Government has structure. That is in the essence of government. That structure is expressed in constitutions and laws. Without that structure society would collapse in anarchy with the strongest and most rapacious ruling by terror and force. Alternatively, a government that possesses a monopoly of the means of coercion and a point of view like that of socialism or fascism that demands compliance with its program will inevitably become a tyranny.
To that end the framers and founders of the US wrote a constitution that is the supreme law of the land and that is impossible to change without the compliance of the states as the sovereign entity partners in that constitution.
Bearing on the present hysteria over Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton:
1. The 2nd amendment to the US Constitution guarantees to the citizens of the US the right to keep and bear arms.
2. In the United States vs The District of Columbia in 2008, SCOTUS ruled that the right to bear arms in self defense and defense of the home is an INDIVIDUAL right, not a right that can only be exercised as part of a state government associated militia. In this decision the door was left open for governments to deny the right to ownership to the mentally ill as well as to prior felons.
3. In Federalist Paper 46 James Madison writing as "Publius" in favor of the ratification of the present constitution argues that the proposed federal government could not become a tyranny precisely because it would be denied a monopoly of the means of coercion by the existence of state militias and the "unorganized militia" of the whole body of the armed citizenry. Those who think that a people armed with light weapons and improvised mines is not a major factor in internal struggles for power have learned nothing from the history of the last hundred years.
As a practical matter, it is impossible to disarm the American People. ATF estimates that there are over 270 MILLION firearms in private hands. "From my cold dead hands" was the cry of Charlton Heston describing the moment when government could take his guns.
The cry of the Left for "universal" background checks is once more abroad. Do not be deceived. "Universal" would mean ALL transfers firearms between Americans.
The various governments should get busy and find the means of denying firearms to the mentally ill. pl
I am on two minds about this.
On one hand, I can certainly appreciate that a state which is somewhat afraid of its citizenry will not overreach as much. On the other hand, a state that is afraid of its citizenry may actually end up far more violent towards it.
US state violence against American citizens, meaning not just police shootings and other violence (I showed some videos of police violence to some Russian cops whom I happen to be related too. Reactions were interesting to say the least. Especially concerning civil asset forfeiture which they regarded as a surefire way to turn a normal police unit into a bunch of corrupt predatory highwaymen.).
but also things like civil asset forfeiture, removal of due process via plea bargain abuse etc.
However, assuming that the US state would suddenly become more bening in its interactions with the citenzry if the citizenry would unilaterally disarm seems like a suckers bet to me.
In the last three years we have seen a failed plot by government agents to overturn a lawful election, as well as the inability and/or unwillingness of that same government to perform the most basic functions of border security.
Now we hear anti-white voices on the political left employing exterminatory rhetoric with regard to the native white population of this republic. And on the so-called right, we see a President and party leaders so unprincipled that they push for laws similar to those which politicized psychiatry and pathologized dissent in the late Soviet Union.
Anyone calling for restrictions on the ability of the sovereign people to defend themselves at this time is, at best, misguided. At worst, they are traitors.
Ban multi-bladed assault knives.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48186035
Sir,
Yes we must keep the 2A in the broadest terms, but we must deny the mentally ill access.
We know who’s mentally ill. I can see the diagnoses, hospitalizations, prescriptions, etc of anyone who’s ever had such healthcare services paid for by any insurance company (+ govt programs). This is the same database, more or less, that allows us to know if someone had a pre-existing condition. It shouldn’t be a big deal to link the inter-insurance cooperative database to the firearm purchasing background database. Data could be inputted from other sources as well.
I also think that level headed non-partisan clinicians could work out criteria that does a good job of being fair and just. Logic could be developed such that someone diagnosed with, say, brief reactive anxiety – a temporary acute condition – would not be excluded from gun ownership after being clear for a few months. Same with veterans coming home with PTSD. I think that building logic identifying those with chronic serious conditions or reoccurring acute serious conditions could be done fairly easily (we do that kind of algorithm development as SOP). There could be a clinical appeals process for anyone who thinks they’ve been unreasonably denied the ability to purchase. I don’t see any of that as being prohibitively costly.
The real hurdle is getting these young males identified and into the database in the first place. It must be made easier to have people fitting the profile committed to treatment and into the system. The Florida school shooter and the Dayton guy were clearly a danger to others due to mental health issues. Why they were allowed back in school and why they were not under the supervision of mental health experts escapes me entirely.
I know, funding tied to school graduate rates, liberal notions of rights for the mentally ill play a role, but are we serious about preventing violence or not?
We also, to get this ball rolling, have to agree that taking guns won’t solve the problem. A guy in Japan committed arson last week and deliberately killed 35 people (gasoline and matches). We know that some mass killers have used motor vehicles. Someone will get the idea of poisoning the produce at the grocery store or bring a big sword to class. We need to focus on the man, not the method.
mightypeon
You are merely waiting to find the right government ass to kiss.
Eric, the rate of false positive diagnoses is going to be way too high to make this work. The left will brand masculinity a mental condition. A single teenage outburst will get you banned for life.
The shooting in Texas could have been minimized had their been one watching the Bose Facial Recognition camera system that is in all of that particular box store chain nationwide. The same Bose Facial Recognition camera system that is tied to Homeland Security. If somebody had been watching that live video feed, they could have immediately sounded the alarm before the individual was completely inside the store and before he started walking up and down the aisles firing. In addition if they had had paid armed off-duty commissioned law enforcement at the entrances it would have helped to minimize as well.
”The Florida school shooter and the Dayton guy were clearly a danger to others due to mental health issues. Why they were allowed back in school and why they were not under the supervision of mental health experts escapes me entirely. ”
WHERE were the parents in all this? They had to know something was wrong.
I don’t think the second amendment was meant to be a suicide pact. There is a compelling reason to curtail some gun ownership and numerous mass killings demand it. I still think that a comprehensive and universal licensing system would work the best. You can still own guns, but you have to prove that you should. The Heller decision would not prohibit this either.
As I have said before, there is a tipping point out there and when it is reached, the public will demand something that may be rather draconian and political careers will rely on delivering. Those resisting reasonable controls will only have themselves to blame, should it happen.
Newhill:
“We know who’s mentally ill.” Do “we”? Who sets that standard? Who writes the DSM? Has that entity made any conspicuously audacious decisions in the past few years? Has that entity ruled that ‘a person who wants to remove their external genitals and have a section of their digestive tract rewired to a surgically-implanted hole’ is natural and normal, but stoicism is a mental defect?
APA on Transsexuals
https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.pdf
APA on Toxic Masculinity
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner
“The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.”
Newhill:
“I also think that level headed non-partisan clinicians could work out criteria that does a good job of being fair and just.”
Political actors, by definition, are neither level-headed nor non-partisan.
Sir
My grandpa while just a farmer and rancher was one of the more erudite men I have known. He always stressed that what made the United States unique was the fact that it is a constitutional republic. He made it known to me when I was a young boy that the amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights should be interpreted broadly as the intent of the constitution was to protect the citizenry from the tyranny of government. In his opinion the framers recognized that all governments would tend towards tyranny. I fully concur with him, and in the twilight of my life I’m dismayed how far we have strayed from the wisdom of the earlier generations. Any chipping away at the rights in those amendments would inevitably lead to them becoming effectively voided. One of my peeves is how we have chipped away at the 4th and 5th amendments all under the guise of safety. Another is the point you have made consistently, that we are a union of states which is further under pressure most recently in the hysteria over the electoral college.
One of the challenges of mass immigration particularly from societies where there is no established skepticism of governmental power is erosion in the ethos of what made the US unique. IMO, we have done a very poor job in assimilating the millions who have come in the recent decades. If our constitutional republic should survive we need to be better in educating not only our children but those who come here from other places. Many don’t have grandpa’s like I was fortunate to have.
Slippery slope these databases. I don’t think the problem is big enough to warrant this risk. Level headed non partisan climicians are rarer than you think, and are always prone to be coopted anyhow. Think the opiate crisis.I dont even think these people including the two you mentioned are mentally ill,no more than jihadis are mentally ill. This solution of more control and categorization comes off as very unamerican to me.
I have problems with the “mental health” criterion. It is too easy to construct a “catch 22” situation where a request to purchase a military – like weapon or anything for self defence is regarded as incipient paranoia, thereby disqualifying.
The big difference I see in all these knife assaults is that there is one victim at a time, often with multiple assailants. Edged weapons are certainly less lethal than semiautomatic rifles with 100 round magazines. It is also a distinctly different sensation killing someone with an edged weapon than with a firearm.
Eric, I agree with this approach, but it will be fraught with at least as much controversy as any firearms limiting legislation if not more.
USA models many of its programs on Israel.
Here’s what a popular Israeli rabbi thinks of each Jewish Israeli’s right to defend “the Jewish people and the Jewish homeland, by whatever means . . .”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMckgMvy_kA
Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that Moses was the leader most worthy of being emulated because he consulted directly with god. Rabbi David bar-Hayim bases his teachings on the Books of Moses, Torah.
“We know who’s mentally ill.”
Compared to what?
The situations people live in can make them “mentally ill,” even to the point of acting out criminally.
Blacks more-or-less forcibly removed from the South in the pre-WWII years and housed in urban, multi-story apartments with no green space, were nearly literally fish out of water: When the human objects of a social engineering project react unfavorably, perhaps the engineering scheme should be consulted before deciding that the human is “mentally ill.”
Who gets to diagnose that congressmen, or key decision-makers in government service, are “mentally ill”?
Those persons can do and have done far more damage than all of the “white supremacist” shooters combined: shouldn’t they have to certify that they are not mentally ill before being given life-and-death powers?
TTG
Have you killed anyone?
Colonel Lang…The writers of The Constitution Knew there would have been No Continental Army if The Colonists had not Had had their Rifles..and True Grit..Tyrrany is Tyrrany…I Have My Dads old Remington Single shot 22 cal Bolt action Rifle..I would take it out to Our local 100 year old Gun Range…Frequently used to train local Military….But a Democrat County Offical shut it Down by applying so Many requirements for New Permits etc It May Never Reopen…
Yes
Mass shootings as unfortunate as they are are minor of the evil that comes when government goes rogue then sooner or later you get organized mass shootings which as history shows are not something fun to experience. Basically next best thing to doing nothing is to arm citizens even more (ccw) and require decent level of proficiency. Assuming you have more than 50% of decent people things would turn better on their own. Assuming less than 50% decent makes any kind of society pointless. In US you would do much better calling spade a spade and focus on legal drug abuse, black ghettos and instead of trying to police the world police yourself and remove bunch of power hungry bastards from buttons with power. Most of what is going on nowadays is by design to divide and conquer, smoke and mirrors so rats can operate out of sight.
Sir, with due respect, this is uncalled for.
The 2A should be repealed, unless the herrenvolk still believe in the suppression of slave revolts and the genocide of indigenous peoples.
Parent not parents. No father present for most of these boys.
Just like war evolved to become hybrid, a hybrid civil war in the USA is raging, and it is not front page news anymore , it has become a usual occurrence, like the weather report.
Hey everyone, I own guns – some of them even have detachable magazines that hold more than 10 rounds – and am totally pro 2A. I think that people should be able to own select fire rifles with no special permission required. IMO Cuomo is an anti-American thug.
You all are way off base with your concerns. What I described is, pretty much, already the law. I’m just trying to make it work as intended.
The guy who shot the congregation of the church in TX had received a big chicken dinner from the military and/or was section 8 (or something like that if I recall correctly). Prohibiting gun ownership for Florida school shooter and the Dayton guy can in no reasonable way be construed to be an abuse of mental health diagnostics.
Put the qualifying diagnoses and criteria for getting each diagnosis per the DSM 5 in the law. Make it an act of congress to change any of that. Who wants crazy people to have a gun? This is reasonable and, again, is the law already and has been for as long as I’ve been around.
Or we’re all going to lose our guns as soon as a damn democrat gets into the oval office with a majority congress. A third option I guess is civil war.
walrus,
the criterion already exists. You have to attest on a form that you are not addicted to drugs and haven’t been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. If you answer “yes” to those questions, you are denied purchase. The problem is that the crazy guys simply lie.
This is not rocket science. Link their treatment history to the background check database that looks at criminal history.
Serge,
The Dayton guy wrote list of names of students he wanted to kill or rape on the wall in the hallway of the school. He was suspended for it, but then allowed back. Apparently he did stuff like that frequently. A few weeks before the shooting a friend says he held a loaded gun to his own head.
Come on. That’s not someone that belongs in treatment?
walrus
A lack of paranoia about one’s government is certainly a mental health condition and the level of paranoia which should be deemed healthy is rising.
D
It was the federal government that was considered the probable enemy. You missed that? Slow.
The “mentally ill” prohibition is good BUT difficult to define. Take for instance anti-depressants, which are widely used, and have known violence/suicide side effects.
These drugs help a lot of people. As one of my fiends who takes Prozac said when I asked her how the drugs were “it helps to keep the demons away.”
So, do we ban guns for those on anti-depressants? If you don’t think anti-depressants are a problem with mass shooters read this:
http://patriotrising.com/the-one-thing-that-nearly-every-mass-shooting-has-in-common-and-it-isnt-guns/
Colonel
The problem we face today is that far too many on the Left do not accept the premise in your first paragraph re the inevitable tendency of governments towards tyranny. Folk like Jack’s grandpa who recognized why the American Constitution is unique are outnumbered by people who have learned its text without gaining an appreciation of the enduring rationale for the safeguards it provides. Perhaps they see these as outdated. After all, do we not now live in a post-conflict utopian age of perpetual benign government?
The education system is a state organ itself and cannot be relied upon to teach citizens why they should nurture a healthy suspicion of its paymaster. Our society has a sickness that needs curing and it is to be expected that the state will seek to take the easy route, at a severe cost to civil liberties. This should be resisted, by cold dead hands if necessary. That said, Hobbes would probably be the first to admit that a state as presently constituted is failing its citizens if too many of their lives are arbitrarily cut short. How many dead annually is an acceptable price for protection from a future tyranny? I genuinely do not have an answer, but I do not think we are there yet.
It is not. You wish to appease the government.
Says the lifelong government employee who would have saluted and said yes sir if asked to crush any domestic insurrection
D
A soldier is not a government employee. He or she is a sworn defender of the constitution. I would not have participated in suppressing a revolt that was in defense of that constitution. I would have refused and then faced the consequences.
catherine,
Where were the parents is a good question. The reason they were both allowed back in school is the policy decisions in place by the school board, mostly a result of efforts by the prior administration to focus on rates of discipline by race rather than individual conduct. In 2013 those efforts were lauded for thier success. Less than ten years later it is obvious they are failed policies.
https://prospect.org/article/reversing-broward-countys-school-prison-pipeline
To quote the article:
“Broward announced broad changes designed to mitigate the use of harsh punishments for minor misbehavior at the beginning of this school year.”
That is the reason both Cruz (Florida) and the man in Dayton were not referred to law enforcement. The leadership beleived their ideology and still do.
Lars,
Will we also need a license to vote?
walrus,
Of course it is easy to construct a ‘catch 22’. One of the early lists of ‘mental health’ reasons people will be denied ability to purchase or own firearms will be PTSD designation by the VA. I expect the left to mandate than some time in the coming decade, perhaps sooner if they lose the presidential election in 2020.
TTG
In the year of “Private Ryan” I had begun to write my memoir and was forced to tally up the numbers that I could remember. Few intelligence officers personally face the enemy or supervise some of the country’s lethal actions. I did. the numbers in both categories were appalling.
Eric,
Being an incel devoid of morality and exposed to edgy subculture is not mental illness. If we gave Dayton a few girlfriends and a purpose in life he wouldn’t have his mental illness. If you gave a schizophrenic a dozen girlfriends and a purpose in life he would still be schizophrenic. Being a bad person should not be blanketed under nebulous definitions of mental illness.
So you link treatment databases and you pick up all the guys that got six months of SSRIs after a divorce or death in the family? What the leftists will do is reverse the onus of proof and ask you to prove you are NOT insane. Have you ever seen the movie “one flew out of the cuckoos nest?”
No you won’t, but when I became a US citizen, I had to pass a civics test, which I did. Afterwards, I asked many native born Americans the same questions and none could answer. So, having some kind of civics test for voters would probably be beneficial, but I doubt that I will ever see one, since only naturalized citizens would be able to vote.
But so also would removing voting suppression efforts based upon anything other than civic knowledge. Just as removing gerrymandering would.
A licensing system for voting would neither be desirable, nor practical. It would also be too easy to manipulate, since there would be quite some time between having to use it.
If you are on anti-depressants long term, then no guns.
I am for this approach (deny access to mentally ill) but differ on the method. SSRI’s have a black box warning on them and proved to increase aggression and suicidal and homicidal ideation in younger people. Why is that? Scientists have called for more research but no funding as of yet. Pharmacogenetics is a rising field – people have a wide variety of reactions to drugs based on genetics. Is there anything in common across the DNA of shooters? MAOA in particular. What DNA polymorphisms led to bad reactions to SSRI’s?
A science approach could crack this and I’d trust it a lot more than subjective diagnosis.
“With age stratification, there was a significant association between SSRIs and violent crime convictions for individuals aged 15 to 24 y”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26372359
“Antidepressants double the occurrence of events in adult healthy volunteers that can lead to suicide and violence.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27729596
MAOA-l (low activity) types are more like to use violence if they had childhood trauma or are screwed over
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2650118/
Walrus,
No. You implement clinically sound rules as to what data, diagnoses, etc get linked. That will have to be hashed out.
See my comment about my personal experience with this issue if Col Lang posts it. The current state is unacceptable. We shouldn’t shy from reform just because the work is messy.
I hope none of the nay-sayers are for socialized medicine. Imagine what a Peter Strzrok would do with access to our healthcare records.
Here’s a great article titled “Fuck you, I like guns”, about military grade weapons written by a former Army guy.
https://agingmillennialengineer.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/fuck-you-i-like-guns-2/?fbclid=IwAR2glzvBoFoFv8RbHufTM3Din3xVFutdoyPy046Hv3qIeovM4KfcO278ol0
I risk going the sliding slope road TTG with my argument, but it CAN be done, multiple killings with a knife. This is the Chinese mode of attack. People adopt means to accomplish their evil ends. The option I prefer is to objectively, as possible, examine why we THINK these individuals are attacking. And to reject simplistic first arguments, White Supremacy, AntiFa, proffered reasons. Also, at some point more and more people are going to start arming themselves to simply go to the store or mall, or nightclub. It is happening now…but the pace will pick up dramatically as the killing speeds up. Leaving aside whether this is a wise thing or not, self defense is a deep human instinct.
There is a substantial difference between kissing someone ass…and someone carrying out their constitutional duty. I would have assumed most people would automatically grasp that obvious fact. But I guess not.
Then the Rabbi should come here and teach his co-religionists to stop trying to disarm the goyim: their patience has its limits, and they tend not to go in for Talmudic hair-splitting concerning those who try to enslave them.
Anger, frustration, and hatred are not mental illness. Mental illness seems to be a minor problem in homicides in the US.
A bit of evidence might shed light on the issue:
Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120,000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.26
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318286/
Lars,
The voting system is already easy to manipulate, especially since one need not prove US citizenship in order to vote. That is precisely how the left wants it, easy to manipulate.
The black box warning says that people starting,stopping, or changing SSRI’s should be monitored closely so long range won’t capture the issue and monitoring is a failure as it is easy for people to stop without others knowing. The suicide and violence issue is also age related with those < 24 years old most affected. It would sure help if we could track down why that is. As it is many left wingers scream if you bring it up, especially as so many people are on them and helped by it. They can't handle nuanced information or discussion, especially as they are "emotional thinkers", i.e. their emotional reactions dictate their response rather than information. Anyone starting or on SSRI's and < 30 years old (no association with suicide or violence in the 30-60 age group) should have guns taken away and strong restrictions on access to guns others may have in the home. SSRI's have also been tied to a reduction in suicide and violence overall.
Catherine,
You do not understand how difficult it is for a parent or guardian to get a seriously mentally ill person who doesn’t want treatment (and they almost never do), into the system against their will. Basically, the system says that people have the right to be insane. Involuntary commitment to treatment is reserved for those who are deemed an immediate danger to self or others – and that determination is usually only made after the person has actually done something dangerous. The system is not proactive.
The mentally ill have rights that are ardently defended by the same people that want to take away guns.
The anti-gun people – like their left wing cohort – are not really about public safety.
They’re about disarming all those “gun owning, redneck Trump voters.”
And every lunatic mass shooter gives them more ammunition (no pun intended).
And, BTW, the next mass shooter already has his weapon(s).
All,
mental illness – my foot! many commenters (rightly) point out the deficiencies of blaming the “mental illness” – how about the statistics all over the world? is incidence of s.c. mental illness different between races and nations? Not to my knowledge. Is neurotic behavior, is psychotic behavior, is schizophrenia, is manic depressive illness, all under the same umbrella? Are organic brain diseases to be detected before they manifest themselves? Is using crack cocaine and other mind altering drugs mental illness? (how many politicians fall under those?) Are we to create a monster of administrating psychiatric examination every 1, or 2 or 5 years? is an anonymous denunciation of a unpleasant neighbor enough to make him undergo mandatory psychiatric tests? The mental illness is a cop-out imho. Mr. Newhill with his insurance statistics (clouds altering his mind) is not what I consider a level headed approach.
I think there is perfect storm of pernicious influences. First and foremost, the rise and prevalence of LGBTQA, effeminate men, masculine women, gender dysmorphia, liberal politics, hysterical reactions to extremely statistically rare events, etc… is due to the pill. Millions of women (particularly white women) have used the pill in their fertile age and then started having children later. So millions of women were/are fundamentally altering their body’s hormonal balance with ethinylestradiol (estrogen) and progestin (progestogen) and then discontinuing use to have their 2.1 kids. These hormones also reduce neurotransmitter levels (particularly serotonin) affecting mental and emotional health. Discontinued use of the pill does not return hormonal balance in women and women who have used the pill have continued elevation of things like sex hormone-binding globulin. We all know the tragedy of prenatal cocaine exposure (crack babies) when a mother uses a nervous system stimulant. Yet a drug which fundamentally alters hormone levels in mothers will have no effect?? But questioning the negative effects of the pill is outside the Overton Window. But the Catholic Church was right.
Throw in the widespread use of marijuana— which causes of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, psychosis, et al.— and the rapid change (unraveling) of the culture and you can start to make sense of what we see unfolding. Scary times.
El paso was a false flag because the true motives fot the attack have not been disclosed.The attack in dayton was payback.
Evidently el paso walmart was being used as a distribution point for drugs coming in from s.america.lots of drugs.the trucks carrying walmart merchandise were part of a supply chain running drugs all over the usa.the perfect cover.the attacks on el paso walmart and other walmarts are merely a warning.The cartels are using drugs and immigration to advance a 2 pronged attack on the usa.Miami is the nexus of old money and new and it is here that the future of southern parts of the usa are being negioated.
The cocaine industry is probably one of the most useless enterprises on this planet.Valuable land resources are being wasted in a time when climate change is directly affecting food chains.
Guns are merely tools in this scenario
The entire essay is worth reading. An excerpt:
“But we’re supposed to protect against tyranny! I need the same weapons the military would come at me with!” Dude. You know where I can get an Apache helicopter and a Paladin?! Hook a girl up! Seriously, though, do you really think you’d be able to hold off the government with an individual level weapon? Because you wouldn’t. One grenade, and you’re toast. Don’t have these illusions of standing up to the government, and needing military style rifles for that purpose. You’re not going to stand up to the government with this thing. They’d take you out in about half a second.”
Well put. Cogent logic. Thank you SRW for the link.
It’s completely silly then to argue that state “militias” are some bulwark against tyranny–and justify some anti-gun control theory on that–when the constitution explicitly states that congress has the power to call up said militias to enforce federal laws and suppress insurrection.
D
a state militia that is not part of the National Guard cannot be called into federal service without the consent of the state government.
akapatience
A people in arms have often been able to tie a heavily armed military force in knots. Would the individuals in the resistance necessarily survive? A lot of them would not. Do you want me to give you a list of all the places in the last 100 years where guerillas have successfully fought regular troops? You must be very self centered to focus on the survival of individuals.
Not too many people even know these things still exist. They are usually called “State Guard” or “State Militia,” basically a Civil Defense kind of thing with elements of a community service organization. NY’s is not armed.
But do you think that your view of whether such a suppression of a revolt was actually in defense of the Constitution would have changed over the period of your career?
Would your opinion differ now?
Not an easy question to have to face and one I was glad to be spared when I was in the Army. Hopefully all of us will be spared that question.
The problem I think is the high rate of fire military-style weapons.
If people only had access to single shot rifles or traditional single or double barrelled shotguns the potential for these kinds of massacres would be seriously curtailed.
There should be a complete ban on all automatic, semi-automatic or repeater, lever, bolt-action or double-action weapons. After all, grenades and mortars are banned, right?
It’s the stranger or random killings that most worry us, even if the incidence of such killings is very low. Not always predictable and therefore not always avoidable. I do not believe these killings, or indeed the more usual sort, are necessarily related to a diagnosable psychotic condition. A neighbour had a relative killed recently in London. Sitting on a park bench and stabbed from behind by a boy who seemingly did it as part of a gang dare or initiation rite. I doubt any doctor or social worker could have reckoned up the likelihood of that in advance.
The custom of suddenly delivering a sharp blow to a random passing pedestrians can also occasionally result in death. Sometimes videos of this from CCTV cameras are released and it’s possibly to see that there’s really no way of predicting it. The victims can be anyone from the elderly to the young and everything seems normal up until the time it happens. In Sweden the practice of setting a rubbish bin on fire and then dropping blocks from a bridge on to the fire engines as they drive to the fire puts the fire teams at risk. Attacking paramedics as they attend an emergency, or attacking utility workers, means such work can’t be done safely without police protection in some areas. And as you say motor vehicles are sometimes used to devastating effect. Then there are bombs, rare enough but when used as bad as a mass shooting.
Separating out the race war stuff from the gang crimes from the purely psychotic seems to me impracticable when looking at these stranger or random killings. In any case the categories aren’t mutually exclusive – Breivik, for example, seems to have been a psychotic but dabbled in race war too. The figures are opaque but I’d guess that the chances of one of my children being killed by a neighbour who’d lost his temper and fetched an axe out of the garden shed are very much lower than their chances of being killed if they wandered into the wrong part of, say, London or Manchester without being careful.
We can, and I think in England generally do, confine the people who merely have a screw loose – if, as you say, they get diagnosed. I agree that banning guns or knives doesn’t really address the problem. Using these killings as an excuse for banning this or that seems to me to be merely displacement activity. Some shops no longer stock kitchen knives above a certain size but that looks more like virtue signalling than anything effective.
I don’t think there is a solution, other than being more careful than we used to be. The main protection, if one can call it that, is that statistically the chances of being caught up in such incidents are still vanishingly small for most of us. But we live in an increasingly violent society and we’re going to be more at risk from random violence than was the norm in the recent past.
“Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” was I recollect the mantra in the Blair era. Didn’t happen and is unlikely to.
Mental Health-Related Prohibited Categories in California
https://lawcenter.giffords.org/mental-health-related-prohibited-categories-in-california/
If Senator Kamala gets in the WH I’m stashing my 9mm and deer rifle in the crawl space just in case she comes looking for them. Although I should probably give the Winchester to my grandson before they close that loophole.
bernard
Do you think such a ban could be enforced? I do not.
john minehan
You appear to have misunderstood what I said which was that I would not have participated in suppression of a revolt that sought to defend the constitution. I won the American Legion state oratory contest in 1958 on the subject “The Constitution, ours to defend.” My views have never changed.
John Minehan
Your generalization about these non-National Guard parts of the state’s militias is wildly inaccurate. Many of these forces are armed. but, the larger point is that the Unorganized Militia of each state is the whole adult citizen population and as a balance for federal power they must not be disarmed.
The mental illness label is a red herring. Lots of people get SSRI’s And it is the < 24 year olds that show increased suicide and violence. Lots of people benefit from SSRI's without issue but some are greatly affected. "The proportion of non-psychiatrist doctor visits where antidepressants were prescribed without a documented psychiatric diagnosis increased from 59.5% to 72.7% between 1996 and 2007, according to a new study in Health Affairs." https://www.webmd.com/depression/news/20110804/antidepressants-prescribed-without-psychiatric-diagnosis#1
SRW
This “great article” is written by former (?) army ‘guy’ Anastasia Bernoulli a self confessed “confirmed pacifist” who among other fine qualifications writes for laprogressive.com. An interesting choice.
Come the fight against Tyranny I wish you and Anastasia luck. I prefer the opinions of another
formerArmy guy who actually knows what a few well motivated people with “military grade weapons” can actually do.I love the stuff I learn here. Thanks!
Great summary on state defense forces –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_defense_force
Some of the doctors groups have begin incorporating “political correctness” into their diagnoses.
E.g.:
“Racism has devastating effects on children’s health, pediatricians warn”, WaPo, 2019-08-02
The msm use to mention SSRIs where taken by a large majority of mass killers, back in the 90’s when the mass killing trend started. Now it is not mentioned at all. How many know Dylan Roof was addicted to Suboxone? That information was not released until two years after the shooting. Today the media only harps on White supremacy and guns as the causes. The popular term used today “gun violence” creates the image guns cause the killings and not the person pulling the trigger.
I’ve often wondered when young men will start responding, and in what way, after being demonized by the anti-White male rhetoric prevalent in the culture. It must promote a feeling of shame and hopelessness in in young White men. And hopelessness is common to mass killers. Paul Craig Roberts explores this in the following article. The only supremacist talking point the El Paso murderer hit was his disapproval of race mixing. He didn’t even mention Blacks or Jews as most White supremacists do. He didn’t say or imply that Hispanics were any less human or intelligent than Whites; he didn’t like the second and third generation Hispanics were taking the skilled, high paying jobs–the job he was too unmotivated to work for.
I am not excusing the piece of shit but his motivation for killing is more complicated than what the media says. I don’t think people taking SSRIs should automatically have their guns taken from them but should be monitored by their doctors for behavorial changes.
http://www.unz.com/proberts/mass-shootings-and-responses-to-them-have-unintended-consequences/
My father was a student at the University of Texas in Austin while we were at Bergstrom AFB and friends with Allen Crum. To us firearms were just tools and it was common for neighbors have rifle cabinets or racks in living rooms.
Many people forget some of the details from the incident:
Regular people from all over Austin had grabbed their guns from their trucks or homes that day and rushed to campus to fire at Whitman from the ground. Their bullets pelted the tower, kicking up clouds of limestone. At times, witnesses said, the campus felt like a war zone, but with armed frat boys and hunting enthusiasts instead of soldiers.
https://apps.texastribune.org/guns-on-campus/allen-crum-helped-stop-ut-tower-shooter-charles-whitman/
Being more comfortable in rural areas I always avoided crowded areas and likely nuclear targets when able.
“Second Amendment history: Until 1959, every law review article on the amendment concluded it didn’t guarantee an individual right to a gun.
Law review pieces saying the opposite started to appear in the late 1970s, funded mainly by the NRA.”
https://twitter.com/brennancenter/status/1159256661481144323?s=21
Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment (City Lights Open Media)
Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0872867234/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_Il3sDbZW2ACDH
Maybe it could not be enforced, but it is what is required.
At the Broad Arrow Café, using a semi-auto, Bryant took about 15 seconds to kill twelve people and shoot 10 more. If he had to work a bolt to remove a spent round, and manually insert a fresh one, surely he would not nearly have had so much ‘success’. People could run away, or rush him, or both. Instead, most victims were probably shot before they even realised what was happening.
Surely a single-shot rifle is all that is needed for hunting, stock and vermin control, sports shooting, target shooting etc.
”Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that Moses was the leader most worthy of being emulated because he consulted directly with god. Rabbi David bar-Hayim bases his teachings on the Books of Moses, Torah.”
People who claim God talks to them are usually put on meds or confined to mental wards….depending on what they claim God told them.
The debate among most people here is not about banning all guns, but rather the banning of military-like assault weapons.
Sir, IMO if we have many more incidents like El Paso, an activity such as mere grocery shopping is going to subject us all to metal detectors and bag/body searches. I consider this a much more likely tyranny and infringement of personal freedom than the likelihood of governmental confiscation of all guns of any sort from private citizens.
While a ban certainly won’t stop those who are willful and determined to cause mass harm, I believe it’s worth trying to see if the incidence of this deadly phenomenon will be reduced. I also believe people shouldn’t have to be increasingly concerned for their very lives while grocery shopping, for God’s sake!
I’m not in favor of gun control per se. It’s the use of assault weapons against innocents that alarms me.
Serious question: what kind of government tyranny do you anticipate in the US that would require an assault weapon to counter?
After reading California’s explanatory writings about gun confiscation orders, it is clear that voicing a strong opinion about the need for second amendment gun rights constitutes sufficient evidence of the threat of violence to warrant court ordered permanent confiscation of firearms. Even defending yourself in court and objecting could be seen as evidence of violent intent – a real catch 22.
”You can have your deer rifle. You can have your shotgun that you love to shoot clay pigeons with. You can have your target pistol. Get a license. Get a training course. Recertify at a predetermined interval. You do not need a military grade rifle. You don’t. There’s no excuse.”
Agree…
Do you think though that even if the whole adult citizen population of a state was armed with assault style weapons they could defeat a federal military called out against them?
I don’t see how they could….though they might be able to turn their state into a occupied like territory with a prolonged gorilla war.
Catherine
You got no guts girl
akapatience
You have no idea what a “military like assault weapon” is. You are just another frightened woman being herded toward UK style firearms confiscation.
This is idiotic. Part of the fundamental right to own firearms is that we NOT be registered with the government. It starts with registration and then eventually that’s not enough so they use the registry to sieze everyone’s guns. This has happened elsewhere and could easily happen here.
Patience,
They shoot bullets, that makes them “military grade”. All of them.
What kind of government needs a disarmed citizenry, besides ones run by politicians named Castro?
I have literally stated appeasing the US government by unilaterally disarming would be a quote “suckers bet”?
I dont know about you, but I appease people, such as friends, coworkers, relatives etc. all the damn time.
This does not mean I crawl up their rear ends.
In a way, your americans are special in your relationship with your government because your government is the greatest threat to your freedoms. Historically, everywhere else that title went to someone elses government (even with pretty extremely internally violent goverments like the Soviet and the Nazi ones, some even worse governments was right around the corner pouncing to invade), as such one ends up making pragmatic deals with the lesser threat, often including or meaning ones own government, against the greater threats, somebody elses.
What I am uncertain off is the extent to which modern technology makes militias stronger or weaker compared to the government.
On one hand,
3D printing and drones offer smart insurgents capabilities (in terms of having an air force, aerial recon and a manufacturing base) formerly reserved to nation states or very high level non nation state forces (like Hezbollah or the Donbas rebels, who both act quite aking to nation states in practice).
On the other hand, genetic finger printing, facial recognition software and social networks considerably increase the ease of repression and tyranny.
Key for the insurgents will be to degrade the repressors trusts into his own system. If a large scale intrustion suceeds in completely fouling up f.e. a genetic finger printing database (not as in destroying the date but as in randomizing which data set is linked to whom) the insurgents can massively decrease his opponents capabilities. I dont see an inherent potential for the repressor to do this types of exploits against decentralized insurgent networks.
Honestly, if you want to deterr the government, I would recommend being anti 3D printing control and anti drone control at least as much as being anti gun control.
I think a big question for any insurgent is the question of wether he wants to stay an insurgent or move towards a conventional combatant. Donbass chose the latter path with a gusto (allthough few rebels would have that type of great power support to make this happen), Hezbollah clearly prefers to fight conventionally against irregulars and irregularly against conventionals (it works for them).
mightypeon
Very good. To quote Lt Col Thursday “At which staff college did Cochise study?” We have to be careful about thinking that more and more technology makes the repressor relatively stronger. In Iraq we were driven from the country by men armed with small arms and improvised roadside bombs. Our response was to pile on more and more incredible expensive anti-mine technology in that project run by Meigs. The enemy response was to continue to innovate using their own technical skills and disassembled electronic appliances. The only thing that stopped the bombers in the end was the initiative of a handful of junior SF and US Marine officers and NCOs who realized from mixing with the tribes that the bombers were alien to the tribes as well as to us repressors. The movement of the “Sons of Iraq” then proceeded to kill the bombers. No technology was involved other than a bullet in the head. At that point it could have been said that us oppressors had won the war but infact war fatigue had set in within the body politic of the repressor nation (us) and a candidate was elected president to was committed to withdrawal. That kind of outcome is what insurgents dream of. I was in a war game a while back in which very basic drones of a kind that can be built in a garage workshop made a tremendous difference to an insurgent force in terms of reconnaissance. The Houthis seem to be doing quite well with similar systems. Good comment.
fanto,
Have you ever purchases a gun in the US? According to federal law, individuals cannot buy a gun if a court or other authority has deemed them a “mental defective” or committed them involuntarily to a mental hospital. If you’ve ever purchased a gun, you’d know that you had to answer “no” to a question asking if you fall into the above category.
Everyone is missing the point that medical records would clearly show who is in that category. It’s not statistics. It’s records. Instead everyone is arguing that the category will be expanded (i.e. the law changed). That is a different issue. That could be done with or without database linkage to mental health records.
Also, there is no reason why the background check DB would have ALL of your healthcare encounters. It wouldn’t. It would just get the narrow range of diagnoses and procedures that indicate a serious mental illness *as already defined by the law*.
What you and most others here are confusedly saying is that if the speed limit is 70mph and the police are given radar guns to identify speeders (going in excess of 70mph), then people will be ticketed for going 40mph. You’re not following the bouncing ball.
EO,
It’s obvious to me that no one really cares any more about all the gang bangers shooting each other in the big democrat cities than they do about all the lower class whites ODing on narcotics.
The urban political class cares about the random mass shootings of strangers because they imagine it could happen to them. It upsets the stability of their world. And it sure is a nice political club to wield against republicans.
Insane people are susceptible to all kinds of weird and/or unpleasant ideologies. Goes hand in hand.
As you say, there is no complete solution, yet we could prevent a meaningful number of these events if we took steps to block the mentally ill – per the definitions already in the law – from acquiring firearms.
I am mildly amused at just how sensitive some people are about having their mental health examined. I think that people don’t understand that hospitalizations are a matter of record as are court ordered treatments as are diagnoses and prescriptions. This is all a matter of a lack of understanding on their part of all aspects of the professions and processes involved. The database isn’t going to include the short term episode of depression after a divorce. That’s not the law.
Resistance to an oppressive force doesn’t require semiautomatic weapons with high volume magazines. Solution: grandfather the owners of such weapons and allow transference through inheritance or strictly controlled sales similar to the way automatic weapons are controlled.
Arguing from the other side might be enlightening. Why can’t most Americans go to their local gun stores and purchase an M60 machine gun?
A big thums up to you sir.you hit the nail on its head.
It is a pretty interesting thing to consider what type of size is “optimal” in terms of government.
The “optimal” government is just large enough to deterr other government, but small enough to not threaten its populations.
I used to believe that this optimal state size is decreasing, since a reasonably smart state that distributes 3D printers amongst its citizenry is probably quite good at deterring state adversaries (I take Baltic claims of “Oh my god the Russians are coming give us money” seriously when they actually do this).
Another reason is that large states tend to gravitate towards the overorganized, overegineered and overcentralized.
Overcentralization can be very very vulnerable.
I do hope that US intel has some cunning plans to set everyone social credit score in Chinas funny system to above 9000. If not, well, hopefully Russia and India are more imaginative.
Aristophanes
As you know you can legally buy an M-60 machine gun. All you need do is apply to ATF for the license.
Having studied WW2 quite a bit, something came I came acress is that one often wins wars by not losing. The insurgents made an exploitable mistake in not getting the local tribes on their side, and this mistake was exploited.
I also wonder to what extent Russias own civil war experiences (IIRC all Russian officers get quite a bit of a military history and typically not as boring classroom instructions, a frequent thing with this is that the cadets are randomly divided into 2 or more groups, 1 group of each faction, they get their order of battle and are tasked to divise a plan to murder their opponents. This is then wargamed, and then there comes what actually happened ) helps Russia in their current Syrian adventure. My hunch is quite a bit.
In my haste to get the above off, I left out a key statement from the report from the American Academy of Pediatricians:
So there you have, (some) doctors diagnosing politically incorrect thought as a “disease.”
It is not possible, in their view that those inequities are significantly due to genetic or cultural differences.
BTW, on the use of diagnoses of “mental illness” to smear those expressing unpopular opinions,
Kerry R. Bolton has written several essays on this topic.
For example, “Psychopathology of the Left”.
You can google on his name to find more. A sample from the above link:
I view government as a necessary evil and share Thoreau’s perspective re its optimum size. But he was absolutely right that it can only work “when men are prepared for it”. The general direction of travel over the last 150 years has not been consistent with this goal and “The character inherent in the American people” is in great jeopardy. The Left detest the individualism of this inherent character and would crush it completely with their all-powerful state’s ever expanding definition of acceptable behaviors.
America is a unique experiment in structuring a state so as to ensure it always “comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power”. The Second Amendment is critical in enforcing this wholly unnatural state of affairs.
Eric – the big drivers are income disparity and population replacement. Mix those up and whatever the progs say – and as you remark they say little that’s to the point – that’s going to cause stress and then violence. I do agree with you that there are already existing ways of minimising the problem that aren’t being used as well as they could be. But looking at the problem generally holding the violence back isn’t so much a matter for health professionals. It’s a matter for the police and security services.
They, in this country at least, are severely overstretched as it is. So short of holing up like Tyler – for which you need more space and more money than most of us have – my somewhat lame suggestion that all one can do is to be a little more careful is about the only one practicable.
At present. Tell me that the progs are losing ground and common sense is gaining the upper hand. I shan’t believe you but it’s nice hearing it.
Correct, but a lot more effort, time, and money needs to be spent for an automatic v semi-auto purchase. There are more restrictions and scrutiny on these owners and transfers of arms. Not saying that I agree with all of the restrictions but it does limit access.
Maybe a sliding scale of restrictions and hurdles could be implemented to limit access of the more efficient anti-personnel weapon systems.
”You got no guts girl”
If only you knew…hehehe
I would prefer more lone wolf type activities like assassin or spy since I am a tad old now for the trenches.
Are all mental illness voilent? Are all those that have a mental illness violent?
Fred, I usually agree with you but I haven’t advocated disarming the citizenry. You’re mistaken.
And you and the colonel both know what I mean about the weapon of choice used by mass shooters (which don’t allow their victims even a sporting chance) but have used semantic quibbling to dismiss my suggestion about banning them. It’s the colonel’s blog though so it’s his prerogative to say whatever he wants.
Neither of you have answered my last question, posed in all earnestness: what kind of government tyranny do you anticipate in the US that would require such weapons to counter? I’d honestly like to know, as it’s obviously beyond my ken.
BTW I’m just as concerned and alarmed as anyone about the attempts to thwart the Trump campaign and presidency; FBI agents with guns blazing to arrest the likes of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, etc., but I don’t see a connection to, or excuse for, the legality of the kind of weapons mass shooters employ. I await enlightenment.
Off topic, but arguably relevant:
NBC’s Universal Pictures plans to release ‘The Hunt’ despite backlash
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/nbc-universal-pictures-the-hunt-release-backlash
Keep in mind that:
– Comcast owns NBC Universal, which also owns NBC News and MSNBC. As Tucker Carlson pointed out on his show on August 7, the pundits at MSNBC have gone completely off the wall in their criticism of the President; and anyone who follows the news knows that NBC News is supportive of the Democratic agenda.
– The leading 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates are all taking about banning weapons, buy back programs and using the power of the state to seize weapons in one form or another.
– While POTUS is supportive of universal background checks (the polling data apparently shows that by wide margins the American public favor this); and red flag laws, (various people have studied mass shootings, and all have recommended some form of a law which, as I understand it, allows the State to temporarily deprive an individual of his or her right to bear arms, if it can be shown the person is a danger to himself or society) how will dropping this sort of movie into today’s environment go over?
Will such a movie not add more fuel to the fire, while hardening the views of those who are supportive of the 2nd amendment?
If NBC Universal does go ahead and release the film, is it easy to see that someone who is not all there might decide to go shoot up a movie theater in protest?
akapatience
Look at Walrus’ response on this on the need for firearms ownership to resist if necessary. Please don’t tell me that you think a government tyranny is impossible in the US because of the modest temperament of American law enforcement ad politicians. IMO the Squad and their allies represent a potential for tyrannical government that cannot be ignored. Tell me, would you have thought British rule tyrannical enough in 1775 to have rebelled?
Dayton did have girlfriends. I’ve seen two of them interviewed. Your “incel” theory doesn’t hold up.
He stalked one of the girlfriends after they broke up and frightened her.
Here is an interesting question!
Semi-automatic (self-loading) shoulder arms really come in with the M-1 rifle, circa 1936 or so. If you want a good illustration of how they increased the efficiency of the average rifleman, watch the battle scenes towards the end of SGT York (1941) where Gary Cooper, an experienced hunter, familiar with bolt action rifles, plays SGT York, an excellent Infantryman, who had been an experienced hunter.
Before firing, Cooper must come off the sights in to cycle the bolt to chamber a round. It visibly slows the process.
Consider the Dayton attack. The shooter was killed within 30 seconds of beginning his attack. However, in that time he killed 7 and wounded 19.
That is harder to do with a bolt action rifle or even a pistol. That is virtually impossible with a knife.
We outlawed private ownership of automatic weapons in the 1930s because “Chicago Typewriters” were considered an undue threat to public peace. At that time, the technology that is used in the M-1 Rifle was just emerging.
The question is does that kind of technology endanger the public peace as much as the “Chicago Typewriter” did in the 1920s and 1930s?
Because these mass casualty events are statistically rare, do we accept that risk in order to have sufficient military grade weapons in private hands to potentially oppose a tyranny?
What differs between the Dayton and El Paso attacks and your average weekend in Chicago is that, in Chicago, it is multiple shooters with small numbers of victims in each incident where the shooter knows the victim or who are collateral damage to an attack on a known victim. The ordinance also usually differs, hand guns versus rifles or carbines.
The overall murder rates in the US are dropping, but these mass casualty events and street crime in certain places is an outlier.
The only issue that applies in both cases is the culture, that makes shooting people a means of expression.
But changing the culture is a slow process and I don’t see a common vision in place sufficient to outlaw these weapons as automatic weapons were outlawed in the 1930s, for good or ill. .
Just based on the lack of consensus on this issue, the third option is at least conceivable.
From what I have seen, probably not.
Sometimes, crushing a “domestic insurrection” is warranted, sometimes it’s an injustice and sometimes it’s avoidable.
We pay people in DoJ and the armed forces to make those distinctions.
Possibly, but I’m not sure that dog had its “one bite” yet. How would you know he was a threat before hand?
I think you over-estimate the level of cohesion and consensus.
My question was more, have your views changed on WHAT constitutes a “revolt that sought to defend the Constitution?”
I probably think there are MORE types of “revolts that sought to defend the Constitution” than I thought true 40 years ago.
In NYS, under the Military Law, it’s males 18 to 45, not on Active Duty or the Organized Reserves . . . and most people in it have never heard of it. The NYS State Guard is unarmed.
It’s probably something people should think about . . . but don’t.
Law review articles are NOT binding authority; Supreme Court decisions are (although they can be distinguished).
This is the only reason to allow semi-automatic battle rifles to be owned by private citizens in the US; because they **MIGHT** one day be needed in a justified revolt.
Otherwise, they create to much potential for use in incidents like Dayton or El Paso to justify their wide spread ownership for any other reason (sporting use, etc.).
Also, when those laws were passed in the 1930s, their was a consensus on the issue that does not exist now.
John Minehan
“Because these mass casualty events are statistically rare, do we accept that risk in order to have sufficient military grade weapons in private hands to potentially oppose a tyranny?”
This is the core question and as I read it, the original intent of the 2A. It was not worded to allow citizens only to own bows and arrows because guns are dangerous.
To make an informed decision on this question, one would need to estimate the probability of a tyranny emerging in the US. The Colonel has listed the Squad as a potential source of such and I agree with this, given they include neo-Marxists. I would add the creeping and well-advanced surveillance state combined with the massive political corruption much discussed on this blog. There are doubtless many other possible scenarios, none of us have a crystal ball.
Human perspectives are short term and most people take a Fukuyamaesque view of the past; it’s old news, things are different now.. Can and will a tyranny one day emerge in America? Though the Framers clearly did a good job, America is not uniquely invulnerable forever and with history as our guide it is surely a certainty.
In any case, the decision will not be made based on a dispassionate appraisal of the tiny statistical chance of meeting one’s end in this way. Terror, be it orchestrated or not, works and the Left know this. Personally, I am far more terrified of my children, or perhaps grandchildren, one day waking up in the world of 6079 Smith W. I would like them to have the means to do something about it if they do.
John Minehan
What are “battle rifles?” Black long guns? As you must know there all kinds of semi-auto hunting rifles and shotguns. You want to ban them also? How about the Ruger 10-22? .22 caliber LR.There are millions of them out there. i have a Keltec SU-22 .22 semi-auto rifle that is bad assed looking but fires the same round as the Ruger 10-22. How about that one? how about antiques like the M-1 Garand?
John,
The only reason to disarm the public is to prevent them from revolting.