Doesn’t it sound logical? Doesn’t it sound safe? Wouldn’t it make sense to learn from other developed nations, which believe that only the military and law enforcers, when necessary, should be armed — and which as a result lose far, far fewer innocent people than die every year in the United States? Sounds great.
Yes, even saying these words makes the NRA happy. It fuels the slippery-slope argument the gun lobby uses to oppose even the most modest, common-sense reforms. You see? Background checks today, confiscation tomorrow. Still trying to goad me into rejoining the NRA, aren't you?
And yes, I understand how difficult it would be. This is a matter of changing the culture and norms of an entire society. It would take time.
But the incremental approach is not succeeding. It sets increasingly modest goals, increasingly polite goals: close a loophole here, restrict a particularly lethal weapon there. Talk about gun safety and public health. Say “reform,” not “control.” Terrific news. A left winger admits all their whining and crying about gun control isn't working.
In response, a few states have tightened restrictions, a few states have loosened them. But as a nation — in Congress — we are stuck. Oregon, where the latest massacre took place, has recently instituted universal background checks which the shooter passed, every time.
Meanwhile the strategy of modest reform has its own vulnerabilities.
Every time there is a mass shooting, gun-control advocates argue again for legislation. But almost every time, opponents can argue that this shooter wouldn’t have been blocked from buying a gun, or that this gun would not have been on anyone’s banned list — and so why waste time (and political capital) on irrelevant restrictions? Neither would I personally have argued. My argument is this: Registration and confiscation schemes in the two states that implemented them since Sandy Hook have failed, miserably in New York at around five percent and in Connecticut where the compliance rate is at most 18 percent. That is civil disobedience, at the moment, but any attempt to seize weapons that have not been registered will likely be met with armed opposition this time around. You can cow an entire town, violate their Constitutional rights, as they did in Boston trying to catch a bad guy, but I suspect the reaction will be a damn sight different in the state attempting to seize weapons, property not rightfully belonging to the state. It will not happen in Massachusetts and it will not be allowed elsewhere, and any attempt, any attempt to dance the two step of registration and seizure will be met with severe penalties for the state. What do you do as a politician who has followed the prescribed remedy of registration and confiscation, when the thugs you employ refuse to go house to house to seize property not rightfully belonging to the state, because of armed disobedience? Do the state's armed thugs, champing at the bit to take guns away from citizens who have failed to register, relish the snap back, all initially at their expense? What happens when you run out of thugs to do your bidding as prescribed by "law". What happens when half your SWAT team calls in sick? Resigns? What happens when no one will protect you, your high office notwithstanding? Do you buy a gun, or do you get the hell out of Dodge?
To be clear, I believe the NRA is wrong on this, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is right. Modest restrictions can help and have helped. The one-gun-a-month law can reduce crime. Really? Prove it. You can't...
The gun-show loophole should be closed, and closing it would prevent some criminals from obtaining weapons. Really? Prove it. You can't. For people who say that they 'respect science' and live in a 'reality-based community', the fact is you don't bother with facts and take your reality in very small doses...
Every gun in a home with children should have a trigger lock. Implicit in a trigger lock law is a state mandated inspection at the most and criminal penalties of some sort if it is found a gun is stored without a gun lock. Such a law makes a constitutional right premised on a state mandated requirement, which means the right is utterly destroyed, long a goal of fascists which as Fred Hiatt. Also implicit in the "one gun a month law" are universal background checks, a severe violation of personal liberty, and one which also will be met with civil disobedience.
But how many members of Congress will risk their jobs for modest, incremental reform that may or may not show up as a blip on the following year’s murder statistics? We’ve learned the answer to that question.
Fine, you say, but then why would those same members commit political suicide by embracing something bigger? The Big One. That's what Hiatt wants politicians to bite into. Hell, that's what he wants for us all.
They won’t, of course. Congress will not lead this change. There has to be a cultural shift. Only then will Congress and the Supreme Court follow. The cultural shift Hiatt is talking about is more than 200 years old, damaged by serial unconstitutional legislation to deny citizen's their Gawd given rights, yet still going strong. And matters are coming to a head with regard to law. As mentioned before in New York and Connecticut, the Supreme Court can rule all day long that something is or is not constitutional, but when you impose law where it didn't exist before or make up new law to allow a case to be decided, the law is rapidly becoming more and more irrelevant as time goes on.
As we’ve seen over the past 15 years with same-sex marriage, such deep cultural change is difficult — and possible. Wyatt Earp, the frontier mentality, prying my cold dead fingers — I get all that. But Australia was a pioneer nation, too, and gave up its guns. Societies change, populations evolve. There was no cultural shift. The SCOTUS decision was top down, imposed by judicial fiat, creating a right where one did not exist, nor needed to exist. And Australia still has mass shootings, and terrorism. And fewer citizens who can fight back...
And people are not immune, over time, to reason. Show me a liberal...
Given how guns decimate poor black communities every day — not just when there are mass shootings, but every day — this is a civil rights issue. Given how many small children shoot themselves or their siblings accidentally, it is a family issue. Given the suicides that could be prevented, it is a mental health issue. On average 55 Americans shoot themselves to death every day. Every day! It was certainly a civil rights issue when black citizens armed themselves to protect their families from the KKK. It was government that disarmed them in the guise of 'gun control'. We remember even if you stuffed it down the rabbit hole of progressive memory...
The Supreme Court, which has misread the Second Amendment in its recent decisions, ...just like it mis-read the Constitution on Roe v Wade, or was that different somehow...
would have to revisit the issue. The court has corrected itself before, and if public opinion shifts it could correct itself again. If it did not, the Constitution would have to be amended. Good luck with an amendment which essentially shifts rights, permanently from the individual to the state.
It sounds hard, I know. But it’s possible that if we started talking more honestly about the most logical, long-term goal, public opinion would begin to shift and the short-term gains would become more, not less likely, as the NRA had to play defense. We might end up with a safer country. The NRA does nothing if not play defense. Hiatt with be crapping his bloomers if the NRA took some rights back from the state and returned them to the people, where they rightfully belong.
There are strong arguments against setting a gun-free society as the goal, but there are 100,000 arguments in favor — that’s how many of us get shot every year. Every year 11,000 Americans are murdered. Every year some 20,000 kill themselves with guns. And there are 300 million arguments against such a goal. Remove the six cities with the highest murder rates and (not coincidentally) the most stringent gun control, and the rest of the U.S. is no more dangerous than Switzerland.
Without guns — with only kitchen knives at hand — some of those people would die. Most would still be living.
Maybe it’s time to start talking about the most logical way to save their lives. We're still waiting for fascists like you to begin with logic. Gun confiscation is not the goal of these people. Confiscation is simply a means to an end; that being the revolution and anarchy that would inevitably follow the confiscation or 'buy-back' process. Gun confiscation is simply a triggering event.
However, just to prove how much you believe in this lets first have all officials, and politicians go completely without protect, no secret service, no armed guards (public, LEO, or private) no arms of any kind (including knives), no bodyguards, nor armored cars or trucks. No-one around you may be armed in any way. And that goes for your children s well - no private security (or even a wall or locked door - you also believe in open borders right?) at any schools or functions where you children attend. And yes - I mean to include your children - if you are going to endanger mine - then yours should be included also.
That goes for the media elite and advocates as well - the producers, reporters, editors owners, and anchors of the media - print, radio, web, TV - all of it.
#3
"if we started talking more honestly about the most logical, long-term goal"
YES, why do you not start talking bout that very thing.
When I pull my control counsel up, I map VIOLENT CRIME RATES - and that is the real only thing that counts to me.
If Guns are the way to Life, you need to shut your trap.
A liberal free society would always work better. This way, we don't have to call your bankrupt state for help with thugs it takes you an hour to handle.
Go take a long walk on a short pier.
Your accusations that I AM micro-aggressive show me that you are crypto-fascist, and THAT is more of a threat to Lives than guns ever were.
#4
We already have a gun free society in which only state agents bear arms. They're called prisons. By the way Sunshine, there's still murder, rape, assault, and drug dealing. Maybe if you take your head out of your rectal orifice, you discover the problem isn't guns, but elements within your society, like every society, and every time in history.
#6
A gun-free society feeds into the meme of the left. First, it will never be achieved. The government, criminals and terrorists will be the only ones with guns. The 2nd amendment was not about hunting, it was about defending liberty. First the left wants national registration. The next step will be confiscation. Before confiscation occurs, I anticipate a widespread civil war, gun owners and lovers of liberty vs. the lefties.
#7
Finally, a refreshing admission of the true end-goal from a gun control advocate. And, perhaps, an unwitting vindication of the NRA's contention that their floundering "incremental approach" is indeed the proverbial slippery slope. Remember this authors' words everytime you hear someone championing "modest" gun control laws a "common sense" first step.
#8
The "gun show loophole" is a myth. If you by a firearm from a vendor at a gun show you still have to show a valid ID, have your fingerprints taken, and pass a background check. Some states bar sales in the parking.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/06/2015 16:00 Comments ||
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#9
What Deacon said; anyone saying otherwise is lying or willfully ignorant - both are thieves. Both are immoral.
Without guns — with only kitchen knives at hand — some of those people would die. Most would still be living.
The writer is another hostile element preparing the battlefield, for when she and her fascist buddies set law enforcement onto gun owners to steal property nor rightfully theirs. All these articles recently are -- as usual -- planned from on high. The liberals have figured out that they can't move gun control through Congress, the legislatures and the courts, and so they're now going to "change the culture." They've been talking about how to implement their campaign over in the liberal/progressive blogs, and now they're doing it. They'll keep doing it too, and so we'll have to keep countering them, step by step, argument by argument. Don't give them space to breathe.
One terrorist group is responsible for more civilian deaths since December 2012 (the Sandy Hook massacre) than Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas and the Taliban. Yet it is the only nearly-state sponsored terrorist group that is not listed by the U.S. State Department as such.
It is the National Rifle Association and for their unending lobbying that’s kept a lid on gun control we now have 428 times more American deaths by gun than deaths by foreign terrorists. There's a difference between a political organization and a terrorist group. I think we have a pretty good handle on it here. The writer seems to have difficulty with basic concepts.
No? Between 2012 and 2015, according to University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, ISIS has murdered approximately 12,138 civilians, Boko Haram,10,092, the Taliban 9,427 and Hamas, 85.
In that time, Americans have murdered or spree killed via gun and assault rifle, 87,423 people in the United States. An assault rifle is a gun. I doubt anything close to the majority of those 87,423 killers were NRA members.
In contrast, terrorism killed 28 Americans per year on both U.S. soil and abroad according to the Global Terrorism Database. Aha. The tweak is American deaths. I bet the total deaths from terrorism is an order of magnitude greater that, at least.
Those murdered Americans killed by our own lunatic gun slingers include terrified children calling for their mothers, teachers begging for the lives of their students, students begging for not just their own lives but the lives of their classmates, moviegoers looking for escape, bystanders cheering for athletes, athletes trying to be the best they can be as the worst we ever could have imagined struck them down in cold blood. Such an emotional appeal to a problem that is so easily remedied. If those people were so terrified of being shot, they should get armed and learn for themselves to protect themselves, and not depend on government dicta.
America is supposed to be 'the home of the brave.' But there is nothing brave about blasting away nine innocent people at a college. On that we and 100 million gun owners agree.
Therefore the NRA should take its rightful place on the State Department list of terrorist organizations, because its influence is more of an immediate threat to the lives of our citizens than foreign terrorists. I understand you want to use the full power of the state to deal with your armed ideological enemies, but casting aspersions on a group of individuals who constantly use the phrase "law abiding citizen" is a bit much, don't you think? How many NRA members have set off IEDs? Has any NRA member ever chopped anyone's head off? Blown up a train or an aircraft?
Although the NRA is not an officially state-sponsored organization it is the supporter of the state with its massive member and lobbyist donations to our elected officials. So, the NRA isn't state sponsored, but it is sponsored by the NRA.
After the last no-vote on gun control, the British newspaper The Guardian did an analysis that showed 45 of the 48 senators who torpedoed gun control in Congress “have received money from firearms lobbyists.” Shocking! Organizations using their cash and media to keep the terminally fascist from committing terminally stupid laws. Organizations donating money to politicians who have similar political outlooks. Tut tut.
On Friday, even as the country’s collective heart was breaking again, faded pol and former-gun control advocate Rudy Giuliani, who will say anything to get on TV in a pathetic and dangerous attempt to be relevant (that ship has sailed, bub), went on “Fox & Friends” to rant about his now-support of guns, ranting that murderers don’t follow gun control laws.
No, but lax gun control laws put guns in those murderer’s hands. Oregon has some of the strictest laws in the nation on allowing firearms transfers to individuals, just passed last spring. Even so, the shooter acquired a number of guns and proceeded to kill his ideological enemies, much in the same way your customers, the left, wish to do to gun owners.
On his visit, the Pope declared America to be the “Land of the free, home of the brave.” Really? Sez so, right in the anthem.
How brave was it for a sexually frustrated, racist freak with six guns to shoot and kill eight students and a staffer at a college? It took more balls than I have. That said, you must really be screwed up to want to kill so many people because of their religious views. A culture that glorifies shooting people is more to blame than the guns the nutjobs use. The Columbine pinheads even dressed like their role models from The Matrix.
How brave was it for the sheriff there — a Sandy Hook non-believer — to write to the vice president of the United States after the Sandy Hook massacre to declare that neither he nor his deputies would enforce gun control restrictions if passed. They didn’t pass, so he didn’t have to. Now his citizens are dead and on Friday he presided over the victim’s family’s announcements. How does he sleep at night? How do we? The sheriff was pointing out that as draconian as the laws of the nation and Oregon are, they do not work, because they can never work. America is the arsenal of democracy, and trying to change us into a pattern befitting a penal colony will never, can never work.
#2
I noticed that the author spells her name in the same way as the East German cold war spook agency, i.d. Stasi.
Try as the left might, they will never be able to demonize the NRA to the level of a terrorist organization. If you ask people who they trust more right now, the NRA vs. whatever the hell you call what's going on in D.C., I wouldn't bet a sou or peso on this administration coming out on top.
[Guardian] In Soweto to deliver the annual Nelson Mandela lecture, the rock star economist says the country is more unequal than under apartheid. Daily Maverick reports. I blame fake signer Thamsanqa Jantjie.
Thomas Piketty is puzzled. To a near-capacity crowd in Soweto, he confesses that South Africa presents him and his fellow economists with a conundrum. A "conundrum" to some possibly. Ears that cannot hear, eyes that cannot see, sort of thing I reckon.
"Of course now we are 25 years after the fall of apartheid ... [but] inequality is not only still very high in South Africa, but has been rising and in some ways income inequality is even higher today than 20 years ago. This is something we want to better understand," he told the audience at the University of Johannesburg campus.
Piketty has made it his life's work to solve exactly these kinds of puzzles. His bestselling book, Capital in the 21st Century, addresses this problem on a global scale.
He argues that capitalism today is fundamentally flawed because wealth will always grow faster than economic output. In other words the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
This is the ideological foundation for the Occupy protests around, who say that the top 1% profit while 99% suffer, and it's this thesis has made Piketty a celebrity.
Delivering the prestigious annual Nelson Mandela lecture last weekend, Piketty outlined why he thinks South Africa is still so dramatically unequal -- and suggests a few things that can be done about it.
Skipping to the bottom line:
"We've got the framework in place but I think the problems are not in the economics; it's not even in the tax law. Our problems are in the leadership and how we convene society to understand that we're in this together," said Manuel. Bold finding that. Very bold.
In Soweto, Piketty's ideas earned him two standing ovations. But will this be the extent of their impact on South Africa? So Affirmative Action on steroids is failing? How could this possibly have happened ?
[Daily Caller] Two U.S. coal regions are weathering the storm of EPA regulations, proving coal production is still viable.
Moody's Investor Service's new report on the coal industry shows that the Illinois Basin and Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming are maintaining solid production levels despite market pressure and declines in the overall energy sector due to financial instability in China.
The entire energy sector is currently facing a turbulent market, however, Bloomberg reports, "The Illinois Basin stands to be the 'most resilient to current market dynamics,'" and, "will be able to maintain steady production volumes over the next two to three years."
The new Moody's forecast claims that half of the world's coal production is unprofitable. Last month the global price of coal reached $89 a metric ton, hitting a decade low. Bloomberg observes simply that, "coal isn't worth digging out of the ground at current prices."
#3
Yampa Basin coal is still being mined, as is some of the stuff over by Paradise. Three or four coal fields that became either too dangerous or too expensive to mine here in Colorado now produce a large quantity of natural gas.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
10/06/2015 21:01 Comments ||
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Pakistani leaders have failed in their recent attempts by civilian leaders to curb military political power. The generals can still veto political decisions, such as efforts to curb military support for Islamic terror groups that operate but do not attack inside Pakistan. The military considers these groups para-military assets because they can be used to attack India, Afghanistan and anyone else seen as a threat to Pakistan. This situation has gotten worse as India and Afghanistan have become more public, persistent and detailed in their efforts to get Pakistan to exercise control over its military. What makes the Pakistani military so confident in defying its own people and its elected government is the growing support from China, which will supply high-tech weapons that the United States (and other Western nations) refuse to provide because of Pakistani support for Islamic terrorism. The Chinese don't care about that as long as Pakistan does not harbor anti-Chinese Islamic terrorists. Pakistan has, with some effort, managed to do that over the last few years and China is rewarding Pakistan for that. Much more at the link
Posted by: 3dc ||
10/06/2015 01:36 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[10 views]
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[DAWN] CORRUPTION suspects are being nabbed and plea bargains struck -- the national exchequer will soon swell thanks to the amount recovered from plea bargains. This can even help cut the fiscal deficit.
Would the suspects be punished if found guilty? The plea bargain option allows the guilty to at least avoid jail -- the suspect's consent to return 80pc of the money and his or her being barred from holding public office is considered punishment enough. So, almost anybody who finds himself in the dock settles for the plea bargain route. The beauty of a plea bargain is, transfer Rs2 billion from the national kitty to your personal account, return 80pc in instalments and the balance Rs400 million is yours to enjoy. Yes, you lose your reputation and the right to hold public office. But to save your reputation you can easily play the Dire Revenge or conspiracy card.
To hold public office, you can wait for a change in climatic conditions to sign a re-entry pact.
Voluntary return of the entire amount in question, before you are in the dock, would not even debar you from holding public office. Dip your hands in the pot; if you go unnoticed, enjoy the entire booty. If noticed and still in the country, which would be rare, return the money before a formal investigation begins and you are cleaner than a newborn.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2015 00:00 ||
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[8 views]
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[DAWN] IN the last few days, I had occasion to witness the work of government teachers at three schools in Larkana district.
At a boys' primary school, a government teacher in connivance with a local landowner withdrew government funds from a school bank account; he gave Rs3,000 to the landowner as a bribe, another Rs3,000 to the education department clerk to process the approvals and kept the remaining Rs5,000 himself. These are funds allocated by the government to be spent on the school building and facilities. The school in question is located in an agricultural field where there is no electric grid; the Rs11,000 the teacher embezzled would have been enough to pay for one solar panel and two pedestal fans for the two-room school.
At 9am on a school day at a boys' high school, about 70 students were roaming the corridors, playing games on their mobile phones or sitting chatting in the playground. Inside the headmaster's office, seven male teachers, all in their 40s and 50s, sat before plates piled high with sweets while the school's peons served them several cups of tea. When asked about the timetable and which teacher was due in which classroom, the headmaster, whose monthly salary is Rs105,000, looked up with a blank expression, as if the most incomprehensible and irrelevant question had been asked.
A few days later at the sam e school, the same group of teachers arrived in the morning, marked their attendance and then headed out together leaving dozens of students in unsupervised classrooms. Where were they headed? A meeting of the teachers' union that could not be missed and was far more important than teaching.
At a girls' primary school, an experienced middle-aged teacher was cross about having been marked absent when she didn't show up. After all, she demanded, why couldn't she just be marked as on casual leave? At the same school, three teachers bribed or used political pressure to be transferred elsewhere because here they were being asked to show up on time every morning.
The penalty for all these acts of gross misconduct and negligence: nothing. To the contrary, taxpayers' money is being drained on these incompetent and corrupt individuals who receive salaries ranging from Rs25,000 to over Rs100,000 compared with the Rs4,000 to Rs7,000 non-profit organizations pay teachers in the same area. These low-paid teachers are punctual, regular and committed to their students. Where does the difference lie?
First, these government teachers have been bred in a system of zero accountability where everyone from an office peon at the education department to supervisors and officers are accustomed to receiving and giving illicit payments and political favours to avoid duties. Second, years of this corrupt system has led to a complete breakdown in the collective conscience of babus government employees and the society in which they operate. Third, the end-user -- in this case the students and their parents -- have no recourse when they are not provided what is rightfully theirs.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2015 00:00 ||
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[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Coming to an unionized school district near you!
[Daily Caller] Legendary economist Thomas Sowell is as impressed with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's ideas as he is with Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates' -- which is to say, not much.
Sowell, currently a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is out with a new book, "Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective." Last week, he opened up about his new book and topics related to it in an interview on the "Hugh Hewitt Show," guest-hosted by this writer.
Asked about in-vogue author Ta-Nehisi Coates and his theory that black America's plight can be blamed on institutional racism, Sowell said, "It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry."
"What bothers me is that when he says things like that there is no need to produce one spec of evidence to back that up," he elaborated. "You simply make the assertion and it's repeated enough -- it's the old formula by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, that the people will believe any lie if it's big enough and told loud enough, often enough. And that's the basis of so many of these things that are said. Once you start getting into facts, then all of this stuff crumbles. But the problem is neither the media nor a good share of academia feel like testing these fashionable notions."
#1
Sowell is right. At this time, the country seems to be awash in Marxism, Communism and facisism. As Sowell said: "You simply make the assertion and it's repeated enough -- it's the old formula by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, that the people will believe any lie if it's big enough and told loud enough, often enough." Plus, you keep the economy in a deplorable state--never quite recovering. Obamacare has destroyed many full time jobs. The labor participation level really sucks. And then you have a lefty press trumpeting such nonsense as good and successful. The 4th estate has become the 5th column.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] CORRUPTION suspects are being nabbed and plea bargains struck -- the national exchequer will soon swell thanks to the amount recovered from plea bargains. This can even help cut the fiscal deficit.
[Daily Caller] Legendary economist Thomas Sowell is as impressed with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's ideas as he is with Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates' -- which is to say, not much.
