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A gun-free society
Prohibition.Mass buyback. A gun-free society. Let’s say that one again: A gun-free society. 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. Posted by: badanov 2015-10-06 |
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