The slavering ammosexuals have been making some headlines lately, with their "open carry" protests and mindless claims that "Obama's going to take our guns!" (Despite, you know, the lack of a single gun-control measure to emerge from this administration since he came into office.)
Here's the thing: the NRA-fellators get sweaty and start spewing spittle if you point out that the Holy Second Amendment has an opening clause that's just getting ignored.
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.
A simple grammatical test will tell you that the first half of that sentence defines why the second half exists. You have the right to own guns because the country needs a well-regulated militia.
(If you want context, the Founding Fathers didn't believe in a standing army - they knew that the fledgling country couldn't afford one, and they also believed that having an army around was how tyrants stayed in power. That's why Article 1 of the Constitution limits the army to a 2-year lifespan.
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years
(Weirdly, no such restriction on funding the Navy - our Founding Fathers loved their boats: rum, sodomy and the lash - you know how it is.)
The NRA used to understand this, but that day is gone. The modern NRA is a lobbying group supporting, not the people, but the weapons manufacturers. The only right they support now is the unrestricted sale of firearms, but it wasn't always thus.
The first president of the NRA, back in 1871, was former Gen. Ambrose Burnside (he of the famous facial hair), and he acted as a symbol of the "civilian militia" concept. One of the first actions of the NRA was convincing New York State to build them a firing range to promote marksmanship. Through the decades, the NRA helped various state and federal legislatures write gun control legislation.
In 1938, NRA President Karl T. Frederick (lawyer and Olympic gold-medalist for marksmanship) spoke in support of gun control laws before Congress. "I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I seldom carry one. ... I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses."
Now, in the Sixties, there was this thing they called "the Civil Rights movement." Blacks were tired of getting lynched, attacked, and occasionally beaten by the police. They started patrolling the streets on the "black side of town," carrying rifles, as a means of "policing the police." As Malcolm X put it:
I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it’s time for Negroes to defend themselves.
Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn't mean you’re going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you’d be within your rights — I mean, you’d be justified; but that would be illegal and we don’t do anything illegal.
Then, in 1967, in California, the NRA assisted California Assemblyman Don Mulford in writing the "Mulford Act," which would prohibit carrying of loaded firearms in public. While it was being debated, the Black Panthers staged a protest, where they walked into the California State House, openly carrying guns.
That strategy backfired on them just a little, as it ended debate quickly, and the bill (soon to be part of the California penal code) was signed into law by then-Governor Ronald Reagan.
In fact, Reagan, having been reminded that black people were allowed to carry guns too, explained to reporters "There's no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons."
So, apparently, that's what we need. In order to get some sort of reasonable gun control passed, we have to organize and arm brown people. Let's have black people wearing berets, walking the streets with semi-automatic weapons. Let's have armed Muslims outside of mosques, and keeping their neighborhoods safe.
Hell, let's have armed Sikh patrols, too! The beards and turbans already freak some people out.
We'd have the Second Amendment repealed within a month.
As we slowly drag some of America's less-evolved citizens toward the reality that the Second Amendment is not Holy Writ, I've noticed a number of very specific bad debating tactics that the NRA likes to use.
There's all the usual suspects: attacking the messenger ("you liberals hate guns! And the Constitution!"), the slippery slope argument ("if they ban assault weapons, next they'll ban all guns!"), and on and on.
Most of them are pretty easy to combat, if you know what you're talking about. And let's be real: if you are required to accept "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" without any limitations, then the Second Amendment isn't restricted to guns, either. Nuclear weapons are "arms," and therefore all citizens should be allowed to own them.
Since even the most conservative member of the Supreme Court says that there can, in fact, be limitations on gun ownership, maybe it's time for somebody to put a muzzle on Wayne LaPierre and let the adults talk.
But on that subject -- knowing what you're talking about -- there is one little thing that bothers me. In blogs and on talk shows, I keep hearing people making obvious, blatant mistakes that occasionally get them in trouble. So let's put a little reality into our side of the argument. Here's some little facts relevant to the gun debate that you should probably know.
Guns aren't difficult to understand, nor are they difficult to use. Literally any idiot can learn to use one, and most of them can learn to use them very well. (Here's where I want to follow up with "...for example, look at the Marines," but my son is a Marine now, and I've promised to be good.) However, just like any other hobby enthusiast, there is a certain amount of specialized knowledge involved.
To put it another way, gun nuts are like LARPers or comic book geeks: they have specific terminology, and a knowledge of trivia that is unique to their hobby, and if you get any of it wrong, they'll scream like little bitches and try to say that you don't know anything about the subject.
Trust me: having carried one for 21 years, I'm reasonably familiar with the subject, and it isn't rocket science. So here's the least you need to know.
Always be sure that you're using the right terminology. We want an "assault weapons ban," not a ban on assault rifles.
There's are important reasons for this, and most of them have to do with the legal definitions of these two terms. See, an "assault weapon" is a generic term, and can be expanded or contracted to cover a multitude of sins.
An assault rifle, on the other hand, has a very specific definition (and yes, I'm using Wikipedia here - it's the most accessible source I found, and it is at least getting this part of the debate right):
An assault rifle is a selective fire (selective between automatic, semi-automatic, and burst fire) rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine....
Assault rifles are categorized in terms of using an intermediate cartridge power that is between light machine guns firing full power cartridges, which are intended more for sustained automatic fire in a light support role, and submachine guns, which fire a lower powered pistol cartridge rather than a rifle cartridge.
Fully automatic fire refers to an ability for a rifle to fire continuously until the magazine is empty and no rounds remain; "burst-capable" fire refers to an ability of a rifle to fire a small yet fixed multiple number of rounds with but one press of the trigger; in contrast, semi-automatic refers to an ability to fire one round per press of a trigger.
I could go on about the difference between the full-auto sear (a little metal piece on the inside of the M-16 that allows it to keep firing until you run out of ammo), and the burst-fire sear (which I thought was an awesome innovation when it came out), but all you really need to know is that replacing a sear isn't difficult.
More than that, though, there are conversion kits that make it even easier. So don't let anybody try to tell you that it takes some kind of mystic metalwork to convert a civilian AR-15, which is an assault weapon, into a functional assault rifle. A couple of pliers, a small punch (I usually ended up using a small screwdriver) - there are specialized tools that make working on an M-16 easier (like a barrel wrench), but damned few of them are required.
There are other terms that drive the gun hobbyists crazy: the bullet is the metal bit that flies out of the gun. The whole thing, including the casing, the powder and everything, is a shell, a round, or a cartridge. Never call it a bullet.
For some reason, this makes them crazy (or "crazier, maybe).
Also, don't say "clip," say "magazine." This is another of those stupid pedantic things that make spittle fly across the room. A clip can feed ammo into a magazine - a magazine feeds ammo into a weapon. If you really care enough to read about it, go here - but otherwise, just avoid it.
They also can get really cranky about the word "gun" - it's a very generic term that covers everything from handguns to Howitzers. Just so you know.
(Overall, I find the whole thing funny - it's like listening to comic nerds screaming "You don't even know the relationship between the Golden Age and Silver Age Superman! Why should we listen to you about anything?" But I find a lot of things funny, even when nobody else does.)
__________
(If you want to get even farther into the argument, here's a piece I ran across in gathering links for this post. I tend to avoid DailyKos just out of habit, but the writer gets into a lot of the tactics and terminology that might come in handy for somebody.)
I do after all, even if it's
not what you support or any of the loudest activists urge. No I don't share
the urge to tilt at the "Weapons of War" windmills provided us by the
media and the more gullible gun control advocates who generally use any
sad story to go after what they insist is the root of the problem but
rarely is. I do support, at least provisionally, some of what the President is supporting.
• increasing access to mental health services
• lifting restrictions on federally funded research on gun violence
• extending background checks before the purchase of a gun
Yes
-- research for one thing, and here's where it's quite appropriate to
be angry at the NRA who has opposed all taxpayer funded study of
violence with firearms -- because of course any mention of such things;
any attempt to find a way to reduce violence is an obvious precursor to
the Liberal plot to grab our guns. President Obama has ordered the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
other federal agencies to begin research on gun violence and
its effects. The actualization of course depends on Congress which
controls the funds and therein lurks the cold, dead, but still active
hand of the NRA.
No, I'm not in the NRA camp. I don't
think anyone who likes hunting or shooting or owns a gun for legitimate
reasons is the 'sick bastard' or deranged potential murderer I've been called any more
than I think that anyone who owns a penis is a rapist and child molester
and neither does the vast majority of Americans. I'm not going to
waste time arguing with such people. I'm just going to look for
solutions that work -- like the vast majority of Americans, like the President.
I
used to watch Glades, a TV series about Florida Law Enforcement, and was
occasionally amused by talk of finding criminals with "unregistered"
guns -- amused because of course Florida doesn't register them and
forbids keeping lists of who owns them. I've been amused as well by
their showing us how the police could enter a serial number into the
computer and find an owner. They can't. Why is it that people who cry for more gun
control sometimes think we have more than we do? The same reason that
many think we have less, I imagine. At any rate there's an instance of
ignorance being less than blissful.
If 72% of
gun-related homicides for which we know the kind of gun used are
committed with handguns, and only 4% with rifles of all kinds, why are
we obsessing about "assault rifles?" Perhaps it's another instance of a
solution in search of a problem as I hinted at above. Why are we all
in a dither about "high capacity" magazines when more concealable, more
portable, low capacity magazines can be changed in less than two
seconds? Why are we not concentrating on the most frequently used tools?
A revolver, usually with five or six shots remains a favorite choice
for professional murderers for reasons I won't go into. See above and
note well that those least informed often seek solutions that are bound
to fail and are as intransigent in promoting them as they are in
ignoring a larger view.
At first glance I'm not
against some system of being able to trace guns, a paper trail if you
will, as we can do with any property that requires a title, with
prescription medicine for that matter. It seems compatible with a
constitutional right, but we find strong objections in a country with
such a long Libertarian history of self re-invention and the ability to
shed one's past and most of all the desire for independence and
self-reliance. We remember the New Orleans public being disarmed when
they most needed a means of self defense. We remember Jim Crow. We remember lots of things and we worry.
I
don't necessarily like the idea of my possessions and movements being
on record and more than my e-mails or purchases or telephone calls. Most
people don't like it, but we don't seem to care as much about being
spied on as having our shotgun under surveillance. Let's say that a
record of who owns what, might help well enough to keep guns from those
with no right to own them that I could support some form of
registration if it could be made to work better than any system has
been so far. But neither hit-men nor drug dealers are not going to
comply, nor tell the truth. People who want to die taking as many
innocents with them as possible? They don't care about punishment or
registration or anything else the law can do. Like the Sibyl, they want
to die.
Can we, should we disarm 325 million to prevent 5
or 6 people from running amok with a gun legally or illegally
obtained? Good luck selling it and good luck accomplishing it. The only
choice is to screen them out, not to simply register their guns or threaten
them with fines or punishment. Better look to better background checks.
If we can accept that some people should not, do not have the right to
keep and bear arms, how can we not accept that we need to find out who
they are?
So how can we manage to get significant
compliance with registration? We can't without screening out the loose
canons with effective, mandatory background checks and the observation
that States which do require it tend to have gun-related homicides in
excess of States that do not, shows that our current efforts aren't
always enough, that off-the-books transfers are far too easy and quite
legal in most cases. Making registration work would require that all
transfers be done through licensed dealers who must keep records and
report to authorities. That's where those background checks come in.
Many are surprised that we have them at all, and waiting periods too.
Some are surprised that people with no fear of breaking the law by
killing aren't afraid to break the law by lying. Make the checks real.
Yes, I advocate background checks and making them more
meaningful. As it is, we simply ask people if they're unstable, mentally
impaired and under psychiatric care and not surprisingly people who
should answer yes, answer no. As intrusive and objectionable as it may
sound to make checks more comprehensive, it's necessary if we want to
have registration and want it to actually do anything.
It
may be hard to prove that such things as we have done so far have indeed
made our country safer from gun related violence, but then it's hard to
prove to some people that gun-related homicides have declined
substantially for 30 years now. Why? Once again, see that solution
seeking a problem because when the solution most dearly envisioned is to
make all danger disappear at all cost, that cost gets high and people
still get killed.
I do keep in mind however, that while any
reduction in the death rate we can accomplish under any circumstances
may not be dramatic and will not be quick to become observable, that
reduction is worthwhile. I also keep in mind that it will not satisfy a
great many people. The slow decline of automobile fatalities seems to
have pacified us where the slow decline of gun fatalities has not. Any
observation of human tendencies has to include the illogical, irrational
nature of humans. We will continue to fear the lone madman more than we
fear the drug gangs and robbers and other "traditional" killers even
though the latter are predominant when it comes to slaughter and the
former far less likely to be deterred by anything short of a straight
jacket.
That's why I support research, scientific
inquiry and honest, continuing, informed discussion even though the NRA
deems it useless and dangerous and even though their organized
opposition will see it as an excuse to do nothing. I support it because
there's ill-understood pathology behind the violence we most fear. I
fear it won't happen because both sides are afraid of being argued out
of their urges to act now or not to act at all. Any effective effort
must come from a middle no one is listening to, from a public that
doesn't share the pantheon of bogeymen of either extreme and it must
recognize an eternal struggle that can't be legislated away. By all
means listen to Law Enforcement people. Many of their opinions may
surprise you. Listen to mental health people, look at statistics and
listen to firearms experts and lets get down to business.
If all that I read were the sporting goods catalogs that arrive in
the mail I would still know something was up. There are suddenly pages
of drum magazines for sale to fit everything from non-military versions
of long guns to shotguns to semiautomatic pistols. Drum magazines,
you'll remember seeing them on The Untouchables, great round
things holding 75 to 100 rounds mounted on the infamous "Chicago
Typewriter." One catalog even features violin and cello cases fitted
out to carry them. Fedora and Zoot Suit sold separately. What you'd
need to carry a Glock pistol with a 75 round drum mounted below the
grip, I don't know, but it's next to useless as a concealable or even
portable weapon. So why this feeding frenzy? Why just now? Is there an
invasion coming?
Gun
shops are getting very crowded again. There's a large supermarket
style one under construction in my area of coastal Florida. Prices are
rising and they can't seem to keep military-looking fake 'assault
rifles' on the shelves. Another catalog features a kit allowing one to
bolt together two Ruger 10/22 rifles - the kind of gun some country
gentleman might give his son on his 18th birthday into a two barrel,
crank operated .22 rimfire Gattling gun, complete with tripod. Only
$397 but you have to supply your own pair of rifles. Their website bears
a headline saying they're up to a week behind on shipping orders
because of massive demand.
In barber shops and hardware stores and the
Sporting Goods department at the local Wal-Mart, you hear muttering and
whispering about "that monkey" and they don't mean Wayne LaPierre. I
heard an octogenarian friend say at dinner the other night "we don't
have any freedom any more." She'd just sold her handgun from the fear
that someone would steal it and murder someone and she'd be blamed. It
isn't true of course, I don't think there's any way of tracing guns in Florida, but the fear is on the street and in the
retirement homes and the mansions and yachts and trailer parks. That monkey is after our guns.
Yes, it's gun control time again with one side arming themselves for war and the other side howling Gun Control
like ragged extras in a Frankenstein movie. The President has offered
a package of measures designed to calm the hysterical on both sides
and it's not likely to do that, or so I think. It's the "biggest legislative effort in a generation" says the Huffington Post, "a bold and potentially historic attempt to stem the increase in mass gun violence."
Lets see what it looks like after passing through the entrails of
Congress. Surely some of the proposals were pinned to the coat-tails of
a tragedy like a rider on an unrelated bill: ban the armor piercing
ammunition? Well it's really not that nor are the hollow points we use
for hunting "Cop Killer Bullets" either. How does one argue for
meaningful gun control with all that lying going on?
Really
most of these inflammatory lumps of high velocity hyperbole are just
that: attempts to emotionalize and to dupe the uninitiated and succeed
in polarizing the attempt to do something useful. To me, much of this
heated argument is corrupted by dishonest coinage, invention and the
refusal by both sides to examine the axioms their arguments rely on.
GUN CONTROL! and when I ask "what kind?" The expression I get from
either side is the same -- I must be one of them! Will banning the millions and millions and millions of
guns and accessories now in 150 million private hands do anything? By
the time anything like another loophole-ridden, designed-to-fail ban
hits the streets, the number of these things buried in back yards and
hidden behind paneling in basements will have doubled and the ranks of
camo-clad, militiamen and survivalists and preppers will have grown
further and short of a house to house search of 100 million private
residences and storage lockers and bunkers, very little will be done to
reduce their numbers.And nice people, ordinary people, educated people,
affluent people are buying guns they would have had no interest in -- because Obama's gonna ban them.The best way to create demand is to ban something.
And
if Congress does do it again, and if they suddenly disappear with a
wave of the magic wand, will someone still be able to find the hardware
to kill a score of innocents? Could you get drunk in 1929? Can you get
stoned in 2013? Of course. Have all the miscellaneous and ballyhooed safety regulations done anything? Mandatory trigger locks, microstamping
of firing pins, loaded chamber indicator and magazine disconnect
regulations? No. Has there been an increase in the murder by firearm
rate as is being said? No. It's lower than it was in the 1950's. The fear is oversold. Much of what is being proposed can be no more effective in protecting school children than those stupid, yellowBaby on Boardsigns people put on their cars in the '70s. It's just there for the "I hate guns" people. I'm still wondering if there has been
an increase in mass gun violence or if the handful in the last few
years is a statistical blip and the result of the unrelenting "never
forget" emotional media coverage that promotes repeat performances, but
that question will never be settled when opinions on both sides are
bolstered by selective facts, when the tenets of faith, the
proclamations of activists and politicians and lobbyists are taken as
axiomatic without question.
Whatever
happens, I doubt my shotgun will be confiscated, nor my Civil War
pistols or my Flintlock Rifle. I'm sure I'll still be able to go to the
outdoor shooting range and make holes in targets with a .22 pistol Top Shot will
still be on the History Channel and the Biathlon will still be held and
Sarah Palin can still hunt for moose. Floridians will still be able to
shoot wild hogs and Burmese pythons and out in the bayou, they'll still
be able to hunt 'gators with .22 rifles. The fear is oversold.
Whatever
happens, much legislation will be designed by people who know
dangerously little about firearms and in a state of near hysteria and
much will be sabotaged by their opponents terrified of symbolic
emasculation and little will change. No one will bother to mention or
discuss or factor in the fact that gun violence is still on the decline
and that the level of gun control in any particular state or city does
not correlate to that decline. It's a battle of preconceived notions and
it's all about irrational fear.
Increased
penalties and such won't effect anyone bent on committing suicide and
taking a few dozen innocents with him. Banning an auto-loader with a 15
round magazine when Abraham Lincoln's brass bound Henry repeater will
fire 16 rounds in 16 seconds will not make anyone all that much safer
and we'll go on banning all kinds of things to "save the children" and
setting the stage for a massive Republican victory in 2016. America
loves guns or we wouldn't own 300 million of them. America loves guns
the way it loves trucks and football and beer and that's not going to
change.
As a side note, I honestly intended to send this out. Unfortunately, I found 6 Joshua Bostons in Kentucky, two of whom were in Louisville, and I don't randomly spam people just because they MIGHT be the right person. If anybody finds an actual physical (or email) address for him, please advise. (Just like in school, be sure to show your work.)
So, just after Christmas, an ex-marine named Joshua Boston posted the following open letter to Dianne Feinstein on CNN's attempt at social media, CNN iReport.
Senator Dianne Feinstein,
I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government's right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma'am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.
I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.
I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.
I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.
We, the people, deserve better than you.
Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012
There. Now you have the backstory, in case you missed it.
_____________________
Mr Boston,
You don't know me, but, just like you, I was in the military. Unlike you, I did more than just two tours - I retired after 21 years. On the other hand, I only had two vacations in the Middle East, to your four. So, things even out, I guess.
I read your "open letter" on the CNN website with some interest. I get the general impression that you don't support the idea of gun control: if I'm wrong about that, please tell me.
Oh, and congratulations on learning to use Spellcheck: so many of your fellow lunatics can't manage even that much. But next letter, maybe you should see about getting somebody to help you with the punctuation. I know that's hard for a Marine (or even an ex-Marine), but we all need help sometimes.
I could argue with you on the subject of gun control - it's actually not that difficult to refute every one of the NRA's talking points. The hardest part of the debate is keeping you guys from yelling; you seem to feel that your arguments are more valid when they're louder.
Now, since then, you've become something of an internet celebrity. Your letter has gone viral. You've appeared on Fox News several times, you've been interviewed by Piers Morgan (that one seems particularly popular), and there seem to be people lighting candles and incense under your picture. You're another Internet celebrity. Enjoy it while it lasts, I guess - those 15 minutes die out pretty fast.
I'll tell you the truth, though: I'm not impressed. To be honest, other marines aren't impressed. But I'm not going to try to argue the Second Amendment with you, despite the fact that even the most extreme right-wing Supreme Court justice has said that it's not as all-encompassing as you seem to think.
I could even argue history with you. You seem to ignore the first half of the second amendment, because the full text is "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."
See, back then, every town had a militia. Where we've got the National Guard, they had the local militia. And when they said "well-regulated," they meant it. They had volumes of regulations covering the behavior of the militia.
The founders had a simple reason for curbing this right: Quakers and other religious pacifists were opposed to bearing arms, and wished to be exempt from an obligation that could be made incumbent on all male citizens at the time.
When the Second Amendment is discussed today, we tend to think of those “militias” as just a bunch of ordinary guys with guns, empowering themselves to resist authority when and if necessary. Nothing could be further from the founders’ vision.
Militias were tightly controlled organizations legally defined and regulated by the individual colonies before the Revolution and, after independence, by the individual states. Militia laws ran on for pages and were some of the lengthiest pieces of legislation in the statute books. States kept track of who had guns, had the right to inspect them in private homes and could fine citizens for failing to report to a muster.
(Saul Cornell, author of "A Well-Regulated Militia:The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America")
Yeah, but, see, that kind of argument doesn't do much for you. Logic has left the building. The historical reasons for the Second Amendment don't matter so much as your ability to take out your automatic weapons and blow the shit out of everything in the neighborhood, does it?
I just want to point out a couple of little things you should consider, outside of the Freudian glories of firing off your boom-stick.
First off, Senator Feinstein doesn't carry her gun everywhere. She just happens to own one. That's not hypocritical: she isn't trying to ban all guns everywhere - she wants some simple, common-sense laws to be instituted. Are you aware that out of the 23 executive orders the president just signed into law (yes, they're legal and they're constitutional, despite what you'd like to believe), one of them made it legal once again for the CDC to look into gun violence?
Yes, did you know that the NRA had gotten some of their trained Congressional poodles to make it illegal to even examine one of the 15 most common causes of death in the US? That's how afraid they are of reality.
But, of course you'd see Senator Feinstein's actions in the worst possible light: after all, she's a woman, and I hate to break this to you, but you're sexist.
Yeah, I know. You'd like to deny it: either to call it a lie, or to attack the messenger (it's a pretty common tactic: "liberals always call conservatives racist," as if simply denying it makes it less true).
I mean, it's pretty obvious just from your choice of words. "I will not have some woman... tell me I may not have one," or "I am the man who keeps you free... I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned."
Those are your own words. But that's just subtext, so maybe that's too subtle for you. Let's look at some of your other words. "I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government's right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me..."
That's adorable. Paranoid, but adorable. So I suppose that your car doesn't have a license plate, right?
Let me explain what you've done with your idiotic little rant. You made this statement on a nationally-read website. You told the American public that you weren't going to comply with the law. Now, hypothetically, some members of that same public might just work for the government. And they might just file your little letter away for future consideration.
And then, later, a couple of people might just knock on your door. With pictures of you at a shooting range, firing an unlicensed weapon. Since you aren't listed as owning, say, an AR-15, that could very well be considered "probable cause." And then you get a citation: even then, the government would be unlikely to confiscate your guns - they'd just take them as evidence, and you'd end up with a fine.
Of course, if you still didn't register your weapons, then they would be perfectly within their rights not to release the weapons back into your custody. Which may seem like "confiscation" to you, but it's something that they wouldn't be able to do if you'd just complied with the law.
I'm not saying that this is a likely scenario. I'm just pointing out the obvious flaw in your logic. The most likely way that your stubborn ignorance would turn around to bite you would be if you ended up arrested on, say, drug charges, or suspicion of being a terrorist: some charge that resulted in a search warrant against you.
Licensing your guns doesn't put you on a "confiscation list," despite what you read in The Turner Diaries. It just keeps you from getting further charges filed against you when the guns turn up in your possession.
But mostly, I'd like to thank you. When people see the immediate and illogical overreaction of people like you, to the mere suggestion of guns getting at least as much regulation as a car? It highlights the insanity of certain parts of the American public. And maybe suggests to them that there are some people who probably shouldn't be allowed access to firearms. People like you, Josh.
So thanks for your efforts to get some common-sense gun laws put into place.
Bill Minnich
TSgt, United States Air Force
1983-2004
Years ago, I was researching delusional thoughts for a paper on psychotic disorders. Where do delusional thoughts come from? Are there patterns or archetypes? Should all killing rampages be considered copycat crimes? Or something else?
We find examples of delusional thinking across a range of psychological disorders - dissociative, bipolar, personality, and psychotic disorders, as examples. Delusions are often expressions of inner conflicts, drives, memories, and feelings. For lack of a better expression, I call these “cultural artifacts” because they rise to the surface from the Spirtius Mundi of culture and infuse the mind. Delusional thoughts take many forms: Astral entities, historical events or persons, personifications of painful emotions or traumatic memories, revenge personae, or voices in the head – all born of our culture and made manifest in shocking crimes.
Every massacre demands an explanation. Law enforcement will gather evidence and assign motives to explain the unexplainable; the public wants answers; and parents seek reassurance. Every night on cable news, talking-head gasbags will assault our senses as competing stakeholders weave false hypotheses and self-serving narratives. Perpetrators rarely live to disclose their delusions in detail; they take their secrets to the grave.
If you accept this concept of delusions as cultural artifacts, then perhaps you might approach from a different perspective the murderous rampages that continue to confound and mystify us.
Perhaps there are other artifacts less visible to us. How does social stress correlate with violent crime? How do we quantify and measure alienation and depersonalization - the kinds of torments that find a path of least resistance in the delusional mind? Recently, one of our readers named
democommie commented:
Poverty does not cause crime; it breeds despair. Mental illness does not cause crime; it removes inhibitions and the ability to control dark impulses. Guns do not cause crime; they enable people who despair … to attain, if only for a moment, a feeling of control, of superiority over others. That the feelings of control and superiority often result in the taking of other's property, dignity, safety and, far too often, their lives is not the result that they dreamed of. It is the stuff of nightmares.
The incidence of mental illness is constant across various population groups – as constant as background radiation in the Universe. The rate of violent crime in the mentally ill population equals the rate of violent crime in the general population. Yet, America has a far higher prevalence rate of violent crime across all population groups compared with other nations. Why? Gun merchants offer easier access to arms. Simulated violence in games and entertainment provide scripts for delusional reenactment. Desperation drives motive. These are cultural artifacts.
Let there be no doubt. Easy access to arms correlates with higher incidence rates of violent crime, and America leads the world. The U.S. has 50% of all guns in circulation worldwide and 30 times the murder rate compared with other industrialized nations. Undeniably, gun culture is the vestigial relic of a frontier mentality deeply imbedded in the American mythos. Cowboys and guns are cultural artifacts.
Reductio ad absurdum. After a weeklong silence following the Sandy Hook massacre, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA responded with this prescription: Fight fire with more firepower; place armed guards in every school; arm the good guys to neutralize the bad guys. More guns! Turn America into an armed fortress with self-appointed militias and vigilantes in every city and town.
LaPierre offers not an imaginary dystopia but a real one – like a bad Mad Max movie – creeping into our lives. Is the ubiquity of guns an acceptable vision for our children and future generations? If you understand the pervasive impact of “cultural artifacts” on people, then LaPierre’s prescription for fighting fire with firepower is akin to pouring gasoline on a raging inferno.
During my parenthood years, I tried to teach my children the relationship between responsibility and freedom. Responsibility earns trust and confidence; the penalty for misconduct is more parental supervision and less independence. A reasonable proposition for raising children, I thought. Yet, ours is a society that fails to understand this relationship. Every public controversy, every perceived loss of freedom (whether imagined or real) represents a failure of responsibility.
Which is worse: A crazed gunman who kills 20 children at a clip? Or junk food merchants who consign children to lives of obesity and diabetes? Or designers of video games who market violence to children and call it entertainment? Or arms dealers selling automatic weapons that appeal, not to legitimate sports enthusiasts, but to adult children reared on action toys - who project their self-image of manhood through the barrel of a gun? Or reckless speculators who game investment markets and leave millions of lives in financial ruin? Or a corporate CEO who orders massive layoffs - casting entire families into panic and debt - then rewards himself with a million dollar bonus. Crimes of violence against people committed in the name of easy money, fast money, and free enterprise - these have become cultural artifacts.
How often have we heard people in the news disclaim or dismiss a public controversy with: “No laws were broken.” And how often have we thought: The word ‘legal’ is not necessarily synonymous with the word 'ethical.' Legal acts, all too often considered irresponsible and reprehensible, have become cultural artifacts.
What preoccupies our thoughts in this forum? We write about chicanery and corruption, inequality and injustice, abuse of our public institutions, the lies and deceptions of persons who aspire to positions of power and authority over us; of town hall hooligans, legislative gridlock and deadlock, and a public held hostage by political hacks and henchmen. How often have we felt bullied and abused! These too are cultural artifacts.
We may talk about the dangers of easy access to automatic weapons; about loopholes in our system of background checks and bullet holes in our mental health establishment; about the subliminal influence of violence as entertainment; about competing ideas of gun ownership versus public safety. These controversies, grave as they are, overlook other urgent questions:
How will more guns or less guns serve us when “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold?” Have we fostered a culture of remorseless and ruthless sociopathy? Are incidents of gun violence signs and symptoms of a culture in crisis?
We equate freedom with excess and excess with freedom. We enable overindulgence without self-restraint. We practice brinksmanship but not citizenship. With each passing year, we drive all standards of civility, community and accountability further into the wilderness. National conversations turn fractious and fragmented; not even the high ideals of secular democracy bind us together. We covet freedom but spurn responsibility. Perhaps the worst monsters of society mirror the accelerated grimace of a culture grown monstrous.
Let’s talk about the cultural artifacts that crash in the mind. Perhaps we should start this debate at the beginning by reaffirming those values of a democratic republic whose mission and purpose is to secure “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The price of civilization is never cheap. We demand the rights and privileges of full membership, but refuse to pay our dues.
Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death
(E. E. Cummings)
Years ago, I was researching delusional thoughts for a study on psychotic disorders. Where do delusional thoughts come from? What drives them? Are there patterns or archetypes? Should all killing rampages be considered copycat crimes? Or something else?
We find examples of delusional thinking across a range of psychological disorders – in dissociative disorders (multiple personality), in bipolar disorder (hypermania), in schizophrenia, in a subset of personality disorders, as examples. Delusions are often expressions of inner conflicts, drives, memories, and feelings. For lack of a better expression, I call these “cultural artifacts” because they rise to the surface from the Spirtius Mundi of culture and infuse the mind. Delusional thoughts take many forms: Astral entities, historical persons, personifications of painful emotions or traumatic memories, revenge personae, spirit guides, voices in the head, beings from an another universe – born of our culture and made manifest in shocking crimes.
Every massacre demands an explanation. Law enforcement will gather evidence and assign motives to explain the unexplainable; the public wants answers; and parents seek reassurance. Every night on cable news, talking-head gasbags will assault our senses as competing stakeholders weave false hypotheses and self-serving narratives. Perpetrators rarely live to disclose their delusions in detail; they take their secrets to the grave.
If you accept this concept of delusions as cultural artifacts, then perhaps you might approach, from a different perspective, the murderous rampages that confound and mystify us.
Let there be no doubt. Easy access to arms correlates with higher incidence rates of violent crime, and America leads the world. The U.S. has 50% of all guns in circulation worldwide and 30 times the murder rate compared with other industrialized nations. Undeniably, gun culture is the vestigial relic of a frontier mentality deeply imbedded in the American mythos. Cowboys and guns are cultural artifacts.
Perhaps there are other artifacts less visible to us. How does social stress correlate with violent crime? How do we quantify and measure social alienation and depersonalization - the kinds of torments that find a path of least resistance in delusional minds? Recently, one of our readers named
democommie commented:
Poverty does not cause crime; it breeds despair. Mental illness does not cause crime; it removes inhibitions and the ability to control dark impulses. Guns do not cause crime; they enable people who despair … to attain, if only for a moment, a feeling of control, of superiority over others. That the feelings of control and superiority often result in the taking of other's property, dignity, safety and, far too often, their lives is not the result that they dreamed of. It is the stuff of nightmares.
The incidence of mental illness is constant across various population groups – almost as constant as background radiation in the Universe. The rate of violent crime in the mentally ill population equals the rate of violent crime in the general population. Yet America has a far higher prevalence rate of violent crime across all population groups compared with other nations. Why? Gun makers and their merchants offer easier access to arms. Simulated violence in games and entertainment provide scripts for madmen to follow. Desperation drives motive. These are cultural artifacts.
Reductio ad absurdum. After a weeklong silence following the Sandy Hook massacre, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA responded with this prescription: Fight fire with more firepower; place armed guards in every school; arm the good guys to neutralize the bad guys. More guns! Turn America into an armed fortress with self-appointed militias and vigilantes in every city and town.
LaPierre offers not an imaginary dystopia but a real one – like a bad Mad Max movie – threatening our lives. Is this an acceptable vision for our children and future generations? If you understand the pervasive impact of “cultural artifacts” on people, then LaPierre’s prescription for fighting fire with firepower is akin to pouring gasoline on a raging inferno.
During my parenthood years, I tried to teach my children the relationship between responsibility and freedom. Responsibility earns parental trust and confidence; misconduct results in forfeitures of freedom and independence. A reasonable proposition for raising children - yet ours is a society that fails to understand this relationship. Every public controversy, every perceived loss of freedom, whether imagined or real, represents a failure of responsibility.
Which is worse: A crazed gunman who kills 20 children at a clip? Or junk food merchants that consign a generation of children to lives of obesity and diabetes? Or designers of video games that teach violence to children and consider it entertainment? Or arms dealers selling weapons of mass murder that appeal, not to legitimate sports enthusiasts, but to adult children reared on action toys, who project their self-image of manhood through the barrel of a gun? Or reckless speculators who wreck the world economy and leave millions of lives in financial ruin? Or corporate CEOs who order massive layoffs - casting entire families into panic and debt - then reward themselves with multi-million dollar bonuses. Atrocities committed in the name of easy money, fast money, and free enterprise - these have become cultural artifacts.
How often have we heard people in the news disclaim or dismiss a public controversy with: “No laws were broken.” And how often have we thought: The word ‘legal’ is not necessarily synonymous with the word 'ethical.' Legal acts, all too often considered unethical and reprehensible, have become cultural artifacts.
What preoccupies our thoughts in this forum? We write about chicanery and corruption, inequality and injustice, abuse of our public institutions, the lies and deceptions of persons who aspire to positions of power and authority over us; of town hall hooligans, legislative gridlock and deadlock, and a public held hostage by hacks and henchmen. How often have we felt bullied and abused! These too are cultural artifacts.
We may talk about the dangers of easy access to automatic weapons; about loopholes in our system of background checks and bullet holes in our mental health establishment; about the subliminal influence of violence as entertainment; about competing ideas of gun ownership versus public safety. These controversies, grave as they are, overlook other urgent questions:
How will more guns or less guns serve us when “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold?” Have we fostered a culture of remorseless and ruthless sociopathy? Are incidents of gun violence signs and symptoms of a culture in crisis?
We value freedom but not responsibility. We enable excess without restraint. We practice brinksmanship but not citizenship. With each passing year, we push all standards of civility, community and accountability further into the wilderness. National conversations turn fractious and fragmented; not even the high ideals of secular democracy hold us together. Perhaps the worst monsters of society mirror the accelerated grimace of a culture grown monstrous.
Let’s talk about the cultural artifacts that crash in the mind. Perhaps we should start this debate at the beginning by reaffirming those values of a democratic republic whose mission and purpose is to secure “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The price of civilization is never cheap. We demand the rights and privileges of full membership, but refuse to pay our dues.
Today the National Rifle Association (NRA) finally broke its silence about the massacre of innocents and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012.
Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president rejected the idea of stronger gun legislation in favor of placing "...armed police officers in every single school in this nation." LaPierre goes on to declare, "Innocent lives might have been spared, if armed security was present at Sandy Hook. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." (Rachel Rose Hartman, NRA Newtown Response, Yahoo News)
LaPierre and the NRA are irrational and dangerous.The difference between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun is indistinguishable until they shoot someone. Mass shooters are typically people who decide on a particular day to murder a lot of people. If they had been a "bad guy" and made a practice of shooting large groups of people, I seriously doubt that they would still be allowed to wander about with a gun. The NRA's position makes no sense to anyone capable of rational thought.
The problem lies with the number of guns owned in America, the type of weapons, and the type of ammo. Even a good guy can have a bad day and the last thing that we need are a bunch of armed people patrolling the halls of our schools unless the NRA can come up with a fool proof test to determine who is a good guy and who is a bad guy.
The NRA also tries to shift the focus to violent movies and video games. The problem is that numerous studies have concluded that exposure to such material is not the causative factor in American gun violence.
A Facebook friend argues that it isn't about the tool used by the perpetrator of mass violence, but about our "social celebration of violence as an answer to problems and as a way to fame."
I agree that we need to deal with our culture of violence, but the tools do make a difference. In addition, when data of other types of crimes is compared with crime rates of other cultures, the U.S. doesn't appear to be any more violent than other developed countries except in the area of gun violence.
We are not a more violent nation, if we look at overall crime rates. It is only in the area of gun violence that the U.S. drastically exceeds other nations. (National Vital Statistics Report, CDC, October 2012)
While we kill 11,000 to 12,000 of our fellow citizens each year with guns; England and Wales have about 50 gun homicides a year -- 3% of our rate per 100,000 people. The U.S. has more gun-related killings than any other developed country. (Max Fisher, WorldViews, 12/14/12 Washington Post).
Changing cultural norms takes an inordinate amount of time and in the meanwhile, this nation has a murder by gun rate that far exceeds that of comparable developed nations.
A single person with a semi-automatic gun with a magazine capable of rapidly firing multiple rounds is bound to have a higher kill count than someone with a shovel. Lanza killed 26 people in approximately 10 minutes. This pretext that tools don't matter is dangerous and nonsensical. Who would you rather face--a person armed with a shovel or a person armed with a glock?
The countries that have enacted stringent gun controls have seriously lowered their rates of death by gun violence
The NRA offers a ludicrous solution--let's arm the good people to fight the bad people, as if good people and bad people are separate species. Anyone has the potential to commit an act of violence and we don't know that they are a "bad person" until they do so. Some of those "good people" that the NRA would arm may get pissed off one day and become a bad person with a gun.
We have to stop coming up with overly simplistic solutions based on fallacies about human nature. There is no such thing as a criminal until a person commits a crime. We have more people in prison proportionate to our population than any other country. I'm not worried about criminals running around with guns. It's those law abiding citizens, armed to the teeth that worry me. Up until last Friday, Adam Lanza wasn't a criminal.
