bubb interestingly, NYC has significantly reduced their crime rates and murder rates because the police are doing there jobs. I beleive that NYC has a handgun ban as well. PB is correct DC is the murder capital of the US and that simply banning hand guns will not solve the problem. There is a lot of social and police work that has to be done in DC and NYC is a good model.
SA, Waco and Ruby Ridge - exactly my point and that's exactly what will happen to you when the IRS man or whatever comes knocking on your door and you wave a pistol in his face. So it's not so ludicrous that they would take you out because by the time you mobilize your resistance you'll already be dust. You seem to put faith in the military that thay would obey the law but not in the government. If anything is ludicrous it's that you believe you can stop the US government
Again you depart from reality. These examples were all splinter groups who were breaking normal laws such as passing bad checks and other petty thefts. This doesn't represent a ground swell of oposition to say a law requiring all American children to attend govenrment boarding schools or a suspention of the rights to privacy that allows any government official to enter and search your house with out obtaining a warrent.
No, a cache of guns isn't going to stop the government from entering your warren of theives and bullies. Not becuase the government is all powerful but because it has the backing of the American people. Now reverse that and have the government trying to go after John Q. Public, and you'd quickly find the feds being shot at, bombed, and otherwise harrased at every turn. It would in short order all but shut down the government.
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ebs,
You're going to love this article! Particularly the opening quote of Thomas Jefferson. Your reliance on the police, in fact, your willingness to live in a police state, is not shared in the US.
bubb interestingly, NYC has significantly reduced their crime rates and murder rates because the police are doing there jobs. I believe that NYC has a handgun ban as well. PB is correct DC is the murder capital of the US and that simply banning hand guns will not solve the problem. There is a lot of social and police work that has to be done in DC and NYC is a good model.
What a load of horse-pucky! The only correct factor found within is that the police are doing their jobs. Jobs that the police never really lost sight of how to do properly, but were prevented from doing so by the same liberal ethos that viewed gun control as part of the solution. NYC's crime rate went down because they got a conservative law and order mayor in Rudy Giuliani who said we're not going to tolerate the bums and the vandalism that lead to more serious problems. And the people responded with hosannas!
This wasn't your socialist policy of Canadian tolerance, it was a return to the cop on the beat saying move along-I don't give a damn about your right, ethnic or otherwise, to panhandle. It was about no longer describing spray paint graffiti on subway cars as street art but calling it what it is, vandalism.
The people didn't need social work-they needed a safe society. they knew how to get it, too. After Bernhard Goetz ventilated three miscreants on the subway many years ago, subway crime plummeted. The criminals suddenly saw a "death wish" behind every meek, mild-mannered accountant on the A-train. It took the libs many years for the criminal element to feel comfortable again riding the trains.
And the whole point, proven over and over again, in community after community, is that the police cannot protect you. They file a report and maybe they catch a bad guy before he strikes again, all of which does nothing for the fact that you've been mugged. You have the fundamental misunderstanding of the role of police common to all totalitarian forms of government, particularly the fascist and the communist.
In free democracies the police are there to tidy up the mess after it occurs. They are not there to prevent murders, rapes, and mayhem-that is society's role. They are there to apprehend those who break society's laws. Period. It is up to society, in a liberal democracy, to create the mores and traditions that make the police presence innocuous. Once that tradition, that social morality, is broken the police are merely little dutch boys with their fingers in the dike. Only in the socialist mind-set can the lure of totalitarianism be so strong; the overriding notion that government itself, properly driven by the right people, can implement the top-down solution. That's the root of fascism and the route to enslavement.
I'm perforce required to mention the travesty that are Canada's Human Rights Commissions which are just the exact type of star chambers that true liberal democratic society's abhor. Your questioning on the Second Amendment makes no observance of the fact that the Second follows the First, leading one to believe that there might be a continuum at work in the writer's minds. And indeed the Second gives teeth to the First. Perhaps you are right from your Canadian perspective; if you are so willing to sacrifice the free speech rights of the First, all on your own as has been done with the HRC's, what need is there for a Second to protect what you value so little?
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SA, twice today you make my point and twice you deny it. Are you going for thrice like the apostle John. SA I am not the second coming, sorry. NYC. law and order just what I said, Waco and Ruby Ridge-they got their asses handed to them on a platter just like they'll do to you if they so decide. You continue to say I am questioning the 2nd amendment and that I am for radical gun control. I question your ability to carry out the intent of the 2nd because I don't believe you have it no matter how many guns you have. The government has more and bigger ones. The Supreme Court has already drawn a line in the sand. Certain arms you are not aloud to own even in the US, certain people are not allowed to own guns and all I am questioning is where that line should be. It would seem 4 of 9 are on my side. 5 of 9 are on your side. YOU WIN. Congrats. What's your prize? You get to move into a gated community. It's not the 2nd nor any of the amendments that is going to make you cities safe. It's not a social safety net either. In washington for example on a Sunday morning there are homeless sleeping on every park bench and every doorway along Pensylvania Ave. This is just the tip of the iceberg but is indicative of the social problem facing the officials of Washington officials. You can move them along but all that does is relocate the problem. Throwing money, handouts, at the problem does nothing actually makes it worse. When I say social work it is not handouts it's the tough love approach to get these people off drugs and back as functioning useful members of society. It costs money yes but no handouts. The other approach which you seem to advocate and it would work too is just shoot them because "And the whole point, proven over and over again, in community after community, is that the police cannot protect you." And this is okay with you as long as it's not the police doing the shooting.
OOH if life were as simple as plugging a little whole in the dyke we wouldn't even be having this conversation. But it's a lot more complex. Police work invovles more than filing a report every now and then. If every murderer where apprehended and convicted, the murder rate would go down. If we got drugs off the streets crime rates would plummet. If that's a police state then I'm all for it. To my way of thinking it sure as hell is far better than vigilante justice a la Bernie Goetz and all of this can be done within the framework of the Bill of Rights.
In our own era, "gun control" promoted the Nazi genocide against 6,000,000 Jews and 7,000,000 Gentiles, in which 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered. The Nazis inherited a "gun control" law -- complete with detailed registration lists -- from the centrist Weimar Republic, which enacted "gun control" to curb political violence. Those registration lists enabled the Nazis -- who gained power through the ballot box -- quickly to disarm their opponents, to gain an iron grip on Germany, and to make sure that no one could challenge them.
"Gun control" promoted at least seven other major 20th Century genocides, including those in Rwanda, Cambodia, and the ex-Soviet Union. In just 103 days, 800,000 Rwandans were murdered in 1994, including several hundred thousand thanks to "gun control" (laws of 23 November 1964 and 1 May 1979). In these eight major genocides, a total of 57 million children, women, and men were murdered by officials of governments "gone bad," thanks to "gun control."
So contrary to what you say, there are places in the world past and present that could benefit from the 2nd.
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Ray
S.V. Nikko
1983 Fraser 41
La Conner, WA
Our right to keep and bear arms in our own or the country's defense comes from exactly the same place as the American one -- English Common Law, the English Bill of Rights 1689, the writings of Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries on English Law, and others. All these laws (and indeed the full body of English Law), became part of Canadian law on our Confederation in 1867 with the affirmation of the British North America (BNA) Act.
We have this Right, though our government is attempting to suppress it and deny citizen's their age-old right to self-defense with the egregious and unconstitutional (not to mention horrendously expensive) Firearms Act and other proposals.
That you guys chose to let your government violate your rights is your choice, it's just not ours.
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Ray
S.V. Nikko
1983 Fraser 41
La Conner, WA
And the whole point, proven over and over again, in community after community, is that the police cannot protect you.
Something most people do not realize.. is that the "police" have no binding legal responsibility to provide service... none what-so-ever. All they really amount to is a private security service for your municipality. Sheriff is a little different but some places of the country don't have sheriffs. Do you want to trust your life to a glorified rent-a-cop? No?
That is a most excellent article, Sway. Thanks for pointing it out.
Professor Turley is the kind of gun control advocate I can respect. While I don't agree with his position on the issue, he's honest about where he stands and what the Constitution says. Note that most honest, intelligent gun control advocates agree. Take, for example, the ACLU's Sanford Levinson's The Embarrassing Second Amendment. He didn't like what his research revealed. In fact: He did not find what he expected to find. But his integrity demanded he discover what was really there, not what he wished was there. That he report on what he found, not on how he thought things ought to be. What he discovered directly contradicted his prior convictions and the ACLU's position, thus he wrote: "...for I want to suggest that the Amendment may be profoundly embarrassing to many who both support such regulation and view themselves as committed to zealous adherence to the Bill of Rights (such as most members of the ACLU)."
The ACLU's position remained unchanged.
Liberal journalist Michael Kinsley once famously quoted a colleague as saying, "If liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they interpret the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would be law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory." Law professors, "liberal" and otherwise, haven't gone quite that far, but the preponderance of opinion amongst Constitutional scholars over the last couple of decades has agreed with that of the recent Supreme Court decision.
I wonder what the ACLU will do now? It can no longer credibly support the position that the Second Amendment does not affirm an individual right (as if ever it could), but it runs the risk of alienating its traditional support base if it does otherwise.
Jim
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"If fifty million people say a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing." - Anatole France
1976 Pearson P30 #914 - s/v Abracadabra
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