I love it when antis run these mock dialogues with “gun nuts.” Paul Bangiola follows the standard style of setting up and knocking down straw men with his logic and reason, triumphing mightily over the feeble arguments of the ignorant/paranoid/conspiracist gun nut. Paul opens with an anecdote about a debate he went to in the early ‘80s between Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, another member of the Chicago Seven . . .
My takeaway from their debate was a good one-liner by Jerry to Abbie: “It’s OK to be against authority, unless it’s your authority.”
Bear with me here. Paul believes it’s relevant:
Now, this comes to mind when it comes to gun control. I hear many gun rights activists say they might need a gun for self-defense:
“What if somebody breaks into my house!”
No quarrel with me, buddy. You can just get yourself a handgun, a shotgun, a rifle, maybe a moat with alligators in it, and I hope the bad guy falls in!
Well that’s mighty big of Paul, “allowing” me to exercise the natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional right to defend myself and my loved ones as I see fit. OK, maybe the moat was a little hyperbole; probably trying to frame the perfectly reasonable and life-affirming choice of armed self-defense as a paranoid overreaction to the threat of crime.
That’s when Paul ladles on the snark:
Oh, one thing, by the way: Please keep those guns away from kids, particularly your own unhappy adolescent.
Umm, no, Paul, I am not going to keep them away from my kids. I’m going to teach them gun safety and how to shoot. In fact, according to The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s March, 1994 study Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse:
Figure 13 shows a very strong relationship between owning illegal guns and delinquency and drug use. Seventy-four percent of the illegal gunowners commit street crimes, 24 percent commit gun crimes, and 41 percent use drugs. Boys who own legal firearms, however, have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of guns.
Please carefully note that final sentence and note what isn’t mentioned; gun crime among boys who own legal firearms. That’s because it is zero percent. As for my “unhappy adolescent” . . . according to the American Heritage Dictionary:
ăd’l-ĕs’ənt – n. A young person who has undergone puberty but who has not reached full maturity; a teenager.
So why do you want me to keep my guns away from my “unhappy” 15-18 year-old? Are you afraid they’ll commit suicide? I appreciate your concern, but even in adolescents, suicide rates are independent of method; that is, if guns are made less “accessible” the rate of suicide by gun may drop, but overall rates tend to remain unchanged.
In addition, according to the CDC’s WISQARS website, in that age range the gun suicide rate is 3.13 per 100,000. By comparison, the death rate from motor vehicle accidents is 20.41 so perhaps you should take the car keys away from your happy adolescent before trying to tell me what to do with mine.
Now that he’s cleared the decks of the home/self-defense argument, Paul brings out (you should pardon the expression) the big guns:
“But now,” I say, “tell me again about why you need a Bushmaster assault rifle with a 30-bullet clip filled with armor- piercing cop-killer bullets?”
First, as of 2004 there had not been a single police officer killed with a handgun round through their (properly worn) vest whether a KTW Teflon-coated round (the classic “cop-killer” bullet) or any other. Oh, and it was an NBC news report on “cop-killer” bullets in 1982 which informed the BGs that many cops were wearing body armor and so they should start shooting for the head.
Second, it’s a magazine not a clip.
Third, an “assault rifle” is a select-fire weapon, capable of semi-auto or full-auto fire. Some also have “burst” capability which allows the shooter to fire 3 or 5 rounds (depending on the settings) with a single trigger pull. These weapons have been tightly controlled since the 1934 NFA was passed and since the (unlawfully passed) Hughes amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act have become virtually unavailable to non-LEOs.
Fourth, just about any .223 round (“armor piercing” or not) will penetrate the level II or III police body armor (which is designed primarily to protect against handgun fire) that most cops wear.
Fifth, whether I own an ugly gun is not a question of need, but the fact that the freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional right — subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility. Furthermore I saw a great quote the other day: I don’t need an AR-15 any more than Rosa Parks needed to sit at the front of that bus.
But let’s address Paul’s question, why do I need a weapon with a 30-round mag?
How about because the police have pulled out of Koreatown or New Orleans where my home and/or store is located?
How about because the police are overwhelmed in Coney Island/Brooklyn or Virginia Beach which is where my home and/or store is located?
How about because there may be more than one attacker and (as Mas Ayoob points out here) it may take more than a couple of hits to stop the threat?
How about because I may miss?
Now, why might I need armor piercing bullets?
How about, because my attacker(s) may be wearing body armor (as the Aurora shooter was (erroneously) reported to have been), or is hiding behind a car door (which, BTW, is what ‘teflon coated bullets’ were originally invented to deal with)?
Realistically, however, in most self-defense scenarios you don’t want to have AP ammo, because 1) it creates a far smaller wound channel than a soft point or hollow point round (as shown with 9mm here) and B} it tends to over-penetrate and keep going to potentially hit something you don’t want hit.
But instead of bringing up personal self-defense reasons, Paul’s gun nut has a different rationale:
“But now,” I say, “tell me again about why you need a Bushmaster assault rifle with a 30-bullet clip filled with armor- piercing cop-killer bullets?”
“Well,” they say, “the Second Amendment is supposed to protect me from the Government in case we need an armed revolt. After all I might need to ‘get revolutionary’ and assert my ‘Second Amendment remedies’ (to quote a failed US Senate candidate of the R-Tea Party-persuasion).
Do gun rights activists really butcher the English language that way or is Paul indulging in a little stereotyping here? Whatever, Paul’s make-believe gun rights activist is not making much sense here, talking about the Second Amendment “protecting” him from the government if he revolts. If you are engaged in revolution (although I prefer the term “restoration” because most of us don’t want to overthrow the Constitution we just want the government to quit ignoring it) you’re going to want to take offensive action, not defensive action. Paul is mingling two arguments here; one that the Second protects us from tyranny and the other that it allows us arms to overthrow such a tyranny. It’s a subtle difference but a difference nevertheless.
In addition, if I’m preparing to “get revolutionary,” why the heck would I be so stupid as to have the same rifle as them? I don’t want to engage in firefights, hell, I don’t want to “engage” at all. Shoot’n’scoot is, I believe, the term; I want to harass and bloody my enemy from beyond the effective range of their weapons and then beat feet before they can reply.
But Paul has his own reply to the (slightly confused) gun rights advocate:
And then I say: “Whoa, partner! It’s okay to be against the Government unless it’s your government. Treason is a crime in this constitutional republic of ours,
Indeed it is and it’s the one crime which is actually defined in the Constitution (mainly because the Founders were tired of royalty (cough *Henry VIII* cough) accusing anyone who disagreed with them of “treason”):
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Paul is correct, that does seem pretty straightforward. But let me ask one question: if the government fails to follow the Constitution, then what is treason? Is it treasonous to fight government oppression or to support it (either actively or tacitly)? Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN) once said:
The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.
And in his 1860 Presidential campaign the “Great Emancipator” himself, Abe Lincoln said:
The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it
Which I think is one of the best summations of “insurrectionist” philosophy I have ever heard. Paul continues:
Treason is a crime in this constitutional republic of ours, and there is nothing in the Second Amendment that requires, say, that just because our military has F-18s jet fighters, you can get one too–just to keep the battle even when you decide you don’t like the way a vote on the town council went, and persuade yourself that a revolution of one is required.
Nice bait-and-switch. That was so smooth that I missed it the first time around. Paul had his gun rights activist talk about overthrowing the government to restore the Constitution, but then he flips it over to a lone disgruntled individual; you know, the kind of person like Carl Drega who can be safely written off as a “lone nut-job” and forgotten. The kind of person who won’t disturb your little “everything is fine, the government is my friend” fantasy world.
Paul also trots out the classic “you can’t fight the 101st Airborne with your deer rifle” argument. Unfortunately this thesis becomes completely circular when we suggest that in that case the Second Amendment does cover Stingers, LAWS and grenades, and the antis soil themselves with cries of “but why would you need those things?!?”
But setting that aside too, my question for Paul would be, how on earth is the government going to use an F-18 against someone like Carl Drega? What does it matter if the government has them and we don’t? Paul finishes with some more ad hominem attacks:
Maybe our government needs an edge against a guy who is listening to voices and maybe even the guy who just can’t quite get his mind around losing, or being powerless, rejected, or the recipient of one of fate’s thousand slings and arrows. I think so.
You know what Paul? It isn’t the lone loon you need to worry about. No, if we ever do get pushed past that awkward stage I doubt that it will be a “town council” vote that does it. See Paul, local politics are reasonably accessible and responsive, and while there are cases (like Carl Drega) which do precipitate “a revolution of one” that isn’t the sort of repression that is liable to make people “get revolutionary” and reach for “Second Amendment remedies”.
What you and your collectivist buddies should be afraid of (although you probably don’t even realize it) is when the Leviathan goes that one step too far. When it passes just one more “shoulder thing that goes up” ban, burns down just one more church full of women and children or even just railroads one more gun-owner on a bullshit “machine-gun” charge, all of a sudden you have a few hundred thousand seriously pissed off gun owners.
Gun owners who have kids and grand-kids just back from the “sandbox”; kids who won’t be particularly interested in listening to the ATF explaining that Gramps committed suicide by lighting his house on fire and shooting himself 13 times in the back, or why he’s in Sing Sing doing 10 – 20 for having an 8-round magazine.
Gun owners who, for whatever reason, are perfectly willing to lay down their lives and their fortunes to uphold their sacred honor.
Gun owners who, like their kids and grand-kids, served in the military and who remember their oath.
Gun owners with the skills and equipment to drop a man deer at 600 yards.
Gun owners who remember Clinton’s Serbian rules of engagement.
That’s who you worry about Paul.
A lawyer…
and a democrat…
oh….
and an IDIOT ASSHAT!
Questions?
To assault is to leap, bound or spring. See somersault and rollypollys.
To rifle is to pass through or into at high speed a groove, notch, cavity.
An assault rifle, a clown or other random object that is shoved out of a tube or raceway at high speed which then later tumbles in mid air.
Paul Bangiola ain’t no Steve Allen.
Jeezus, I really hope that someone feeds the gun grabbers the articles ya’ll write here.
If I weren’t already in agreement with you, I’d find it damn hard to oppose the points you lay out.
I wish I were that eloquent.
Lowne,
Your request that “someone feeds” these articles to the gun grabbers leads me to believe that you don’t feed these articles to the gun grabbers. If true, why not? If your Senators and reps are anti-gun, send them the articles. For an broader audience, write a similar article and send it to the local papers. You could even ask for permission to send the original article to the local papers. Don’t forget proper recognition of the original author though. We all need to get active in the protection of the right to keep and bear arms and all other rights. We must stop expecting someone else to do it for us.
Somebody already has. Try reading the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog once in a while. All the gun grabbers do when they feel the need to go into screaming fits of insanity.
Nice reading someone shredding the fantasy argument.
Dude, you just lost an argument with the straw-men. Paul isn’t even here, and his arguments beat all of yours even with you arranging and re-stating his arguments in the worst possible way.
Dude, you just lot an argument with your own comment.
FutureDave5, Why do you not take up a discussion with the author of this post? Make it public. Bring some facts and not just insults. Put your money where your mouth is.
Care to be specific there, Dave? Bangiola’s argument is against a stereotype, not the typical gun-owning citizen. It’s easy to argue against stereotypes.
ITT the gentleman loses an argument about losing a fake argument on the internet, on the internet. Crikey. Let’s stick around and see what it does!
Uh, Dave, hate to be the one to break this to you but this was a comment to Herr Bangiola’s original post. It was re-posted here, along with all the, what did Paul call it? – “frou-frou formatting” – which actually makes it easier to keep Paul’s idiotic, illogical straw man arguments apart from Bruce’s reason, logic and common sense. If you haven’t read the original crash-and-burn piece Paul wrote, you should, along with the many sensible comments on that page showing this hoplophobic bedwetter for what he really is: just another mouthpiece of creeping government tyranny.
Perhaps the two of you should join Piers Morgan and swim back to jolly ol’ England where the gun deaths are lower but the violent crime rate is nearly 4 times that of America. Paul’s title of nobility should give the three of you a pass, unless the Queen’s men still want to prosecute Morgan the cell phone pirate for his crimes.
The fortunate know their enemies.
I’m confused…the Founders and King Henry VIII?
King Henry VIII, born: 1491. died: 1547.
Did you mean King George III? Or did I miss something, like Henry’s penchant for lopping off the heads of those who disagreed with him?
Regardless, while a decent rebuttal, you must not let your facts get in the way of their opinion. You should know better.
v/r
Badger 8-3
No, he meant Henry #8. Inconvenient people like Sir Thomas Moore, Anne Boleyn, and many others lost their heads for “treason”.
+1 Jay.
Badger, royalty in general had a tendency to “define” treason as “whatever I say it is” but Heny VIII was especially notorious. E.g.
Nobleman: “Henry, dude, ease up on the wives, eh?”
H-8: “Treason! Off with his head!”
Yep. Addressed with part of my comment, to whit;
” Or did I miss something, like Henry’s penchant for lopping off the heads of those who disagreed with him?”
The wording made it seem as if you were saying the Founders were responding to Henry VIII’s tyranny, not George III’s. George was as much of a tyrant, just not as historically popular as Henry, who, incidentally, was around 200 years before the Founders were mere twinkles in their daddy’s eyes. In my opinion only, suggesting that the Founders were responding to Henry’s tyranny would be akin to suggesting that Congress pass legislation condemning George III. Simply in my opinion.
Now, was Henry’s legendary tyranny held up as an example of worst-case-scenario? Sure. Just as we today hold up Stalin and Hitler and Mao as worst-case-examples.
Carry on.
-1
This is well said. I am in the Army, as a combat arms officer. I believe one of the unintended consequences of the all volunteer army is that the army now is over represented by “red states.” While there are certainly those from the “blue states” including minorities in the Army, although they are more conservative than you might think and they serve primarily in the support MOSs, transportation, quartermaster etc. The combat arms, Infantry, Armor, Artillery, Special Forces, are predominantly conservative, and it should be recognized, primarily white. Don’t believe me go check out a battalion formation in an Infantry or Armor Battalion and you’ll see what I mean.
It is my contention that there would be resistance among the fighting branches to fighting their own citizens. Sure, the support branches might follow the orders, but the combat arms soldiers and officers would be much less likely to aid in confiscation or quelling a resistance movement. And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of combat veterans that will have left the military, and that with sequestration the military is likely to be even smaller.
The only real exception to your model is Military Police. Those guys are such uptight pricks I fully expect them to fall all over themselves to execute any confiscation order. You can’t spell “wimp” without MP.
On the other hand, I believe that most Army National Guard combat arms units would either defect en masse to join the resistance or just not show up for work.
It will be interesting to see what happens in states that pass nullification laws against any Federal gun bans when there is a move to Federalize the Guard if things start to get hot.
Methinks that Paul Bangiola actually doesn’t Bangenough.
. . . Bill Clinton’s Serbian Rules Of Engagement.
To which I’ll add my old D.I’s oft-repeated admonition, “If you find yourself in a fair fight, you’re doing it wrong.”
it’s a shame that most voters who are sick and tired of today’s government is not voting down those very people who are perverting the Constitution.
Is it because whoever’s there already “the lesser of two evils” or is it because we don’t care enough?
I’m still not sure at this moment. Although I don’t listen to Warren Buffett’s preaching, his one remark about firing Congressmembers until something like a BUDGET gets passed is somewhat sound in the climate that we’re living in right now.
Of course, we should also apply that to other policies in the land, and other government workers as well, from city council all the way up to the POTUS.
Eugene, did you mean “firing” or “shooting”?
Not, of course, that I would ever, in any way shape or form, suggest or support the idea that shooting CongressCritters, brass-hat bureaucrats and over-officious officials would be a good start.
Did you catch that Mark?
“30-bullet clip filled with armor- piercing cop-killer bullets”
the more adjectives you can cram on something, the better…apparently.
Ok, maybe someone who followed the case more closely can explain this to me, how the hell was Olofson convicted and his appeals were repeatedly shot down, all the way to the Supreme Court? Did he not have a good lawyer? Reading the wiki article Bruce linked to, the article says the main witness was paid an undisclosed sum of money by the ATF for his testimony, which directly led to the conviction. The sure as hell looks like buying off a witness’s testimony.
Elliotte/23Jan2013 @ 08:25
RE: Paid Fed witness in Olofson case
Govt & law enforcement can do that & MUCH more.:
Govt witnesses can lie & not be sued
Supreme Court rules against exonerated death row inmate who sued prosecutors
A Trial is NOT About the Truth
Also review the numerous articles about why one should never talk to LE without a lawyer. It’s interesting how the above is okay for LE while you go to the joint for doing likewise, then there’s that whole ‘blue wall of silence’ thing that if you/your buds do it is called criminal conspiracy.
Now that’s interesting, I included links to the abovementioned article titles & followed the html tag procedure & they disappeared anyway.
This is a great article. Unfortunately it will fall on deaf ears. They do not want to hear the “awful truth”, and when confronted with said truth, respond, in kind, with lies, threats, and “conspiracy theorist” attacks. Sad thing is, when the shit hits the fan, those same citizens that are covering their eyes and ears and going “La la la la la la la la” will want, no, expect us, to step in and save them. And we will. Just like we always have. Since this country was formed.
Excellent article but I have one correction and I think it is extremely important as to pointing out how our history and language has been twisted to mean what liberals wish it to mean. Please check the following length for a better explanation that I can provide.
http://www.unalienableproject.com/index.html
Let’s revert our history and therefore our future back to what the Founders intended.
“I don’t want to engage in firefights, hell, I don’t want to “engage” at all. Shoot’n’scoot is, I believe, the term; I want to harass and bloody my enemy from beyond the effective range of their weapons and then beat feet before they can reply.”
Hence I have a sub-MOA accurate, semi-auto 7.62×51/.308 Win (accepts either equally well) instead of a .223. I don’t want them able to effectively return fire. Plus it makes a dandy varment rifle. It’ll stop any varmint in North America – 4 legs or 2 – easily plus I don’t need teflon to get a FMJBT to penetrate a car door.
Uhhh, I liked Carl Drega.
What Paul doesn’t get is cause and effect.
C: government talks about awb.
E: people write congressmen and petition at an astonishing rate
C: new York and several other northern states begin passing strict and ridiculous gun laws
E: people nation wide protest at Guns Across America
I’m starting to see a pattern here. Maybe people don’t really agree with these new gun control measures…
C: the government (state or national) pokes the bear one time too many
We can only wonder how the effect will turn out. People like Paul don’t think that far or that rationally.
I found his linkdIn account – http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-m-bangiola-esq/33/270/a64
If anyone wants to say hello 🙂
“Paul M. Bangiola, Esq., is a Morristown lawyer, former municipal prosecutor, former Morris County Democratic Chairman, a 2000 New Jersey Presidential Elector, and a campaign adviser.”
Should explain everything you need to know about this douche.
LMAO
Liinkedin profile does not exist. Wonder why? Me thinks he knows he hit a nerve with his lies and went to ground as the old saying goes. Assuming the link above is correct that is.
Paul M. Bangiola, Esq writes:
Please see my response to Bruce Krafft at: http://morristowngreen.com/2013/01/15/commentary-shooting-holes-in-the-second-amendment/
Bruce sent me a private email with a link to this site and his cut-and-pasted response to my Commentary (my email address and web page “Lord Champ”is not hard to find), but did not respond to my invitation to post his full response to my full Commentary on the MorristownGreen.com web site. I suspect he ‘s just another guy with gun muscles who wants an audience limited to those who agree with him. I can tell you that veiled threats and crazy allusion to armed revolution by paranoid authors like Bruce will do more than I ever could to advance the cause of gun control and background checks.
One more thing: Language is important and I have been critical of the loose talk of Treason and Tyranny being spouted by those who claim to support the Constitution until they get out-voted. So, to be fair, I want to disavow the unnecessarily inflammatory headline placed on my Commentary, which was not my title for the piece, It was added by the blog editor, and is not a title I would have chosen. I understand and support the Second Amendment, as finally defined and interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States, and do not wish to “Shoot Holes” in it. The Commentary itself, however, is all mine and I stand behind it.
Regards,
Paul M. Bangiola
“Paranoid authors like Bruce Kraft”
You’re mistaken in your assumption that the majority of the population will side with the government over the people. That’s the problem with you elitist types. You’re so hopped up on yourself that you really think you’re pulling the wool over our eyes. To quote South Park in an adult discussion isn’t ideal. However, anyone who follows that show knows that the creators are incredibly level-headed, reasonable guys.
Episode: fishticks
Premise: Kaye west gets pissed
Kyle to Cartmen” that’s how people like you work. Your ego is so out of whack that it will do anything to protect itself. Any people with these egos will do mental gymnastics to convince themselves that they are awesome, when really they’re just douche bags.” Paul, in case you need me to break it down for you, you’re Cartmen.
….”Paul….you’re Cartman……!” That is eff’n funny…..!
Regards,
RJ O’Guillory
Author-
Webster Groves-The Life of an Insane Family
…”The Commentary itself, however, is all mine and I stand behind it….”
…then you are a either a misinformed idiot, or a paid shill working for someone else’s agenda…I worked for the US Government all over the world for over two decades …over twenty years as a “federally protected whistle-blower” …working all over the US Empire…and you have no idea what you speak of…especially relative to the current level of corruption, criminal activity and war-crimes compared to the original concepts of our country’s founding fathers…if you think creating blatantly unconstitutional law after unconstitutional law..(drug laws) and then having them stamped by the same corrupt court that approved kidnapping and torture…if that is not tyranny, and if that is not corruption….then no such thing exists….and every one of your “logic points” about gun ownership does nothing but display your poor grasp of the American Constitution….all those years in school and you fail to understand the difference between a “right” and a “need”…how disappointing for your parents… and unless you have some trademarked, scientific method for soothing the savage beast within mankind, I’ll stick with my guns..!
Regards,
RJ O’Guillory
Author-
Webster Groves-The Life of an Insane Family
Webster Graves? Oop! Ack! Vomit!
It was seen as a Peyton Place nightmare in the mid-70s back when my parents thought about buying there. It was a raging joke about the pathos of the “middle class” when I was kid 40 years ago.
Congrats, Don Marsh lives there. Nobody with a clue does. they left in the early 60s.