Real homeland security comes from giving citizens the ability to defend themselves and others, not from wiretaps and warrantless searches.
On Tuesday evening Sulejman Talovic headed to Trolley Square Mall like many other Salt Lake City teens. But instead of a credit card and iPod, he had a shotgun and .38 caliber pistol hidden under his black trenchcoat - plus a backpack full of ammunition.…
Article comments
226 - Clavos
Stan, where did you/have you seen that?
227 - STM
Clav, I won't give too much away on here as there's no need, but trust me, I have seen it quite a few times up close as part of the job I used to do and I must say, it's pretty bloody awful. There are a couple that really stand out in my memory (along with a dead pilot hanging upside down in the cockpit of a crashed aircraft). It would be fair to say that it's where I get my aversion to firearms, although I don't disagree that they are needed in some circumstances. I'm not that keen on flying, either ...
228 - Dave Nalle
Stan, I've seen two people shot up close. One at the moment when he shot himself accidentally and the other shortly after he was shot in a bizarre driveby. Neither experience was at all pleasant, but the blood and in one case bone splinters didn't suddenly make me think that the guns in question were responsible for the wounds rather than the people using the guns.
Dave
229 - Dave Nalle
The reasoning behind that is that it is obviously harder to look after more kit, it's easier for people other than the registered owner to access the weapons and that having lots of them around helps foster an atmosphere in which it seems more socially acceptable.
Pretty vague arguments, Chris. Plus one great illustration of how little you understand US culture as it relates to guns. To wit, there's no such thing as a 'registered owner' of a firearm in the US. Private citizens can buy and sell them without any kind of registration or license for themselves or the gun. They do have to pass a background check, but the government is legally prohibited from tracking gun ownership, and there are no background checks on private sales. Horrified yet?
Dave
230 - STM
Dave asked: "Horrified yet"
Well, he might not be, but I am. I've also just realised that I might as well be conversing with a brick wall. Also, what's there to understand about American gun culture?
It's jest 'bout shootin' shit, ain't it?
231 - Dave Nalle
Well, he might not be, but I am. I've also just realised that I might as well be conversing with a brick wall. Also, what's there to understand about American gun culture?
That's sort of the point. Outsiders tend not to understand the pervasiveness of the belief in gun rights in mainstream America, or how different our attitude towards guns is from what you see in Europe or other areas of the world.
It's jest 'bout shootin' shit, ain't it?
I thought I'd been over this a few times. It's not just about shooting, it's about personal responsibility. It's about trusting the people to decide whether they can own something like a gun and use it properly and not letting government that decision for them.
Dave
232 - STM
Sorry Dave, I love ya, but that's horsesh.it (with a bit of bullsh.t thrown in for good measure).
233 - Dave Nalle
What appears as BS to those outside the US may appear differently to those of us living here. That's the fundamental problem in this discussion - the disconnect between those who are part of the culture and those observing it from the outside.
Dave
234 - Christopher Rose
Dave: Re your #228 - you just have a mental blind spot on this issue. Your own examples serve to illustrate the nonsensical perspective you espouse. One accidental shooting and one driveby: neither could have been prevented by an armed citizenry but could have been prevented easily if the guns weren't there in the first place!
Your argument about personal responsibility is also specious: Someone like you for instance can't even conduct yourself at all times within the parameters of the BC comments policy. What likelihood is there that the citizenry of the USA are all suddenly going to start acting like perfect model citizens just because everyone was armed? Absolute zero!
As your judgement is so fundamentally flawed on such a basic point, how could you be expected or trusted to come up with a wise decision as to when to shoot a gun? It just goes to support my contention that the US is an adolescent nation for your arguments in favour of gun ownership boild down to little more than that perpetual cry of the challenged juvenile "cos I want to!"
You're also trying to frame the argument as though everybody in the US thinks the same way as you, which is blatantly untrue. Your suggestion that the fundamental problem is American vs non-American perspectives is simply bogus.
You've still not come up with a single plausible suggestion as to why the country needs a widely armed population. I seriously doubt you can as you seem to be arguing from a position of dogma or faith rather than anything connected to fact or reality...
235 - S.T.M
Dave said: "What appears as BS to those outside the US ... "
Ah, but it's not like I haven't spent any time in the US, so that argument doesn't hold water. I have two eyes to see with, and two ears to hear with, and I have plenty to compare it to as well. It's also not like I didn't live in a country that had its own 200 year old gun culture until recently either. There is no disconnect.
Truth is, a lot of Americans just like playing with guns, for whatever reason. There is nothing more to it than that. All this rubbish about your second amendment rights is a nonense. It's a justification, and you know it. I have heard all the same arguments here BTW about rights and what have you.
Guns are simply bloody dangerous, and they were designed for one purpose: to kill people (and later, animals). Having 300 million of them in one country is a serious worry, because the more you have, the more likely they are to be used to kill people.
I saw you getting into moonraven about the potential proliferation of AK47s in Venezuela recently, and have to ask, quite seriously, what IS the difference. Having standing armies and armed police forces is one thing, having 300 million guns - and they are the legal ones I presume - out there in the general community looks really bizarre from the outside.
Thing is, to a lot of Americans, it also looks really bizarre from the inside too.
236 - S.T.M
Dave wrote: "And even with only 1/6 of the population owning a gun and an even smaller proportion carrying a concealed firearm, the deterrent effect is very real so long as criminals do not know who is armed and who isn't."
Then why do you have the highest murder rates, the highest gun murder rates, the highest crime rates generally and the highest per capita prison populations of any nation in the DEVELOPED world (you know which countries I mean, and it doesn't include Colombia and Honduras).
Your argument falls fair on its blurter on the basis of that one bit of nonsense alone.
237 - Dave Nalle
Chris, you continue to completely not understand the most basic principles of American society.
As your judgement is so fundamentally flawed on such a basic point, how could you be expected or trusted to come up with a wise decision as to when to shoot a gun?
It's not that my judgment is flawed, Christopher, it's that you just will not accept the possibility of the existence of the kind of basic philosophical ideas which US society is built on. If it doesn't fit your model then you just reject it out of hand.
It just goes to support my contention that the US is an adolescent nation for your arguments in favour of gun ownership boild down to little more than that perpetual cry of the challenged juvenile "cos I want to!"
I reject the idea that it's juvenile, but yes you are exactly right ''cos I want to' is the basic, founding principle of US society. The nation was founded on the idea - and many of us still believe in it - that people should be allowed to do whatever they want so long as it does no harm to other people. This includes the presumption that people will behave responsibly within those prarameters. Owning a gun is NOT inherently harmful. There is no active harm in owning a piece of hardware which has the potential for killing or wounding others. A gun is harmless unless used with conscious intent to do harm. We believe that it is the intent to do harm which is the problem, not the gun. Accordingly, you punish those who commit criminal acts, you do not punish the entire population by taking away rights and liberties preemptively.
The fact that you cannot understand this basic idea of freedom as the natural condition of man, rather than a privelege granted by the state, makes it almost impossible to discuss this subject and many others with you in any intelligent way. If you cannot accept or even consider that people are born with a natural entitlement to complete freedom, you're rejecting 200+ years of liberal philosophy which is the basis of American society.
You're also trying to frame the argument as though everybody in the US thinks the same way as you, which is blatantly untrue. Your suggestion that the fundamental problem is American vs non-American perspectives is simply bogus.
The founding fathers certainly believed as I do, and our system of government and our principles of social organization are based on those same beliefs. I agree that there are many in America today who have drifted away from those basic principles, but that is NOT a positive change, but rather a sign of the growing corruption of our society and its ideals. Those who have moved away from basic American principles of individual liberty are no more American in an ideological sense than you are.
You've still not come up with a single plausible suggestion as to why the country needs a widely armed population. I seriously doubt you can as you seem to be arguing from a position of dogma or faith rather than anything connected to fact or reality...
Fact and reality have a limited applicability here when we're talking about a matter of principle.
But there are lots of reasons why an armed populace is desirable, most of which you will reject solely because you don't believe in individual liberty. Here are ones I've cited before:
• Defense of self and property
• Ability to resist oppressive government
• Because no right should be denied to a responsible citizen.
• General deterence of crime
And to answer Stan's complaint that crime doesn't seem to be deterred and gun violence is higher in the US than elsewhere, I just have to point out again, that a little bit more violence seems to come with the kind of society we've established here, and that has little or nothing to do with guns. There is a higher level of non-gun violence here as well, so it's not surprising that there's a higher level of gun violence. My argument is that without the deterrent effect of private gun ownership violence would be even more common. The validity of that position has been pretty well demonstrated by the decrease in violence in those states which have passed concealed carry laws during the last decade or so.
Dave
238 - Christopher Rose
Dave, Dave, Dave, what are we to do with you?
First of all, you presume to speak for America when your views are clearly not at all part of the American mainstream. Why you continue to labour under this self-inflicted delusion is anybody's guess.
I think I'm much closer to the mainstream of global political thought than your exotic fantasies will ever be. Of course, you still seem to believe that the US is the mainstream and you're at the heart of it. Neither idea is true!
That seems classic juvenilia to me, which may well be why you react so strongly against the idea...
If you're going to keep making up long diatribes of irrelevant nonsense every time I make the point, well, you're only serving to prove it's accuracy and validity.
Just because I'm not persuaded by your militaristic fantasy of an armed nation doesn't in any way imply that I am against personal freedom. You just made it up! But please do keep making the accusation, it serves as wonderful proof that your ideas are sound only in your own imagination.
In response to your four points in favour of wider weapons ownership:-
1. It's the job of the police to enforce the law. If it wasn't, you wouldn't need a police force in the first place. Would a nation of armed vigilantes instead be a better solution?
2. Is there a history of the US needing to defend itself against an oppressive government? I believe not, so you seem to be trying to solve a problem that doesn't even exist. Way to go to be so grounded in reality!
3. Rights also entail responsibilities. You personally can't even conduct yourself within the very loose comments policy of this site. Why on earth would you imagine that you are anywhere near clear enough in judgment as to be allowed weapons?
4. Guns don't deter crime, they encourage an arms race. That's why people in the USA have started owning bigger and more powerful guns.
As to your final point, one of the biggest social pressures that causes violence is population density. Europe has 60% more people living in less than half the land area of the USA yet, as you have been forced to admit, is way less violent.
The only thing the US experiment in weapons ownership has shown is that it is a bad idea. If you weren't so blinded by your defective principles, you might be able to see that.
Thanks for admitting that "Fact and reality have a limited applicability" for you, that makes a lot of things a lot clearer. I take it you will at least accept that there is no difference between "a matter of principle" and blind faith?
I find it bitterly ironic that you have managed to free yourself from spiritual dogma only to have locked yourself into another set of rigid ideas, one that doesn't have even the pretense of being for humanity's good, as the faithists believe.
239 - Al Barger
Christopher Rose, again with the arrogant presumption that your opinions reflect those of the rest of the world, as in this clearly factually wrong statement: "you presume to speak for America when your views are clearly not at all part of the American mainstream."
In fact, support for the rights of gun ownership and self-defense are if anything more American than apple pie. You can argue that this is out of sync with the European pinkos that you presume as the great arbiters of Truth. You can argue some Freudian nonsense about guns-as-phalluses. You can try to argue that we'd be better off with more gun control laws.
But it's nonsense to say that supporting gun rights is not a mainstream American political position. Note how even our gun-grabbing Democrats have backed way off on the gun control stuff in the last half dozen years. That's not cause they have learned respect for the US Constitution suddenly, but because it got them beat into the ground electorally.
And SCREW "what are we to do with you?" This really reveals your underlying authoritarian nature, as do comments like "You personally can't even conduct yourself within the very loose comments policy of this site. Why on earth would you imagine that you are anywhere near clear enough in judgment as to be allowed weapons?"
You really relish your sub-hall monitor level of petty authority as BC comments cop. Also, it's really cute how you presume to fantasize yourself as having some right to even think about telling a peaceful citizen such as Nalle what kind of weapons he should or shouldn't be allowed to have.
It's all about how you think people should or shouldn't be allowed to speak and act. That you would criticize Dave Nalle of all people for the tone of his comments speaks pretty much to your basic authoritarian nature.
It's reasonable if unfortunate that Olsen might find it necessary to have someone try to thin out some of the truly inflammatory and abusive foolishness from comments on his site. That's on the order of a shopkeeper scrubbing the graffiti off the walls of his store. It's not a bit defensible, however, for you to be even trying to characterize the perfectly civil and restrained tone of Dave Nalle as abusive or a violation of comment policy simply because you disagree with his viewpoint.
Such little flexings of your imagined authority don't impress anybody. My, how patient you are that you continue allowing Dave Nalle to continue making his bad speech! What an exemplar of enlightened tolerance that Christopher Rose is!
240 - Paul2
Al Barger,
you're trying to discredit Christopher Rose without addressing any of the arguments for or against gun control.
Only people that cannot find arguments or facts to support their position resort to personal attacks as their only way out.
241 - Christopher Rose
Al, you're the authoritarian one not me. You're also attributing positions to me that I don't hold, even though I believe you already know better.
I don't believe the Democrats lost recent elections because of their position on gun control but due to the current poor form of their team. Form always goes in swings and roundabouts and they'll surely have their day again.
Not that I care much which of your two main parties is in power, the differences are increasingly slight between them as the nature of what's politically important is shifting so rapidly at the moment and they are both in need of reform.
I think my question as to Dave's presumption of his own fitness to hold weapons is an entirely reasonable thing to ask. Based on his inability to control himself at all times within this site's slack norms, I am concerned about his ability not to lose it so badly as to indulge in inappropriate weapons use. And he's clearly smarter than many Americans, after all he's an elitist pig!
I got the impression that you thought my remarks were addressed to Dave's expression on this page but I wasn't, it was a general thing. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.
Please chill out with the semi-hysterical hostility though, it's really getting old. I didn't tell Dave what weapons he could have, I exercised my right to express my opinion. I take it you don't have a problem with that? My opinion is different to his and I like to think with better reasoning, for he argues from a point of political theory and I favour praxis.
Finally, I don't relish any such "sub-hall monitor level of petty authority as BC comments cop", but I do work really hard to be as fair-minded as possible, and even more so with people whose views are different to mine; but please feel free to keep venting fantasy spleen if it makes you feel better than the present reality...
242 - JR
Dave Nalle: And even with only 1/6 of the population owning a gun and an even smaller proportion carrying a concealed firearm, the deterrent effect is very real so long as criminals do not know who is armed and who isn't.
I'm afraid your assertion of reality isn't good enough for me. Can you point us to surveys among would-be criminals that give some indication of what percentage of them were deterred by the threat of armed citizens? And can you provide corresponding figures on how many people committed a crime because they could easily get a gun themselves?
243 - Dave Nalle
Nice try, JR. You know as well as I do that studies like that would be virtually impossible to carry out reliably. The anecdotal evidence for the deterrent effects of gun ownership is widely available, and more importantly the statistical evidence is definitive.
Dave
244 - JR
Dave Nalle: You know as well as I do that studies like that would be virtually impossible to carry out reliably. The anecdotal evidence for the deterrent effects of gun ownership is widely available, and more importantly the statistical evidence is definitive.
See, what that first sentence tells me that there is no relevent evidence, let alone definitive evidence. So your assertion remains unsupported.
It certainly sounds plausible, even in a limited sense logical, that armed citizens would deter crime. But that doesn't make it true.
245 - Dave Nalle
Dave, Dave, Dave, what are we to do with you?
Send me some money so I can buy more guns?
First of all, you presume to speak for America when your views are clearly not at all part of the American mainstream. Why you continue to labour under this self-inflicted delusion is anybody's guess.
Check a poll sometime, Christopher. The majority of Americans favor private gun ownership. In a 2004 poll 63% of the population opposed the idea of banning handguns. Stop trying to project your eurocentric assumptions onto our population. I may not speak FOR them, but my beliefs are certainly compatible with those of a majority of our population.
I think I'm much closer to the mainstream of global political thought than your exotic fantasies will ever be.
Oh, I'm sure you are. But I'm not writing from a globalist perspective, now am I?
Of course, you still seem to believe that the US is the mainstream and you're at the heart of it. Neither idea is true!
The US is certainly NOT the mainstream. We're different from the rest of the world in a number of ways, and that's a good thing.
Just because I'm not persuaded by your militaristic fantasy of an armed nation
You continue to completely not get it. It's the opposite of a 'militaristic fantasy'. The idea of an armed citizenry is to move away from the military/imperialist model. It goes hand in hand with disbanding the federal military altogether. The idea is to provide for national defense without having a substantial standing army.
doesn't in any way imply that I am against personal freedom. You just made it up!
You're certainly against the freedom to bear arms. No?
1. It's the job of the police to enforce the law. If it wasn't, you wouldn't need a police force in the first place. Would a nation of armed vigilantes instead be a better solution?
The problem here is that the police do not PREVENT crime. They punish it after the fact. If the police track down the person who killed you, that's nice, but it doesn't make you any less dead. Private gun ownership prevents crime in a way that the police just aren't equipped to.
2. Is there a history of the US needing to defend itself against an oppressive government? I believe not, so you seem to be trying to solve a problem that doesn't even exist. Way to go to be so grounded in reality!
You're kidding, right? How about the revolutionary war? How about the civil war? And believe me, the first time your country turns into a dictatorship and you have no ability to fight back is really all it takes to ruin your day.
3. Rights also entail responsibilities. You personally can't even conduct yourself within the very loose comments policy of this site.
As Al Barger points out here, and as others have mentioned before, I've shown notable restraint in dealing with the obnoxious commentors who infest the politics section. I don't recall you deleting a hell of a lot of my comments, not just because I don't care - which I don't - but because you do leave a trail and make your little editorial notes, and they aren't showing up on a lot of my comments. I also have a sense of proportion. These are comments on a blog, not works of great literature. If I think I wrote something of great import I save it to my own computer. If you delete it here I'm unlikely to even notice. That's called having a sense of proportion, something which you clearly lack, to wit:
Why on earth would you imagine that you are anywhere near clear enough in judgment as to be allowed weapons?
The fact that you equate comments on a website with the responsibilities of gun ownership show how utterly clueless you are. There's no meaningful consequence to the occasional rude comment here. Part of owning a gun and doing so responsibly is understanding the consequences of the misuse of that gun, not just in your own hands, but in the hands of others. That means not just governing your own actions, but in my case making sure that my arms are stored securely and that my kids are aware of basic gun safety and know better than to even touch a gun without adult supervision.
I realize you don't understand this responsibility, because you think the risks of gun use are equivalent in some way to making a rude comment on a blog.
4. Guns don't deter crime, they encourage an arms race. That's why people in the USA have started owning bigger and more powerful guns.
What arms race? What bigger and more powerful guns? You've been watching too many movies, Christopher. No one who doesn't have an embarassingly small penis is running around with a .50 Desert Eagle or a Purdey .577 or any of the other legendary super calibre guns. Those calibres are mostly a holdover of the 19th century. Modern guns that use those cartridges are novelty items. No one actually needs to shoot lengthwise through a buffalo, take down an elephant or shoot out the engine-block of a car.
The trend in guns in the US is towards small guns with good stopping power which can be carried easily in a purse or a shoulder holster. Shotguns - which are legal in most parts of Europe - are more powerful and do more damage at short range than the typical US handgun.
As to your final point, one of the biggest social pressures that causes violence is population density. Europe has 60% more people living in less than half the land area of the USA yet, as you have been forced to admit, is way less violent.
I wasn't exactly forced to admit it. And we're also going into the funny realm of statistics, where you can say 'way less violent' and I can say 'huh?' The truth is that the US and Europe are both relatively non-violent compared to other parts of the world and to past eras, and that includes the level of gun violence. While Europe has almost no gun violence the US still has a very small amount in comparison to other kinds of violence. No one in the US is at all worried about getting shot in the normal course of their day. We don't have maniacs wandering the streets shooting people as a general rule.
The only thing the US experiment in weapons ownership has shown is that it is a bad idea. If you weren't so blinded by your defective principles, you might be able to see that.
And you remain blinded by your own provincialism. You still think it's an 'experiment'. It's not. It's part of our culture. No one sat down and decided to try out guns and see how they worked. They were part of society in 1787 and a conscious decision was made then and subsequently reviewed multiple times by the courts and legislature, to retain private ownership of guns.
Thanks for admitting that "Fact and reality have a limited applicability" for you, that makes a lot of things a lot clearer. I take it you will at least accept that there is no difference between "a matter of principle" and blind faith?
There's a huge difference since the principles are arrived at through reason, while blind faith is by its nature unreasonable. The differnece between you and I is that we have different priorities. I put the highest priority on individual liberty. You place personal safety and your sense of security higher than that.
I find it bitterly ironic that you have managed to free yourself from spiritual dogma only to have locked yourself into another set of rigid ideas, one that doesn't have even the pretense of being for humanity's good, as the faithists believe.
Oddly enough, I remain confident that liberty is good for humanity, and I base that not on faith, but on observation and experience.
Dave
246 - Dave Nalle
It certainly sounds plausible, even in a limited sense logical, that armed citizens would deter crime. But that doesn't make it true.
JR, the one area of data that we do have that is reliable, is the statistics coming out of those states which have passed concealed carry laws. Universally those states have shown a decline in violent crime which is measurably higher than the general decline in crime nationwide. This has been easy to track because it has taken place in the last decade and there has been some serious academic study of it.
When they were considering passing concealed carry the staff of the Minnesota State Legislature put together a nice little summary of the studies on the subject which is available in a PDF. It covers both sides of the argument, and doesn't draw any conclusions, but reading it over it's hard to deny that the Lott and Mustard study from 1997's Journal of Legal Review and the followup work by its authors is awfully convincing.
Dave
247 - Christopher Rose
re Dave's #245:-
The majority of Americans favour a lot of things but it doesn't make them right. Presumably as you style yourself as an elitist pig you already know that...
Every country is different, so I don't quite understand what you mean by saying the US is different. The subtext I get from you is that you really mean the USA is better and that's sometimes true and often not. It's just another country, better than some in some ways, worse in others.
Your point about your weapons theory as not being a miltaristic fantasy is entirely absurd. Even if you did disband the military, your scenario would replace it with a universally armed citizenry. Just as this didn't work in the Cowboy era of US history, it certainly wouldn't work now. You'd simply replace an organised force with an uncontrolled anarchy of firepower.
This line is classic Nallian absurdity: "The idea is to provide for national defense without having a substantial standing army." Where exactly would you be keeping the US nuclear arsenal then? In Walmart or the local gas station? Lunacy!
I'm not against the freedom to bear arms in principle but praxis has shown that it is not a good idea. I'm against the freedom for everybody to be armed because precious little good seems to come from it.
You can quote all the statistics you want that show that some states crime rates have gone down, but they would go down a lot more if neither criminals or citizens were armed.
If the police were doing a better job, there would be less weapons in the hands of criminals. Just because they aren't doing such a good job, partly hampered by the current gun laws in the USA, doesn't mean that we should have armed posses patrolling the streets doing their job for them, which is what you seem to be implying is the way to go.
Exactly how long ago was the civil war? The fact is that the world as a whole is becoming a richer more democratic place. You are guarding against ancient acts of history that have no relevance to today.
Are you seriously contending that the US Government is going to turn against its own people? Surely not in such a fine country, the land of the free, that you love to champion at such great length?
As to your conduct on these pages, it is true that you have shown some restraint, but not enough to stay within the very loose constraints of the comments policy. The most recent editing of one of your remarks was as long ago as yesterday!
It's a failure of logic, hopefully accidental rather than deliberate spin on your part, to state that I equated self control on this site with self control with a weapon.
What I said was that you can't manage to do the former, which does have consequences in that you then both inflame others and legitimize their right to respond in kind.
As this shows that you have limited self control and poor judgement, in that you believe your actions have no consequence, it seems entirely reasonable to wonder how exactly you should conduct yourself when in a more real confrontation. You certainly wouldn't be the first or the last US citizen to use a weapon inappropriately in the heat of the moment.
If you haven't noticed that criminals have started using weapons like Uzis and AK47s more than they used to in the past, you clearly have no idea what is going on in your country. There is an arms race and it's taking place on the streets of American cities throughout the country.
I was directly comparing the USA to Europe as they are the only roughly similar entities in this world. Trying to change the terms to compare the USA to other countries is basic confusion tactics, a strategy you love to deploy.
I have been to the US more than twenty times and have seen incidents of gun use or police action to prevent it on at least three occasions.
On the other hand, I've been in Europe for decades, including over twenty years in the racially tense London borough of Brixton, and have heard a gun being used once.
I love the arrogance in accusing me of provincialism when I am clearly siding with humanity in general rather than one US political idea in particular, a tactic you love to deploy when you're clearly losing a debate but, setting that aside, let's look at your case:-
Over two hundred years ago, in a world and a time that in no way resembled our current time, a bunch of idealistic innocents tried to make their part of the world a better place.
By and large that vision has come true but the cultural hangover of the arms issue is one of the clear weaknesses of that process. It's a failure on many levels, cultural and political, that the only way the American citizenry can co-exist is by adapting the principle of mutually assured destruction from a global deterrent to a local one. If that's what the land of the free is becoming, it has way bigger problems to address than gun control.
You don't actually have principles arrived at through reason, you have a set of prejudices and have constructed some "reasoning" to confirm them. That isn't freedom or liberty, it's just another case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
Surely even you, with your bizarre mix of elitism and individual liberty, can see that there are far more important challenges facing all of us than arming a citizenry, may of whom, judging by the people we see on all these reality TV shows, are even less lucid than you?
You say "The differnece between you and I is that we have different priorities. I put the highest priority on individual liberty. You place personal safety and your sense of security higher than that."
I say OF COURSE! My personal safety, including the right not to be shot by some hysterical hothead who thinks they're on a mission, is a million times more important than your right to bear arms.
Absolute liberty is a complete illusion. If it wasn't, I'd be within my rights to shoot you as I see you as a threat to my safety.
There has NEVER been a time in all human history when people were absolutely free to do what they wanted. Even children aren't allowed to run wild and free. You seem to want a world that sounds great in theory but would be an absolute living hell in reality.
248 - Clavos
@#247:
The majority of Americans favour a lot of things but it doesn't make them right
No, but it does make it legal, and we are a nation of laws.
If you don't like it, if (not when) it ever comes up for a vote, you can vote against it...oh, wait...you can't, can you?
Oh, well...
249 - troll
[ ALERT
political section neophytes -
don't let dirty old uncle Dave diddle you with his dramatic (though disingenuous) display of (debunked) data analysis
do your homework - a brief review of the literature surrounding the Lott/Mustard study will suffice in this case to show that the study is unconvincing
remember to remember - social science ain't exactly science
it's all politics...fuckin' politic$ ]
250 - Christopher Rose
Clavos: no, I can't vote in US elections but I can debate with people who have some very odd viewpoints.
This may be trite but it is also true: Arming for peace is like fucking for virginity, except that innocent people will die if Dave's fantasy came true...
251 - Clavos
Correction to my 248:
Second line should be:
According to the minority, no, but it does make it legal, and we are a nation of laws.
252 - foolkiller
"...and we are a nation of laws." - Clavos
Someone appears to have forgotten to tell this Administration that. From every signing statement, to all the wonderful shit coming out from the Libby trial, add Safavian, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps, the MCA and it's suspension of habeus corpus (especially in GITMO, the Padilla case (held for years with no trial or hearing or habeus corpus rights, and he's a citizen), pre-emptively removing the Administration and it's lackeys from answering to the World Court, all this and a lot more...from the people who are supposed to protect and defend our rule of law.
But the original poster defends all of that, and attempts to distract us by raising up some bullshit about a psycho with a gun who killed some people, as if it were more than just what it was, the actions of a deranged individual.
Big difference between rational thought and the GOP kind of rationalization, or radical Dem rationalizations for that matter. The Dems just aren't as good at getting all their people into lockstep on anything.
Anything but dealing with actual solutions to actual problems.
253 - Clavos
@#252:
Someone appears to have forgotten to tell this Administration that. From every signing statement, to all the wonderful shit coming out from the Libby trial, add Safavian, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps, the MCA and it's suspension of habeus corpus (especially in GITMO, the Padilla case (held for years with no trial or hearing or habeus corpus rights, and he's a citizen), pre-emptively removing the Administration and it's lackeys from answering to the World Court, all this and a lot more...from the people who are supposed to protect and defend our rule of law.
Excellent argument for citizen gun ownership, killer.
Thank you.
254 - Dave Nalle
don't let dirty old uncle Dave diddle you with his dramatic (though disingenuous) display of (debunked) data analysis
do your homework - a brief review of the literature surrounding the Lott/Mustard study will suffice in this case to show that the study is unconvincing
Troll, I provided a link not to just the Lott/Mustard study, but also to a neutral analysis of it and its critics. I realize that there are those who have attempted to debunk it, and left it to each individual to determine whether those efforts were successful. That's hardly deceitful.
Obviously I think that Lott/Mustard and other similar studies are pretty damned convincing, and the efforts to dispute them are feeble. I've even looked at the source data myself and come up with my own conclusions, which are less enthusiastic than Lott/Mustard and Lott's later work - which is also very interesting.
Looking at the complete picture, the worst conclusion you can reach is that the impact of concealed carry is not negative. It certainly hasn't resulted in MORE gun crime. That being the case, why not support that right for our citizens?
Dave
255 - foolkiller
@ #253 - Clavos, I am personally all for a "well regulated militia" and it's right to keep and bear arms. The key word there is regulated, licensed and accountable just like the deadly weapon of your car.
Yet if you truly believe that having a handgun is going to keep you safe from the Federal government, should it turn uglier than historically normal, you are indeed living the life of a Fool.
@ #254 - All for people having legal weapons, how about enforcing the laws on the books already concerning illegal sales, dealerships which sell arms illegally, and maximum penalties for crimes involving a firearm.
Oh yes, and how about discontinuing the bullshit of conflating a psycho teenager and an unfortunate crime with your racist notions about "muslim youth".
256 - Clavos
@#255:
Yet if you truly believe that having a handgun is going to keep you safe from the Federal government, should it turn uglier than historically normal, you are indeed living the life of a Fool.
Perhaps you're right, killer, but it does give me the option of fighting back, however vainly.
257 - foolkiller
Clavos - you miss the main point. A militia does NOT carry concealed weapons. Such behavior is counterproductive to the goal of deterrence, no one is deterred if they do not know the defensive weapon is there.
A "well regulated militia" indicates a standing force, openly armed, not a citizen with a gun under his coat, or a .50 caliber machine gun in his garage, or selling weapons form the trunk of a car to felons.
Now is the difference clear?
258 - Clavos
Clavos - you miss the main point. A militia does NOT carry concealed weapons. Such behavior is counterproductive to the goal of deterrence, no one is deterred if they do not know the defensive weapon is there.
I'm not sure who you're talking about here, but there definitely is a deterrent when someone bent on doing you bodily harm can't be sure whether or not you're armed.
I'm not sure why we're even discussing here, as all I advocate is NOT outlawing private weapons altogether. Earlier, I commented that we should have stronger laws (and enforce them to the limit) against crimes committed with weapons, and I see above that you do, too.
I advocate LEGAL weapons, and have NO problem limiting them to hunting weapons and handguns; no assault weapons.
There's no place for an AR 16 or AK47 in a household, unless it's issued Swiss-style by the government.
259 - foolkiller
Clavos - it began with me citing your assertion that the US is indeed a nation governed by the rule of law. I proceeded to point out that many appear to have forgotten such when it came to this administration and their violations of our laws...over and over again.
Was not directed at you, specifically, nor was such indicated by anything I wrote, yet you appear to have taken it that way and became defensive.
Again, guilty conscience, perhaps?
260 - Clavos
killer,
Again, guilty conscience, perhaps?
See my response(s) on the other thread regarding guilt...
261 - Dave Nalle
The majority of Americans favour a lot of things but it doesn't make them right.
I'm with you on that. Majority rule is mob rule. But that doesn't mean the majority is wrong either.
Presumably as you style yourself as an elitist pig you already know that...
Irony continues to be lost on Christopher...
Your point about your weapons theory as not being a miltaristic fantasy is entirely absurd. Even if you did disband the military, your scenario would replace it with a universally armed citizenry. Just as this didn't work in the Cowboy era of US history, it certainly wouldn't work now. You'd simply replace an organised force with an uncontrolled anarchy of firepower.
Again, your assumptions and your ignorance do you in. First off, the level of crime and violence by citizen on citizen on the western frontier was LOWER than in the civilized parts of the nation at the same time. The fiction of the violence of the 'wild west' comes mostly from a few highly publicized incidents and doesn't hold up historically. Plus the federal military wasn't disbanded in that era. It is, in fact, the first era in which we HAD a standing military. Prior to the civil war the idea was anathema.
This line is classic Nallian absurdity: "The idea is to provide for national defense without having a substantial standing army." Where exactly would you be keeping the US nuclear arsenal then? In Walmart or the local gas station? Lunacy!
Why do we need a nuclear arsenal? But I do agree that we need to maintain some level of centralized military administration to maintain infrastructure, handle training and preserve technology of a modern military. What we don't need is millions of professional soldiers and overseas bases.
I'm not against the freedom to bear arms in principle but praxis has shown that it is not a good idea. I'm against the freedom for everybody to be armed because precious little good seems to come from it.
I'm not one of those who believe in mandatory gun ownership and training, though I have to point out that in those US communities where that is the law it hasn't led to additional crime and violence. As for proof that the freedom to own guns is a bad idea, it's just not there. No causal relationship has ever been established between gun ownership by citizens and gun crime. Gun crime remains overwhelmingly the province of criminals, many of whom already acquire their guns illegally under existing law, and would do so no matter what restrictions were in place. And, of course, a complete ban on guns is impossible, as has been demonstrated conclusively by those nations which have tried it.
You can quote all the statistics you want that show that some states crime rates have gone down, but they would go down a lot more if neither criminals or citizens were armed.
You can make that assumption, but the data doesn't exist to support it. Much the opposite, in fact. Those US jurisdictions which have attempted total gun bans have seen substantial increases in crimes of all sorts. DC banned guns and went from being a middling high-crime city to the city with the highest rate of murder in the nation.
If the police were doing a better job, there would be less weapons in the hands of criminals.
The police cannot function to preempt crime without massive violations of rights well beyond just the right to own guns. Americans might put up with stricter gun laws. They won't put up with police surveillance of the general populace.
Just because they aren't doing such a good job, partly hampered by the current gun laws in the USA,
As I've pointed out before, most police officers support the idea of an armed citizenry. It helps in their work keeping the public safe.
doesn't mean that we should have armed posses patrolling the streets doing their job for them, which is what you seem to be implying is the way to go.
I never said anything like that, but the fact is that the police DO support the idea of citizen patrols where they are necessary. There's a police sponsored program in every part of the US called the 'Neighborhood Watch' program which encourages citizens to watch for and deter criminal activity in their neighborhoods.
Exactly how long ago was the civil war? The fact is that the world as a whole is becoming a richer more democratic place. You are guarding against ancient acts of history that have no relevance to today.
Ah, the innocence of the sheep. Don't question Big Brother. He's only trying to protect you. Ignorance IS strength!
BTW, your 'richer and more democratic' is what some of us consider increasingly powerless and oppressed.
As mentioned frequently when discussing Hugo Chavez, a dictatorship is no less a dictatorship if it's voted into office.
Are you seriously contending that the US Government is going to turn against its own people? Surely not in such a fine country, the land of the free, that you love to champion at such great length?
I'm not contending that, but there are plenty right here on BC who claim it's already happened or is ongoing. I think it's not impossible that there could be a breakdown of federal authority and situations in which citizens would be under serious threat if not armed. The phrase 'better safe than sorry' comes to mind in this context.
As to your conduct on these pages, it is true that you have shown some restraint, but not enough to stay within the very loose constraints of the comments policy. The most recent editing of one of your remarks was as long ago as yesterday!
As I've pointed out before, I don't even look to see whether my comments have been edited or not. I say what I think is right. If it doesn't fit your parameters, that's on you.
It's a failure of logic, hopefully accidental rather than deliberate spin on your part, to state that I equated self control on this site with self control with a weapon.
Christopher, if that's not what you meant, then you shouldn't have said it. And you certainly shouldn't have said it again as you do below.
What I said was that you can't manage to do the former, which does have consequences in that you then both inflame others and legitimize their right to respond in kind.
There are some comments which deserve response in kind and as you know I don't agree with the comment policy.
As this shows that you have limited self control and poor judgement, in that you believe your actions have no consequence,
No, it shows that I don't agree with the comment policy and believe that individuals should be able to comment and be held responsible for what thye say. I accept responsibility for anything I've said. I also accept that there's a comment policy and try to at least stick with the spirit of it, but I can't really be expected to figure out how you are going to interpret it.
it seems entirely reasonable to wonder how exactly you should conduct yourself when in a more real confrontation.
No, Christopher, it's insulting and shows a profound lack of judgment on your part. That you can continue to equate comments on a blog with the use of a firearm shows how totally disconnected from reality you are.
I think this attitude must be a product of the kind of managed society you live in. You just do as your told and you don't have to think about or understand the consequences of your actions. You aren't expected to be responsible for your actions so you don't understand the concept of individual responsibility. That shows up again and again in your comments on subjects like this.
Here in the US most of us learn to understand the consequences of our actions and the responsibilities which we have - and we can tell the difference between the import of a blog comment and shooting someone and would never try to equate the two or suggest that there's a relationship, or judge peoples actions in the real world based on their comments in this sphere.
I think a good argument could be made that the reason we DO have slightly higher levels of violent crime here on the US is because this idea of individual responsibility is perhaps a bit challenging for some people to grasp and they never quite 'get' it.
You certainly wouldn't be the first or the last US citizen to use a weapon inappropriately in the heat of the moment.
Based on your logic I'll have to wait in line behind people like Just One Man and Arch Conservative who are presumably getting ready to go on mass killing sprees.
You really have no idea how ridiculous you sound, do you?
If you haven't noticed that criminals have started using weapons like Uzis and AK47s more than they used to in the past, you clearly have no idea what is going on in your country. There is an arms race and it's taking place on the streets of American cities throughout the country.
Again, you show total ignorance of history and of contemporary reality in the US. Weapons like that were LEGAL a couple of generations ago and widely available. Your idea of an 'arms race' is completely fictional. Low-cost, powerful and fully automatic weapons have always been easily available on the gray or black market in the US - no more so now than in the past. In fact, in recent years there's been some success keeping super-cheap and weapons like the Mac-10 off the market.
And your 'arms race' theory certainly isn't born out by the 20 years of consistently declining crime levels in the US.
I was directly comparing the USA to Europe as they are the only roughly similar entities in this world. Trying to change the terms to compare the USA to other countries is basic confusion tactics, a strategy you love to deploy.
Christopher, comparing the US to Europe is hardly a model of accuracy, but it may be the best we have. I didn't try to change to any other comparison. You're the one who thinks such comparisons are relevant.
I have been to the US more than twenty times and have seen incidents of gun use or police action to prevent it on at least three occasions.
Amazing. Do you make regular visits to major urban crime areas? I lived in the most violent city in the US for a decade and never saw a single violent crime during that time.
On the other hand, I've been in Europe for decades, including over twenty years in the racially tense London borough of Brixton, and have heard a gun being used once.
Which means exactly nothing, just as my 10 years living in DC does. Hell, I live in one of the most peaceful counties in the US and I hear gunfire almost every day and think nothing of it.
I love the arrogance in accusing me of provincialism when I am clearly siding with humanity in general
And I love the arrogance of thinking that you speak for the entirety of humanity, when obviously others do not agree with your limited perspective.
rather than one US political idea in particular, a tactic you love to deploy when you're clearly losing a debate but, setting that aside, let's look at your case:-
I love the way you like to completely misrepresent my positions. It's such a childishly manipulative technique.
As you should know perfectly well I'm not talking about 'one' US political idea, but an entire philosophy of human society which predates the US and applies universally. The gun issue is just a specific manifestation of it.
Over two hundred years ago, in a world and a time that in no way resembled our current time, a bunch of idealistic innocents tried to make their part of the world a better place.
Good job being ocndescending to an entire generation of important American leaders and to everyone who has followed their lead since that time. Does your arrogance know no bounds?
By and large that vision has come true but the cultural hangover of the arms issue is one of the clear weaknesses of that process. It's a failure on many levels, cultural and political, that the only way the American citizenry can co-exist is by adapting the principle of mutually assured destruction from a global deterrent to a local one. If that's what the land of the free is becoming, it has way bigger problems to address than gun control.
Again you demonstrate that you have no idea what you're talking about. Clearly the ideas of principle and basic human rights are utterly meaningless to you. You're incapable of understanding the most basic reasoning behind a free society.
As for 'mutually assured destruction', that has nothing to do with gun rights. Again, the fact that you can make such a comparison with a straight face shows that you have no clue at all. It's the same thing as your comparison to blog comments. You've got no idea where guns fit in the hierarchy of life.
You don't actually have principles arrived at through reason, you have a set of prejudices and have constructed some "reasoning" to confirm them. That isn't freedom or liberty, it's just another case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
Your opinion. But as we've already seen with your comparison of guns to nuclear weapons and blog comments, your rational faculties are so crippled by your background that there's no reason to take anything you say on this subject seriously.
Surely even you, with your bizarre mix of elitism and individual liberty, can see that there are far more important challenges facing all of us than arming a citizenry, may of whom, judging by the people we see on all these reality TV shows, are even less lucid than you?
And again, when did I ever suggest the mandatory arming of the entire citizenry. I support the right of citizens to be armed, not the militarization of society, but you can't tell the difference between the two. Having no grounding whatsoever in how a free society operates you find it threatening and incomprehensible.
You say "The differnece between you and I is that we have different priorities. I put the highest priority on individual liberty. You place personal safety and your sense of security higher than that."
I say OF COURSE! My personal safety, including the right not to be shot by some hysterical hothead who thinks they're on a mission, is a million times more important than your right to bear arms.
Then there's no basis for discussion. You think it's okay to take away the rights of others for your own protection. You're not qualified to live in a free society.
Absolute liberty is a complete illusion. If it wasn't, I'd be within my rights to shoot you as I see you as a threat to my safety.
No, Christopher. That's simplistic sophistry. Liberty applies equally to all in the society, so you can't violate my liberty by shooting me.
That you suggest that I'm arguing for total anarchy shows either your desperation because you've run out of sensible arguments, or such a profound lack of understanding of the philosophy of society and government that you're unqualified to debate on the subject.
There has NEVER been a time in all human history when people were absolutely free to do what they wanted. Even children aren't allowed to run wild and free. You seem to want a world that sounds great in theory but would be an absolute living hell in reality.
All I'm supporting is the maximum amount of liberty possible within the constraints of a functional society. That means a hell of a lot more freedom than you currently enjoy in Europe and somewhat more than we currently have in the US, but it certainly isn't people running wild. Freedom is inseperable from responsibility and from that relationship comes the idea of law, a basic concept which you fail to grasp.
Dave
262 - foolkiller
So speaks Vox Foolius. As usual, some very solid points mixed in with the spin. Tread with care readers, and take a look at #249.
263 - foolkiller
Just so there is no misunderstanding, I've placed a pertinent URL under my "name" for full disclosure, my apologies for not doing it sooner.
I had wanted my words to mean more than where they were coming from.
In homage to lost Innocence...
the Tao of D'oh.
264 - Dave Nalle
FK, I suggest that you reread #254 and give the self-righteous bullshit a rest.
No one with any sense was confused about your identity, [Personal attack deleted].
A new name doesn't give you a new schtick.
Dave
265 - troll
see Concealed Handguns: The Counterfeit Deterrent by Zimring and Hawkins in v7 of The Responsive Community
and see A Note on the Use of County-Level UCR Data for more problems with methods
and this one is a good read too but bracket table 10 until you've read
266 - troll
this one
267 - Dave Nalle
Troll, I hadn't read the Zimring and Hawkins dispute of the Lott and Mustard study before. It's not the worst of the lot, but it has obvious biases. After picking all their nits, they basically conclude that Lott may be right in general, if he's overstating his case, and fall back on the old 'guns are baaaaad' non-argument. Pretty weak, but more approachable than some.
The problem with Lott and with all the people disputing him is that they're all half-nuts. They all start from a political perspective and then try to hammer their data or rehammer Lott's data to fit their preconceptions.
I mentioned Lott's study earlier because it's the one which started all this debate off in 1997. I included the link to the survey article because I acknowledge there's a debate going on. Most of the debate appears to be politically driven despite involving a lot of academics.
I've read a hell of a lot of this stuff. I've reached sort of the same conclusion as most of the more honest folks who've done the same.
There are gaping holes in Lott's work and he's kind of a nutjob. Nonetheless, his basic premise isn't wrong. There IS a small statistical correlation between concealed carry laws and a reduction in crime, but that doesn't establish a causal relationship. But at the same time the detractors haven't been able to definitively prove that concealed carry causes any harm either, and they've tried fairly hard.
In the absence of a definitive study one way or the other, I think it makes sense to err in favor of giving people more rights, and the common sense, unscientific presumption that concealed carry likely saves a few lives.
Dave
268 - foolkiller
For Vox in #264.
troll's links beat me to some of it, and after reading #267..i see a bit of an advance from what I referred to in #262,
What slays me is the pure Irony of this bit... "The problem with Lott and with all the people disputing him is that they're all half-nuts. They all start from a political perspective and then try to hammer their data or rehammer Lott's data to fit their preconceptions."
It is wonderfully ironic that I agree with the assessment about Lott...but that you as writing it fail to see when ANY GOP type does the same...yourself included.
You took the principle of the right to bear arms, and twisted it into a partisan attack while exploiting a tragedy involving a youth and murders.
Almost makes me wish there is a Hell, and that there are special Circles for some people.
269 - foolkiller
(side note: I chose this name for my current "dipping the toe back in the water" bit very carefully, and with you in mind, Dave.
it's one of my old bands, the underground/punk/political band i was playing in about the same time you were DJing for a college station as referenced by you yourself as "old punk days"...
it very well reminds me and demonstrates the difference between us in many ways... you were on the radio, talking about it and spinning records...i was out living and playing it with many of the folks whose music you were playing
end Interlude)
270 - MCH
Vox Populi was a DJ?
271 - MCH
I knew he was a male cheerleader, but I think this is the first I've heard about DJing...
272 - Dave Nalle
It is wonderfully ironic that I agree with the assessment about Lott...but that you as writing it fail to see when ANY GOP type does the same...yourself included.
But the problem here is that when any GOP type regardless of who they are or what their greater agenda is, says anything you assume from the outset that they are lying and distorting. Your preconceptions invalidate your response to them.
You took the principle of the right to bear arms, and twisted it into a partisan attack while exploiting a tragedy involving a youth and murders.
Actually, that's not the process I went through. I started out to write a simple news piece which just didn't overlook the fact that the kid was Muslim. But then I got caught up in some of the coverage of officer Hammond, and picked up on something he said, which led me in a different direction and onto the armed citizen response theme, which I still think is vitally important.
You can't expect an effective police response to sudden, unplanned attacks like this. The only way they are likely to be stopped is if someone among the potential victims happens to be armed.
it very well reminds me and demonstrates the difference between us in many ways... you were on the radio, talking about it and spinning records...i was out living and playing it with many of the folks whose music you were playing
Sorry for having zero musical talent and being tone deaf. And you're right, those old days do highlight the difference between us. You were in a band whining about how oppressed we all are, and I wasn't just DJing, I was organizing political rallies and protests against the oppressors, trying to actually DO something.
Dave
273 - Clavos
From today's Miami Herald:
A prominent Miami-Dade traffic-ticket lawyer, facing an armed robber, pulled a gun from his glove compartment and stopped his attacker dead with a volley of gunfire.
Traffic Ticket Office's Scott Hidnert was backing out of his North-Central Miami-Dade office in his black Mercedes Thursday night when the robber rushed him.
Handcuffs stuffed in his pocket and a ski mask pulled over his head, the attacker pointed his weapon at Hidnert.
''I'm lucky to be alive,'' the lawyer said...
...The incident follows two recent high-profile self-defense shootings, both fatal, neither resulting in criminal charges.
Last year, a new Florida law was enacted that loosened the standard for self-defense, allowing threatened citizens to shoot first even if attackers don't show a gun.
''I don't expect any charges. He had a gun and was aiming at me,'' Hidnert said. ``If his gun didn't jam, he would have shot me.''
274 - Dave Nalle
Anecdotal evidence abounds in Florida given the high rate of violent crime there in the first place.
BTW, that last legal change referred to is what's called a 'castle' law, and they're under consideration in a couple of dozen states right now, including here in Texas.
Dave