Quote of the Day: Punish Everyone Edition

Cute? I thought it was hypocrisy, but maybe it is cute. . .

No, wait, I checked:
hy·poc·ri·sy
/hiˈpäkrisē/
noun: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.

Yup, that’s it all right.

Here’s the thing. Many (if not most) DGU’s don’t get documented. If I chase away an intruder by showing my firearm and yelling “GET THE **** OUT OF HERE!!!!,” I may call law enforcement afterward. Or I may not. Or if I call law enforcement, I may tell them I showed my weapon…or I may not. Particularly in jurisdictions that are, ahm, less than sympathetic to civilian firearms ownership, NOT telling the cops you showed a gun in scaring off the intruder is probably going to be the better part of valor.

And if we were to document all the DGU’s, you’d doubtless consider our data about as trustworthy as we would consider Mr. Nocera’s data trustworthy…

It’s true, I honestly don’t have much plan to “keep the guns away from crazies” because there’s practically nothing more that can be done without completely tossing the book on civil rights.

Unlike you, I’m not willing to forge ahead trying to “do something” to try to solve a truly marginal problem that’s going to cause comparably overwhelming damage in its implementation. The mass shooter is a rare incident, maybe a few dozen pear year leading to a couple hundred casualties.

No, that’s not ideal, but we’re a nation of 350 million people that’s you’re trying to hold accountable for what ends up being a statistical anomaly. I’m not willing to basically declare outmoded the rights and freedoms we’ve struggled to ensure for decades if not centuries and start a staggeringly costly campaign against a politically manufactured crisis.

Let’s not focus on the wrong problem.

In China they are having frequent mass stabbings. In the latest incident, more people were hurt by an automobile and half the deaths were by knife.

IF, and that’s a mighty big IF, you could restrict access to firearms, psychopaths are not going to decide not to kill because they can’t get a firearm. The worst school killing in this country was still done by using TNT. Homemade explosives are surprisingly easy to manufacture. Just look at the Oklahoma City Bombing for how devastating homemade explosives can be.

A tiny fraction of guns are used illegally. Most violent crimes committed by firearm are done so with a weapon that was illegally acquired. So what law can you pass that will stop this?

You acknowledge violent crime is down, but then dismiss that readily. While violent crime is on the decline, concealed carry has become legal in all 50 states. Fine, correlation without causation, except that it flies in the face of your claim that easy access to firearms increases violent crime.

In the meantime, there have been many stories of grandmothers, mothers, homosexuals, and others who have defended their very lives with a firearm. Why do you want to disarm them? These are typically not people who can overwhelm an attacker physically? Waiting on the police is a death sentence to those people.

Why do you want to disarm victims? Why do you insistence guns are the problem when ready access to firearms has not increased violent crime?

Why do you want to punish the innocent gun owners who have done no harm due to the actions of a tiny fraction of the population? Why are you ignoring the far greater number of deaths that occur through other means. Firearms continue to miss the list of top 10 causes of death in the US.

Sorry, your whole argument boils down to “I don’t like guns and I think they should be banned because then good things will happen.” Sounds childish in that context, but that is it at the core.

“What is your plan to keep all the guns away from all the crazies who can legally purchase and bear the countless U.S. guns?” A well worn piece of sophistry played by one obviously skilled at the game. The point is to force one’s adversary into conceding the premise without examination.

Here is a logical reply: “Sir, I have no plan to disarm my fellow man. To state it more generally, I have no plan to order the lives of my fellow citizens.”

Please understand that if you are throwing your hands up, others will (must) take a leadership role in solving the problem.

But they haven’t solved the problem, or proposed anything that can reasonably be expected, given international and historic experiences, be expected to solve the problem. But we’re just supposed to accept as axiomatic that our safety can be increased if only we surrender more of our liberty to the state. Well, I don’t. The numbers don’t support it, and a long string of lapses and outright abuses have put the lie to the notion.

Therefore, rather than surrender more liberty in exchange for empty promises, I will choose to retain it and use it to further my own safety and that of my family, by such means and measures as I find prudent.

I have no plan to order the affairs of others. I do, however, have a plan for dealing with those who would order my affairs. Execution of that plan requires that my right to keep and bear arms not be infringed.

Something tells me you knew that.

We don’t ban cars when people do stupid things with them.

It is already illegal to run a red light. We don’t need a law saying I can’t own a certain type of car. The government is not good at assessing individual needs. They should not get a say in what I can or cannot drive or what I need for my personal use, family, or business.

Same thing applies to murder. Laws don’t stop bad behavior. They punish bad behavior. Making a thing illegal just punishes people because they MIGHT do something bad. Usually less than 1%. Why is the answer with you people always to restrict everyone elses freedom? You don’t have a right to feel comfortable or even safe.

If you believe that banning guns will make us safe, you are ignoring the total ineffectiveness of Clinton’s Assault Weapon Ban. Even the Democrats had to admit it was a total failure, which is why it was not renewed despite G.W. Bush being willing to sign an extension.

“…But the traffic law to stop at a red light existed before you got there, and before your innocence was detained for no actual reason. ”

There is a subtle, but very important, difference:

Firearms are a Constitutionally protected Right. Cars, and the red lights that control them, are not.

Arms are held in much higher esteem in the eyes of our Republic because they are so important as to be called out specifically in our Bill of Rights.

And there is a flaw with your red light example…. red lights eventually turn green. The laws proposed by the anti-gun crowd never do.

“…I am a lifetime gun owner and shooter, by the way, but have become ashamed of the ”

You, of course, have already given up your guns and no longer own them.

“…Too much gun violence is caused by mentally challenged individuals such as in the OP.”

Those adjudicated as mentally incompetent are already prevented from owning or possessing firearms. That is a Federal law that applies in all the corners of this nation.

Or are you, like so many others who want the guns gone, trying to redefine what qualifies as ‘mentally challenged?’

“I am a lifetime gun owner and shooter” Calhoun must be one of those pro-gun democrats, I was wondering if I would ever run across one.

Plans to undue human nature, or reality itself, rarely end well.

The Aztecs noticed a problem–every day the sun went farther and farther south. There was consensus among the scientific community and ruling elite: If this problem was not solved, the sun would just keep going south and they’d all freeze. They refused to simply shrug their shoulders. They didn’t wait for others to solve the problem. They did something. They made daily human sacrifice of their political enemies until that sun stopped moving south and came back north.

If you can just get people to believe that reality can be undone, it’s amazing how much of their freedom and treasure they will throw at your feet.

Chip, we need better screening for who may have guns. The bar was set too low for Mr. Rodgers, the subject of this thread. I think along the lines of Israel, which applies pretty tough psychological tests to see who should be allowed to have guns. U.S. law enforcement uses similar screening for employment there.

“Well regulated.” Familiar with the term? If I can lass a significant test, I can keep my gun. If I don’t pass muster, no biggie, I turn it in. Pretty simple, and I’m at peace with that.

The problem is that causal studies will soon draw lines which point to high-risk characters. Oscar Pistorius may be one, for example. Public health was close to defining standards in the early ’90’s, when the NRA quashed public funding for causal study.

If the gun violence data had supported a healthy mindset among those who bore arms or were violent with guns, there would have been no reason to quash public study, of course. Meanwhile, private study has been less than flattering to gun behavior, and the NRA has no new generation of viable econometrics professors with figures to debate the issue. Wow.

The out come is a 17-years vacuum of gun violence information, and crazies who get guns. It’s the topic of this thread. Not too cool.

Not too moral or ethical, either. Just sayin’.

Yes, Mr. Calhoun, we all know what “well-regulated” means, but it appears that you do not. We suggest that you read the seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision in D.C. v. Heller where, after an exhaustive historical analysis, the entire court agreed that “well-regulated” in the language of the men who wrote the clause means “well-trained or “well-drilled.” It does not mean “subjected to (“reasonable”) laws and regulations.” The whole point of the Second amendment is to take away the power of the government to pass laws regulating the ownership and carrying of firearms, which the founding fathers believed was a critical defense against tyranny. Don’t take my word for it, read the case. Also read that at the time, most militias did not provide firearms for the use of the militia men; men were required by law to keep a (self-procured) musket and a specified quantity of powder and shot. In fact, the entire curt unanimously agreed that the Second amendment guarantees an individual, not a communal, right to keep and bear arms; their point of divergence was the minority’s view that that right extended only to service in a militia, while the majority concluded that the right was to protect hearth and home.

P.S. I don’t know what “17 year vacuum” you are referring to; Professor John Lott’s data is current through at least 2009. There have been something like 18 other studies since, all of which generally agreed with his results. Just because the CDC hasn’t done a study is essentially a red herring.

I think along the lines of Israel, which applies pretty tough psychological tests to see who should be allowed to have guns. U.S. law enforcement uses similar screening for employment there.

Your proposal (and accompanying claims that psychological science is this close to being able to spot the crazies) is directly at odds with the statements from the mental health community in the wake of the Isla Vista shootings, and with U.S. historical experiences (in mass shootings and otherwise). There is no reliable way to weed out the crazies, nor is there any prospect on the horizon that would change that.

It’s important to note that the Isla Vista shooter’s contact with the mental health system was far from cursory. Neither was James Holmes’, or the Seung-Hui Cho’s, or Adam Lanza’s. Yet despite that all that contact and evaluation, red flags were either not raised or were raised and not heeded. On the flip side of the coin, we have shooters like Aaron Alexis who underwent extensive evaluation by the government for reliability as part of is security clearance and still passed. Indeed, despite this much-vaunted psychological testing of potential law-enforcement officers, this groups ends up committing crimes at the same rate as the general population.

So believing that what’s necessary is a set of longer, more burdensome, psychological tests is a non-starter. It’s been disproved before we even begin.

using your numbers, 110,000 gunshot victims in a nation of 313.9 million people works out to 0.0350% of the population. Anything else that injured only 3 one-hundreds of a percent of the population per annum in a nation would be below the threshold of debate. Heart Disease kills 600,000 Americans per year, or about 0.19%, that’s 6 times greater, and that’s deaths, not injuries. If you honestly care about saving lives, contact the American Heart Association and forget about gun control. Household accidents kill slightly more people that your number for gunshot wounds, again kill, not injure. What are you doing to prevent household accidents?

“…Some people can’t handle guns. ”

The question still stands…. who is allowed to make that determination?

How do you make that determination while simultaneously respecting individual Rights including due process of law? You (not you specifically, the anti-gun crowd in general) say ‘mentally ill’ in regards to firearms. What do you mean ‘mentally ill?’ Claustrophobia is considered a mental illness, is being afraid of closed in spaces sufficient to remove someones rights?

And a friendly suggestion….. many of the regulars around here do not take kindly to argumentative setups in an attempt to prove what we see as a flawed point. For example…” I agree, my suggestion is that as TRULY responsible gun owners…we could set things up so that Rodgers and his sort don’t get to have them.”

No True Scotsman would ever…

And then specifically to your comment, nothing currently on the books, and nothing proposed short of an absolute ban, would have prevented Rodgers from doing what he did. The killings did not happen because ‘the system’ is flawed, this example was not an example of not enough gun control. The killing happened because the individual responsible was, to put it very simply, evil. He plotted and planned his killing so I don’t think breaking a few more laws regarding whatever you are proposing for gun control were going to stop him from breaking the law by killing people. Your proposals to date will do nothing to stop the next shooter but will make it impossible for innocent civilians to be able to defend themselves from the next shooter. If the clarion call is supposed to be ‘if it saves one life!’ why can’t that one life be mine that I saved by being armed?

“Who will be the judge” is indeed a critical question. Rodger had years of mental health treatment by some of the best psychiatrists around–and not one felt that he was a danger to himself or others. If the very best that medial mental health “science” was not enough to stop him, how are you going to ferret out the “potential” psychopaths out of 100,000,000 gun owners before they ever commit a single crime? The principle of freedom on which our criminal justice system and due process of law are founded demands that nine guilty men shall go free before a single innocent man be unjustly punished. What you suggest is that nine innocent gun owners should be deprived of their rights under the constitution on the say so of nothing more than an opinion for the practitioner of an inexact medical art in order that they system catches that one psychopath who should not be permitted to possess a firearm. And even if you take away the guns, you won’t stop the violence. Look at England–almost no “gun crime” but a rate of violent crime that is three times higher than in the United States. Google it–you will find the statistics from the Home Office, and you can compare them to the statistics from the FBI, also available on line.

Truth be told, those restrictions on drunk driving are only constitutional because driving isn’t a right.
Realizing the difference between rights and privileges is an important part of any such debate.
Only someone being deliberately obtuse could miss the point.
Let’s refocus on things we agree about.
Like the facts and reasons behind these rights and the crimes that are possible because of them.

A well intentioned discussion could yield at least some common ground.
But of course we will have differences.
Overtures could be made to rectify our differences.
Various things might suffice to alleviate the problem without intruding on innocents rights.
Every person has a responsibility to keep an open mind and consider alternative views.

For instance, we could discuss mental health care reform instead of gun restrictions.
Utimately it’s the results that matter, not the process.
Can we reign in the rhetoric and search for solutions we can all agree with?
Killing is bad, we all agree on that.

Your idea’s are a little foreign to us, it will take some getting used to.
Our position is pretty entrenched, we believe it’s a natural right not to be infringed upon.
Unless we find common ground no solution can proceed.