Editorial: Gun Control: Have We Gone Too Far?

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Editorial: Gun Control: Have We Gone Too Far?

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:18:52 PM EDT

www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/0655_gun_control_gone_too_far.html

Gun Control: Have We Gone Too Far?

A fundamentally flawed piece of gun legislation just died. Here's why the

rest should too.

By Matt Hutaff Sep 20, 2004

"Tyranny is always better organized than freedom." – Charles Péguy

It took three shootings over the course of ten years to spur Diane
Feinstein, the Grand Dame of California politics, into spearheading the 1994 Assault
Weapons Act.

"It was the ultimate shock," Feinstein said of the final spree that claimed
six lives in a San Francisco law office. "Someone comes in, aggrieved, and
goes right through the place."

And you know what? Such a response makes sense. After all, when 34 people
are killed in three totally unrelated situations years apart, what other
alternative is there than stripping away the rights of law-abiding citizens?

·····
Gun control is the ultimate extension of the "government-as-parent" scenario
which posits that Americans are either too stupid or too ignorant to take
care of themselves. While I won't argue that our nation is plagued with an
overabundance of idiocy, it is not the responsibility of the government to
baby-sit everyone and make sure they don't stick a fork in a light socket.

Such a mentality towards gun regulation only punishes the average citizen by
depriving themselves of the right to defend their person and their property.

Criminals aren't likely to care about where they find their firearms
because, hey, they're criminals. When they rob a store the last thing they're worried
about is whether or not their handgun is licensed.

Yet that reaction is what we've come to expect from our society. When one
lone nutjob storms into a school and kills five people, public outcry
doesn't lay blame on the criminal who committed the crime, it lands on the society that
gave him free access to a semi-automatic weapon and the legislators who,
despite campaign promises to the contrary, cannot see the future and
foretell every human tragedy that will ever occur in his or her jurisdiction.

Hey, there's a chance an airliner could be hijacked – should we be allowed
to fly with that kind of danger hanging over us? Drink too much water and
you'll die – why not regulate its consumption?

Because doing so would be as vain a pursuit as trying to make sure that
every person who is ever wounded or killed by a firearm deserved it. Wise up – you
can't standardize life.

However, it appears common sense is kicking in on Capitol Hill, as
Feinstein's bill shuffled off into the political sunset last Monday
afternoon. Having passed its ten-year anniversary, the bill required renewal or expiration. It
was quietly ignored.

And with good cause. Opponents of the bill will correctly highlight its
overall impotence at keeping weapons out of people's hands. Numerous
loopholes allowed the guns to stay on the market with small cosmetic changes or minor
alterations in accessories. Many that weren't modifiable were often
protected by grandfather clauses that exempted pre-ban guns. Feinstein herself has
admitted that "we could have written a better bill."

But while I herald the death of a law that, by the Department of Justice's
admission, had no impact on crime reduction, there are bigger issues at
play. How can firearms be regulated in the first place? Who benefits from such
regulation?

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution plainly states that
"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." There's
no wiggle room on this. The Founders of our nation wanted to make sure that, if
we wanted to, we could arm and defend ourselves. Strangely, the past fifty
years have only amplified the need for such protection.

Why? Some would argue that the notion of gun rights in this day and age are
antiquated, a relic of our rural past. Few Americans need to hunt to
survive, critics say. And it's not like we're expecting the British or French to
invade any time soon.

While these things are true, the Founding Fathers didn't draft the Bill of
Rights to better prepare us from the hordes of berets and fish n' chips from
rampaging unchecked throughout the land. The personal freedoms guaranteed to
every American by that living document are there to protect you from the
tyranny of our own government.

Think about it for a moment. The First Amendment protects you from being
persecuted by the government for what you say and believe. The Fourth
Amendment defends your right to privacy, the Fifth guards you from incriminating
yourself in court and the Sixth guarantees you won't be subjected to a show trial if
you're ever prosecuted. These ideas are so simple and obvious it seems silly
to write them down, but they are all rights that a crooked government would
love to abuse or discard if they weren't.

In the past four years we've seen numerous attacks on many of the liberties
we find sacred. Censorship, the PATRIOT Act and secret "Star Chamber" trials
have eroded the fundamental freedoms I noted above. Police forces and
National Guard units are militarizing against their own citizens. And lest you think
this is a recent phenomenon, federal Civil Disturbance plans like Operation
Garden Plot and Department of State Publication 7277 have been around for
decades, ready and waiting to strip you of your rights to defend yourself before
killing you for disagreeing with the government.

History has shown that gun control invariably ends in total gun restriction
and genocide. Don't believe me? Ask German Jews or Armenian Turks - two
ethnic groups unable to save themselves from violence. It's estimated that 56
million unarmed victims fell in the 20th century alone. Crimes like these are
precisely why the Second Amendment was written. In the end, you may need to
make sure you have the same firepower the military has.

So I wholeheartedly support the ability for any citizen of this country to
purchase the exact same weaponry available to its own army. If you've got
the

inclination and the wherewithal to buy a tank or a rocket launcher, go for
it. If our arms manufacturers can sell automatic weapons to foreign countries
that have no specific allegiance to the United States, why can't they sell them
to

Americans who have a vested interest in securing themselves? Profit is
profit.

Am I advocating another Ruby Ridge or violent insurrection? Hardly. I just
think the playing field should be level and that people who want access to
these weapons shouldn't be denied because some irresponsible ass might do
something deadly with it. The presumption of innocence is one of the basic tenets of
American society.

Does everyone need to arm up? That's a personal decision. Should they have
the possibility?

You're damn right.

Canon Fodder is a weekly analysis of politics and society.

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:24:14 PM EDT

[#1]

The do something reaction is strong.

It seems that every time something bizarre happens to anyone in our society that liberals and their willing politicians feel the need to do something about it. Let me alter that, whenever something bizarre happens that involves a firearm the liberals feel the need to do something.

This four years ago a Russian immigrant stabbed his pregnant wife, his in-laws, and his children to death with a knife. Where was the hue and cry to limit the size of knifes, call for a waiting period, or to close the swap meet loophole? Surely if the obviously crazy man used a firearm to commit his heinous crime Californian politicians would be searching for another law to pass that restricts only the honest citizens, makes the ignorant unarmed feel better and does nothing to address the root of the problem.

How many children drown this year in backyard swimming pools or were bitten by sharks this summer? Yet swimming pools continue to enjoy public favor and the beaches remain crowded. Too many people have grown up without healthy exposure to the shooting sports to know anything other that what Hollywood shows them on the latest movie to separate them from their money and reality.

The fact is that people kill people and that a gun is sometimes the tool that the criminal uses to commit his crime. Most crime in America can be ultimately traced to the drug culture whether protecting their illegal goods or fighting over the right to sell the highly profitable drugs on their turf it?s drugs that fill the cities morgues. If you?re not involved with drugs and you?re not living in a neighborhood that embraces them you a several times better chance of not being a victim.

We?ve passed twenty thousand laws controlling firearms in America by some counts. We?ve also passed laws against killing, rape, burglary, and narcotics abuse yet it would seem that they all continue in our society. What is needed isn?t more laws but more jails and jail time. When the laws against abusing drugs or guns are not enforced then society will continue to suffer from the blight that these inanimate objects in the hands of criminals bring to our otherwise polite society.

I am a bright, intelligent, well-read, and educated man. I have yet to see but a handful of the thousands of gun laws that make one bit of sense. The politicians in California and in power in many states of this once great Republic play upon the emotions of their ignorant foolish followers. They believe that just one more law against this color or style of firearm will cause the murder to stop. How foolish this truly is. Firearms in the hands of honest law-abiding citizens deter crime far better than a police officer coming to the scene of an act of violence hours afterwards.

Take personal responsibility for your safety and the safety of your loved ones. Upon hearing a felon breaking into my home I will call 911 but I will also arm myself and take the responsibility of defending mine. Citizens of this country still have the right to chose not to be a victim but liberals are fighting tooth and nail to remove that right. They are more concerned that I will do harm to them than the career criminal with a dozen convictions on their record. They?ve focused on the wrong target which will cause them to fail time and time again. This leads them to believe that if they just pass the right combination of laws they?ll somehow be safe in the society that they?ve taken the morals, justice, and responsibility out of though both the teachings of schools and the rulings of the courts.

Paul

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:25:06 PM EDT

[#2]

Tagged for later. I'm in a hurry...

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:25:17 PM EDT

[#3]

Damn, I like his attitude!

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:31:40 PM EDT

[#4]

Quoted:
www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/0655_gun_control_gone_too_far.html

Gun Control: Have We Gone Too Far?

A fundamentally flawed piece of gun legislation just died. Here's why the

rest should too.

By Matt Hutaff Sep 20, 2004

"Tyranny is always better organized than freedom." – Charles Péguy

It took three shootings over the course of ten years to spur Diane
Feinstein, the Grand Dame of California politics, into spearheading the 1994 Assault
Weapons Act.

"It was the ultimate shock," Feinstein said of the final spree that claimed
six lives in a San Francisco law office. "Someone comes in, aggrieved, and
goes right through the place."

And you know what? Such a response makes sense. After all, when 34 people
are killed in three totally unrelated situations years apart, what other
alternative is there than stripping away the rights of law-abiding citizens?

·····
Gun control is the ultimate extension of the "government-as-parent" scenario
which posits that Americans are either too stupid or too ignorant to take
care of themselves. While I won't argue that our nation is plagued with an
overabundance of idiocy, it is not the responsibility of the government to
baby-sit everyone and make sure they don't stick a fork in a light socket.

Such a mentality towards gun regulation only punishes the average citizen by
depriving themselves of the right to defend their person and their property.

Criminals aren't likely to care about where they find their firearms
because, hey, they're criminals. When they rob a store the last thing they're worried
about is whether or not their handgun is licensed.

Yet that reaction is what we've come to expect from our society. When one
lone nutjob storms into a school and kills five people, public outcry
doesn't lay blame on the criminal who committed the crime, it lands on the society that
gave him free access to a semi-automatic weapon and the legislators who,
despite campaign promises to the contrary, cannot see the future and
foretell every human tragedy that will ever occur in his or her jurisdiction.

Hey, there's a chance an airliner could be hijacked – should we be allowed
to fly with that kind of danger hanging over us? Drink too much water and
you'll die – why not regulate its consumption?

Because doing so would be as vain a pursuit as trying to make sure that
every person who is ever wounded or killed by a firearm deserved it. Wise up – you
can't standardize life.

However, it appears common sense is kicking in on Capitol Hill, as
Feinstein's bill shuffled off into the political sunset last Monday
afternoon. Having passed its ten-year anniversary, the bill required renewal or expiration. It
was quietly ignored.

And with good cause. Opponents of the bill will correctly highlight its
overall impotence at keeping weapons out of people's hands. Numerous
loopholes allowed the guns to stay on the market with small cosmetic changes or minor
alterations in accessories. Many that weren't modifiable were often
protected by grandfather clauses that exempted pre-ban guns. Feinstein herself has
admitted that "we could have written a better bill."

But while I herald the death of a law that, by the Department of Justice's
admission, had no impact on crime reduction, there are bigger issues at
play. How can firearms be regulated in the first place? Who benefits from such
regulation?

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution plainly states that
"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." There's
no wiggle room on this. The Founders of our nation wanted to make sure that, if
we wanted to, we could arm and defend ourselves. Strangely, the past fifty
years have only amplified the need for such protection.

Why? Some would argue that the notion of gun rights in this day and age are
antiquated, a relic of our rural past. Few Americans need to hunt to
survive, critics say. And it's not like we're expecting the British or French to
invade any time soon.

While these things are true, the Founding Fathers didn't draft the Bill of
Rights to better prepare us from the hordes of berets and fish n' chips from
rampaging unchecked throughout the land. The personal freedoms guaranteed to
every American by that living document are there to protect you from the
tyranny of our own government.

Think about it for a moment. The First Amendment protects you from being
persecuted by the government for what you say and believe. The Fourth
Amendment defends your right to privacy, the Fifth guards you from incriminating
yourself in court and the Sixth guarantees you won't be subjected to a show trial if
you're ever prosecuted. These ideas are so simple and obvious it seems silly
to write them down, but they are all rights that a crooked government would
love to abuse or discard if they weren't.

In the past four years we've seen numerous attacks on many of the liberties
we find sacred. Censorship, the PATRIOT Act and secret "Star Chamber" trials
have eroded the fundamental freedoms I noted above. Police forces and
National Guard units are militarizing against their own citizens. And lest you think
this is a recent phenomenon, federal Civil Disturbance plans like Operation
Garden Plot and Department of State Publication 7277 have been around for
decades, ready and waiting to strip you of your rights to defend yourself before
killing you for disagreeing with the government.

History has shown that gun control invariably ends in total gun restriction
and genocide. Don't believe me? Ask German Jews or Armenian Turks - two
ethnic groups unable to save themselves from violence. It's estimated that 56
million unarmed victims fell in the 20th century alone. Crimes like these are
precisely why the Second Amendment was written. In the end, you may need to
make sure you have the same firepower the military has.

So I wholeheartedly support the ability for any citizen of this country to
purchase the exact same weaponry available to its own army. If you've got
the

inclination and the wherewithal to buy a tank or a rocket launcher, go for
it. If our arms manufacturers can sell automatic weapons to foreign countries
that have no specific allegiance to the United States, why can't they sell them
to

Americans who have a vested interest in securing themselves? Profit is
profit.

Am I advocating another Ruby Ridge or violent insurrection? Hardly. I just
think the playing field should be level and that people who want access to
these weapons shouldn't be denied because some irresponsible ass might do
something deadly with it. The presumption of innocence is one of the basic tenets of
American society.

Does everyone need to arm up? That's a personal decision. Should they have
the possibility?

You're damn right.

Canon Fodder is a weekly analysis of politics and society.

Could'nt agree more

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:43:56 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:
Quoted:
www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/0655_gun_control_gone_too_far.html

Gun Control: Have We Gone Too Far?

A fundamentally flawed piece of gun legislation just died. Here's why the

rest should too.

.....
Canon Fodder is a weekly analysis of politics and society.

Could'nt agree more

learn to use ellipses

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:44:02 PM EDT

[#6]

General public skims article and comes to a conclusion:

"How did this psycho anti-government militant get published?"

They have been slowly trained to think this with TV and movies. Just like Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", TV is the Soma. Just abide and succumb, the government will make sure you are ok....

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:44:48 PM EDT

[#7]

I think he has a great point! Thanks Arvin

Posted: 9/25/2004 5:46:33 PM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:
General public skims article and comes to a conclusion:

"How did this psycho anti-government militant get published?"

They have been slowly trained to think this with TV and movies. Just like Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", TV is the Soma. Just abide and succumb, the government will make sure you are ok....

+1

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Editorial: Gun Control: Have We Gone Too Far?

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