So, I was going to shirk my duty this week and not write a Complaint at all. I’ve been writing papers like mad and frankly the thought of spending more time at my keyboard made me a bit sick to my stomach. But then, I spotted this article on my Sidebar feed and read it and it got me thinking. I was inspired. So even though I am more than a little writing drunk (it’s like punch drunk for nerdy fellas like myself), I figured what the hell. It should also be noted that this violates my personal goal of not submitting two pieces in a row that discuss political issues (last week featured a piece on taxes that people really seemed to take a liking to), but it was my personal ethos and I violate them all the time so what’s one more, right? Anyway, enjoy this Complaint that almost wasn’t.
I don’t get guns.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. Who hasn’t imagined what it would be like to “fire two guns whilst jumping through the air?”
Or to stand up in a wildly expensive convertible while it is still moving to mow down ones opponents with a ridiculously large firearm?
But I also recognize that these activities would be acts of sociopathy if performed by me. There is just not much call for gun play in my line of work. Reckless fantasies of massive firefights are fine as long as that’s where they stay.
Which is not to say that one cannot one a gun and still be a decent and responsible person. I have a buddy who collects guns. I am more of comic book collector myself, but hey, it does it responsibly, so no issue there. My cousin and some of his friends are licensed to carry in the CT and occasionally hit up the firing range and that’s okay too. My aunt is a police officer, so she certainly needs to have one and while she has never discharged it (I think…it’s possible I am wrong on this) that would be okay with me ifit was necessary. Heck, my wife used to kill various rodent type pests on her grandparents’ farm to protect the crops and feed the cats and while I hassle her about it, that does not seem like a careless use of firearm either.
What I don’t understand is the weird mix of fascination and horror that makes my fellow countrymen feel the need to trumpet their gun ownership from the treetops and constantly shout about their right to carry. If I were President, I’d get it. I won’t lie, I’d be a big gun control guy. Gun sales at gun shows? Yeah, we can do without that. Automatic weapons? For hunting and protection? Really? You need to make a more realistic argument to get me on your side for that one. I’m one of those guys that will quote you statistics that indicate you are less safe, not safer, if you have a gun in the house and that laugh/shudder at people who make arguments for teachers or professors being able to bring guns to class. I think my beliefs are reasonable, of course, and I’d never call for the elimination of all guns (that’s just dumb), but yeah, I’d get if you were worried about your guns with me in office.
But President Obama? I know he has a past track record of gun control support, but did he even mention more than a dozen times on the campaign trail? Has he made any speeches about it since taking office? The only people I’ve seen mention his intention to strip everyone’s gun rights are Fox News anchors and NRA leaders. I guess he could be silently plotting, but it just strikes me as unlikely.
Let’s go to the extreme though and say that he is. That he and Democratic leaders under the direction of George Soros (what’s a good conspiracy theory without the presence of George Soros?) are having secret meeting in which they are hammering out sweeping anti-gun legislation. Let’s ignore that one look at the electoral map tells us this is wildly unlikely to ever go anywhere between Republicans solid resistance to it and Blue Dog or Southern Dems (who, admittedly, are dwindling in number) likely breaking with their conservative legislative mates because they either disagree with such reforms or know that to agree would mean a severe downturn in their re-election hopes. In this highly hypothetical world, is it still all right to walk around brandishing weapons, speaking of violent revolution FIRST?
Not writing your local Senator or Representative. Not getting petitions signed. Not staging (gunless) rallies. No, right to being armed before word one of such a secret bill hits the streets. There is such thing as a proportional response and I just don’t see it in this kind of behavior.
And I know people will start to respond will cries that it is unfair to judge the whole by the actions of a few and I agree. Liberals have had to put up with years of idiotic, if well intentioned, protestors who couldn’t decide if they were there to oppose the war, argue for the legalization of pot, or shout their desire to free Mumia, so I feel your pain. That said, you cannot point to the numbers of people who have engaged in this sort of behavior as an argument against Obama’s policies while simultaneously decrying people for writing about them in negative ways. You have to embrace them or reject them, you cannot do both simultaneously.
Also, I plead for a little consistency. If anyone had brought a gun to a rally where Bush was attending or to an airport where Bush was flying, outrage would have been quick and deafening. Now though, it is treated with either a sort of “eh, what can you do” attitude, or, worse, support because that man or woman is just expressing their Second Amendment rights.
But, hey, I could be wrong. I’ve already said I don’t get guns. They make me uncomfortable so I might just be overreacting to their presence. But what I don’t think I am overreacting to is the attitude that has come along with this uptick in gun ownership and display.
At the end of the day, I suppose my problem is less with the guns themselves than with what they represent. When the hell did we all get so scared of one another? (And please don’t tell me 9/11 because I think we all know that’s not what this is about anymore.) When did we start seeing the government not as just an annoyance, or, god forbid, useful for some stuff but instead a jackbooted institution that is poised to go fascist/communist (yet dangerously permissive) any second? How did this happen? I don’t like guns, I don’t like the potential damage they represent. But all that pales in comparison to the potential damage these attitudes represent. Disagreeing with the government is fine; hell, it is necessary for a good democracy. Protesting is okay, although I wish people would craft their messages to be more clear and accurate and be less scattered and hysterical—neither Bush nor Obama is anywhere near Hitler, thank you very much. The rampant fear, mistrust, and paranoia though? The stoking of these flames for ratings or political gain? That’s disgusting. That’s wrong. That shouldn’t be America.
If you want your guns and you can make your case for them, then do it. If you think they are in danger, then prove it. But I cannot listen to you, I cannot take you seriously if you reach for that firearm before you use your words.
Guns are a difficult topic, and in this forum the discussion usually leads to a pro-2nd amendment vs. anti-2nd amendment debate. The topic is complicated by the difficulty of finding a reasonable starting point.
For perspective, a big issue lately on my wife’s college campus is the school’s inability to prevent students with state conceal/carry licenses to bring them on campus. If you knew my wife you would say that she is about the last person you’d want carrying a gun – she’d tell you exactly that, herself – but if her grumpy students are going to be carrying loaded weapons, it makes you think about the issue just a little bit differently.
The problem with the discussion is that we all know there is some sort of continuum between the “good” gun owners (like your family members, say) and the “crazy” ones, like the student that a professor like my wife might fear. There’s a widespread philosophical desire to stop the crazies without impacting the goods.
Hope that works out. In the meantime, my family will be seriously considering whether to escalate the number of conceal-carry licenses in our state, if necessary, which is really something that no one should want. But what can you do….
That is a great example of some of the struggles with gun laws that this mentality often leaves us with, Jazz, so thanks for sharing it. And I would hate to have your wife be in a vulnerable position because of a student carrying a gun. But why does anyone need to have a gun on campus is my question? I understand that Americans have a right to buy and own guns, but does that right really mean you can bring it any where you choose? Why can’t the Second Amendment be limited in certain ways like the First Amendment is? Is banning peple from carrying at a college, for instance, really such an overstep or is it on par with not allowing people to shout fire in a crowded theatre–in other words an acceptable restriction for the good of all?
I should clarify that it is unsettled about where my state’s concealed/carry law will shake out wrt college campuses, so hopefully this discussion will never impact our real lives. I do find it irritating, though, that for whatever reason, the topic of guns seems to have a much bigger “gray area feel” than other topics of civil liberties. It’s as though we’re always starting in the middle of the conversation, with no way to retrace our steps to the beginning and no idea how to get to the end.
Interesting that you invoke the “fire in crowded theater” analogy. It feels like there is a line, characterized by “yelling fire in a crowded theater”, beyond which all speech is not acceptable, and this side of which, speech is protected. Can you yell fire in a crowded…bar? What if you’re joking? Can you yell fire in a relatively empty bar? What if Great White is the house band that evening? I am sure there are well-formed legal opinions on these gray areas, but for us common non-legal folk, it feels as though there is a solid delineation of where free speech ends (fire in a crowded theater) even if that is a shorthand that isn’t very meaningful in real life.
The 2nd amendment does seem to lack a similar line at which the right to bear arms seems to reasonably end, which is frustrating.
What happened to the crime rate in the UK when they made their already strict gun laws even more draconian?
Which places in the US have the lowest amounts of violence and gun crimes? Those where people have the right to carry guns or those with strict gun control?
Gun control laws merely ensure that only criminals have guns.
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England’s stats are, apparently, a bit controversial. On the one hand, you have some who argue that crime went up between 1997 and 2004 but has since leveled off and gun deaths remained low throughout. They also tend to argue that any stats that indicate otherwise are because the UK moved to a new method of registering gun related crimes. On the other hand, you have those who attribute such a rise to increase gangland violence and argue that those that say otherwise are fudging the results. One source says that there were only 42 gun deaths in 2008, the lowest in years. Another says that gun crimes actually doubled between 1999 and 2009. Add to that the fact that Northern Ireland actually has different laws regarding firearms than mainland Britain and things are even further complicated. Overall, I am willing to say my five minute review of your question led me to believe that the answer is not straightforward.
As for the US, I had a hard time finding a measure of the severity of gun laws beyond the Brady State Ratings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brady_State_Ratings_2009.svg. Given their role as advocacy group, you may not like them but it was the best I could do. In any case, when compared to gun violence, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state), it shows me that there is no clear “too many laws equals more gun violence” conclusions to be drawn, but you may see something different.
“Gun control laws merely ensure that only criminals have guns.”
Well, and the cops. Plus it means that availability of guns period is harder to come by. Japan, which has one of the strictest gun control stances in the world has an unsurprisingly low rate of gun crimes. Shockingly enough people aren’t being assaulted by armed criminals left and right. How low? Homicide by gun in Japan comes at a rate of 0.02 per 100,000 people, or 1 person in 5 million. In the U.S.? 3.72 per 100,000. Meaning you are 186 times more likely to be shot to death in the U.S. than in Japan. And its not like you are going to be safer from death by other means in the U.S., we have a 10 times greater rate of homicide over all. Thats just one example and there are a number of factors that play in, but the overall picture painted isn’t pretty when you go country by country.
Guns in the hands of more people don’t make us safer, they make it easier for criminals to get guns, they make it easier for unstable people to get guns, they make it easier for guns to be in the hands of people who are poorly (or not at all) trained in their use.
I don’t oppose legal ownership of guns, I don’t believe we need to become like Japan or other no-gun nations. However there are commonsense things that we should do that WOULD make us safer.
1) Limit the types of fire arms allowed to be legal owned. No one needs a semi-automatic rifle outside the military.
2) Require mandatory training for gun ownership. We require you to take lessons and pass an exam to drive a care, why not a gun whose SOLE purpose is for killing?
3) Stop gun show sales, ALL gun sales should require a full background check, waiting period, monitoring and registration.
We can make legal gun ownership for responsible people an option while simultaneously limiting gun availability. Well we could if it weren’t for the second ammendment. Until its repealed or revised I don’t think there is alot that can be done legally, and I think thats a damn shame.
Oh and anyone who tries to claim they need their guns incase the government tries to oppress us is nuts. Unless you happen to have a tank or fighter jet, you’re screwed if the army decides to take charge.
Gun don’t kill people… Tim Stevens having a psychotic break with reality after watching “Swordfish” one too many times and then reading about Joe Lieberman’s latest legislative shenanigans kills people.
What Brendan said. Also cobras.
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Tim: since our verybusy Lawyer-Blogmeister has restricted himself to filing a verybrief Brief just Joking around with the subject (hi Brendan 🙂 , I (being notoriously Unbusy 😉 shall endeavor to shed some light (however Dim 🙂 on [a] what I think is the bigfat Additional reason — beyond the ones you’ve so well set forth — why the popular Fear of our impending Disarmament by the Gummint is greatly exaggerated ; and relatedly. [b] the reason why I feel the fear of a perceived Absolutism, iow Limitlessness, in the 2nd-Amendment right is also very likely unwarranted.
As excerpted & expounded by Wikipedia, our text for today is District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___ (2008), which — emphases mine —
Various state-level gun-rights lawsuits are percolating through the system and whenever one or more reach SCOTUS, it seems probable that arms-bearing as a private Individual right (as distinct from a right to join the state’s National Guard) will be extended to the States and their municipalities. (Unless of course Justice Kennedy has an epiphany, and Swings. 😉
Continuing with Wikipedia, the Court wrote that (emphases added),
Well, obviously I didn’t correctly Close that second Blockquote. / Bah. And I even PROOFREAD it, too. / But you get the idea: everything in the little narrow stupid sub-block-quote-looking thing is Just Me. / Fie. I Hate when that happens. 🙂
David, I applaud you for being intellectually honest about the 2nd Amendment, but beyond that, I’m curious: What’s so scary about a semi-automatic rifle? Have you ever fired a semi-automatic rifle? I can understand fear about automatic weapons, but concern about semi-automatics makes much less sense to me.
Tim, you ask when we started fearing the government. The thing is, that is really nothing even remotely new in this country. Look at the writings of Thomas Jefferson, where you can find quotations such as here“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”, or here “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty . . . And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
Such writings are not merely the product of him having lived through the American Revolution; some of Lincoln’s statements about how an electorate can deal with the government by way of revolution are on the same level of starkness.
Part of the mentality that you need to address is the general concept that power corrupts. Many people who resist stricter gun control laws are not fundamentally OK with the idea that the government is allowed to have guns that the citizens are not, as they are afraid of the slippery slope to a police state. Regardless of whether that thought is plausible, it’s important to address it when advocating for stricter gun control measures; if you don’t, you’ll often be missing the sticking point.
And David, I’m not sure that international examples are the best comparison. Japan has exceedingly strict gun control measures, and has a very low rate of gun-related crime. Switzerland mandates gun ownership for males either in the national militia or in the reserves — typically from age 20 to 30 or 34 if the man is an officer according to Wikipedia — and also has a very low rate of gun-related crime. Different societies are, well, different. Americans are, by first world standards, quite violent. I don’t think it’s an automatic conclusion that we’d be less violent with stricter gun control laws.
Japan–Gee, when you get the living sh*t smacked out of you and pacifism smacked in, plus haven’t had guns since the fascists took over in the 1930s, you don’t exactly have a tradition of any violence, much less gun violence. The island thing helps too.
On the other hand, here in the United States we’ve been batsh*t crazy since inception, you can’t exactly put the gun genie back in the bottle, and if you try lots of folks are going to get rather unruly. Ergo, you might as well cite Jupiter as an applicable example.
Quite frankly, if you’re scared of _my_ gun, you’re an idiot or a criminal. I’m not saying you have to get a gun, but I for one have no inclination to engage a criminal at 3 in the morning with my keen intellect and blunt objects. While I’m not like someone I know who has glint tape at chest level all around his house (to make it easier to shoot center mass in the dark), I do firmly believe the possible presence of firearms keeps a lot of craziness under wraps here in the States. In England, criminals realize they can walk in, grab a kitchen knife, and likely be better armed than the home occupants. (Even the Telegraph had an article on this phenomenon back in 2006.) In the States, on the other hand, you could be armed like freakin’ Audie Murphy and still have no guarantee the homeowner won’t have you outclassed. Think this doesn’t make a difference? Ask criminals sometimes…
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Mike, you are absolutely right. America did grow up with a healthy distrust of the government and I should have noted that. That being said, that is some 235 years in our past and I’ve never felt the paranoia at this high a pitch in my lifetime. It could be that I am just hearing more about it because of the 24 hour news cycle (much like we hear a lot about child abductions or murders by strangers and begin to think it is a problem that’s growing exponentially, when they are, blessedly, rare still) and if so, boy is my face red. Long way of saying, you got me on the historical aspect and I should have nodded to it. Unfotunately that does little to assuage my fears.
James, I can only say to each their own. I don’t feel so under threat that I need a gun for the wildly unlikely chance someone breaks into my home. That may be a naivete on my part, but there you go. Also, to safely store a gun in a way I’d feel comfortable with having it would remove almost any advantage to me having the darn thing in the first place. So while I don’t fear your gun specifically, I fear a culture that is so distressed that they feel the need to pack heat to feel safe. I could still be an idiot (although hopefully not a criminal) by that definition, but there you are.
I think Mike makes a rather deft general point. Though not agreeing completely, obviously, if I did this comment would be redundant.
Today the country is structured quite differently than it was during the revolution. In a sense it was structured like Switzerland. Every male member of society likely owned a musket and knew how to use it. And when attacked the general population made up the military, to fight off an invasion, an “Indian raid”, a rebellion, or a bear. It made little difference, the people were the military and the community was the government and were armed and responsible for their own protection. And such was the US under the fast and loose Articles of Confederation. So too was the US until well after the War of 1812. Things started to change by the time of the Civil War in the North but far less so in the South. By WWII the way the US fights wars had changed completely–the military was setup to fight foreign wars not domestic ones, set up like the British Regulars instead of the American Revolutionaries. It is a philosophical argument whether this change is for better or for worse. Ron Paul and I would agree, we were better off under the old method. And the old method works quite well to resist invasion. Nobody in their right mind would try invading Switzerland. Seriously, the degree to which they have themselves fortified is almost legendary. The cost of that design is that fighting outside your own borders is limited to non-existent. I wouldn’t necessarily call that a bad thing. But it does break the entire military industrial complex.
I know this is a far more complex issue than what a single comment or two can get into. But I think, to a large extent, the fear of the “government taking my guns”. And the fear of the government in general actually ties into the deeper fear of the Military Industrial Complex–the “Government” can over-power us, our means of defense are limited. And the “Government” might try to use that power to try an take away what limited “defense” or “control” that we happen to have.
Personally, I think the paranoia is unwarranted, but I think that that is the general psychology. Even by those that support the military. I think it is more supporting the general ideal of the military, and also likely the “Super Power” status of the US–the “safety” that comes from that, but I think, through a bit of cognitive dissidence they fear that exact same military and government because a feeling that they have no control over it or what it will do.
If this were really all about home protection and hunting, the only guns people would be worried about the government taking away is the 12 gauge pump action shotgun and good old rifles. Because let’s face it, the sound of a 12 gauge is generally enough to make an intruder piss their paints and run away. And if it doesn’t, well you don’t really need to worry about aiming in the dark too much. And the shotgun or the rifle is all you really need for hunting. Most other guns are offensive not defensive.
And as Tim said, I’m not so sure where that gets us. I don’t think we will go back in time to the Pre Military Industrial Complex and Standing Army that we have. Though perhaps it would be better for all of us if we could.
The problem with guns is there is a lot of paranoia in the debate. On both sides. If we could get rid of the paranoia we might come to a rational conclusion. I don’t think either of those two things is terribly likely though.
For my own part, I don’t particularly “like” guns. But I do understand and appreciate the counter argument. That said, I think, generally, everyone walking around with a concealed handgun likely makes us substantially less safe than more safe. Even with responsible gun owners. Because some times things get out of hand, tempers flare and people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. And when you put guns in everyone’s hands you go from a few broken bones to a few dead bodies. Gun control isn’t really about all the time guns spend in the holster, it’s about the times they come out of their holsters. Even with highly trained police officers there are numerous instances of contagious gunfire (80 bullets into one suspect that might have been armed because everyone fired when they thought they heard a shot) and excessive violence at the ends of car chases and what not. The best trained among us make mistakes and get overly excited. It doesn’t make me too keen on people that are lightly trained all thinking they can cary a gun and go all vigilantly to stop a VT style campus assault, because odds are they can’t, and if they tried they’d end up getting shot by someone else that is “just trying to help”. Making the entire situation far more complicated and dangerous for the police.
dcl, I encourage you to read this a href=”http://www.jeffersonreview.com/2010/04/the-gun-is-civilization/”>article and ponder the meaning of the saying, “God didn’t make all men equal, Sam Colt did.” There is thinking going back to the 18th century and the founding fathers that shows it wasn’t just about attacking Indians and bears, it was also about creating a lasting civilization. The thinking wasn’t just that guns in the hands of the citizenry helped prevent tyranny, it was also that an armed populace helped enforce the settlement of differences by reason versus by force. Personally, I’d rather take the training and get a concealed carry permit than invest in becoming a black belt in krav maga (though currently I am running a calculated risk by doing neither).
dcl, I encourage you to read this article and ponder the meaning of the saying, “God didn’t make all men equal, Sam Colt did.” There is thinking going back to the 18th century and the founding fathers that shows it wasn’t just about attacking Indians and bears, it was also about creating a lasting civilization. The thinking wasn’t just that guns in the hands of the citizenry helped prevent tyranny, it was also that an armed populace helped enforce the settlement of differences by reason versus by force. Personally, I’d rather take the training and get a concealed carry permit than invest in becoming a black belt in krav maga (though currently I am running a calculated risk by doing neither).