A couple of thoughts...
Okay, the last thing I want to do is either comment on the events of Monday or get into a gun control debate, but there are two things on the latter issue that never seem to come up that I think are overlooked:
1. The gun lobby always claims that gun laws keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens and do nothing to stop criminals from getting guns. This may be true, but the reasoning behind it is that restrictive gun laws make ordinary citizens less safe because they will have a harder time buying guns and that there is no proof that these laws keep criminals from getting guns. I'd like to know whether there is any proof that ordinary, law abiding citizens having guns actually helps prevent any crimes. My guess is that is doesn't, which is why you never hear the gun lobby make any claims to that effect. So many of our gun laws seem predicated on feelings and assumptions rather than facts one way or the other.
2. The 2nd amendment was written at a time when operating a gun was an arduous affair. It would take a long time to load a single shot rifle or pistol and there was not much accuracy even once you could get a shot off. I doubt the people drafting the bill of rights could have foreseen the age when a pistol could fire off 20+ rounds in a matter of seconds or machine gun assault rifles could hit all manner of things with consistent, deadly accuracy. Or that either of these things would be mass manufactured and available cheaply to pretty much anyone. Or that criminals could wear protective body armour or that they could have more firepower than the police. Don't get me wrong, I love that our constitution is flexible and has room for interpretation, but the situation is now so messed up that the issue needs rethinking. I really doubt that our forefathers intended that every home in America have its own independent military stockpile of firearms, ammo, and explosives.
1. The gun lobby always claims that gun laws keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens and do nothing to stop criminals from getting guns. This may be true, but the reasoning behind it is that restrictive gun laws make ordinary citizens less safe because they will have a harder time buying guns and that there is no proof that these laws keep criminals from getting guns. I'd like to know whether there is any proof that ordinary, law abiding citizens having guns actually helps prevent any crimes. My guess is that is doesn't, which is why you never hear the gun lobby make any claims to that effect. So many of our gun laws seem predicated on feelings and assumptions rather than facts one way or the other.
2. The 2nd amendment was written at a time when operating a gun was an arduous affair. It would take a long time to load a single shot rifle or pistol and there was not much accuracy even once you could get a shot off. I doubt the people drafting the bill of rights could have foreseen the age when a pistol could fire off 20+ rounds in a matter of seconds or machine gun assault rifles could hit all manner of things with consistent, deadly accuracy. Or that either of these things would be mass manufactured and available cheaply to pretty much anyone. Or that criminals could wear protective body armour or that they could have more firepower than the police. Don't get me wrong, I love that our constitution is flexible and has room for interpretation, but the situation is now so messed up that the issue needs rethinking. I really doubt that our forefathers intended that every home in America have its own independent military stockpile of firearms, ammo, and explosives.
I agree completely.
I hate to start a conversation with "in my day" because that dates me in a very bad way & I'm turning 37 in a couple weeks (which makes you, Yoshi, 34 in a couple weeks, right?) Anyway, "in my day," and, God, this is going to sound terrible, but the people with the most problems bullied people. They beat them up, in the cities they stabbed people and on occasion they comitted suicide. They did not go on mass shooting sprees. In my little circle of the world anyway.
Now, that comment above is crass and lends nothing to my overall philosophy that WE are responsible for creating these desperate people. Every one of us. Every hurtful thing we've ever said to another, every time we turned our back on someone different from us, every time we breathed an angry word - it effects people. We, as humans, need to know this. We are one, created of the same matter, with no difference in makeup or barriers in between. And, until we start behaving in accordance with this, these horrible tragedies will continue.
We can not continue to be obsessed with our homes, our cars, our clothing, our entertainment and our immediate families and turn a blind eye to *human beings* who are hungry, unloved, disabled, etc.
Until we except responsibility for all of humanity, we will continue to create these monsters.
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Thanks, JJ, for looking at the long view on this one. We are all responsible for this even if not directly. We are caretakers of a world that created not only this really screwed up person, but of one that let him have powerful weapons capable of hurting himself and lots of others. If we don't all look at ourselves when things like this happen, then they are just going to happen again and again.
And yes, I'm soon to be 34. Ugh.
In honor of your comments, I have added "JJ" to my spell checking dictionary. I'm glad you pointed out the one feature that my blog has over WATAT, but really WATAT is still way better then this blog will ever hope to be (all hail the queen).
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I understand how fear is the root of all evil. And that if everyone could suddenly be of like mind and see the world as JJ, Jesus, Yogi Berra, and the Buddha have, we’d find world peace. Until then, I’m buying a Stoeger Coach gun to travel out of state with and get a snub-nose .38 to keep in an ankle holster in case my unkind words come back to haunt me in the way the dead students’ and professors’ unkind words came back to haunt them this week.
One 19-year-old girl with a .38 in her purse and five hours of training could have greatly reduced the number of ruined lives in Virginia. And it’s much more realistic to hope that we could get 10% of the population to conceal-carry weapons than it is to hope that the entire world will reach mass enlightenment at the same instant.
Just two months ago: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/13/national/main2466711.shtml
The reason we have forgotten that event already is because of one person with a concealed weapon. Had that gun not been there, dozens of people would have lost their lives in Utah that day, not five.
For one to say no one in the gun lobby has made this argument is to admit that one has not been paying attention to the gun control issue.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html
More Guns, Less Crime, by John Lott, has been practically the NRA bible for a decade. Several studies have been done since then that support the same conclusions.
Another story, this one of questionable source:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288
Both points on the gun control issue are trite and have been discussed at un-ending length. Paula Poundstone had a whole HBO special in 1991 or so on the issue about what a firearm was in 1790 vs. what one is today. She was marginally funny (John Stewart is the first comedian to successfully cover social issues while being funny in the history of humans, in my opinion) and factually inaccurate, but she had the same premise.
But I guess if they were illegal then no one would have them. Drugs are illegal and no one has them.
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Okay, I haven't read the book and I'm not very likely to, but here's what I got from the blurb/interview with John Lott:
1. I find the contention that criminals rationalize the possibility of a victim carrying a weapon dubious. Is there evidence for this idea, ie some sort of poll of criminals? If this is the central theory behind the book, then it's weak.
2. I find the lack of comparisons to other countries/cultures a fair one. It's a hard enough thing to nail down facts with this issue and trying to do so in relation to other places in the world (especially ones that don't stare so long and lovingly at their navels as we do) might not be doable. Plus, I will allow for the possibility that maybe indeed there is some cultural thing about Americans and guns that lowers crime rates.
But, if I didn't make it clear enough before, I don't advocate getting rid of guns altogether. It's a nice idea, but not a realistic one. However, the laws we have don't work and need to be revisited from a variety of perspectives.
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By the same reasoning Chuck: if the state of Virgina had tighter gun laws that would have restricted the legal purchase of two hand guns by the killer Cho, who is to say that he would've gotten any guns at all? In such an event, why does any 19 year old girl need to bring a .38 to school?
More guns just isn't an answer that works. There is no amount of evidence that would ever convince me otherwise. If that makes me uninformed then so be it. More guns = more dead people. There is just no way around it. One example can be seen in post-Katrina New Orleans. Crime rates are up, murders are up, and guess what...so are the amount of guns being sold!
What's more important to me is that we live in a world that the type of violence we saw this week is even possible. Isn't it a much bigger thing to worry about that a 19 year old girl would need to bring a .38 to school just to get through the day? Is there no room for hope that someday we might live in a world where she doesn't have to?
Oh yeah, and the war on drugs has been so successful too. It really makes me feel safe that the same segments of our society that advocate extreme punishment for drug users also pushes for easing our gun laws. Hate and blame are always positive things to base a society on and they've clearly worked so well in getting people to stop buying illegal drugs.
And the "proof" that a concealed weapon by an off duty law enforcement officer is way different than some 19 year old girl packin' heat in her French class.
I must admit that I'm embarrassed by having the same logic as Paula Poundstone, but it is true. Guns are vastly different then when the Bill of Rights was written. No one can argue that they are same and that it isn't easier for a stupid, confused, mentally imbalanced kid to kill 30 people in a matter of minutes in 2007 than it was in 1807. How could such an overarching rule about some piece of technology written over 200 years ago possibly address the reality of today?
To say my points are trite and discussed at un-ending length is simply false. True, I've not kept up more than a marginal interest in the gun debate, but I've never once see either issue discussed. Even today I read two articles in support of lax gun laws and the same, tired and trite argument was used by those advocating more and more guns for all: tougher gun laws will not allow poor little old grandmas to keep themselves safe from attackers. I still hold to my statement that our gun laws, restrictive or liberal, are based on more on feelings than on facts. It's either bad laws based on feelings that everyone should have guns because the constitution says we can or it's laws that prevent the non-insane among us from living life however we feel we should. Our gun laws suck. I can't imagine you'd get any of the families of Monday's victims to agree that Virginia's gun laws were of use to them. It's really hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to support such laws.
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19 year old girls should have guns more to fend off lacross player and frat boy rapists than to kill shooting spree fuckheads, but whatever. I think that if about 20 college-age boys got their nuts shot off each year, the world would be a safer place for women.
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Now that's a logic I can agree with, evidence be damned! There's nothing that 20 year old boys like less than not havng anymore nuts.
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If an arguement has enough truthiness, it really needs no evidence.
I bought my first gun ever today (I've had guns given as gifts or issued to me, but never bought one). I got a Stoeger Coach Gun, a short, double barrel side-by-side perfect for scaring the bejesus out of anyone without really killing them or penetrating walls and endangering neighbors. Bad guys don't need to know that I'm only going to put bird shot or rock salt into it. It s remarkably easy to buy. The whole process took about 20 minutes and I walked out of Gander Mountain with a disassembled but complete weapon and 24 shells. It was kind of surreal. The cashier even asked if I needed ammo. It was kind of like being asked to supersize. Next is to get my pistol permit, I'm going to start that process this week.
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At least, presumably, they didn't sell this weapon to someone who is considered mentally unstable by the state. Unless there is something you aren't telling us, Chuck.
This makes me a little sad. I've often been tempted to buy a gun, but it's usually when I get paranoid about the state of the world. Like a handgun is really going to help me fight my way off the island of Manhattan with my wife and cat in tow. To me, it would feel like a failure to actually indulge the urge. It would be acknowledging that things are in fact as bad as I sometimes think they are.
I do know for sure that owning one would ever have prevented any crime that actually has been permitted against me. Most often it's been things that have been stolen from me while either asleep or with my back turned. I've only been physically assaulted once, a situation that happened so suddenly and in the open that a gun wouldn't have helped.
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I don't know why I didn't think of this until now, but there's an old theatrical axiom that parallels real life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun
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1. Switzerland has more guns per capita than us (one of the few, legally anyway) and they have less violent crime than almost anyone else in the world. Also, the most restrictive gun laws are in DC. Approaching the highest gun violence numbers is... you guess it, DC. The "Wild West" had more guns than DC does today but they had a lower gun violence rate. Check it out you will find that my statements are correct!
2. The 2nd Amendment was put there for us to protect ourselves from the government. No other reason dominated any discussions of the time. After all, we just fought a revolution. In order for a people to remain free they must be able to defend themselves against all enemies foreign and domestic including our own government. Standing up against our military with muskets won't do much to that end now would it?
"The beauty of the 2nd Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take all the others."
- Thomas Jefferson
"...the 2nd Amendment stands as a protector for everything we stand for."
- Benjamin Franklin
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Um, okay. I don't remember advocating that people be restricted to muskets, but by that logic:
Cho fired 174 rounds in 12 minutes. It would take 58 minutes to fire that many rounds with a musket, assuming top firing rate could be achieved. 30 people were killed and 17 wounded in those 12 minutes. Assuming that every shot were a kill shot, a musket could actually outperform that mark, by killing 36 people in 12 minutes (at 3 shots per minute). However, I would doubt that a 48" rifle that requires a long pole to load the shot would be as effective in a school hallway and certainly would draw more attention than an 8" pistol that can hold 15 rounds and be hidden in a jacket.
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin had a lot of good ideas and many catchy, quotable phrases. Both were brilliant men. They are a product of their time and their views need to be placed in that context. To assume they would not view the world (and guns) differently in 2007 than they did in 1777 is, IMHO, a pretty big leap of faith. And I can't imagine that they would be advocates of allowing mentally ill individuals purchase guns legally.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"
- Benjamin Franklin
I'm sure the 32 people that Cho killed that day are grateful for their 2nd amendment rights. They seem to be getting very good results from that one.
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