shenanigans at best a poor prospect.

  17. All questions of Gun Control Law are, to my mind, very simple. We know, because the debates on the Constitution and bill of right were well documented, that the Second Amendment was written and passed expressly to ensure that the common citizen had easy legal access to military grade weapons. There really is no reputable evidence to the contrary, and people who believe otherwise are willfully avoiding consideration of the facts of the matter.

    Now, this may have been a bad idea. Several such were embodied in the Constitution. Which is why the Constitution has a procedure for amending the Constitution written into it.

    As the Second Amendment stands, all gun control laws SHOULD be unconstitutional. That they have been ruled otherwise, in the face of the evidence and also against the basic understanding of the english used in the Amendment, does nobody concerned any credit. In short, the people who passed those laws were weaseling around the necessity of passing an amendment. They were scofflaws.

    Governments that will not obey their own laws are dangerous. I am a lot more concerned with them than I am with the chances of being targeted by an armed criminal or madman. Unaccountable governments murdered at least a hundred million people in the 20th Century.

    If you want some form of Gun Control law passed, propose a Constitutional Amendment that would allow it. Until you do that, we have nothing to talk about.

    1. Excellently, and succinctly, put. I only wish the anti-2nd amendment nuts were willing to admit when they were and are staggeringly wrong about the issue. Sadly, I suspect they will never admit the truth and cease their deliberately anti-constitutional efforts to do an end-run around the process of amending the Constitution. Why do it legally, when you can piss on the Constitution and be lauded for it without needing a 2/3s majority or a Constitutional Convention? Breaking the law is just *so much* easier! /headdesk.

      1. Ultimately, until the pain resulting from conspiring to deprive us of our civil rights under color of authority is greater than the perceived pleasure of controlling people’s lives, this will continue.

  18. I know I come from a country that the anti gun movement has made it to the ears of every non shooter & politician. This is Australia, where you’re innocent until someone on the other side of the country screws up, and the gun owners country wide pay the price with no politician prepared to listen. It hurts alot to hear all this BS about gun crime over there in the US. Have any of the fence sitters suggested that maybe they should be looking @ why someone would want to kill innocent people and not what tool he used to carry out this act?

    1. http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1152-firearms

      Liberal Democrats support firearms for self defence and ownership by law-abiding citizens. I also like their stance about foreign aid. Also their stance about immigration and easier visitor visas.

      Don’t really agree with the cannabis use though.

      (For the Americans; Liberal Democrats are the closest thing I can see to a libertarian party over here in Australia; more classic Liberal than modern day US Democrat.)

  19. [Long a source of irritation for black supremacists, angry claims of an epidemic of white-on-black crime (often simply referred to as “white crime”) have drifted closer to the mainstream since the controversial shooting in Florida of Trayvon Martin, a young African-American male, by George Zimmerman (who has been described in the media as a white Hispanic). Following the assertions, extremists have repeated their claims that a large number of black victims are being ignored. And now even some mainstream commentators have taken up the issue and have used rhetoric similar to that used by the black supremacists to attack the media for allegedly discounting black victims of crime.]

    *

    That is from a post titled “White Supremacists Use Black-on-White Crime as Propaganda Tool” at the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. All I did was exchange the words “white” and “black.”

    http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/domestic-extremism-terrorism/c/white-supremacists-use.html

    As you can see, using nothing more than actuals facts of how SJWs present interracial crime and the logic of SJWs themselves, they have indicted themselves for racial incitement. Conclusion: SJWs in SFF use White-on-Black Crime as Propaganda Tool.

    That’s no surprise. I have maintained all along middle class SJW useful idiots in SFF are allowing themselves to be used by radical racist and sexist supremacists. What is more obvious than the crying over Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones while scores of men die horrible deaths. It’s the same as white supremacists moaning about the assault of a white woman in a film which takes place in Africa where scores of blacks die. Saying “pussy” is proof of misogyny. Saying “dick” is proof of exactly nothing. SJWs outright lie about interracial murder and pretty much everything else.

    Any neutral observer who looked at the Twitter feeds of the 50 most activist voices in SFF in the last three years would find interracial crime to be close to 100% white-on-black, rather than the truth (in the case of murder) of a more than 2 to 1 ratio of black-on-white. Any journalist can do that research and see the truth for themselves. SJWs are liars, racists and guilty of ginning up racial incitement and hatred against men. Reality is turned completely upside-down.

    SJWs lie in a similar fashion about Gamergate, rape, the history of SFF and the present state of SFF. They do that so they can purposefully or naively drum up support for their stupid anti-white, anti-male crusades.

    1. George Zimmerman (who has been described in the media as a white Hispanic)

      Zimmerman got described in the media as a ‘white Hispanic’ because when they heard his Germanic-sounding name, they thought they finally had the racist Kluker baby-killer they’ve been looking for for years. Then when it turned out he looked like he belonged in a La Raza poster, they had to scramble to come up something in hopes of wiping some of the egg off their faces. And to keep the proverbial rifles of both of their grievance gangs aimed at white people instead of swinging around to point at each other.

  20. This is a culture war and you will never get a day off. You have to stand up and fight or be silent and ruled by these idiots. Slaves don’t own guns nor are they allowed to use them.

    Teachers and students have been beaten by thugs. The only things they have to shield themselves against gun murder sprees are textbooks. I would have a CCW if it were permitted at my gun free school. The attitude of the anti gun nuts is that teachers would cause a bloodbath. I’m a combat vet. I’m trained. I certainly know the devastation that can happen at the barrel of the gun. Yet communities bank on the civility and trust the nature of the thugs over the safety and well being of the teachers and students. Duck and cover? Run and hide? Hope that your students win the lottery and blend in with the dead and dying and get overlooked by the murderer?

    A gun free zone sign is about as useful as the no drug sign at school. Thugs get into the populace and sell their wares at schools. Yet people rely on the caricature of Yosemite Sam shooting his pistols if you bring up the debate. The anti gun nuts do not want a debate, they demand the surrender of your rights. I do not feel a bit guilty in embracing my second amendment right to defend myself.

  21. 2. alcohol has known benefits.

    Since even a gun-grabbing quack like Hemenway admits there are 100,000 cases of defensive gun use (DGU) a year (and that’s lowball estimate, it’s probably several times that), guns have known benefits, too. Moreover, all of alcohol’s benefits (antioxidants, etc.) can be obtained by other means. The benefit of stopping a guy who’s half again your size and coming up the stairs to kill you and your children? You get that from a gun. Period.

    i’m [sic] not necessarily in favor of banning all guns

    Tell you what — you can ban any guns that the government is not allowed to have. Anything else, sod off.

    but i [sic] think it’s not above the pale to talk about it and put it at issue.

    Oh for crying out loud, here we are back at the ‘it’s time for a national discussion about guns’ thing. Try to get it through your thick skull — we have been talking about it. The entire country has been having this discussion over and over and over again for decades. Your problem is that every time we have it, you lose, and you lose because you’re wrong. But you can’t accept that, so every time you get your nose bloodied by reality again, you go running around crying that nobody will listen. We listened just fine. You’re. Just. Wrong.

    Oh and by the way, learn to use the shift key. You type like a kindergartener.

  22. Just out of interest, how do you feel when you or your family travel to Australia or the UK? You can’t carry a gun, but no one around you can carry one either. Do you feel more relaxed by not having to have the responsibility of carrying a weapon? A responsibility you obviously take very seriously. What is your suggestion for those of us from the UK and Australia visiting the U.S.? We are not used to guns (I have friends who have never seen an actual gun, apart from under glass in a museum or display), and we couldn’t buy guns for a short visit (a few days maybe), even if we wanted to. Are you saying that we are unsafe in your country if we are not armed?

    1. Hi. Migrant to Australia here, from the Philippines. I’ve lived in both Germanies, the US, Paris, France, I’ve visited England, Italy, Spain; have lived in Sydney and now live in Townsville, Queensland.

      Out of interest, have you ever been taught how to be street smart? Been taught how to stay aware of your surroundings, if nothing else so you don’t get run over by a bus? Were you taught how to avoid rough looking people, how to not look like an easy victim when walking down the street? How to avoid getting into trouble, and if you end up in trouble, how to get yourself out of it, with your own survival in mind? Or, if you are the adult, how to protect the children, teach them to run and flee? Or, if you find yourself lost, do you have a basic idea of how to get back to your hotel? Try doing it in a place where you don’t speak the language. I have.

      Because, if you haven’t been taught these basic survival skills, it won’t matter where you are, US, Australia, England, Paris, or Mexico, or Hong Kong. Gun or no gun. You’ll be seen as prey.

      I’m small; 143cm tall, female, and frail. I know what it’s like to be viewed as prey. I avoid finding myself in situations where I am prey as much as possible, but in the event I do, I immediately make my body language alert, and become aware of my surroundings, as well as the people around me.

      You don’t need guns to hurt other people; take it from someone who has had to use pencils to stab someone in self defense in one of the areas of Paris now known as a Zones Urbaines Sensibles – the 20th arrondisment. Google it. Take it from someone whose brother came home bleeding from the forehead because someone walking past slashed at his face with a plastic phone card. Knives and weapons are illegal? Pencils and phone cards are not weapons, but can be used as such. I’ve been advised by a former resident of Adelaide that if I find myself in a fight, hope I can get my hands on a trolley pole; it makes for a fantastic impromptu club.

      Said resident of Adelaide also says that I’m very likely to be unsafe in the UK than in Australia. Given that the UK has a higher crime rate than either the US or Australia, both of which still allows self defence (with or without weapons of any kind) as opposed to the UK, there’s probably a lot of truth to that claim, but when I was visiting, we didn’t run into any trouble. This was after the bus bombings there and after the Metro bombings in Paris though, so we still were alert enough to stay safe and still enjoy our visit.

      Funny thing, I rode through LA on the bus through some areas the residents themselves said were pretty rough, but they said ‘if yanno how to keep out of trouble, you don’t get no trouble,’ and that they prefered the bus because ‘then nobody tries to steal your car.’

      So, assuming by your name that you’re female, perhaps you were hoping to use the ‘defenseless female’ argument about ‘oh noes, America is too dangerous to visit, because guns omgz’ – oops. not sorry about ripping up your condescending little straw man.

      Little not defenseless woman who actually has agency and self-responsibility.

      And only can’t reach the top shelf if there’s no stepstair around.

      1. <paraphrase>UK does not allow self defence</paraphrase>

        I’ve heard (just earlier today) that the UK is getting less insane on this, after a lot of public push-back after the recent spate of lawsuits & criminal cases have been in the news. I was glad to hear it, but “less insane” is still faint praise.

      2. So, assuming by your name that you’re female, perhaps you were hoping to use the ‘defenseless female’ argument about ‘oh noes, America is too dangerous to visit, because guns omgz’ – oops. not sorry about ripping up your condescending little straw man.

        “God created Man, but Sam Colt made them equal.”

      3. And only can’t reach the top shelf if there’s no stepstair around.

        You should be ashamed of this badthink. Stepstairs are dangerous. I mean, you might fall off of them, drop them on your foot, suddenly snap and run amok bludgeoning people with it, or some other tragic result of stepstair use by non-professionals. You should always call for someone with a stepstair license (or one of us tall people), instead.

        1. *chuckle*
          My husband helps when he’s around, and when he’s not (say, at work or out field); Aff does that.

          However, if they’re both not home I have to manage somehow.

          And one day, when I’m say, 90+ years old, I’ll be shrinking even more so…

      4. And of course, “her grace” the baroness has declined to respond to you. Maybe she forgot how to breathe, and passed out. It’s been known to happen to certain kinds of brainless idjits. (Bobby Singer is the best!)

        PS: your blog post about the whole Irene Gallo bullpucky was delightful. It made me laugh, cry, giggle, shout “huzzah!” and otherwise embarrass myself. Your father was a badass of the first order! Magnificent. I wish I could’ve met him, but thank you for introducing me to him, if only in written form. God bless you, and yours. 😉

        1. Thanks for those kind words; I’m glad you enjoyed the essay. I hope you read Peter Grant’s open letter too; reading it was one of the things that prompted me to write the essay on my blog.

          God Bless to you and yours as well =)

          1. Heck yes I read his open letter! It resulted in my deciding to bookmark his blog, and take a look at his books, lol. Anyone who can put that much passion and feeling into an open letter, and who has the history he discusses in that letter, is sure to be equally capable of producing eminently readable literature. Maybe not “MHI” or Jake Sullivan level, but that’s sort of an unfair standard, I admit. *chuckle* 🙂

    2. Depends on where you go, I suppose, just like in any other country.

      Most places are perfectly safe, even in the big cities. You’ll hardly ever see anyone visibly armed.

      Just use common sense: don’t flash large wads of cash, be polite, and pay attention to your surroundings.

    3. You are just as unsafe in both the UK or Australia as you are in the Democrat controlled cities of the US. The difference is that the governments there have perfected the mechanisms that keep crime unreported even by the police.

  23. Hello, I’m a foreigner, from another rich country but with strict gun control, and I have been interested for a long time in the desire for many citizens of the USA to own a gun. It is just something that seems weird to me, especially with the never ending mass shootings that seem to happen regularly in your country and constantly make the frontlines in mine. Your essay helped me a bit to understand this, and I thank you for that. No there are a few things I would like to discuss.

    You said that because of the strict gun control existing in England, Norway, Australia, it is a lot easier for a mass shooter to make a lot of victims. That is true. Now you should also look at number of firearm related death per capita for each of these countries. A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that the USA is way above all of these countries. Same thing with India. And just following the news, there are not many mass shootings happening in these country, contrary to the US.

    I currently live in New Zealand, a country where policemen don’t carry firearms. No ‘good guys with guns’ in a large perimeter around me. But I feel considerably safer that when I go (regularly) to the USA to work, where I had to take courses on how to react if a mass shooter arrives in the office. It was really shocking for me, to acknowledge the fact that this is a realistic possibility.

    So safety is not linked to the existence of good guys with guns around you. In my opinion, it is linked to the culture of the country you live in.

    In the USA, the gun culture is extremely developed. I think that it is directly linkable to the high number of firearms victims and mass shootings. The only reasonable way to prevent mass shooting from existing, and not just to reduce the number of casualties as you propose, is to reduce the importance of this culture. Progressively increased gun control would help to do that. Of course it would take a very long time, given how deep rooted this gun culture is.

    Now I understand that it is not desirable by many, that this gun culture is part of who you are. But this culture comes at a safety cost. I don’t say that it is wrong to want to keep this culture alive. But I think it is not wrong also to try to diminish its importance, and ultimately get more safety.

    In short, gun control laws do not aim only at practically preventing mass shootings, but also at reducing the importance of the gun culture in the USA, and thus attacking the roots of mass shooting.

    1. First: Everything you see on American television is designed either to entertain or to spread propaganda. “Even the news?” Yes. Especially the news.

      That means that you cannot trust that what you see on American TV is a) factual, b) truthful, or c) complete.

      Second: We keep guns in order to prevent our government from turning into the kind of banana republic tyranny that can (and does!) commit mass murders, and have its citizens disappeared for any and every reason (or even none at all).

      It’s not “culture”, it’s not “tradition”, it’s not “hunting”.

      It’s self-defense. The ability to defend one’s self, one’s family, one’s hometown from a government that would see them dead.

      Corollary to the second, is that having a professional, standing army is, as far as I know, a practice of dubious constutionality.

      The way it’s supposed to work is that all the citizens are armed and all the men, at least, are part of a local militia that can be called up if there is a need for an army, for example, to fight off the invading army of some other country.

      Again, it’s self-defense. The ability to defend one’s family, hometown, state, and nation from other governments that would see them dead, or ground underfoot as slaves.

      (This, BTW, is why Imperial Japan didn’t want to invade the continental US in WWII: “A gun behind every blade of grass.”)

      The mass shooters you speak of (who are overwhelmingly Marxist and frequently on psychotropic drugs) are abusing the constitutionally-guaranteed right to carry weapons.
      That’s why you have a judicial system and prisons and the death penalty.

      However, the benefits of 1) not needing to fear invasions because everybody else is afraid to invade, and 2) not needing to fear one’s one government, because you can destroy it when it overreaches, far outweigh the disadvantages provided by easy access to weapons.

      1. Corollary to the second, is that having a professional, standing army is, as far as I know, a practice of dubious constutionality.

        I would argue that a professional, standing army would be much less objectionable to the Founding Fathers than the professional politicians we have now. More people need to follow George Washington’s example.

      2. Thank you for your reply.
        I never watched television in the USA, even when I was there.

        Self-defense from a foreign country exerted by citizens instead of professionals sounds weird to me. Why not let the professionals handle it? How can militias deter a foreign well trained and well equipped army? I have to admit I don’t know enough the USA constitution. Then given the huge military spending of the USA, the rest of the world doesn’t stand a chance now! So right now it does not make much sense to have guns against ‘invaders’.

        Self-defense from government is something I never considered, I admit. I never lived in a country where I view the state as a threat, just something you should keep an eye on through elections. It sheds a lot of light on this whole thing, thank you for that!

        1. After the end of WWII, Tojo was asked why the Japanese never tried to land forces on the American main land. He responded that actually invading America would be a slaughter, there would be a gun behind every blade of grass.

          Fell free to search “Every blade of grass”.

          Khrushchev was also credited with stating that an open invasion of America would be impossible. “With the armed America citizen, even if we killed 20 to 1 we would depopulate the USSR. No, America will have to be destroyed from within”.

          So yeah, According to Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union. But maybe you know military strategy better.

          1. Ok, point taken. But right now, the risk of a foreign invasion in the US is close to 0. And if some country still decides to do it, they probably got the atomic bomb, which makes the militias useless. Do people really carry guns, and fight for the right to, partly because they fear a foreign invasion?

          2. The atomic bomb does not make militias useless.

            Using nuclear weapons alone, it is not possible to conquer a country – at some point, they would have to try to occupy it. Nukes aren’t going to help there, and militia will. Even if they’re forgoing conquering, and instead just intend to completely destroy the US, that’s going to be extremely difficult to accomplish w/out running into MAD – even w/out the US using nukes back, the US militia is going to be effective enough to retaliate. And if they did somehow succeed in doing enough damage to really cripple the US militia, then they’ve probably done enough damage to the entire global ecosystem to kill themselves too. They’d have to practically glass the entire country.

            Another way to look at, to make my point that the atomic bomb does not make militias useless: cars did make horse-and-buggies useless. But planes & helicopters didn’t make cars useless. Why not? A lot of people thought they would. It’s obviously not because planes & helicopters are themselves useless – they obviously are. It’s because the way that they’re useful does not supersede the way that cars are useful. It’s the same with militia & nukes – their applications are sufficiently different that the one does not obsolete the other.

          3. They’d have to practically glass the entire country.

            For no real reason, I like to think most of these foreign enemies would probably try and nuke large cities that are full of gun control regulations, largely missing the huge amounts of armed US citizens completely.

            They would probably have bought into the current media that seems to emphasize NY, LA, and the North East as the only places that matter in the US.

          4. Two years ago the people of Ukraine probably scoffed at the idea of a foreign invasion to. Ooops.

          5. Completely different, as:

            In Ukraine it is a mix of civil war and foreign invasions. Initially the pro-russian population started the conflict, with weapons most probably furnished by Russia. If they had weapons from the beginning, it would have made things happen even faster.

            Foreign invasion was always a threat. Many people in Eastern Europe fear a Russian Invasion.

            Ukraine doesn’t have the strongest military force in the world, and is not part of NATO. You can’t compare their invasion threat with yours.

          6. Once again, your historical ignorance is showing. This can be remedied!- go and study.
            But do remember this, within living memory, the policy of a major government was to somehow kill off the entire population of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, the Ukraine, Russia, and others. Note, not just the Jews, but every single last living person. And that nasty little government went from piddling little backstreet rabble to the national government in a decade.

            Go back another 20 years or so, and ponder peaceful pre-WW1 Europe. Do you know how many empires went from stable to gone during the years 1914-18?
            It is almost scary just how unstable governments actually are.

          7. I know what happened in WW2, and fail to see how it invalidates my point.

            Pre-WW1 was anything but peaceful. The question was not IF a world war would happen, but WHEN.

            Long implemented democracies are probably the most stable government type, thanks to their ability to reduce discontentment with government through elections. Of course an authoritarian derivative is always possible, but widespread education can prevent this.

            But I got the point: you want to be allowed to carry weapons among other things to be able to defend yourself against an eventually hostile government. The rest is off topic.

          8. Break it down like this:
            1) Your government can become hostile & take a turn towards tyranny
            2) Part of your country can become hostile (civil wars, rebellions, et al) and you become a targeted group
            3) Your country could be invaded by a neighbor
            You do know that Norman Angell and others predicted that a European war would be impossible before WW1, and was not rejected as a fool or hysteric? The totality, length, and brutality of that war was a surprise to pretty much everyone, as have been the consequences.
            Thus, to me it seems a bit naive to make confident predictions regarding a definite outbreak of lasting peace.

          9. Thank you for your more respectful tone, I appreciate that.
            1) Yes, now that is why we have democracy: if the democracy is working well, meaning an educated and politically invested population, with efficient institutions, a dangerous government turn is easily avoidable. And this is the duty of every citizen to insure that this system is maintained. Now if you think that your country doesn’t meet these criteria, then guns can be a solution, a new oppressive regime can be topped down faster, but the nature of the regime that will replace it will depend on many factors. Guns are only a mean, an armed population doesn’t guarantee democracy. Education and effective institutions seems to be a more efficient armor to me.
            2) Well, if there is civil war, guns will only catalyze the whole thing into a more violent situation. Civil war is a portion of population against another. Broader access to weapons will not solve anything. Of course you would love to have weapons if you are a targeted group, but maybe the other part of the population would have much more trouble hurting you in the first place.
            3) True, now I think that in the US is not in this situation. As you saw, I am not a military expert, but am I wrong in saying that US army can prevent any foreign invasion?
            You’re right that very few people were expecting the WW1 to be as long and bloody. Now most of the sources agree that the general sentiment in the early 20th century was that a European conflict was not only seen as probable, but also wished for.
            Yes, history is unpredictable, and my confidence may be misplaced. But I don’t think that an armed population is an effective guarantee against some of the risks that you described.
            Anyway, thank you for taking the time to explain your arguments to me. I still disagree, but now I understand your position a lot more, and that is why I came here. Now I see how it is a defensible and reasonable position.

          10. “Civil war is a portion of population against another. Broader access to weapons will not solve anything.” This is definitely not true. You may not like the solution, but being able to defend yourself against attacks by those wishing to do you and yours harm (and depriving you of your rights is harm, never doubt it) makes those attacks less likely to occur. The only way this could work is if all sides access to weapons was equally restricted. Since we’re talking about the citizenry against a despotic government, such would certainly not be the case. Therefore, broader access to weapons is an extremely good deterrent to attacks in the first place.

          11. Jeremy, I have not yet seen anyone answer one big misconception you seem to have in your first post: your belief that America is a wildly violent country with so very many shootings (with the incorrect, unstated corollary that: if only we’d give up our guns, we wouldn’t have so many shootings). MOST of the shootings in this country are inner city drug-related and gang-related shooting. MOST of the people murdered by guns have criminal records, as do the shooters. If you remove those “gun deaths” from the statistics, the U.S has even LESS “gun crime” than most European countries.

            If you get your ideas of “how it is in America” from the media, then you will never hear or read about the vast majority of these deaths — because black-on-black-and-hispanic violence is NOT reported in the media. ONLY white-on-black violence is covered, usually hysterically and often resulting in riots and town-burnings. The numbers are there, easy to find — but not much publicized, because it doesn’t suit the (liberal) Narrative.

          12. Try living in a country bordered until recently with a Military Junta, a young democracy-ish ex communist country, a country destroyed by violent communist uprising, which was saved by very communist neighbor, The peoples of all these countries for the most people “dislike” their neighbors.

            And then on top of that, throw in a military that comes out of the barracks and deposes democracy rather often. And I can tell you now, Jeremy that one side holding all the guns plus bombs etc is the only reason that it continually occurs, unopposed. Then on top of that the usual tinpot paranoia and massacres, where the Junta or establishments supporters just lose the human rights plot.

            And it goes from all 1st world to third world very quickly.

            The lack of counterforce makes the country weaker to the outside and makes it vulnerable on the inside. This is my first hand experience, now you may feel your country is beyond slipping backwards.

            You may wish to consider the legacy an erosion of freedoms and self defence could mean one day to your grand children, or yourself 10 years from now. The gamut of possibilities based on personal experience for most people is terribly limited. Base it on the world news, probably much broader, use that as an example of never say never.

          13. Tell that to the two known wolves the TX cops dealt with. Both were foreign born and here. The other alternative, of course, is to effectively cut off both tourism and immigration, and reverse what’s been allowed so far.

          14. But right now, the risk of a foreign invasion in the US is close to 0.

            “Invasion” also includes infiltration and attempted subversion.

            Texas gave us an example of what happens when that’s tried.

            Also, by way of analogy my last A1C reading was in the “non diabetic” range. My wife suggested that this meant I could stop with the diabetes treatment. To the contrary, it’s a sign that the treatement is working

          15. You must understand the concept of self defense. Defense of yourself. It doesn’t matter if its from a foreign invader, domestic government, out of control thugs, you will be able to keep and bear arms to defend yourself.

            Atomic bombs. Really?

        2. “Self-defense from a foreign country exerted by citizens instead of professionals sounds weird to me. Why not let the professionals handle it? ”

          In America, there is no separate military class. Those “professionals”? They’re US, and we’re THEM. I’m not a veteran myself, but there’s a whole bunch of them in this comments section. In the final event, WE will handle it.

          1. Regarding Jeremy’s professionals vs citizen soldiers- Jeremy, may I suggest that you go and study the history of that question a bit. The fact that you do not at all in any slight teeny tiny little way know what has happened shows that you do not have the proper level of historical knowledge and background to engage in this debate. Kind of like the person who cannot do basic maths trying to engage a physicist on thermodynamics- if you don’t have the proper background, you don’t get to play.
            And no, I will not labor gratis to get you up to speed on this question.

        3. I never lived in a country where I view the state as a threat, just something you should keep an eye on through elections.

          German Jews circa 1930 felt the same way.

          1. Entirely different situation. I doubt Jews felt safe anywhere in continental Europe at the time. And the regime that happened next reflected the society, which had not much democratic culture and was deeply antisemitic. Governement reflected that.
            In the end it comes down to the amount of trust you put in your government. I trust my government enough to let it carry the responsability to control the weapons. They’re us, and we are them, as one of the commenter said. I feel safer this way. Apparently you don’t trust yours, and you may be right not to.

          2. Well, buddy, guess what? You’re wrong about basically everything you just said.
            Read some firsthand accounts of the nazi purges and you find that ghettoization came as a complete fucking surprise. No one believed it was happening, even as jackbooted thugs pounded on their doors and told them they had to pack whatever shit they could carry and get going. One book i read, the author said she thought she was having a nightmare and couldn’t wake up.
            No democratic culture, huh? They had free and open elections since 1919. Hitler was fucking ELECTED, you jackass. Read the history before you comment on it. And the average German wasn’t “deeply antisemitic”, his friends and neighbors were Jews. There were thousands of recorded cases of German citizens hiding their Jewish friends from the nazis.

            Here’s a link, it’s the only one i’m gonna give you. Educating yourself is something you need to do, not something other people do for you.

            http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/news/rescuing-jews-national/

          3. You misunderstand me completly.
            What I said (or tried to):
            Antisemitism was deep rooted in Europe. Look at the Affaire Dreyfus in France. I don’t say that Jews would expect what happened, but that they certainly felt threatened (many still do today in Europe, look at what happened in France in January).
            14 years is a very short time to get a democratic culture. And yes, Hitler was elected, that is exactly my point: a population with a democratic culture doesn’t vote for fascism.
            I’m sorry that I was not clear enough, but you should not assume anything on my education.

          4. No one’s assuming anything, Jeremy, You’re demonstrating your miseducation all by yourself, for everyone to see.

    2. Mass Shootings are only one way of violence, of course more guns=more gun violence, but why are you placing gun violence on a pedestal, above other violence. Mass shootings are statistically very rare and are not common, even if our gun culture would prevent an oppressive regime shift or an invasion once every 10000 years it would still be a net positive of cost benefit analysis. If you look at how often mass shootings are in the office it’s very very rare. Mass shootings are always basically a form of public suicide, and many of them are acts of Terrorism that would of been performed with a bomb instead of a gun.

      1. Gahh even with the 5 minute safety you can’t edit if someone posted anywhere else on the thread well that’s what I get for not reviewing my statement.

        Basically I was just going to take out the repetitiveness of saying mass shootings in the office are very rare, because already stated that mass shootings are very rare period. Also clear up some bad wording but whatever that’s fine.

    3. I’m glad you feel safe in New Zealand. If the immigration idiocy currently afflicting Australia spreads to your country, that may end.

      As to “the desire for many citizens of the USA to own a gun”, consider this:

      I don’t own a gun. I am, nevertheless, a firm believer in the Second Amendment meaning that U.S. Citizens have the right to own and carry firearms. Why? Because they is what the men who wrote and voted for that Amendment said at the time; it’s well documented. And while I accept that they are arguments against that being a good idea, I am not interested in even listening to them, UNTIL the people putting them forward are willing to propose an Amendment to make whatever Gun Control laws they desire legal.

      The Government should obey its own laws. Always. If those laws prove to be a mistake, then they should be changed, through the legal process. Because if the government is allowed to enforce the laws selectively or creatively, the result is going to inevitably be the preferential treatment of some group over others, and the one group that will CERTAINLY benefit is Government Stooges.

      Don’t like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Then propose changes, and persuade enough of your fellow citizens to support you that those changes happen. Otherwise you are a scofflaw and a tyrant-in-the-making.

      Or, perhaps, you are happy citizen (or subject) of another country, and like your own traditions and laws. Which is fine.

      1. I don’t think you are aware on the immigration policy of New Zealand (I’m an immigrant myself), but that is not the topic. I agree otherwise that your constitution should be changed if your population wish one day for more gun control.

        1. Ah, but do you agree that, absent such change, discussion of Gun Control is piffle?

          You see, in the U.S. there are creatures in human garments who whine that “condition have changed” since the Bill of Rights was signed, or that the Constitution is a “Living Document”. They don’t want to cross the t’s and dot the i’s, they just want to pass a bunch of blatantly Unconstitutional laws, right damn now, because They Know Better.

          And they display the same tender concern for the other Amendments; they are liable to say things like “Hate speech is not free speech”, which is absurd because if speech offends nobody it would hardly need the protection of a Constitutional Amendment, would it.

          These vermin worry me. They have no respect for the limits that the Constitution puts on the State, and no concept of how bad life is likely to get under an unchecked government. And they seem to believe, for some reason, that under an unchecked government their little clique will automatically hold power.

          1. Well, I’m not an expert at all on the US constitution, but according to what you and other commenters say, it looks like a change to the constitution is needed if you want to implement gun control laws.
            Now I don’t see any problem in changing a constitution as long as it is done according to the rules. Societies evolve.
            Your other points seem off topic to me.

          2. The 2nd Amendment will never be repealed. Take that to the bank. If it were even close to happening, you would have a large portion of the populace (and probably at least a few state governments) declare the federal government in abrogation of the Constitution (they could do so now, for a myriad of reasons; but the attacks on the Constitution haven’t been painful enough yet) and therefore no longer valid. This would be secession of a sort.

        2. All I know about the immigration policy in New Zealand is that you can’t move to that country if you’re too fat.

    4. Hey, Jeremy, thanks for joining in.

      I could give you the boilerplate about how more guns equals less crime, dig out statistics, or even wade into the philosophical question of how ‘gun deaths’ aren’t any different than other deaths. But you brought up “Gun culture” like it was a bad thing that causes these mass shootings, and I want to explain why it’s a good thing.

      When I was in college a few years ago, I was at a friend’s house and I was pretty new to guns. But we were shooting the breeze and I asked how a revolver’s barrel is joined to the frame. He didn’t know offhand, so we got one of his out and had a look. Then we disassembled his M1911 so I could see how the barrel locks. I was new, like I said, but I’d been following gun blogs like Correia’s for a few years so I knew the four rules of firearms safety:

      -Treat a gun like it’s loaded, even when you know it’s not.
      -Never point a gun at something you aren’t willing to destroy.
      -Be sure of your target and what’s behind it.
      -Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.

      So, we disassembled those guns and examined them like a car engine or a power tool. That’s what they are to us. Tools. We use them to hunt or plink or even defend ourselves. Many of us are in the NRA (Many aren’t because they feel that the $25 membership fees are too steep or aren’t worth it) or some other club. Many go to the range to shoot the breeze and hang out. Some of us start companies to build rifle accessories.

      When you hear about killings, they’re rarely committed by this gun culture. The perpetrators belong to the drug culture or the gang culture. Heck, Chicago has almost completely eliminated the gun culture, and it’s awash in ‘gun violence’. These shooters don’t go to the range or hang out at a gun store or learn to shoot from their grandfathers.

      Same for our mass shooters. The NRA gets all the blame when some freak massacres a declared gun free zone like a school or a church, but none of these freaks belong to the gun culture. Heck, ever notice how there’s a hoopla over how the killer bought his guns after every mass shooting? They aren’t a part of the gun culture, or we’d be seeing more shooting committed with grandpa’s gun.

      1. People like to bitch about the gun culture, until something bad happens and they’re hoping that one of our people show up in time to save them. 🙂

        1. My basic response to the anti-gun hysteric is still the same now as it was after Columbine:
          “I’m carrying a gun, and you’re afraid of them. If we’d both been there, I could have tried to do something. No promises as to success… but I could’ve tried.
          What could YOU have done?”

          1. Playing Devil’s advocate here, but I have to say that in these mass shootings I’ve often wondered why nobody present has said to him (her) self, “Screw it. If I can’t get away, maybe I can take the bastard with me.”. Chairs, fire extinguishers, brooms; there has to be SOMETHING you could hit the vermin with.

            Maybe I’m fooling myself. Maybe I’d flee, even when fleeing wasn’t working. But I like to think I’d see if you can swing a fire extinguisher by its hose. ‘Cause I think THAT would make an impression.

          2. That was the gist of our “active shooter” training video that we got shown at the (gun-free) state university two years ago. I think it was an official thing put out by the FBI, but I can’t guarantee that. Throw backpacks, throw books, throw desks. Sort of lame but way better than doing nothing at all and just waiting until a crazy person gets tired of shooting people. It might even work. Again, at least it might work better than doing nothing.

            I don’t know if this was shown to everyone or not, but one of my English profs took class time for it. He’d had a couple of colleagues murdered by a stalker some years before. He didn’t *say* what his views on gun control were but he told the story. The man had gotten a gun for protection. Kept it in a drawer in the kitchen (as I heard the story) while he and the woman went out one evening. The stalker broke into the house and found the gun. When the couple got home he shot them with it.

            I know what my reaction to this story was (in addition to horror at the human tragedy) and I can imagine Larry’s reaction to it.

            It seems to me that most of the “reasonable” things that gun control advocates advocate make guns more dangerous. When I was in the military and we were concerned with material security of classified information we had a thing called “positive control” (if I’m remembering the term right, it was a while ago). What it meant was that you always knew exactly where the items you were in charge of transporting were and more, actually had your hands on them. Relate this to guns… a gun is not safer or more secure for having been left in your car in the parking lot. It’s not safer or more secure if it’s in the trunk in a locked box while you drive. Any time you don’t have positive control of an item it can be set down and temporarily forgotten or someone else can pick it up. A gun purchased to protect you from a stalker and known threat is not safer left in your home because the law doesn’t allow you to carry it when you’ve gone out on your date.

          3. My reaction would be, the man in the story was an idiot for not keeping the handgun on his person.

          4. I agree. I have trained in martial arts for a long time before i even had a gun. I remember many times when I would be training in a gym these guys would jokingly say “I could just shoot you.” To which I reply “What makes you think I don’t also carry a gun?”

            It’s humorous that some gun people seem to think that is all that is necessary, and I hope that it is. But I feel it never hurts to be amply able to defend yourself with whatever is at hand, be it a gun, knife, pool stick, furniture, etc.

      2. Thanks for your reply, interesting point. If gun culture is not the reason why there are much more violent deaths and deaths by firearm, then what is the reason according to you? And what to do about it? I’m genuinely interested in your answer.

        1. Jeremy, you might want to look up the rates for robbery with violence, rape, and other crimes where the stronger treat the weaker as prey. As soon as gun control is made more stringent, those crimes skyrocket. Why? Because criminals know there will be no effective resistance.

          1. Yeah, like the rape rate in Norway outright EXPLODED into increases of more than 200%… because of their Muslim illegal immigrants. When they started deporting them, the overall crime rate dropped.

            https://muslimrapewave.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/rape-epidemic-in-norway-caused-by-muslim-immigration/

            Brace yourself if you click the link, it’s a start, and a very hard read. But google “rape / crime rate Norway Muslim immigrant” and you’ll get a lot of hits.

            And before any stupid moron out there goes ‘racism’ consider that the victims have been largely the white Norwegians, and the perpetrators have varied from being from Africa, to the Middle East, and the only thing that is common amongst them being Muslim and from out of the country.

            Not so very many years ago, Oslo was virtually a rape-free city, inhabited by people who had been brought up on civilized notions of mutual respect and tolerance. No longer. Over the years, the incidence of rape has risen steadily. A wildly disproportionate number of the perpetrators are “rejected asylum seekers” – which may sound puzzling unless you are aware of the perverse state of affairs whereby even persons officially rejected for asylum in Norway are still allowed to stay. And the increasing temerity of the rapists – who know very well that they will probably not be caught, and, if caught, will not be severely punished – is reflected in the fact that the most recent rape (in which two men assaulted a 21-year-old woman) took place virtually in the backyard of the Royal Palace.

            Oslo is, of course, not alone in having undergone this cultural sea change: many major cities in Western Europe have experienced similar transformations. Yet it now appears that the incidence of rapes in Oslo has now eclipsed that in the other two Scandinavian capitals, Stockholm and Copenhagen. This is quite an achievement, given that Oslo has traditionally been the smallest and sleepiest of these three cities – the least cosmopolitan, the one that feels more like a safe small town than a European capital.

            A glimpse of the official mentality that makes this steady rise in rape statistics possible was provided in an article that appeared in the Norwegian daily Dagbladet on October 25. It appears that in the summer of last year, the same paper ran a story about Abdi, a Somali immigrant, then 24 years old, who since coming to Norway as an asylum seeker had committed 14 robberies, been incarcerated, become a narcotic, and lived on welfare.

            June 3, 2010, Dagbladet reported, an Oslo court had ruled that Abdi, who is not a Norwegian citizen, should be returned to Somalia. Now, however, that ruling has been overturned by an appeals court. Abdi’s lawyer was jubilant, saying that this decision “is important for many Somalis in this country.” (Of all immigrant groups in Norway, Somalis are among those with the lowest employment and highest crime rates.) The lawyer chided Norway for having shown “an ugly face in this case” by planning to return her client to Somalia, but she expressed hope that given the new decision Norway would “change its practice” – presumably meaning that no amount of unsavory activity would make it possible to kick an immigrant out.

            The appeals court’s basis for its decision to let Abdi stay in Norway was that it might be dangerous for him to live in Somalia. Whether letting him stay in Norway might make life dangerous for Norwegians didn’t seem to enter into the court’s calculus.

          2. Good point lil drow

            Within the last year I recall a scandal in Briton that some ungodly amount of rapes were happening in one small town that went undocumented over something like five years. I’m kind of recalling something like three thousand, eight thousand or so sexual assaults? It never made the news (at first) or the British crime stats because the authorities were afraid of being labeled “racist” because the offenders were all Muslim.

            You know, the exact same authorities that claim that you don’t need to be armed. They will keep you protected. The exact type of authorities these gibbering moonbats want me to hand over my guns to, so they can protect me and my family the exact same way. Not. Gonna. Happen.

        2. Why are there more violent deaths in America?

          It’s complicated.

          First of all, I’m wary of directly comparing American crime stats to other countries, because no two countries collect data the same way. Our laws are different, so what is classified as a violent crime in Washington D.C. may not be a violent crime in London or Paris. Our /states/ don’t collect and classify crimes the same way, which makes sense seeing as how the continental United States is larger than Europe. Plus, places like Chicago and London have been caught fudging the crime stats to make themselves look good.

          Second, the United States of America is the same geographic size as Europe. It’s much fairer to compare states to individual countries. We have individual states that are fairly wealthy and trend low in crime, and we have poorer states with higher crime rates.

          Also, just for shits and giggles, I’d like to see America compared with European countries that have had long, divisive civil wars in the past two centuries. The American Civil War created deep divides in our country that have yet to heal over, if only because those divisions are too useful for politicians and moralists to let heal.

          So, let’s not play the comparison game. Let’s talk about what causes America’s violent crime.

          America has a poverty problem. I’m not talking about income inequality, because that’s a symptom, not a cause. I suspect that the real problem is that we declared a War on Poverty in the ’60s and a War on Drugs a few decades thereafter, both of which have been just as successful as the War on Terror. Our anti-poverty programs are a fig leaf at best, and our drug war breaks up families and creates a permanent prison population which exacerbates the problems of poverty. I’ve seen it for myself; it’s nearly impossible for a family to raise itself out of the lower income brackets when the dad is serving several years for possession. Poverty breeds violence.

          So if we’re going to address the problem of violent crime in America, we need to stop pretending that the War on Poverty has worked. We need to stop pretending that we can cure the problem by addressing the symptoms like “Gun deaths” or income inequality. I’m not sure about the exact solution, but it’s going to involve a hard look at how inner-city corruption drives away job opportunities. At the same time, we have to start the process of decriminalizing illegal drugs and treat addiction as a medical problem, not a criminal one.

          In short, we have a complicated problem with dozens of causes, many of which I don’t have the time to address. They aren’t going to be cured by simple fixes, and banning guns is one of those simple fixes.

          1. Thank you for your very interesting reply. This is the kind of comment I was hoping for when I started to write here. You made some good points.

            First: I agree, it will be always impossible to have the exact numbers because of many bias. But it is the only thing we got, violent deaths rate is probably higher in USA than most EU country, even if we can’t be 100% sure.

            Second: Yes, but if you look at the EU (which has a larger population than the USA), the rate is still significantly lower (only the Baltic states have a slightly higher rate according to wikipedia).

            History: Well, European history in the last two centuries is not exactly calm. You have strong divides in many countries: West/Est Germany, North/South Italy, more generally Eastern vs Western Europe. You have separatist movements in Spain, UK. USA domestic situation was quite more peaceful in comparison in the last 150 years. And if we look the country where I live in, New Zealand, you still have deep divisions between Maoris and Europeans. At the time of the civil war in the USA, NZ was deep in the maori wars.
            Now it is true that comparisons are tricky, but they can also reveal a lot I believe. Strong discrepancies often mean something, as long as you look at the causes and not only the symptoms.

            Wars on words are never a good idea, yes.

            Poverty seems the primary issue to me too. I agree that if you want to reduce violent crime, you need to address poverty first. Now finding the causes of poverty is very tricky, has they will heavily depend on your political views and education. We probably have opposite views on this, and I’m sure other commenters on ‘your’ side of the gun control debate will disagree with you.
            I don’t think that poverty in the USA in sensibly higher than in other developed countries though. Data on poverty is way more difficult to evaluate, so I may be wrong.

            I still think than gun culture promotes violence and is one of the causes of those higher violent deaths rates. When I say ‘gun culture’, I refer to the situation where objects whose primary purpose is to at least hurt another human being are common and widespread in the society. I believe that the mere presence of these objects leads to a more violent society, as their use, by you or someone else, in your close environment, is something that you actually consider during your life, and direct some of your decisions.
            This is not the main reason why violent deaths occur, but it is one of the causes, I believe. Poverty is the first issue to address, on this we agree.

          2. “I still think than gun culture promotes violence and is one of the causes of those higher violent deaths rates. When I say ‘gun culture’, I refer to the situation where objects whose primary purpose is to at least hurt another human being are common and widespread in the society. I believe that the mere presence of these objects leads to a more violent society, as their use, by you or someone else, in your close environment, is something that you actually consider during your life, and direct some of your decisions.”

            You may think and believe that (we all notice that you talk about your opinions and feelings, not about any hard data showing this), but most of the rest of us have seen evidence with our own eyes that it isn’t true.

          3. Illegal immigration and economic refugeeism is another cause of violent crime. If you enter a country with no regard for the laws of the country, there is a pretty good chance that attitude will remain. Further, if a so-called economic refugee enters the country with no intention of abiding by the local laws and culture, and seeks only to avail himself of the country’s support structures and welfare assistance – essentially, to abuse a system that was meant to aid the lawful and in need – then there is also a trend of crime and fraud. I speak in general terms as this is a problem that exists in more than one place and the specific details vary from place to place.

          4. Ok, but as you say it happens in other places too, and sometimes in higher proportions. It is not something unique to the US. So it does not support the highest homicidal rate explanation there.

          5. Certain of the early colonial populations were fighting populations who were encouraged to leave zones of endemic warfare as those areas were being made peaceful. These, the indians, and the indian wars are some of the roots of America’s mainstream gun culture. Both sides of the ACW and the ‘Wild West’ involved what is now the mainstream gun culture. There were elements of the Wild West still extant in the 1920s and 1960s. The mainstream gun culture is now relatively peaceful, I believe due to changes in risks and rewards. (Cars, telephone and television have a different dynamic than horses, telegraph and rail.)

            Mall ninja and some kids might be classified as a subculture of the mainstream gun culture. The stereotypical mall ninja is a shopping center security guard who talks and buys equipment like he thinks a SEAL would. These are essentially peaceful, because the focus is more on buying and having than practical use. (Shopping center security guards may or may not be armed, but they generally are not intended to need to use them.)

            There are only a trivial number of indians, their gun cultures are probably pretty close to mainstream, and they are essentially peaceful. The Indian Wars were concluded by destroying their ability to field warriors, and hence their willingness to start independent wars.

            Rural poor heavily use firearms for food. They respect laws against murder even if they do not respect game laws. (North America does have a fair amount of animals that can kill adults and more that can kill or injure children.)

            As pointed out before, America’s gang cultures and drug cultures are fairly distinct, and the associated gun cultures are fairly distinct also. The gangsters and druggies are not big deer hunters, and America’s mainstream gun culture never holds pistols sideways.

            The gangs have a large number of former military personal from south and central america. Phoenix had a very high kidnapping rate for a period because of the civil war in Mexico spilling over. The group mindedness, the psychology of a criminal organization, is very different from the normal run of the mill American individualist.

            The druggies by and large care about getting their next fix than human life or long term consequences. A certain fraction of them are stupidly violent, even with fists and feet.

            As for the War on Poverty, it may have been designed for that specific effect. It gives money to single teen mom’s. A kid growing up like that might at ten never have spent any time around a man or someone older than thirty. If a boy does not learn from the experience of a man forty or older, he has less chance of reaching that age.

            I must dissent from Benjamin on the drug issue. Using drugs is a very poor life choice, and I doubt imprisonment changes the value of a role model that much.

    5. Hi, Jeremy,

      Let me address a few of your points.

      It is just something that seems weird to me, especially with the never ending mass shootings that seem to happen regularly in your country

      ‘never ending?’ ‘happen regularly?’ I have no doubt it seems that way, because the rare times a mass shooting occurs, the media run around like headless chickens and Bloomberg goes into even worse irrational hysterics than usual. But let’s look at some actual numbers. There’s a report here from last October analyzing mass shootings from 2009 to mid 2014. I encourage you to read it, as it should help clear away a lot of the propaganda fog that’s being passed off as gunsmoke.

      So safety is not linked to the existence of good guys with guns around you. In my opinion, it is linked to the culture of the country you live in.

      I’m sure people in Norway used to feel the same way. As did Parisians. As did Australians in Port Arthur. Culture is very thin armor. It won’t protect you against crazies, and it definitely won’t protect you if you import people who don’t share it.

      In short, gun control laws do not aim only at practically preventing mass shootings, but also at reducing the importance of the gun culture in the USA, and thus attacking the roots of mass shooting.

      See, this is where progressives keep going wrong. Your fundamental premise is flat out wrong. You keep focusing on the weapon instead of the killer. You’re so blinded by the method that you completely ignore the motive. The root of mass shooting isn’t gun culture, the root of mass shooting is mass killing, and for that a gun isn’t even all that effective a tool. Aum Shinrikyo killed 13 people and injured hundreds more with poison gas (and they placed a hydrogen cyanide bomb that was just barely stopped from killing thousands). In France, Andreas Lubitz killed 150 people without firing a single round. McVeigh killed 168.

      Please get over this notion that you’re more ‘evolved’ or ‘enlightened’ and we silly Americans just need to be cozened into your ovine way of doing things. It’s really very tiresome. The fact we keep telling you to sod off isn’t due to gun culture, or because we didn’t hear you the first 1,280,642 times. It’s because you’re wrong.

      1. Thank you for your reply.
        Mass shooting still seem to happen far more regularly than in other countries. People in Norway, in Paris, in France are still far less likely to die from a violent death than most American citizens. Their armor seems thicker to me. Gun culture may not be the reason why, it is just my opinion, but then what is the reason?
        And I never intended to give the impression that I felt more ‘evolved’ or something else. I am just trying to understand a culture (yours) that is different than mine, and I would never assume that my culture is ‘better’ than any other. I already learnt a lot here, thanks to the OP and some comments.

        1. Now I understand that it is not desirable by many, that this gun culture is part of who you are. But this culture comes at a safety cost. I don’t say that it is wrong to want to keep this culture alive. But I think it is not wrong also to try to diminish its importance, and ultimately get more safety.

          In short, gun control laws do not aim only at practically preventing mass shootings, but also at reducing the importance of the gun culture in the USA, and thus attacking the roots of mass shooting.

          I’m sorry, but this really does read as ‘Of course those silly ‘gun culture’ people will object to being reduced to defenseless peons, but it’s for their own good, donchaknow? We’ll just pretend to humor their quaint little beliefs while we impose our own (because ours are more enlightened, naturally, they’re just too blind to see it).”

          I do thank you for admitting the real purpose of gun control isn’t preventing mass killings (which it doesn’t do), it’s to persuade the population that they should like being docile little sheep. We already knew it, which is why we smack the camel’s nose every time it intrudes into the tent, but it’s nice to see someone own up to it.

        2. Mass shooting still seem to happen far more regularly than in other countries.

          “Seems” to. So therefore it is?

          Gun culture may not be the reason why, it is just my opinion, but then what is the reason?

          Some lunatic wanted to kill a bunch of people. No more. No less.

          “Gun culture” is simply a buzzword used by those wishing to scapegoat millions of people whom have harmed no one for the crimes of the few.

          You seem to think this is laudable. It is not. Even if you oh-so-piously claim it is for “safety” or whatever other excuse you can come up with.

          1. I think that most of the time people haven’t any sort of clue just how big the United States are. And I’m including people who have visited, flown into an airport and seen a city. If we’re going to compare mass shooting events in the US to Norway (for example) it would make more sense to compare shooting events in Norway to those in Idaho, or compare those in Norway to those in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine.

          2. Well, EU is larger in population. Now as I said before comparisons between countries are always tricky, because there are many factors to account for. But still, the number of mass shootings events per capita is one of the highest in the world. Why is that? I don’t say that more leniant gun control laws is the only reason, but I believe it is one of them (and yes, I say ‘believe’, because demonstrating something in this domain with stats is very difficult, especially if you try to ponder other factors as poverty. You could easily get the numbers you want to get the result you aim for, whatever it is).

          3. So long as you recognize that what you believe isn’t supported by facts.

        3. Again, unless you consider all other types of crime, you’re missing the real picture. Those rates are higher with gun control.

          There’s another fact to consider: If you take out the cities that have been run under strict gun control, the US becomes the 4th safest country in the world. Hmmmm.

          1. There are two factors. One is the gun control and welfare state stuff, which I call white supremacist.

            Secondly is the situation along the southern border. Per the modern racism that calls itself anti-racism, we are not allowed to talk about this.

    6. Unarmed police?
      Like the french cop in France that rode up on his bicycle with his little billy club and whistle to the shots fired call. You know, the one where 12 newspaper staff had just been gunned down by 3 “frustrated youths” of an Islamic bent.
      I have to wonder what that cop thought of being unarmed if the face of AKs and an RPG?

      2 similar “frustrated youths” of the same Islamic bent tried to do the same thing recently in Texas. Lets just say with a VASTLY different outcome.

      Or, nine months ago. Yet another “frustrated youth” of yet again, the same Islamic bent was in the middle of beheading as second (unarmed) victim in Oklahoma when the company CEO walked out of his office, with his gun and introduced the “frustrated youth” to Allah.

      I think I smell a troll here, but just in case, I think I’ll pass on anything that wants to leave me unarmed Jeremy.

      1. Thank you for your reply.
        French policemen do carry guns, New Zealand is the exception here. And in France, such attacks are very scarce, that is why policemen are not prepared to deal with it. Attacks in the USA may cause less casualties, but they are much more frequent. You are still safer in France.
        The correlation I made between the higher intentional homicide rate in the USA and the fact that people are allowed to carry guns is only my opinion.

        1. Again, Jeremy, if you are getting your information from the news, or from television shows produced in the US, then you are not getting accurate information on what the US is like, you are not getting accurate information on what US gun culture(s) is like, and you’re not getting accurate information on how many die from being shot (vs. die from other causes).

          For heaven’s sake, cars are more dangerous than guns. More people die by car, a tool which is not designed to kill, than die by gun, a tool which is designed to kill.

          So… the push to ban guns in the US is not about safety concerns.
          If it were, the banners would start with cars.

          1. Cars are different because they have a purpose that is not primarily to hurt someone.

            Don’t you see that that makes it worse, though?
            The purpose of a car is to transport things and people from one place to another.
            The purpose of a gun is to kill the target at which is is pointed.

            And in the US, more people die by car than die by gunshot.

            Cars are more dangerous accidentally than guns are deliberately.

            Banning guns is not about the safety concerns.

            And it is irrelevant to this discussion what other countries do with their guns. They are sovereign nations that do what they do for their own reasons.
            We are discussing the US.

          2. To Feather Blade:
            I don’t see it that way. Cars serve an essential purpose for our society, they cause collateral damage but we do our best to reduce those. Guns on the other hand, contribute to the existence of a violent culture, without actually serving an essential purpose. Societies can survive and prosper as much, if not more, without firearms distributed among their population, but you can’t say the same for cars.

            I don’t think it is irrelevant to discuss other countries guns policies. If they banned those for safety reasons, why another country cannot do it for the same reasons?

          3. “…contribute to the existence of a violent culture, (unproven assertion number one) without actually serving an essential purpose.” (Unproven assertion number two) Please explain to me how modern civilization, particularly in the west, could exist had guns never been invented. Really, I’m curious. How could the British Empire have been built (for good or ill, it was instrumental in creating the world we consider “civilized”) without the existence of cannon, muskets, and so on? How could America have come to exist? What weapons would have been used in place of guns? Swords? Arrows? Javelins and Pila? Ballistae? Or do you think modern civilization was/could have been built without violence on a massive scale? Do you think weapons aren’t necessary for the creation and defense of a nation, civilization and society? Heck, you even admitted that the military should have guns. Now, if guns didn’t exist, sure, the military wouldn’t need to have them…but we’d still be in a pre-industrial-revolution style society. Forget about social justice or feminism, or any of the other luxuries that our unspeakably advanced and decadently blessed civilization has had the opportunity to experiment with; technology is the only thing that can bridge the strength (etc) gap betwixt the average male and the average female, so all that equality rhetoric goes right out the window, sans guns. Seriously, Jeremy. Where did you study history? God bless you, and pardon my tone, please, it’s very late in my timezone. 😉

          4. To Bibliotheca Servare:

            I thought that the context was clear. Apparently it was not so let me correct: Guns on the other hand, contribute to the existence of a violent culture, without actually serving an essential purpose in the hands of civilian being part of a society of an advanced country.

            You talk about ‘unproven assertions’. Yes, as many of you noticed, it is my opinion and my opinion only that I’m saying here. Proving the influence of a factor in the average behavior of the individuals in a society is very difficult, and so is the contrary. You have to weight many other factors, and there will always be some dose of arbitrary. I can’t prove scientifically that guns increase violence in a society, and you can’t prove the opposite either. Saying otherwise would be the pretense of knowledge. Now there are clues that may influence one’s judgment. One that I repeatedly stated here is the important difference of violent deaths rates between the USA and other developed countries. It doesn’t prove anything of course, but it tends to make me think that there are reasons for this, and one of them may be a more violent culture, that may exist because of the wider diffusion of guns among civilians. I was interested to know what reason you would input this to.

            The rest seems off topic to me.

          5. “Guns on the other hand, contribute to the existence of a violent culture, without actually serving an essential purpose in the hands of civilian being part of a society of an advanced country.”

            You’re STILL trying to make this claim? It’s 100% wrong, and you’ve been shown that repeatedly. I submit that you are uneducable.

          6. Off topic? It was a rebuttal of your assertion that “Societies can survive and prosper as much, if not more, without firearms distributed among their population, but you can’t say the same for cars.” Jeremy. Now, either answer the questions I posed, admit you simply misspoke in a very silly way (without answering the questions), or bugger off. Really. I’d say more…but I find myself at a loss for words. Speechless, really.

          7. Off topic? It was a rebuttal of your assertion that “Societies can survive and prosper as much, if not more, without firearms distributed among their population, but you can’t say the same for cars.” Jeremy. Now, either answer the questions I posed, admit you simply misspoke in a very silly way (without answering the questions), or bugger off. Really. I’d say more…but I find myself at a loss for words. Speechless, really. But then, you think that tyranny can be prevented or defended against by…democracy and elections. Kind of like how Chamberlain thought Hitler could be controlled and subdued by having him sign a treaty. Thereby ensuring “peace in our time.” Remind me: how well did relying on “peaceful” tactics to defend against monsters work for Mr Chamberlain? Did WWII start despite the Germans not being permitted to own many of the weapons they used in that war? Or did weapons bans and democracy prevail, preventing over eight million people (six million plus of them were Jews) from dying horribly? Did democracy save the more than thirty million people killed in Stalin’s Russia? Hmmm…yes, I see you have a valid point. #sarcasm

            …Well, so much for that speechlessness I was suffering from…

          8. To Bibliotheca Servare:

            The fact that guns allowed Europeans powers to dominate the world is not an argument for allowing civilians to carry them. I don’t see any causative link, if there is one be more explicit. That is why I said that you were off topic.

            I already talked about Germany in 1933 in other comments. History can be a good teacher, but you also have to see what changed. Situation in 1933 Germany and in our long established democracies are very different. As I said, democracy culture is a capital factor. And also, if an antidemocratic government is elected, it means that most of the population support them. This part of the population will have access to weapons, as you do.

            But I reread your post, and I’m not sure it is your point. In your example, you talked about how democratic UK could not prevent the tiranny of fascist Germany. So you talk about the foreign policies of democracies. Ok , but how does that is linked to a population owning guns? Tactics of a regime are not linked to the amount of guns in the society. Look at France today, fighting in wars in Africa and Middle-East, that is not what I would call ‘peaceful tactics’. But their citizens are restricted from owning guns. But maybe I missed you point, and in this case I’m sorry.

            I find it interesting that you think that guns are the best way to protect your rights against your government, while you have a long history of peaceful protests that did change things in your country. If Martin Luther King, Jr took arms, would that have been as successful? In a democratic government, the best way to fight for your rights is peacefully. The public opinion is what matters, and you don’t earn points with violence.

            Also, your numbers for the casualties of WW2 are way off, but maybe you considered only some countries?

          9. “In a democratic government, the best way to fight for your rights is peacefully. The public opinion is what matters, and you don’t earn points with violence. ”

            1. The Founders didn’t establish a “mobocracy” such as you favor.

            2. A democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner. Guns allow the sheep to dispute the vote.

            3. Public opinion has favored slavery, and “democratic” Germany endorsed a Holocaust. Neither supports your puerile rantings. Slavery took lots of guns to get rid of. The best argument against gun control is that Democrats like you made it a pillar of Jim Crow.

          10. To snelson134:

            1. What the Founders established would not be called a democracy today, as only a small part of the population had the right to vote. I don’t say that they were evil or whatever, just that societies evolve. And democracy are actually in their their best shape ever, as more and more people have access to education and can make educated choices.

            2. Democracy is what people make of it. If you don’t trust it, you don’t trust your fellow citizens.

            3. Already answered on the Germany thing. As slaves had not the right to vote, they were not living in a true democracy, so irrelevant. And I don’t see how you can compare me with Democrats of that time.

          11. 1. What the Founders wanted was a government of the productive. Look up a little something called the pauper’s oath: if you wantd help, you swore it, and you lost the right to vote until you became self supporting.

            2. After 50 years of Leftists like yourself lying about everything from global warming to gun control, I don’t trust you. In fact, like Sam Adams said about the Tories, Leftists are no longer our countrymen.

          12. 1. Yeah, because slaves were not productive. Now I’m trolling, and sorry for that, but I don’t really see your point: you think that the system instaured by the founders is better than today? By what would you replace our actual democracies? (I say our, because even if there are differences from one country to the other, the basic principles are really similar: each citizen considered an adult can vote for a government, and all are equal in this regard. I consider only developed countries with a western civilization here).

            2. So you exclude a whole part a the society that does not think like you? That does not sound very tolerant.

          13. 1. As usual, you assume the goal is the journey. The goal was a society where the productive not disqualified by law (why do you think felons can’t vote without restoration) would be making the decisions.

            2. I”m not very tolerant of people who lie to me ( as you have with dishonest argument here), try to take away my rights (as you also have proposed here), and tell me I’m evil for protesting. Look up the term “high-trust” society; history has shown that you can’t have one with Leftists in it.

          14. Except that you DON’T trust your fellow citizens. You said so. I DO trust my fellow citizens. If I can’t trust them to be responsible members of the community (which you stated clearly that you don’t) how could I trust them to vote?

            There are all sorts of areas where our Constitution listed rights that (some) people have decided that they no longer trust citizens to have. If it were just guns… but it’s not. How could it be? There will be supposed “educated” members of academia that will say, without apparent shame, that anything they don’t like hearing doesn’t actually come under the protection of freedom of speech. There will be a label and category given to that “speech” to explain why it doesn’t count, but clearly the bottom line is “this speech is not approved.” So, do we trust fellow citizens with speech? Some people do and some people quite clearly don’t. Freedom of religious belief and practice is rapidly becoming freedom of approved religious belief and practice.

            Your main argument today seems to be that a nation can view citizens as untrustworthy and in need of keepers and take away the dangerous tools they might hurt themselves or others with… and that this systematic mistrust will not impact other areas of democratic actualization.

            That’s absurd, Jeremy.

            If you frame the State/citizen relationship in the terms of parent/child you can easily see how a whole population can be urged toward dependency by being treated like children unable to manage their own affairs long after adulthood should have happened… and worse that dependency causes resentment, anger and destructive behavior. Because if the State is going to treat you like an infant or a criminal, what reason is there not to be?

          15. To Synova:

            I don’t trust SOME of them. I do trust the vast majority of the citizens for chosing a government responsibly.

            In my opinion, you cannot put on the same level the right to own guns and freedom of speech. Citizens own guns for safety. This safety can be achieved without those gun rights (I’m convinced it can, but debatable, and you will never know for sure, as I argued in other posts.). Therefore, the right to be armed is not a fundamental right, it is a choice that society has to make, both choices (restriction or allowance) are valid options. Free speech, on the other hand, is a condition for democracy. It is a fundamental right.

            If, as a society, you don’t trust some citizen to carry arms, and therefore prefer to live in a society without guns, you deprive the citizens of a liberty, but not of a fundamental right. I will also add, that as safety is necessary to express its liberties, a higher safety feeling in the society can increase liberties. Now, of course, all of this depend on what you think is the impact of guns on the society.

            If, as a society, you don’t trust some citizen to express freely, and decides to stop resctrict the freedom of all citizens, then you fail as a democracy. You attack a fundamental right.

            Now, ‘fundamental rights’ are subjective. I understood that these rights are linked to your Constitution (I may be wrong). For me they are above. A constitution is a system designed to guarantee as much as possible some rights, but as any system, it is flawed.

            But, after reading many comments, I understood that the Constitution in the USA in very different than in other countries where I lived. I guess it is a cultural thing. So I should probably not argue about it further. The notion of ‘fundamental rights’ in itself is cultural.

            About the mother/child:
            I think we’ll both agree that the state is here to guarantee its citizens certain freedoms. Now on how, we have a different opinion. I believe that more state intervention is necessary to insure those freedoms, and you think that this intervention is an attack to freedom. Neither of us are wrong, we just have a different vision on what the society should tend to be, and we don’t agree on the causes of the problems in our society, but that is fine.

          16. “This safety can be achieved without those gun rights”

            How? How can safety — my direct personal safety — be achieved without my gun? I’m a 60-yr-old woman with an arthritic hip. I cannot run away from an attacker, I cannot fight back well enough to prevent injury, rape or death, and so — what? To whom do I trust my safety?

            Are you completely unaware of the thing called “polar bear hunting” (also called the “knock-out game”)? More and more common here in The States. That’s where young blacks attack a white person without warning or cause (save the race of the attacked!) — sucker punching him or her (and then often beating the hell out of person) — you can see literally hundreds of videos (not merely reports, the actual VIDEOS) of these attacks — because the thugs are proudly posting them online! People have DIED and suffered brain damage and broken face bones and lost teeth! Just how is MY safety achieved?! If I cannot go armed, then I cannot go out!

            You tell me, since you believe this: how is MY safety to be achieved without my gun? And, perhaps you have not yet learned the old saying: “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” And that implies that someone calls the police — but it obviously won’t be before I (or anyone else) am attacked and injured or possibly killed! Police are the mop-up squad AFTER a crime has been committed. The chances that a cop will be nearby if I were to be attacked range between slim and none! How is MY safety to be achieved?

            You only see guns as “designed to kill” — and do not see the hugely more important “design” aspect, which is to PROTECT!

          17. Jeremy,

            1. What the Founders established is a Republic. You had to be a landholder (have skin in the game) to vote. If you don’t know our history, stop spewing BS.

            2. Agreed. Which is why the US is spiraling down the toilet. Too many people voting for stuff they never earned or helped make.

            3. Again, wasn’t ever meant to be a full democracy, so you are the one who is actually irrelevant.

          18. Societies can totally thrive without guns! Now. For one brief time in history. Well, except for the ones with totalitarian regimes and big standing armies, unless they are one of those wussy euro states that can call on America to come save them. 🙂

          19. To correia45:

            Again, people don’t look at the context: Societies can totally thrive without guns AMONG THEIR CIVILIANS. Examples; Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc. If ‘America’ can ‘save’ them, it’s because they have the highest military budget by far, not because their civilians got guns.

          20. I’m not going to waste time on you at this point, because Rule #1 don’t expect to sway the willfully ignorant, internet arguing is a spectator sport, and 500 posts down a comment thread isn’t going to get much audience.

            See the thing I wrote above about the gun culture using Mumbai as an example. The two are intertwined.

          21. No really… I’d love to hear what society can thrive and prosper without guns. Name it, and it either has an army with guns, or it is a tiny client state who is protected by another nation with guns.

          22. Cars serve an essential purpose for our society, they cause collateral damage but we do our best to reduce those.

            Any yet, despite our best efforts, they are still more dangerous by accident than guns are on purpose
            ….
            Perhaps this will help illustrate the problem….
            I don’t think you fully appreciate how large the US is.

            East to west, the US is about 3000 miles wide. It takes nearly a week to drive from one coast to the other.

            North to south the US is about 1600 miles long. The terrestrial borders are a total of about 7500 mile long. The maritime borders are even longer – and that’s just the 48 contiguous, continental states (does not include Alaska and Hawaii).

            The US is too expansive for agents of the government to ensure the perfect safety of each citizen.

            Bringing in the other discussion (about leaving national defense to the professional military), there are somewhat less than 3 million Americans in the military to defend a population of 320 million people over a land area of 3.8 million square miles.

            The US is too large for the professional military alone to defend.

            The US has healthy population of several large predators, including wolves, bears, and mountain lions; and of smaller predators like coyotes. Re-introduction of wolves into the western states has, in many cases, forced coyotes to retreat into towns, where they present a danger to household pets and small children.

            There are also reservoirs of rabies in several wild animal populations.

            …to say nothing of the feral humans that look for vulnerable targets in cities and along the borders.

            Taking away guns removes the ability of our people to defend themselves from foreign invasion, from the government, and from predators (both four-legged and two-legged.)

            It is not physically possible for the US to maintain its safety an d prosperity unless the civilian population (individually and in the aggregate) is armed.

          23. To Feather Blade:

            ‘The US is too expansive for agents of the government to ensure the perfect safety of each citizen.’
            Sweden and Australia have lower densities. Their citizen are as safe as in other denser countries. ‘Agents of the governments’ are people hired to ensure security, they can exist where any community lives.

            ‘The US is too large for the professional military alone to defend.’
            I seriously doubt that. Professional military of the USA can take alone most of the world. Number of soldiers is not the only number that matter in a war.

            About the need to have guns to be able to defend yourself against animals:
            I seriously doubt that a large proportion of the USA population has to use a gun against savage species at least one in his life. And in other countries, people can hunt and carry firearms, even if there are strong regulations. Many hunt for sport here in New Zealand. They just don’t use weapons designed to kill human beings.

            About the need to have guns to be able to defend yourself against the government:
            I already stated my opinion in another post: you control the government through democracy and education. If nonetheless something goes wrong, like two parts of the population disagree on what the government should be, and civil war threatens, then weapons availability will only escalate things to more violent levels. From what I read here the army is not considered a danger, as it is profoundly integrated with the population, and thus won’t turn against you. Who do you fear then?

            About the two legged predators:
            I said that I believe that firearm availability increases the level of violence in a community, and thus that you are safer in a community without firearms. I understood that you believe otherwise.

            Anyway, I feel like we keep repeating the same things, and that I’m not learning anything new anymore. Not sure if I will continue this.

          24. So…Magic Weapons? Seriously. What kind of weapon is “not designed to kill human beings” Jeremy? I am fascinated at the idea of such a thing! Where can I get some of those special “animal-killing-only” weapons?

          25. To Bibliotheca Servare:

            Well, I see a big difference between hunting rifles and machine guns. A hunting rifle is not designated to kill humans, but it can. Same as a car. The purpose of an object is really important in my opinion, its presence or its absence in a society sends a message.

          26. “Hunting rifle” is another meaningless classification, like “assault weapon”, made up out of whole cloth by gun grabbers like you. Guns are tools, no more, no less.
            And since you can’t honestly define your terms, the discussion is over.

          27. You said it. My word, if ever there was a shining example of intellectual dishonesty, Jeremy would be it. There are others, but, right now, it’s Jeremy who deserves to have his picture alongside that term in the dictionary. Hyperbole? Maybe…I mean, we can use it too, can’t we? Think of the children! Etc. ;-P

            PS: “hunting rifle” Jeremy? Seriously? Well, a 1911 is a “hunting pistol” then, and, in my opinion, a taser is a “machine gun” because I said so, and because it uses “eckeltricity” (electricity) to slaughter countless innocent-*uncontrollable laughter begins* *Ahem* I see your hunting pistol…sorry, “rifle”. I raise you my “hunting nuke”. Get some. 😀 😉

          28. A hunting rifle is *supremely* effective and beautifully designed to kill humans.

            No doubt you feel like people are ganging up on you, Jeremy, but really.

            As for the presence of something in society sending a message… you’re very right about that. The most important message that gun ownership in society sends is that the person who possesses arms is a member of the ruling class, TRUSTED and fully actualized as a FULL citizen, viewed as a force FOR law and order, a pillar supporting society rather than a threat to society.

            Unless some individual PROVES that they are unworthy of full rights and full citizenship, for example, those who commit crimes and are judged by a court of law to have given up those rights… well, that’s the message that lack of gun ownership sends… that the individual has lesser rights and lesser status. It’s true if those rights were lost to that individual through criminal activity and judicial due process or if those rights never existed.

            Should someone *choose* not to own guns, that is an entirely different than if they have no RIGHT to own guns. Just so I’m clear.

          29. More to the point, a lot of sniper rifles are hunting rifles with niftier scopes.

            Which is why they’ll be called “sniper rifles” when people decide they must be banned.

          30. I believe the most common “sniper” rifle in the world is still the Remington 700, which last time I checked, is still the most popular hunting rifle in the world. Close behind that is the Winchester Model 70 (as used by legendary sniper Carlos Hathcock), which has been one of the most common and popular hunting rifles this century.

          31. What you said. Except, I’d quibble (amicably) with you about the legality of stripping someone who has served their sentence and paid their debt of the right to bear arms (or to vote). It (1) sends the wrong message “you served your time, but you still aren’t a real citizen because you were a naughty, naughty person!” and (2) grants far too much power over the freedoms and rights of the citizenry to the courts and justice system. (what happened to “inalienable”?) Or perhaps my problem isn’t with that concept, but with the overabundance of ways and acts that can result in the consequence of losing ones fundamental, constitutionally-guaranteed rights. I mean…we put “destruction of government property” (willful or no) at the same, or equivalent, level of criminality as rape or murder! (In the context of “rights-stripping” felonies) I could go on, but I’ll stop before I begin to ramble absentmindedly. Heh… 😉 Other than that, though, complete agreement. Well said.

          32. What you said. Except, I’d quibble (amicably) with you about the legality of stripping someone who has served their sentence and paid their debt of the right to bear arms (or to vote).

            Not a worry, I have no problem with being quibbled with (amicably, and intelligently, as you’ve done ;>). Your quibble also got my curiosity piqued to do some research into stuff that I’ve always ‘just known,’ which is a good thing. Note that the following is the product of some extremely cursory web research, I don’t claim to be an expert on any of it.

            First RKBA. The Constitutionality of stripping 2A rights from a citizen seems to be considered a done deal. I didn’t dig deep enough to find the specific cases challenging it, but that’s where we are. As far as getting them back once taken, the Law Dictionary article on the topic is somewhat vague. Basically, it is possible for a convicted felon to have his 2A rights restored, but the process (and how likely it is to actually be successful) depends on a lot of factors. These break down into two basic categories — whether the offense was state or federal — but it doesn’t end there. If it was federal, he has to petition either the Attorney General’s office or BATF, depending, and in either instance rotsa ruck with that. If it was state, it depends on the state and the particular offense (and whether there’s a federal law that supersedes state law, in which case he’s pretty much hosed). Even under the most favorable circumstances, though, it sounds like he’s going to need to have either the ability to navigate legal bureaucracy himself or the counsel of someone who does — i.e., a lawyer. And it’s not going to just happen once his time is served.

            Second, losing the right to vote (aka felony disenfranchisement). This has also been held to be Constitutional (except in a few cases) and interestingly enough is entirely a state thing. Different states do it differently, but in 39 states (and DC), they’re automatically restored at some point.

            In 2 states (Maine and Vermont), felons can vote even when they’re still locked up..

            In 13 states (and DC), voting rights are restored once a felon is released (even if he/she is still on probation or parole and thus still technically has not completed the sentence). These are Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Utah.

            4 states require that both incarceration and parole, but not probation, be complete: California, Colorado, Connecticut, and New York.

            In 19 states (Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin) voting rights are restored only after incarceration+parole+probation is complete. In West Virginia, the prosecutor can also request it be continued until financial obligations (fines, restitution, etc.) are met.

            In 1 state — Nebraska — it’s incarceration+parole+probation+2 years. Oh, and try not to be convicted of treason in Nebraska, because that’s it, no ballots for you.

            In 8 states, voting rights are automatically restored after incarceration+parole+probation for some crimes, for others the felon must petition to get them back. These are Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wyoming.

            In 3 states — Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky — the felon must petition to have them restored, regardless of the offense.

          33. Which crimes “count” and which don’t is absolutely up for discussion and debate. The base principle I believe is sound. That is that Rights can only be lost through due process and the courts. The most significant are life and liberty… We take “jail” for granted because is seems very normal but locking someone up is a profound violation of liberty and constitutional rights. But there has been due process and (we hope) proof brought and legal representation, etc.

            Children are not supposed to have this follow them through life but all adults do have it follow them. They’ve proven themselves untrustworthy.

            The gun grabbers simply Believe people to be untrustworthy, without proof or due process. And think that everyone should take their feelings seriously.

            Synova

          34. Which crimes “count” and which don’t is absolutely up for discussion and debate. The base principle I believe is sound. That is that Rights can only be lost through due process and the courts.

            Completely agree. I have no problem with the revocation of someone’s RKBA provided it’s been proven warranted through due process. I think which crimes count should be considerably more closely defined and limited than it currently is (‘all felonies’ is rather overbroad IMNSHO). Likewise for mental illness. But just for being charged with something, there’s not enough Nope in the world for that. I’m only reluctantly on board with the suspension-due-to-TRO thing. I can see the logic of it, but it skirts very close to the line.

          35. Yeah, I just realised that hunting weapons seem to be quite different from one country to the other. But it doesn’t change what I said, that the function behind an object is important.

            To Synova:
            Very good argument. I am indeed arguing for a loss of liberty for what I believe would be a gain in safety. I prefer to live in a society where people chose to give the responsibility of their safety to the state, while you prefer to live in a society where you retain some of this responsibility. Why? Because, as you say, I don’t TRUST some of my fellow citizen to act rationally and because it increases my safety, and also and mainly because I don’t want to live in a society with a more prominent violent culture.

            We have different views on the society we want to live in, and there is nothing wrong about that.

          36. If you don’t trust your fellow citizens… why do you trust the fellow citizens you are handing the power of the government over to? Politicians are not exactly the world’s most trustworthy breed as they have proved over and over again. And you’re giving them MUCH bigger bangs to play with than the average citizen is going to have readily to hand.

            Also, I would point out. I have lived in many places where guns are common (so common that the High School didn’t bother to try and enforce ‘no guns at school’ Just asked folk to keep them in their cars to keep the official folk off their back. The kids complied with minimal grumbling.) Those people have been, by and large, the politest most welcoming people I’ve ever met. Conversely, some of the tightest gun controlled areas I’ve been in have been some of the surliest, rudest, and most belligerent people I’ve ever met. Gun control does NOT make people polite and less violent.

            Violence was viewed with practicality in the first location. It has a function and consequence, and that consequence as not always pleasant to the person starting things, even the local bullies knew it and chose their targets accordingly. In the latter the attitude was universally ‘What are you going to do to me?’ with the implication that I had no recourse. Violence was viewed as a high, a drug, it was POWER because the cops were minutes away and anyone they targeted had seconds to deal with them.

          37. To WyrdBard:

            I don’t trust SOME of the citizens. I trust the citizens in general for chosing a representative government. If they are unhappy with the actions of the government, a new one comes through elections. We are responsible of the actions of our government, through the democratic system.

            Your personal experience tells you one thing, mine tells me the opposite.

          38. Until the government turns to tyranny and suspends/rigs elections (like has happened dozens of times around the world since the founding of the US) and then the citizens can rise up and… Uh… Well, I suppose they can protest and get machinegunned in the streets by the army I guess.

          39. It’s interesting in a “wow mind control really works” sort of way how untrustworthy citizens magically become trustworthy rulers by virtue of being employed by the State.

            But thank you for admitting straight up that your feelings justify the loss of someone else’s rights.

          40. I suppose that there is nothing wrong with having a different view of what sort of society we wish to live in, except that if wishes were horses I’d have a pony. I’d prefer not to be treated as a child by my government. Promises of safety are lies. The subjugation is real. Chains are chains, even if you fasten them on yourself… but it’s not just yourself is it? It’s making that choice for everyone else, too. And if most of the people don’t mind at all? What about dissenters, individuals and minorities? Must they comply or else be criminals? Of course they must.

          41. To Synova:

            If you live in a society, you have to make choices together, on which type of society you want to live in. It’s a compromise between all the members. Yes, people have to comply to this compromise, because we live together.

            You see ‘chains’, I see ‘links’, that promote solidarity and cohesion, and protections against the less responsible members of the society. Yes you make choices for the others, but it can guarantee a better protection the freedoms and rights of everybody.

            I don’t think that an educated population won’t mind in which type of society they want to live in.

            But we could discuss like that for hours, we just have a different vision of what a society should be, and again, it’s fine.

          42. Turning minorities into criminals is not “just fine”. Your version of what’s best has no way to protect people from the “majority” if someone decides that society is better without, say, homosexuals. Or if the majority decides that Wiccans can just get over it. Any viewpoint can be criminalized if enough people become convinced that it will improve society. No really. This is not “just fine”.

          43. @Synova: Very well said.

            First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—
            Because I was not a Communist.

            Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
            Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

            Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
            Because I was not a Jew.

            Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

            Literally anyone & everyone can be placed into some weird minority group. Politics, profession, religion, ethnicity, culture, health, whatever else. And there is no guarantee that the “majority” won’t turn on you. Throughout history we’ve seen it over & over & over. Today ISIS is killing homosexuals, and in the USA homosexuals are destroying Christian businesses. Maybe tomorrow you & your “majority” will come for me, or maybe the day after I & my “majority” will come for you. Or maybe we won’t speak out when the “majority” goes after some else.

            The SJWs like to talk about tolerance of everything except intolerance. But with no “nuance” for the intolerance. Throwing gays off roofs, refusing to bake a cake, it’s all the same to them. To me murder, imprisonment, punitive fines – these are serious forms of intolerance, that need to be resisted. Refusing business is relatively petty, and carries an inherent negative consequence (loss of profit from at least 1 sale). Go ahead & denounce it if you want, & don’t patronize the business (so they lose more sales), but an $135,000 fine – that is definitely crossing the line from reasonable response into unreasonable intolerance.

          44. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

          45. Jeremy:

            I prefer to live in a society where people chose to give the responsibility of their safety to the state …

            As others have already said, when you say “the state”, you mean “one particular group of people”. And you’re going to hand them weapons, while making sure that everyone else is disarmed. Yeah, there’s no possible way that THAT can go wrong. I mean, it’s not like there are any cases in history where an armed state has oppressed and/or killed its unarmed citizens who were powerless to fight back…

          46. If you knew anything at all about firearms design and history, you would realize what an incredibly naive and ignorant statement that is.

          47. It isn’t like a bolt action rifle has ever been used to kill people… err… Okay, lever action… Shit. Single shot? Damn it. Musket? Hell. I give up.

          48. Yes, you keep repeating the same things over and over, even after they have been comprehensively rebutted. It’s clear that you aren’t actually considering anything that’s shown to you, but are only trying to push your emotional opinion, based on no actual facts or personal experience, onto others. It isn’t working, Jeremy; we DO have the facts and (for some) personal experience to know that you’re just flat-out wrong.

          49. We know otherwise. And you have no statistics or history that haven’t been cooked.

          50. These other countries do not have our 2nd amendment. They are irrelevant in this discussion.

          51. Jeremy, you will find very few people in the U.S. who trust the objectivity of anything the U.N. publishes.

          52. To snelson134:

            From wikipedia: ‘He is best known as an advocate in the gun rights debate’. It doesn’t sound like an objective source. The one I provided, on the other hand, sounds more objective. Look at page 68:

            ‘Hypotheses about the impact of the prevalence of firearm ownership and, more generally, of gun availability on homicide tend to fall into two categories. One suggests that easy access to firearms may facilitate the commission of homicide in a variety of ways, including by fostering violent confrontations and by increasing their lethality, as well as, on a different note, by facilitating the commission of crimes and the execution of targeted killings. The second hypothesis suggests, on the other hand, that widespread availability of firearms may be a deterrent to assault and aggressions, in that it may reduce the leverage and motivation of an armed perpetrator. A number of methodological challenges, starting with the shortage of data on firearm availability, make it difficult to provide definitive answers in either direction.’

            I believe in hypothesis one, you in hypothesis two. Proving rigorously that one of them is true is just not possible.
            While reading this document, I found what may be another reason for the highest violent death rate in the USA compared to other developed countries: the efficiency and availability of the health care system. The USA are known for having a somewhat deficient health care system, this may be another factor. What do you think?

          53. Wikipedia? Please. On any subject with even a hint of political controversy, Wikipedia is on the far left of the spectrum. Its editors are well-known to be leftist authoritarians. If you don’t recognize that, your judgment in most other things is called into question too.

            As for the deficiency of the U.S. health care system, you’re reading from your leftist sources again. The health care system here compares positively to that almost anywhere else. Just because its “deficiency” is “known” to you doesn’t make it true, it only makes you a willing believer in standard leftist dogma.

          54. I’ll take ‘deficient’ over the charnel houses of socialized medicine. And the hordes of Canadians who come down here when they need a real doctor agree. We also don’t lose thousands of our citizens to heat waves.

            You really need to quit drinking that Kool-Aid, Jeremy.

          55. To Doug Loss:

            Wikipedia has nothing to do with this, he wrote a book named ‘more guns, less crime’. There is nothing objective here. I don’t say that he’s wrong, just that you cannot base your argument on an overtly biased source.

            About the health care system, many studies showed that it is in fact, less efficient than in most other developed countries, but I guess you will not believe these sources, so I won’t bother. From my personal experience, I remember when I worked in the USA colleagues asking donations for medical expenses, it choked me, that the quality of your treatment depends on your wealth.

          56. Objective? His book was based on the FACTS of gun ownership, not on your imaginings about it. As for your opinion about health care, it’s just clear that you know as little about it as you know about guns.

          57. To Doug Loss

            Then you should link to the facts, not to the conclusions. That is how you demonstrate something.

          58. To Doug Loss

            Then you should link to the facts, not to the conclusions. That is how you demonstrate something.

            Since you’ve spent the past week regaling us with your completely fact-free opinions, that’s highly amusing.

          59. Again, your ignorance of the subject is showing. Lott is an economist who did a study. The title of the book came about after the results of the study.

          60. Heck, on Wikipedia right now Sad Puppies is a Gamergate affiliate designed to block women and minorities from sci-fi publishing. 🙂

          61. ‘He is best known as an advocate in the gun rights debate’.

            Translation: ‘He knows about guns.’

          62. Internet arguing checklist Dismiss that argument. Flavor: ‘You know too much therefore you are biased.’ Would you care to raise the ante to ‘Justify the Moon Ferrets?’

            Yes, he knows about guns. People should not opine about things about which they have no knowledge. People often do (Yourself, for example). He did research. He delved into actual numbers, actual facts, actual reporting procedures. You may disagree with his conclusion, but you should do so by looking at his FACTS and providing counter-veining FACTS. And I gave the UN Article you posted a quick read through (I’m in the middle of a 1000 page UN document on another topic so quick was what I could spare). There appears to be some good detail in there, but within the data were things that contradicted, strongly, their own conclusions. There was a failure to consider cross reference and account for cultural practices that were independent of weaponry used (When you take away X group’s guns they use knives, IEDs, or anything that comes to hand to do the same thing). The statistics were very broad, there was little analysis of what happened when you excluded local outliers that I saw. (Extreme outliers always bear closer investigation as there is likely to be another factor or factors involved there.)

            By the way… this is basic scientific method. Not anything complicated. The UN reports tend to take data from scientists and then let the politicians write the reports. They often have nuggets of GREAT data in there, but you have to look at the data, not the pretty graphs. They’re a decent place to start back-tracking and rabbit trailing.

          63. Seconding what WyldBard said.

            I, too, scanned through the UN report, which was (literally) all over the map. Leaving aside the dubious validity of the numbers themselves, even taking them as gospel about the only solid conclusions you can draw are ‘homicide is more common in some countries than others’ and ‘people will kill with whatever weapons they have to hand.’ I also note that according to the report, the homicide rate in the US is actually lower than the global rate, and with the exception of Canada (which is only slightly better), the US and Chile are the two least-homicidal countries in the entire Western Hemisphere. We’re safer than Greenland, for crying out loud.

            Another report, this one by Harvard (not exactly a hotbed of gun culture) professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser drives a even sharper stake into the ‘guns = death’ notion.

            For example, handguns are outlawed in Luxembourg, and gun ownership extremely rare, yet its murder rate is nine times greater than in Germany, which has one of the highest gun ownership rates in Europe. As another example, Hungary’s murder rate is nearly three times higher than nearby Austria’s, but Austria’s gun ownership rate is over eight times higher than Hungary’s. “Norway,” they note, “has far and away Western Europe’s highest household gun ownership rate (32%), but also its lowest murder rate. The Netherlands,” in contrast, “has the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe (1.9%) … yet the Dutch gun murder rate is higher than the Norwegian.”

            The above is an except from a Freedom Online article regarding the study, which you can (and most definitely should) read in its entirety here: Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide.

            Not only are you overstating the problem, you’re misdiagnosing the causes and trying to insist on a ‘cure’ that’s not just ineffective but actually harmful.

          64. To Achillea:

            Thanks for the paper, I’ll look into it. It does seem weird at first glance that guns ownership in Europe are so high, I guess they included souvenir weapons from wars, which are not used anymore. It is a shame also that only countries with strict gun laws are considered. But I will read it.

            And I may misdiagnose the causes, but then again, what are they? Why USA has a murder rate of 4.7 and most of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand has a rate that is close to 1? Poverty doesn’t seem to be a bigger problem in the USA, nor immigration. I proposed the health system, but people don’t agree also. What is it then?

          65. Poverty and immigration aren’t issues in the US? And yet you still think you can carry on an informed discussion about relative crime rates?

          66. To correia45:

            I meant: Poverty and immigration doesn’t seem to be a bigger problem in the USA than in Western Europe, etc. I was making a comparison here.

          67. A poor comparison that displays just how very little you know about this topic.

          68. And I may misdiagnose the causes, but then again, what are they?

            You definitely misdiagnose the cause if you think guns/’gun culture’ is it. We’ve thoroughly established by now that there is no correlation between gun ownership rates and homicide rates. And while it’s possible to have correlation without causation, the reverse is not the case. If you don’t have correlation, you don’t have causation.

            As simplistic as it sounds, the cause of homicide is murderers. Call it the Thug Factor. In any society, there will be a percentage (X) who feel that for whatever reason (race, sex, size, religion, sheer ego, etc.) they’re entitled to whatever goodies (wealth, sex, authority, celebrity, etc.) they want, and they will take them by force. X may be homegrown or immigrate (or in a worst-case scenario, invade), but the bigger X is, the higher the homicide/violence rate is going to be. You make X smaller by stomping on it, hard, fast, and comprehensively whenever and wherever it rears its head. You put it either in the ground or in prison. You spit on it, mock it, and shun it. You don’t grovel to it, you don’t bribe it, you don’t give it recording contracts, you don’t lionize it, you don’t say “if I had a son he would look just like X,” you don’t make excuses for it, and you don’t blame inanimate objects for its misbehavior.

          69. Nah, I don’t think you established anything, but whatever, it doesn’t seem productive to continue on this.

            Yes the cause of homicides is murderers. But then again, why X is higher in the USA? Do you think murderers are more glorified? than the justice system is defficient? Be more explicit please.

          70. Actually, if you take out Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. (all cities with very strict gun laws by-the-way), the US has one of the lowest per capita murder rates in the world.

            Try again.

          71. Do you think murderers are more glorified?

            I didn’t pull ‘would’ve looked like X’ out of my ass.

            As far as being more specific, we’ve already done so, accompanied by copious supporting data. You’re the one waving around utterly fact- and reality-free opinions trying to insist we should accept them as Revealed Wisdom on nothing more than your say-so. You’ve yet to present a single speck of evidence to back up your delusions, so either get to work providing some specifics of your own or sod off.

          72. Jeremy: “Nah, I don’t think…

            Ding Ding Ding!!!

            Winner winner, chicken dinner!

            Thank you for identifying the source of your problem in this discussion.

          73. To WyrdBard:

            Well, I agree with most of what you said, I gave this report because indeed there are not many conclusions drown from it and it is therefore fairly objective. That was my goal: to link to a document that is not biased.

          74. @Jeremy: It is also of very limited utility. Conclusions are part of science. The whole point of studying a thing is to say ‘Based on the evidence we currently have X seems the most reasonable explanation. We see Y problems with that which will be further topics for investigation (Or possibly: Which we cannot yet test due to limitations in technology should this prove to be true once technology is available we expect to get Z result which would confirm X if we do not get Z result X is then wrong.) This is very, very basic for any study.

            Among the things they did not control for is ‘what is reported as homicide’ and ‘how are crime stats reported?’ In England, for example (unless the method of reporting has changed in very recent years), Homicide is not homicide unless there is a conviction. It is an unsolved death. In the US once a crime is ruled a Homicide it is reported as such even if a conviction is never achieved. (And before you try to say ‘The UK catches them all’ look at the numbers WITHOUT the unsolved ones in there.) There are likely other reporting anomalies that skew the data. The US has a ‘Report and categorize ALL THE THINGS’ mentality. Everything I’ve seen in Europe is ‘Report and categorize everything you can’t get away with ignoring.’ How would the stats look if we excluded the things the US reports that Europe doesn’t or reports differently?

            There are so many variables they didn’t even seem to mention that their data while likely accurate for what it is, has insufficient controls to be representative. I’m a geologist. I deal with data on a daily basis. Our data has to be solid enough and well analyzed and presented enough that someone can drill a hole in the earth, essentially blind, and find what they’re looking for. I’ve been an analyst, and people could have lived or died on how accurate I parsed through data. I would like to see at least the rigor we used there applied to reports that theoretically set the tone for the entire WORLD debate on an issue that is literally a matter of life and death.

            And if you think an armed civilian populace is NOT necessary at all anywhere, look at what ISIS is doing, and how the Kurds are fighting back. I saw at least one report where they shot a guy because he was too far from his weapons(Yes plural, that’s important), then were immediately shot by his mother and (now) widow because they were NOT too far from his weapons and returned fire before they could come in and kill MORE people. An armed populace defends itself.

            All civilized countries have remnants of this kind of rabid, feral, savage animal in human clothing. In a civilized country they are CRIMINALS rather than in charge or a force to be reckoned with, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there and that happy thoughts will make them go away. You can’t guarantee you won’t run into them. You can move in to what seems to be the safest neighborhood in the universe and discover that they are cooking Meth down the road, and will shot you if you ask too many questions. After all they moved here to get AWAY from nosy neighbors. Call the cops, well the cops aren’t going to live in your neighborhood and if the bad guys come to your door the cops are minutes away. It’ll take them seconds to shoot you, and you can bet they’re going to pick neighborhoods they don’t think are well armed. Why go into a high risk environment? It cuts into profits. Prior to the shot gun, I have a bow, and a whole slew of medieval weaponry (still have it). Not great against a gun, but enough to convince a burglar that the crazy person with the morning-star flail is a BAD one to burgle.

            I don’t believe in mandatory gun training. (I think that it would be wise to have everyone so trained, but that’s another issue.) Someone who is so scared of their weapon they won’t use it or use it only very hesitantly is a danger to everyone around them because they won’t necessarily be too careful with their aim or they’ll curl up in a ball and cry uselessly leaving a hole in your defenses.

          75. To WyrdBard:

            Well, exactly, and I think it is better if you draw your own conclusions yourself. For exemple, I read the paper from Don Kates, and I see some important flaws (comparing US with Eastern Europe, which has not at all the same level of development, or using gun ownership as his main argument when the guns do not have the same cultural importance then in the USA at all), that I would not have seen if I read only the conclusions. It is interesting, to read conclusions from other, but you have to do it carefully to not let it biase your judgement.

            Of course there are probably issues with how sdata is collected, it is always the case, but it is expansively discussed in the ONU paper. In developed countries, no only one organism counts homicide, you have health system, and justice. They said that the match for developed countries was usually really close, meaning that data can be considered reliable. It is not true for other countries, but I did not included those countries in my argument. I invite you to read section 6 and 7.

            And data collection is a problem for both sides, pro and anti. That is why I said, repetedly, that it is very difficult, if not impossible to prove with ease a correlation or its absence.

            Syria is a very different situation, I don’t think you can draw easy paralels like that. And I can play this game too, I can say, for example, that the access to weapons allowed the fanatics to successfully attack populations, in Syria, but also in Libya and then Mali. But I don’t think it is relevant to our current discussion.

            About the safety, without guns, I already talked at length about that. let’s just say that criminals with guns are very uncommon where I live.

          76. Actually, Jeremy, I can. You see I’ve been to Europe (Germany, Austria, Italy specifically). I’ve been to South Korea. I’ve spoken in great detail with people who were THERE for the Korean War. My JOB when I was active duty was to understand Russia. I’ve been to Iraq. I’ve seen the kind of sick animals that make ISIS. And I have seen them in every single country I’ve been to. I’ve seen them in EVERY single history book I’ve studied. I’ve studied the people, not just the statistics. I’ve looked into the faces of the Iraqis as they asked me why we were so upset at this bit of corruption or that bit of corruption in the government. And their sheer surprise when my automatic response was it shouldn’t be that way.

            The UN report waffled. It didn’t actually analyse. Their data and there analysis were not very well related. Their “Well we have these limitations” were NOT well thought out. They didn’t define what a Homicide was and then rigorously apply it to ALL reports regardless of what those reports called the crime. We don’t actually have the data collected. We have summaries. We don’t have how those summaries were arrived at. I say again: SHOW ME THE DATA. The raw numbers. Every last one of them.

            Side note, you say criminals with guns are uncommon where you live? Which means they use other means. You don’t say that you have no criminals. Therefore getting rid of guns didn’t get rid of criminals. But it DOES mean there’s no force equalizer for the small person beset upon by a large thug. Unless they are insanely lucky and very well trained they’re going to be robbed, murdered, raped, or otherwise victimized with very little recourse. The police, by and large, aren’t useful until after the fact. And if you’re dead, that’s not exactly a comfort.

          77. Another little note on those crime statistics: there have been multiple documented instances within the last 5 years of police departments in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, various European countries, and yes, the United States. of police agencies at ALL levels refusing to investigate, file incident reports, and harassing the crime victims to discourage them from reporting. The best known example is possibly the teenage rape victims of Rotherham, but there are whole books detailing these incidents. Furthermore, even when it’s a mob of 50 involved (captured on video) in assaulting the victim, egging on others, preventing assistance, etc., the cops will arrest 2 or 3 and let the rest go. Strangely, the common thread in all of these is that the criminals are in one or more “Official Government Victim Groups.”

            In summary, the crime statistics we have, especially in metro areas, are likely to be understated by 25 to 100 percent.

          78. We don’t actually have the data collected.

            It doesn’t matter. No amount of data will change his mind, because there is neither knowledge nor reasoning behind his opinion, just what he really really wants to believe. Any and all facts, reality, history, or direct personal experience that conflict with that belief will be handwaved. It’s pure superstition — guns are evil, demon-possessed things whose mere presence causes murder (except for the hundreds of thousands of them in low-homicide countries, which have apparently been ritually cleansed of the taint *eyeroll*). If he wants to belong to a cult, fine that’s his business, but we’re not joining it.

          79. That is because anybody with a fucking clue and two brain cells to rub together who isn’t a devout leftist who critically studies the issue ends up as a gun rights advocate.

          80. Funny how that works. I used to be for gun control, until I got more information on it.

  24. Ban all guns. Why does anyone have to own a gun? I don’t own one and don’t feel threatened. If you want more of your brothers and sisters murdered by gun, keep up your campaign. The U.S.A. is the laughing stock of the world with their antiquated gun laws.

    1. Please try to add something to the conversation besides histrionics that even the Victorians would laugh at.

    2. When the world can get through a single decade without coming running to the United States to bail it (them) out of one disaster or another, then they can laugh at us.

    3. You know what? None of us care what you think about our right to bear arms to defend ourselves. If you don’t want to, don’t. If you want to make us all assuage your silly little fears, you’re delusional.

  25. Larry, thanks for reposting this. Sorry to get to the party late, though only a day or so. Jeez, you guys are well on your way to breaking another blog page.

    Instead of dribbing and drabbing like I did back in 2012/3 with the first posting of this excellent essay, I’ll try and address the bigger gun control myths perpetuated by those like justanobody (thanks for your succinct encapsulation of this ignorance, BTW) all at once, without stepping on Larry’s already well-made points:

    1) “[The Q]uestion becomes, just how deadly of a weapon you permit stupid, ill-tempered and malicious people to have.” Ah, how deliciously pretentious, condescending and ignorant, all at once. For starters, those ‘stupid, ill-tempered and malicious’ people are ALREADY carrying guns. Laws can’t stop that. At best they can punish them after they’ve committed a crime, as others have pointed out (that doesn’t invalidate the concept of the Rule of Law, it merely points out one of its limitations). Do me a favor and try going through the system as it currently stands. Buy a gun, get a concealed carry license and buy an NFA item like a suppressor, while repeatedly asking yourself “how is this keeping criminals from just ignoring all of this stuff?”. HOLY SHIT! The bureaucracy is titanic, and largely arbitrary. While I’m all for discouraging violent criminals from getting weapons, you need to understand that these laws only affect law-abiding citizens, by definition. Even then, if you make the hurdles too high, the law-abiding will simply ignore them. A better argument would be to aim for the middle of the bell curve, and set the regulations just high enough to encourage the majority of law-abiding citizens to seek out useful training. The sad (for you) fact is that laws criminalizing gun ownership will only affect those who respect the law to begin with. To a criminal intent on breaking laws anyway, what kind of a deterrent is one more law? Get this through your head kitten, criminals cannot be nagged, shamed or guilted into compliance. They don’t care about your opinion of them. Just because you perceive these techniques to work in your Greenwich Village and SoHo neighborhoods (and even there, they don’t work as often as you believe) doesn’t mean they apply to the world writ large. The best that they can do is reach the majority of those who are receptive to instruction and get them beneficial training. Even there, the one’s who need the training most are the same people least likely to be receptive to it (re; Larry’s previous rant on the subject…as a newly-minted NRA pistol instructor, I see it as a problem of compliance, not the lack of available, knowledgeable instruction).

    2) “Defense against tyranny is “cute”, but wholly obsolete.” This one’s directed at you, Bill Mahr. Why is it that gun controllers take whichever side of the argument best defends their beliefs instead of the explanation that best fits the facts? Actually, I think I just answered my own question there. 80 million gun owners and 300 million guns in the US are used as big, scary numbers when they serve the sophistic (good word, thanks for that one guys…you’re better than RD’s “Word of the Day” column) purpose, but when talking about opposing governmental tyranny, it’s always couched in the notion of “the individual against the state”? Pick a lane, guys. And after all, the idea of a few thousand guys with small arms fighting the combined might of NATO to a standstill really is just silly, right? Oh, wait… I’ll admit I’ve never heard the “eventually you’ll run out of ammo unless outside suppliers step in, so just give up” argument before. That’s still specious and ignorant, but at least it’s new. How do you think the Taliban, IS, Boko Haram (or on a more morally upright note, the Colonial Revolutionary Army) keeps shooting? Wishful thinking? It does lead me into my next point though;

    3) “We liberals don’t trust the government. We watch them carefully.” Yeah, great. And when you see something tyrannical, what do you do? Write a harshly worded letter? I know you think in your little world that reason trumps force, but the sad fact kitten, is that it does not. You can lay out the most air-tight, logical argument as to why the mugger shouldn’t take your wallet, but when he caves your head in with a crowbar, he’s getting your wallet. The second Amendment encapsulates the fact that OUR government works for the people, not the other way around as in most other countries with a history of sovereign rule. We keep the guns around in case the help starts getting uppity. They’re also useful on a more individual basis for self-defense. Which leads me to;

    4) “The Second Amendment refers to the army, not individuals.” Sorry Moose-breath, but the Supreme Court disagrees with you. Reference D.C. v Heller, or McDonald v City of Chicago. Or hell, just watch Penn and Teller explain it (well, as usual Teller doesn’t say much): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4zE0K22zH8 If a Vegas magic act can correctly diagram the sentence structure and meaning, and you’re still not grokking it, you’re just in denial, clinging desperately to your beliefs.

    5) “The police will protect me.” I love cities. They allow for specialization that you can’t achieve in rural communities. After all, you won’t find many pediatric oncologists in Ottumwa Iowa. But specialization leads specialists (city dwellers) to know more and more about less and less. The increasingly large list of subjects that fall outside their narrowing focus is subconsciously handed off to other people, like sanitation, transportation, health care, food, and security. Like Larry said, there are 7-800,000 LEO’s of all flavors in this country, of which 200,000 are on duty at any given time, to “protect” a population of 319,000,000. That’s about 1500 citizens per LEO. Police are public servants we hire to help with the heavy lifting. Incarceration, investigation, riot control, that kind of stuff. They cannot defend you individually. It’s not that they’re inept, or uncaring, it’s just logistics. In 2010 a spurned boyfriend went to his ex’s office and shot the place up (Google “Emcore shooting”). Albuquerque PD’s response time was phenomenal, and well below the average of 9 minutes. They got there in three (I live just over a mile from the office, and I don’t think I could get there that fast), but by then all the shooting was over. Cops aren’t body guards. Self-defense is an individual responsibility. It’s inherent in the term for crying out loud.

    6) “Gun control hasn’t worked so far because it just hasn’t gone far enough.” What this back-handedly acknowledges is that gun control can only work with 100% compliance. But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King, and in the land of the unarmed sheeple, the guy with the gun calls the shots (pun intended). All of humanity can’t agree 100% on anything more controversial than breathing, let alone gun control, so good luck with compliance. Gun technology isn’t magic unless you actively protect your ignorance of the subject. We’ve been making these things in one form or another for over 500 years. It’s not that tough. The only place where you can rid society of all guns, as well as rid it of all knowledge of their production and use, is the same mythical planet where you find frictionless surfaces and massless pulleys from your high school physics textbook. Even if you could, you’d just be handing control of society over to the biggest and the strongest, essentially the high school football team. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer a more level playing field.

    7) “Handguns are evil, they should all be banned.” You realize you’re taking this point from a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, right? “It’s a Saturday Night Special, got a barrel that’s blue and cold. They ain’t good for ‘nuthin, but put a man six feet in a hole.” I guess we should be thankful that you weren’t listening to “That Smell” when you were searching for moral guidance (“Whiskey bottles, brand-new cars, oak tree you’re in my way.”) I wish I could find the old Discover Magazine article that covered violent death through the ages, but the gist of it is this; in prehistory, judging from archeological records from around the world, the percentage of human deaths attributable to violence was as high as 10%-30% (depending on the location). Do you know what the current violent death percentage is worldwide? With all the terrorism, gangs, civil wars, all brought to you through the convenience of the 24/7 news cycle? It’s 3%. Again correlation does not equal causation, but firearms have, for the first time in the history of the world, taken physical strength out of the equations of predation and competition for resources. Robert Heinlein put it more succinctly; “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” Hoplophobic false fears of turning “fender-benders into bloodbaths” and “fistfights into gunfights” notwithstanding. There is no Constitutional Right to have your phobias catered to. If you’re afraid of something, do the mature thing and learn more about it. Don’t expect reality to conform to the limitations of your own psyche.

    8) “If the Second Amendment protects individuals right to own weapons, then why aren’t you arguing for nukes and chem./bio weapons?” Because I’m not trying to convince myself that I’m right based on reductio ad absurdum (or more correctly, a Strawman argument…thanks Feather Blade and Adam Lawson), which others have already correctly called you on. From a more practical standpoint, NBC are largely offensive weapons (save the premise of MAD, which doesn’t scale well to the individual level), and as such they don’t offer much in a home invasion scenario. And unlike you, it’s not like I’m talking from ignorance. I spent two years certified for the solo delivery of nuclear weapons, so I’ve got a working knowledge of what they’re good for, and what they’re not. If you want to destroy a FENCER base in Georgia, then a B61 Mod3 or Mod4 is your weapon of choice. Defending against a mugger (or as others have mentioned, tyranny on your home soil), not so much.

    9) “Don’t trust the NRA/GOA/NSSF etc. They’re all part of the conspiracy.” So I’m assuming that you also distrust the AMA as part of the “medical-industrial complex”, and seek medical advice from Christian Scientists instead? Because when you depend on The Brady Campaign, VPC or Everytown for Gun Safety, that’s exactly what you’re doing with firearm information. Taking as fact the opinion of people who, going in to the argument, admit they hate guns and consistently demonstrate their ignorance of guns and violent crime, valuing their beliefs more highly than knowledge. I guess John Kenneth Galbraith was right when he observed; “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

    10) Finally (“Yea!!!, right?), predation and competition for resources are not human behavioral peculiarities, much less Republican conspiracies. They are the forces that have driven evolution on this planet for the past 3.5 billion years or so. You cannot hand-wave them in to non-existence simply because your urban perspective finds them distasteful. Cribbing from Dave Grossman’s excellent essay “On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs”, there are wolves out there kitten. And they don’t care what you believe. They care about 1) what they want (money, drugs, rape/murder victims, etc.) and 2) not getting caught. Avoid them if you can, but even the best of us can’t see them coming 100% of the time. When that confrontation arises, there are two items left on the menu; succumb to the violence, or oppose it with violence of your own. As a denialist, you’ve only got the first choice. As a realist, I’ve got a plan B. And I pose absolutely no threat to you or your equally ignorant fellow Progressives until and unless you threaten me with criminal violence. I am a sheepdog.

    I’ll let you in on a little secret kitten. I was raised on the East Coast too, and spent my formative years bantering the same ignorant pabulum back and forth between me and my equally ignorant buddies. It only holds together if you ignore all of that pesky “reality” that goes hand-in-hand with experience and knowledge. When I left Connecticut (to paraphrase Jake Johannsen’s observation of his native Iowa “It took a long time for me to realize that we were free to go.”), I eventually sought out people who knew more about guns and criminal violence than I did (cops, instructors, cop instructors…), asked them questions (sometimes really ignorant ones), listened to their answers, and incorporated this new knowledge into an ever-evolving world view. I call this process “learning”, and I’m really hoping it’ll catch on, though I have my doubts. Quit being such a poster child for Conformation Bias.

    P.S. I’m looking forward to the book signing next month Larry. I’m poring through as many as I can before then (though I just started Vendetta…sorry, but I was a late adopter of the series) to have signable material handy. If you haven’t already, I’d like to request incorporating more Glock 20/29’s and Tavors into your plots :).
    P.P.S. WordPress’ security has gotten so strong that not even I can post as myself. Presumably the hackers in the PRC and Russia still can though.

  26. One thing I honestly can’t comprehend is how easily people seem to twist the wording to mean other than it does. Or misunderstand, perhaps.

    Is it because I read stuff written in Middle English (and even Old occasionally) all the way up through modern? Is there something that makes this complicated I just don’t see?

    Really, it’s not even that long.

    “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

    We have A because B, therefore C.

    Seriously, that’s all it is.

    A (Militia) is necessary.
    It is necessary because B. (security)
    Therefore C. (people’s right shall not be infringed)

    Note that it is the _people’s_ right to bear arms, not the militias specifically.

    That the definition of militia keeps getting argued is smoke and mirrors, as far as I can tell.

    You can even argue that the amendment here doesn’t even grant the right to bear arms, but merely states that the existing assumed right cannot be infringed.

    (Though even if I am wrong about that the fact that it states said right shall not be infringed establishes it as a right in its own right, if it wasn’t already assumed.)

    1. Ah, but the Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressives totally abandoned simple English grammar and syntax early in the 20th Century, when it proved unable to disguise they idiocy.

    2. This isn’t Greek. It says there are times when a militia may be needed. By definition that is a grass roots group of citizens formed at need which is not part of a professional standing army. Having their own weapons is a plus.

  27. — “Until this national conversation is willing to entertain allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons, then it isn’t a conversation at all, it is a lecture.” —

    Given that we’re talking about Barack Hussein Obama and his lieutenants, the “lecture” is foreordained, the antecedent clause being unnecessary.

  28. If I buy and shoot a Confederate flag with an assault weapon in California, which felony cancels out? No reason.

  29. Long time reader (huge fan of MHI and Grimnoir Chronicles), first time commenter. I have thought about the “mandatory training” thing before and come to this conclusion. Proper firearm safety training should be required of all US residents 18 years and older. Make it part of the high school curriculum. We need to take a page from the liberal play book (see Alinski 4). If they can force sex ed or the purchase of health insurance, why can’t we force gun safety training? After all, it’s just common sense!

    1. If it’s part of the high school curriculum you’d have to make it age 16 at least. Better, actually, to have it be age 12. It could be part of a larger program that includes how to put out kitchen grease fires.

      The biggest problem would be that (just like with sex ed) you’re trusting a curriculum put out by a government institution.

  30. “how many of your fellow Americans are you willing to kill…?”
    Asked and answered:
    “25 million” — Bill Ayers

  31. I have finally decided to run some numbers to see what kind of correlation, if any, exists between civilian gun ownership and crime. To this end, I’ve calculated the Pearson correlation coefficient (r) for rates of civilian gun ownership per state vs. crime rate. The data I’ve used was the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey of 2001 and the FBI Uniform Crime Report for the same year. Only data for the 50 states plus the District of Columbia is used. The rationale for using this particular data set is as follows:

    – Comparing crime rates across countries is inherently suspect. Different criminal codes, different methods of collection, not to mention the fact that some nations are flagrantly cooking their books. By limiting my data to the United States I can be reasonably comfortable that my working set is at least consistent.

    – 2001 is the only year for which data is available for both the crime rate and the gun ownership rate. I do not believe it is reasonable to draw meaningful conclusions from data across different years.

    – The data is freely available, thus interested third parties can readily double-check my math.

    Before we begin, there’s a critically important fact to remember:

    CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION

    The straight results:

    Violent crime: -0.41
    Property crime: -0.21

    Murder and manslaughter: -0.31
    Rape: 0.14
    Robbery: -0.57
    Aggravated assault: -0.30
    Burglary: -0.06

    There was one thing I wanted to do, however, and that was to recalculate the results while excluding DC. It appeared to be an outlier with a gun ownership rate half as much as the next lowest at 3.8% vs. Hawaii at 8.7%, while being an absolute cesspit of crime with a violent crime rate of 1736.7 per 100K being over twice as high as the next highest of 797 per 100K in Florida. So the following are the results excluding Washington DC.

    Violent crime: -0.26
    Property crime: -0.10

    Murder and manslaughter: -0.02
    Rape: 0.15
    Robbery: -0.52
    Aggravated assault: -0.13
    Burglary: -0.03

    What follows is strictly my own interpretation of the results:

    I do not want to hear another damn-fool tell me how less guns will make us safer. Gun ownership rate by itself is completely irrelevant to the homicide rate, and negative where violent crime in general is concerned. So if you think that “assault weapon” bans, or magazine capacity limits, or any of this jazz will have one iota of positive impact, you’re either ignorant, stupid, or you have an agenda unrelated to reducing crime or improving safety.

    I do not believe that the evidence that more guns by themselves will reduce violent crime is compelling. Furthermore, I suspect more guns by themselves will have no measurable effect on property crime in general. The one instance where I think “More guns, less crime!” may have some validity is where burglary is concerned. Everywhere else the correlation it to weak.

    1. Nice post. I might have said the correlation is too tenuous and difficult to demonstrate, but otherwise, (and that’s a minor quibble) I have to say this was an impressive bit of analysis. I wonder how (and if) the rape numbers would change were it less popular to smear advocates of arming women with the “misogynist” and “rape apologist” labels, and were it more popular for women to go armed.
      God bless! 😉

      1. I doubt it would change anything. I believe what you’re seeing is statistical noise, nothing more.

      2. OK, I’m now damn sure you’re seeing noise in the data. There’s just something weird going on with Alaska and rape. If you exclude it from the sample, correlation drops to 0.02, which translates to “completely unrelated”.

  32. that’s not an argument against gun laws, that’s the argument against ALL laws.

    Only if you presume that the sole purpose of law is to prevent crime.

    It’s not. But if your argument is that something should be a law specifically to prevent crime then the failure to do so is an argument against that law.

    Regarding murder, rape, assault, and the like, there are already laws against them carrying pretty steep penalties. Anybody who is going to be stopped by something being illegal will already be stopped by those laws. “Gun law” adds nothing. If they’re going to ignore a law against murder, they’re going to ignore a law against murder with a gun.

    So whatever benefit you have from laws in general, you don’t get from “gun control.” This is predictably the case. This, historically, has been the result time and time again when “gun laws” have been passed.

    At this point the proponents among the “political class” of such things cannot possibly believe the stated goal. The question then becomes (and for most of us it’s purely rhetorical) is what are the unstated goals?

  33. As a CHL Instructor in Texas I can confirm everything in Larry’s article on gun control. Currently there are so many guns on the street even if they stopped making guns criminals would still have guns. Our only effective defense is to protect our families by having our own guns. It is too late to bar the doors.

    1. Even if we somehow did eliminate the existing supply, the worse elements would just make their own. There’s articles about once a year out of Australia where they’ve raided a small warehouse factory used by the human trafficking rings to build stuff like Owen Machine Carbine knockoffs out of hardware store materials and light machining tools.

  34. And an idiot at Th e Guardian (no, not that one, another) mentions Sad Puppies in an article about the Charleston shooting:

    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/28/harold-covington-northwest-front-dylann-roof-manifesto-charleston-shooting

    “American science fiction has long had a rightward tilt, from the contemporary strain of small-press sci-fi Tea Party fantasias swarming the Hugo Awards nominations all the way back to libertarian deity Ayn Rand.”

    And look who gets interviewed by the writer: John Scalzi.

    1. It’s completely absurd. I don’t suppose Scalzi took the opportunity to explain that connecting the Charleston shooting to science fiction or characterizing the history of science fiction that way or suggesting that Ayn Rand was *rightward*, are completely ridiculous suggestions?

  35. Great post, thanks for sharing it again.

    I’m gradually getting to the point where I want to let these people go their own way. Let them have a blue country with all the gun control and socialism and government control and social justice and carbon-neutrality and mandatory unions and Christian-suppression and corruption they want. Eventually we’ll have to build a wall to manage the stream of people fleeing their economically collapsing crime-ridden bluetopia into our booming Republic of Greater Texas, but at least they’ll either understand the problems with their worldview or have to deal with its consequences.

    To be perfectly honest I don’t know much longer they will let us peacefully co-exist with them, even to the limited extent they do now. It’s only paranoia until people start knocking down your door at 3AM, reporters in tow, trashing your house, and then telling you there’s a “gag order” so you can’t even talk about it, all for the crime of challenging unions. Just ask Cindy Archer.

  36. I have read your essay and scanned the comments of this post and have some ideas on items that have not been discussed.

    1. Background Check Improvement – The current law around NICS prohibits sales of guns to users who fall under this definition “Is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” but doesn’t have a great way to check on that. I would expand the NICS check and require all courts to submit charges and convictions of substance abuse to a central database. This would include DUI, possession of narcotics, public intoxication, ect…… This would have prevented Dylan Roof from getting his gun as the NICS check at the gun store would have come up as a DENY because of his charge of opiate possession. I would also work towards a technical improvement in mental health. The Virginia Tech shooter was declared mentally ill 2 years prior to the shooting but was still able to pass a background check. Either find better ways to implement the current law or if it is not sufficient pass new laws to require this information to be passed up to the NICS database.
    2. Background Check Expansion – Current law exempts private sellers from doing background checks, effectively allowing them to sell guns at will to criminals and mentally ill people with no repercussions. Make the law that all transfers of ownership of a gun to require a background check. It can be done over the web or via the phone so it is not an overly hard thing to do. A signed statement from Robyn Anderson, the person who procured the guns for the Columbine shooters, states she would not have gotten the guns for them if she had been required to do paperwork or complete a background check.
    3. Additional Criminal Liability – Under current law the unlawful transfer of a gun to a person is punishable by 0-5 years in prison and up to a $5000 fine in Utah. I would propose that if you transfer a gun illegally to a restricted person that you are liable to be charged as an accessory to any crime committed with that gun. I would think a lot of criminals would begin having second thoughts on selling guns if they knew each sale is a lottery that can royally screw them over. A gangbanger gives a gun to a friend who kills 2 people with it and suddenly he is going away for murder. A meth junkie gets a gun from an enterprising drug dealer and robs a liquor store and kills the owner and suddenly the dealer is going away for decades. I think these additional penalties would have an impact on the illegal sales of firearms and potentially help keep them out of the hands of unstable people.
    4. Additional Criminal Liability Part 2 – Under current law if you legally purchase a gun and your son takes it from you and shoots up a school you are not liable. I would propose a law that says if a gun owner does not properly secure their guns (on self or with trigger guard or in a locked gun cabinet) that they bear some criminal liability if that gun is taken from an unsecured location and used in a crime. Nancy Lanza did not secure her weapons at home and her son got them and shot her and shot up a school. She obviously was not in fear of him killing her or she would have secured the guns or locked her son up but if this fear of prosecution for any crimes her son might commit with her guns had been present maybe she would have done more to secure them and prevented a tragedy.
    I think these all protect the rights of law abiding gun owners. Items 1 & 2 are directed at criminals/addicts/mentally ill and only add minutes to the gun transaction. Item 3 is only directed at illegal sales. Item 4 is a bit more controversial but even the NRA agrees that gun owners should “Store guns so they are not accessible to unauthorized persons.”
    http://training.nra.org/nra-gun-safety-rules.aspx

    Any thoughts? Thanks!

    1. A lot of thoughts actually, and I’ll probably end up doing another blog post specifically about back ground checks. I started writing up another post about the “gun show loophole” trying to explain what that actually meant. Basically there are a whole lot of problems with the existing system, and way bigger problems when you try to expand it.

      “Securing” guns is another interesting one that people bring up, but which fails badly when applied in real life, as does making people liable for items which were stolen and then used in commission of a crime.

      1. Thank you for the response! I look forward to a future posting on background checks but I will clarify my position as against all private sales without a background check, not just those conducted at a gun show. In 2012 Radcliffe Haughton purchased a gun from a private seller despite having a restraining order that would have prohibited the sale if a NICS check had run. He then proceeded to use that gun 1 day later to kill his wife and several others.

        I agree that some proposals for securing guns are silly, especially those requiring they be secured while not in use. The purpose of having a gun on your person is self-defense and that defense is slowed if you have to remove a trigger guard. My proposal is more along the lines of being secured when you are not present. I think gun owners have a responsibility to secure their guns from those that would use them illegally. An example, a hypothetical gun owner is a bit of a slob. His house is messy and unorganized and he leaves his guns and ammo random places that are easy to get to (counter, junk drawer, closet, garage, ect…) rather than securing them in a locked gun case or locked gun safe. His brother is recently kicked out of his house due to a marriage failing and moves in with the gun owner. One day while the gun owner is at work the brother gets in a particularly bad fight with his estranged wife on the phone and takes one the unsecured guns and goes and kills her with it. I personally think if the gun owner made no effort to secure his weapons and they are used in a crime that the owner bears some criminal liability for that. What are your thoughts as to what should happen to the gun owner in this case? Thanks!

        PS: Enjoying the Monster Hunter series. The way you are varying points of view per book is refreshing. To many novels in F&SF switch per chapter and I like the way you are switching through characters (Z, Earl, Franks) and getting full stories from them as opposed to drips and drabs.

        1. Jesse H:

          Let’s take the principle you’re suggesting and apply it to some other scenarios with objects other than guns, and see if it still makes sense in those cases. Instead of “the gun owner” since in some of these scenarios he doesn’t own guns, I’m going to call him A, and the brother B.

          A doesn’t own and collect guns, he collects classic cars. He’s got three or four vintage cars that he’s quite proud of, and he’s shown them to his brother B. B, now living in A’s house, knows that A is a bit of a slob and keeps his car keys lying around on the kitchen counter in easy access. So when B has a fight with his estranged wife, he steals the keys to one of A’s cars, drives to where he knows she’ll be grocery shopping, and runs her over while she’s crossing the street. Should A be held liable for his property being stolen and used against his will?

          A is an amateur chef, so he keeps a lot of well-sharpened kitchen knives around the house. After the argument, B steals one of A’s knives and goes over and stabs his wife to death. Should A be held liable for his kitchen knives being misused?

          A has an old cavalry sword hanging over his mantelpiece, a souvenir from his great-grandfather who fought for the Union in the Civil War. In honor to his great-grandfather’s memory, he keeps the sword sharp. B knows this, so when he decides to murder his wife, he steals A’s sword and kills his wife with it. Should A be held liable for B’s crime?

          A has a laptop computer, which he sometimes leaves turned on while he’s logged in. While A is out shopping, B sits down at A’s laptop and, without A’s permission or knowledge, emails a hitman to arrange for his wife’s murder, then deletes the email out of the Sent folder. Should A be held liable for B’s abuse of his personal property?

          You begin to see the problem, I hope. If someone steals my property, I should not be held liable for what they do with it. Even if that property is something potentially lethal, like a car or a kitchen knife or a gun. I would treat guns the same way that I treat other things that could potentially be used for murder: the person actually using the tool is responsible for its use. If the owner did not consent to the other person’s use of his property, he should have no liability for what the other person did after stealing his property.

          1. I think those are good examples using items that are less dangerous than a gun but what about items more dangerous? The federal government has made it illegal to store explosives in a manner that is not theft-resistant and proceeds to describe what they mean by that in this document:

            https://www.atf.gov/file/58741/download

            This is punishable by up to $1000 fine and up to 1 year in jail.

            Should gun owners have a similar responsibility to make their guns theft resistant? Texas, a red state, has a law on the books that bases the punishment of a crime on the outcome:

            “Sec. 46.13. MAKING A FIREARM ACCESSIBLE TO A CHILD. (a) In this section:
            (1) “Child” means a person younger than 17 years of age.
            (2) “Readily dischargeable firearm” means a firearm that is loaded with ammunition, whether or not a round is in the chamber.
            (3) “Secure” means to take steps that a reasonable person would take to prevent the access to a readily dischargeable firearm by a child, including but not limited to placing a firearm in a locked container or temporarily rendering the firearm inoperable by a trigger lock or other means.
            (b) A person commits an offense if a child gains access to a readily dischargeable firearm and the person with criminal negligence:
            (1) failed to secure the firearm; or
            (2) left the firearm in a place to which the person knew or should have known the child would gain access.
            (c) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the child’s access to the firearm:
            (1) was supervised by a person older than 18 years of age and was for hunting, sporting, or other lawful purposes;
            (2) consisted of lawful defense by the child of people or property;
            (3) was gained by entering property in violation of this code; or
            (4) occurred during a time when the actor was engaged in an agricultural enterprise.
            (d) Except as provided by Subsection (e), an offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor.
            (e) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor if the child discharges the firearm and causes death or serious bodily injury to himself or another person.”

            http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.46.htm

            I will admit that my earlier comment on making a gun owner liable for the crime if their gun was stolen was probably going too far but what about taking the Texas example and extending it to making a firearm accessible to a known felon or someone suffering from mental illness? Thoughts?

          2. Only two problems with that proposal:

            1. Every proposal I see from gun-grabbers leaves this one out:

            “(3) was gained by entering property in violation of this code; ”

            2. Most importantly, after being lied to by gun-grabbers and other varieties of Leftist for the last 60 years, we don’t trust you to keep your side of the bargain: “If we agree to this, you will stop proposing more restrictions, using this as a base.” You have poisoned the well permanently.

          3. “we don’t trust you to keep your side of the bargain”

            This is important and can’t be underlined enough. The STANDARD playbook tactic, as explained by Josh Silverman of Handgun Control, is “Take what you can, we’ll come back for the rest later”. In other words, there will always be another gun control bill after this one, another restriction, another ban, and the banners will start work on passing the next one just as soon as this one here is signed; and this is the official, deliberate policy.
            Why would I want to “compromise” with people who view my willingness to bargain as only a step to the next imposition on my rights, and who by their own words, have no intention at all of bargaining in good faith?

    2. I would expand the NICS check and require all courts to submit charges and convictions of substance abuse to a central database. This would include DUI, possession of narcotics, public intoxication, ect[sic]……

      Whoa. Hold on there, cowboy.

      There are already federal laws against those convicted of most felonies owning guns. If you want to agitate for improving the reporting mechanisms in order to prevent said convicted felons from acquiring firearms though legal purchase, have at. Note the emphases. What you’re proposing here is stripping a Constitutionally-protected right from someone merely for being accused of a crime, even if that alleged crime is just a misdemeanor (as public intoxication generally is). No. Absolutely not.

      1. I think that you have 2 points here:

        1. Accused of a crime
        Current law allows for citizens to be denied legal access to arms if they are under indictment for a crime punishable by 1 year or more so this ship has already sailed.

        “(d) It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person—
        (1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;”

        https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/922#d

        2. Misdemeanor
        One of the weaknesses of the current law is that it has very nebulous language around “addiction”.

        “(3) is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance”

        My attempt there, which I would be open for debate on, was to define an “addict” as a person who has legal issues resulting from their use of mind altering substances. Perhaps that hold expires after 1 year for those convicted of misdemeanors. Do you think an attempt to identify a way to keep guns out of addicts hands is a good thing or is it too vague and should not be attempted?

        1. I believe the point is under current law, once you are no longer under indictment and not convicted (acquitted, charges dismissed, etc), it is once more legal to sell this person arms and ammo.

          The statement to which Achillea was responding read as if anyone ever charged with such a crime would forever be disallowed the purchase and ownership of weaponry regardless of the state of that charge.

          1. Also, ‘charged’ is not the same thing as ‘indicted.’ Most criminal cases, including felony ones, no indictment is involved. An indictment requires the prosecutor to go to a Grand Jury and convince them a given person or persons should be arrested and brought to trial. It’s still laughably easy, and I’d like to beach that ship and turn it into a quaint little nautically-themed cafe, but at least it’s still tied up at the dock. All it takes to be charged with something is for the prosecutor to formally claim ‘I think so-and-so should be brought to trial for thus-and-so crime.’ He doesn’t have to convince anyone of anything, there’s no judge until arraignment and no jury until the actual trial.

            My attempt there, which I would be open for debate on, was to define an “addict” as a person who has legal issues resulting from their use of mind altering substances. Perhaps that hold expires after 1 year for those convicted of misdemeanors. Do you think an attempt to identify a way to keep guns out of addicts hands is a good thing or is it too vague and should not be attempted?

            I think addicts and drunks have the right to defend themselves, too. I think a sloppy-ass impromptu pole dance or an off-key rendition of Danny Boy at 2am is not sufficient reason to strip someone of a fundamental, Constitutionally-guaranteed right. Not even temporarily. If you want to prove someone is prone to felony level stupidity/violence while under the influence, then convict him/her in a court of law for committing a felony level crime while hammered.

          2. Good point, I should have provided more clarity on the length of time. If charges are dropped or if a person wins at court then any hold based on those charges would be dropped immediately.

  37. Larry,
    Thank you for taking the time to write this. It’s a shame most anti-gun types seem immune to logic and reason.
    I do have one question. You quote a statistic regarding the number of casualties in mass shooting incidents stopped by law enforcement vs civilians. May I ask where you got those numbers? I ask since the last I heard it was hard to compute the second number since a mass shooting incident was defined as 4 or more casualties. Someone is willing to comb through and analyze a lot data, and I’d be interested in what other numbers they’ve come up with.
    Again, that you for being a voice of reason, and taking time away from more lucrative writing to produce this.

    1. Stupidly, I didn’t include the link in the original. However, I put it into the comments of the original post. Sorry I can’t be of more help, but I can’t recall the name off the top of my head.

      1. I’m still scanning through the comments on the original post looking for the link and will post it here if/when I turn it up. I have found a couple of pertinent comments by thewriterinblack, though, from which I’m taking the liberty of excerpting a couple of the key parts below:

        When I did my informal study on mass shootings (every incident involving four or more people killed as part of a single event) the total number killed in mass shootings from 1949 to 2009 (when I did the study) was 602. The largest single incident was Virginia Tech (33).

        Happy Land Fire: 87 killed
        Upstairs Lounge Arson Attack: 32 killed
        Whiskey Au Go Go fire: 15 killed
        Beverly Hills Supper Club fire: 165 killed (although, to be fair, arson was never proven in this case)
        Reno arson fire: 9 killed
        And so on and so on and so on.

        Arson doesn’t get the press that “mass shootings” do (and nobody keeps track nationally on “number killed by arson” as they do by people using guns) but it should be pretty clear from this short sampling that using the same standard of “mass murder” used for mass shootings, arson is just as deadly as gunfire, with quite a few more killed at the “top end.”

        The only “preventative” nature appropriate to law is deterrence: the threat of being caught and punished making some people “think twice” about committing crimes. Unfortunately, when a person is planning to die in the process anyway, deterrence is not terribly effective except for one thing: out of the 90 separate events I studied covering the period from 1949 to 2009 (when I did the study) there were only 9 mass shooting incidents where I could not prove (with the resources available at the time of completing the study) were at locations where the killer could be highly confident that nobody would be armed. At at least 90 percent (“at least” because if I did not have complete information I assumed the _least_ restrictive category that I could prove–they could have been more restrictive but certainly were not less) of the incidents the killer chose, for whatever reason, a place where no one would be armed.

      1. That’s actually how I found it, the fact that the author was so fixated on message science fiction suggested to me that we might share a common enemy.

  38. I’m going to collect a couple of things down here, since it’s getting difficult to find stuff buried higher up.

    the right to be armed is not a fundamental right …
    Free speech, on the other hand, is a condition for democracy. It is a fundamental right.

    This has it exactly backward. The absolute first, most basic, most fundamental right is a person’s right to live. Without it, you have no other rights, fundamental or otherwise. You don’t have a functioning culture, democratic or otherwise. You’re still getting hung up on the guns part of the equation. The ‘right to be armed’ is the right to self-defense, and part and parcel with the fundamental right to live. Free speech is very nice, and it might be a condition for democracy (though that’s debatable), but it’s not a fundamental right. Plenty of cultures/societies don’t have it and get along fine. With the possible exceptions of the Kurds and one or two tiny little ‘heretic’ offshoots, there’s not a single Muslim society on the planet that has free speech. Would they be more successful if they did? Almost certainly. Are they viable without it? Yes. By contrast, there are no cultures which do not recognize their members’ right to live. They may closely define what constitutes membership, and what offenses will cause that right to be considered invalidated, but every single one recognizes it, because without it you don’t have a society, you have anarchy.

    The notion of ‘fundamental rights’ in itself is cultural.

    Wrong. The notion of which rights are considered fundamental is cultural. The exception is the right to life, which is inherent and universal.

    I prefer to live in a society where people chose to give the responsibility of their safety to the state, while you prefer to live in a society where you retain some of this responsibility.

    Then you recognize the fundamental nature of the right to live, since you acknowledge that somebody has the responsibility of preserving it. Good. We’re finally getting somewhere. Firstly, unless you’re a child or otherwise incompetent, the only person truly responsible for your safety is you. You may choose to farm the work out exclusively to the state, but that’s your choice, and the results are on you both literally and figuratively. Secondly, not content with infantilizing yourself, you’re trying to demand that everyone around you (and everyone here, which is even worse), do the same.

    True story for you. There was a guy named Kevin Sutherland. He was your typical empty-headed white liberal, passionately devoted to gun control (and, ironically, to the whites-are-violent-racists-picking-on-poor-defenseless-blacks canard). Last Saturday, he was robbed, beaten, and stabbed to death by a black thug named Jaspar Spires during a three-minute train ride. He was unarmed, having decided to trust the state to keep him safe. It being DC, his fellow passengers (who were terrorized and also robbed, but at least survived), were likewise unarmed. Whether that was due in their cases to holding the same idiotic personal convictions or having them crammed down their throats by tools like Sutherland (and you), we’ll probably never know. Either way, none of them had guns, so nobody could save him. One wonders if, while he was bleeding out on the floor, he wished perhaps he hadn’t worked quite so assiduously toward disarming his fellow law-abiding citizens. But that, too, we’ll never know, because he didn’t trust them, he trusted only the state, and it was the state that wasn’t there when he needed it most.

  39. ehlo

    I actually agree with most of your “pro-gun” thoughts, I only have a single condition for gun owners:
    People should need a permit to buy guns or ammunition. And to get that permit, you have to pass a mental ‘stability’ test [ can’t remember the proper name at the moment]. I don’t mind people having guns as long as there is at least some mechanism in place to keep the insane or partially insane away from dangerous toys. We all know, that this solution is not perfect, but it’s still better than no check.

    On the other hand, I’m not a US citizen and given what I read about current situation around US, I believe, I’ll stick to countries with real freedom and unless I really have to, I don’t really wish to travel to/around US. The country is quite beautiful, but the level of weird is too high at the moment.

    1. The country is quite beautiful, but the level of weird is too high at the moment.

      Yeah, all those weirdos who think freedom means not having to ask the government for permission to do something. /sarcasm

    2. Your single condition is both naive and logistically impossible.

      So, we institute another massive infringement on liberty, where regular Americans have to jump through hoops and pay a poll tax to exercise their rights…

      And right after you passed it, statist politicians would be declaring vets/conservatives/anyone who disagrees as mentally defective.

      And another mass shooting would take place using one of the hundreds of millions of firearms that are already in circulation.

      And then somebody would be calling for yet another single condition.

      Sorry, John. I’m afraid you don’t know jack about the US. Most of the US is just fine. The places where you’re actually likely to get murdered over here are the ones that you think have “real freedom”. Go figure.

    3. I love how people who don’t even live here want to tell us how to live.

      Here’s a little clue, if you believe ANYTHING from mainstream media about the US, you’re a fool.

    4. The Main Stream Media is odd in the US. Of the major news outlets Fox is right wing, the rest are left wing (Our right/left. Left/Liberal tends to be towards ‘the government doing everything’ and Right/Conservative tends to be towards ‘Do things at the lowest level practical starting with the individual’ so you understand the unfamiliar usage of terms, there are variances enough to give you splitting headaches but that’ll give you a basic feel for what we mean by right/left). First the media lies. Secondly they try and make people look bad. Third, unlike the European news media who seems to try and avoid publishing too much embarrassing stuff, the American news media loves it. They LOVE bashing the US. (Except for Fox which tends to love bashing the people bashing the US. The Bashing is a constant.) Odds are most of the things being reported are exaggerated not understated.

      For point the first, I have lived through things that the news media (specifically CNN) reported on. The only resemblance some of those events bore on reality was the time, the place, and one person’s name. There are other incidents but some of them are not mine to tell.

      If you stay out of Chicago, Washington DC, and Los Angeles, the odds of anything violent happening to you are very low unless you are exceptionally stupid in your behavior. (Walking up to a drunk and telling him his mother is a cheap prostitute will likely get you punched. It is called ‘picking a fight’. Other obvious levels of ‘well… that wasn’t the brightest thing I ever did’ also apply.)

      1. I would add Detroit and St Louis to your list. Alright, Detroit is improving, but moving from a cesspool to a sewer, while technically an improvement, is still a problem. Other than that, I agree 100% WyrdBard.

  40. ” … the shoulder thing which goes up ”

    Sounds like “this thing that tells time.” Cf. A Christmas Story

  41. My brain is a little fried from reading all the comments, but one thing did stand out from all the typical, already-refuted-if-you’re-willing-to-be-intellectually-honest anti-gun arguments: the role of worldview. Once one accepts the liberal view that it is the state that bears responsibility for both my safety and preservation of my rights, support for disarming the populace seems virtually inevitable. In otherwise ostensibly free societies, it is this worldview that leads one to say “I don’t trust my fellow citizens to bear arms, but I do trust them to elect a government that will, by virtue of having exclusive or near-exclusive access to guns, have the power to deny us any and all rights it chooses.” That those same citizens of dubious trustworthiness will be able to effectively restrain, by ballot, a government that overreaches in its authority must also be accepted, in spite of its inherent absurdity. These things lead me to two conclusions: 1) Helping, or leading, people to change their worldview is a long, slow and painful process that is unlikely to succeed in the absence of a sufficiently significant life event. 2) Since it is a matter of worldview, those of us who accept, and even prefer, personal responsibility for our rights and safety need to understand that those who seek ever greater control will not change. They will always seek to limit our freedoms. That is what liberals do. Not because they view themselves as evil destroyers of liberty, but because, for liberals, true safety and liberty are incompatible with individual freedom. They will never quit. They will never stop trying because they are absolutely convinced individual citizens (except for a chosen few) are incapable of being both free and responsible. We, then, must be even more resolute – not just for now, but all the time and in every generation.

  42. Some time back on FaceBook you listed something like 10 points against “Universal background checks”. I think these would be a good addition to this.

  43. A few months ago we had a guy who shot his wife and then disappeared after being chased by police. There was a search for him for several days. One of the places where he was seen is near where I work. My boss and the big boss come over to me and ask if I have a gun in my car? I said that I did and I was asked to get it and bring it inside. There was eight of us that all had weapons and the idea was to place us through out the building in case the guy got inside. One of the guys asked what should he do if he saw the guy. I said “Shoot him in the head.” “Are you nuts!” was the majority reply. I said “We have been informed that he is armed and is a threat. That meets all of the requirements for self-defense. We are under no obligation to apprehend and what if he runs away and ends up wounding or killing someone else?” Well the Big Boss says that there will be no shooting here period. I said “Fine.” and walked back out and locked my gun in my car.

    1. Better to walk out to the car, conceal the weapon while you act like you’re locking it up, and go back in. Some guy running around with a gun, I’d want something to break the boss’ rules with if he came be. You can find another job. You can’t find another life.

  44. I am a member of the media (local radio news). I believe local coverage of such a shooting is important, because people may have a child or other family member in a school. I think it is even more important now that most everybody is hooked into social media, which can spread runors. Now that coverage must be responsible by confirming anything obtained from facebook, twitter, etc.. Law enforcement’s most important job is obviously to stop the threat, but is also important to communicate with the public via the local “media”, as well as through facebook, twitter, etc. With that said, I really don’t understand why the national media needs to be doing wall to wall coverage. When they do, they end up spreading rumors and giving the killer what he seems to want, not his 5 minutes of fame, but rather his hours and hours and hours and hours fame. And in some cases, years of fame.

  45. These are great and cogent points. The argument that the genie is already out of the bottle on gun violence is accurate, and trying to stuff it back in is only going to affect the law abiding.

    For the sake of further understanding: What preventative steps would ACTUALLY be effective on stopping the spread and rise of mass shootings, rather than limiting the scope of their damage? I agree, pervasive concealed carry does have a lock on the latter, but is the former possible? Is the idea of gun control a mislead attempt to attain the impossible? I think the clash of the 24-hour news cycle and the inherent sensationalism of mass shootings combines into something that horrifyingly exacerbates our national problem of an increasing level of mass murders.

  46. I think that your arguments are sound and i’m changing my mind about gun laws, but i don’t think guns should be made so common as to make the argument “everybody has one, why can’t i have one?”, and this is something the NRA should take more seriously.
    Gun ownership is a pretty big responsibility, as you made the case for. You shouldn’t have one if you’re not prepared to use it. You shouldn’t have one if you are unstable, have psychological issues (such as schizophrenia) or just “because”. You shouldn’t have one if you do not respect the possibility of someone taking it from you, or having it accidentally fire from bad handling or bad maintenance.
    We’ve seen dangerous stuff go into the “everybody does it” terrain, and as a society we had to screw up to realize that its use should be responsible and well-thought (take for example cigarettes, cars, aerosols, pesticides, and the list goes on and on). This doesn’t mean that all these things should be banned, but they should be taken seriously and people (specially kids growing up) should be warned of the dangers of their use.
    Guns shouldn’t be normal. It should be as special as people who are willing to put their lives on the line when danger arises are (i believe that most would prefer to run and hide). We should not let gun ownership get to the point of allowing the argument “everybody has it, why should i not?”, because that way you’re putting guns in the wrong hands, and people asking for more gun control generates that healthy debate. It’s all about presenting both sides of the argument and let childrens come up with their own conclusions, which i think, are pretty common sense.. Guns, like cars, can be good, but you should be fucking careful when using/owning one.

    1. Couple things. Contrary to popular narrative, the NRA is the biggest gun safety instructor provider in the world. They teach lots of gun safety. I was an NRA instructor for a few years. The big reliable continual safety programs? NRA.

      Actual gun culture folks? We’re hard core about safety. We’ve got this thing that we call the 4 Rules. My kids had them memorized by the time they were six. Look around you? See the people here? Put up a photo of somebody with their finger inside a trigger guard and watch them flip out.

      Again, my people aren’t the problem.

  47. Er I live in the UK its not a violent dystopia. Ok the goverment would like to make it an Orwellian nightmare but thats never happening as its way past their level of competency.
    You couldnt own a firearm for self defence since 1968 let alone carry one after the dunblane killings handguns were banned theres been one mass shooting with legally held guns since then nofurther restrictions have been enforced.
    We dont need armed teachers or have to worry about mass shootings by the deranged because its quite difficult to get a firearm if you want one you have to prove your law abiding can store it securely and competent by joining a club and satisfying fellow shooters that they can trust you still cant use it for self defence but then criminals cant easily get guns or ammo either .

    1. I never said violent dystopia. But you do have an extremely high violent crime rate. It breaks down different than ours (hence me talking about apples to oranges), but your crime rate still sucks.

      1. They report crimes differently in the UK than in the US. Comparison of crime rates and types of crime just doesn’t work between the two.

    2. No, you just have some guys chopping up other people with knives and machetes and the like from time to time to time to time to…

  48. A very well put together piece. Also, as a mildly useless aside, your webpage is easy for even the blind to get around in.

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