Chris from Alaska finds quite a gem of a quite from one of the Brady Campaign’s board members. One other thing I would ad, is even if any major newspapers weren’t calling for DC v. Heller to be overturned, it should concern them greatly that we have at least one, and probably four Supreme Court justices that want to overturn the decision. For years, I think the elites in the gun control movement really convinced themselves they were up against rubes. Now that it’s becoming abundantly clear their elites are not all dripping with intellectual talent, the tiger is finding it difficult to change its stripes.
On the policy front, a recent tactic you’ve seen from the gun control elite is to pooh pooh the notion of the “law abiding citizen.” You can see a recent example of it here. This is such a thoroughly weak argument that one laughs over the fact that they are even presenting it. Most people, I believe, recognize that Minority Report was a work of fiction, and we do not have a magical ability to look into people’s heads to assess whether or not they might in the future become criminals. All we can do is look at past criminal behavior as an indication for future criminal behavior. That’s what the NICS check is about.
So yes, some people who can pass a background check now will later go on to commit crimes. This is hardly surprising. But the more important question is how you deal with this fact in terms of public policy? You really have to start with the default assumption that everyone is a potential criminal, and either make buying a gun impossible, or so onerously difficult that only the strongly motivated bother. And in the realm of motivated people, where does someone who’s planning on committing a crime with a gun rank?
If the answer is that you have to assume everyone is a criminal, and make it generally difficult or impossible to obtain or buy firearms, how does that jibe with the keeping and bearing of arms to be a fundamental right? Why am I paranoid, as gun control elites suggest, for suggesting their end goal isn’t just a few “common sense” regulations, but a draconian public policy regimes aimed at unconstitutionally disarming most of American society? Their own rhetoric betrays their true intentions. The only reason they joke about our paranoia is because we have them at the end of their rope, and they realize it more than we do. I realize it, but I aim to cut that rope, and help accelerate their movement’s plunge into the dustbin of history. I don’t see any reason to let up now.
All we can do is look at past criminal behavior as an indication for future criminal behavior.
True.
I think most people who aren’t part of the VPC or equivalent realise that the vast majority of people committing crimes with guns… don’t have clean criminal records.
And I don’t mean “they got a ticket” or “an unrelated perfectly peaceful misdemeanor 20 years ago”; I mean a long string of convictions showing that they, for whatever reason, “lead a life of crime”.
My impression is that your average armed robber or gang-bang drive-by shooter is already barred from legal gun ownership for that very reason… and that apart from suicides, other gun crime by people with otherwise clean records is very uncommon*.
(* And that much of that is of the “found out my spouse was cheating and had a psychotic break” sort, where lacking a gun one suspects they might just use a baseball bat or poison.)
I for one am happy when members of the gun control elite pooh pooh the notion of the “law abiding citizen.†That’s because there are still many of them who at some point claim that they only want to keep guns away from criminals, crazies, and children, and it’s possible that somewhere there are gunowners who might believe them.
Their disparagement of the “law abiding citizen†shows that despite all their talk of background checks, they also want to keep guns away from those who PASS background checks — and it’s important that all gunowners realize that.
I get the vibe that the gun control folks would be perfectly happy to treat all of the citizens of this country like inmates in a minimum-security prison.
The Peterson Syndrome, named after Ms. Peterson, describing cognitive impermeability to fact, logic and rational argument, was first named by Sean D. Sorrentino AFAIK and is described here: http://blog.joehuffman.org/2010/09/25/AProcessFailure.aspx for your entertainment.
Thank you mikee, that was interesting reading.
One of the things that struck me about that article is that if I had changed a few words, it was the same logic as the Brady campaign uses.
I suspect that there are a whole lot of people on both sides that deny that there is a valid viewpoint on the other side.
They know you’re evil, you know they are evil, let’s have a witch hunt!!
After the ranters and ravers on both sides are exhausted, and have given all they can afford to the causes and the causes spokesmen, reasonable people will be left to work out a logical, fact-based solution.