There’s a lot more at the link, but clearly, and particularly in light of all of the irresponsible reporting and pontificating on what the Founders intended, by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and others, it’s time to rein in this out-of-control media. How could the Founders have foreseen cable television, or television at all, in which irresponsible, uneducated, ignorant people could fill Americans’ heads with rapid-fire historical nonsense?If, just to win this debate with me, you say you'd agree to some curtailing of the 1st Amendment if it meant curtailing the 2nd, then you're a fool who has both of those rights only due to the exertions of men and women better than you are. (with thanks to John Stuart Mill)
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
I Do Enjoy Satire
Think the Founders never intended for citizens to have high-powered rifles because all they had was muskets? Think the 2nd Amendment is "technology-dependent"? How about the 1st?
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Not to mention Darren, does the NY Puke use an actual printing press? Probably not. So I think it would not be protected by the restrictions the 1st Amendment places on government actions. It's only putting the Constitution into a living and breathing context, right?
This is the argument we hear all the time, though. "The founding fathers could never have imagined..."
Meanwhile, we continue to give up our freedoms as the country moves towards a police state. I just hope I'm gone before that happens.
Should we also allow citizens to buy tanks?
For " then you're a fool who has both of those right only due to" I think you meant to say "rights" instead of "right." Or maybe my "intuitive" grammar parser is broken today.
well ... this falls apart when you consider that a) speech doesn't kill elementary school students b) freedom of speech has been limited in cases where it's exercise can be shown to bbe likely to cause harm to others; c)that the first amendment specifies NO law whereas the 2nd begins with 'well regulated militia'. It isn't technology that's the problem -- it's things which can be shown to cause harm to others. You have the right to own a weapon, or weapons, but not the right to shoot many other people with them. I recognize that the problem is the people, not the guns, and I don't really have a problem with people being able to own assault rifles or large magazines, even if they are ridiculous and unnecessary -- but conservatives and the NRA are still opposing legislation designed to make it harder for lunatics and felons to get these, or to track where they go once they are sold.
Jeez Muckdog, how about a little faith?
The country's been moving toward a police state since before the Declaration of Independence was signed, let alone the Constitution and while we've come awfully close a couple of times we've always resisted the entreaties of those who desire a police state and try to make it seem both inevitable and desirable.
Given the fact that a bunch of states have enacted CCW reform and Michigan (hurray!) just enacted right-to-work law, I'd say there are some pretty potent signals that the left is far from having everything its own way.
Being an optimist though, I'll go a step further.
I think the left's on the ropes and is pulling out all the stops before its descent becomes unconcealable. Far from being a brilliant success, President Obama's been a considerable disappointment to the left with Obamacare, his only real accomplishment as far as the left is concerned, being a bitter disappointment.
If you want a sense of where the country's at, look at the gun sales surge in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. That surge in buying is unlikely to not be accompanied by a surge in pro-Second Amendment activism. 2010 is not that long ago and more then a few Democratic congressmen survived by tacking to the right. If they sign on to any gun control measure they're betting their seats that gun owners will forget by 2014. Not a good bet.
Television, radio, internet? Not covered by freedom of the press, since no press is involved. For that matter, did the Founders envision technological changes that would create mass printing devices -- or ought we limit freedom of the press to the hand-set, manual screw presses that were in existence when the First Amendment was written?
Even elementary students understand the distinction that stick and stones [and automatic weapons] can [end our lives] but words can never hurt us.
Huge difference between commentary and an AK-47.
HUGE.
What do you think about letting citizens buy tanks? By your logic, this is also OK under the 2nd Amendment.
I guess one distinction would be that the first amendment features the language, "no law" whereas the second contains "well regulated." another would be that speech, no matter how vile, can't kill. And, the first has been restricted in cases where the speech could legitimately lead to harm to others. we seem not to want to do that with the second. I agree wholeheartedly that the problem is people, not guns . . .so i'll give you the guns, if you give me legislation that makes it harder for people who are dangerous to get them. The NRA inexplicably opposes all of these proposed laws . . .
Max, you're ignoring the context in which the 2nd Amendment was written, as well as its actual purpose.
Max:
Forgive, I forgot to specify satire, see Darren’s title.
If speech doesn’t kill as you say, why do we have these laws controlling where speech can take place (e.g. “free speech zones” on campuses). More specifically, speech can arouse a crowd and cause injury or death. For an excellent example, see Al Sharpton and Yankel Rosenbaum.
What is a “well regulated militia’. From the founding of this nation it was defined as every “able bodied man”. People have a right, endowed by their Creator (I know I’ve read that from somewhere before Max, can you refresh my memory?) to defend themselves. That does not mean a convicted felon or legitimated mentally unstable person can be prohibited firearms or that we can put a minimum age for gun ownership. Things the NRA has and does support.
BTY, that punk in CT was 20 so he couldn’t have legally owned pistols. And the piece of s$%^ in New York who murdered those two firemen was a convicted felon who killed his grandmother with a hammer to the face. Besides multiple homicides what do both have in common? By law neither could possess a firearm. One was too young and in a “Gun Free Zone”, one was a felon. That law really stopped them didn’t it.
Now one thing that would have helped in NY. In Texas we have a weird idea, you kill someone we at the least put your ass away for a good hunk of your life. Maybe if the geniuses in NY would think “put his ass away, thrown away the key and he can’t harm anyone one the outside...”. No it can’t be that easy, could it?
BTY, can you define an assault rifle? I have both a AR-15 and a Ruger Mini-14. Which is the assault weapon? I have 30 round mags for both. Does the fact the AR-15 has a upper receiver handle make it an assault weapon? Or the forward assist the Mini-14 lacks? Both fire the same round (223) at the same rate of fire (2-3 rounds per second on a good day, but it won’t be accurate beyond 50 meters)
Finally I have a problem with hypocrites like that moron Diane Feinstein demanding I register my weapons when she has a CCP and had said she got a pistol to protect herself. If the gun is the problem Diane we wouldn't want you hurt. You first.
so i'll give you the guns, if you give me legislation that makes it harder for people who are dangerous to get them
OK, specifics. I just gave you two examples on how legislation was worthless. Please give me some specific legislation that would have stopped CT or NY. Unless you surprise me Max I will rip it apart with one simple point. Criminals, but their definition, don’t obey the law. I can’t tell you how many convicted felons I’ve arrested with pistols on them. Guess what, they cannot carry a firearm of any type, because, it’s against the law. Didn’t stop them much. But please, share your insight.
Actually, don't. We all know the arguments both sides are going to make, must we really rehash them here?
MikeAT . . . I don't really disagree with you ast all. i oppose limitations on free speech; i merely noted that there are some. Campus limitations on free speech are abhorrent to me . . .And, I recognize that you can't stop criminals from getting guns -- but I think it's a fair concession to make it harder for violent felons and the mentally ill to obtain them. i also think that we should impose some responsibility on gun owners: the CT shooter wouldn't have been able to take his mother's guns, had they been properly secured. i'm all for locking up the ones who use them violently, too . . . but the lunatics usually wind up dead, and expecting it. I'm not sure it's the best deterrent.
Apparently so since there appears to be essentially no appetite for an inspection of lefty motivations on the part of conservatives.
For the likes of maxutils, mazenko and anonymous the motivations of conservatives opposed to demonstrably ineffective gun control law are pretty clear - we conservatives are crazy or evil. Probably both. Hence maxutil's trotting out of the lie that the NRA is in favor of guns getting into the hands of criminals. Mazenko's argument, to be generous by characterizing it as such, is that capitalizing a word imbues it with a compelling logic. It doesn't and an argument as silly as that could be considered the third assumption lefties have of conservatives - we're stupid.
Why would people who can form technically correct sentences utilize demonstrably faulty logic and espouse provably ineffective law?
It's not because they're stupid or crazy. "Technically correct sentences" largely rules out that self-serving explanation.
And I very much doubt it's because lefties are evil since in the spectrum of evil calling people names is pretty thin gruel. Too thin to be an explanation for the widespread popularity of name-calling.
So here's an alternative to rehashing endlessly-made arguments - delve into the motivations.
Max, you're nuts. If mom had the weapons legally, she shouldn't be required to have them in a safe *in her own home*. It might have been smart, considering she had a wackadoo son, but requiring everyone to do that, well, kinda negates the point of having firearms sometimes.
Gun control doesn't work. Allen in MI is correct; the motive for "gun control" is the 2nd word.
How's that control working in Chicago, which has had 500 murders in 2012? I'll bet we've lost fewer than that in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya combined in the same time frame.
http://m.townhall.com/tipsheet/KatiePavlich/2012/12/28/chicago-hits-500-murders-in-2012-n1475263
It's had pretty noticeable effects in Australia.
Allen, I didn't say that the NRA wanted guns in the hands of criminals . . . I merely said they opposed legislation that might make it more difficult. And Darren . . . I'm okay with not requiring the gun safes, but if not, mom should bear some of the responsibility for the shooting if it could be proved that she knew her son was wackadoo. of course, that's irrelevant in this case, since mom is dead . . . i don't support band-aid legislation, and I don't support restricting arms -- but felons give up some rights, and so do the mentally ill -- i DON'T have a problem with that. And, I'm not a liberal.
"After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled."
professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323777204578195470446855466.html
I love when people quote people extremely selectively.
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. - John Stuart Mill
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. - John Stuart Mill
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. -
John Stuart Mill
In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny. - John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill is absolutely one of my favorite political and economic writers, but you should know that conservatives should have a hard time quoting him in that he is one of the fathers of liberal thought.
Allen, I didn't say that the NRA wanted guns in the hands of criminals . . . I merely said they opposed legislation that might make it more difficult.
Tomato, tomawto. The laws you claim would make it more difficult for criminals to acquire guns perform this magic by burdening the entire populace, i.e. everyone who isn't a criminal.
I hope you never see a cockroach in your house because by your logic the appropriate solution is to set fire to your house. Of course setting fire to your house probably would get rid of your cockroach problem whereas burdening the law-abiding with onerous regulations won't do a thing to deter criminals from acquiring firearms. What then?
Oh, I know. More regulations, impediments, penalties and dangers that fall on the law-abiding. If the first batch of regulations didn't get the result you claim you want then the solution must be more of the same. Someone who isn't transfixed by their own insightfulness might come to the conclusion that you're more interested in successively reducing the rights of your fellow citizens then you are in reducing crime.
That, by the way, is why you're a lefty, i.e. liberal.
It's not how you see yourself that's definitive but how you see others.
Everyone has to pay more for a car then they otherwise might so UAW workers can get paid more then they're worth. Everyone has to be at risk of the commission of a crime if they don't store their property, i.e. guns, according to the rules you are quite certain will prevent gun-related crimes.
Your solutions all involve circumscribing freedoms rather then in maintaining them and, you accept no responsibility for the failure of those solutions seeing in their failure the assumption that they simply weren't broad enough in their scope. That makes you a liberal, at least on these subjects.
Max
What planet are you on? The NRA has always supported keeping weapons out of the hands of felons and mentally unstable people. Show me one time Wayne LaPierre or any other officer of the NRA has said (words to the effect) "let's repeal the laws already on the books that forbid felons or mentally disabled from purchasing or owning firearms". Or show me one thing Diane Feinstein, Da Moron Mayor Bloomberg et all have proposed that would have keep the guns away from Adam Lanza or William Spangler. You show it Max and I'll join Handgun Control Inc.
Back in the early part of the Clinton administration when they were discussing gun control the NRA was ok with a phone in (now online) system to check people's eligibility during purchases. But Clinton, Reno, etc wanted people to fill out a form and have it mailed in so a bureaucrat could bless off of it after a couple a weeks. The purpose was to depress gun sales in general and to kill off gun shows period. The NRA was very against that. So they supported Instacheck which works well.
Mazenko, just curious, you support David Gregory being prosecuted for bringing a high capacity magazine into the safe as Eden District of Columbia? Also, these post are more common than the mass shootings in CT, Aurora or NY. They just don't get the publicity.
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=33389
http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/texas-boy-goes-on-shooting-spree-with-assault-rifle-two-home-inavders-hardest-hit/
I thought I was doing a good job giving credit to Mill when I borrowed the template of his words, I didn't realize that doing so made me have to accept every single other thing he ever said.
Geezus, I get tired of your pettiness sometimes.
If he's the Big Bad of Lefties, I wonder how you'd jibe the 2nd quote you provided with Obamacare.
Don't answer, it's rhetorical, and you'd have to do a bunch of twisting and parsing even to try to make a coherent point out of it. *sigh*
Allen . . . I recognize that criminals are going to be able to get guns, regardless. So, maybe there isn't a good answer. But, when you want to start driving, you need to undergo a lengthy training process followed by a safety test, a test of your knowledge of laws, and a licensing. It does not seem unreasonable to me to require some sort of process for gun ownership. If it works on-line, as submitted by the gun dealer, fine ... but then again, the NRA has opposed a national registry -- so if i was declared mentally ill in Iowa, it might well not show up if I buy a weapon in California. I don't want to take away people's right to own weapons -- and, in fact, I support what Utah is doing with encouraging teachers to carry concealed weapons. David Gregory should absolutely not be prosecuted because a) the ban is ridiculous, b) it was not in the vicinity of a weapon, and c) he was clearly not intending to do harm with it. Obviously, the key thing we can do is to punish those who use guns to harm innocent people -- but all to frequently, the psychos just want to die anyway. MikeAT - i never said the NRA wanted to repeal laws, either -- but their insistence to do nothing except attempt to sell more gunsso that we can put armed guards in every school, to me, is ridiculous. Have a national registry; require owners to report lost or stolen guns; hold both perpetratorsd and the gun owners who let them get the guns in to their hands accountable for the crimes. I think that would be doable, and with background checks for buyers, minimally invasive.
Max, may I quote you, “I agree wholeheartedly that the problem is people, not guns . . .so i'll give you the guns, if you give me legislation that makes it harder for people who are dangerous to get them. The NRA inexplicably opposes all of these proposed laws . . .”
Again, it is illegal for a felon like William Spengler (convicted of manslaughter in the murder of his grandmother) to possess a firearm, period. He got it though a third person and she will face some prison time for that (hopefully more than what he got for murdering his grandmother). It is illegal for Adam Lanza possess a pistol (he was 20 and the minimum age is 21). I don’t think he had been declared a “mental defective or committed to a mental institution” (GCA 68) so the rifle is an open question but from what I read the reason Lanza his killed his mother (and stole her guns) was beause she was going to get him institutioned. A bit too late.
The NRA supports keeping firearms away from felons and people who have mental issues. These are the types of people who cannot possess firearms due to current law (again, Gun Control Act of 1968 which the head of the NRA testified to Congress in support of) . Could the system use some improvements, yes, especially in the ares of mentally ill people, see Seung-Hui Cho and the Virginia Tech shooting. The problem with that is what is the standard for a mental illness that prohibits possession of a firearm. We’ll agree with Hannibal Lector, but what about people who are simply diagnosed as depressed? Bi-polar disorder? What is your standard? And when are you going to tell psychologist “You have to tell us little Johnny is getting really serious about wanting to bump off fifty kids at the school...” OK, there might be an issue with medical ethics (by law in most states what is privileged information).
A summary. Everyone listed in the recent CT and NY shooting used semiautomatic rifles to kill people obtained in violation of current law. One by using a straw buyer and one by killing the legal owner and stealing them. In both cases current law was violated. And nothing you have posted in your rants will have changed that.
And yes, I agree, the ban on the clips in DC is ridiculous. But seeing Gregory is a pure bred hypocrite (he and his family live under armed security) I would like to see him held to account.
MikeAT . . . a very reasonable response. I don't disagree with anything you said . . .I'm just frustrated that these things keep happening . . .I don't know that I have a good solution, but I do know that every single one of these, there have been indicators that were ignored. I think a little bureaucratic curiosity might be in order.
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