≡ Menu

“We Have Two Americas:”The Gun Debate According to Michael Owens [Bumped]

“This is the best commentary I’ve seen on the gun debate ever. “ And Michael Owen needs to start his own (real) blog:

“No amount of statistics or facts will sway either side in the gun control debate, because they are all looking for simple solutions to complex problems. The facts of those complex problems are uncomfortable and nobody really wants to come to grips with them.

“For example, we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths. Instead, we have two Americas, one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western & northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries.

“The tough questions are those like, why do we have these two Americas? But that’s an uncomfortable discussion to have.

“Those on the left favor simple minded restrictions that target first world America, with its high gun ownership but very low murder rate, but don’t address the root causes of third world America’s violence at all.

“Those on the right correctly feel their civil rights are constantly threatened, so they are constantly in a state of “better stock up before they finally ban it” and the guns and ammo fly off the shelves. The left’s constant gun control rhetoric is the greatest thing ever for arms manufacturers.

“Meanwhile, over the past 40 years, while the number of guns in private hands has doubled, the murder rate has dropped by half.

“The left are constantly prattling about “assault weapons” which are almost never used to commit murders (about 1% of gun murders; all rifles combined are around 3%). More murders are committed with baseball bats than “assault rifles”; the vast majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns, but it’s easier to sell restrictions that target “assault weapons”, even though such restrictions, even if 100% effective, would make no detectable change in the murder rate (especially because of substitution effects). They favor ridiculous measures such as bans on “high capacity magazines”, as if magazines weren’t cheap and easily swapped out in a fraction of a second.

“The uncomfortable fact is that roughly 80% of the US homicide rate is associated with the drug trade, and the drug trade is violent because the drug war reserves it for violent criminals.

“We have a system in place where the government subsidizes poverty in urban areas, imposes economic blight in those same areas through heavy taxes and regulations, renders the residents permanently unemployable via the “criminal justice” (sic) system, and creates a lucrative black market in drugs by restricting supply (not to mention increasing demand as people are desperate to escape their circumstances by getting high), meaning the only game in town is often entering the drug trade. The drug trade is violent because those in it have no access to courts to settle disputes. Powerful industries lobby to keep the drug war going; the top spenders are law enforcement unions, the prison industry, big alcohol, tobacco, and pharma.

“Guns are not the proximate cause of gun violence in the US. Childlike magical thinking and simple “fixes” to complex problems will not work. But it is comfortable, and self-righteousness feels so good. So I expect it to continue indefinitely.”

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Gordon October 15, 2017, 7:29 PM

    I knew all of this. But I’ve never seen it stated so concisely and well.

  • ghostsniper October 15, 2017, 7:30 PM

    If guns were outlawed a whole bunch of govt employees would become instantly unemployed and we can’t have that.

  • Casey Klahn October 15, 2017, 7:55 PM

    Yes. Good article. But, in the fever pits of democrat/progressive policy-making, there is a nefarious reason for gun control. It would make governing easier, they think. They wouldn’t have to try so hard at their rhetoric; they could just start implementing their socialist and communist policies. Voting? Sh’yeah, right!

  • Casey Klahn October 15, 2017, 8:16 PM

    Darn. Lost another comment. I was saying the dems have more nefarious reasons for gun control than stated in this otherwise okay article.

    I came back to say that I just checked Twitser, for the first time in over a week, for Las Vegas updates. The whole story has gone to absolute hash. It is now a steaming pile of cultural rot, with nothing but conspiracy theories from wall to wall, and no original or official storyline to be found. The cops have left the room! The FBI, the sheriff, and the AG of Nevada, are the stupidest inhibitors of those jobs ever.

    To give no coherent news is as malfeasant as it is misfeasant. Why do these idiots even have jobs?

  • Ten October 16, 2017, 3:59 AM

    Somewhat pursuant to Casey’s remark, when dysfunction is rampant no logic works. That’s why your drunken, abusive ex will not reform according to your impeccable reason and it’s why this argument fails. The left has been entirely successful trapping the ostensible right in a century-long abusive, codependent relationship in which the right ultimately adopts all its points and principles.

    Don Colacho has written a dozen quotes on the nature of problems and human arrogance, all of which suit the left’s dysfunction. But there’s a snag: Axiomatically they all apply to the right too.

  • Fuel Filter October 16, 2017, 6:08 AM

    I’ll go where the author doesn’t want to go. He sticks with the usual old bromides of “poverty”, et.al. but misses—probably on purpose— the actual point entirely.

    If our negroes and the invaders from the South (thanks to the “Lion of the Senate”, that murderous lech Teddy Kennedy) didn’t have guns, or if the police were freed up to actually do their jobs,  the “3rd World” rates of murder and mayhem would immediately drop to “1st World” status.

    Period. End of discussion.  

    Thanks to Trump, our enemies are being smoked out right and left (puns intended).

    Just pay a visit once in a while to WesternRifleShooters.wordpress.com and you’ll see what I mean. Pete and 90% of his commenters are the ones who are truly “woke”.

    Have no doubt: CWII is coming.

    Buy more ammo. You never have enough.

  • ghostsniper October 16, 2017, 7:31 AM

    “…police were freed up to actually do their jobs…”
    ==================================

    No.
    According to the law enforcement’s own records you are 13 times more likely to be shot by a cop than a citizen. Stay away from crowds and all gov’t employees if you take your life seriously.

  • Terry October 16, 2017, 8:05 AM

    @ Fuel Filter

    I agree with most of your comment but, this is not correct in my opinion: “. . . or if the police were freed up to actually do their jobs, the “3rd World” rates of murder and mayhem would immediately drop to “1st World” status.”

    Insert something more like this: If the people were armed and the courts removed from control by the left, murder rates and mayhem would quickly drop to civilized status.

    Cops are not the fix. They are part of the problem. Please take a broader view of the situation from way above and you will see what I am getting at. Police in the USA are now essentially brown shirts/thugs that thrive on violence and breaking into homes of the innocent for booty.

  • Casey Klahn October 16, 2017, 8:39 AM

    Ten: haven’t seen the blogger Don Colacho’s name in awhile. Here’s a goodie: there are now only the two parties: citizens and bureaucrats.

  • james wilson October 16, 2017, 9:55 AM

    “No amount of statistics or facts will sway either side in the gun control debate, because they are all looking for simple solutions to complex problems. ” Simply false. Drawing an equivalency between unequals is fatuous. One side has it’s fact right, the other, deliberately wrong. One side is happy to learn more facts, the other is happy to make facts a hate crime. And no, this is not a complex problem. The fact that something is immune to reason and experience does not make it complex.

  • mushroom October 16, 2017, 11:07 AM

    You all are correct. Cops don’t prevent crimes. They did, at one time, though, serve to interrupt the cycle of retribution. If someone murdered my brother, instead of starting a feud, we could rely on the justice system administer the prescribed punishment. The justice system with its peace officers has degenerated into a “legal system” that administers justice by accident, if at all.

  • Jim in Alaska October 16, 2017, 12:42 PM

    “…because they are all looking for simple solutions to complex problems. The facts of those complex problems are uncomfortable and nobody really wants to come to grips with them.”

    I quite agree with Michael excepting that first paragraph that I noted above. Personally I believe even complex problems can generally be broken down and, if not solved, at least be understood with back of an envelope calculations.
    (A parenthetical aside as a back of an envelope example: Over 50 years ago I was flying from Anchorage to Fairbanks, beside me was a friend, a PhD versed in hydraulics and engineering. As the plane took off we started talking about Magnan’s contention that bumblebees can’t fly and moved on to query if the plane we were in was capable of flight. So! We, actually, on the back of an envelope, started calculating the possibility. Luckily my, educated, friend had much of the data we needed stored in his head {such as the value of Slug: the gravitational unit of mass in the foot-pound-second system to which a pound force can impart an acceleration of one foot per second per second and which is equal to the mass of an object weighing 32 pounds }, estimated wing surface area etc., and we scribbled away at it. The flight was about an hour and, just as we were landing, we rounded off the last few decimal points & based on the number right of the equal sign, we allowed that yes, the plane we were on was quite capable of flight!)

    I’d suggest the reason we have this problem (& most, although not all of the other complex problems in this day and age.) is lack of an educated populace. Schools today, from kindergarten through university, do not provide any basis for critical thinking and even facts are treated as fluid. The 4th estate used to base reporting on the questions; Who, what, when, why and when necessary, where. Today those queries have been replaced with “& how does that make you feel?”

    Hence in my opinion, if we were to replace today’s widespread indoctrination systems with education we’d find there is no complexity to the gun debate.

    That’s, as noted, my opinion & I really don’t give a damn how that makes you feel, but I, of course, would be delighted to hear arguments for or against this position.

  • Howard Nelson October 16, 2017, 2:51 PM

    Reply to Jim/Alaska:
    To reduce likelihood of a Sandy Hook or Las Vegas type of massacre —
    1. Require all present and proposed gun owners to undergo periodic ‘lie’ detector tests re all intentions for use of the weapon. This would include all members of the owner’s household.
    2. Long prison terms for all with illegal firearms. Reinstitute ‘stop and frisk.’
    3. Offer bounties to those exposing to the police, owners of illegal/nonlicensed weapons.
    4. As for 1 above, test all former felons. ‘Weapon’ here and on 1 & 3 above would be gun, vehicle, knife, poison, fist, bludgeon, …

    Not perfect for all psychopath detection but perhaps preventing some mayhem. Cost of testing and civil rights issues to be considered vs. life-saving values.
    What say you?

  • Ten October 16, 2017, 4:22 PM

    What say I, in reply to his question, is that Howard Nelson is quite wrong (or expert in sarcasm). How? That’s self-evident: because that preventative, Minority Report rot conflicts with natural negative rights (which is probably why Dick found it so resonant).

    The nature of goodness is not to prevent badness by some asinine and purported means. The nature of goodness is to deal well in a reality where badness shall always be.

  • ghostsniper October 16, 2017, 6:17 PM

    “What say you?”
    ===========

    .5 Immediate revocation of ALL laws that violate the 2nd amendment which simply states the gov’t is not allowed to create said laws which violate people’s natural rights.

    The more things the gov’t does, the worse things get.
    This is more than obvious, so why do people like Howard want the gov’t to do even more?
    I too believe what Jim in Alaska said though I say it a little differently:
    “The worst thing this rotten assed gov’t ever did was to hijack the public education system for that is at the base of all societal ills.”
    –gs, 2099

    Stupid people ate, well, stupid.
    Strap em to the wheel.

  • Howard Nelson October 16, 2017, 6:29 PM

    On the contrary, Ten.
    1. Simply an extension of background checks prior to purchase, and periodic check thereafter to confirm current competency — kind of like checking whether a 110 year old school bus driver still has adequate vision.
    2. Less chance for recidivism. Stop and frisk in NYC took many illegal handguns and their owners off the streets. What’s not to like?
    3. Disrupt the criminal enemy’s trust in one another thereby disrupting the gang, picking off the leaders.
    4. Follow-up on former criminals in a mutually convenient non-disturbing fair way.
    Help prevent recidivism.
    What’s not to like?

    Inconvenient to honest gun owners? Yes!
    Worth trying? Why not?

    In 20 years we’ll all be required to wear electronic “harmful thought detector caps” for crime prevention, as part of the human nature control plan.

  • ghostsniper October 17, 2017, 4:12 AM

    Here’s a novel idea, next time there’s a shooting let’s just, um, I know, “Blame a bunch of people that had nothing to do with it!”, yeah, that’s the ticket…makes perfect sense.

    Since so many people liked that method after the election, like, klintin lost so it had to be SOMEBODY’S fault, right?, but who? Oh, that’s right, silly me, it was them scary russians.
    Yeah, lets just place blame wherever and move on to the next societal fashion show. 30 second attention span and all that.

    If there was not a single gun anywhere in the US would people still get shot?
    Yes?
    How?
    List the ways:
    1.
    2.
    3.
    4.
    5.
    etc.

  • Ten October 17, 2017, 6:58 AM

    “On the contrary, Ten”, intones Howie the ignorant Law’n Order rightist-fascist, who then doubles down on the question-begging and various other fallacies as if nobody caught it the first time.

    And this, folks, is why it’s less then foolish to engage the dysfunctional on their terms. On that trajectory eventually you debate with them whether you are allowed to live.

    Let me add to ghostsniper’s idea: Criminal prosecution for any and all entities encroaching on the 2A or any other negative right.

  • Jim in Alaska October 17, 2017, 9:06 AM

    In reply to Howard Nelson: I say that you prove my argument that critical thinking is dead and education is needed.
    Look at the Vegas shooting: The man had, yes, umpty eleven guns. Yes your 4 points might have reduced the number of guns he had to zero at great cost, in violation of the constitution and with unintended consequences. According to the news he also had 2 airplanes. One of his planes, with full gas tanks diving into the same location…

  • mushroom October 17, 2017, 12:27 PM

    Tyranny rule #1, always base policy on anecdotes, special cases, exceptions, and pictures that make women cry.

  • Gordon October 17, 2017, 4:33 PM

    I am not a conspiracy minded person. But Las Vegas, man…

  • Casey Klahn October 17, 2017, 7:41 PM

    Las Vegas, in my opinion, is a hard case of the gubmint gives no shits for you, whatsoever. Most of the bureaucrats in the chain of knowledge on this case are unaware that the nation is having a ginormous analspasm over the lack of information on the case and the motives of the killer. They wish to left alone while they connive new gun laws, cover their collective asses over this huge Intel failure and unsat response on the day of the massacre.

    The only official, apparent to me, who is suffering the pressure from the public to report what he knows, is the sheriff, who was brought to tears at a presser because he has a size ten leash and choker around his neck and nuts so as to not speak frankly.

    Now to us. We get to let the threat grow large in our minds, because it has no form or shape. It is a boogey man, with a machine gun. Wait: 10 machine guns. Wait: multiple shooters. Wait: FBI gun runners gone evil. No: ISIS operatives in tow by the FBI. Wait: the Illuminati False Flagger Patrol. No: MIB with flashy pens that work on crowds of 20,000. No: a cabal of country western singers hell-bent on America’s destruction.

    Get a grip, America. Keep your powder dry, and your skepticism sharp. And, brush up on your logic while you’re at it, K?

  • Mr.shawn October 18, 2017, 10:59 AM

    @howard
    1. I didn’t realize my enumerated rights came with a experation date.
    2. Stop & frisk is a clear violation of citizens fourth amendment rights.
    (That’s what’s not to like)
    3. Criminals informing on other criminals. This is already being done by law enforcement & the courts. The plea bargain system is what we get. Where criminals get off easy for accusing someone else of being worse than them.
    4. Follow up on criminals
    You mean the probation system we already have in place.

    Basically your answer is the removal of the enumerated rights of law abiding American’s.
    2nd amendment has an expiration date.
    4th amendment is unneeded and an impediment to effective law enforcement.
    Why stop there Howard. Why not just scrap the bill of rights entirely.
    We can all have our mail, email & phone conversations filtered through a government agency to look for badthink.

    Maybe body cams and recording devices should be mandatory for everyone to wear. We could create a new government agency to monitor the daily activities of all Americans.

    We could get rid of the 3rd and just place a government agent in every household.

    The fifth is already gone.

    The sixth. After all the NRA is responsible for all shootings, it’s just hard to prove. Now you won’t have to prove a thing. Just throw them in jail and promise some hearing in the future. Wait for them to die while in custody.
    Easy peasy.

    The seventh. Let’s go back and arrest and convict everyone ever involved in a justified use of force. Because it’s never justified is it Howard?

    The eighth. If we impose million dollar fines for minor infractions. nobody would ever commit a crime. We could also include a public flogging in the Town square.

    The ninth & tenth. We don’t really need states rights anyway. After all the federal government is our Lord & master.

    Friggin Constitution. Written by slave owners & Christians.
    It always seems to be getting in the way of “progress”

  • Howard Nelsone October 18, 2017, 2:59 PM

    Maintaining reasonable public safety is the main job of government. Protection against improper application of that authority is why we have Bills of Rights, federal and state.
    I support the 2nd Amendment, not its misapplication to allow it to be used to harm innocents. Courts, citizen support groups, legislation (stand your ground, …) are available to challenge misapplication of the misapplications. Are nuclear weapons included under the term ‘Arms’ in the 2nd Amendment?
    Yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater when there is no fire is permissable under an unsane application of the 1st Amendment. For public safety, it would be at least, an imminent threat to public safety and punishable.
    Would you have that limit on the 1st Amendment nullified?

    In a society of equals and unequals before the law, there are tradeoffs between rights and responsibilities.

    If you don’t want the burden of living under imperfect regulations, work to lawfully change the laws or yawn when the next massacre of innocents occurs because of an excess of absolutism of virtue, or a too literal reading of a statute without considering the hierarchy of values involved.

  • Howard Nelsone October 18, 2017, 5:36 PM

    The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the San Bernardino massacre, the Las Vegas massacre, the Florida nightclub massacre, the church black membership massacre, … may have been prevented had lie/psych tests been required prior to the perp’s or family member’s gun purchase. If these kinds of tests are applied to CIA candidates it may be worthwhile to adapt them to all gun purchasers.

    No point disagreeing with me; better to argue the inconvenience of testing vs. the potential benefits of testing, with the ghosts and survivors of the murderous events noted above.
    A visit to a DMV for driver competency may take no longer than the suggested psych/lie detector test (soon to be used to detect robot/AI violators of Asimov’s Three Rules of Robots).

  • ghostsniper October 19, 2017, 4:42 AM

    “Are nuclear weapons included…”
    =======================
    Where are they *excluded* in the 2nd?
    If anybody can have noox, then why can’t everybody?
    BTW, how much does a nuke cost?
    You don’t seem to have a firm grip on the exact wording of the constitution, Howard, or for that matter the history that led to it’s conception. You might want to brush up on that so as to not appear so foolish.

    “…work to lawfully change the laws…”
    ===========================
    You’re getting deperately desperate when you bring up that non-workable silliness Howard, and you know it. It didn’t work then and it still doesn’t work now. Laws are created, not revoked.

    “…it may be worthwhile to adapt…”
    ========================
    Yeah well, since it’s YOUR idea how about if YOU go ahead an adapt and then after about 10 years or so we’ll get back with you and see how it’s all working out, but prolly not.

    See, this is another part of why democracy can never work, because nitwits get as much say as non-nitwits but nitwits are more deranged than non-nitwits so their voices carry a little farther and all the rest of us have to suffer their penalty.

    Half a century ago my ol’ gray haired mammy used to say that polite people never spoke openly about politics and religion and she was probably right because people are so deeply ingrained on such things that no one will ever change anyone else nor should they try, all they do is create divides between themselves and others. I’d rather have a friend than an enemy.

    I rarely speak to other people out here in Realityland about politics and religion cause, well, there is so much other stuff to talk about and do, and quite frankly, both topics leave one feeling dirty. And in the long run it is a waste of time, and extremely boring. After all, all of us are going to do/think/say what we want to do/think/say anyway for the most part so what is the point in arguing it?

    The could claim guns completely illegal today and out here in the hinters it wouldn’t even matter.
    “We live out here.”
    –gs, 2099

  • Casey Klahn October 19, 2017, 6:48 AM

    Ghost makes a point I never thought about. If I could have a nuke, would I?

    We used to be on edge over the Spetnaz carrying briefcase nukes into West Germany and causing terror and generally interdicting our troop flows. They were called ManPads. Man portable atomic demolitions. Of course, the jokes flew about Man Pads…in a different context.

    I think a nuke would be too much for my usage, but I still reserve the right to own one. I think a tank, or a mortar, would suit me much better. Those I can handle. In detail.

  • Ten October 19, 2017, 12:37 PM

    You seem to be trying now, Howard, so I’ll retract my prior characterization of you, although it was aimed to be as flippant as I thought your thinking was at that time. However, you still run afoul of some very important things, as ghost discovered.

    Maintaining reasonable public safety is the main job of government. Protection against improper application of that authority is why we have Bills of Rights, federal and state.

    Right off you get it wrong. The aim of govt, in the original structural and, since you raise it, constitutional sense, is not this arbitrary safety thing you’re on about but, in fact, the protection of the rights of the individual against that of collectivist encroachment. We can roughly sum them up as life, liberty, and that pursuit of what makes you happy, the thinking being that life and liberty pretty much constrain happiness.

    Safety? Protection? No. We have robust but intentionally vestigial laws that a sound legal system can only redress violations against. Preventing them is is a wholly different thing, and is precisely the Minority Reportish problem the original structure sought to prevent. You have drawn a connection where none exists and where none should exist. You’ve also gotten things backwards.

    I support the 2nd Amendment, not its misapplication to allow it to be used to harm innocents. Courts, citizen support groups, legislation (stand your ground, …) are available to challenge misapplication of the misapplications.

    Also wrong. It took you three words to directly conflict your 2A advocacy and you did so arbitrarily with the completely loaded “misapplication”. Right there you endorse the tyranny of the majority, “democracy”, altering the legal meanings of words, and the same soft-headedness the left built its reputation on. The same applies for your fire-in-a-crowded-theater assumption, which is also wrong – you can yell fire all you want because damages are sought after the illegal act, not before – the 1A isn’t moderated or even involved here; willful negligence or worse are however actionable damages.

    We have a system of legal discouragement and penalty, not prevention. It’s why we call it justice. Guns aren’t illegal (they’re efficient appliances aimed at protecting life) but using them wrongly is very illegal.

    Would you have that limit on the 1st Amendment nullified?

    It is no such limit on 1A. It is a remediation against abusing it, not unlike capital punishment is against blasting away at crowds.

    In a society of equals and unequals before the law, there are tradeoffs between rights and responsibilities.

    There are “unequalities” before the law when there are incorrect laws. These “tradeoffs” are therefore as symptomatic as they are arbitrary. The highest law – the Constitution – contains no such thing and allows no such thing.

    If you don’t want the burden of living under imperfect regulations, work to lawfully change the laws or yawn when the next massacre of innocents occurs because of an excess of absolutism of virtue, or a too literal reading of a statute without considering the hierarchy of values involved.

    That’s a nice projection but that’s all it is. This “hierarchy of values” is a salad of whatever you can turn it into, and there goes your 1A and 2A. You’ve made them subject to whatever comes.

    You have trouble with the notion of safety and want to upend the Constitution you support to achieve it. You cannot achieve it. You will never achieve it.

    The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the San Bernardino massacre, the Las Vegas massacre, the Florida nightclub massacre, the church black membership massacre, … may have been prevented had lie/psych tests been required prior to the perp’s or family member’s gun purchase.

    No might about it – they would have if everybody appealed to their master for bread and water too. Remember, you aim for a nice soft, unprincipled, arbitrary, variable, democratic middle ground to practice your constitutional advocacy; the problem is you somehow expect those contradictions to stand together.

    A visit to a DMV for driver competency may take no longer than the suggested psych/lie detector test (soon to be used to detect robot/AI violators of Asimov’s Three Rules of Robots).

    Ditto. No matter how many ways you say it.

    What you advocate, Howard, is Utopia. Safety. That brave new world.

  • Rob De Witt October 19, 2017, 3:52 PM

    Ten,

    It’s a troll. Ignore it.

  • ghostsniper October 20, 2017, 4:22 AM

    @ Casey, yeah, a tank in the front yard would be cool. An old skool tank, maybe a Sheridan? A smallish one. Flanked by a 105mm cannon on one side and a bofors quad on the other, pointed out at 45 degree angles. And a few of them little stacks of ammo sitting around. All restored to like new and functional condition.

    A nuke?
    I don’t think so. Wouldn’t want the responsibility and don’t see any need for it. But like you I reserve the right.

    I designed a house for a guy in Naples, FL who was a vintage military collector and since the design of homes of this caliber are generally controlled by the wife his sole input was that he wanted the entry foyer to be large enough to support the mounting of a B17 ball turret he had acquired. So there it was, the right side entry wall, about 12′ wide by 20′ tall with a giant ball turret mounted in it sideways so that the viewer was looking straight into it as if looking at it from below. Awesome. They are like an iceberg, you only see the tip. All the guts you don’t see took up a decent size room inside. Yeah, it had a pair of inert 50’s in it.

  • Howard Nelsone October 21, 2017, 11:25 AM

    As my closing comments on this thread, my replies in chronological order to other commenters.

    To gs 10-16-17. 6:17PM
    My suggested ‘more’ was meant as more and better. Government is not totally useless and venal.
    To Jim in Alaska 10-17-17 9:06AM
    Given all the guns the LV shooter had, a psych test at times of purchase may have led to prevention. Other means, vehicles, same tests can be prepared. We live and die in a new world of threat and injury. We are not seeking ‘a little temporary safety’ but rightful life.
    gs 10-19-17 4:42AM
    Nukes excluded in the 2nd? — by uncommon common sense.
    … why can’t everybody? — Someday maybe everyone can, that’s why it should be excluded now
    … Nukes cost? — Nothing! It’s given free of charge by it’s owner to the fanatic willing to trigger it. Another reason to not violate the suspect’s rights until after the detonation?
    — firm grip … Constitution …history — Yes, my grip is palsied but adequate.
    The idea that agreements need not be suicide pacts is applicable here to fairly moderate absolutism and to recognize sensible intent of the agreement/Amendment.
    — Laws are created, not revoked. — Some laws, overall, are beneficial and some are not. The most obvious is revocation of the 18th by the 21st Amendment. Laws are frequently being modified if not revoked or overridden by new more incomprehensible comprehensive laws.

    Mr.shawn 10-18-17 10:59PM
    Your enumerated and nonenumerated rights are not expired unless you are dead, or the kind of criminal specified by current imperfect laws.
    … 4th Amendment, Stop and frisk…violation of privacy rights — Perhaps, yes, but overridden by innocent citizens’ rights to life. I believe NYCPD procedures along these lines since inception about 20 years ago have brought down felony per capita rates ~ 80%+.
    …4th — clearly specifies ‘reasonable’ search and seizure, need for Warrants — all to protect the innocent.
    Ten 10-19-17 12:37PM
    Aim of government — Importance and primacy of Safety is clearly stated in Para 2, 1st sentence.
    I read it as, without reasonable safety, Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness are in jeopardy. That’s why we have police and military. I understand your view that Life, Liberty (Rights), Pursuit of Happiness are primary. It seems my focus is on ensuring expression of those rights.
    Notice that in the sentence referred to, Safety, takes the place of, is equated to, Life+Liberty? Curious, no?
    — tyranny of the majority — I endorse majority of rule only in a constitutional, democratic, republic where rights of all individual citizens are the same and protected by law.
    — yelling fire — if you say that yelling fire, in a crowded theater is lawful, where is the illegal act justifying damage claims?
    — discouragement and penalty, not prevention — the only difference between the two terms is removal of means as a factor in prevention.,
    — tradeoffs, inequalities before the law– the Constitution does NOT require a defendant to have representation equal in quality to that of the opposition. Public defenders are an attempt by government to correct this problem.
    At this time the Constitution permits this inequity, though it does not approve of it, nor moves to require standards for equity. That’s why just means for improvement are needed. Getting agreement on ends and means is a governing dynamic forever.
    — notion of safety, upending the Constitution — rather I’m trying to improve the balance and stability as a means of better, more fair functioning.
    — safety, its achievement — certainly we can and do all the time. School guards, building codes, food ingredient standards (no excess of toxics,…), Hospital standards, speed limits, required vehicle inspections, gun ownership by minors?, …
    — contradictions to stand together — no, I expect the contradictions and errors to be corrected via implementation of impoved regulations.

    Rob De Witt 10-19-17 3:52PM
    Yes, I am a troll of a sort, the breed that trolls for truth through waters murky and polluted. As that kind of a troll my lure and hook are multimagnetic drawing in all kinds of ideas and behaviors. What a wonder-filled world of similarities and differences for consideration, rejection, retention, and appreciation.
    Let’s troll this way together. Just one troll rule: when you choose to come up for air, you must come up laughing. It’s your choice when.

    Bless all the contenders, offenders, defenders, and range of fools, jesters, and maniacs who revel here. Thank you to GVDL, our foremost, provocative host.

  • Mike G. October 21, 2017, 1:19 PM

    Howard,

    All the solutions you propose forget one simple fact. You, with all your restrictions and tests punish the 95% of the population that is decent, lawful and moral.

    I don’t know about anyone else, but I m getting damn sick and tired of the very vocal minority dictating how the rest of us should live our lives.

  • ghostsniper October 21, 2017, 2:08 PM

    “…punish the 95%…”
    ==============

    Right.

    The first response of the grabbers is to punish people that had nothing to with it, as long as they aren’t one of those people.

    None of Howard’s proposals effect him so he has no compunction about levying them on others.
    Though, suggest any senior that calls 911 for any reason must surrender 90% of their SSI payment and he will squeal like a bald tire.

    The problem with democracy is that everybody gets to speak for everybody else and nobody is the better for it, no, instead everyone becomes victimized by everyone else.

    I think it was Churchill that said something about democracy is not the best way but it’s better than anything else but I believe he had that exactly backwards.

    Democracy is the worst way possible. Anyone that comes up with the retarded notion that it worked well for 200+ years can be accused of using only 1/8″ of their brain for there have been millions upon millions of victims created by democracy adherents from the very beginning.

    Stupid humans, you teach them a retarded habit and they are loathe to ever change it.

  • Howard Nelsone October 21, 2017, 3:14 PM

    Brethren and Sistern, I herewith rescind my premature retirement from this thread.

    First things first,
    A. My comments to Ten, above, re Safety, are based in our Declaration of Independence.
    First things second,
    B. No more Mr. Nice Guy
    First things 3rd,
    C. It’s pitiful that some of us here can’t or won’t offer an improvement in our system to reduce the murder of innocents by criminal gun owners or prospective owners. Psych tests are OK for psychiatrist candidates but not for peaceful and potentially murderous gun purchasing candidates. The cost-to-benefit ratio, that is the testing inconvenience-to-benefit of lives saved ratio is too high! By what standard of comparative values is that ratio calculated?
    First things 4th,
    I know the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
    That is not the only road. The road to earthly Heaven is also paved with Good Intentions. Take this latter, GI tract and you’ll meet along the way, the
    living and dead Doctors Without Borders, UN WHO medical team members, First Responders inconvenienced at some cost: benefit ratio.
    Digest the GI path experience well; it confers it’s blessing producing a high, a high benefits: inconvenience ratio.

    First things 5th,
    E. Using the 3rd half of my brain, and the 7th sixth of my mind, I pronounce the following curse:
    May all those who refuse to try to conceive of an improvement to our present system, be perpetually sneezing due to excess navel lint, your own or others!
    I apologize to anyone to whom I have failed to seriously insult by my remarks. At the appropriate time you may buss my duff.

  • Kauf Buch October 21, 2017, 3:40 PM

    Howard, Please F OFF. You use “soma” language to “fig leaf” your secret desire to live in a land located somewhere between Utopia and North Korea…all while mouthing the soothing ideals of Americanisms in an attempt to seduce the naive to sell their freedoms for submission.

    The rest of us here get it. You will persuade NO ONE with you totalitarian-wannabe blathering.

    All that cr*p and $1.50 will getcha a nice cup of Starbucks…but I’d suggest Wawa coffee is better.

  • Fletcher Christian October 21, 2017, 4:38 PM

    Ten:
    “It’s why we call it justice. Guns aren’t illegal (they’re efficient appliances aimed at protecting life).” Nope. Guns are certainly efficient, but the sole object of their design is to make holes in things at a distance. The application of that function is entirely dependent on the user.

    In addition: Guns do not protect life except indirectly. The only way they do so is by removing the ability of whatever is threatening that life to do so – either by removing its or his ability to do so directly or by inducing fear of severe damage upon him.

    OTOH, guns make it much easier to threaten the life of another at a distance. Without a gun or similar weapon, you cannot immediately threaten the life of someone a hundred yards away. With one, you can.

  • Snakepit Kansas October 21, 2017, 4:40 PM

    Howard,
    Your points would all make sense if Government was capable, efficient and fair as the Lady of Justice. It is not. I will NOT let some half-wit Gubmint official decide if I am sane enough to own a gun. Especially if the test was periodic. It would be completely subjective and Lois Lerner’s IRS proved that Gubmint it is NOT without its own extreme prejudice. My ethnicity, social standing, education level, job position, etc. etc. etc. may not be politically correct. That may be enough to “fail” the test. Someone wants my gun? I am easy to find. Kick in my door tonight and I will show it to you.

  • ghostsniper October 22, 2017, 4:31 AM

    It seems that as long as certain publicized items are possessed by people other people become fearful that they may become victimized by the former. 6 years ago my friend Steve got up from his desk with his head in his hands and despair on his face and exclaimed, “There’s TOO much information out there!”, to which I replied, “Agreed, but don’t mistake information with disinformation.”

    One is truth and one is false.

    Discerning which is which is the crucial part.
    My guns are no threat to anyone and the Howard’s of the world know not whether I possess them or not. As long as a gun exists somewhere though the Howard’s of the world are terrified. Broad based assumptions like this are indicative of character flaw, personality disorder, or mental disability.

    Probably the most confusing aspect of everything gun in the US is the huge disparity in how justice is rendered in regards to the infractions committed by criminals with guns and this is true across the board in all criminal activity. It’s common knowledge that laws pertaining to gun use are enforced unevenly as there are as many people captured wrongly in the net as there are wrong doers that are not. Once again we see the efficacy of the gov’t’s irresponsible nature.

    The justice system is irretrievably broken and probably cannot be fixed and therefore there will be more and more people victimized by it, good and bad. If the present laws were strictly and sternly enforced by penalty with teeth the Howard’s would have little to complain about in regards to guns, because whether the Howards are aware or not the problem isn’t in the tools themselves but in the application of justice in regard to those that abuse the tools they possess.

    Ever seen that picture of the world’s largest ball of string? It’s maybe 10′ in diameter and has hundreds of miles of random lengths of various types of string collected over the decades. The corollary here is that the gov’t is a tangled ball of string larger than that one by a million fold and none of it will ever be untangled but all of it will be destroyed all at the same time. We know not when this will occur but we all know it will in deed happen. The largest criminal organization this world has ever seen cannot last indefinitely. So the Howards as well as everyone else will just have to bide their time and stay out of the way of that which brings the most harm in world history. All bad stories eventually come to an end….

  • Ten October 22, 2017, 4:57 AM

    Howard says:

    Aim of government — Importance and primacy of Safety is clearly stated in Para 2, 1st sentence.

    Of what and to what purpose?

    It seems my focus is on ensuring expression of those rights.

    It seems your focus is consistently arbitrary, together with the ways and means you want to experiment with to, you say, get it.

    — tyranny of the majority — I endorse majority of rule only in a constitutional, democratic, republic where rights of all individual citizens are the same and protected by law.

    Interpreted: As you claim it, whatever it may be at any one instant, also arbitrary.

    — yelling fire — if you say that yelling fire, in a crowded theater is lawful, where is the illegal act justifying damage claims?

    It’s actionable to act with the malicious intent of damaging others. For this reason murder is illegal in the extreme. Is it more illegal when it’s a special, categorical, subjective, political, and arbitrary crime like a ‘hate crime’?

    — discouragement and penalty, not prevention — the only difference between the two terms is removal of means as a factor in prevention,

    Contradictory on its face. Logically wrong.

    — tradeoffs, inequalities before the law– the Constitution does NOT require a defendant to have representation equal in quality to that of the opposition.

    If that’s your point it’s irrelevant to whatever you’re on about.

    — notion of safety, upending the Constitution — rather I’m trying to improve the balance and stability as a means of better, more fair functioning.

    In which claim you’d be completely unproved and therefore completely wrong, bringing us back to your unique version of constitutional fealty and primacy by any instantaneous ‘democratic’ edict, typically yours.

    — safety, its achievement — certainly we can and do all the time. School guards, building codes, [et al]

    All of which can be argued to be well outside the purview of DC and at that level, unconstitutional. You conflate the States with enumerated federal powers and outcomes after 250 years of decay with original structure.

    — contradictions to stand together — no, I expect the contradictions and errors to be corrected via implementation of impoved regulations.

    That is, by subjective ‘democracy’ downstream of natural, negative, and inscribed rights. I see that all over your stuff, Howard.

    I don’t actually reject everything you claim to want to pull off. I reject your silly, unspoken, unformed, variable trajectory getting whatever it is you think you want. It’s that meandering, subjective, arbitrary action that it seems most people have a natural revulsion to.

  • Ten October 22, 2017, 8:10 AM

    Howard, Your points would all make sense if Government was capable, efficient and fair as the Lady of Justice.

    No they certainly would not. As a matter of obvious fact Howard’s attempt to use 1A and crowded theaters to support his encroachment of 2A is actually contradictory and at complete odds with itself. Gov’t has nothing to do with it.

  • Gordon October 22, 2017, 8:25 AM

    Perhaps this was already written, but: Which psych test? Who writes and interprets and administers it? As Jordan Peterson has pointed out, the unconscious bias test is only somewhat useful with groups and is completely useless on individuals, and cannot predict future behavior.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhA08CUjImU

    Yet in Canada they’re using this test to decide if you need reeducation in the workplace. You’re a raciss! Science says so! Submit to our reeducation regime or be fired and blacklisted!

    I am so, so glad that I’m out of the corporate world–or perhaps I should say that I’m so far out on the edge of it that I’m beyond the range of the radar.

  • Kauf Buch October 22, 2017, 9:18 AM

    TO Ten and Gordon
    Correct on all counts. Bravo!

    The only beef I have with Ten’s thorough post is that he is attempting to logically and rationally appeal to a troll, who clearly – as Gordon’s example exposes – wants subjective Law-by-Man tyranny, using pretty, soothing words to seduce.

    Pigs like Howard don’t want you to think – not even a single step ahead! – of the possibility of any such subjective “criteria” being turned on YOU on a whim (read: Democrats). These are the sorts of weasels I’ve found it’s best in life simply to (verbally) slap upside the head and move on…reasoning merely offers them the chance to troll further and gives their propaganda a smidgen of credibility in the eyes of the more gullible.

  • El Tigre October 22, 2017, 9:37 AM

    Do we have an iron clad agreement that the assorted smugglers that cross the southern border will not add all sorts weapons to their inventory?

  • Ten October 22, 2017, 10:08 AM

    The only beef I have with Ten’s thorough post is that he is attempting to logically and rationally appeal…

    Absolutely correct. The biggest problem with slippery slopes and encroachment is codependence – logical and rational efforts fail and they fail because they are an inherent capitulation to dysfunction. They appeal to nothing, in other words, because there’s nothing there to appeal to.

    Give a partisan on such a trajectory ten years and he won’t even recognize himself.

  • Ten October 22, 2017, 10:09 AM

    Which psych test?

    The same one that determines to remove your voicebox because of how you test about speech in cinema houses.

  • Howard Nelsone October 22, 2017, 6:41 PM

    Psych test @Ten, Gordon, Kauf
    You all have forgotten about everyday applications
    of forensic psychology and forensic linguistics, used by police detectives, CIA interviewers, airport security (especially Israeli), court lawyers, parents world-wide.
    Upon questioning, changes in: facial expressions, body language, psychosomatics (breathing patterns, eye structures, sweating, skin electrical properties, are recorded and tests repeated to detect anomalies for further questioning.
    Forensic linguistics studies the ‘suspect’s’ use of words, phraseology, diversionary replies, … to detect anomalies, for follow-up questioning to detect lies.
    Surely, these kinds of tests can be adapted to prospective gun purchasers. Evidence of their effectiveness may be found at your local law libraries and law enforcement training centers.
    Peterson aside for these interviews, since we’d be testing for conscious known intentions, purposes for ownership, not unconscious ones which the you tube discussion involved.
    Imperfect lawmakers will approve these tests and assign taxes to the innocent. The plan for providing perfect lawmakers is ready to go, but awaits adequate funding and bio-spiritual splice development.
    Law-by-Man tyranny, Kauf, no! Everything comes up for a vote, like did the Constitution
    Pigs like Howard don’t want you to think, says Kauf.
    Thinking is all I’ve urged all to do! Perhaps, it’s pigs or prigs, unlike Howard, who prefer insult to honest, combative inquiry.

    The slippery slope to overregulation, excessive encroachment on Rights, is a jeopardy to be avoided by attention to one’s Representatives, by self, local, or national group (NRA, …).

    My aim is to provoke worthwhile creative thinking to find means to reduce the massacre incidents, not to remove guns of honest citizens. Improvement not impounding.
    Sadly, the ratio here of personal vituperation-to-valuable new or adaptive ideas, is depressingly high.
    I attribute it to ‘tyrannymetusia’, the rational fear of tyranny.

    It’s pleasing to report that we do share an opinion:
    Either,
    1. All present gun purchase laws, though burdensome, are acceptable as is, without change.
    And/or
    2. The present gun purchase laws are so bad that one or more of them should be voided, nullified, erased, expunged, and deleted.
    And/or
    Improvememts, if acceptable by all, might save innocent lives.

    In one or the other cases, you accept the government’s authority to keep,delete, or add.

    Blessings.

    Op

  • Howard Nelsone October 23, 2017, 9:15 AM

    In reply to Gordon, Kauf, Ten —
    Psych/Lie detection testing: Used now by the CIA, FBI, police detectives, lawyers, parents, spouses. Techniques, rationales for evaluating test responses have been developed by forensic psychologists and forensic linguists. Changes in psychosomatic responses (breathing patterns, blood pressure, eye structures and movement, posture, gestures, sweating, …), and speech responses ( word and phrase selections, diversionary replies, anomalous responses (physical and verbal to questions). Anyway, a multifaceted interview with candidate gun purchasers is within the realm of possibility. Imperfect people will prepare questions to be posed and responses to be evaluated — imperfect but not totally inadequate.
    The perfection plan is complete awaiting implementation as soon as funding is obtained and bio-spiritual splicing is developed (on-loan angels have other commitments).

    Slippery slope avoidance of tyrannical encroachments — vigilance and support of organizations such as NRA, CCAA, …

    From Kauf: Pigs like Howard don’t want you to think. Since I’ve continued to ask us all to think creatively, Kauf must be mistaken or referring to someone else, whether that other is pig, prig, or innocent.

    Law-by-Man tyranny — No, I support a society of equal-before-the law democratic representative republic where the majority rules. Unjust laws to be subject to correction via the ballot box, court challenges by plaintiffs supported by civilian organizations, public defenders, jury nullifications of unjust charges, civil disobedience, and rebellion/revolution. See the DoI for some guidelines.

    We live in an imperfect world. At least, let us think and behave in ways to make it better for some, if not all, and worse for none.

  • Howard Nelson October 23, 2017, 9:20 AM

    In reply to Gordon, Kauf, Ten —
    Psych/Lie detection testing: Used now by the CIA, FBI, police detectives, lawyers, parents, spouses. Techniques, rationales for evaluating test responses have been developed by forensic psychologists and forensic linguists. Changes in psychosomatic responses (breathing patterns, blood pressure, eye structures and movement, posture, gestures, sweating, …), and speech responses ( word and phrase selections, diversionary replies, anomalous responses (physical and verbal to questions). Anyway, a multifaceted interview with candidate gun purchasers is within the realm of possibility. Imperfect people will prepare questions to be posed and responses to be evaluated — imperfect but not totally inadequate.
    The perfection plan is complete awaiting implementation as soon as funding is obtained and bio-spiritual splicing is developed (on-loan angels have other commitments).

    Slippery slope avoidance of tyrannical encroachments — vigilance and support of organizations such as NRA, CCAA, …

    From Kauf: Pigs like Howard don’t want you to think. Since I’ve continued to ask us all to think creatively, Kauf must be mistaken or referring to someone else, whether that other is pig, prig, or innocent.

    Law-by-Man tyranny — No, I support a society of equal-before-the law democratic representative republic where the majority rules. Unjust laws to be subject to correction via the ballot box, court challenges by plaintiffs supported by civilian organizations, public defenders, jury nullifications of unjust charges, civil disobedience, and rebellion/revolution. See the DoI for some guidelines.

    We live in an imperfect world. At least, let us think and behave in ways to make it better for some, if not all, and worse for none.

  • Kauf Buch October 23, 2017, 11:31 AM

    Howard, Take your totalitarian “Burma Shave” gun-less sales pitch elsewhere and shove it.
    I’d suggest: try North Korea. You’ll fit right in.
    Just remember to switch out your “r’s” and “l’s”.

    You’le velly wercome.
    *Blessings*, TROLL.

  • Howard Nelson October 23, 2017, 11:34 AM

    I need to remove my mittens AND engage my mind before hitting the ‘Submit’ button below.

    LXXXVI Rubaiyat of O. K.

    After a momentary silence spake
    Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make;
    “They sneer at me for leaning all awry:
    What! Did the Hand then of the Potter shake?”

  • Ten October 23, 2017, 1:13 PM

    So much for the principles of a valid position. Howard has been (further) reduced to the abstracted variables of dissociated anecdotes and poetry. That creative vagueness is probably characteristic of totalitarians and underminers with plans.

    There was that time I insisted I could fly. When pressed for the details or a demonstration I dissolved into wishful sounds and special pleadings. Eventually no one took me with any seriousness at all…

  • Ten October 23, 2017, 1:22 PM

    …which is to say, Howard, that I haven’t forgotten about your especially pleaded attempts at comparisons, comparisons that haven’t a freaking iota to do with the original principle.

    Rather you’ve ignored that, taken to its logical conclusion, the only way to prevent FIRE! in a crowded theater – regardless of how wrongly you use that myth – is, using your reasoning, to remove voiceboxes following psych testing for the purpose of producing two subservient members of society. Those who have proved their fitness and those who cannot speak.

    Maybe someone can take a freighter of pretzels and somehow connect that to an Amendment but I’m guessing no one can connect those Amendments as they’re written to your claims to support them.

    Or maybe they can.

  • Kauf Buch October 24, 2017, 1:51 AM

    Idiot Not-So-Savant Howard, described in a nutshell:
    “The students running campuses like re-education camps aren’t afraid of being muzzled, because they imagine they will always be the ones doing the muzzling — the ones dictating what words we can use, what books we can read, what practices we can embrace. These millennials don’t fear censorship because they plan on doing all the censoring. The problem is a failure of imagination. Today’s moral avant-garde can’t envision falling victim to their own constraints.”

    SOURCE: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/millennials-dont-fear-censorship-because-they-plan-on-doing-all-the-censoring/

    Two sets of four words for you, Howie:
    1) “…shall not be infringed.”
    2) F OFF AND DIE.

  • Anonymous October 24, 2017, 5:09 PM

    I’ve suggested some changes in evaluating prospective and existing gun owners with respect to their mental stability and truthfulness which might relate to their murderousness.
    The suggestions are simply adaptations of existing procedures. I thought others would consider possibilities for improved procedures as well.
    I nowhere demanded guns be removed from gun owners other than for sound indications of mental instability or dishonesty indicative of criminal behavior to come through use of those guns. Some of the tyrannymetusiacs, expressing themselves above do not believe any changes are possible in gun regulations without excessive encroachment on their rights to bear arms, privacy, …
    I am pleased to serve as the receptacle for the vile bile spewed, as it helps to relieve the toxins in the mental boils and abscesses of otherwise sane and decent people. In this, I serve you as a maggot serves medically to digest already diseased flesh around a wound. This is part of my job description.
    I was offered this job by my Master who assured me that He would always be becoming what I had need of Him to be. That assurance, by the way, has been given to all of us.
    What gun regulation modification would you allow to have prevented the murder of only one of the children murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School or at the Las Vegas massacre? Do you believe none are possible without excessive surrender of some percentage of your rights?
    If so, you are experiencing lack of imagination, lack of creativity, and lack of self-respect and confidence in your own humanity. These disabilities are correctable if you choose to make the necessary effort. We all have different mixes of principles and priorities. Keep stirring as the situations change.
    As you have expressed yourselves as best you can, I am pleased to accept that which you have presented as your best. The maggot is rewarded as he helps cure the injured or diseased. Snake venom is also used medicinally. To be a troll, trolling for drowning swimmers is to be a fisher of men, and to be a fissure of men you need to instigate the cracks that permit the light to get in. Choose your preferred metaphor, that’s what they’re there for. The previous curse I presented masks the blessing of self-awareness which I hoped you’d discover. Have you discovered some? Was it awesome or hopefully, awe-full, and not awful.
    If I don’t respond in writing to any of your further comments on this thread, it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your passion and honesty in expression. Let’s observe the consequences of our choices and then decide samely or differently. Let us all enjoy the OODA loops of our existence.

  • Ten October 24, 2017, 5:17 PM

    ^ And now the martyrdom of the blamer of his own victims…

  • Howard Nelson October 24, 2017, 5:23 PM

    Anonymous, above, is only one phantom in this tragi-comedy of an opera.
    We’ve all written the lyrics, time now to hum the melodies and take the opera on the road as we play our parts.

  • ghostsniper October 24, 2017, 7:57 PM

    “Do you believe none are possible without excessive surrender of some percentage of your rights?”
    ===========================

    Since I had nothing to do with any of that, yes.
    Seems like this whole thing goes back to about a 2nd grade level in that some people believe “rights” are flexible, as long as they are talking about other people’s rights, or, rights they have no concern for.
    Without the proper definition of the word “rights” no conversation can be had.
    People that assume to address the rights of other do not understand the proper definition.
    Therefore they dismiss themselves before the conversation starts.
    IOW, you have nothing to say about anything to do with me or things I possess and for the life of me I don’t know why your life is so boring that you would want to nor do I care.
    Perhaps you need a hobby.

    As my ol’ gray haired pappy used to say, “Find something to do or I’ll find something for you to do.”
    Over and fukkin out.

  • Kauf Buch October 24, 2017, 9:55 PM
  • Howard Nelson October 24, 2017, 11:41 PM

    ‘… to address the rights of others …’
    Yes, certainly with what’s been seen at the LV and Sandy Hook School massacres by deranged gun owners, we should try to improve how we authorize gun purchasing.
    The 2nd Amendment was not intended to promote the murder of innocents by permitting gun purchasing by the likely violent, criminally insane.
    Likely, by improving testing and background checking to detect/prevent violent perverts from driving school buses and traitors infiltrating our intelligence agencies and other high levels of government.
    For starters, I would rely on you to prepare the standards, testing questionnaire and other forensic techniques to estimate likelihood of a presidential candidate being a serious liar, violent criminal, or likely traitor-to-be. If your system didn’t call out the Clintons and Obama as serious threats, we’d be justified in beating you over the head with a zinc cap pistol! And I suspect you’d agree that that thumping was justified.
    Most of us in society wish to live under the rule of fair law rather than of a lawless mobocracy. Why not TRY to achieve excellence instead of perfection, improvement instead of inadequateness?
    Tyrannymetusia is justified, thinkingphobia regarding life preservation is not, in my arrogant opinion.
    We are not speaking here of Ben Franklin’s giving up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, we’re talking about lives to be saved by all yielding
    some percentage of some of our rights to protect others as well as most of ourselves. We do this now if we obey speed limits, whether old or revised (changed, improved, inconveniencing) depending on road hazard conditions. Massacres, 9/11 conditions, San Bernardino inadequately tracked threats, … are our road of life hazards. Deal better with these threats or allow death by denial.

    E

    The excuse that government is too corrupt and/or too inept to improve prevention to some worthwhile degree is an absolutist’s inanity.

  • Howard Nelson October 25, 2017, 12:30 AM

    Kauf, the cake thing you offered truly takes the cake for fallacious, deceptive, invalid logic.
    The DoI, Constitution, similar local laws give us each the same size cake of Rights. We know from recent history that some of these cakes have been poisoned by citizens and noncitizens in our midst exerting their right to own poison. For public safety, we establish laws controlling these poisons, and because these poisons are useful as pesticides, we do not exclude purchase as long as purpose is considered safe.
    Honest, decent purchasers are inconvenienced, and lives are saved.
    An imperfect Rights balance of values is obtained, lives saved vs. everyone’s inconvenience.
    The majority approves the new rules as fair since all will gain some protection for their Right to life and all cake eaters will be able to have their cake and eat it too, with safe limits on the level of poison allowed in the cake to prevent early spoilage.
    Hence, thus, ergo we have turned the Opera into a Circus into a Farce.
    And how do we feel, think, and behave after this exorcism? Well, if you do eat unplucked duck, expect to feel down in the mouth.

    A

  • Kauf Buch October 25, 2017, 11:15 AM

    F OFF, Howard.
    In your fascist world, you “law” gets passed.
    Within one day, all Conservatives are deemed “mentally unstable.”
    Hence, F OFF, Howard.

    NO, I’m NOT asking for debate or discussion from you.
    Take your “public safety” strawman to North Korea and choke on it, A@#HOLE.
    Oh yes: F OFF, TROLL.

  • Kauf Buch October 25, 2017, 11:18 AM

    Howard, take your “public safety” strawman to North Korea and CHOKE ON IT.

    In your totalitarian utopia, your “sensible testing” law is passed…
    …and within a week all Conservatives are deemed “mentally unstable.”

    Please stop making such a joke of yourself.
    You persuade NO ONE.

  • Kauf Buch October 25, 2017, 11:20 AM

    p.s. Your beloved “poison control” clause in the Bill of Rights
    must be right next to that “muskets only” clause.

    *rolls eyes*

  • Kauf Buch October 25, 2017, 11:46 AM

    p.p.s. to Howard

    Please let us all know in which city
    you will be participating in the
    November 4 “Scream Helplessly at the Sky” Fest.
    I’m sure there are a number of us who would enjoy watching.

  • ghostsniper October 25, 2017, 1:38 PM

    “The 2nd Amendment was not intended….”
    ==============================

    Howard, it has nothing to do with the 2nd.
    Nothing. At. All.

    The 2nd amendment limits the gov’t’s infringement upon an already existing “right”, and that was what I said above.

    A right.

    Not a privilege.

    The gov’t can bestow a privilege and it can take it away. But the gov’t, nor anybody else, can take away a right. A right is sacrosanct, inviolate. You can no more take away the things I possess then the air in my lungs. Any attempt to do so requires me to stop you, whatever it takes.

    Do you really NOT understand the meaning of the word “right”?
    Or are you simply acting like a troll as others have accused you?

    Til the day I die I will always have at least 1 gun and thousands of rounds of ammunition and there is nothing that can be done about it by anybody, ever.

  • Rob De Witt October 25, 2017, 2:14 PM

    Fer Chrissake, boys, you’re being trolled. It’s sitting in its mother’s basement congratulating itself over getting you cranked up.

    Give it a rest.

  • Lela Markham October 25, 2017, 2:43 PM

    You’re right about there being two de facto Americas – the one with a lot of guns and a very low murder rate and the other with few guns and a sky-high murder rate (almost often involving those illegal guns).

    Why such a difference between the two Americas? Well, it might have something to do with ordinary people having guns. Thieves, robbers and murders think twice about going into a house where they have a reasonable expectation of getting shot by people who know how to aim center of mass. An armed society is indeed a polite society.

    It might have something to do with us not living on top of each other, so we don’t engender violence to one another like too many rats crammed together in too little space. Psychologically speaking, city dwellers set themselves up to encounter more violence by the choice to live in high-population-density settings.

    It might have something to do with the differing morals of the two Americas. Rural folks tend to embrace a zeitgeist of “leave the other guy alone”, made possible by not living so close together. They also tend to go to church where they learn lessons about life being sacred. So when they’re angry (as all humans get sometimes) they tend to go after each other in ways that won’t kill one another.

    The article, however, asks the question: How do we fix it? I don’t think we can fix it as one America. The cities want a simplistic solution that leaves the rurals (who don’t have or want cops right around the corner) disarmed and at the mercy of people who don’t follow the law. I don’t see that being reconciliable. Maybe the best we can hope for is an amicable separation. Break into smaller units that don’t have the power to make life-and-death decisions for one another. Stay friendly. Maybe cooperate on foreign affairs and military needs, but allow autonomy to return on local/state, economic, and social matters.

    The cities will then have nobody to blame but themselves for their murder rates and maybe then, they’ll take steps to address it.

  • Ten October 26, 2017, 5:57 AM

    Fer Chrissake, boys, you’re being trolled. It’s sitting in its mother’s basement congratulating itself over getting you cranked up.

    It has elevated special pleading and self-victimization and Mobying the Constitution and emoting to high art, however, and it’s really perfected the art of utterly ignoring the inevitable trajectory of its own whim. You know, that voiceboxes-by-State thing to safeguard movie houses.

    And the poetry part was … special. We’ll probably be treated to more of that. It’s convincing.

  • Kauf Buch October 26, 2017, 8:08 AM

    TO Ten and Rob De Witt

    Well, *of course*, it’s trolling…I just needed the aerobic exercise. 😉

  • Howard Nelson October 26, 2017, 6:25 PM

    Lela, your last two summary sentences make a lot of sense.
    Have any locales turned themselves around as you, we would like?

  • Kauf Buch October 26, 2017, 10:53 PM

    “Look at ME!”, say the fool who’s begging to become a statistic.