Subject:
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Re: New Web Page
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 14 May 1999 06:37:07 GMT
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737 times
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Hi--
Frank, I hope you'll forgive my answering
the previous post through yours.
Frank Filz wrote:
> I should probably stay out of this but...
>
> Note that I don't personally own a gun.
Neither do I, Frank. But the *right* to own one is vital in the United
States, and for more reason
than weapons--it's a symbolic iteration of the
democratic ideal and that whole "of the people"
thing. It may already be pie-in-the-sky wishful
thinking, but it's kept a country of 280 million of
the most ethnically diverse people I can imagine
*together* despite wars, persistent inequality,
abuses from within and without, and all of that.
Note that we don't have serious separatism in
the US, nor is there any fear of another Civil War.
Just to cite one example, as lousy as race relations
appear in the US, it's a far cry from a "race war."
Sure, there are militants, but it's not like Chechnya,
that's for sure. We argue, but the act of argument
and free intellectual (or anti-intellectual) exchange
is what keeps us from falling apart.
What country with so many people can say that
it's had the same basic Government with no real
upheavals since 1865? The Russians can't; nor
can India, China, or even smaller nations like
Germany or France--nor can Canada or Britain,
for that matter. Don't believe me? Just go and
witness devolution (PQ, anyone?) movements in
both. The right to bear arms is more than that--it's
a visible indicator of a greater ideal that we buy into,
whether or not it's the reality of what's going on.
So when looking at these numbers, remember just
how many people there are in the United States. To
be honest, the fact that it's not *much* more widespread
is an indication that the system overwhelmingly works.
Unfortunately, the fact that it took a shooting spree at
a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant school to bring the
issue to a head is indicative of where we need to fix it.
(Oh, yeah, and I'm "half-Canadian," so there. ;) )
> > In light of the events at Columbine, would you (plural, all
> > Americans, anyone in general, and perhaps proponents of some
> > political philosophies), still support gun ownership? Would
> > it still be the contention that any one of the lives of the
> > 15 that died would be insignificant, when weighed against the
> > symbolic notion of freedom that the pro-gun people imply gun
> > ownership to represent?
>
> The availability of guns is a factor in the recent school tragedies, but
> most of the tragedies would probably still have happened in some way
> (though probably with fewer casualties) without guns. The major
> contributing problems I see:
>
> - the promotion of violence in media
> - more importantly, the promotion of instant gratification
> - the fact that all too often marginalized kids are ignored and told to
> "take it like a man"
> - lack of parental involvement
We can make these exercises in counterfactuals
all we like, and it's not gonna change one whit
what actually happens/happened. I don't think
the bombs that the Columbine shooters tossed
had any guns in them--another weapon could
have been found, another strategy pursued. And
didn't Australia have its San Ysidroesque shooter,
while Britain and Canada have had theirs too?
The problem is one of mentality, not materiality.
>
The initial post asks if even one of the lives of a child at Columbine
is worth the freedom the
"gun lobby" finds the Second Amendment to
represent. That's a highly unfair question, as
you can't measure the counterfactual alternative.
As I remember seeing in another post, a lot of
lives are *saved* by owning a gun, or just by
the threat of a person owning a gun. I can tell
you of three instances where a gun or the chance
that they might have one saved the life of someone
I know--and yet, not one of my acquaintances or
friends has met their end at the barrel of a gun.
> > Would pro-gun people still argue that "keeping the government
> > in check," to be one of the tenets and responsibilities of
> > gun ownership? Do people really think that the military
> > would sit by and allow a dictatorship to evolve and rule?
> > Do people actually believe the oft-repeated notion that
> > people kill people, not guns?
>
> As some one else mentioned, the military is usually the power behind
> oppresive governments.
>
> Also, as one who grew up in Lexington and Concord MA, and is therefore
> much more educated about the start of our country than most Americans,
> all I can say is that I really understand just why we give the right to
> bear arms to individuals. I am not against reasonable laws which make a
> real attempt to reduce the flow of guns to criminals (such as back
> ground checks, being illegal for a convicted felon to own a gun, waiting
> periods, etc).
I'd advance also that it's simply too late to just
go and "outlaw" guns. There are too many here.
As a Norwegian professor of mine had on his door:
"When lutefisk is outlawed, only outlaws will have
lutefisk!" If you take the guns away from the legit
owners, only the criminals will have them. Millions
of them. And what's more, they'll know that Joe
Average won't.
> > Will people keep voting for legislation that makes it easier
> > to acquire weaponry? Will *any* legislation passed in relation
> > to gun ownership continue to fail the innocent?
>
> What legislation has been proposed lately which would make it easier to
> acquire arms?
>
> > Do people really, truly fear, or believe, that there is a gun-
> > toting maniac around every corner? Or that their mild-mannered,
> > harmless neighbour will snap, necessitating them to heavily
> > arm themselves to protect against such a possibility?
>
> No, but as many have mentioned, the criminal element doesn't live around
> the corner (or at least not in the neighborhoods I live in, inner city
> neighborhoods are another story), but they come where the wealth is.
Bingo. And if your average Jane doesn't have a gun,
the criminals will know it--the idea that criminals are
somehow "stupid" just isn't true.
> > Or will there continue to be a mini-, localised arms race,
> > and more innocents dying because no politician has the
> > stomach to do anything about it.
You can't just subtract a factor like that, when the society has
included it as a necessary. If
you do, the results will *not* be what you think--
it won't turn the United States into a less violent
country.
"Innocence" is relative, besides.
> > Think about it. By doing nothing for so many years, the problem
> > has only gotten worse, and much harder to do anything about it.
> > What real need has anyone to possess a gun. What real justification?
> > When was the Constitution written, 1789? 210 years ago! What
> > was life like then? Then, you could argue that justification
> > existed. "Hostile" natives, the need to hunt for much of the
> > food to be consumed, etc.
The Second Amendment was designed specifically
with the recent war experience in mind. There was
no intention to maintain a standing army--the pattern
was British, you see--but a militia-based military was
the norm. And, considering the reserve system, it
still is--except that combat weapons are issued and
have power and capabilities that no *legal* private
weapon may have (the exception, of course, is the
collector--and knowing one, I can tell you that those
licenses are next to *impossible* to get. Even then,
weapons must be peacebonded, e.g., made nonfiring.
Richard makes it sound like you can walk down to
the corner store to buy an automatic rifle, but the fact
is that you can't. Fully automatic (and most semi-
automatic) weapons are illegal. I *am* opposed
to easy availability of firearms--however, I am also
opposed to any effort to ban them across the board.
The handgun ban in Britain seemingly worked
because it was Britain--but it didn't save that news-
caster woman who got shot a little while back,
did it? Shot by a likely assassin--a criminal--hmmm.
> > ("Hostile" natives. Hmmmmm, a group
> > of people, though not recognised as being part of the nation,
> > excersising their democratic rights, both in what would later
> > be defined in international law, and what would then have been
> > their constitutional rights, to protect their homes, culture,
> > and way of life, from what was then a far more hostile and
> > powerful foe. Sound familiar?
Sure. Sounds like any one of Europe's empires--
take your pick as to the villain. We're all equally
guilty of it (yes, the United States had a rather well
developed imperialist--but not colonial--system).
Division of the "internal Other" from the "citizen" is
a venerable practice. (As a historian of 19th-Century
Britain and modern Africa, I can tell you that it's half
the reason for the problems that still exist on that
continent. "Enlightened" European policies--which
incidentally included prohibitions of gun ownership
by non-Europeans during the colonial period--are
largely to blame for the continuing bloodshed in
the supposedly "decolonized" world. The other
problem is tribalization, another European creation,
but that's outside the scope of this rant.)
It seems that every imperialist power becomes less
honest about domination than the one before--the
Spanish were pretty forthright, the Portuguese a
little less so, the French pretended to be "civilizing,"
creating Frenchmen from the colonized, and the British
often pretended to be preparing imperial subjects
for independence and maturity in the family of
nations. The United States just takes it one step
further, by saying that we're just aiding nebulous
concepts of democracy and free trade, but we do
enforce them selectively and strategically, just as
our imperial forebears.
> > A nation being invaded for nothing
> > more than profit, or to conduct "ethnic cleansing." Oh the irony,
> > when the US government should decide to send in Apache helicoptors,
> > to protect the Kosovans. Sending in a piece of military hardware
> > to protect a group of people from "ethnic cleansing," named after
> > a group of people "ethnically cleansed" by the owners' recent
> > ancestors!) Back to the story.....
>
> By your reasoning, no current government has any standing whatsoever to
> fight for the rights of oppressed peoples, I guess we should have let
> europe fall to Germany...
And which is NATO doing by sending forces into
Kosova ("Kosovo" is the Serbian pronunciation,
ironic that we use it)? I see neither profit, nor an
attempt to kill all the Serbians...the execution leaves
much to be desired, but it's the sort of thing the
world should have done in Rwanda and Burundi
(and did do in Liberia--but you don't hear much
about that, in part because it's going comparatively
well, and it's an African coalition of African states
that intervened).
Anyhow, my fiftieth of a buck there. Back to
my writing. :(
LFB.
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: New Web Page
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| Mr L F Braun wrote: <snipped> WELL SAID! The only thing you didn't reference was Hitler's confiscation of guns as the precursor to WW2. -- Lee Jorgensen, Programmer/Analyst - Bankoe Systems, Inc. mailto:jorgensen@bankoe.moc <-- reverse moc (...) (25 years ago, 14-May-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: New Web Page
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| I should probably stay out of this but... Note that I don't personally own a gun. (...) The availability of guns is a factor in the recent school tragedies, but most of the tragedies would probably still have happened in some way (though probably (...) (25 years ago, 13-May-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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