Political Discussions
Latest Gun Grab
Posted by Agit8r • 6/24/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: gun grab
New legislation to give Atty. General the authority to block gun sales...
lautenberg.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=314817&
usgovinfo.about.com/b/2009/06/24/people-on-terror-watch-list-buying-guns-ga...
who is on that list anyway?
User Comments
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I'm half and ha;f on this. Obviously, we don't want people with criminal records, histories of violence etc and so forth to get their hands on guns legally, yes? And we don't want people who may be part of terrorist cells to get their hands on guns (or explosives, as the article states) yes?
But the problem is what you mentioned - who is on the terrorist watch list, and why? It opens itself up to far too much abuse and power grabs. I would argue that either the "terror watch list" needs to be re-organized so as to include people with histories and real connections to terrorism or other acts of violence or of a criminal nature, while excluding groups who are not, in fact, terrorists (no matter how much they "look" like terrorists).
Perhaps a good gauge would be to determine how many of the people on the list, purchasing the guns, actually use them in a domestic terrorist plan or plot. How many of the 800 and whatever have used the guns?
DOn't get me wrong, I don't think that preventing purchases of guns will deter or stop the suspected terrorists from getting guns one way or another. But we shouldn't just hand them to them, either. You know?
I don't believe this bill will pass, though. Not unless they have something concrete to back up the assertion that all suspected terrorists are actually worthy of such suspicion, and are amassing guns in an unusual way that might throw up some red flags.-
they already have the Brady Bill for known criminals. This is theoretical and arbitrary.
here is how wacky the process is:
www.aclu.org/privacy/35968prs20080714.html -
I understand that, I guess where my problem lies is between the notion of being innocent until proven guilty (of terrorism) and having tangible suspicions of a person's activities that may warrant a loss of the right to buy guns legally.
It's a really, really fine line. Which is why I don't think it will pass. -
there is the matter of due process.
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If they're known terrorists, they shouldn't be able to buy a gun. They should be in prison. If they're only suspected, that's a different story. But what's really needed is a national database where gun sellers can do an instant check on the buyer. And anyone buying large quantities should be thoroughly investigated, in case the guns are going to Mexico. -
here's more. good thing that Nelson Mandela doesn't need to buy a gun
www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/watchlistcounter.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives_and_other_controversial_c... -
here's another make-your-blood-boil link about the subject
www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2009m5d18-Arbitrary-nofly-... -
Because this is so much more important than the economy, health care, or Iran . . .
Frankly, the subject leaves me cold. I'm tired of the excessive ease with which nearly anyone can get their hands on a weapon. Worried about this list? Visit a Virginia gun show. You can get what you want with no hassle then. So now gun freaks blood no longer need boil, but maybe mine should.-
yes, but If one were working as say... a repo man, and needed to have a firearm for occupational reasons, one should not be barred from LEGAL ownership because they have the same name as a "suspected terrorist"
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In a way it is more important because the recession will last ten years tops but taking away our citizens teeth will last forever. Also, I'm pretty sure inner city crime rates will spike after gun rights are taken away, and that could kill as many people as what Iran can do. -
actually the inner cities would be less effected... after all how many people could be named JaShawn, or Condoleeza?
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I'm really not getting your joke right now.
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not really a joke. The primary concern of this list is that one recieves a false positive. For instance, there are probably tens of thousands of John Fishers in America. If one of them winds up on the list, we're all screwed!
A secondary concern being that I myself will be placed on the list for quoting Jefferson on the "Tree of Liberty... it's natural manure"
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Paranoia ain't pretty.
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i used myself, simply as an example. The fact that some people are being treated unjustly because of this list (regardless of the gun implications) should enrage us all
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I don't see any justice in owning a gun, although I realize it is a constitutionally guaranteed right. Part of last summer's Supreme Court ruling, though, included accepting the government's ability to regulate firearms. Some of the rhetoric I'm hearing in this thread suggests fear of losing the right to bear arms altogether, as if all regulation were illegitimate, which is not what last year's Supreme Court decision said, and as if the Second Amendment would be overturned, which isn't going to happen.
Edited to add:
This is fodder for the gristmill of GOP candidates who get voted in by single-issue, low-information voters. But if there is a real issue I should be concerned about, I'm not seeing it, at least not specifically for guns. The issue of lists of suspects in general might be troublesome, but if no fly lists are legal, then no gun lists would have to be too. Any word on any legal challenges to the no fly lists, which have been around now for some 8 years? -
My beef is about arbitrary governance, but I understand what you're talking about
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"This is fodder for the gristmill of GOP candidates who get voted in by single-issue, low-information voters."
There are as many of those on the democrat side as the republican. Face it mark, most voters aren't well informed and barely think about this stuff.
As for the justice of owning a gun, it's self-reliance. You, just like the birds of the sky, have the right to your own pair of claws. And the problem Mark is that Obama is using your "regulation" as a weapon. He is redefining assault weapons to include almost all weapons currently manufactured in the United States. This will drive up the cost of all firearms as gunmakers rush to redesign their firearms and rebuild their production to make them according to Obama's standards. This will drive up the cost of weapons (already very high) to the point where most people simply won't be able to afford them, and that's wrong.
Edited: Further, most gun laws are more emotion then reason, especially the ban on assault weapons which does more to assist organized crime then to keep our citizens safe, and it does that by making it impossible for citizens to defend themselves against a large group of people. Even if an innocent has only a 10% chance of defeating a mob, that still gives innocents as a corporate an edge, because while the innocent will face this situation maybe once a month at worst if they live in an exceptionally bad part of town, your criminal likely faces this every day. And in Switzerland, where Assault Rifle ownership is both allowed and mandatory for most of the male population, their crime rate is near zilch and low even for the continent of Europe, while Englands actually increased tremendously (though still less then America's, but not by as much) after they prohibited firearms. -
Your Swiss and British comparrison assumes that the only variable that is different is gun laws, which is simply not true. You are dealing with two radically different societies. The all-gun-regulation-is-to-be-condemned crowd tend to circulate these kinds of falsely framed "facts" as real arguments. You can find more on FactCheck.org, among other places.
But I argued the question of gun rights and gun regulation to death when the decision came out. Did a few posts on my blog and had some uncharacteristically civil discussions on BlogCatalog. -
While there is truth to what you say about comparing two countries Mark, the fact that England's increased tremendously is beyond such fallacies. Further, the basic fact that 1) criminals will find firearms or something else that does much the same anyways and 2) better arms benefit the innocent more then the guilty (by removing some of the advantage of numbers) still stands.
If it is any reassurance, however, I do support regulating WHO can own a gun (mental patients, for instance), just not WHAT KIND of gun, except that I do believe howitzers would do too much splash damage. -
I've seen you do this in other threads. Act reasonable by admitting that the other side has a point, and then go back to your original point, continuing to ask us to take your logic as an article of faith. Ssee your numbers points 1 and 2 above. And your statement about England rests on assumptions about the way the world works, not actual studies. Such statements are akin to another truism I am used to hearing from your side, "Guns don't kill people. People do." Sure. But people use guns to do the deed. Ever consider why U.S. law enforcement agencies are for the regulation of guns, not just who gets them, but what kind they are allowed to possess?
(Edited to add: But what's the point? There is no way I am going to agree with your radical stance, which does not comport with the law. And apparently there is no way you are going to come round to my way of seeing things.) -
"job security"
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Bull.
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So would you dissolve the 2nd Amendment completely? -
I talk about that above. Read the thread, and the question would be unnecessary, unless you see all regulation as contrary to the 2nd amendment, which is not how the majority of the Supreme Court ruled last summer. Anyway, if you're interested in how I reacted last summer, here:
markstoneman.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/learning-to-accept-the-courts-decisio...
markstoneman.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/deadly-force/
But I don't plan on approving new comments, because it's been a year. -
@MS: On 2, I gave you the logic in (). On 1, it should be common sense that prohibiting guns is not going to lead to criminals not commiting crimes. As for my "radical stance," of course it does not comport to law, that's why I'm TRYING TO GET THE LAW CHANGED
EDITED: Logic is never accepted on "an article of faith." By definition, to not accept logic is to not be logical. Show a fallacy or stop being an arrogant snob. -
If we only had to prove things by using logic, we would never have to do any empirical studies about what actually happens. Logic has to be based on premises about how things works. But who's to say your premises are correct? Without some studies, I'd say we have to accept---or not accept---your premises on faith.
Launching a personal attack does nothing to strengthen your argument. -
@MS: Show me your fallacies. Tell me where my logic could be wrong or you're just a little red dog barking up the wrong tree.
Anyways, I wouldn't call that so much a personal attack as a rebuke. -
@MS: Answer the question.
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On 1, it should be common sense that prohibiting guns is not going to lead to criminals not commiting crimes.
That's your opinion. Saying it's common sense doesn't make it a fact. -
@sati: Although you are right in pointing out that it doesn't make it a fact, MS's complete inabillity to show why it is not does make one suspect it.
Further, if they are already breaking the law, why not break one more?
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In the late 1700's the arguement was as follows;
The right-wing as represented by Edmund Burke advocated the restraint of self-governance:
"One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause... He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it."
And representing the then left-wing position on this issue we have Thomas Jefferson reflecting the Lockean assertion of the right of rebellion, as he defends the Shay's Rebellion:
"...what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."-
Considering Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France it's no wonder.
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meanwhile, taking the middle ground:
"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws."
--John Adams; 'A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America' -
The right of self-defense is also anchored in the English Bill of Rights from 1689, which came out of the Glorious Revolution (to use its Protestant name) of 1688. Of course, this right obtained only for Protestants. There is no mention of militias (this being England), but there is mention of regulation. Here's the item: "That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law." And the source: avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp. By the way, I take the mention of "conditions" to relate to their social background, that is, their "rank" in society, to use another term from the time.
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thanx for helping flesh out our historical perspective here
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I thought you'd like that.
The quote, by the way, helped me to come to terms with the Second Amendment decision last summer, even if it did more or less render the militia clause irrelevant. Relevance? Well, take a look at some of the other rights in that 1689 document. They're not as far-reaching as some of ours a century later, after the Enlightenment and in a different context, but the similarities are striking.
And Burke's book on 1789, which you like to cite, talks an awful lot about 1688.
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Obama wants our guns!!!! I think its time to rebel against the statist government.-
or better yet, we ought to simply insist that inclusion on the list be limited to cases in which a court order is issued, and secondary identifying information (social security #, green card, etc) is used for instant cross referencing.
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@Agit8r: Wanting accountability via courts would be reasonable. Ditto for the no-fly lists.
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thanks. My thoughts exactly
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