TheAgitator.com
Second Amendment-Loathing Mayor Attacked With Lead Pipe
Monday, August 17th, 2009Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett lost two front teeth this weekend after being attacked by a man wielding a lead pipe. Barrett was coming to the aid of a grandmother and a young child, both of whom were being attacked by the man.
Barrett deserves all the praise he’s getting for his heroism, but on Twitter, Jon Henke makes a good point. This is the same mayor who backed Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn’s outrageous statements defending his intentions to deny Milwaukee’s citizens their Second Amendment rights.
Back in April, shortly after the Wisconsin attorney general affirmed the right of the state’s citizen to carry in public, Flynn responded:
“My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it.”
A local news station reported at the time:
Flynn has the support of Mayor Tom Barrett, who said there should be exceptions for densely populated urban areas.”There’s a fundamental difference between carrying gun in Vilas County on your own land and carrying an AK-47 or Uzi to watch the Circus Parade in Milwaukee,” Barrett said.
But even in more populated areas, it might be helpful to have a pistol if you happen to be attacked, or see someone being attacked, by an assailant armed with a lead pipe. Or worse.
Somehow, I doubt that’s the lesson Barrett will take from this.
A little harsh Radley. This didn’t seem like a situation where bringing a gun in wouldve done any good. Kinda a badass move iny book.
While brandishing is a gray area in many jurisdictions, defending himself *with* the gun would have been entirely justified. Who knows but that the assailant could have beaten him to death with the pipe? If I were coming to the defense of a grandmother and a child, I’d much rather have a gun than be unarmed against an assailant with a [potentially] deadly weapon.
Radley, you gotta sleep at some point.
Yes, the lesson to be learned here is clear!
Everyone should carry a gun, so a simple mugging can turn into a bloodbath.
What is lost here is that while YOU would rather have a gun in that situation, since you’d definitely have an advantage, would you rather EVERYONE have a gun, including the mugger?
Vigilante justice has all sorts of problems. Professionals like the police can’t even get it right a not-insignificant part of the time.
Radley, letting people carry makes too much sense. The obvious solution is to ban steel pipe and only allow PVC in the future.
If I ever see you getting attacked by a man with a lead pipe skunky, I’ll make sure to call the police and then stand back and hope they get there before your head gets bashed in since you wouldn’t want me engaging in vigilante justice.
You can carry a firearm on your own land in Wisconsin, but you can not shoot anyone unless you are in fear of your life and unable to retreat. Or you are a LEO. I live in the sticks and even out here if the neighbors hear shots out of hunting season they will drive by and check to see whats up.
THE CLEAR MESSAGE HERE IS THAT WE NEED NATIONAL PIPE CONTROL. Once again having pipes easily available for purchase by anyone without requiring a background check or waiting period has resulted in the maiming of another American. After the slaughter at Colombine where pipe bombs were a part of the arsenal you would think our leaders would have gotten the message. Pipes are used to kill and maim people every day. But no one takes notice when statistics clearly show that the pipe is the most common weapon in the solution to Clue.
Perhaps with an attack of one of their own they will finally take notice and start to put the reasonable controls in place that will benefit all of society. Whether used for bombing, clubbing or penetration, pipes are a menace. BRING ON THE BARRETT BILL!!!
#4
Hey moron, criminals will get whatever they want because they aren’t reigned in by “ink on paper” AKA “the Law”. People who are automaton will obey every “ink on paper” regardless of how foolish it is. Firearms control is fantasy land that it will stop crime, and stop criminals from getting said controlled firearms. The bigger picture is disarming the citizens, who are then more helpless to combat crime on equal footing, and more importantly a tyrannical government.
Am I the only who noticed that “skunky” is the one who said, “Everyone should carry a gun”–when no one else had said that–and then chastises Radley because he allegedly would “rather EVERYONE have a gun”?
Your strawmen about universal carry and bloodbath are childish hysteria.
If anything, having a gun in this case would likely have ended up with the perpetrator dropping his pipe and running away, saving the grandmother and the Mayor’s teeth.
Radley, have you read this? DNA evidence can be fabricated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=2&hp
What if the lead pipe had been a gun?
“#4 | skunky | August 17th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Yes, the lesson to be learned here is clear!
Everyone should carry a gun, so a simple mugging can turn into a bloodbath.”
I believe most studies of defensive gun uses show that the gun is not fired the majority of the time. The sight of it is often enough to de-escalate the situation. In a situation like the one our mayor found himself in, a gun would probably have put an end to the attack on the grandmother and child and no one would have gotten injured.
Elliot – it’s called sarcasm. Lost on you apparently.
Brian – unless you’re a criminologist and/or statistician`, don’t start any statement by saying “I believe most studies of defensive gun uses…..”. You have no idea, clearly, and are just making stuff up to suit your point of view.
When would it be acceptable to brandish your “constitutionally protected” gun and threaten someone? In a bar fight? Traffic altercation? Mugging? Cop arresting you for disorderly conduct in your house? Where is the threshold for use of a deadly weapon?
How many accidental/unintentional deaths are worth making you feel like a big swinging dick?
And when will gun owners stop this paranoid fantasy about overthrowing tyrranical governments? 225 years later and I’m still waiting for the revolution to be televised.
And for all of you who begin their rebuttal by using an insult like “moron” or, more pathetically, “mongrel” (see previous posts), try making a cogent argument rebutting my points before devolving into schoolyard imbecilities.
Once again, I remind the contestants to please refrain from making ethnic slurs.
What if the lead pipe had been a gun?
What if it had, and the mayor had 2 bodyguards and a ninja and could teleport?
When would it be acceptable to brandish your “constitutionally protected” gun and threaten someone? In a bar fight? Traffic altercation? Mugging? Cop arresting you for disorderly conduct in your house? Where is the threshold for use of a deadly weapon?
When I am threatened with grave bodily harm or losing my life – that’s my threshold.
In this particular case, if you’re standing 10ft from me, start moving towards me and swinging a lead pipe at my head – that’s a threshold. My pipe has lead in it too. ;)
@ maitri
I’m sure gun controls are what stopped the mugger from having a gun. Clearly, an upstanding citizen such as himself would never think of breaking the law.
‘Elliot – it’s called sarcasm. Lost on you apparently.’
maybe because it’s late, but it was lost on me, too…
When would it be acceptable to brandish your “constitutionally protected” gun and threaten someone? In a bar fight? Traffic altercation? Mugging? Cop arresting you for disorderly conduct in your house? Where is the threshold for use of a deadly weapon?
To protect my life or that of another. Its as simple as that.
What gives? The dude was obviously stand-up above and beyond where nine out of ten people would go, and you use this opportunity to score points on him? As a gun-toting Second Amendment supporter, I say lame in the extreme.
In other news, an Austin, Texas convenience store clerk has been charged with First-Degree Murder for shooting a man who stole beer from the store.
Maybe gun controls are why the mugger had a pipe instead of a gun.
Criminals might ignore the law but it is far harder to get hold of a gun if they aren’t sold on every street corner and everyone doesn’t have one in the back of their closet.
Frankly I find poking this guy after, in my view, he acted in a very heroic fashion rather distasteful. I mean politics is politics but you have to draw the line at something and the guy actually getting hurt defending innocent people is far from a grey area in my book.
Handguns should still be banned. People DO have the right to defend themselves but unfortunately the number of accidents far out-weight the number of genuine defensive actions taken. Plus one less hand gun on the street is one less hand gun a criminal could potentially get hold of…
His gun policy may suck, but at least the mayor has guts.
Not many people would take on an armed criminal empty handed.
@Mister DNA: Some of the comments at that link are pretty bad. Those attitudes are largely the reason anti-gun nuts can actually get traction. Repeatedly shooting an unarmed man that at no point made a threat in the back as he’s running away over 5 or 6 dollars worth of beer shouldn’t be cheered. :/
Lead pipes destroyed the Roman Empire, don’t sell them short.
I think the mugger should be fined by the EPA-that will teach him.
Where does one find a lead pipe these days? Antique plumbing shop?
“THE CLEAR MESSAGE HERE IS THAT WE NEED NATIONAL PIPE CONTROL….Whether used for bombing, clubbing or penetration, pipes are a menace. BRING ON THE BARRETT BILL!!!”
Please ignore anything that Big Chief says. It’s clear to me that he is merely a shill for the Big Bucket Lobby.
I wonder why we in Germany don’t suffer thousands of brutal deaths each year for being unable to defend ourselves with guns whenever we want.
@Patrick,
Its because so few in your country has anything of value that anyone wants. Those few that do have guns too, despite your laws.
@ Someone
You’re right. This is proof that gun controls work. Now criminals are turning to house hold tools to commit crimes. If only cities like Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Chicago would enact strict gun control policies, the murder rates there would be cut in half over night once criminals no longer had easy access to weapons.
@ Patrick
I can’t answer your question, but Britain has banned guns and they have comparable crime rates to the US while Switzerland which issues guns to many of its citizens has a relatively low crime rate, so clearly the answer isn’t as simple as no guns = less crime.
Was it actually a lead pipe?
I mean… lead pipes are so cliche.
Weren’t they outlawed in the 70′s after the Wisconsin Uprising? Where thousands of lead pipe wielding Amish revolted when their children were forced to attend the ninth grade?
No no… sorry… that was something different. Lead pipes fell out of favor because they are made of lead, a material known to cause… well, for lack of a better phrase, lead poisoning.
Wait a minute! The article only specifies the innocuous ‘metal bar’, not the dreaded ‘Lead Pipe’ of lore. This is no ordinary error! This is the difference between the common Roscoe and an AK47, only one of which belongs on the fairgrounds of this fine country.
Heh.
More likely it’s because they uh… ‘took care of’ anyone who was different in the 40′s. Currently, over 90% of the german population is ethnically German. There is probably no single sub group large enough to balkanize and paint as an ‘enemy’ for harassment and persecution like we have in this country.
The Human race can be an ugly thing.
A lead pipe? That’s some fine reporting right there – when was the last time lead was used to make pipes? I would bet that had the reporter ever done any real work in his lifetime that he could have identified the material the pipe was made out of – probably iron, in this case.
Lead pipe indeed!
“it’s called sarcasm. Lost on you apparently.”
Ah, the famous Skunky wit. Well, half of it anyway.
“And for all of you who begin their rebuttal by using an insult like “moron”… ”
If the pointy hat fits…
Euler,
“Britain has banned guns and they have comparable crime rates to the US ”
Do you know what the Irish city of Limerick is called by locals?
“Stab City”.
Silly liberals, thinking they can write a law that overrides human nature.
Maybe we can ban pipes, and go back to using outhouses.
@Mr Dna
As well he should be. If you think unarmed theft of beer and then fleeing justifies murder then to fuck with your ideology. And I believe firmly in the right to carry a firearm in public.
I’m a concealed carry permit holder (people who oppose this vasty, and intentionally, I think, misrepresent us). I disagree that restricting legal gun possession will reduce crime, although each gun stolen from a car or in a robbery is another gun on the street to be used in a crime.
That said, this mayor acted with courage and audacity. I salute him!
I don’t see anything in the article about a lead pipe. It says “metal bar”. If the pipe had been lead, the entire focus of the article would probably have been about the environmental threat with the assault being merely incidental.
Same is true of guns. They shouldn’t make bullets out of lead. Lead has all kinds of nasty health effects when it gets into the body.
As for the Second Amendment, we should keep in mind what the Bill of Rights is really just a list of things the government feels compelled to eliminate. And, for you people who think the government is ineffective at everything it does, they at least seem to be pretty efficient at that task.
Where do you get a lead pipe in this day and age? Lead plumbing has been illegal for years. These days, you can’t even use lead-containing solder with copper pipe! Iron pipe, now, that should do the job.
Still waiting for the Clue reference . . .
> And when will gun owners stop this paranoid fantasy about overthrowing tyrranical governments?
July 5, 1776, the day after the revolution failed.
Oh wait, it didn’t fail.
The citizens had guns.
While Michael Moore might make your stomach turn, ‘Bowling for Columbine’ ended up convincing me that gun control is useless. The main point of the movie was that other countries, Canada in particular, had as many or more guns per capita, but much fewer gun murders and crimes. There’s something else rotten in the U.S. We need to find out why we’re a bunch of psychopaths and work on that! ;)
What IS is with these guys? They can’t all be stupid and delusional. Somebody says “gun” and it’s an AK-47 or an Uzi. If I told hizzoner I’d bought a plane would he think B-52? If I said I was going to buy some milk would he expect to see me leading a cow home?
Puh-leeze.
Dave, check here. Relevent paragraph:
“John Barrett said the suspect used an expandable metal baton in the attack, though police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz has said it was a metal pipe.”
The attack also went on a little longer than first reported:
Barrett’s brother, John Barrett, said the mayor tried to calm the man down, and when he went to call 911, the man knocked the phone out of his hands and stomped on it. At one point, the suspect said he had a gun and he’s “not afraid to use it,” John Barrett said.
Tom Barrett’s daughters started crying, and the mayor ordered his sister to take the kids away. The suspect told them to stay. The sister took Barrett’s daughters away, but a niece stayed behind, the brother said.
The man then punched Barrett in the stomach and he doubled over, John Barrett said. The suspect then told Barrett to lay on the ground face down, but the mayor became frightened and fought back, the brother said. While either defending himself or hitting the man, the mayor shattered his hand — so much so that bones were sticking out, according to the brother.
The man then took both of the mayor’s arms and threw him to the ground, the brother said.
It was the Angry Wife beater, in the Fairgrounds, with the Lead Pipe!
It wasn’t a lead pipe.
It was a clue bat.
Skunky makes the common, yet obviously incorrect, assumption that muggers care what the law says.
In case you missed it, Skunky, beating people with a metal pipe is also against the law, but that didn’t seem to stop this turd from doing it.
Concealed Carry laws are about what we decide to allow law abiding citizens to do. The criminals don’t care what the law says. That’s why they are “criminals”.. Remember?
Good grief..
I’m with you, skunky. I think mugging victims have an obligation to take a beating without defending themselves with deadly force. After all, taking a beating (even to the death) is a small price to pay for keeping gun violence in check. Victims should stop being so selfish and start thinking about society at large. In fact, someone who is attacked by a mugger should think of it as an opportunity to not contribute to gun violence by voluntarily having the shit kicked out of himself.
Euler,
“Britain has banned guns and they have comparable crime rates to the US ”
O RLY? Crime rates are not relevant stats. No one is claiming gun restrictions reduce crime. Rather they reduce homicides. Firearm vis a vis total homicide rates are, and are more relevant if we’re talking firearms. As you can see by the link below, England and Wales have a much lower homicide rate, with only 8% by firearm. Our total rate is 3x higher per capita and 65% are by firearm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence
You’re free to habitate elsewhere, Skinky, and I encourage you to do so. Where your rights are spelled out by your betters, inconvenient questions come with official answers, and unruly folk like us won’t be a bother.
So does my neighborhood, Skinky. It isn’t Chicago.
Cite wishful correlation replacing causation in the issue, Skanky. I’ll wait.
Muggers are people too!
You know, the poor fellow was just trying to make a living.
If Bush hadn’t destroyed the economy………
Skunky, I got yer back bro.
Kreuger,
What’s your point other than poking fun at my position? Couldn’t the same deterrent effect be accomplished by carrying a baseball bat in public? Or a bottle of pepper spray? If you’re a libertarian and don’t want government having the power to decide life or death (as I agree it should not), why would you grant that to all individual citizens?
Why not allow people to have fully-automatic machine guns, anti-aircraft missles, etc? I mean, if we’re going to rise up against tyrrany, handguns aren’t gonna do much good against the powers that be.
Heh. Pay attention, Skrunchy. That’s sarcasm.
An attack with a pipe would constitute deadly force and shooting the perp would be perfectly legal and perfectly warranted.
The solution to violence is clearly more and better violence.
Per your “argument” concerning the ineffectiveness of guns vs lead pipes, apparently not.
@ skunky
They are relevant stats if we are talking about guns being a deterrent to crime.
Oh, and I guess you missed this disclaimer in your link:
“Caution is advised in reading the table. The statistics cannot take into account the differences that exist between the legal definitions of offences in various countries, of the different methods of tallying, etc.[19][20][21][22] In particular, to use the figures as a basis for comparison between different countries is highly problematic[23] ….”
That remark was surely lifted verbatim from the various State’s formulations on the 2nd Amendment wherein citizens are allowed by their self-governance to carry appliances designed expressly to efficiently enforce laws against violence.
You know like the cops and all.
That’s some stellar logic, la Rana
[...] Radley Balko: Second Amendment-Loathing Mayor Attacked With Lead Pipe. [...]
I really hate to feed the trolls, but I just have to in this case.
First, (Skunky) if you are going to tell someone not to quote stats unless they are staticians then kindly apply that same rule to yourself (please see your own post #42).
Second, on #23 the number of accidents versus number of self-defense uses is incorrect. Many of the self-defense uses go unreported since the issue is closed without violence and the bad guy runs off.
You should really take a Concealed Carry Class, not so you can actually carry a weapon (God forbid, it might come alive, jump out of your holster and shoot a 3 year old child by itself) but so you can actually see what gets taught and what restrictions a CCW permit holder is held to. It is actually pretty restrictive and very much common sense. Plus everyone gets trained on safety which seems to be a huge point for you guys.
I really do have an issue with the police chief saying he and his police will determine “who has the right to carry”. Last time I checked that was the courts job, not the cops.
That being said, I will give a “hoorah” to the mayor for jumping in to help that woman and her grandchild. That took guts. I would have used my concealed carry weapon, or I would have looked for something/anything before jumping in myself but he still did the right thing by trying to help.
Bob: We do have poor people to balkanize. Don’t forget the poor people.
Can’t we get away from this “lead pipe” meme? Has anyone here ever seen a lead pipe?
I’ve been working with piping and plumbing since the 1967 in the Navy, in industry, in residential and I’ve never seen one nor known anyone who has.
You can buy it but it is a specialty item and hard to come by.
So do you think the mayore was REALLY hit by a lead pipe?
I doubt it.
John Henry
I think the brave Mayor could make a case for the banning of lead pipes. “If we see you marching around with a lead pipe, we’ll put you on the ground, take that pipe, and then decide if you have a right to carry it.”
Plumbers Local Union 101 was up in arms at that statement. But the mayor and police chief refused to back down. “Look, pal, you walk down my streets with a pipe in hand, you’re gonna’ get…right in the face,” said police chief Flynn. The mayor agreed with a loud “YEEAAHH BOYEEEE!” which had a bit of a whistle sound to it due to the mayor’s missing front teeth.
“…let us now turn to the lovely, peaceful, and pistol-free, United Kingdom.”
(New Knife Crime Statistics have today been released by the Conservative Party)
http://www.insight-security.com/facts-knife-crime-stats.htm
(Knife crime)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/knifecrime
(U.K. Knife Crime at Its Highest in 3 Decades)
http://blogs.abcnews.com/worldview/2008/12/uk-knife-crime.html
(UK is knife crime capital)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1626691.ece
and to, now, solve this vexing problem:
(First ‘anti-stab’ knife to go on sale in Britain)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6501720.ece
I highly anticipate the market for throw-proof stones and swing-proof clubs.
#22
What’s interesting about this charge of 1st Degree Murder against this guy is when you juxtapose it against that cop in Washington that slammed that guy head first into a wall – that’s considered “reasonable” because “his crime” (and punishment) was
running from the police.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9llvTQn8v-c
I think these stories read a lot better when grandma pulls out a gun and shoots the bad guy. No outside interference needed.
“#14 | skunky | August 18th, 2009 at 12:54 am
Brian – unless you’re a criminologist and/or statistician`, don’t start any statement by saying “I believe most studies of defensive gun uses…..”. You have no idea, clearly, and are just making stuff up to suit your point of view.”
Actually, I do have an idea having read the statistic in a study by criminologists. I was being lazy with my response by not looking for it again. (http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/stats.html)
Specifically, “In 91.7% of these incidents the defensive use of a gun did not wound or kill the criminal attacker”
“#14 | skunky | August 18th, 2009 at 12:54 am
When would it be acceptable to brandish your “constitutionally protected” gun and threaten someone? In a bar fight? Traffic altercation? Mugging? Cop arresting you for disorderly conduct in your house? Where is the threshold for use of a deadly weapon?”
When you or someone else is threatened with deadly force, obviously. Kinda like Mayor Barrett.
“#14 | skunky | August 18th, 2009 at 12:54 am
How many accidental/unintentional deaths are worth making you feel like a big swinging dick?”
Defensive gun uses greatly outnumber the number of accidental gun deaths. By several orders of magnitude.
“#54 | skunky | August 18th, 2009 at 9:24 am
…
Why not allow people to have fully-automatic machine guns, anti-aircraft missles, etc?”
People can legally own fully-automatic machine guns right now.
I’m all for open carry, but in the real world, I’ll simply second Mike’s comment.
I started pistol training last December as a nervous ex-liberal and it was very enlightening about gun safety, practice and thinking tactically about weapons use and self-defense.
I’m in Alameda County, CA so getting a concealed permit is highly unlikely, but pistols and shotguns will be practical for home defense (especially after the next big earthquake!).
In the meanwhile, I carry a 2-shot 10% pepper gel launcher. That’s what I’d use were I the Mayor–no additional blood, and I bet the assailant would drop that pipe real fast!
I love the bull stats. Fine let’s compare:
UK Knife *DEATHS*
US Guns Accidental *DEATHS*
US Population – 304059724
UK Population (England & Wales) – 52041916
US Accidental Guns Deaths – 1500
UK Knife Deaths (England & Wales) – 277
Thus:
One knife death for every 5.322 people in England and Whales.
One Accidental Gun death for every 4.93 people in the US.
The US figure is ONLY accidental shootings. It doesn’t take into account self defence, criminal homicide, or police shootings.
So you have roughly the same chance of dying to a clueless US gun owner as you do to die from a stabbing in the UK.
To paraphrase Jeff Cooper: the mayor gets a ten for bravery and a zero for preparedness
I have seen a baseball bat wielding punk stopped dead in his tracks by the sight of a pistol in the hands of a law abiding citizen. Thanks to the presence of a gun in the hands of a good guy no one was hurt and everyone got to go home to their families that day. That was many years ago and hopefully that young punk grew up and wised up.
I also ran into a young fellow last week at a local swimming hole who was recovering from being hit in the head with a bat. He didn’t remember anything except getting into an argument with someone. He also didn’t remember how to drive, but the folks at the rehab center where he was living had recently re-taught him. He also couldn’t go in the water because he didn’t remember how to swim although he is expecting to re-learn that soon as well.
That guy was probably lucky. There was a local case a couple of years ago of a young man who was hit in the head with a bat and rendered a quadriplegic…for a year until he died from complications.
Those of you in the anti-gun camp who seem to believe that a gun is a deadly weapon but a pipe/bat/knife is not live in a fantasy world. Those “obsolete” and “primitive” weapons will kill and maim you just as surely as a Glock in the wrong hands.
If anti self defense types want to volunteer to be maimed or killed in order to maintain what you consider to be social order: in this case, taking a beating with a pipe, and then calling 911 so that the police can come collect your body and fill out the proper paperwork, be my guest. Just don’t expect me to do the same.
Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a lead pipe.
One accidental gun death for every 4.93 people in the US?
Are you seriously trying to make the case that roughly twenty percent of the US population is killed in gun accidents every year?
You need to sharpen you pencil and get back to work on that one.
skunky is someone who needs to be hit with a lead pipe a few times.
#54 | skunky If you’re a libertarian and don’t want government having the power to decide life or death (as I agree it should not), why would you grant that to all individual citizens?
Skunky, this is an incredibly weak argument.
Being a Libertarian doesn’t mean I’m going to give up my life, and the ability to defend my life, so that a criminal can continue living their life while ending mine.
Someone’s right to live to extends right up until the moment that they threaten to kill me, and display the means for doing so.
Police Chief Ed Flynn, “My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it.”
It sounds like the perp was a trooper who mistook the Mayor’s cell phone for a gun.
I wouldn’t wish harm on the Mayor, but is calling 911 really above the call of duty and a selfless act of courage? Has heroism been dumbed so far that a man of action is defined by someone having 911 on speed dial?
Radley, you should correct the specious lead pipe claim, obviously it was a semi-automatic Assault Pipe.
Self defense or the defense of others is NOT vigilante justice!
Someone
Please cite your source. I hope it’s not the same UN report that skunky cited that specifically says the data does not provide a good means of comparing rates across countries.
Why not allow people to have fully-automatic machine guns, anti-aircraft missles, etc?
Yes. This is what I advocate. You have summed it up admirably.
“Handguns should still be banned.”
Banning them is quite simple. Just amend the Constitution (oh yeah, that document again) and its done. If the Constitution doesn’t really mean what it says, don’t just keep telling me what it really means, amend it to say what you think it really means. In the meantime you’re just out of luck.
The sad thing that comes from discussing anything with a person like skunky is that they can’t maintain any sense of proportion. As usual he immediately resorts to machine guns, missles, tanks etc. I have a CCP in Georgia and of course it comes with a page of restrictions on where you can or cannot carry your weapon. Skunky seems to not be aware of these restrictions or he would not have said “In a bar fight” since that is one of the places where you are not allowed to carry. In a traffic accident this is another story. Imagine sitting in traffic and the car in front of you starts to move only to have its engine stall. You bump the guys bumper and see this tatooed, ponytail weight lifter get out with a club in his hand. What do you do? Roll your window up?
I have been carrying for over eight years without any issue. I hope and pray that I will reach the end of my life without the use of a hand gun towards my fellow man but I don’t want to reach the end of my life any earlier than necessary.
Euler,
The population stats are from the census. The knife/gun stats are from UK crime survey and a gun safety advocacy group respectively.
Dividing one by the other I did myself…
I’ve spent entirely too much of my life arguing about this one, and I give up. Suffice to say that I’ve got more statistics in my background than the vast majority of even you brilliant people on this site and I was terribly surprised to find the data so incredibly clear that restriction of firearm posession and/or ownership increases crime. Especially violent crime. Go. Look. Find the data and don’t stop at the first set that seems to prove your point. There’s an awful lot out there and when you’re done you may believe that guns are scary, but you can’t believe that removing them saves lives. Anywhere. Ever.
So, I’m dying to find out. Was the pipe cast iron or galvanized?
You can buy it but it is a specialty item and hard to come by.
So do you think the mayore was REALLY hit by a lead pipe?
I doubt it.
Hmmm…just a guess here, but I think the saying “lead pipe” isn’t meant to be taken literally, but rather as a metaphor for “really heavy pipe capable of inflicting harm”.
#39 Dave Krueger
“Same is true of guns. They shouldn’t make bullets out of lead. Lead has all kinds of nasty health effects when it gets into the body.”
I know your being sarcastic, but there are actually bullets made now that are lead free. It became a heath concern of mine two years ago when I was pregnant due to lead vapor in the air after firing. The lead free bullets take care of that concern, but only if your at a firing range alone.
Since then I’ve taken up archery. I’ve found and English longbow with a bodkin tipped arrow will do quite a bit of damage so long as you’ve got a high enough poundage. It’ll go through body armor, through chain mail, and if you’ve got a high enough poundage (90+) through steal plate armor. I’m expecting it to be outlawed eventually.
===
If you look in the criminal code of your state, you will find sections related to the justifiable use of deadly force. These sections describe the threshold for when you can use a deadly weapon against another person. In most states, you can do so only when it is necessary to protect your own life, someone else’s life, or to prevent aggravated felonies like rape or kidnapping.
Just because you can’t be bothered to do your research doesn’t mean that these issues haven’t been discussed, debated and settled already. Most gun owners, particularly those who have carry licenses, know when they may use deadly force. I suggest you apply for and get training in how to carry a concealed weapon and you might also become educated in these issues.
Sam,
I love the “The stats are SO clear I have no time to set them out for you here, even with my brilliant statistical mind…”
I set out stats above. Very simple ones. So simple in fact that unless the source data is inaccurate it is hard to poke holes in them.
deaths/population = deaths per person
I showed that deaths per person of both accidental shootings (US) and all kinds of Knife Crime (UK) are extremely close. Those showing one reason why guns should be restricted.
No. Nothing equalizes two opponents as well as a handgun. There’s no satisfaction in slightly improving one’s odds against a mugger if the option exists to completely equalize those odds or gain an advantage. The victim isn’t a voluntary party to a mugging. The mugger is. The victim should not be forced to risk his life, whereas the mugger has already chosen to risk his own. If the mugger gets killed, it was his choice.
Assaulting someone is like an act of war against that person. The mugger has already thrown out the rules of society by assaulting the victim. The idea that the victim must still remain bound by those rules in protecting his own life shows a huge disregard for the good guy to the benefit of the bad guy. In other words, it’s completely ass backwards.
#15 skunky-
They did.
Moron.
Attempting to disarm the population discards the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people. If you want to know the effects of nearly everyone being armed, take a look at Israel: the terrorists gave up on shooting people in shopping malls, because a perp would often be dispatched before he managed to injure or kill even one person.
#72 | Steve
Excellent Post Steve!
[...] http://www.theagitator.com/2009/08/17/second-amendment-loathing-mayor-attacked-with-lead-pipe/ [...]
The great strawman here is focusing on “gun deaths” and presenting that statistic as the definitive representation of homicide and crime rates. This is a common trick of gun control advocates. In reality, homicides and violent death in any country can be broken down into the following categories:
1) Total homicide (gun and non-gun) which breaks down into (2) and (3) below:
2) Homicide by gun
2a) Suicide by gun
2b) Justifiable homicide (self-defense) by gun
2c) Murder or manslaughter by gun
3) Homicide by non-gun
3a) Suicide by non-gun
3b) Justifiable homicide (self-defense) by non-gun
3c) Murder or manslaughter by non-gun
Other violent crimes not amounting to death can also be broken down in a similar manner.
Sensible crime policy should focus on the items (2c) and (3c) and work to reduce both of them. Instead, gun control advocates prefer to cherry pick item (2) instead, since that gives them the scariest numbers, and helps to show the US in a bad light. You will note that they ignore item (3) altogether. In reality, there are many countries where non-gun homicides outnumber gun homicides. In gun control advocates’ comparisons, they will be shown in a favorable light compared to the US. This is very much intentional. It is doubtful if the victims felt any better that they were bludgeoned, stabbed or strangled to death.
So a complete understanding of guns and crime has to include non-gun crime as well, and preferably, not just homicide, but all violent crime. When you actually do this, the US disappears as an outlier and actually is shown to be a moderately safe country. It still leads in homicide but other violent crime rates are quite comparable to the rest of the modern world. In the US, nearly 70% of homicide victims happen to fall into one or more of these groups: They have their own history of criminal behavior; they are involved in using or trading illegal drugs, or they associate with the previous persons. While nobody should lose their life just because they live on the edge, if you avoid these behaviors, you will reduce your risk of being murdered by 70%.
Suicide is something that will exist regardless of the instrument used to commit it, and is usually the end result of years of depression, other mental illness, bad health, financial problems and other chronic circumstances that make life seem hopeless. Nobody commits suicide on a whim just because they found a gun. They had already made some kind of decision to end their life. The US has a moderately low suicide rate compared to many other countries, despite the widespread presence of guns.
The readership should be aware of how a case can be presented in a one-sided manner while pretending that another side doesn’t exist at all. This is very common with gun control advocates and MSM news coverage of gun-related issues: focus on cherry-picked stories of carnage, ignore that the other side even exists, and above all, systematically ignore the fact that lawful gun ownership does save lives, prevent crimes, and benefit society in general.
@la Rana (#57) The solution to violence is clearly more and better violence
That is actually true. Perhaps you meant that sarcastically, but it makes sense to meet aggressive force with defensive force. It makes no sense to impose some arbitrary rule about how much defensive force is OK, and how much isn’t, because every situation is different.
Are you worried that a perpetrator who is aggressively attacking a victim is going to get more than he bargained for? Poor poor muggers and rapists. They only wanted to hurt their victims a little bit and only carried knives or small caliber handguns. They shouldn’t have to be killed or to face bigger guns. How then could they continue to mug and rape?
#87 | Dave Krueger
I think I love you! Your intelligent comments and sarcastic wit are an enormous turn-on and never disappointing!
Rock me Baby!!!
@Mike (#62) on #23 the number of accidents versus number of self-defense uses is incorrect. Many of the self-defense uses go unreported since the issue is closed without violence and the bad guy runs off.
If you faced down an attacker with a gun and the attacker fled, you have to weigh the risk of reporting it. Will the report lead to the attacker being caught, or just a stack of forms collecting dust in the police station? If you do report it, do you risk having your gun confiscated? Do you risk being charged with a crime (not for actually doing harm to any innocents, mind you, but for failing to get government permission to protect yourself)?
I read enough news articles about people who have done nothing wrong being railroaded by cops that I’d be very worried that even if I didn’t think I broke the law, I may be ignorant of technicalities, and there’s a good chance the cops could gin up something if they were motivated to.
People are accidently killed by lots of things. Doctors, vehicles, perscription drugs, police officers, etc. That’s why we liscence people to do these things to mitigate the risk.
Most people who carry a concealed weapon go through training required by their state. Or at least they should. My state of Georgia does not which bothers me. Nonetheless, firearms can be trusted with the populus as a whole to be operated safely just like we trust our fellow citizens to operate any number of other potentially dangerous things. Cars, boats, fireworks, etc.
Violence can never be completely stamped out without turning our country into North Korea. Now England is considering banning knives because of all the stabbing that have every year. This is over the top. Banning dangerous things that could be used in crimes only treats the problem. If people had more going for them than to rob and steal they wouldn’t be mugging people with pipes and crow bars.
And yeah, I think people should be able to own whatever they want so long as they can prove competency with the weapon of choice. I know many people out there think that if everyone had guns there would bloodbaths in the streets, but I think most people would behave if they knew everyone else near by could intervene and shoot back. I think that goes for the madmen too. The crazies out there are just sane enough to shoot up schools and post offices as opposed to police stations and NRA conventions because they know the latter will end the altercation rather quickly.
@ SOMEONE
US Population – 304059724
UK Population (England & Wales) – 52041916
US Accidental Guns Deaths – 1500
UK Knife Deaths (England & Wales) – 277
Thus:
One knife death for every 5.322 people in England and Whales.
One Accidental Gun death for every 4.93 people in the US.
lol wut?
Your abacus needs a tuneup.
One death for every 4.93 people would be 61,675,400.4
I think you are using outcome based math there cheif.
Regards
JPB III
To who?
Bullshit. States have no liability and by my Constitution, no right to tell people what to do, save criminal law. That’s why we liscence people to do these things [sic] to regulate behavior and make money for the corrupt ones at the top of nearly all power pyramids.
Unless “regulating commerce between the States” covers absolutely anything and everything you want it to.
But if this is a raw democracy, why the constitution?
See, I didn’t have to call anyone a moron or retarded or insult anyone either. I just forgot to run spell check.
Uh, that isn’t how it works :)
Somebody @ 23 said: ”
People DO have the right to defend themselves…” Oh, thank you so very much! “…but unfortunately the number of accidents far out-weight the number of genuine defensive actions taken.” Oh, really? And your data source is…? You might find the following interesting: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf You might also consider the FBIs statistics interesting about the annual number of defensive uses of firearms. Of course, if you are typical of the anti-gun crowd, you already have your mind made up and no amount of factual information will sway you. You may wish to google “defensive use of handguns”, “accidental deaths in america”, and “concealed carry license requirements”. But, then, that might require some effort on your part, and you already know everything about the subject, right?
“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American … The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People.”
— Tench Coxe, 1788.
Every weapon should be available to the public, if we have a problem with the weapons available then we need to get control of out currently out of control military industrial complex. It is more of a threat to our national nay global security then all the terroists plus all the worlds standing armies combined.
“We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method…” and warned about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals and continued with a warning that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Someone
Your numbers give the knife homicide rate in England & Wales (Why did they leave out Scotland and N. Ireland?) as approx. 0.53 per 100,000 and the accidental firearms death rate in the U.S. as approx. 0.49 per 100,000.
Anyway, putting aside your elementary math errors, I’d love to see the methodology used in the study by your unnamed gun safety advocacy group. As you can see at the link at the bottom according to the CDC, the number of unintentional firearms deaths in 2006 was 642, less than half of the number your source gave. That gives us a rate of approx. 0.21 per 100,000 which is less than half the number of knife homicides in England & Wales.
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html
Simply select unintentional for 1. and firearms for 2., and then run the report to get the figures.
I applaud the man for putting himself at very real risk to protect the innocent. That said though, the mugger might be in a different line of work if he hadn’t been led to expect no armed resistance.
Because I’m sure he could have gotten off a clean shot without injuring anyone but the guy with the pipe. You wannabe cowboys are pathetic. There is a reason why the police use batons in close quarters, and it isn’t because they’re trying out of the pep squad.
Sorry, that should be less than half the rate of knife homicides instead of half the number. I need to start proof reading.
I’m amazed by all skunky doesn’t know.
For example, fully-automatic machine guns manufactured prior to 1987 are legal for civilians to own under federal law, and they always have been. Presently, there are about 250,000 machine guns, submachine guns, selective-fire assault rifles (or in other words, real ones) and machine pistols in civilian hands. Roughly half of those belong to civilian law enforcement, the other 125,000 belong to your friends and neighbors. Precisely 2 legally-owned machine guns have been used in killings since 1934, and one of those was by a dirty Ohio cop using his department-issued MAC-10 to gun down an informant.
As for how often guns are used in defense versus crime, try 400,00 criminal uses versus 2.5 million times a year they were used for self defense, according to “Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America”, criminologist Gary Kleck’s 1991 research that was winner of the Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology.
As for who in society causes more accidental casualties with firearms, you are far more likely to be shot by a police officer than someone licensed to carry a concealed weapon.
As for “paranoid fantasy about overthrowing tyrranical governments,” there have been two times in the past 100 years where armed citizens successfully revolted in the United States via armed rebellion.
The first time was in Wilmington, NC in 1898, where the North Carolina Democratic Party and the Ku Klux Klan raided the local National Guard Armory and killed dozens in overthrowing the duly-elected Republican government. The Democrats were in power at the governor’s mansion and at the federal level as well, and the went uncorrected. The Wilmington Insurrection remains the only successful coup in U.S. history.
The second time an armed rebellion was Aug 1-2, 1946, the Battle of Athens (AKA McMinn County War), where veterans returning from WWII overthrew a corrupt local government at gunpoint to ensure free and fair elections.
Regarding the math problem — I think the problem is that folks are misreading their calculators. 1500 divided by 304 million gives you 4.93 X 10 to the negative 6th.
What a terrifying thing it must be to be an American if you have to walk around your own city armed like a soldier.
By definition this incident didn’t require deadly force to stop, so I dont see how the use of deadly force can be retroactively justified. It’s the exact opposite in this case.
So, a first poke and correction…hope it helps.
Aside from any math error inherent, comparing one culture’s violent statistics to another is inherently invalid when assessing laws. You can use those stats to assess large scale social mores and to infer necessary research into individual units of regulation but not to infer likely reactions to individual units of regulation.
In other words, if you’re discussing the usefulness of criminal legislation in America, showing that a different culture has both less crime and more gun control does not equate to more gun control and less crime in America. It doesn’t mean it wouldn’t either, but the point is that laws are fine tuning adjustments to a culture, not applicable to large scale shifts in the nature of a people. If you take nothing else from this discussion, please at least accept the possibility that crafting laws doesn’t effect a paradigm shift in the nature of the people governed by those laws or even their actions. It’s kind of the important assumption involved in this discussion and it deserves more air time.
Killfile, hitting someone in the head with a dense blunt instrument is an act having significant lethal potential (there’s no “by definition” here, but that’s pretty close)…that’s why it’ll bring attempted murder charges if that’s what occurred. If the assault was an obviously controlled attempt to inflict pain and not grievous injury or death then a prosecutor might argue that killing the aggressor was an escalated response, but threatening the aggressor with a weapon would not be. It is, however, generally accepted that attacking someone with a lethal device requires the assumption of intent to commit murder and a lethal response is justified. Generally speaking.
England and Wales only seem idylic with the ignorance of distance. I’ve been to both places. I was sooo happy to get back to “violent” America.
You would think by the way people talk that the whole of America looks like Manchester. Not so, but it won’t be long before the whole of Britain looks like Manchester.
@salvage (#114) What a terrifying thing it must be to be an American if you have to walk around your own city armed like a soldier.
If the prospect of free people having the freedom to carry the best tools to use for self defense terrifies you, when you come to the U.S., be sure to go to the cities where guns are illegal (Chicago) or strictly limited (Washington, D.C.). You’re certain to be safe there, without worrying about gun crime.
@killfile (#115) By definition this incident didn’t require deadly force to stop,
The incident was not stopped. The mayor lost his teeth and broke his hand.
Had he threatened to use deadly force, he probably would have saved himself such injury. In all likelihood, the punk would have backed down without a shot fired.
That would be a successful conclusion.
@Sam (#116) …laws are fine tuning adjustments to a culture…
No they are not.
Laws are rules written by a tiny subset of the population who happen to have the backing of massive force to see to it that they are followed, regardless of whether they have anything to do with cultural norms or rational morality. Take, for instance, drug laws. Those are most decidedly not “adjustments” but are a full-on war waged on the freedoms of Americans.
“#115 | killfile | August 18th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
By definition this incident didn’t require deadly force to stop, so I dont see how the use of deadly force can be retroactively justified. It’s the exact opposite in this case.”
Results-oriented thinking, killfile. That Barrett survived the attack does not show that the attack wasn’t potentially deadly. A metal pipe is certainly capable of killing and any person being assaulted with one should reasonably fear for their life and therefore be justified in using deadly force to stop that threat. Not only that, but it sounds like the attacker in this case made threats about having a gun and being willing to use it. If that doesn’t make you fear for you life, you should win a Darwin Award.
@Patrick -”I wonder why we in Germany don’t suffer thousands of brutal deaths each year for being unable to defend ourselves with guns whenever we want.”
You can’t be that ignorant of your own history.
What if I really really hate clowns?
Euler -
The point I made about comparing HOMICIDE rates with guns and without was meant to compare things that are reasonably comparable. The disclaimer pertained to CRIME rates, since in different places different things are classified as crimes. Homicide is homicide.
#123 | Fred
“You would think by the way people talk that the whole of America looks like Manchester. Not so, but it won’t be long before the whole of Britain looks like Manchester.”
You care to illuminate this comment with your subtext? Are you referring to the Islamist takeover of the UK?
Fred:
“You can’t be that ignorant of your own history.”
Yes, because if the Germans had guns they would have risen up against Hitler?
Your odds to defend yourself are greatly improved when armed. Germany and Hitler is the example everyone mentions, but what about Mao, Pol Pot, and other Asian dictators? How about Che Guevvera and Castro? Any human that is armed has a greater chance of defending themself – no debate changes this FACT. Whether one chooses to defend themself IS a debatable topic.
Sometimes people have to rise up against tyranny with whatever tools are on hand, and there will be deaths on both sides. Just ask the Romanians about Ceausescu.
Your criticism of the Mayor is ridiculous. True, he said “no guns in my town” and then personally ran into a situation where a gun would have been helpful. But even when faced with a dangerously armed (piped?) assailant, he risked his life to save a woman.
Now he would have been a target of ridicule for being a hypocrite had he pulled out a gun and shot the pipe wielder, or maybe even a coward if he had not helped the woman, but no – he did the right thing, following the tenets he had set.
So, my laughter will be left for The Agitator, who will receive a slight chuckle followed by a “give me a break!”
Don’t be silly. Germans wouldn’t have risen up with or without guns. They thought government was their friend. That could never happen here.
>If the prospect of free people having the freedom to carry the best tools to use for self defense terrifies you,
If that was the only way I could feel safe in my own home / city / country I would probably move.
There are parts of the world where people don’t have more guns than flatware that are just as free and prosperous as American.
As for guns being tools for self-defense I agree but that doesn’t exclude them from a certain amount of sensible oversight and control. They are like cars; in the wrong hands and in certain situations they are extremely dangerous so for the good of society there must be regulation. If a city decides that maybe it’s better if they try and limit the amount of guns it’s because they’re a problem, obviously. If you had a city with no speed- limits or safety standards how long before they realize that maybe some control would be better than none? A limiting of freedom for the common good is not a bad idea.
You’re free to carry guns I’m free from the fear of guns, I think my version of liberty here is on the whole better.
And I’m not worried about my government oppressing me as with have a system of checks and balances with written laws to prevent that. But if we ever need to revolt at least we’ll have a wholesale weapons bizarre next door.
Homicide rates are outcome based, not event based.
In the past 30 years or so, survival of patients who are alive when they hit the door of advanced shock-trauma centers is hugely improved. About 4 out of 5 patients who would have died now survive … at huge cost … attributed, of course, to ”healthcare” and not to unchecked criminality.
A large increase in comparable inner-city assaults, no longer homicides, has been masked by these improvements in shock-trauma health care.
@salvage (#131) If the prospect of free people having the freedom to carry the best tools to use for self defense terrifies you,
If that was the only way I could feel safe
Who said anything about “only way” and “feeling” “safe”? Those are your words and you get to take responsibility for them. They have no place next to what I wrote.
There are parts of the world where people don’t have more guns than flatware
Who has more guns than flatware? Again, you’re building strawmen all over the place. They are yours and have no relationship to what I wrote.
that are just as free and prosperous as American.
Name one place which is as free and prosperous as America. (Hurry up, before the Democrats undo that.)
As for guns being tools for self-defense I agree
Your agreement is not necessary. Every human being has an inalienable right to defend their one and only lives, regardless of what you or tens of millions of other people think.
Until an individual does something to hurt or threaten others who don’t deserve it, or displays mental instability, that person does not give up that right, regardless of where on a map they live.
but that doesn’t exclude them from a certain amount of sensible oversight and control.
By whom? Who makes the rules? Why do they get to?
Look, the person in the particular situation, who is facing a threat, knows far better than some office holder a thousand miles away what she needs to protect herself, those around her, or her property. I see no reason to deny her the ability to make her own decisions, and to be held accountable if she makes a mistake.
…for the good of society…
Garbage. What you call “society” isn’t a singular entity with a quantifiable “good” to be protected. There are 300,000,000 or so individuals, each of which have their own values. Some may benefit from an arbitrary requirement to license a car or a gun, but some may be harmed. You don’t get to claim that “society” (which properly includes 100% of the population) benefits if some people don’t.
Stop using the collective dodge in your arguments.
…there must be regulation.
Regulation by whom and on what authority?
If a city decides that maybe it’s better if they try and limit the amount of guns it’s because they’re a problem, obviously.
That is most definitely not obvious. It’s typically politicians seeking control over people, sometimes cynically and sometimes because of ignorant, misguided notions about crime. And, always, it’s due to a disregard for the inalienable rights of individuals.
If you had a city with no speed- limits or safety standards how long before they realize that maybe some control would be better than none?
Actually, I’ve read of places where they experiment with removing stop signs and speed limits, so that people pay more attention to their surroundings, instead of blindly following signs and signals. Anecdotal evidence suggests it may cut down on collisions.
A limiting of freedom for the common good is not a bad idea.
There’s that collective dodge again. There is no “common good”. If you say otherwise, tell me who decides what it is. Tell me what happens when something helps some but hurts others. Is that in the “common good”?
Limiting the freedom of anyone who is not doing harm to others is always, always, always a bad idea.
You’re free to carry guns I’m free from the fear of guns, I think my version of liberty here is on the whole better.
Better for whom?
You’re attempting to conflate positive and negative freedom. Freedom to do something and freedom from something are apples and oranges. That was FDR’s trick with the Four Freedoms.
Your “version of liberty” is a denial of the rights of individuals for a non-existent “common good” (which you will, of course, insist on being a party to deciding what this alleged “common good” is–because you would be deathly afraid to let Republicans, for example, dictate the “common good” and presume to speak for you).
And I’m not worried about my government oppressing me as with have a system of checks and balances with written laws to prevent that.
That shows an astounding ignorance of history. “It can’t happen here.”
You have the luxury of insouciance precisely because so many people take action to defend rights from government, with no help from you.
But if we ever need to revolt at least we’ll have a wholesale weapons bizarre next door.
Why should it come to that? It doesn’t have to.
Bashing people with lead pipes is an excellent solution for Constitutional disagreements, and certainly anyone who interprets the Constitution in a different manner than you do should be violently assaulted. I’m pretty sure that’s what the Founders had in mind.
I’m sure Salvage can point us to the article in our founding documents that guarantees a citizen’s right to be free from feeling uncomfortable by his neighbor’s ownership of “icky” things.
Steve, by “fine tuning” I meant that laws don’t significantly affect what people want, and I should mention that I essentially blow up on a fairly regular basis about exactly what you said. What I want those on the other side of the debate to understand is that just because they made the law doesn’t mean they get the result they wanted.
(i.e. I’m agreein’ witcha man! stop yelling at me!)
Yeah, it works out so well for the public when only the police and criminals have guns.
There’s been a lot of sarcasm from Agitator readers slipping under the radar lately. Is the above quote for real? Did something happen in the last year or so where it’s now okay to trust the government?
Mea culpa, Sam. I reread your comment and see what you mean. Sorry.
@Alan (#134) Bashing people with lead pipes is an excellent solution for Constitutional disagreements, and certainly anyone who interprets the Constitution in a different manner than you do should be violently assaulted. I’m pretty sure that’s what the Founders had in mind.
Your foolish attempt at sarcasm completely misses the point. The Mayor wants gun laws enforced that people like him who are confronted by violent assailants have no effective means to fight back, so the bone shattering and teeth bashing will continue to be the only recourse for good people.
He didn’t deserve to be bashed and it’s a damned shame he probably won’t learn the lesson that he shouldn’t force good people to face the same circumstances in the future.
If this were a “teachable moment” it would enlighten the Mayor to reconsider his unjustified repression of the rights of people living in his city.
Actually, the real irony is that Radley got all steamed up over an officer of the law saying that he’d act first and ask questions later in the name of safety, then tut-tutted over how all this violence could have been prevented if a few well-meaning citizens were willing to whip their guns out at the first sign of trouble.
aside, to Mister DNA: “Yeah, it works out so well for the public when only the police and criminals have guns.” Was that supposed to be sarcastic? Because sarcasm is less effective when what you say is literally true. Watch: “yeah, you really haven’t thought this through at all.” See?
(Ok, Balko: you won your two extra outrage pageviews.)
What a terrifying thing it must be to be an American if you have to walk around your own city armed like a soldier.
No, walking around armed offers a feeling a security that you can protect yourself… there’s nothing terrifying about it.
It’s only people that have no means of self-defense that risk being terrified.
So it’s literally true that the public is better off when only the police and criminals have guns?
Wow. Just wow. I honestly don’t know what else to say.
Heh? Carrying a weapon is not a violent or even threatening act. Certainly, it carries the potential for violence, but as it is widely known, anything can be used as a weapon. Anything except for full prostration on the ground can be seen as a potentially “unsafe” position for other people.
Besides. Radley isn’t all steamed up. And he acknowledges the heroism of the Mayor. The point is that the Mayor could have saved himself some pain and misery, and actually given the bad guy some pain and or misery by using and promoting the appropriate tools via good policy. It’s been shown here that it’s at least possible that guns are useful tools for more than just shooting senselessly. The mere presence of a gun can tell a crook that you won’t be messed with.
@Betty Pastard (#140) aside, to Mister DNA: “Yeah, it works out so well for the public when only the police and criminals have guns.” Was that supposed to be sarcastic? Because sarcasm is less effective when what you say is literally true.
Are you seriously claiming that if only criminals and cops(*) have guns, it “works out well”? Works out well for whom? It only works out well for the criminals. Cops may also argue that it works out well for them. While I’d take issue with that, it’s more than I want to tackle here.
But please tell me how well it would work out for a woman confronted by an attacker twice her size if she was prohibited from having a gun? Don’t presume that she lacks the competence to use the gun, that it would be easy to disarm her, or that she will probably hurt innocent bystanders. Because those women have nothing to do with the many women I know who are quite capable, women whom would-be attackers should fear and avoid.
So long as criminals (with or without guns) have the capacity to kill, hurt, or rob innocent people more easily because those people are unarmed, it would always “work out” better for those would-be victims to have an effective means to protect themselves. Always.
(*) Not that criminals and cops are exclusive sets. Read this and similar blogs for awhile and you’ll learn that there is far too much overlap.
What’s notable is that the same people who claim that guns reduce violent crime/deaths etc claim they would kill a mugger with a “lead pipe” who was menacing someone else. I thank fuck we do not allow guns where I am, because we’re not short on fuckwits either, and I prefer living in a place where it’s not Gunfight at the OK Corral every time someone knocks over the corner store.
I do not own a gun and, most likely, never will.
I do not think guns are particularly useful for self-defense unless the gun owner is highly trained in their use and possesses sufficient discretion to know when the use is and is not appropriate. This includes an ability to make split-second correct decisions.
I do not have the training to know when the use of a gun would be appropriate, and, frankly, am too lazy to invest the time necessary to learn how to do so.
As I would have no other use for a gun – I do not particularly enjoy shooting a gun and I am not a hunter – I will not own one.
Further, I believe that many people who buy guns for protection are damn fools. They are more likely to injure themselves or their loved ones by unsafe use of the gun and are more likely to try to plunge into a dangerous situation with false bravado than to do the sensible thing and simply run away.
Please note that I am saying MANY here, not ALL. If you have invested the time and effort to know how to use a gun properly, I am not describing you. I am sure that most responsible gun owners know a lot of the sort of damn fools I described above. (The people who bring them to the Town Hall meetings come to mind here.)
So, I am not a gun owner and I think many who own guns should not.
But I sure as hell am not going to set myself up as high judge of who should own guns. The choice must be left to the individual.
We know you commit acts of true bravery every day, right Radley? When you’re not eating cheetos in your mom’s basement, I mean.
Moron.
Hey Dhalgren.
Do you know anything about Balko? His reporting got a guy off death row. He also helped get a 13-year-old kid’s murder conviction overturned. He keeps going back to Mississippi to report on that state’s fucked up criminal justice system, and I’d imagine by now that there are a lot of powerful people down there who don’t like him. Oh, and then there are the cops and town officials he’s taken on in Manassas Park, VA. That’s practically his backyard. Yeah, I’d say he does commit acts of bravery. Maybe not every day. But a hell of a lot more than most people.
So what have *you* done? I see from your blog that you’re good at posting YouTube videos of crazy right wingers. Brave!
Nice, Radley.
Even is it were legal for folks in Milwaukee (or the suburbs, where this happened) to carry guns, the Mayor wouldn’t have been carrying one.
Duh.
But it’s not legal. And I live in the next suburb over from West Allis (that would be Wauwatosa). People carrying heat are idiots.
All right, I’ve had it with the gun argument.
Yes, guns are dangerous… more dangerous than Chain Saws (Which are damn dangerous!) but not as dangerous as cars. Now, to be fair… cars are also far more useful.
But there is a bigger picture. A picture the gun control crowd just doesn’t get.
Yes, guns are a liability for society. On occasion, BAD THINGS will happen… mass murders will occur. People will commit suicide, people will accidentally shoot each other.
But the crucial fundamental is that people in FREE societies are free because they ACCEPT these risks. The occasional mass murder is BETTER than constant oppression.
Let’s look at an example you probably won’t expect. The Amish.
The Amish are pacifists. There is minimal gun violence. They are also a totalitarian society that enforces conformity in all things. The Amish have a right of passage for young children called “Breaking the will of the child”. This is where the boy child gets his first hat, and the girl child gets her first bonnet. It’s about the age of 3. The Amish are further trained to go to work for the community at the age of 14 or so up to the time you become an adult (In Amish culture, once you finish the Eighth grade and are married you are an adult)
The Amish are not a free society. They are a totalitarian religious sect. People born to the Amish are basically imprisoned to that mentality. For… Life…
The cure to totalitarianism is freedom. But Freedom is messy. People die. Massacres happen. Free people have guns.
I’ll take Freedom, thank you. I accept the risk.
No, when the police have guns AND tasers.
Yeah, it sure is cowardly of Radley Balko to help innocent people get out of prison.
Where the fuck are these people coming from?
Bob
I agree with you. I hope you didn’t take my 8:01 post as an anti-gun screed.
I was dwelling more on the choice aspect of gun ownership than the aspect of a protection against tyranny.
/sarc so you know. And knowing is half the battle…
DR Zen @145
The shootout at the OK corral is mostly myth and they don’t keep corrals/stables in the middle of town-know much about horses? If both sides weren’t armed you likely wouldn’t have heard about it.
#152: Aresen:
Uh… 8:01…. 8:01… gimme a minute. A post number would have been faster…
Found it!
Ah! This is the joy of synergy. The fact is? We can’t ALL be weapon masters. Some of us suck at fast draw… some of us suck at aiming in general.
Let’s face it. Some of us suck at owning guns at all.
Do what you can, man. There is no test.
Actually DR Zen, chances are there were a lot more ambushes because everyone was armed.
I don’t have a bunch of info in front of me but I was a 5th gen Wyomingite and I do remember my dad talking about a lot of people getting capped going to the outhouse in the morning.
Also, not long ago I read a book called Tensleep and No Rest about some sheepmen who were ambushed by cattlemen up in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming around 1890. The cattlemen snuck up on the sheepmen in the middle of the night and ended up killing the lead guy, Alleman, and a Frenchman who was a herder for the outfit.
Aresen @146
“I do not have the training to know when the use of a gun would be appropriate, and, frankly, am too lazy to invest the time necessary to learn how to do so.”
That’s why raising kids in the gun culture is so important.
Why is it that liberals are pro-education when it comes to sex but pro-abstainance when it comes to guns?
Stay classy! With your Whole Foods rants and now poking heroic, seriously injured mayors, you are making a real name for yourself.
Nice discussion. In the old definition–precious, closed, for the sake of argument among folks at a distance.
1. I’ll be more impressed by such blather when we accept the simple fact that guns have become an erotic totem to Americans. Carry-permit bohunks walk the streets spoiling for a fight. They do their state-mandated training with a stiffy the whole time. That’s no way to run a society, especially when it’s based on
2. a completely idiotic interpretation of the second amendment. Until the Scalia Club’s recent Pet Negroes of DC decision, there has never been a precedent that supported the NRA’s testosterone-trip idea that the 2nd permits, and was intended to permit, folks to carry autoloading handguns around in their coats. It’s a masturbatory fantasy. You deserve every bit of the Sadly No send-up.
ice
Over at Sadly, No! there’s a steady stream of comments about “glibertarians” and how no one in their right might should call themselves a libertarian after the age of 18. Yet Beavis here thinks this is a cogent and well-reasoned argument against guns. Actually it’s less of an argument than it is the noodlings of someone who forms their political opinions by meditating over Rage Against The Machine lyrics.
I live in South Texas, so it goes without saying that I know hundreds of “bohunks”. I also know about a dozen or so people with Conceal Carry Permits. There is no overlap in the two groups – everyone I know with a Conceal Carry Permit is an unassuming professional. Lawyers, real estate agents, restaurant owners.
Of course, I’m not going to use such a small sampling to base an opinion on everyone with a Conceal Carry Permit. Trucking in stereotypes is the domain of the intellectually lazy.
[Quote]There are parts of the world where people don’t have more guns than flatware
Who has more guns than flatware? Again, you’re building strawmen all over the place. They are yours and have no relationship to what I wrote.[/quote]
Errr . . . . . .(shyly raises hand) I do.
Flatware:
12 spoons
12 forks
12 butterknives
8 steak knives
9 kitchen knives
15 utility flatware(spatula, gravy ladle, etc.)
—————————————–
total: 68
—————————————–
4 derringers(.22, .22 mag, 9mm, .45lc/.410)
2 .22 pistols(ruger mark III & bearcat)
4 9mm(glock,beretta,sig)
6 .38/.357(colt, taurus, rossi, ruger, S&W)
2 .40(glock)
3 .41 magnums(S&W, taurus)
2 .44spec/mag(charter arms, s&w)
5 convertibles(.34-40/10mm, 9mm/.357, .45lc/.45acp, .44-40/.44 mag, .22long/.22 mag)
5 .45acp(glock,1911, taurus)
1 .45 gap(glock)
2 .454 casull(ruger & taurus)
7 .22(singer, remington, marlin, ruger)
3 .223(bushmaster, saiga, ruger)
1 .243(remington)
2 .270(ruger, savage arms)
2 .303 british(lee enfield)
3 7.62×39(saiga, ruger)
3 .308(saiga,dpms, bushmaster)
2 .38/.357 rifle(rossi, taurus)
2 .44mag rifles(ruger, rossi)
1 .44-40(rossi)
1 .45-70(marlin)
1 450 marlin(marlin)
1 .454 rifle(rossi)
3 .410(saiga, cz, h&r)
2 20ga shotguns(mossberg, remington)
4 12ga(mossberg,saiga,benelli)
———————————-
total 75
Damn, i am a GUN-NUT!!
About 1/3 of the guns came from my father & the rest i have collected over the past 30+yrs.
It is irrelevant if you are feeling “impressed” or not. That’s no basis for a discussion of rights. You can claim any feeling you want, for no logical reason.
You’re just making that up. It’s pure ad hominem.
Unfortunately, a large fraction of articles and comments opposing the basic right of self defense include this sort of childish attack, which suggests that part of the motivation for wanting to ban guns is to punish the class of people the gun critics don’t like.
It’s a bit like supporting drug prohibition to punish the “smelly hippies” or “crackhead n***s” you don’t like. It’s obscene.
So, considering the thousands of CCW holders allegedly “spoiling for a fight”, where are the incidents to back up this claim? Nope. It’s just another class warfare fantasy.
“#149 | Lettuce | August 18th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Nice, Radley.
Even is it were legal for folks in Milwaukee (or the suburbs, where this happened) to carry guns, the Mayor wouldn’t have been carrying one.”
You’re missing the point. If the mayor doesn’t want to have an effective tool for ending violent encounters, that’s his prerogative. But the mayor is willing to prohibit others from having such tools (unless they’re the police). In other words, he’s putting those who don’t want to be helpless in the position of either becoming criminals themselves (concealing illegally), subject to harassment by the Milwaukee police (ridiculous since open carry is in the constitution and even our putz Gov. Doyle says it’s legal), or just let themselves be equally as helpless as Barrett was. That kind of attitude is unacceptable, imo.
>Name one place which is as free and prosperous as America. (Hurry up, before the Democrats undo that.)
Canada, most of Europe, Australia and Japan and they all have gun control and less gun violence, that of course could be just a coincidence.
You should look beyond your own small world once in awhile, you may be surprised by what you see, there can be better ways than the ones you know.
I also find it bizarre that you don’t trust your government, I’m not talking about the people that run it, I’m talking about the system.
I also find it bizarre that you don’t trust your government, I’m not talking about the people that run it, I’m talking about the system.
I find it bizzare that anyone would trust their government, being that governments are the people which run them.
People, being greedy by nature, will always tend towards gathering power, and by extention, will eventually promote more and more laws “for the public good”. Laws which tend to favor the government more than the people.
See Chavez, Hugo for a nice example.
It’s just degenerated into yelling again, like most gun/no-gun forums. Posturing, finger-pointing, and sarcasm. Even I’m too damned lazy to post any useful information.
Pro-gun summary:
Necessary for a free people.
It’s in the second amendment.
Makes you safer (statistics say so!)
Worth the dangers.
I think they’re pretty.
Anti-gun summary:
You don’t need them for a free people.
It’s not in the second amendment.
Makes you less safe (statistics say so!).
Not worth the dangers.
People are idiots.
Throw in a bunch of anecdotes sarcasm and sneering on both sides and we’ve become a standard internerd waste of breath.
Hey, guys! This is what makes democracy so wonderful. It legitimizes the tyrannizing of the minority by the majority. It’s like the opening scene of the movie, Gangs of New York, but instead of fighting, the smaller gang just cowers down on their knees and passively lets the bigger gang pummel the living shit out of them.
Then the Decaprio character grows up to be FDR and the Cameron Diaz character grows up to be Martha Stewart.
@ jsphbuttafucco
So everyone is bad or will be bad so everyone should carry a gun? I don’t think you fully understand the point of a constitution or the idea of a nations of laws. You have those things so you don’t have to carry a gun, so that you can live a in a just and peaceful society.
And yes, it works, please see Canada, most of Europe, Japan, Australia for examples.
You seem to think or at the very least want everyone to have your lack of faith in the system so they can share your angry paranoia.
Oh and if Chavez is the only example you can think of for oppressive government than you really need to watch more than Fox News, he is mild (so far) for South America. The Coalition of the Willing had far more reprehensible members.
Didn’t Aristotle suggest that democracy was the worst form of group governance?
Brian:
“You’re missing the point. If the mayor doesn’t want to have an effective tool for ending violent encounters, that’s his prerogative. But the mayor is willing to prohibit others from having such tools (unless they’re the police). In other words, he’s putting those who don’t want to be helpless in the position of either becoming criminals themselves (concealing illegally), subject to harassment by the Milwaukee police (ridiculous since open carry is in the constitution and even our putz Gov. Doyle says it’s legal), or just let themselves be equally as helpless as Barrett was. That kind of attitude is unacceptable, imo.”
No.
I’m saying he wouldn’t have been carrying a gun… And that’s really the end of the story.
This was outside the state fair. You think there was NOBODY with a gun around? C’mon. He got beat because he got beat, and he’s a hero for getting beat and ending the situation.
As for citizens “needing” gun… We live in a very different place, I suspect. And I assume the Mayor is correct, and the Governor (who has decided not to run again, and whose decisions I don’t know because he’s not nearly as important around here) is not.
And I suspect the Mayor probably has the second amendment on his side.
#105 The Angry Optimist
“Uh, that isn’t how it works J”
Don’t want to argue with you, but it is a legitimate health concern.
http://www.aqs.com/iaq/heavy_metals.asp
Hazardous levels of atmospheric lead have been found at police and civilian firing ranges.
http://www.outdoors.net/site/features/feature.aspx?rn=41473&Forum=Firearms&ArticleCode=129&V=False
This one discusses how lead is ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin at a firing range.
And while I hate to use Wikipeda, their not that bad on just general information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_safety#Hot_gases_and_debris
Given that I the Obgyn I went to was concerned about going to a firing range as well, we weren’t going to risk having anything wrong happen during the pregnancy. And while I didn’t shoot any rifles or handguns, during that period, I picked up archery so it worked out. I’ve got a new skill that I can actually practice a bit more often in my backyard.
@salvage (#165) Name one place which is as free and prosperous as America. (Hurry up, before the Democrats undo that.)
Canada, most of Europe, Australia and Japan
You’re just making that up, with no facts to justify it. People there are neither as free as Americans (for now), nor as prosperous. Most of them benefit greatly from US military bases or proximity, so could afford their little “experiments” in democratic socialism.
You shouldn’t worry too much, though. You’ll get what you want and see the Democrats get their wish of kneecap-n-trading our economy and imposing universal everything, hyper regulation, and all the other anti-freedom measures seen in those countries you hold up as examples of freedom. If you ever realize the horrible mistake, it will be way too late.
In short, we’ll be Europe soon enough.
You should look beyond your own small world once in awhile…
You mean like I lived in one of the places you mention? You know nothing about me.
I also find it bizarre that you don’t trust your government, I’m not talking about the people that run it, I’m talking about the system.
So there is a non-human “system” in place? I think you’ve been watching too many sci fi movies.
Governments murder people on massive scales (like nearly 200,000,000 last century). Governments steal on massive scales. Governments imprison innocents on massive scales–and, I’m not just talking about GULAGs and “reeducation camps”, I’m talking about the drug war, for one. That isn’t even getting to the relatively “minor” issues of tasers and other forms of police brutality, civil forfeiture, surveillance (UK is the worst, but US also monitors internet and phone).
Whenever you have a monopoly on the use of force, those who wield that power will become increasingly corrupt and abusive. It happens every time.
It’s all in the history books. You can look it up, if you’re interested in facts.
troops…. what a jackass.
I don’t like smelly hippies if they make me smell them, or crackheads when they steal my TV. Nor do I like guys with guns, who have power over me whether they deserve it or not. I’m inclined to dispute with people who try to take power over me. I thought the libertarians did that too.
The crackhead can have the TV, because no matter how poor his condition I’m not going to cap somebody over stuff. The hippie, well, I’ll move away from him if I can. Both of those exemplars are outside of reasonable civil behavior. I suggest that people who carry guns in public are also outside of reasonable civil behavior, and also are uncovered by any pure freedom of the sorts light up libertarian dreams with unicorns and rainbows.
You guys are all over cops who exceed their authority. But you give the cops a pass to give a pass to citizens who want to carry guns, on the simple theory that 1. it helps people protect themselves and each other, and 2. the Constitution says it’s ok. Neither contention is clearly true.
It’s one thing for people, bohunks or not, to choose to exercise their rights to, say, resist the quartering of troops in their home. It’s another for them to claim constitutional cover for their enjoyment of a gun culture that presents real dangers to citizens. Noble fellows may be carrying, and bohunks may be keeping their rifles legally on the window rack where they belong, but they are still arming up based on a broad range of false threats, threats mostly presented as part of arguments made against gun control. Which would be fine if there were a constitutional right to carry guns. But there ain’t.
I suppose that citizens in their normal state–that is, not arrested or indicted or searched or censored or facing a bunch of redcoats looking to move in to their guest room–might be eager to exercise random constitutional rights by standing on a streetcorner and free-speeching or loudly hinting that they have papers and effects the government might want to search but damn well better not! It may even be true that such sudden ejaculations annoy passersby. Some rights empower citizens in a way that might slightly trouble other citizens; price of liberty, etc.
But which other amendment creates a situation where citizens get to intimidate strangers on the street with the threat of violence, restrained only by assumptions? Whoa, he has a handgun under his coat! To feel safe, I have to move along, or I have to compromise: I have to just relax and lighten up about guns. I have to let others decide, and just shut up, because I don’t know the difference between a magazine and a clip. I have to assume the guy has a permit. I have to assume competent training, and hammer-down on an empty chamber, and that he’s not having a really bad day, and that the hundred background-check loopholes the NRA has fought for over the years don’t happen to apply right here and now. (Or I can pipe up and demand his papers…nah, maybe not.) Oh, and I should give him, and the cops who permitted him and the NRA bad-boy who trained him, the benefit of the doubt over whether he didn’t just open up his coat and show me his handgun to punctuate our heated conversation on, say health care, or the fact that he objected to my bumper sticker. (Anecdotes do not equal evidence, but an older gentleman once accosted me in a parking garage at the Mall of America and demanded an explanation of my “Republicans for Voldemort” bumper sticker while adjusting his jacket to show me a handgun but no badge. I was afraid. He might have had a permit. He might have been a lawyer or a restaurant owner. I didn’t ask. So fuck you, South Texas.)
Well, libertarians, I don’t like being intimidated, even passively or accidentally, on a street corner. I guess it’s cool with you. I don’t like being proselytized, either, but I AM IMPRESSED by the evangelist’s right to exercise, and mine to resist. I stand up to cops, and know when to consent to a search, and when to remain silent, and so on. Those clear rights impress me, despite recent erosion of those rights by the criminals in the Bush Administration. The second amendment is not so impressively clear, what with the history of the Revolution, the intent of the founders so clearly expressed, the precedents, and that pesky well-ordered militia clause.
I might just be bitter over the parking garage guy. But I try not to be; unlike you guys, I admit that personality and situation plays a role in the real world.
The second amendment doesn’t give you the right to carry guns. It doesn’t say any such thing. Don’t listen to me–listen to the Supreme Court. Of course, if the Constitution is silent on carrying guns in your britches, then states can do as they choose, and people can persuade the legislature that they need guns to shoot bad guys. But I claim that we don’t need guns to kill bad guys. I say that instead people like guns because they are sexy and give us power over others, and that it is contemptible to fall for the kill bad guys argument when there are other motives for carrying around four pounds of steel and screwing up the drape of your sportcoat.
I don’t make an argument against guns, cogent and well-reasoned or not. I have some, though I lack that sexy South Texas cred that seems to determine the sane course in our representative democracy. I’ve used guns for things other than entertainment, too, and I know the difference between a clip and a magazine. There’s another argument here, one that is against carry permits because they don’t reduce danger as much as they increase it. That’s been made lots of times, complete with the little blue words. It seems a close one to me, but I am so far unimpressed. I am not impressed enough to see a clear benefit to society that could stand independent of the second amendment.
Meanwhile gun horniness has empowered organizations like the NRA to dictate most of our public policy. Y’all like that? Or does Libertarian Magic cause you to ignore such gross misbehavior? Is it true libertarianism that encourages support of broad gun freedoms…or is it that the thing feels dense and hot in your hand, and kind of throbs a little, and if that bastard next door lets his dog crap in my front yard one more time…
It’s either stupid or dishonest to pretend that, for lots of people in the US, guns are dildoes for boys; that those boys daydream about heroic violence with Peckinpah closeups of splattered terrorists. And that cynical political organizations milk those tendencies for power. And it’s all based on a carefully shaped interpretation of the second amendment that lots of people dispute.
ice
>You’re just making that up, with no facts to justify it.
Nope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
You will of course dismiss all of that because it’s from the UN and more importantly says stuff you don’t want to be true.
>People there are neither as free as Americans (for now), nor as prosperous.
Um… no, they really are. You really do need to watch more than Fox News.
>Most of them benefit greatly from US military bases or proximity, so could afford their little “experiments” in democratic socialism.
Ha! Ha! Yes! Where would Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland and many others be without American military support!?!?
>In short, we’ll be Europe soon enough.
If only that were so, alas you seem to be suffering from the same jingoistic delusions that many Americans have.
>You should look beyond your own small world once in awhile…
I do, that’s how I know more about this stuff than you.
>So there is a non-human “system” in place? I think you’ve been watching too many sci fi movies.
Er… you do know that the Constitution is “living and breathing” in only the poetic sense right?
People murder people on massive scales (like nearly 200,000,000 last century). People steal on massive scales. People imprison innocents on massive scales–and so on.
You have documents like The Constitution that say you can’t do that sort of thing. As long as they are enforced there isn’t a problem. It’s worked fairly well in America up until 2002, then y’all just threw it out the window in a blind panic.
That’s that American fear I’m talking about. 19 greasy theist whackjobs really put the zap on you as a nation.
>Whenever you have a monopoly on the use of force, those who wield that power will become increasingly corrupt and abusive. It happens every time.
Yeah, look at the Uk, they went from a bloody tyrant like Henry the VIII to Tony Blair.
Look at Spain they went from a fascist dictator to a representative democracy.
Look at Japan they went from an absolute monarchy to a representative democracy.
And so on.
Are you sure you know as much about history as you think you do?
I’m sure the Jews in Germany, Poland, etc. would have certainly liked to have had a gun or three. Interestingly, when the Germans marched into towns in Czechoslovakia and Poland, one of the first things they did was inspect the gun registration records at City Hall. Makes it easier to round up all those loose, errant firearms.
“You can’t be that ignorant of your own history.”
Yes, because if the Germans had guns they would have risen up against Hitler?
@salvage (#175) You will of course dismiss all of that because it’s from the UN and more importantly says stuff you don’t want to be true.
I measure freedom by what I can do without interference, or the amount of interference I might encounter. Small business owners (for now) face fewer regulations, taxes, and other hassles in most of the US than they do in Europe or Japan (where big corporations are in bed with government to shut out upstarts). I pay less taxes than the other guys. I have more freedoms with health care (for now), self defense, transportation, etc.. By every metric that matters to me, I’m more free (for now) than those guys. I suppose if I moved to SF or NY, I would be inclined to read the newspaper to double-check that statement, but for most of the US it’s most definitely true.
The only aspects for which I’d rank the US below others is the drug war and other unjust excuses for having a massive prison population. Also, I don’t know enough about immigration in all of those other countries to say if they are worse or better than the US at mistreating good people who just want to come here to work.
Otherwise, Americans are more free, hands down.
I measure prosperity by productivity, standard of living, etc.. In just a handful of other countries do their middle class people live as well as our poor people.
Where would Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland and many others be without American military support!?!?
Recovering from being overrun by Nazis or Soviets, or facing higher deficits from having to spend their own money on defense.
…you seem to be suffering from the same jingoistic delusions that many Americans have.
You’re just making things up out of whole cloth now!
What ever gave you the mistaken impression that I support foreign intervention? I don’t.
Your accusation is completely backwards.
“You should look beyond your own small world once in awhile…”
I do
You’re responding to your own words. Look at how I italicized what you wrote. You also took out my response, where I informed you that I have lived in one of those other countries. Again, you know nothing personal about me and you’re just making things up.
People murder people on massive scales (like nearly 200,000,000 last century). People steal on massive scales. People imprison innocents on massive scales–and so on.
You have documents like The Constitution that say you can’t do that sort of thing.
Hahahahaha! It’s written on paper, so it can’t happen.
Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of drug war victims. Tell that to the hundreds of millions of Americans who have large chunks of their paychecks withheld, who pay into a Ponzi scheme (SS) which is stolen when they die, who pay a ransom just to own property (under threat of eviction and confiscation, kind of like the mafia).
As long as they are enforced there isn’t a problem.
That’s not true. The Constitution was hardwired with slavery, for one thing.
It’s worked fairly well in America up until 2002
No, it didn’t. All of the horrible policies of Bush II and Obama are continuations of a long, long arc stretching back over more than a century.
Yeah, look at the Uk, they went from a bloody tyrant like Henry the VIII to Tony Blair.
With a few wars and coups intervening. But look at how Brits are controlled and monitored by a massive nanny state now. Within a few miles of George Orwell’s home, there are dozens of surveillance cameras. You think those people aren’t oppressed?
Look at Spain they went from a fascist dictator to a representative democracy.
You forgot the war.
Look at Japan they went from an absolute monarchy to a representative democracy.
You forgot the war and the American occupation.
Are you sure you know as much about history as you think you do?
Absolutely.
Yes, you might be able to deal with the guy with the lead pipe better if you have a gun. You also create an enormous risk of dealing with some other situation very badly, because you have a gun. And that risk includes the risk of killing someone. This is not trivial.
If someone has thorough training, not only in gun use but in situation assessment and (above all) making life and death decisions, then the benefits of allowing that person to carry a gun in an urban area may outweigh the costs.
The bottom line is that, when there is a conflict between the two, my right to NOT have a hole blown through me overrides anyone else’s right to carry the power to blow that hole through me. In an urban area, that conflict almost inevitably exists.
> I have more freedoms with health care (for now),
Really? Let’s see when I’m sick I go to a doctor (of my choice, no really, we can choose our own doctors and services) I give them my OHIP card and that’s that.
Tell me how you have more freedom than I in this case. I guess you’re free to pay more to an insurance company… wow… lucky you and actually I can get American style insurance here, I just think that paying $400 a month to be told later on that they’re not going to pay out is kind of a waste.
>self defense,
I can get a gun anytime I like, I’m happy to say I don’t need one.
>transportation, etc..
Huh? And what etc. so far you haven’t shown any examples.
>Otherwise, Americans are more free, hands down.
Nope, you have yet to describe any freedom that is unique to America, please try again.
>I measure prosperity by productivity, standard of living, etc.. In just a handful of other countries do their middle class people live as well as our poor people.
Again I refer you to the link.
>Where would Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland and many others be without American military support!?!?
>Recovering from being overrun by Nazis or Soviets,
Yeah, history books, you need to (re)read them.
>or facing higher deficits from having to spend their own money on defense.
Well only if they were so silly as to throw money at stuff like “Star Wars” or jet fighters that cost billions that have almost no strategic use or enough nukes to blow up the planet a hundred times over. If they just spent the money on regular army stuff they would be helping to keep employment up so no, not really.
>What ever gave you the mistaken impression that I support foreign intervention? I don’t.
Please look up the meaning of “jingoism” I don’t think it means what you think it means. Pat Buchanan is a jingoist.
>Hahahahaha! It’s written on paper, so it can’t happen.
That’s the theory.
>Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of drug war victims.
I agree that the “War on drugs” is unconstitutional but the average American voted likes the war on drugs so it doesn’t end. The downside of democracy, enough stupid people make stupid things happen.
>Tell that to the hundreds of millions of Americans who have large chunks of their paychecks withheld,
Ah yes, taxes, you live in a country that you insist is the best in the world (and in many ways it is) but you don’t want to pay for it. Are you a communist? They don’t pay taxes in many countries, guess what they’re like? That list of best nations in the link? Guess how much they pay in taxes? You see often you get what you pay for.
>That’s not true. The Constitution was hardwired with slavery, for one thing.
You don’t know much about American history do you? How slavery was a pretty big issue for the Founding Fathers and that the whole “created equal” thing was actually a shot across the bow of slavery? They had to comprise for the sake of unity but they were under no illusions that the issue would eventually have to dealt with. The Founding Fathers were all fans of Roman history and I suspect they understood that a slave economy is impossible to maintain. Heck even the Romans figured that out but could never bring themselves to do something about it.
>No, it didn’t. All of the horrible policies of Bush II and Obama are continuations of a long, long arc stretching back over more than a century.
Such double think! America is the greatest worse country in the world!
>Yeah, look at the Uk, they went from a bloody tyrant like Henry the VIII to Tony Blair.
>With a few wars and coups intervening.
See you said “things always get worse” I show you, no, things can get better and you then move the goalposts and now seem to say “Yeah, but bad things happen on the way.” As if that’s some sort of refutation of my point.
It isn’t.
>But look at how Brits are controlled and monitored by a massive nanny state now. Within a few miles of George Orwell’s home, there are dozens of surveillance cameras. You think those people aren’t oppressed?
Help! Help! I’ve been videotaped along with millions of other people! I’m being oppressed! The government is following my every move and with that information they’re going to… do… stuff… bad stuff! You do know that in 1984 the cameras were in the homes right? When you’re out in the street you have very little expectation of privacy. The cameras are seeing the exact same thing as your fellow citizens see so why do you care? FYI? There are cameras in every American city doing the same thing.
>Look at Spain they went from a fascist dictator to a representative democracy.
>You forgot the war.
Uh WWII? That ended with Franco (Fascist dictator? Perhaps you heard of him? One of those history deals) in power, Spain had a very quiet transformation, perhaps that’s why you didn’t notice it, nothing blowing up on Fox News.
>Look at Japan they went from an absolute monarchy to a representative democracy.
>You forgot the war and the American occupation.
You said everything gets worse I provided yet another example of it getting better and your rebuttal isn’t denying that, it’s just providing an explanation for how it happened. So you are agreed than things can get better in government?
>Are you sure you know as much about history as you think you do?
>Absolutely.
I have to say no, you really don’t.
Liberal.
Sees two people being attacked with a lead pipe.
Not knowing either of them, goes in to help without a weapon of his own.
What side has the cowards?! You guys wouldn’t help at all; unless it was the head of United Health Care and you were standing well off to the side with a TOW missile…
Y’all are proof evolution is optional.
@salvage (#180) Tell me how you have more freedom than I in [health care].
Who pays for that system? Is such a payment voluntary?
Q.E.D.
I can get a gun anytime I like…
You didn’t mention Canada. You mentioned Europe, Australia, and Japan. In those countries, you usually can’t get a gun at all, or only under strict controls (you probably have to have political connections).
…you have yet to describe any freedom that is unique to America
Health care was one.
And, for the others I mentioned, damned few other countries have such freedoms, and when they do, they are no better than the US. With the exception of drugs and perhaps immigration, as I mentioned previously.
>>Where would Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland and many others be without American military support!?!?
>Recovering from being overrun by Nazis or Soviets,
Yeah, history books, you need to (re)read them.
Iceland was a founding member of NATO. Sweden had an unofficial defense arrangement with the US and benefited from the Marshall Plan. Had the Nazis defeated the Allies, they would eventually have invaded Switzerland.
If they just spent the money on regular army stuff they would be helping to keep employment up so no, not really.
Broken window fallacy.
Please look up the meaning of “jingoism”…
You overlooked the part about favoring an aggressive foreign policy.
I agree that the “War on drugs” is unconstitutional but the average American voted likes the war on drugs so it doesn’t end.
So you admit that even though things are written down in the Constitution, if people don’t complain, there’s nothing to stop the government? My point, exactly.
The downside of democracy, enough stupid people make stupid things happen.
Always happens. Moral questions should never be put up to a vote. No matter how popular, it’s always wrong to put Jews in gas chambers.
Ah yes, taxes, you live in a country that you insist is the best in the world (and in many ways it is) but you don’t want to pay for it.
False. I want to pay for what I value. If I want to use something which isn’t mine, I expect to pay for it.
The problem is when other people decide for me what I ought to value, like health care deform and kneecap-and-trade economic suicide.
How slavery was a pretty big issue for the Founding Fathers and that the whole “created equal” thing was actually a shot across the bow of slavery? They had to comprise for the sake of unity
So, you admit that the white male property owners decided to let the whole owning people thing slide for convenience? I guess the black people who lived in the South between the Revolution and the Civil War didn’t count, as far as following the Constitution being a good thing, as you asserted?
The Founding Fathers were all fans of Roman history and I suspect they understood that a slave economy is impossible to maintain. Heck even the Romans figured that out but could never bring themselves to do something about it.
Wow. Just wow!
Help! Help! I’ve been videotaped along with millions of other people! I’m being oppressed! The government is following my every move and with that information they’re going to… do… stuff… bad stuff!
Keep digging. You’re only hurting your case to dismiss that.
You do know that in 1984 the cameras were in the homes right?
I’m well aware.
When you’re out in the street you have very little expectation of privacy. The cameras are seeing the exact same thing as your fellow citizens see so why do you care? FYI? There are cameras in every American city doing the same thing.
Which is why I keep saying “not yet” and “so far” because I see the signs of authoritarianism creeping into the US.
Uh WWII? That ended with Franco
The Cold War. You know, the US buying its way, putting pressure to become democratic.
You said everything gets worse I provided yet another example of it getting better [Japan]
No, you didn’t for the reason I gave. Japan became a military dictatorship until the US conquered and occupied them.
…and your rebuttal isn’t denying that, it’s just providing an explanation for how it happened.
So, being conquered and occupied isn’t important to you?
Enough of this. If you’re just going to make excuses for slavery, dismiss massive government surveillance, and ignore one historical fact after another, I’m through with you.
Steve A
You set a nice table sir! A Nice. Polite. Table.
salvage
Those countries don’t have a Fourth Ammendment either. Can’t they come in your house and look around pretty much anytime or hold you for long periods of time?
America has a lot more civil rights that just those related to guns. Even with cops pushing those limits it’s a damn site better than the rest of the world.
Besides-America doesn’t blur out it’s vaginas either.
Hannah
Did you place the bow in your child’s hand after birth so that he/she will grow up a warrior? I think that was a Celtic ritual or something akin to it.
ice9
State law’s good enough to say we can carry guns so stfu and move to Illinois.
savage
Sweden’s festering with future jihadists and Switzerland has as many guns per capita as the US if not more. What’s your point? I like choclate, ABBA and guns and I’m staying right here.
Chocolate-errr.
Charlie O
Look at the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. A few Jews with captured weapons held off a confused German army and forced them to burn the city.
Steve Finlay
I advise you not to shop at the Blue Flame then.
paleo
Yeah-because evolved people have moved beyond common sense. Like using their cell phones away from pipe-range before the perp notices them. If it was an iphone he could have then detonated it against the perps head.
Hannah: the airborne lead comes from the composition of the primers, not the bullets.
//What is lost here is that while YOU would rather have a gun in that situation, since you’d definitely have an advantage, would you rather EVERYONE have a gun, including the mugger?//
A mugger with a knife can attack a smaller and weaker person who isn’t armed with a gun, and have a 99.44% chance of getting away unharmed.
Give the target a gun and the mugger’s chance of getting away unharmed goes WAY down, no matter what type of armament the mugger has. Note that actually firing a gun would be contrary to the mugger’s interests in a number of ways (most significantly by attracting unwanted attention); a mugger would have to show his target the gun without firing it, thus yielding some tactical advantage to the target.
>Who pays for that system? Is such a payment voluntary?
Who pays for the road maintenance? I don’t drive why should I have to pay for that? Who pays for the military? I don’t like the military why should I have to pay for that? I don’t like a certain race / creed / religion and some of my tax dollars are helping them? Why should I pay for that?
And on it goes.
The answer of course is always the same; it’s the best thing for society on the whole.
So yes, a few bucks of your taxes may go to help a sick person you don’t’ even know.
Horrible, I know. Those people in Somalia think they have it rough!
>I can get a gun anytime I like…
>You didn’t mention Canada. You mentioned Europe, Australia, and Japan. In those countries, you usually can’t get a gun at all, or only under strict controls (you probably have to have political connections).
You can get guns if you really want in all of those countries, what you don’t get is people generally don’t want guns and don’t want to live in a place where you need guns.
So they have laws that limit guns and crazy but true; it works.
>…you have yet to describe any freedom that is unique to America
>Health care was one.
Do you have trouble reading? I have all the health care freedom I could want or need. I can pay for it with my taxes or if I’m supah rich I can go out and get a private plan.
What do you have that I do not?
> Had the Nazis defeated the Allies, they would eventually have invaded Switzerland.
Yes but fortunately we live in this reality so I’m going by stuff that actually happened.
> If they just spent the money on regular army stuff they would be helping to keep employment up so no, not really.
>Broken window fallacy.
Really? Than what was WWII then? A bit of history, employment picked up in the US right about around late 1941. Suddenly everyone had a job, y’know what it was?
>You overlooked the part about favoring an aggressive foreign policy.
Well enough other parts fit.
>So you admit that even though things are written down in the Constitution, if people don’t complain, there’s nothing to stop the government? My point, exactly.
People are stopping the government, slowly sanity is leaking into the debate, we’ve come a ways since “Refer Madness” and I wish it would happen faster but I’m not sure if anyone is prepared to launch a revolution over it.
>The downside of democracy, enough stupid people make stupid things happen.
>Always happens.
No it doesn’t always happen. Nothing always happens.
> Moral questions should never be put up to a vote.
Sure and who decides what’s moral?
>False. I want to pay for what I value. If I want to use something which isn’t mine, I expect to pay for it.
That’s a pretty childish attitude and arrogant to boot. See your taxes pay for stuff that keeps you alive and you don’t even know it. The health inspector that keeps the bugs out of your bread to the engineer that keeps an eye on cracks in bridges to the standards department that make sure kids helmets will keep their melons whole. You have no idea how lucky you are to be living in the time and place you are living in. You also don’t appreciate the hard work and sacrifice that went into building your country. Now that it’s all comfy you feel like you don’t have to contribute for the next inhabitants. I take it back, it’s a deeply childish attitude.
>The problem is when other people decide for me what I ought to value, like health care deform and kneecap-and-trade economic suicide.
How much FoxNews do you watch? Seriously, tell me right now if you watch Fox or not.
>So, you admit that the white male property owners decided to let the whole owning people thing slide for convenience?
Yes, the dozens of men standing up to the British Empire, who fully expected that they were going to be hung (not in the good way) at best or slaughtered in front of their families as Boston and Philadelphia burned made choices based on “convenience”.
There were no other consideration at all!
Again, I really think you need to read more history, you seem to have a very basic understanding. For instance while you and I recognize slavery as evil at the time it was considered fine because it was in The Bible. It took a conscious raising of unimaginable proportion to shift the attitudes of dozens of nations against slavery. They needed the colonies united if they were going to survive they had to make a hard choice.
> I guess the black people who lived in the South between the Revolution and the Civil War didn’t count, as far as following the Constitution being a good thing, as you asserted?
Of course they count but at the time not enough people thought so. That’s the reality and guess what?
IT GOT BETTER!
See how that works? It took a very long time but now there’s a Black President.
>Which is why I keep saying “not yet” and “so far” because I see the signs of authoritarianism creeping into the US.
Yes, yes, your kind always does well that’s why there’s the ACLU, if you want to do something more productive than buying another gun send them a cheque.
>Uh WWII? That ended with Franco
>The Cold War. You know, the US buying its way, putting pressure to become democratic.
No… America was indifferent to Spain, Franco was reliably
anti-commie and he was left alone to do as he pleased until his death in 1975 then Spain slowly but surely evolved into a democracy. The only time America meddles in another country’s politics is when there’s money to be made, oil or defense, there wasn’t anything like that in Spain.
>No, you didn’t for the reason I gave. Japan became a military dictatorship until the US conquered and occupied them.
Yes, I know that’s when things got better in Japan and still are.
Thing get better, sometimes with a war and sometimes politically like in Spain.
>Enough of this. If you’re just going to make excuses for slavery, dismiss massive government surveillance, and ignore one historical fact after another, I’m through with you.
LOL! Yes! I excuse slavery! And yes right now under Washington is a massive bunker recording every single email, phone call, fax, text, smoke signal and wink and all that data is cross referenced to another giant computer that is hooked into every video camera in America and that way they can see and hear everything you’re saying! Unfortunately this produces about a terabyte a millisecond (most of its spam) and they need to hire about a million data entry clerks to catalogue it all.
And you’re gonna have to cover it all with your unfair taxes that you have to pay to live in the best country in the world!
Sucks to be you.
You shouldn’t have to put up with anyone imposing power over you with a gun, a pipe, a 9 iron, a 200 lb. muscular body, or a sack of hornets.
If someone is threatening you with a gun or a sack of hornets, telling you to do what they want or else, you have every right to complain and to defend yourself, if necessary.
Ask the muggers and rapists who tried to attack women with guns if the guns helped protect their would-be victims.
Get a medium to help you contact them.
So says Pollyanna.
Close your eyes shut tight. “There’s no such thing as violent crime!”
I’m amazed you say this without any sense of irony.
Once again, if someone is waving a gun or a bag of bees at you in order to intimidate you, nobody here is claiming they have the right to do so.
Why do you keep pretending they do?
Indeed. As Twain said, it’s better you stay silent and let people wonder if you’re a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Your discomfort isn’t a reason to infringe on my liberty. “Some rights empower citizens in a way that might slightly trouble other citizens; price of liberty, etc.”
Who is arguing that that sort of behavior is acceptable? I think anyone who shows off a gun to intimidate someone else is a fool who is just looking for trouble.
Now, about the vast majority of gun owners who don’t do that, who have nothing to do with such fools, you get to just shut up and mind your own business.
All of it?! Because of one guy? You have a problem with blaming innocent people for the misdeeds of others.
So stay off street corners. Price of liberty, etc..
I don’t care. Rights are inherent and not determined by words on paper. The right of every individual to use the most effective tools of self defense does not rely on arcane verbiage.
Notice how you mix “I” and “we”?
Speak for yourself.
Like I said before, it is irrelevant if you are feeling “impressed” or not. That’s no basis for a discussion of rights. You can claim any feeling you want, for no logical reason.
Anyone can claim to know what a “benefit to society” is, but there is no such thing. Society is made up of millions of individuals, some of whom benefit from something, some of whom don’t.
Collective fallacy.
“…unless you’re a criminologist and/or statistician`, don’t start any statement by saying “I believe most studies of…”
Logically flawed. One’s profession does not change facts, nor is credible statistical analysis limited to two professions. But, please try again with the whole cogent-thing.
I don’t care if guns cause triple the amount of accidents/deaths, I don’t want the fuckwad government to be the only ones armed.
#195 – I mistakenly hit a “thumbs down” when I meant to hit a “thumbs up”. You shore do talk pretty, son.
Elliot: the whole point of the post is that making guns legal for carry is an infringement on my liberty whether I choose to exercise that right or not, whether I’m a pussy or not, whether I’m a collective fallacist or not. It compels me to do something dangerous and counterproductive–carry a gun–if I want to balance the behavior of the next guy and preserve my own freedom, because I can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys unless the good guys wear a uniform and a badge. When my fellow citizen chooses to carry his gun–whether it’s legal or not, constitutional or not, state-legislature-approved or not–he creates a threat to me. I want society to abridge the ass off of his right to carry a loaded gun.
I may have a weak motive. I may just be ascared of guns. I may fail to understand them, which may be why I drop my Colt every time I let off a round at a mounted Blackfoot. I may want to save the deers and grouses.–so what? It’s my right to be safe; I can choose what means I want to achieve safety for myself and my family–and my neighborhood and my community and my nation, too. There is more than one means to safety, as the example of Canada and France and Somalia and Iraqi Kurdestan shows. This arguments is about that means to safety.
Those guys then say, hey, second amendment. I say, no, second amendment doesn’t say that. They say, well, rape and robbery! I say, maybe, maybe not; let’s look at the figures, make the usual societal calculation about law and right, have a cool civil conversation, come to an agreement, and reject the fringe screechers; let’s make law! They say, no, Hey! Second amendment! I calmly repeat: second amendment doesn’t say that! They say stfu, move to Illinois, Rape and Robbery!!! I say, OK, let’s discuss…they say, No Discussion! I’ll put 9mm holes in you! Second Amendment!
You have to choose the Santa Claus which gave you the right over others. If it’s the threat of crime, well, we can measure that and make a decision as a society. The numbers are ambiguous. Is your Santa a pure constitutional freedom? I say no; nobody here says yes so far… So, which Santa do you choose? It’s not the collective fallacy that bothers you; it’s the fact that you can’t be both a Freedom-Lovin’ Right-Thinkin’ American, well-armed, a bulge in your jacket and a bulge in your jeans… and also claim to be a member of a civil society; the only recourse then is to assert that the society ain’t so civil, and you have to protect yourself against anecdotal gun-toting robbers or pipe-wielding domestic disputers who want to brain their own grandma at the state fair. Fine–let’s just assess that claim outside of the Get Out of Jail Free shadow of a mythical second-amendment right to bear arms whenever you feel like it.
Grownups, like the mayor of Milwaukee, have no use for this slippery, dick-grabbing weaseling. They have a city to run, a well-armed city (good guys and bad) thanks to the efforts of the NRA (motto: Proud Sponsor of 30,000 Firearms Deaths Last Year!)
Meanwhile the gun lobby and their pocket-pole politicians own this nation. It acquired Congress based not on some cool-headed reckoning of pure freedom and the value of a civil society, but based on the exploitation of sexiness, fear, danger, fantasy, and power. Your quibbling on the collective fallacy and pronouns is part of a cowardly willingness to embrace the fantasy they sell–that guns are manly, that guns make us strong, that outlaws have guns, that Canadians are chickenshit, that the French are gunless faggots cowering before roving bands of Romanian gypsies. All because as a society we can’t muster the courage to tell a bunch of men-children to zip it up, to be happy with a couple of shotguns and a rifle in the closet in case the antelope mount a coup.
ice
“#198 | ice9 | August 20th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Elliot: the whole point of the post is that making guns legal for carry is an infringement on my liberty…”
No it isn’t. You have no inherent right to FEEL any particular way.
“…It compels me to do something dangerous and counterproductive–carry a gun–if I want to balance the behavior of the next guy and preserve my own freedom, because I can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys unless the good guys wear a uniform and a badge.”
This is nonsensical. Clearly there are bad people out there right now armed and dangerous yet I doubt you’re lugging around a gun, pipe, knife, and tire iron just to “balance” them out. So why would you need to carry a gun to “balance” out people who aren’t and won’t be criminals? You probably have no idea what percent of ccw holders have their permits revoked but it is incredibly small, usually fractions of a percent. On the other hand, the number of times a gun is used defensively is substantial.
“It’s my right to be safe”
And there are studies that show that higher gun ownership makes you safer, whether you carry or not due to the deterrence effect. Now since you’re (anti-ccw crowd) the one arguing that others should not be allowed to do something, the burden is on you and your ilk to show that ccw makes you less safe.
You are far, far more likely to die in a car crash then you are to be shot to death. Does this ‘right to be safe’ cover automobiles or is that just too inconvenient?
“Grownups, like the mayor of Milwaukee, have no use for this slippery, dick-grabbing weaseling. They have a city to run, a well-armed city (good guys and bad) thanks to the efforts of the NRA (motto: Proud Sponsor of 30,000 Firearms Deaths Last Year!)”
2,500,000 defensive gun uses/year vs 30,000 deaths. Net positive for having guns, obviously.
You fit the stereotypical anti-gun nut to a T, ignorant and illogical. As Don Kates (constitutional lawyer and criminologist) states: “Scholars engaged in serious criminological research into “gun control” have found themselves forced, often very reluctantly, into four largely negative propositions. First, there is no persuasive evidence that gun ownership causes ordinary, responsible, law abiding adults to murder or engage in any other criminal behavior–though guns can facilitate crime by those who were independently inclined toward it. Second, the value of firearms in defending victims has been greatly underestimated. Third, gun controls are innately very difficult to enforce. Therefore, the fourth conclusion criminological research and analysis forces on scholars is that while controls carefully targeted only at the criminal and irresponsible have a place in crime-reduction strategy, the capacity of any type of gun law to reduce dangerous behavior can never be more than marginal.” (Tennessee Law Review)
“#171 | Lettuce | August 19th, 2009 at 10:27 am
No.
I’m saying he wouldn’t have been carrying a gun… And that’s really the end of the story.
This was outside the state fair. You think there was NOBODY with a gun around? C’mon. He got beat because he got beat, and he’s a hero for getting beat and ending the situation.”
He got beat because he was facing an armed opponent unarmed and is probably weaker than the other guy. The point you continue to miss is related to his backing of Flynn’s outrageous statements indicating he was willing to violate constitutional rights of Milwaukee citizens. If Barrett doesn’t want to be armed in case a situation like this happens, so be it. That’s his choice. But he shouldn’t be making that choice for the rest of us.
As for the heroic thing; a firefighter that fights fires without any equipment may be heroic when he saves a person but he’s also an idiot.
“As for citizens “needing” gun… We live in a very different place, I suspect. And I assume the Mayor is correct, and the Governor (who has decided not to run again, and whose decisions I don’t know because he’s not nearly as important around here) is not.”
Correct? Based on what? And who said anything about “needing a gun”
“And I suspect the Mayor probably has the second amendment on his side.”
Huh?
Wow ice9 you almost saved me some melatonin tonight.
I guess that part at the end about the antelope triggered a memory (or a dream).
When my great-grandfather came to Rock Springs, Wyoming in the late 1800′s the Chinese there were an exploited minority as you might guess. They had something called the Chinese Massacre where a number of white townspeople shot up and killed a number of the Chinese. One Brit was heard to say,” They’re harder to hit than bloody antelope.” My great-grandpa was eight, I think, and he saw a “Chinaman” get his head blown off. An unarmed “Chinaman” just to add context.
Later in his life he got shot in the shoulder, in a sheepwagon, and the concussion blew out the kerosene lamp. They dressed the wound by dipping a rag in iodine and passing it through with a wire. My dad said that must have hurt and gg said,”Damn right, my ears rang for two-weeks!”
I think the point I’m trying to make here is I was born to the gun culture. I love guns. The way they look. The way they feel. The way they smell when I’m cleaning them etc. I own a bunch of guns. I’m going to buy a shitload more guns before I die and I hope to inherit a whole pile of guns from my old man.
My son loves guns. He’s going elk hunting this year. He’s in ROTC and he wants to be an Army Ranger. Hoo-ah! He’s in the gun culture too.
I’ve known a lot of people over the years and I can’t think of a single one who’s been killed with a gun. I’ve know people to die of cancer, Parkinson’s, falling off a cliff. One good friend was blown up by a boobie trap in Tikrit. No guns. Maybe you should be my friend-your worries would be over.
Your unease about guns doesn’t bother me a bit. I’d just advise you to watch Final Destination again and get the message that someday, somewhere death will find you when it’s your time.
You can be prudent and get rid of ladders, five-gallon buckets and rakes. You can wear your seatbelt or helmet. You can pop an aspirin before bed.
But don’t take that pipe to town, son…
Elliot: the whole point of the post is that making guns legal for carry is an infringement on my liberty whether I choose to exercise that right or not, whether I’m a pussy or not, whether I’m a collective fallacist or not.
Like a typical liberal, you do not believe you are free unless every other man is your slave.
Why am I not surprised? This is the way liberals look at economic rights, why wouldn’t they look at gun rights the same way?
“I am not free if I have to worry that my employer might fire me.”
“I am not free if someone else is free to own a gun.”
You’re unfamiliar with the nature of liberty, if that is what you think.
Liberty doesn’t mean you have the right to control others, to ensure that you don’t have icky feelings. It means you, and everyone else, get to do your own thing, so long as you’re not hurting anyone else. Hurt doesn’t include feelings.
Did it ever occur to you that all the non-criminal people who decide to keep and bear guns might want to “balance the behavior” of the actual thugs who carry weapons–whether the thugs wield guns, knives, or pipes, or even if they don’t, but still have a physical advantage in size, in numbers? Those people who own guns to defend themselves from criminals also recognize that those people do not obey laws, so laws only restrict the good guys.
You don’t seem to get that, at all.
The thing is, I don’t agree with you about them, or with a few of them them about criminals, that one is compelled (i.e., aggressively coerced) merely by other people being free to have guns.
If there is any specific person who is presenting a real danger to you, such that you feel the need to arm yourself against him or her, then that person falls under the category of criminal. All of the millions of other gun owners are not in that category. You don’t have the right to infringe on the rights of the good people, whether or not doing so would overall reduce the danger from bad guys.
People wearing uniforms and badges are sometimes the bad guys. In countries where freedom is limited, people with uniforms tend to be abusive. In the extreme, where innocents are rounded up by the thousands for political reasons, those doing so are generally wearing uniforms and taking orders.
Mafia goons and street thugs don’t round up thousands of people for detention or execution.
It is everyone’s right to be safe, including the redneck types who bother you by how they look and talk, who have political ideas you don’t like. Their right to safety trumps your feelings, because you don’t have a right to feel a certain way.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/531/story/871989.html
Greatest hit of libertarian magic-wand-waving:
“in countries where freedom is limited, people with uniforms tend to be abusive.”
? People with power tend to be abusive. The badge is nice, if it’s backed up. It’s the gun that gives the power, gentlemen. Take them away, and NO MORE POWER.
Why can’t we take them away, I ask?
hello? Why not? Quit arguing about whether it works; it clearly doesn’t work, or our streets would not run with blood. At least make people saw their shotguns off or hide the bushmaster under a trenchcoat; then they’re easier to spot.
ice
Still no word from y’all on that second amendment, sure now.
@ice9 (#204) Why can’t we take them away, I ask?
Are you a child?
People who have guns don’t want you to take them away. By passing laws, you won’t disarm criminals. You won’t disarm bad cops or soldiers who follow bad orders.
You will only disarm good, decent people, who don’t deserve to be left defenseless.
@ice9:
- I don’t like Chevy’s, so I don’t own one…
- If you don’t like guns, then avail yourself of the same option, don’t buy one, period.
- If you don’t like the fact that others have the RIGHT to own guns legally, then see about getting a constitutional amendment passed to change that.
Or, you can always move to a “safe” country with gun control if it makes you feel better. Northern Mexico usually has nice weather, and it’s “safe”, right?
[sarcasm]
@salvage (#194) Who pays for the road maintenance? I don’t drive why should I have to pay for that? Who pays for the military? I don’t like the military why should I have to pay for that?
You shouldn’t.
The answer of course is always the same; it’s the best thing for society on the whole.
Once again, with feeling: What you call “society” isn’t a singular entity with a quantifiable “good” to be protected. There are 300,000,000 or so individual Americans, each of which have their own values. Any given law or action by government can help some and hurt some. So, you don’t get to wave your hands and claim that something is “the best thing for society on the whole.”
So yes, a few bucks of your taxes may go to help a sick person you don’t’ even know.
Horrible, I know.
A “few bucks”? Are you insane? Try 30%-50%, or more!
It’s so easy for you to dismiss a cost to someone else.
The thing about values is, only the owner has the moral authority to decide how important they are to him or her.
You can get guns if you really want in all of those countries, what you don’t get is people generally don’t want guns and don’t want to live in a place where you need guns.
You can’t legally get guns in most of those countries unless you have political connections.
To the individual who wants a gun, not to hurt anyone else, but because she fears for her safety, what others around her “generally don’t want” is immaterial.
If the people around her generally want to put her race into gas chambers, that doesn’t make it right, either.
See how your appeals to popularity fail?
So they have laws that limit guns and crazy but true; it works.
Works for whom? What about the people who get victimized or killed, who would have used a gun to prevent that if they were allowed to? It didn’t work for them!
Any time you claim that something is good for “society” or that something “works”, you always fail to detail for whom it is good and for whom it is bad.
Why is that?
I have all the health care freedom I could want or need. I can pay for it with my taxes or if I’m supah rich I can go out and get a private plan.
So only super rich people can afford to make a choice? And, even if you want something else, or if you are young and healthy enough that you’d rather put your money into other things you consider more important, you still are forced to pay the same amount of taxes.
That isn’t freedom. You’re very confused about the concept.
What do you have that I do not?
More freedom. I don’t (yet) have to participate in a universal government health care program, for starters.
Yes but fortunately we live in this reality so I’m going by stuff that actually happened.
Quit being dishonest. You posited that Switzerland didn’t benefit from the US military (WW II liberation and stationing of troops to offset Soviet threat). If you were correct, then the hypothetical alternative should have the same result for Switzerland. You want to explain why the Nazis would have left Switzerland alone had they maintained their occupation of Europe until the Allies agreed to a truce? Or, the Soviets, had they defeated the Nazis without US help? Neither of those showed any compassion or restraint. They murdered on the order of 100,000,000 people. And, you expect them to leave some chocolate making yodelers with tons of gold alone?
…employment picked up in the US right about around late 1941. Suddenly everyone had a job, y’know what it was?
Hundreds of thousands of Americans died. Huge amounts of raw materials, capital, and labor was expended creating bullets and bombs which were then used up and gone forever. Vehicles, planes, and ships–built and then thrown into battle where a good portion were destroyed or ruined.
Now, imagine that all of those people who died because of the war instead went to work producing things that other people wanted to buy. Imagine all of the raw materials, capital, and labor being put to productive (not destructive) use.
Get the picture?
Breaking all the windows in town may put food on the window maker’s table, but everyone with a broken window has to take time to clean it up and call the window maker, then give up the money to pay for it, which they could have used for things they wanted.
Who wants to have a broken window?
Well enough other parts fit.
Aggression is the essence of jingoism. It is inseparable.
Learn English.
…we’ve come a ways since “Refer Madness” and I wish it would happen faster…
When Reefer Madness came out, marijuana was legal. There were no ultra-wealthy drug cartels causing mayhem and murder on an unprecedented scale. There was no DEA burning billions of taxpayer dollars engaging in a war on Americans. Prisons weren’t overflowing with people who had done no harm to others.
A few clinics in California (still being raided by Feds, despite Obama’s promises) don’t reverse that. If that’s what you hang your hat on, at this rate we may return to the status quo of 1936 (the year that Reefer Madness came out) in about 60 years or so. Great. Yay government!
For all the drug war victims, that’s too late.
Sure and who decides what’s moral?
The people involved in a situation, whose values are at stake. Bureaucrats and legislators, thousands of miles away, influenced by
contributionsbribes, who don’t have an intimate stake in the outcome, can make up all kinds of nonsense to put into law.I want to pay for what I value. If I want to use something which isn’t mine, I expect to pay for it.
That’s a pretty childish attitude and arrogant to boot.
Paying for what you want and for what you use is the opposite of childish.
Demanding that other pay for things you value, which they don’t, is quintessentially childish. “Wah! Mommy, buy me a lollipop!! BUT I WAAAAANT IT!!!!”
See your taxes pay for stuff that keeps you alive and you don’t even know it.
You’re very, very confused.
I know what keeps me alive, more than you and more than any politician or bureaucrat.
Your argument boils down to: “trust me, I know what is good for you.” Yeah, just look at the $1,500,000,000,000 they blew in the past year on so-called “recovery” which has not been used the way they promised it would (Barney Frank stole the payoff on loans the government bought, even after politicians promised that taxpayers would be paid back), for which there is nearly no accountability (all kinds of missing billions and abject waste), for which there was no time given to review.
Do you seriously argue that people like that can be trusted to spend taxpayer money more wisely than the individuals can?
I wouldn’t trust them to drive my car to get it washed, much less make decisions on my health or ability to defend myself.
The health inspector that keeps the bugs out of your bread to the engineer that keeps an eye on cracks in bridges to the standards department that make sure kids helmets will keep their melons whole.
None of that is done better by bureaucrats, who get paid the same whether the money for such programs is used wisely or efficiently.
Private entities can test their own products, or hire trusted private firms to do that for them. If you sold food or bicycle helmets, you’d see to it that people had confidence in your product, or you’d go out of business! If you hired five times as many people to lazily inspect your products than you actually needed, you’d go out of business.
Government doesn’t have that pressure and isn’t held accountable for not doing as good a job as the private sector could.
You have no idea…
Actually, I know better what benefits me than you or anyone else does.
Why do you just make this stuff up like that?
How much FoxNews do you watch? Seriously, tell me right now if you watch Fox or not.
I don’t watch much cable news at all. I read a wide variety of news sources and I’m quite familiar with their political biases. FNC, CNN, and MSNBC all provide warped sources. Fox favors Republicans. CNN and MSNBC gush over Obama, telling only one side of the story about 90% of the time. MSNBC cropped video footage of a black man with a gun, so you couldn’t see his skin, then played that while commentators went on and on about racists with guns at rallies. CNN has put up one article after another about Obamacare, most of which have absolutely no counter arguments, straight out of the DNC talking points.
So, pardon me if I’m not a mindless cable news sycophant, of any flavor.
For instance while you and I recognize slavery as evil at the time it was considered fine because it was in The Bible. It took a conscious raising of unimaginable proportion to shift the attitudes of dozens of nations against slavery. They needed the colonies united if they were going to survive they had to make a hard choice.
Well, if it’s in a book of superstitions, that’s supposed to make the destruction of lives acceptable?
Your apologist excuses sicken me.
Of course they count but at the time not enough people thought so. That’s the reality and guess what?
IT GOT BETTER!
Things got better for the Jews after WW II. What the bloody fuck is your point? That the victims should be happy taking one for the team?
See how that works?
Yes, I see exactly what people get for compromising with evil. They get death, slavery, and misery.
It took a very long time but now there’s a Black President.
So that makes up for it all?
Is there any deprivation you can’t rationalize as acceptable for the good of the collective?
…your kind always does well that’s why there’s the ACLU, if you want to do something more productive than buying another gun send them a cheque.
What do imagine my “kind” is? You seem to be suffering under the delusion that I am some sort of partisan in the ridiculous Coke vs. Pepsi wars.
@PhantomAce (#206) - If you don’t like the fact that others have the RIGHT to own guns legally, then see about getting a constitutional amendment passed to change that.
Words on paper can’t give or take away rights.
If people like ice9 did succeeded in repealing the 2nd, the essential principles of private property, self defense, and freedom would be starkly visible for all to see.
You’d certainly start learning the meaning of several Latin phrases, and a Greek phrase or two, not to mention the meaning of “III”.
Steve Jean:
True, “words” don’t mean squat. But… if it weren’t for those particular words being codified into the Constitution, we would have had a bloody battle years ago over our right to keep our guns.
The existence of those words have been the thin barrier of protection preventing that outcome. Although, admittedly, that barrier has been eroded by constant barrages from the Left over time.
I know this, if anyone EVER tries to come take my primary means of self defense in the name of the “greater good”, they’re either going to see it in action, or I’ll be packing up and heading elsewhere first.
IMHO the only thing that has kept the kleptocrats in DC at least somewhat in check is the fact that they KNOW we, the people, have the ability to fight back if they push those boundaries too far.
@PhantomAce (#209) …if it weren’t for those particular words being codified into the Constitution, we would have had a bloody battle years ago over our right to keep our guns.
Americans did have a bloody war 230 years ago, over that right and others.
The existence of those words have been the thin barrier of protection preventing that outcome.
I don’t see it that way. I think Americans who appreciated their freedoms wouldn’t have needed those words to know they had no intention of allowing someone else to take away their means of self defense.
I don’t have a problem with laws against murder, rape, robbery, fraud, and such, which prohibit harming others. But when you try to encode rights into law (by which I include the Constitution), the problem is that laws can be changed. And, laws can be obfuscated and just plain ignored.
Thus, your rights are at the mercy of bureaucrats, lawyers, special interests, instead of in your hands where they belong.
I know this, if anyone EVER tries to come take my primary means of self defense in the name of the “greater good”, they’re either going to see it in action, or I’ll be packing up and heading elsewhere first.
Case in point. Your rights, your hands.
IMHO the only thing that has kept the kleptocrats in DC at least somewhat in check is the fact that they KNOW we, the people, have the ability to fight back if they push those boundaries too far.
The problem is that those in power who might consider trying to disarm you will underestimate you, thinking that you’ll cave like they would. That’s a dangerous situation and I hope to hell the anti-gun people would be able to appreciate the determination of gun owners without needing to see it first hand through violent confrontation.
When I read a column on gun control in the New York Times, hear about MSNBC cropping video to pretend a black man with a gun is a white racist, or watch Jon Stewart or Bill Maher mercilessly lampooning gun rights proponents as nothing but a bunch of redneck lunatics, whose ideas should never be considered, I see a dearth of quintessentially American culture. I see people who don’t understand the concept of freedom, arrogantly dismissing the earnest wills of whole swaths of individuals, expecting those people to tuck their tails between their legs and go hide.
“He brings a lead pipe, you bring a gun.”
But even in more populated areas, it might be helpful to have a pistol if you happen to be attacked, or see someone being attacked, by an assailant armed with a lead pipe. Or worse.
Somehow, I doubt that’s the lesson Barrett will take from this.
Well, going up against a fellow with a lead pipe, the Mayor with just his bare hands, and prevailed. What does he need with a pistol.
I have to say Balko, you have become all anecdote. Change the blog title from The Agitator to Here are some links to some stories I find interesting.
So “prevail” includes losing your front teeth, breaking your hand so bad the bones are sticking out, and watching as the perpetrator leaves the scene?
If the mayor had used a gun competently, he could have prevented the guy from hurting anyone else, he would have kept his teeth, and he would have a functioning hand. He may have been able to detain the guy until police could arrest him on the scene. Or, the guy could have run away. Or, the guy could have been stupid and provoked the mayor to shoot him.
All of those are what I’d consider prevailing.
Ice9:
Um…what if your fellow citizen is a cop?