I'm done with the Second Amendment

[digitaldiscipline]

This was just sent to both my Senators, and my Congressperson:

"In the wake of today's events in Connecticut, the time for negotiation with gun-rights advocates is past. Dozens of people, including numerous children, now lie dead because of excessively lax firearm regulation in this country. Let them howl about freedom and civil liberties, and then remind them that the inalienable rights enshrined in our founding documents are "Life, Libery, and the Pursuit of Happiness," and today's shooting victims have been denied all of these.

Nobody's gun trumps anyone else's life. Ever."

Comments

[smjayman.livejournal.com]

CT has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country, doesn't it?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

For all the good it's done - apparently, everything that's been reported so far indicates that the weapons used were procured legally.

Which, honestly, is a big part of the problem. The three of you who've commented are folks I like and respect, and still disagree with. I've been trying to come to grips with my mushy stance on the Second Amendment, and this has finally tipped me into the, "No" column on it. There's no reasonable need for citizens to be carrying, and taking guns out of the hands of both law-abiding citizens and criminals alike, despite the howls of protest from folks who see firearms as the last line of protection of civil liberties (sorry, Ogre, I'm cross-referencing some of the stuff you mentioned on my FB here, but am still up for getting a beer or scotch sometime).... that seems like a better course of action.

It won't be quick, it won't be easy, and it won't be painless. It's taken the best part of forty years for drunk driving to shift from something that's an open secret and the subject of jokes to something almost universally viewed with disgust as being stupid and awful (and I say this as someone with a DUI on my record, nearly half that long ago); I'm OK with several types of private gun ownership being moved down the same path.

My rights end at your body, and vice versa. Guns exist to deliver harm, and, all the social arguments about improved support and mental health care notwithstanding in the instances of folks who may or may not be suffering instabilities expressing themselves with lead and gunpowder in cases like this, I'm not sure I can keep buying the "armed society is polite society" line of reasoning any longer.

[ivy]

Re: reasonable need for citizens to be carrying, personal self-defense is a big one for me. Like that woman who recently shot the guy breaking into her house... he was bigger and stronger than her and had no qualms about using violence. She was at home with a baby and not picking any fights. I think it's a good thing that she had access to something that she could defend herself with. (I like and respect Jay and those like him, but dude is not psychic nor equipped with teleportation.) I don't think anyone but her could have gotten there in time. So I see this as a feminist concern... I think the equalizing of force potential puts the tools in the hands of good people defending themselves who would not otherwise be able to. I agree that many guns exist to deliver harm. I think there are cases where using them for that purpose is doing good and protecting innocents.

It's not, of course, a unilateral fix. There's no way to say "only good people have access to tools of violence", though we sure have tried with legislation. I have been so background checked. So, so background checked. [grin] And then again. It seems to be a matter of which particular set of horrible unintended consequences seems more horrible. And like thinking about terrorism, I think we've got to decide what we want to have happen and then look at history and statistics to figure out what the best likely route there is. We can't be reactionary and emotional more than considered and wise, or we defeat ourselves as a society. We have similar "save the lives of innocents" goals, we just differ in current theories on how best to get there.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

that's where my mush comes in. i live in the famous "stand your ground" state. my home defense system is a baseball bat and a wakizashi, and I have considered augmenting that with a nine. i haven't. i probably won't.

but... yeah.

it's a mess, but, from what i've gathered from the media so far, I don't think there's any reason for a .223 to be in the "home/personal defense" category of firearms.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

When a serial robber tried to break into my house (http://mckitterick.livejournal.com/722526.html) a couple of months ago, I was grateful that I owned a shotgun. Also REALLY glad I didn't have to use it, as he left about the time I showed up in the kitchen, armed. Then, a few minutes later, the police arrived. If the guy had succeeded in breaking in, the cops wouldn't have been there in time. It was after 4:00am, so I was bleary-eyed and not ready to defend myself by hand.

I also didn't go for the .45 or the rifle, because it was dark and I couldn't find my glasses. I don't think those are good home-defense weapons, not the least because they penetrate walls and I live in a neighborhood. My shotgun, though? This is the perfect tool for the job.

When I was 16, I first had to make the decision if I'd use a (different) shotgun to defend the life of my girlfriend and myself from her psychopathic stepfather - a big, dangerous, violent man trying to beat down the front door of my house with an aluminum bat. I had witnessed him commit violence, and he was saying that he would kill us. I had no reason to disbelieve him. I was prepared to kill the man dead with that gun, and the world would not have missed him. Luckily, a neighbor saw him (it was mid-afternoon on a workday, a couple of miles outside a small town), and the guy wised up and left soon after.

For years afterward, I suffered emotionally about my readiness to kill, even though it would have clearly been self-defense - and even though I never had to do it. Even so, I was very glad then, too, to have been armed. It's the bad guys who shouldn't have access to weapons. We need to work on our nation's mental health, not remove rights from good people. And I know a lot of good, progressive people who go hunting because it's the most-humane way to acquire healthy meat, so rifles make complete sense for people to be able to own.

This is a topic that could go on and on and on, and I've debated it with other liberal/progressive types to no conclusive end. It can be boiled down to this: Yes, guns are efficient killing machines, but so are automobiles, and they kill a lot more people than bullets do. And taking away guns (even if we could) wouldn't stop the crazy evil people (like this Chinese man who stabbed 20+ people today (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/12/14/china-knife-attack-school.html)); that would just ensure that law-abiding folks could not defend themselves against violent criminals.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

These are the situations that give me pause, yes. I agree with you - in those cases, having a firearm was a positive thing in your position.

And, as you note, not having that situation come up at all would be even better. I don't know how to get us there, but I'm pretty confident "more guns" isn't the right path.

I think the "cars kill lots of people, too" argument isn't a very good one - motor vehicles have productive utility for pretty much every citizen (whether you drive, are driven, or simply use goods that are transported by them); guns do not (other than, possibly, a vague notion of "safety" that may or may not exist, or be inverted or tempered by the knowledge that other people are armed, or the cops/government/whoever has them). You probably saw Jay's discussion of this (http://jaylake.livejournal.com/3029448.html) earlier in the week about the false equivalency in this particular line of argument, and I tend to be in agreement with him here.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I think the "cars kill lots of people, too" argument isn't a very good one - motor vehicles have productive utility for pretty much every citizen (whether you drive, are driven, or simply use goods that are transported by them); guns do not (other than, possibly, a vague notion of "safety" that may or may not exist, or be inverted or tempered by the knowledge that other people are armed, or the cops/government/whoever has them).

Irrelevant. A tool's effectiveness as a weapon is utterly orthogonal to it's utility as a tool.

Gasoline may have a high enough utility that there's no chance it could ever be banned, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it could quite easily be used to commit atrocities.

And... *headshake* So, the man describes standing to shield his girlfriend, holding a firearm, waiting as a psychopathic giant attempts to batter down his door with a perfectly effective tool for murder, and then you dismiss the notion that guns might be used to create safety as "a vague notion"? That's... quite an impressive set of blinders you're wearing there, sir. And rather dismissive of his experience, to boot.

Studies indicate that there are as many as two million (http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html) defensive gun uses each year in America. That's two million more violent acts that people will have to defend themselves against, each year, without the most effective tool for the job, if you manage to sweep all the guns away.

So, thus far, assuming you get your way, the next killer will have to switch from handguns to petrol bombs, and presuming one in twenty of those defensive gun uses prevented a death committed by a criminal, there will be a hundred thousand more dead people who might have otherwise lived. But most of those people will probably die in ones and twos, and never make the news. So you'll have managed to prevent another tragedy... that you have to hear about, anyway.

The most "effective" school massacre in American history killed 45 people and injured 58 others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster), and not a single one of them was shot. If you ban guns, the only effect it will have is to change the means by which the next massacre happens, and guarantee that no one else has a hope in hell of stopping it. Guns were already banned at that school. Making them more illegal will. Not. Work.

[ivy]

I'm glad that in none of those situations were you hurt, and that you had the means to defend yourself and your partner if you had had to.

For what it's worth, I think it's better when one has a chance to do that self-examination and make decisions about one's readiness to use violence in defense *before* something terrible happens, rather than *when* something terrible happens. (Or, worse, after.) So I am sympathetic to your emotional pain afterwards, but I think it was the better choice given what you were staring at. I'm sorry that that happened to you.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

everything that's been reported so far indicates that the weapons used were procured legally

Except for the part where the killer acquired them by murdering the owner and stealing them, yeah, I guess so.

There's no reasonable need for citizens to be carrying

Except for how it would have been really useful for one of the teachers at that school to be carrying.

It won't be quick, it won't be easy, and it won't be painless.

It won't be possible. Dirt poor villagers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_Copy) make copies of modern weaponry by hand. What chance do you think you have of eliminating firearms in a country that makes the state-of-the-art computer controlled machine tools?

Not to mention, do you really think I'm the only person who will react as I did if your team even gets a law passed and says "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in"? I wasn't being even vaguely hyperbolic when I said you'd get another civil war. And do please note, my side of that war has all the guns.

Really, I suppose I have to give you some respect for your honesty in openly declaring your opposition to the second amendment. The vast majority of anti-gunners are not nearly so direct about it. But it is a position which is no more compatible with friendship with me than if you had declared yourself opposed to the first amendment.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Except for the part where the killer acquired them by murdering the owner and stealing them, yeah, I guess so.

I wrote my comment before seeing that, so I was commenting with the latest info I had at the time.

So, since you weren't being hyperbolic, let me ask you something - is someone to go around, shooting people who don't have guns, when the government says you don't need all of yours?

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

No. Neither myself nor anyone I know has any interest in running around shooting random people. But nor will I stand by passively and be peaceably disarmed. If attacked, I will defend myself. If left alone, I will leave others alone. I have never in my life initiated force against another person. (Well, I suppose I may have picked on my little sister once or twice when we were kids.) But I have ended several fights.

I suspect that most LEOs in this country have a pretty good idea of how terribly they are outnumbered here, too. That's what I mean when I say that my side "has all the guns". How many people who feel as you do would be willing to pick up their own gun, and go door to door, demanding the surrender of firearms literally at gunpoint? Are you expecting that you can just have the police do that for you? What do you think will happen if most of the police just quit, instead?

[ivy]

I disagree with you here, but you're still my friend. [hugs]

I would like to live in a world where we had a workable way of preventing these things from happening, but we don't. China, which has stricter gun control, has people running into schools and stabbing children with knives.

"No motive was given for the stabbings, which echo a string of similar assaults against schoolchildren in 2010 that killed nearly 20 and wounded more than 50. The most recent such attack took place in August, when a knife-wielding man broke into a middle school in the southern city of Nanchang and stabbed two students before fleeing."

"Most of the attackers have been mentally disturbed men involved in personal disputes or unable to adjust to the rapid pace of social change in China."

"In one of the worst incidents, a man described as an unemployed, middle-aged doctor killed eight children with a knife in March 2010 to vent his anger over a thwarted romantic relationship."

Which is also horrifying, of course. So I agree wholeheartedly that we should take a close look at what we can do to lessen the rate that crazy people take it out on innocent kids. But I think they'll just use whatever they have at hand. Banning guns and knives and bricks (the TSA recently confiscated another set of mine) is not the solution, I don't think. My money would be on improving the mental health care system.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

See my previous note to Jay for my desire to lurch things towards a superior care environment; I think we both (you and I) recognize that a string of assaults by a knife-wielding assailant is still less deadly than a single event with a shooter (today, Aurora, etc), especially when it's less likely that a series of events will take place than a one-off massacre.

I don't have any easy fixes, but I think that there are definitely too many fucking guns.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I hope you included the typo, too, so they know just how seriously to take you.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

If the government wants to fuck us, we're going to be fucked; the only things guns will do is delay that slightly, and make sure that it's a corpse that's getting fucked.

Dude, fucking Marco Rubio is one of my Senators. I almost re-wrote it to use smaller words, just for him.