Split. Second.

[digitaldiscipline]

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Leaving aside for a moment the elephant in the room - that the Second Amendment is, on the face of it, simply a mechanism for citizens to be armed as soldiers against threats to the sovereignty of the nation. In essence, at the time of our nation's founding, we were an approximation of modern-day Switzerland (link is to FB). Thus, Red Dawn is an expression of strict Constitutionalism! The following is a sanitized quoting of Rude Pundit's suggestions for contemporary firearms ownership in America.

[begin quoting, including his links, though I am reformatting and pasteurizing; the original can be found here]


The Rude Pundit begins with a sad, simple premise: shit that can be done in his lifetime. Because a total gun ban, hell, just a total handgun and assault weapon ban in this country is realistically never going to happen, and, even in the wildest utopian scenarios, it would take decades to achieve.

Countries that have banned guns have not become lawless wastelands. One oft-cited statistic is that Japan only had two gun deaths last year. Let's put that in perspective. We have about 2.5 or times the number of people as Japan in the United States. That means 5-6 gun deaths for our 310 million people. Twirl that around you brain for a minute or two.

Here we go:

1. The basics - stuff that the majority of the country agrees on:
- Background checks for all gun sales.
- A ban on all assault weapons and magazines over 10 rounds.

This is pretty much the stuff that President Obama called for yesterday.

2. Beyond basics - stuff that is still easy to do but is resisted by many gun enthusiasts.
- Every gun registered.
- Licenses to use guns, renewable by test every 2 years.
- A ban on some kinds of bullets, like hollow points.
- A ban on online sales of weapons.
- Microstamping firearms.
- Bullet identification systems.
- Massive funding of gun buybacks.
- Limit firearm purchases to 1 a month.
- Cap the number of firearms one can own unless registered as a dealer.
- License all dealers.
- Required use of safety locks and storage in homes with children.

[This is me chiming in for a moment - in yesterday's installment, RP made the suggestion that most of the regulations to implement these rules isn't a matter of property rights, it's a matter of commerce, over which Congress has authority. Regulating the manufacture, sale, and licensing of things is certainly under its purview with this line of reasoning, and, as Justice Roberts said in reference to the AHCA, the commerce clause gives Congress the tools to do a lot of things. Whether or not people are happy about it is a different matter.]

3. Getting radical - Things that aren't especially radical, but here and now, seem that way.
- A federal law against concealed carry of firearms.
- A ban on large purchases of ammunition.
- No private sales of firearms.
- No firearms in homes with people who would not pass a firearms purchase background check.
- A confiscation of all assault weapons that were previously banned. If those have to be from some people's cold, head hands, well, that's their choice to make.

[Me again. This is where my resistance begins, very slightly, to manifest; the fourth item there seems overreaching, and implies that everyone in the country would have to take a firearms purchase background check. The parallel to automobiles as potentially dangerous things people use a lot pertains, in my mind - a household with unlicensed and unlicensable individuals (minors, etc) can still be in possession of a car or cars, though the owner of record or person who holds the insurance policy is liable for what happens with them, for the most part.]

You might hate speed limits because you know you can drive fast safely. But all it takes is one person not as skilled as you believe you are to spin out and kill a whole bunch of us. If you speed a lot and get caught, you get your license taken away. All you gotta do is respect the speed limit, and you can drive as much as you want.

Comments

[ivy]

Did you read Larry Correia's opinion on gun control? I think he's got the right of it there.

Re: magazines over ten rounds, that's pretty far off the standard of what's out there. My boring old Glock 19, which is like the Honda Civic of guns, takes 15 per magazine. I have like eight of those in my closet. (They are the only magazines I own. Me and my one semiauto are not particularly enthusiastic as firearms enthusiasts go... I'm the lightweight end of the spectrum.) That's not anomalous or excessive, that's the way it comes from the factory. So I don't think that's basics that are agreed on by the majority... most gun owners are gonna balk at that one right off the bat.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

it's an excellent article. chase his links if you can too.

magazine ban - the 1994 ban, which included iirc magazine limits - read Larry's thoughts on that. i happen to agree.

banning hollowpoints - Larry didn't touch on that per se, but it's silly.

passing laws that hurt lawful users is a bad idea, imho. we already have many laws to use against the unlawful.

#

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I saw it more or less immediately after making this post, courtesy of Stitch right here. :-)

[ivy]

Heh, I got it from like eight places. I don't read his blog myself, because man do that dude and I not agree politically in other ways, but I do like his novels.

[khallis.livejournal.com]

You seem to have a big hate on, here.

It reads to me like you've decided that a 'rights' argument is specious, and that a 'self defense' argument is fantasy, and thus you are happily holding forth on who you'd like to outlaw, imprison or kill for having different opinions and beliefs than your own.

There are abuses of the first amendment that lead to lynch mobs and the death of innocent bystanders - sure, not often - but it occasionally happens. Yet, I consider free speech to be so fundamentally important, that I categorically refuse to hold the right of free speech hostage contingent upon the uniformly good behavior of every single living human being. If our standards for civil liberties fall all the way to the level of, "a hundredth of a percent of those who use it, misbehave with it, so get rid of it" - then there is literally no civil liberty that will remain, to any of us.

I absolutely respect your right to your opinions, and I absolutely respect your right to fight for a world more like the one you want to see. I oppose you profoundly on this point. I will not abdicate the field to you and your desired future because you believe me to be incorrect and unreasonable - I believe you to be incorrect and unreasonable on this point. Neither of our opinions is irrelevant.

Self defense happens a lot. Guns level the playing field between a strong young male aggressor and an elderly female victim in a way that no other martial art I am aware of comes remotely close to. I won't trade that egalitarianism away by overreacting against an atrocity that occurs very rarely. Sometimes doctors misdiagnose, mistreat and kill people, but it would be ludicrous to abolish them because of that, when weighed against the good they also do. The world is complex, and every solution sucks to some degree, but I think the mature thing to do here is shrug and say, "Damn, shit happens. That sucks, and you have my deepest respectful condolences."

If we'd had the fortitude to do that after 9/11, we might not have the TSA now. We had reasonable controls on airport passengers, then. Similarly, we have reasonable controls on firearms, now.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Probably in spite of the abuse I'm getting from ilcylic on the subject, I have been reading a lot of stuff shared by folks who hold opinions with which I differ, and, I think this has helped me try and clarify the point I'm making, and which was not very present in this post, and is a step back from where I was last Friday or so.

There are problems with (primarily American, for the sake of this conversation) society that, all too often, lead to someone reaching for a gun as a solution. Ideally, we should try and work towards a situation where those problems are mitigated as completely as possible; in the interim, trying to find ways to make using a firearm in these situations less likely seems like a good idea.

If violent crime, drug violence, depression, desperation, and the whole host of things that make people need a gun are lessened through improved quality of life, education, impoved health/mental health care & de-stigmatization, the triggers for gun violence are, hopefully, going to decrease.

But, right now, the same folks who make policy who are very strongly in favor of Second Amendment rights are, by and large, very much against spending money on health and education. This is the bed in which we all must lie as a result. I'm not thrilled about that.

[ivy]

I think we would agree more if you swapped out "reaching for a gun" as "reaching for violence as a solution". I do think we agree that it is a problem with society that people choose to use coercive force to get what they want, and that people who clearly need assistance with their health aren't getting it. I'm with you that I want all those improved quality of life things to happen, and I will also work towards helping those goals. I just don't think that tightening our gun laws is an effective way of doing that. Health care and destigmatization would, IME, be way more effective. I'm not a policymaker, and I agree with you that our very polarized (and somewhat arbitrarily so!) political system is bearing bitter fruit here to the detriment of all of us.

In a way, I think my having a non-traditional party stance here is what I can do to undermine that problematic polarization. I'm socially liberal and pro-Second Amendment. This makes it harder for people to try to assign me to some "Us" and "Them" teams, and hopefully makes them think about who they're deciding are bad evil people not like Us. So by being cheerfully friendly and at least partially on everybody's team in some way, it makes it harder for them to demonize the opposition. That common ground means they have slightly improved odds of having to listen to me.

[khallis.livejournal.com]

I share your frustration and anger at seeing people respond to circumstances that do not call for a gun - or even use of force - with the wrong approach.

I heard smjayman put it particularly well; to paraphrase a point he made in a pistol training class, the overwhelming majority of problems that people find themselves in are not gun problems. Attempting to use a gun to solve something that isn't a gun problem does not work.

If somebody steals your parking space - that isn't a gun problem. You cannot effectively or ethically address it with a gun, it's just a big no-go. This should be obvious, and yet, it does sometimes happen that someone tries.

There exist situations that ARE gun problems, like the ones mckitterick mentioned finding himself in, and in those circumstances having the right tools and the skills to use them is the best available option left.

I too want to reduce the number of those situations that happen to people in the first place. From my point of view, wearing a seat belt doesn't make me an advocate of car crashes. (grin)

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I think "casually tuning into a NASCAR race" is what makes one an advocate of car crashes. ;-)

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

From your link: The NRA is gonna call for arming everyone and blame people who don't have guns for the violence because the NRA is an organization led by slimy, corporate bought-and-owned motherfuckers who are merely a lobbying arm of the gun industry with a huge financial stake in deluding the most vocal, paranoid, and depraved section of its membership.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

That's gotta be the worst part for you masturbators of syphilitic camels: you're so mired in astroturf that you can't even recognize actual support for organizations. The NRA isn't supported by corporate lobbyists because it doesn't need to be. And I say that as someone who pretty much despises the NRA because they are too weak on gun rights.

1. The basics - stuff that the majority of the country agrees on:
- Background checks for all gun sales.
- A ban on all assault weapons and magazines over 10 rounds.

You utterly stupid fuckwit. Guns and magazines and ammo have been pouring off the shelves in the wake of Obama's commentary. Here's a hint, it's not because people wanna have something to turn in.

So molon lave, cutie-pie.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I was amused that Correia mentioned the picture of BO with "Salesman of the Year" in his shop. It's funny because it's true.

As for the rest of the abuse you've been heaping on me... I don't know what to tell you. We don't agree.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Heaping teaspoons.

You're right, we don't agree. You're talking about abrogating not only the second but the fifth amendment. You're advocating leaving the weak at the mercy of the strong. You're engaging in collective punishment. I do not merely find your position offensive, I find it actively evil.

I have tried, and utterly failed, at coming up with an analogous scenario that would be equivalently offensive to you, in the hopes of properly conveying just precisely how gut-wrenchingly enraging your suggestions are. Requiring you to get a license to engage in speech? Limiting the number of books you can have, how many you can buy at once, how often you can buy one, setting restrictions on their storage? I don't know if that carries the visceral impact of what I experience when people talk about banning firearms.

You're talking about sending the government to seize tens of thousands of dollars of property from me; to leave me defenceless against any further depredation they might choose to inflict; ultimately to steal something that is a fundamental part of who I am, and you lament that I had harsh words for you? To quote someone I read once: "Life sucks. Get a helmet."

In the end it comes down to the fact that I am willing to sacrifice my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor to prevent what you advocate. Are you likewise willing, to make it come to pass?

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Okay, I've got one.

"Realistically, most of the gun violence in this country (hell, most of the violence, period) is Black on Black. We don't need to repeal the Second Amendment, we need to repeal the Thirteenth. After sufficient training, we might allow Blacks to apply for a license to be released from slavery, but in the end, it's for their own good. And after all, if it saves just one life..."

The nausea you're feeling right now, the blank, inchoate rage? Welcome to my world for the last week.

(Lest anyone mistake my intent: I utterly despise the sentiment I expressed in quotation marks above. Abnegation of gun rights is not the only thing I would fight (to the death, if required) to ward against.)

[etcet.livejournal.com]

My clue light has gone on; thank you for sticking with it.

You feel a lot more passionately about this subject than I do (and probably can). That's to be expected. So, no, I'm not willing to put my ass on the line for it. If I felt as strongly about it as you do, I would.

As I said upstream a couple of places, I'm not absolutely certain of the assertion that guns themselves are the problem; the problems are the things that lead to gun violence being what happens as a result.

[curvemudgeon.livejournal.com]

I've long been a proponent of the razor blade approach. Make the cartridges expensive. Like $20/round expensive to start and adjust from there. Some will no doubt say, "waitwaitwait that'll just make the black market steal more ammo" I respond really? Aren't those selling the ammo also those with the firearms to protect themselves? Isn't possession of a firearm and a willingness to use it the ultimate in protection against unwarranted aggression?

[ivy]

I think this might make it worse and not better... effectively, what that would do is make it prohibitively expensive to practice. So, now everybody has guns, and no one can actually afford to learn to be a good shot. This is not an improvement. Given the tight budgets that many police departments are operating under, I would be particularly worried about the effects on the average shooting ability of cops. They're some of the *most* likely people to ever have to use their gun. I want them to not suck at it.

(Given some of what I see at the range, this is already a popular approach with some people. But at least the majority of people who come to a pistol range are there to *try* to get better.)

[curvemudgeon.livejournal.com]

It would make it prohibitively expensive for civilians to practice; in my implementation those tasked with public and national security have their equipment taken care of and local/state/fed can negotiate whatever prices they want with suppliers. The raw material cost isn't going up in my model so there's no immediate tax burden thus protective service readiness isn't affected, and if folk want to engage in shooting as a hobby they can do so as long as they can afford it - just like pretty much everything else. I enjoy my time at the range but it's not a sacred cow to me.

A highly scientificky study I just carried out via the expedient of Googling "shooting ruled justified" turned up one recent case in Virginia of a civilian defending himself from an armed attacker. Every other event on the first few pages of results was either Border Patrol or an LEO having been involved in a shooting in the line of duty that came under question for whatever reason, although the string "unarmed" did appear with somewhat disturbing alarm. I'm just not seeing broad evidence that the lawlessness in the country has reached the point where personal safety can only be ensured by carrying and training regularly with a firearm, but I am seeing far to many situations where ready access to firearms and live ammo is making the decision to take up arms against innocents waaaay too easy to make.

[vatine]

You know what, I have reached the (probably vastly unpopular) conclusion that in this specific case (violence, in the US, involving guns), the guns are a highly visible distraction.

The problem, people, is American culture. You take the guns away, what'll happen is "school bombings" rather than "school shootings" (making a decent-boom explosive is, well, trivial; or so I find it, having done basic Swedish high-school chemistry and being gifted with something approaching a brain). The rage ain't going away because the guns are gone.

I don't, to this day, know roughly how many guns there are in the US, nor gun-owners. Sweden has ~3 million guns, owned by ~1.5 million people, in a population of ~9 million. The last decade, there's been ~90 "deaths through violence" (murder, causing-of-death or physical abuse leading to death, any death where one of the three previous has caused an investigation along those lines) per annum. That's ~20% of the murder rate in the US, but I don't know how the numbers going in actually compare (we can probably drop it to ~10%, safely). Roughly 20% of these (so ~18 per year) involve firearms.

I also happen to think that it should be a prerequisite to know how to use a firearm safely before being allowed to store it at home (storing it in a club, with external oversight over access, fine, bno issues with that) and that any firearm should either be in the hand(s) of a human or stowed safely (where "safely" probably means a gun safe, or at least with a vital part in a gun safe, or having a barrel lock in place). But that's because that is what I grew up with. I also don't think people should be allowed to operate cars without knowing how to use them safely (and while training, do so with oversight).

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Just so.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Caveat: I'm not a US citizen, and don't live there, but I do visit, and I do love the place, warts and all.

I don't really buy the argument that guns aren't the problem. I do agree that culture is probably at least as big a problem. But if you've not seen Eddie Izzard's take on "The Gun Thing" -- well, I tend to agree with him -- guns may not kill people, but they certainly help. You or I could doubtless figure out how to make explosives, and probably even do so without blowing ourselves up accidentally in the process. But a lot of people couldn't, and those people wouldn't be able to kill that way. More importantly, making explosives takes a LOT more time and effort and planning, than reaching in to the family gun cabinet (or nightstand) and borrowing what you think you need. Plenty of us have temporarily murderous thoughts. But in countries without ready access to guns, we rarely act on them before they pass -- and if we do, the results generally involve far fewer deaths.

I do suspect that the solution for the USA will involve compromise. Personally I think I'm responsible enough to own and ethically use almost any kind of weapon, up to and including tactical thermonuclear devices. But I don't think everyone is, and I'm willing to have my freedom curtailed for the sake of the common good, in this instance. Not curtailed TOO much -- make me go on a course on tacnuke safety, and another one on when it's ethical (or not) to go nuclear; make me memorise the launch codes rather than writing them down, and make me swear never to give up the key or the codes.