[NewRepublic] Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police. Not just because of San Bernardino, or whichever mass shooting may pop up next, but also not not because of those.
...not not because...? Already it can be seen the wordsmith is not thinking deeply on the subject.
Don’t sort the population into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with a gun and those who surely will not. As if this could be known—as if it could be assessed without massively violating civil liberties and stigmatizing the mentally ill. Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.
I used to refer to my position on this issue as being in favor of gun control. Which is true, except that “gun control” at its most radical still tends to refer to bans on certain weapons and closing loopholes. The recent New York Times front-page editorial, as much as it infuriated some, was still too tentative. “Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership,” the paper argued, making the case for “reasonable regulation,” nothing more. Even the rare ban-guns arguments involve prefacing and hedging and disclaimers. “We shouldn’t ‘take them away’ from people who currently own them, necessarily,” writes Hollis Phelps in Salon. Oh, but we should.
I say this not to win some sort of ideological purity contest, but because banning guns urgently needs to become a rhetorical and conceptual possibility. The national conversation needs to shift from one extreme—an acceptance, ranging from complacent to enthusiastic, of an individual right to own guns—to another, which requires people who are not politicians to speak their minds. And this will only happen if the Americans who are quietly convinced that guns are terrible speak out. All we have been hearing from the promoters of theft and murder have been "Americans" (even Canadians such as this individual) speaking out about the "evils" of gunz.
Their wariness, as far as I can tell, comes from two issues: a readiness to accept the Second Amendment as a refutation, and a reluctance to impose “elite” culture on parts of the country where guns are popular. (There are other reasons as well, not least a fear of getting shot.) And there’s the extent to which it’s just so ingrained that banning guns is impossible, legislatively and pragmatically, which dramatically weakens the anti-gun position. Your prize example, Australia was a massive failure in confiscation, and spoke more to English speaking people's unwillingness to part with the one means of protection available to the average individual, than to any leftist dream of placing fellow citizens and political opponents in mortal danger from the security apparatus of the state because of gun ownership.
The first issue shouldn’t be so complicated. It doesn’t take specialized expertise in constitutional law to understand that current U.S. gun law gets its parameters from Supreme Court interpretations of the Second Amendment. But it’s right there in the First Amendment that we don’t have to simply nod along with what follows. That the Second Amendment has been liberally interpreted doesn’t prevent any of us from saying it’s been misinterpreted, or that it should be repealed. Dunno which cave you have been living in, but in several states the 2nd Amendment has been effectively gutted by local laws, all with the approval of a wrong headed Supreme Court. But the 2nd Amendment can't be repealed. It can only be amended by the several states, not by legislative fiat from which most guns law originated.
When you find yourself assuming that everyone who has a more nuanced (or just pro-gun) argument is simply better read on the topic, remember that opponents of abortion aren’t wondering whether they should have a more nuanced view of abortion because of Roe v. Wade. They’re not keeping their opinions to themselves until they’ve got a term paper’s worth of material proving that they’ve studied the relevant case law. You should pause to show your readers that icky abortion amendment in the Constitution. And as we all know living and dying by courts and the majestic and ongoing misinterpreation of the Constitution's plain language is a bad way for a civil society to conduct itself. This nation is supposed to be free with as few rules and regulations over individual lives as possible, but instead we have robed and elected Mandarins whose only role is to pander to whatever initiative the left can conceive, all the while ignoring basic civil liberties.
Then there is the privilege argument. If you grew up somewhere in America where gun culture wasn’t a thing (as is my situation; I’m an American living in Canada), or even just in a family that would have never considered gun ownership, you’ll probably be accused of looking down your nose at gun culture. As if gun ownership were simply a cultural tradition to be respected, and not, you know, about owning guns. Guns… I mean, must it really be spelled out what’s different? It’s absurd to reduce an anti-gun position to a snooty aesthetic preference. Whut?
There’s also a more progressive version of this argument, and a more contrarian one, which involves suggesting that an anti-gun position is racist, because crackdowns on guns are criminal-justice interventions. Progressives who might have been able to brush off accusations of anti-rural-white classism may have a tougher time confronting arguments about the disparate impact gun control policies can have on marginalized communities. Yeah, right: gun owners can be easily convinced to give up their weapons by your using Marxist terms and concepts. Sweetie, you need to get out more. You hate your political opponents enough to set the raw power of the state against them all because they own firearms, at least learn about them before you do that.
These, however, are criticisms of certain tentative, insufficient gun control measures—the ones that would leave small-town white families with legally-acquired guns well enough alone, allowing them to shoot themselves or one another and to let their guns enter the general population. If you'll look, which you obviously didn't, the great bulk of criminal gun violence is committed not by "white gun owning families" but by those of other races. Most including nonwhites own guns for protection because the state doesn't protect anyone but itself, and often creates conditions in which violent crimes with guns flourish.
Ban Guns, meanwhile, is not discriminatory in this way. It’s not about dividing society into “good” and “bad” gun owners. It’s about placing gun ownership itself in the “bad” category. It’s worth adding that the anti-gun position is ultimately about police not carrying guns, either. That could never happen, right? Well, certainly not if we keep on insisting on its impossibility. IOW: It's about the advocacy of setting the raw power of the government against individuals, your political opponents because they own guns. And all the while expecting no backlash against those who would carry out the dictates of government officials, the officials themselves and those who moved gun confiscation to policy, and the inevitable violence that will accompany it.
Ask yourself this: Is the pro-gun side concerned with how it comes across? More to the point: Does the fact that someone opposes gun control demonstrate that they’re culturally sensitive to the concerns of small-town whites, as well as deeply committed to fighting police brutality against blacks nationwide? I’m going to go with no and no on these. (The NRA exists!) Gotta get a dig in at the nation's oldest civil rights group, Sweetie?
On the pro-gun-control side of things, there’s far too much timidity. What’s needed to stop all gun violence is a vocal ban guns contingent. Getting bogged down in discussions of what’s feasible is keeps what needs to happen—no more guns—from entering the realm of possibility. Public opinion needs to shift. The no-guns stance needs to be an identifiable place on the spectrum, embraced unapologetically, if it’s to be reckoned with. You go right ahead with all your polls and votes, but be mindful of one concept: I get a veto, and my vote, if any of this is implemented will come from the rooftops. At 2,810 feet per second.
#3
We're going to have a real civil war, maybe later than sooner, but it certainly has reached a place were it inevitable.
"Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
The Left in their fantasy world believes the Army will duly carry out their orders to grab the guns ignoring they aren't the ones in the ranks and never have been. It'll break the Army just as it did in 1861. Then again, they have no history to learn from.
#5
The liberals would not like the Mad Max scenario that would ensue if all guns were banned. These people are naive, unhinged and dangerous to say the least. Criminals and jihadists would still have guns, axes, knives, etc. As is said the only thing that stops a bad man or woman with a gun is a good man or woman with a gun.
#6
Seems to me you have two kinds of Gun Grabbing liberals. (1) The kind like this yahoo that live in a utopian world and really want the guns grabbed (2) Opportunists who tell the first group what they want to hear in order to get keep their votes from straying farther left, they will occasionally pass some marginal law about fantasy guns to look like they are doing something but know that taking guns away is impossible without a civil war. They also don't particularly like the debate because it drives up Republican attendance at elections and could easily cost them battleground states.
(1) Is not smart enough to realize they are being played.
#7
If people like this really were afraid of people with guns, they wouldn't dare say such things. Only the fact that they are 100% certain we are harmless allows them to utter such nastiness.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/11/2015 14:31 Comments ||
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#14
If she wants to be a slave, I own and shoot guns, I'm also handicapped, be mine, I promise no whippings, only that you be my willing man Friday for the rest of my life.(Her"s Too)
In return I'll protect you.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/11/2015 14:36 Comments ||
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#15
In the next world, you are on your own.
/channeling Firesign Theatre
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/11/2015 17:29 Comments ||
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#16
gun control should never have been linked to San Bernadino as an issue
San Bernadino was an Islamist fascist terror attack. They had a pipe bomb factory in their garage.
They would simply use bombs instead of guns if guns were banned.
This was a cynical attempt by the political lying class who want to separate the concept of Islam from terrorism even though it is the motivating factor
It is dishonest in the extreme
if they really are campaigning on gun control then they hurt their own cause by cynically using as a poster child an issue that should not even have been linked.
It is like using the dead toddler on a beach in Turkey as propaganda to say Europe should open its borders. Why has it got anything to do with Europe?
#17
having said that, gun control actually does work well in Australia.
per capita we have a lot less random shootings than the US
this is because there are not many guns around, so people who are on drugs, or have a mental illness do not have the opportunity to pick one up and start shooting at random
we also do not get accidental shootings where children find them in their parents houses and think they are a toy.
So most australians are very happy there are gun control laws. The only people here that campaign for less gun control are hobby shooters and farmers - but farmers who need them have a license and have them
#18
anon, I would bet you don't have the gang problem we do here. Most gunshot victims are gang related.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/11/2015 18:26 Comments ||
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#19
Murder is against the law but somehow it still happens. No guns and we will see more stabbings, more people run over, blunt force trauma, poisonings, and the bill ayers favorite -- bombings....... Some folks have no respect for other people and some have no respect for the constitution and the author of this article has respect for neither.
There is no credible Iraqi force that can move into Mosul, kick out ISIS, and occupy the city, and there probably won’t be for a long time. But the siege of Mosul has begun. Clearly, Turkey, which has boxed itself out of a solution in Syria, wants to be a part of whatever happens in northern Iraq. The Turkish troops that rolled across the border last week took up positions in the town of Bashiqa, a few miles outside of Mosul. The public reason given by the Turks is that the troops were sent to bolster a contingent of forces that was already there to train a Sunni militia. But no one really believes that.
The Iraqi government may not have invited the Turks, but it seems pretty clear that the Kurdish Regional Government, which oversees the autonomous region of northern Iraq, did not protest when they arrived. In any case, the Iraqi Kurds can’t say no to the Turks: the thing that all Kurdish hopes of independence rest on is the oil pipeline that sends Kurdish oil to the Mediterranean every day. It runs through Turkey, and Erdoğan could turn it off at any moment if he wanted to. On Wednesday, the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, whom I Profiled in the magazine last year, met with Erdoğan in Ankara.
So, finally, why did the Turks go into northern Iraq? It seems pretty clear that Erdoğan, whose policy has failed in Syria, is trying to be relevant again. “Erdoğan wants to be part of whatever happens in Mosul, and putting troops there guarantees that,’’ a senior Iraqi official told me.
Is it going to work? Maybe. But the danger, increasingly, is that with so many major countries jockeying for power in Syria and Iraq events will spin out of control. The Russian cruise missiles flying over northern Iraq are just one example. Several have already crashed in northwestern Iran; just wait until that happens in Iraq.
Turkish troops in Iraq; Russians, Iranians, and Hezbollah fighters in Syria: the Middle East is a very busy place. The longer the war goes on in Syria, the greater the risk that it turns into something much worse.
#1
Any chance Turkey is hoping to divide good Kurds from bad Kurds?
I've always felt it was in Turkeys best interests to get their own Kurds to move south before they demographically take over Turkey. Perhaps facing Putin has caused them to fine-tune their Kurdish thinking a bit.
Will resonate with those here who've served in a Sandbox, and those who've heard stories.
There will be no doubt some hand-wringing about “Islamophobia ...the irrational fear that Moslems will act the way they usually do... ” and further calls to continue the American elite’s fourteen-year track record of whitewashing Islamic beliefs and culture, but I wonder if the media is missing a powerful, largely-uncovered influence on America’s hearts and minds — the experience and testimony of the more than two million Americans who’ve served overseas since 9/11 and have experienced Islamic cultures up-close. "Experiencing them up close" is also known as "empirical observation." It's not considered evidence in university or government circles.
Yes, they were in the middle of a war — but speaking from my own experience — the war was conducted from within a culture that was shockingly broken. I expected the jihadists to be evil, but even I couldn’t fathom the depths of their depravity. You mean the culture was the reason for the war? They weren't just casually connected?
And it was all occurring against the backdrop of a brutally violent and intolerant culture. Women were beaten almost as an afterthought, there was a near-total lack of empathy for even friends and neighbors, lying was endemic, and sexual abuse was rampant. Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became. Yeah, but if you read the Koran you can find just as many verses saying it ain't so as you do saying it is so. So it must not be so, right?
I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community. I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he’d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said — in perfect Army English — “Sir, this s**t is f**ked up.” That's Army technical jargon, of course. And really, "fucked up" is still one step before FUBAR, so thetroops were obviously confused on the level of fuckeduppery.
It is indeed. While it’s certainly unfair to judge Indonesia or Malaysia by the standards of Iraq or Afghanistan, Even though they're trying to get there. q.v. Aceh, southern Thailand, etc.
it’s very hard to shake the power of lived experience, nor should we necessarily try. After all, when we hear stories from Syria, Yemen, Gaza, the Sinai, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, Pakistan, and elsewhere they all fit the same depressing template of the American conflict zones. Nor is the dazzlingly wealthy veneer of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the other Gulf States all that impressive. Tens of thousands of soldiers have seen the veritable slave labor that toils within the oil empires and have witnessed first-hand their casual disregard for “lesser” life. If you're a member of the Master Religion all other religions are vermin. If you're a holy man or a princeling those beneath you are vermin. Those on your level are potential vermin, the scheming murderous bastards.
But this same experience has caused us to treasure the Muslim friends we do have — in part because we recognize the extreme risks of their loyalty and defiance of jihad. Humanity, it seems, can strike anyone.
That’s why American officers fiercely champion the immigration of local interpreters, even to the point of welcoming them into their own home. Back home they'd be three feet under...
That’s why there’s often an intense connection with our Kurdish allies, the single-most effective ground fighting force against ISIS. Kurds: The guys the Obummer regime either can't stand or claims does't exist...
Two million Americans have been downrange, Which is a fair hefty number...
and they’ve come home and told families and friends stories the media rarely tells. If you're ever in Bethesda at Walter Reed+, have a meal in one of the food courts that have somehow replaced the mess hall and the officers' club. Don't say anything. Just listen. If you can't drive that far, go to your nearest VA hospital. If you've really got guts, volunteer to work with the PTSD groups.
Those stories have an impact, but because of the cultural distance between America’s warriors and its media, academic, and political aristocracy, it’s an impact the aristocracy hasn’t been tracking. The aristocracy doesn't do mud, nor live ammunition. Dicky Chapelle remains dead. There is no Bernard Fall. Ernie Pyle's not even a memory.
Experience trumps idealistic rhetoric, and I can’t help but think that polls like YouGov’s are at least partly registering the results of a uniquely grim American experience. People aren't blind. Even without reading Rantburg you can make out at least the murky outlines of the truth, and the outlines usually aren't even within the same frame as the version emanating from Politiciansville.
But when an Iowa man broke into her riff with a question about how the country could confront a new wave of fear, her response sounded less like that of a commander in chief than of a soothing self-help guru. "We've got to do everything we can to weed out hate and plant love and kindness," she told a crowd of several hundred.
The lovey-dovey message seems surprising coming from a Washington veteran who frequently references women in public life needing "skin like a rhinoceros." But as she grapples with Donald Trump's prominence in the Republican race, she's embraced "love and kindness" as a campaign refrain.
In Alabama, she told lawyers that justice means "standing beside love." In Atlanta, Clinton promised black ministers she'd run on a "love and kindness platform." And after Trump said he'd block Muslims from entering the country, her campaign quickly churned out a new catch phrase: "Love trumps hate."
#3
"Women were beaten almost as an afterthought, there was a near-total lack of empathy for even friends and neighbors, lying was endemic, and sexual abuse was rampant."
I always wondered why the left seems to identify so closely with Muslims and why they tend to give them a pass on immigration--probably view them as potential future voters.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/11/2015 18:53 Comments ||
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#5
Hillary talking about love and kindness? It's yet another failed attempt by HillaryBot to pass the Turing Test. Who is writing this code?
As for the hidden reasons Americans dislike Islam, I'm gonna go with how Sharia Law is incompatible Western values in general and with the US Constitution in particular.
[DAWN] A young mother who attended a religious school for women in Pakistain weds a conservative man. Months later, the two are accused of murdering 14 and injuring many more in an unprovoked attack in San Bernardino, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,.
What made her leave diapers for rifles?
Tashfeen Malik, the young mother and the co-accused in last week's massacre in California, attended the religious teaching centre Al-Huda's regional branch in Multan. Though, Ms. Malik left before completing her studies, acquaintances report her becoming religiously conservative after enrolling at Al-Huda.
The Al-Huda International Welfare Foundation has distanced itself from Ms Malik by posting an official statement on their website:
Tashfeen Malik had studied at Al-Huda International's Multan branch for a brief period between 2013 and 2014. She left without completing the Diploma course. No organization can be held responsible for personal acts of any of its students.
While there has been no publicised connection as yet between the institute and the shooting, the Canadian branch of Al-Huda abruptly shut down Tuesday citing security concerns.
The Centre has been controversial from the very beginning -- in 2014, three of the Centre's former students of Somali heritage, aged 15 to 18, left homes for Syria to join the bad boyIslamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) group. The Turkish authorities intercepted the girls and returned them to their parents in Canada.
The Canadian authorities are concerned about the extent to which the teaching at Al-Huda Centre inspired the teenage girls to leave their parents for IS snuffies in Syria.
Oscar winning documentary producer, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy expressed similar concerns 10 years ago in an op-ed in The Globe and Mail, titled: 'Islamic school for women faithful or fundamental?'
Ms Obaid-Chinoy interviewed the matriarch running the Al-Huda enterprise, Dr. Farhat Hashmi, in October 2005 soon after a devastating earthquake killed 85,000 and destroyed entire cities in northern Pakistain. Dr. Hashmi was lecturing her students in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, about what caused the devastating earthquake in the country.
"The people in the area where the earthquake hit were involved in immoral activities, and God has said that he will punish those who do not follow his path," she told her Canadian audience comprising entirely of young women.
Such thinking would suggest that perhaps Dr. Hashmi is not very well-educated. Quite the contrary.
Both she and her husband earned doctorates in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Glasgow in 1989. Their dissertations (both titles start with "A critical edition of ...") were supervised by Professor John Mattock and focussed on the sources of Hadiths.
The government of Pakistain funded Dr. Hashmi's studies.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/11/2015 00:00 ||
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Can there be any further doubt that we have now come to a time when the rightward half of the country perceives much of the mainstream media (the broadcast networks, big city newspapers, etc.) to be carriers of Democratic and/or left-leaning news and opinion?
The media deny this, but their denials — indeed, the very idea that the way to address this matter is to deny or contest it — change nothing. The bottom line is that perhaps one-half of the potential audience for these media outlets holds negative opinions about them.
This practice confounds most people's understanding of the marketing of mass products. Were millions of people, for example, to complain to automakers that the standard radios provided don't work well enough, the manufacturers would endeavor to fix it to the critics' satisfaction — not, as the media have done, simply deny that anything's wrong. So that's an important difference between car companies and the legacy media, but what explains it, and what does the future hold for such media?
Understand what's meant by the first of these questions. It's not what explains why the reporters and editors don't care that they are perceived as biased. They don't care because the overwhelming majority of them are Democrats and/or liberals, and they think their point of view is both objective and correct.
Rather, the question is why their employers — the publishers and corporate CEOs — don't care. It is, after all, those people, not the reporters or editors, who are responsible for the growth and prosperity of their media properties.
Lots of theories are plausible. One is that the so-called firewall separating the editorial from the business side of media companies makes it very difficult, as a practical matter, for corporate leaders to exercise control over the editorial policies of their media outlets. Another theory is that the corporate CEOs share the political mindset of their reporters, and therefore don't see anything wrong with the journalism they're practicing, and are willing to live with reduced viewership and readership for that reason.
Perhaps the most difficult theory is that, at a time when the very existence of newspapers and TV is threatened by the Internet and social media, the CEOs don't much care to spend a lot of time dealing with issues as thorny and intractable as the editorial slant of their news and opinion reporting.
Whatever the explanation, it's unlikely that this state of affairs will go on much longer without notable consequences for the mainstream media. The reasons: the explosive growth, courtesy of the Internet, of conservative and libertarian studies, investigative news reports and commentary; and the alignment, by the leadership of the Republican Party, with the claims of media bias being made by all the right-of-center media and conservative journalists within the mainstream media.
Indeed, and as suggested in a recent piece in RealClearPolitics, a diminution of the influence of the mainstream media may "explain the gravity-defying trajectory of the Trump campaign."
To be sure, it can be argued that the amount of coverage Trump has received in media of all kinds has enabled his dominance among Republicans polled, but this argument ignores the extraordinarily negative coverage the gentleman has received, even by (one might say especially by) conservatives.
At a time when so much of the mainstream media display a politically monochromatic view of the world, they are being ignored by large numbers of people who no longer see them as objective chroniclers of anything.
#2
Freedom of the Press was about the technology not the modern institution that calls itself the 'Press'. The internet is the closest entity to what that freedom was about. It's also why so many in power want to control it. Place the libel law covering the MSM in line with the 14th Amendment of equal protection before the law with serious $$$ consequences and you'll end up with a legion of real fact checkers and editors rather than party operatives.
#3
I think three strands are necessary: the Democrat Party (marxist/islamist), the main stream media, and the Uniparty/Globalists, the dominant faction in the Republican Party (who, along with the Saudis and the globists' SuperPacs fund the main stream media and all elections) for way too many years.
#4
Trump has done a great deal to neuter the lame stream media. He doesn't give a flip about PC. It is refreshing. People are tired of debates that are stifled by PC. The MSM senses the danger of a guy like Trump to their influence. The MSM sold their trustworthiness to the Democratic Party and they are paying the price. They abdicated a free press that had been a part of our society. This election year is payback for forgetting that the voters elect Presidents rather than the elites of both parties and the media. It is payback for all the PC horseshit. It is payback for all the stuff that got rammed down our throats without our consent. It is payback for not listening to the electorate. It is a reminder that we elect our represents and by God they'd better represent us. We tried to tell them in 2010 and 2014 and they did not listen.
#5
Says it all. I read it maybe five years ago. Bias
broadcast journalist Bernard Goldberg reveals a corporate news culture in which the close-mindedness is breathtaking, journalistic integrity has been pawned to liberal opinion, and "entertainment" trumps hard news every time.\
I believe the author was Danny Rather's producer for a number of years.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/11/2015 13:46 Comments ||
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#6
They're all insignifigant, maye they'll fade away, (No more advertisements.)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/11/2015 14:39 Comments ||
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#7
It's encouraging, but before we get cocky, let's remember leftwingers largely controls social media and entertainment, and pump out the agitprop via those channels, while suppressing anti-Narrative thoughts.
In fact, as fewer and fewer people pay attention to the old media, the left will ramp up their efforts direct the new media to their advantage.
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.
