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Gun Sales Halted By FBI Computer Glitch
Anonymous Coward writes: "The Associated Press
reports that all gun sales in the U.S. have been stopped
[temporarily]. This because of a glitch in the FBI's computers. Hey -- why didn't we think of this before? What a way
to reduce crime and stop the bloodshed!" Perhaps one day the entire world will be as safe as Washington, D.C. and other officially disarmed zones.
Um, forgive my naivety, but - if a criminal sneaks up behind you and robs you at gunpoint - how is your concealed weapon going to help you then?
It won't, but the good chance that the next person who walks by also has a gun might do the trick.
Do a search for "The battle of Athens", you'll see that in the USA people have used the second amendment right to vote to protect the right to vote.
http://www.jpfo.org/athens.htm
http://www.constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm
Have a look for yourself.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
How safe would you feel knowing that your missiles won't stop a tiny bullet? How long would such an occupation last? Are you 'macho' enough to be a member of the occupation force?
An excellent point. The last time the US military went up against an armed population that wanted them to leave, the military lost.
Ultimatly, the problem was that the gun could be anywhere at any time. Tanks, missiles, and airpower are useless against that unless the goal is scorched earth.
It must be the gun control!
--
Python
Python
You are Canadian, and you haven't heard all this gun control BS before?
Dude...
*EVERY* Gun in Canada now has to be registered. There is also a yearly FEE for each gun to be registered.
The cops now have the right to bust in to your house WITHOUT A WARRANT solely on the smallest suspicion that you have UNREGISTERED weapons in the house.
And the project has gone hundreds of millions of dollars over budget already.
And you said it already. Criminals can get guns anyway.
I'm not an idiot, you are putting words into my mouth. I did not intend or imply that Joe Crackhead's weapon was concealed. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. As I said that the weapon could only be taken if a crime is commited. If its concealed, without a permit, thats a crime, hence the weapon would be taken.
The law in DC simply makes it easier to confiscate weapons. Less weapons = less crime.
Spyky
A bunch of idiots with guns are not going to be able to overthrow the army of the greatest super power in the world. Even if there are a million idiots. The idiots dont stand a chance against tanks, machine guns, planes, and other high-tech high-damage weapons of the military. So this reason seems absurd.
:)
The Romans at Cannae...
... The British at Isandhlwana...
... The French in Indochina...
... The Americans in Vietnam...
... The Russians in Afghanistan...
... and again in Chechnya...
I'll wait while you go look up the history required to realize that guerilla movements originating from an armed citizenry have this annoying habit of wrecking even the best-trained and equipped armies.
Sigh
Possession of an unregistered firearm is a crime. Possession of a concealed weapon without dispensation is a crime.. If you are pulled over for anything, the cops can and will gleefully take it from you and charge you if the weapon is discovered.
Why does DC have so much crime? I'm guessing people go slowly insane from the massive buildup of politicians..
.sig: Now legally binding!
I'm not sure about WalMart, but there is a interesting story about Meijer:
(WalMart + IGA (in midwest) = Meijer)
Someone bought a 22 cal. in Meijer and went out into the parking lot an committed suicide. The family members sued Meijer for selling a firearm to someone so 'distressed'. I'm not sure how the case ended, but as a result of this case, Meijer now only carries Blackpowder guns and Air (pellet & BB) guns. This is very unfortunate!
Perhaps the MP3 community (I was Napster banned for 1 remix of a Metallica song) should look to the firearms industry for knowledge. The firearms industry has been fighting stupid lawsuits for years.
Like MP3 companies, the firearms companies are being sued so that they accept the responsiblity of individuals who do stupid things with their products. I don't think trading MP3's is stupid, but I agree that an individual should be held responsible when using a product in an illegal manner.
If one conclusion can be made by looking at the firearm industry is that the MP3 companies are going to endure years of litigation until the recording industry can find someone else to blame or another way to make money.
--
In the state of Pennsylvania (and several others, but since this is where I live...) if you were issued a concealed weapons permit you didn't have to wait any amount of time or go through a background check before the instant check went into effect.
I have such a permit, they take a picture of you and the state police do a background check. I spent more time picking out a gun that in transferring ownership.
Waiting periods are a joke, for people like me who have at least 1 gun already the "cooling off" period arguement doesn't hold water. If I were to suddenly become unstable and decide to kill people I wouldn't need to go out any buy anything new.
Another proposal that I liked was the blaze orange driver's license. If you're ever convited of a crime that caused you to be prohibited from owning a firearm your driver's license would glow blaze orange when exposed to UV light. That proposal was killed because the bleeding hearts felt that it would be an unconstitutional violation of the rights of felons.
One last piece of trivia, the brady bill didn't contain any provisions which would have prevented James Brady from getting shot.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Chapter 16 of de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, a book analysing the state of American society, published in 1831, is entitled, "Causes which Mitigate the Tyranny of the Majority in the United States". The first cause is, "ABSENCE OF CENTRALIZED ADMINISTRATION. The national majority does not pretend to do everything--Is obliged to employ the town and county magistrates to execute its sovereign will." The passage is so excellent I'm tempted to reproduce more of it here, but you've got the link...
Anyway, I think that the present problem threatens more than gun rights, and out to be seen in context. A large Federal bureaucracy, IMHO, is unnecessary save to enforce laws which pass beyond the proper scope of the Federal Government. And in that connection, the threat to freedom is clear... the Brady Law, the CDA and the Clipper Chip initiative are all obviously beyond the Ennumerated Powers of the Federal Government, and ought not, IMO, to be seen as wholly seperate issues.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
My friend, you have been told a lie. The main reason why only 2% of that 250,000 has been prosecuted is that about ~90% of those people failed the brady check because either
1. Mistaken identity, many of them have a name identical to a felon. Initially denied, but later approved. How many Joe Smiths there are in California?
or
2. Unpaid parking tickets. A bench warrant for unpaid parking tickets is enough to flag you on a background check. Obviously not prime examples of citizenship, but not the "dangerous, violent criminials" that president clinton has made them out to be.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
More importantly, however, people who don't use guns will still find other ways of being violent. That kid might slash his wrists, ingest something toxic or jump off of a tall object; for every case of a person who shoots their spouse, there's another 10-20 cases where someone else chose to beat, stab or run over their spouse. The real problem is that a 12 year old kid is suicidal or that a 30-year marriage will end in homicide. If it's reached that point, people will find some way of being violent. Guns are popular because they're efficient but it's not as if there aren't a million other means available to someone who's decided to harm someone.
The real tragedy is that everyone spends so much time talking about inanimate objects while so attention is given to the actual problems that make people violent.
__
So the lion share of gun crime is being conducted by, and perpetrated against criminals. Hardly a terrible swath of violence aimed at innocents. Furthermore, millions of crimes are prevented every year by lawful gun owners in the USA.
--
Python
Python
No, gun dealers will not make sales because they're afraid that if they do, they'll get their doors kicked in by HK weilding BATF agents for a surprise inspection.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Yes, in canada guns do have to be registered. We operate differently than the US. Quite differently.
As for when the last time we hat a totalitarian government to defend ourselves against... that's not the point at all. The point is, if we don't have the right to keep arms, then when we DO have a totalitarian government to defend against, we will be powerless to defend.
Remember, government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. When government crosses that line, and starts acting as a way to rule the people, the people have a right to stand up to it.
You're making coherent and cogent points. Even if the 'popular opinion' of moderation judges you wrong, your posts deserve to be counted. Moderation has sucked so badly lately that I regularly see good stuff at -1.
/. peers deserve to know what kind of person is behind the moniker. To do any differently would be dishonest. Shit, I even troll as myself!
/. posters as peers? Another sign I've been spending too much time here..
I think of it as a kind of 'this is who I am'. Your
Did I just refer to
.sig: Now legally binding!
The other tricks that have been used in anti-gun states and localities are:
1. Require the purchaser to have taken a gun safety course that is only offered by the state government. Then make sure that the gun safety courses are rarely scheduled and are made as inconvenient as possible.
2. Accept the paperwork from the purchaser and drop it in the nearest trash can. If the purchaser objects, tell her to fuck off and hire a lawyer if she doesn't like it. A variation on this theme is to always be "out of stock" on the necessary forms.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If you BUY a FUCKING car, then you at least have to FUCKING admit the possibility that you are going to run someone over.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
"Soap box, Ballot box, Ammunition box; use in that order."
.sig.
Indeed, the framers intended for the citizenry to be the last, best check against a tyrannical government. Their other writings reflect this fact irrefutably. There have been Supreme Court cases decided on the "original intent" of the framers of our Constitution.
These old, dead, slave-owning white guys knew what they were about. The fact that they were "angry white males" (you're damned right they were angry - they just won their independence from a tyranny), and "slave owners" (the social and economic thought of the day was that these things were necessary to the maintenance of a working farm - whether or not that is or was true is quite irrelevant) is simply a moot point.
The Constitution is not about "political correctness". There is no guarantee therein that you should be able to live your life without being offended by someone else's words. In fact, the First Amendment guarantees you and me and everyone else the RIGHT to speak our minds (but gives us no guarantee that anyone will listen).
It is unfortunate that the Second Amendment, which so clearly states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"", was not worded in such a way that it is clear even to those who would deprive us of that right (first) today. Had I the ability to travel back in time, I would have pushed for clarification of that clause.
It is more unfortunate, however, that people in modern America have chosen, blindly, to give away their rights and liberties to obtain a measure of temporary safety. Mr. Franklin has a wonderful quote to this effect, and my reply to him is in my
It is a fact that governments around the world have killed 170 million of their own citizens in the twentieth century. This spans from Germany to the USSR to Cambodia. Had the U.S. not been fortunate enough to have a string of major victories while island-hopping in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, how long do you think it would have taken for there to be an overwhelming outcry for our government to "solve the Japanese problem"? Those already interred would have been utterly defenseless, and those not yet confined may have at least had a chance to escape, certainly aided by right-minded Other-Than-Japanese American citizens.
America is not immune from a tyrannical government. Hitler was the duly-elected legal Chancellor of Germany, remember.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
Swiss law on war materials regulates "weapons capable of firing in bursts". Individual cantons have their own restrictions.
Many Swiss army reservists are authorized to keep their issued assault rifle at home. Such soldiers have completed their initial training, undergo (at least) annual training, and are subject to military discipline with regard to military weapons. When their term in the reserves expires, the weapons are turned in.
You can see for yourself the results of victim disarmament: crime goes up. Should that surprise anyone?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I support the right to keep and arm bears! Give them a sporting chance!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I had to laugh when I read this. Funny you should pick out an example which has cause to make many Libertarians much more angry than gun control. It was under FDR's threat of court-packing that the Supreme Court essentially decided to make the Commerce Clause so expansive that the 10th Amendment didn't overturn a single Federal law (including the Brady Act) for the next 60 years. Closing the banks (like just about every part of the New Deal) was unconstitutional, and a vicious blow against freedom. Besides, IMHO, that it didn't work.
FDR's administration can be summed up by quoting him: "I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation."
Suffice it to say, I'm not persuaded. :-) I would sooner we suspend all gun laws, while we give ourselves a chance to discuss the matter. But I appreciate the note of openness; tolerance for people with different views is hugely important. I'm all for calm dialogue.
It's called direct democracy, and there's no better form of government.
Again, I could scarcely disagree more. That the majority of people hold a view does not make it right. If a democracy chooses not to respect the rights of the minority, I don't think there are many worse forms of government. A constitutionally limited goverment for me, thank you.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
As much as I like to argue for the posession of guns.. we do seem much saner up here.
People *do* own guns, and even with our new gun registration laws.. many many people can still go out and buy guns.
And how often in Canada do people get shot in a holdup? Aside from the odd armored truck heist.. never..
Not necessarily; it's a natural right (IMHO), not a natural desire. The obvious difference is, a significant portion of Americans want to bear arms, which makes it an issue of liberty.
Switzerland is arguably the most democratic state on Earth, its laws being the clear expression, for the better or for the worse, of the will of the people
Quite true, from my understanding of their government. The US were founded by people who dreaded such a system... "Tyranny of the Majority" was the phrase of the time. And that, in a sense, is the source of the incessant argument: the sense of "I don't give a damn what most people want, I have rights!"
This conflict sits deep below many of America's hot-button issues: Libertarianism vs. Majoritarianism. So deep that most people aren't really cognizant of it. But, stuffing my opinion in a nutshell, that's why Americans don't simply do something about this, one way or the other.
But is it prudent to let people from way back in the XVIIIth century, be they the Founding Fathers of the nation, make decisions on such contemporary problems as modern criminality?
Unquestionably, no. But that's not how many of us see the matter. I, for instance, see the US Constitution as a far finer expression of my own views on government than anything with which we'd be likely to replace it.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I'm 26 and I've never, ever, seen a handgun in real life. In fact, that vast majority of Canadians can say the same..
Well, I'm 27 and I live (and grew up in) Vermont, which has among the most libertarian gun policy in the US. You don't even need to get a permit to carry a concealed handgun here. Our crime rates are quite low, although I do not have any statistics to cite.
As a membor of a minority which is not well represented in the police, and actively excluded from the military, I am not about to support handing those two forces a monopoly on gun ownership. If I am attacked on the street by a bigoted thug I would prefer to be able to defend myself rather then rely solely on a police force which may be hostle to me.
Furthermore, the phrase "The right of the people to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed" is pretty hard to misinterpret, and I think it is much more dangerous to go tinkering around with the Bill Of Rights then it is to have a few guns around.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Guns can and do shoot projectiles that can kill a person, but by and large they are not used for that purpose. Here's an example to help you understand. Picture a playground full of schoolchildren. A guy with a big ass four wheel drive plows through the fence and kills several children. People like you demand that all four wheel drives be outlawed. Now do you understand? Or do I have to use more capital letters?
By the way, the incident occurred in California, in the late nineteen eighties, and yes, for a short while, the politicians and brilliant people like you proposed outlawing four wheel drive vehicles similar to the model the wacko drove.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
On our long-overdue bloody geek overthrow of the corporatist, closed-source system! My chess club is still only half armed :-(
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
---
And when was the last time we had a totalitarian government we had to defend ourselves from in either Canada or the US?
---
It doesn't happen out of the blue. It happens in steps.
The USA and Canada are young - don't think it can't happen here.
And no, I'm not a right-wing gun nut or anything. I've read plenty of history on how complacency leads to bad things, though...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Anybody remember Red Dawn, one of the best cold war paranoia movies of all time?
As soon as the commies take over Patrick Swayze's home town, they look up the local gun registration records, and use them to track down all of the gun owners. They get a chuckle out of how easy it was, thanks to the U.S.'s own bureacracy. I don't know if it actually would be that easy, but it's food for thought.
MSK
It doesn't matter whether or not crime is up or down as a result. In the United States, gun control violates the highest law of the land and it is therefore wrong.
Funny you should say that. Go to the library and read the history of the revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto.
You might also try expanding your vocabulary to include words other than "fuck".
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The only time that the Supreme Court has ruled on the second amendment it was in US v. Miller. At issue was that one Mr. Miller was in possesion of a sawed off shotgun for which he had not paid the $200 tax and registration (this was in 1934) in violation of the National Firearms Act.
The Supreme court ruled that since a shotgun was not currently used in active duty by the US Military (incorrect) that the shotgun was not protected by the Constitution.
Most unfortunately Mr. Miller or his lawyer never showed up at the Supreme Court to defend the case. It was decided entirely upon the merit of the prosecutions arguments and the previous legal decisions.
What has the anti-gun people terrified is that the Supreme court clearly ruled that any weapon in current use by the military was protected by the Constitution for use and ownership by the common law abiding citizen. This includes pitols, rifles, and machine guns.
chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
... and the politicians know it. The relatively honest ones will even tell you so.
That's because it is essentially a training and research organization for all issues related to guns - starting with safety. It's the government-recognized regulatory organization for the shooting sports in the US. It trains the people who train the army and the police. Nearly every expert in technical issues related to guns is associated with it.
It got its start as a safety and training organization after the US got into a war and discovered that the draftees no longer knew enough about shooting to make decent (or safe) soldiers. It's focus was training - first safety, then accuracy. And it grew from there.
They are THE experts, and are jealous of that status. So they make a point of giving out information that is as correct as they can manage - to the point of NOT saying things that are very likely correct but not proven beyond controversy (much to the disgust of many of their members and EX members, who have founded other organizations to bring these points to light.)
Lobbying (through their separate ILA organization) is a relatively new thing for them. It started primarily in reaction to the anti-gun movement - which was getting to the point that they realized they were at risk of having nothing left to be experts about. And for a long time the lobbying arm was essentially lobbying for the country-club set, selling out many other sorts of gun-sport enthusiasts (such as the machinegun fans, the gun design hackers, and to some extent those who were mostly concerned with self-defense.) NRA-ILA is agruably STILL the most milksop of the pro-gun lobbying groups.
The anti-gun organizations, on the other hand, have quite a track record of publishing bogus numbers. Sometimes they have SOME basis in fact. Other times they seem made up from whole cloth.
Example: "X number of childeren killed by guns per day/year". Sometimes when the number is worked out against crime stats you find they're counting people up to age 25 as "children". This includes the members of teenage drug gangs, and most other murderers. (Murder is a young man's crime, and most murderers kill members of their own race, class, and age group.) Other times you wonder where the numbers come from, because they exceed the total number of gun deaths. For more reasonable definitions of "children" (like under-12) you'll have a hard time finding a year where the numbers get out of the low single-digits in states like California (with a high crime rate and pushing a fifth of the entire US population.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How am I "wrong" I simply, possibly rhetorically, asked 'how often do people get shot in a holdup', implying.. 'not very often'.
REALLY not very often. Like.. hardly ever..
The point of my post wasn't to dispute the validity of the study but to point out that these types of studies are inherently less valid because looking at a sample of data one way will give different conclusions then if one were to aproach the problem from a different way.
The other point that I was trying to make is that their is evidence against as well as for.
Suppose for an instant that the study was about access to information. Lets say the study said that access to information about computer networks was dangerous because when that type of information is known more people will try to circumvent it. You might question that type of study as well.
I question this type of study because of my personel experiance. I'm sure that many people have had different experiances then I have. It just worries me when otherwise rational people argue for restricting peoples rights.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
I must be a hick because I'm from Alberta, and lean toward the Canadian right wing (which is really the center). Its a good thing our left wing government implemented a gun registration system that allows for unwarranted search and siege based on _seizure_ of unregistered guns.
Oh, and thank you for showing your superiority over us with generalizations and mistruths.
Up to 50% of the legally registered guns in the US are not properly entered in the Federal database, due to incompetence, illegal procedures, and the outright destruction of thousands of legally submitted, but unprocessed records by BATF employees to 'reduce backlog'.
Under the current system, the NFRTR return "No record found" if a registration inquiry is made for one of these guns, which is considered proof of illegal possession, and grounds for prosecution. Dealers and private owners who submitted legal paperwork have gone to jail because the BATF denied knowledge of them.
In other words, any legal gun owner has a 50-50 chance of facing a costly legal case, and possible jail time, because the NFRTR records have been in shambles all along. This is confirmed by the 1995 Congressional of Thomas A. Busey, then Chief of the National Firearms Act Branch of the BATF (see below) "...when I first came in a year ago, our error rate was between 49 and 50 percent"
The BATF has stonewalled and denied for years, but have been forced to admit detail after painful detail (only to deny them all again the following year) A Google search for "Gary Schaible" (no quotes) will turn up dozens of documents and links to further information. (Special Agent Schaible was a BATF spokesman whose testimony to courts and Congress has been full of inaccuracies and outright purjury.)
Anyone who owns legal guns, or believes that registration can ever work should read "Institutional Perjury", an article by Col (ret.) James H. Jeffries, III USMC, Reserve (a retired DOJ lawyer, practicing firearms law in Greensboro, N.C) outlining some of the BATF abuses. (This includes the Busey quote above, but does not cover the famous "Gestapo tactics" incidents)
Reform from within hasn't worked either. Here's as affadavit by Eric Martin Larson of the GAO (Government Accounting Office) regarding systematic errors in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) and his efforts to have them corrected. This is just one of his many reports and letters to Congress, but after his initial failure, his later reports are painstaking line by line and word by word responses to BATF tetimony and documents, and are very diffficult to read without the originals in front of you
---------------------------------------------
"...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est."
[roughly: "...swords don't kill people; people kill people."]
-- (Lucius Annaeus) Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD),
_____________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
While do not doubt that guns are part of the problem in the US, there are many other factors. Social and economic differences, and racial relations being major concerns. There is no single problem that can differentiate the countries, but the mindset of the citizens must also be taken into account.
Many illicit drugs are harvested/produced overseas (ie. South America). Give me 2 hours and I could probably find some for you.
The United States does not exist in a vacuum, after all.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Oh, come off it.
I understand absolutely why there's this attachment to an armed population in the US. But I also understand that armies are different now and that it has consequences.
Go back 200 years and military technology wasn't that hot. Net result, you could get your hands on the materials necessary to equip a useful pricte army. Now? Forget it. The US military is awesomely powerful and is _not_ going to be held up by the level of arms available to the population if they decide to rise up against them.
The other side is that an armed population increases the amount of violent crime. Non-gun related, the UK has _higher_ crime than the US. But rates of gun violence and murder are _way_ lower.
If you think the perceived protection against the state is worth the huge cost to your society of gun violence, it's your country. Not mine. And your decision, as a US citizen, whether you consider that to be a balanced cost-benefit equation. But it isn't a price I'd pay were I in your shoes.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
It seems like an arbitrary figure arrived at purely so the media will repeat the alliterative Million Mom March, over and over again. After all, how do you count the number of people at a march... before you've had the march?
This propaganda technique was employed by both Hitler and the Soviet Union, it's called the big lie. (In other words, if you say the same big lie, over and over again, you get a significant percentage of the population believing it.)
Is there a neutral party doing the count?
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
A similar argument could be made against privacy. If you really ARE law-abiding, why do you need encryption? Why are you afraid of law enforcement officers routinely checking your home? What have you got to hide?
IMHO, your very first question shows a misunderstanding of the roots of American culture. In a free society, one need not justify one's actions, when they do not infringe directly on the rights of others. It is enough that a free man may want a gun.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
When the State of Maryland does background checks on gun purchases, the dealer is required to put the make, model and serial number of the firearm on the form before sending it to the State Police. Why do they need this information if they are only doing a background check?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
you quote George Mason saying that "all the people" were the militia. this is the same group of folks that began the constitution with "we the people..." at the time "we the people" were property owning white males. blacks were considered 3/5ths of a person - and only because southern states wanted to boost their population counts.
gay men and women are not allowed in the us military - so obviously if they're "out" then they can be stripped of their right to bear arms, yes? and women in the military aren't allowed in combat, so their right to guns is questionable.
blah, blah, blah.
thankfully i moved to ireland. not only are guns severely restricted, but even the police are (mostly) unarmed. friends and co-workers are astonished on a regular basis about school and office shootings in the states - i patiently explain that the gun nuts who have congress's ear are just that: nuts.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
The scary thing is that the movie was correct. Every time a gun is purchased from a licensed dealer, the purchaser fills out a form ("yellow sheet", ATF Form 4473) that lists the purchaser's name and address, the make, model, and serial number of the gun, and a list of questions about the purchaser's legal status (Are you a convicted felon? etc.). The dealer keeps the form as a permanent part of his records, subject to audit and inspection by the BATF. If the dealer goes out of business, all the records are transferred to the BATF. The BATF has stated that they would like to computerize their records with the eventual goal being to store all of the 4473 forms in a database. The current system is a result of the Gun Control Act of 1968. Letting the gun dealers keep control of the 4473 forms was not an accident, it was intentional. Congress didn't want the federal government to have instant access to this information. The current system allows the government to trace the ownership of a firearm recovered in a criminal investigation, but the FBI or BATF has to do some leg work to trace the firearm from the importer or manufacturer to the retail purchaser. They just can't punch the serial number into a computer terminal and get the name and address of the owner. It also prevents them from doing a database query on all firearms purchased by a given individual.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
So let's make a law for everything, right? That'll fix things.
People don't like being treated like infants.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
That's what I've heard as well. I believe he was being sarcastic.
I am also Canadian, and if I'm not mistaken, the crimerate in Canada is about 1/10 of that in the US. While I agree that gun control can help stop crime, this has little to do with the differece in gun related deaths between the countries. We also must remember that Canada has not had a strong gun control system, and the one currently being implemented is still not as effective as it could be. A better comparison might be to a European country with a strict policy such as Britain.
I can't believe this didn't dawn on me until just now....
If a significant part of the FBI's criminal ID database is down, it could affect a lot more than gun sales. I imagine a few criminal investigations are going to be held up pending results from the FBI.
If this is the case, shame on AP for turning it into yet another gun story. This could significantly affect law enforcement agencies across the entire country.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
A good reason for not registering guns, is to protect the people who have them in times of civil war. During times of civil war or civil unrest gun owners have the ability to protect themselves from totalitarian governments. They have the resources needed to fight for our freedom. Now, if the governments know who has all the guns, then they can just go out to all the gun owners and collect them.
Doing a background check before selling a gun seems like a good idea to me. Wouldn't want to be handing guns to known criminals. (although I'm sure criminals could get guns anyway) With the FBI doing a background check on every gun purchase, then guns don't need to be registered to know where they are. The FBI will have massive lists of everyone who has ever bought a gun. If the government ever wants to, they can march around and take those guns away with little or no resistance.
The right to bare arms is all about protecting yourself from the government. I don't see how you can do this if the government knows how well you are armed.
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
...only the outlaws have guns.
Sure, the phrase is trite, but it's damned true. No municipal ban on handguns has ever stopped Joe Crackhead down the street from packing heat, and no law ever will. Laws banning firearms in a pre-armed society like the United States simply mean that only the segments of the society that we can least trust with them will have them. Law-abiding citizens then are unable to protect themselves, and law and order proceeds to break down.
Criminals need to be disarmed, not law-abiding private citizens. Existing laws, if enforced, would take care of the first part; most gun-control measures under consideration would affect part 2 with very little effect on part 1.
I have read the posts, it just echoes how deeply entrenched the gun culture in America is. If you really ARE law-abiding, why do you need a gun? To protect myself, I hear you say? Why? Because everyone *ELSE* is carrying one! Studies (don't ask me where, and I read it in a print newspaper, anyway), have shown that quite a few killings are caused by people getting very agitated, and finally snapping. And whaddya know? The gun they had for protection purposes is being used for the exact opposite purpose. The hunted becomes the hunter. This raises the crime statistics, people say OMFG, I need a gun to protect myself, end up using it in a situation which definitely isn't self-defence, and then you go to the first part of this paragraph. Isn't recursion a wonderful thing? And, personally, if I did need a gun for a legitimate reason (shooting game, etc is the only one I can think of, and that's really less-than-astonishing), I could wait for a few days. If you're going to go out shooting on the weekend, reschedule. It's not that hard. Just my $AU0.02 (which is likely to be about $US0.00000000003 at the moment). d
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I rather like cows.
The most fascinating part about US v Miller is that Miller did not show for the appearance. The trial was entirely one sided, with the US presenting all of their evidence, and none being presented for Miller.
Miller was a prohibition bootlegger and after he won the case against the state where the State Supreme Court declared that his shotgun was legal because of the second amendment, he went back into the boonies and disappered, never to be found again.
When the Government appealed to the Supreme Court Miller could not be found and his lawyer did not have the money or ability to defend the case at the Supreme Court, so the case went to the SupremeCourt with only the evidence of the State, and the previous decisions.
Unfortunately nobody with any military knowledge became involved in the procedings. The US discovered in World War I that sawed off shotguns were excellent trench warfare weapons and used them quite heavily.
ESR's gun nut page is a great place to start reading on the web.
Chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
But you did nothing to disarm his arguments, which were essentially verbatim descriptions of why we lost Vietnam and the British lost the US.
It doesn't matter how well-armed the occupying force (and by occupying force it might mean the standing army simply enforcing laws in its own country) is, it will ALWAYS lose to a civilian population with weapons.
It has nothing to do with "Amerika" or "Red Dawn", this is a simple principle understood since the ealiest military planners of 5000 BC in China and the middle east began writing about military science.
If soldiers (say, white and black americans) are really well armed but are trying to kill terrorists/revolutionaries that look exactly like civilians (because they are!) they will lose because they don't know if that's "Farmer Bob" or "Bob Who's Gonna Shoot Ya", and you can't be on alert 24 hours a day. Ask anyone stationed in Vietnam well behind the front lines how safe it was to be in a US military base in "well-controlled" territory (that is, when terrorists weren't suicide-bombing the place and prostitutes weren't shredding penises with razor blades in their vaginas and restaurants weren't deliberately poisoning food, etc). it's hard to control a country if people really don't want you there, and killing them all (believe it or not!) is rarely an acceptable victory condition to a military...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
have a deep suspicion of the type of person who carrys a penknife
Must be terrifying to get out of bed in the morning!
What ever else you cannot deny that your average american gunowner has a tendancy towards trigger happiness.
Well, sure you can. The vast, vast vast majority of legal gun owners in the US never shoot another human being in their life.
It's the same misconception people have about police in the US -- it's generally thought that they must shoot criminals every few weeks or so. But the truth is the vast majority of police never even draw their gun in defense, and a statistally small portion of that number ever fire a single bullet at a criminal in their entire career. That's why (unfortunately) so many screw-ups occur with cops shooting -- it's so rare to pull a gun no matter how much you train for that moment. It just happens very rarely.
So no, the average american noncriminal gunowner (whether civilian or police) is certainly not trigger-happy in any way.
It's those criminals who do like to shoot a lot more frequently that tend to throw the statistics for the overall population...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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I will continue to assume that the target-practice is to make one a better shot, when the time comes to shoot a person.
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Is it a good deduction, then, that someone who pitches in a softball team is simply improving his/her ability to throw grenades at people?
Or one who plays Quake is learning to take potshots at intruding marauders?
Or one who buys a nice fast car so that they may outrun the police on a given day?
Or one who is involved in track & field is learning to chuck spears at innocent people and leap over their bloody corpses?
Sounds like one hell of a slippery slope your on. I haven't fired a gun in years, but most of the people I've known were either into sport shooting (cardboard targets, for fun) or kept a dust-laden gun around in the unlikely event that someone might break into their home and possibly try to kill them.
You can argue about the fun or lack thereof in sport shooting, or even the sanity of keeping a pistol around for personal protection. But it's a bit overboard to assume these people are just in it so they can shoot someone.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
(For the background, I'm European, so I don't much care about whether US citizens are allowed to bear guns. I'm glad we have strict gun control on our side of the Atlantic though, and it is an undeniable fact that we also have lower criminality rate (though the causal link can be questioned, I agree). This being said,)
Sorry, your arguments don't hold water. The division of society into "outlaws" and "law-abiding citizens", although intellectually seducing, is worthless. What about the disoriented twelve-year old how suddenly feels an urge to commit suicide, but first destroying every(thing|one) around him: in which category does he fall? What about the elderly man who, after having led a quiet and peaceful life, suddenly decides to suppress his wife?
Granted, gun control will do nothing to protect you against the "international terrorist" kind. However I don't think guns will be of much help there either. Against the "ordinary criminal" criminal kind I described above, it is quite efficient. Naturally, the dichotomy I am trying to assume here ("international terrorist" vs. "ordinary criminal") is just as dubious as the one you suggest ("outlaw" vs. "law-abiding citizen"), but the point is that the matter is not simple and clear-cut.
But you make a very valuable point: the United States is pre-armed. Which means that trying to introduce gun control is going to be mightily difficult.
I'm 26 and I've never, ever, seen a handgun in real life. In fact, that vast majority of Canadians can say the same.. you people have the sickest preoccupation with . I live in inner-city montreal, and I have never, ever felt unsafe walking home at 3:00am (which, in fact, is the time that our bars close and everyone stumbles home). you've got to give up this idea that guns==a higher standard of living.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
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They try to pass bills against guns so they you can fight against them and think you are rebelling against the system.
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Well said. Instead, we should post to Slashdot about how blind everyone is. Revolution through a web form. If only we could be the rebel that you are...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
In 1997, cars killed 102197 people. Guns killed 32436 people. (Sources: FARS, CDC) Cars are three times more lethal than guns. And guns were designed to kill things! That tells you something. It freaks me out that people can get all concerned about violence enough to start meddling with other people's lives, and yet think nothing of hurling their bodies at 85mph down the freeway. WAKE UP! CARS ARE MORE LIKELY TO KILL YOU THAN GUNS! -Nathan Whitehead
Societies with guns don't lower or raise crime compared to non-armed societies. The only real difference I've seen is that criminal violence is much more lethal in armed societies.
I'd rather be hit in the head with a skillet than a bullet.
The FBI explicitly noted that their proposals would shut down gun sales nationally if any one of the 8-15 "key" record systems did not return a response. This was a "feature", not a bug.
Ordinarily, any "hit" any of these computerized databases will refer your inquiry to a criminal records analyst (currently being hired and trained) and either slow your approval or trigger a formal delay (or denial). Only one condition will 'clear' a sale: All databases queried, all systems responding, no records found. The regulations are explicit: if any one system fails to respond, no retail sales will be 'cleared'.
The FBI determines which computer systems will be linked, and is encouraging various agencies to get the interface specs and consider participating. The official list includes at least:
- National Crime Information Center (NCIC, a compilation of networks and systems whose exact makeup is not readily available; includes wanted persons, missing persons, stolen property, stolen cars, stolen boats, fugitives, more. It reportedly can handle a million automated inquiries per day.)
- Interstate Identification Index (III, a linkage of individual states' records; one state police department reports it goes down almost daily)
- National Instant Check System Index (NICS)
- Department of Defense
- Immigration and Naturalization Service
- Veteran's Administration
- FBI State Records files
- State Department
Other computer-system operators that have been mentioned as part of the database network include: Internal Revenue Service; Drug Enforcement Agency; U.S. Border Patrol; U.S. Customs Dept.; a Protective Orders database (there have been vague references to such a thing, related to domestic violence laws, federal availability is unclear) and of course, not to forget, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms._____________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
So they've made their move. First, they "accidentally" halt gun sales. Then, soon, the U.N. Helicopters move in, and the Russian Army soldiers take over our places of business and worship. Registered gun owners are rounded up, and the American government is subsumed in the new world order. So much more efficient than creating crop failures with the U.N.'s weather machine.
But I also understand that armies are different now and that it has consequences.
It has consequences, but not many (from the standpoint of controlling a population).
Sun Tzu's texts on how to fight with pikemen a few tousand years ago are essentially identical to current military troop strategy. Flanks, thrusts, numerical ratios, projecting power, etc.
While you can take over territory with tanks faster than you could with horse cavalry, sooner or later human soldiers with guns have to control the population, otherwise you won't get the taxes or industrial output of the conquered territory.
Dropping an a-bomb is good to stop the production of enemy tanks but does little to provide you with taxes in the future.
Laser-guided bombs cannot control territory, they can only stop industrial output or destroy communications and logistics.
Chemical weapons are good against troops but have the nasty side-effect of killing the civilians and fauna, which isn't good for business.
The russians had technology grossly inferior to the germnans in WW2, and the French were much closer to the Germans. But france was occupied and Russia was not because the French fought tank to tank and lost, leaving plenty behind for the Germans to add to their inventory. The russians burned their own cities and factories to the ground and retreated before the Germans (the same as they had done to the French under napolean just as successfully). Though they also fought with tanks, the Germansd lost for the same reason Napolean did - there was nothing to conquer but bare land. No people to control, no industry to run. Just land, which isn't very useful.
And their soldiers died of cold and starvation because there were no farms to loot, no citizens to press into logistical support.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Well since Uzis have been illegal in the US for some time (and no automatic weapon is legal, period) there is nothing to stop this now save crossing your fingers.
Of course, if the guy standing BEHIND the guy with an Uzi had a gun, he might be able to shoot UZI guy before UZI man kills the rest of the patrons.
We seem to forget so quicly that many of the most famous gun-related crimes in the US have been *STOPPED* by a law-abiding citizen with a gun, minutes or hours before the police were able to deal with it...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Which is why places like Kosovo are so peaceful and safe for children, I suppose?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I'd rather be hit in the head with a skillet than a bullet
I'd rather be shot than stabbed. You're much more likely to survive a shooting...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
> However, nobody has ever been able to convincingly point out any 20th century conflict where the availability to guns has, or could possibly have made a positive difference.
Maybe you should read up your history books about a little country named Vietnam where a well armed citizenry did a fine job of fighting of an invasion by the US Military ( and the french and Australians before that). In all fairness the US Military was so hobbled by the US Government they were fighting a lost cause from the beginning.
> If you study the history of Nazi Germany, it is very chilling and makes you feel incredibly helpless.
If you study the history of Nazi Germany you will see that one the primary acts of the Third Reich was to disarm the citizenry in 1936 (or thereabouts). Hitler knew that an unarmed populace would find it much harder to resist the overtures of the state and dictatorship. Hence the group "Jews for the preservation of firearms" which remembers while they were unable to resist when the Government came to take them away.
If you are going to site the "facts" maybe you should check them first.
Chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
Most of DC is a ghetto, no laws can fix that. Hot-button gun/anti-gun people will harp endlessly about how its about guns and not about the real social and political issues that help maintain and create a ghetto.
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A bunch of idiots with guns are not going to be able to overthrow the army of the greatest super power in the world.
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Just a thought: consider that the 'greatest superpower in the world' is staffed by none other than the children, brothers, sisters, and friends of mainstream Americans. Do you really think that the entire military would rather shoot down their own families rather then defect?
Your assumption is that the military would stay as-is. In reality, you'll find that those tanks and fighter jets will be aiming elsewhere than where a tyrannical government intended. These people are humans after all...
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If it doesn't, then it is pointless. But it is my opinion that this is the point that should be argued, not the points of discussions mentioned above (which seem to be the ones most focus on).
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It's a tough thing to decide on. Traditionally, Americans have been very stubborn about our personal rights - even sacrificing a little safety for the sake of liberty. There are two philosophies on this: those who feel that the government should care for its people and tell them how to live their lives, and those who feel that liberty and freedom is worth losing a bit of security.
Want to take the 100% practical side? It's hard to say - as others have posted, crime-rates don't seem to correlate perfectly with gun ownership. Other factors are at play. Should people have 100% full reign? Probably not. People forfeit their rights when they endanger someone else. A line must be drawn, and it must be somewhere in between. I'd rather not go too far in either direction though...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Recently, the murder rate in DC has fallen considerably (or so the statistics say--but then again, considering how easy it is to lie with them...). Still, Washington DC has a reputation for being an incredibly unsafe city in which to live, as well as a city which is incredibly inhospitable to the Second Amendment.
The comment which was made was done in the spirit of sarcasm. A great many people, including the vehemently pro-gun control Mike Royko, have observed that the cities in the U.S. which have the most gun control also have the most crime.
The NRA would like you to believe that gun control leads to crime. Their logic is that with a disarmed citizenry, criminals can commit their depradations without fear of armed reprisal from their victims.
Other organizations, such as Handgun Control, Inc., offer the view that strict gun control laws are passed as a reaction to the lawlessness which widespread gun ownership brings.
I tend to side more with the NRA than with HCI on this issue.
Until the second amendment is repealed, gun control laws should not continue to be passed. There is a reason that we have a constitution, and it is to protect those rights that America's founders believed to be important.
Perhaps the drafters of the Consitution were wrong, perhaps the right to keep and bear arms is a foolish, dangerous right; this is an issue we could argue about all day. Most people, however, would agree that overall, the Bill of Rights, and more generally the Constitution, is a very good thing. If we start ignoring those sections that become inconvenient to us, then we set a highly dangerous precedent. What if habeas corpus is the next to go? Or free speech/freedom of the press?
Many of the same arguments against the second amendment (that firearms technology was completely different in revolutionary times) could equally well apply to the first (technologies to convey "speech" have also grown by leaps and bounds).
The Constitution was written to be amended. Before any more of this unconstitutional silliness continues, we must acknowledge what we are doing.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Hmm, I wonder if the Million Mom March might have launched a distributed denial of service attack on the FBI computers? Seems simple enough...just get a million mothers to download the client....
(nb, tounge firmly in cheek here)
The Second Amendment Sisters
Finding God in a Dog
On an unrelated issue, anyone know what's up with the DOS attacks on /.? Are they over with? Wired has had a few stories on it that I've covered on geekpress. (There's been lots of news about Slashdot lately, including a profile of Malda and Bates.)
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
YYou should not fear your government. You should fear the corporations, whose power is far greater than your government, and who lack the restraint both of morals and of public opinion.
This post is one I've wanted to make on /. for a while and will probably make again...
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding between US and non-US /.-ers, and this post is mainly to US readers so that you understand some of the puzzled and angry responses you get to posts expressing dislike of government and the restrictions it places on freedom.
As an Australian, speaking of my impression about 'ordinary' Australians (responses, additions and criticism welcome), it is not our government we fear. We fear corporations, and we fear the free market.
At the moment our economy is in a boom cycle (probably at the tail end, judging from our falling dollar), but never have people been less happy with the economy.
Discussion of the free market by non-economists revolves around the negative impact of globalisation on job security and by extension, on happiness and social cohesion. (Remember as a small economy we have less to gain than the US).
In this, we see our government as our protector. When large companies go bankrupt owing their workers large sums, the government steps in and guarantees them money (or they do when the prime Minister's brother was on the board... :) ). When Telstra - the major telecommunications company - announces 10000 jobs to be cut, the government promises that the impact will be minimal and rural workers won't be hit.
Our present government, which is conservative, has had to appear to back off some economic policies in order to exploit this view of market-and-corporations-as-ultimate-enemy.
This is a point of view many posts seem dismissive of, seeming to think it is trivial and silly, thus denying themselves a chance of engaging with and convincing their opponent. Perhaps it is trivial and silly. Perhaps it is not.
Don't dismiss it. Refute it if you think it is wrong. There are a lot of people who hold it in varying degrees and you are not going to be able to argue some of your points of view without accepting that. Just step back a couple of paces in your arguments and argue from there.
Sorry, bad luck. You've hit someone who's studied that period of history fairly extensively :)
France was defeated mostly as the command structure was a mess and society was rapidly falling apart. They had the numerical superiority but didn't have the will to do anything about it. Net result, German troops pushed through. Of course, that's an over simplification, but it gives you the idea.
The defeat in Russia is partly for the reasons you've said but not entirely. Yes, they _did_ practice scorched earth - though more by dismantling and rebuilding east of the Urals - but that wasn't the only thing that won them the war.
Leningrad and Moscow were held in siege for _ages_ and survived. No scorched earth was possible with either. How? Well, they resorted to tactics others wouldn't. Prison regiments, for example. Convicts were sent out as cannon fodder to probe enemy defences. If they returned without being fairly severely injured, they were sent straight back out or shot. Net result, they could get a good idea of German defences - and demoralise them - at little or no cost to their proper troops. You also had locals living in conditions that would have made most cities surrender.
Now, look at the numbers. They didn't use convicts as they were running out, they used them because they could. German commanders were reported on several occasions as saying that the Russian resources seemed practically inexhaustible. No matter how much of anything they took out - resources or men - they were replenished. Which the Germans couldn't do.
Then, the Germans weren't reallly equipped for the war that developed. The campaign started too late, while the winter was nasty. So, they were freezing. We're talking weather so cold that soup could freeze between your bowl and your mouth. They weren't used to this and didn't have the winter equipment so were basically sitting ducks. Cold like we can't imagine, with almost no working guns or vehicles. But the Russian troops were used to this and equipped accordingly . They were observed regularly lyingin ambush in the snow, simply waiting for the right time and knowing the Germans could do nothing.
Then, look at the supply lines. Most stuff had to use trains as the roads weren't good enough, but Russian railways used a different gague to German so they had to build the trainlines out behind them - which is slow and expensive. Then, they got so long that the trains literally had to be left behind. The only way they could make it all run at an acceptable speed was to dump the carriages at the railheads and return, or the time it took to unload them became a problem.
Now, look at the length of the frontier. Simply too long for the number of troops they had to handle it. I remember doing the maths way back and discovering that each company had to handle several miles by itself - a bad idea.
They had to stay behind their own lines, too. The Russians managed a very effective partisan campaign, taking out resources in land the Germans already held. This, predictably, creates a big drain.
Germany won its previous battles by Blitzkrieg - lightning war, literally. Send the tanks across fast, secure the frontiers. Very successful against a relatively small land mass such as Poland or northern France. But it was all they could do. Their armed forces had been established too fast in the 1930s to give them a broad spectrum of abilities, so they'd gone for a Blitzkrieg army. This meant, for example, that their tanks weren't actually that powerful - mostly just fast.
Now, apply this to Russia and it falls apart. You charge at them, they run back just as fast, safe in the knowledge that they can run back for a very long way and, the further in they go, the harder it gets for you to follow them. Also safe in the knowledge that, as a dictatorship, they can get away with things we couldn't have done as the population don't really matter. We have an army which was ill-equipped, insufficiently trained and overextended in the Russian campaign. That army, under that command and at that time, simply couldn't have won in Russia. Whatever your view of their relative technological states, they weren't good enough for that campaign, while the Russian forces were.
Now, look at the modern US. Sure, laser guided bombs and chemical weapons have their limitations - but they're very good at spreading fear. Tanks aren't ideal at population control but they do tend to scare off buses and trucks carrying troops as both drivers know who will win given half a chance.
I'm not saying that the US military could certainly win a civil war against a well organised nationwide private army. It'd inevitably become guerilla war, and Vietnam and Afghanistan have both shown the problems inherent there. But an armed population on the current model isn't really much of a defence, Sun Tzu or not.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Sorry, bad luck. You've hit someone who's studied that period of history fairly extensively :)
:)
Well, but you don't seem to be disagreeing with the conclusion so much as providing more details.
Yes, the logistical issues of invading Russia were difficult (made more so by the scorched earth policy of the russians that I talked about).
Yes, the climate played a huge part (just as it had for Napolean) but the Russians would have won even without that advantage.
It was, as you point out, the fact that the Russians are willing to do ANYTHING to win that has always made them so formidable in war. And that's what I'm talking about -- a populace with weapons (even broken glass bottles and suicide bombers or convicts) simply cannot be defeated by a more "professional" military force with superiour military technology.
Fear and terror areb effective weapons, as you point out. Laser-guided bombs and air superiority have the effect of making people realize things could blow up any time without warning, which is quite effective.
But V2s provided the same terror effect. And what we learned was that it doesn't demoralize the populace, it makes them willing to eat dog food and melt down their false teeth to make bullets. The probelm with employing terror and fear to control a populace is (again, as was pointed out years ago) that fear and hate are very close, and a population that hates you with all their being will kill you, even if it means grinding your tanks to a halt with their own bodies.
For most of history, the Chinese have been far superior technologically than other civilisations, winning every battle due to superior tactics, strategy and firepower.
That is, until they met the Mongols, the most low-tech fighting force on Earth. Although the Mongols made great use of horseback, the majority of their troops were on foot and used nothing more complicated than a club. Very much like the russians, these were people who simply would not stop fighting.
But an armed population on the current model isn't really much of a defence, Sun Tzu or not
WEll then that's what i don't understand -- it's not about technology. If you want to occupy land, you have to have physical human beings with guns or flamethrowers or something to hold it. Do you expect the native population to just mail you tax checks every month? Sooner or later it is the occupying soldiers living in the same city as those they occupy, which makes them very vulnerable, no matter how much technology they have.
We won the gulf war so clearly on because we did not have occupation as a goal. We simply drove in, flanked to the left of Kuwait and squeezed anything that moved to the north of the border. if we had tried to occupy Bagdhad then our soldiers would have had to walk the streets with rifles, just as they do in Kosovo.
Technology changes the process of war but not the fundamental issues of occupying land. Air power, mechanized infantry, gunpowder, the Phalanx, these are all great tools for fighting, but they don't do shit for profiting from what you've taken.
The lesson we HAVE to learn from Afghanistan, Vietnam, the American revolution, the French Revolution, WW2 France and germany, is that if the civilians do not support your military actions you simply will not succeed at occupation and control in the long term.
(Of course, we've also learned from many other places that if the civilians are ambivilent or cynical, pretty much anyone can take control and they won't lift a finger).
So to summarize: Don't ever start a land war in Asia, I don't care what technology you have, the civilian population will decide the winner. But feel free to take over any central or south American country, they don't much care who steals the taxes.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Is that it quickly becomes unreasonable.
Sarah Brady has said publically that the way to outlaw all guns - is to slowly work "small" laws in.
That's the problem - some of these proposals I don't have a problem with - even constitutionally - but what that means is NEXT year, they're used as the starting point for the next round.
Its kind of like somebody shows up, and demands your house and land - you say "No!" "OK, I'll just take this 1/2 of the land here". Next year, he demands all of the rest - and takes another chunk..
This isn't a "Compromise". Its just slow loss.
but what seemed to me to be a reasonable approach (via registration and licensing)
Historically - governments have been "reasonable" about proposing registration - and then at a later point, forgetting the reasonableness, and demanding that citizens (other than the rich and connected) turn in their guns.
I've got a severe problem with the fact that the FBI - _IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF THE BRADY LAW_ is currently keeping historical data on firearms purchases.
And the DoJ doesn't seem to be doing much about it. This is something _specifically_ denied to the federal government - and the FBI had admitted to doing it in interviews...
*That's* the problem with "reasonable" gun legislation - the lack of gurantees/enforcement of the other side as well.
A few years ago "assult" weapons were the focal point - outlaw them (never mind they're almost never used in crime), and that's the answer. Now they're talking trigger locks as the cure.... (uh, yeah, sure).
Many of the people against gun control seem to be hell-bent on portraying anyone supporting any kind of gun control as wanting to ban all weapons.
And many of the supporters of gun control refuse to believe many of their cohorts want to do exactly that.
Addison
Back in 1993 when the Brady Bill was being debated and voted on. We said that after the sunset clause took effect and the national background check was in place the federal government could stop ALL gun sales by taking the national database offline.
We were called kooks and gun nuts and that they didn't want to prohibit firearms ownership or sales, they just wanted background checks. The useful idiots just got in line to support the false promise of lower crime rates.
Now am I the only one that thinks that it's not an accident that this happens the same week-end as the "million mom march". One last point, there is a clause that allows FFL dealers to sell firearms when the system is offline, however most of them are small businessmen who are afraid of the BATF kicking in their doors for a surprise inspection if they do. That's another reason why no guns are being sold.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
We Europeans are fascinated by the US' ability to incessantly argue over the issue of gun control. We have strong gun control everywhere in Europe, together with lower criminality rates than in the US (though the correlation between the two is, admittedly, not entirely clear). Most importantly, I do not think there exists any (non entirely negligible) pressure group here demanding the right to bear arms. Surely if it were a "natural right" of some kind, there would be more protest, wouldn't there? (Or are European citizens so oppressed by their governments that they don't even recognize the need for their freedom any more?)
I wish some Swiss citizen would recall the laws on guns in vigor in the Helvetian federation: because Switzerland is arguably the most democratic state on Earth, its laws being the clear expression, for the better or for the worse, of the will of the people, and since besides Switzerland is usually quite different from the rest of Europe, it would be interesting to know that they have decided (I seem to remember hearing some strange rules about how gun sales to Swiss citizens and to foreigners were very different).
Anyway, when we read stories from the US about a disoriented teen-ager coming in school with a big gun and shooting everyone (or the innumerable variants on the same theme), we Europeans just shake our head and wonder, why don't the Americans do something about this?
There is the question of the considerable reverence for the American constitution, despite (or because of) its age (except for England, that has no written constitution, European fundamental laws are usually post-WW2). The fact that it has remained impressively modern is a sign of the universal value of human rights, assuredly; and our societies are borne of the spirit of Enlightenment (the French have similarly kept the 1789 declaration of rights of man in the book). But is it prudent to let people from way back in the XVIIIth century, be they the Founding Fathers of the nation, make decisions on such contemporary problems as modern criminality? I think the matter requires consideration.
One thing is certain: introducing gun control in a country like the US that already has guns all over the place is very, very delicate.
And claiming a computer problem is probably the worse way to do it.
Just my EUR0.02 (a little below USD0.02, sorry).
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Ceterum censeo carthaginem esse delendam.
Seemed to work fine, I passed the background check ofcourse and I'm getting it in 10 days. Anyway, I can't believe geeks buy this political nonsense people are dishing out these days.
Please protect the 2nd amendment. I can't believe people are actually rallying to 'infringe' upon it, as they say in the constitution. Without the 2nd, what happens to the 1st and 3rd and all the rest if the government doesn't deem those good.
Also, the only people gun legislation hurts are those that are law abiding citizens. Do you think criminals really care about gun laws? nope, but in a sense they do. Which state do you think a criminal would rather enact violent crimes... in a state where law abiding citizens can easily get guns or in a state where law abiding citizens have a hard time getting them and concealed carry permits? Yep you guessed it. If you're living in one of these states, then a gun that someone else owns may be protecting you! How is that possible? The state of Texas which has just brought back legal concealed carry has seen a decrease in violent crime by 6% while most other states have been ~4%. So while you may not want to have a gun, it's still in your benefit to let other law abiding respectful citizens have them. Remember, the only people who get concealed carry permits from the police are those who are upstanding citizens.
The million mom march has a web page and their propoganda that says whatever the 2nd amendment says it's 'irrelevant.' I'm really sorry how mislead they are. They've probably had sons or known other children of parents who have been killed by a gun before and they go and think that guns are bad. Well I'm sorry but inanimate objects can not possess these traits of 'evil.' Guns are tools. That's it. Concealed carry and the 2nd amendment will not end all crime as we know it, but I can say that you will be sorry some time in the future after you've so earnestly wanted to get rid of one of the people's most empowering rights of America.
Ofcourse you've also heard the phrase, 'take guns away from the people and only criminals will have them.' This is pretty true except they're forgetting that the government will also have them, whether or not there is a distinction between politicians and criminals is up for you to decide though ofcourse hehe. Anyhow, if the goverment decides maybe that it's in the 'best interest' of the U.S. and that 'national security' is at risk and they need to maybe search everyone's houses in the state or something like that, it would be a lot easier for them if they knew they were going in to people's houses and tearing them up and disrupting people's live if they knew that most people couldn't protect themselves huh? Well I'd rather the government, god forbid that they should ever decide to do such a thing, would think twice for their own safety before they did such a thing. The 2nd amendment is more about empowering the people so that the government can't bully them around, and I do not want to live in a country where people are 'subjects.'
Here in california it's getting pretty bad though.
rm -rf ~/.signature
The really great thing about the Constitution is that it doesn't matter what the intentions were. Intentions are not the law. The actual words are the law and that is all that matters.
I don't know about you, but I would rather take my chances through the courts and quirky political process than count on my neighbor "Jim" the gun owner to "shoot" those federals whey they get out of hand.
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Having just revolted from under a tyranical government, I personally believe...
You just revolted from under a tyrannical government? Cool!
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Which is NOT possible anyway - even with some Uzis a bunch of gun-nuts won't overthrown the US governement (be it corrupt or not : gun-nuts tend to be on the paranoid side).
I suppose it also was not possible for the citizenry opposed to the us/french in Vietnam to have done very well in opposing a technically superior foreign aggressor. Anyway, you really aren't going to make any impression whatsoever on someone like me who believes in the 2nd ammendment quite strongly and does not fall into the "Billy Bubba chewin tobacco Deliverance cast member" stereotype you hope to carry across with the term gun-nut.
And then again, I don't think the constitution was written with Uzi, tactical nukes, biological weapons and TNT in mind. The consitution doesn't say you should be allowed to buy SR-71 at Walmart.
Like any constitutional right there is to it protection a neccesary amount of common sense applied...DMCA Know your Customer and several other forms of state mandated idiocy also werent invented but the first ammendment still may (i hope) have some effectiveness against them.
for a first ammendment parallel="fire in a crowded theater" not being protected speech. Perhaps this shall sway you away from the fear-rhetoric you are obviously under the effect of, which may cause you to think that your neighbor has an Anthrax warhead equipped Missle aimed at your home;)
The weapon possession should be allowed BECAUSE it is necessary to the security of a free state. This is a reference to external threats (such as England) NOT a defense against a corrupt governement. The people who say so are just right-wingers obsessed with any governement intervention into their activies and other conspiracy nuts. This article talks about being able to turn citizens into a defense army against invasions, not about emptying a McDonalds with a M16. Also notice the words well regulated (which doesn't apply to individuals stockpiling AK-47 to prepare for the Y2K bug, or to David Koresh followers either). So far pro-gun failed to explain how they plan to "well regulate " their militia (since they hate so much any regulation).
I'm afraid all you pro-gun people only take the words the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed and try to erase the begining of the sentence (A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state) because you don't like it. If you have to use the 2nd amendment, then use it completely or don't use it.
You are wrong, they/I do.
At the time the United States had no regular army and relied upon local militias to organize themselves into fighting units. To this end in order that militias are not to require massive amounts of training to be effective with their weaponry in the defense of the FREE state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Also people used their weapons for self defense and hunting as they do now.
And for my defensive stab at your attack on my rights:
Im afraid all you anti-gun people will stumble all over yourselves to crush every contitutional right we have in the name of safety and the common good while in actuality you create a system of laws that punish and the law-abiding all for a kind and happy feeling that someone will always be there to protect you when/if anything bad happens.
If owning a gun is a basic right, and a broken computer at the FBI keeps anyone from fufilling that right. Then who's to say that they just couldn't shut if off anytime they feel like forbiding peoples access to guns?
You're blaming Giulani?? Have you compared the rate of such shootings under his administration with the rate of previous administrations, or are you just joining the Hillary For Senate Campaign of Lies?
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
However, if you want to organise a bit of civil disobedience, what you need are enough bodies on the street - armed or unarmed, it makes little difference. If the government concerned doesn't fold, weapons smuggling ain't that difficult.
Oh, it's just you that feels the need to defend yourself from the government in a bad mood? All an assault rifle is likely to do is make the cops more likely to kill you in the process of arresting you.
So, IMHO, anyone who believes that widespread posession of guns makes any difference to the potential for governmental tyranny, or prevents resistance of that tyranny, is kidding themselves.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Ya know, I wasn't go to post in this thread. That was until I saw this comment. Is this the same Europe that to this day has countries with governments that make a hobby of killing people? Is this the sanity by which America should live up to?
Let's just go about repeating that same old process of letting European countries with an un-armed citizenry let their governments once again go completely out of control. Eventually us nutty Americans with all our pro-gun folks will end up once again spilling blood because the folks across the Atlantic hate guns, but just love to get into armed conflicts.
I know I sure sound prejudiced. I am too. Nothing gets me going more than historically proven bad ideas being touted as the latest thinking. It's too bad the Jews weren't armed in Germany. They might have stood a fighting chance of at least getting out of there. As it is, history teaches us what truly motivates the kinds of gun control that Hitler and his bunch put in place.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I can just see the next big auction on E-Bay:
For Sale: Uploadable Virus
Federal Government won't pass that gun control legislation? Pass it yourself with this handy little program. A few clicks and guess what? The FBI computer no longer works and no one can buy a gun. So easy, an AOL user can do it!
Bidding Starts at: $42,000,000
The scary part is that someone really could try writing a program like that. We've got people who bomb buildings to get heard, I'm sure there are people who will bring down a computer.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
Gun control debates aren't something to be ashamed of. People often want to avoid speaking out in favor of the Second Amendment because they're worried they'll be portrayed as lunatics or right-wing extremists. This needs to change; we need to hear all viewpoints regarding this important isuse. America needs to have a dialogue -- a dialogue with itself, about gun control.
Remember the spirit of Chataqua? Why can't we have that now; a place for Americans with viewpoints from all around the spectrum of this debate to speak their mind and respectfully disagree with those from other walks of life. Extreme laws in either direction are not the answer; what we need is calm, rational debate, the kind that Socrates could respect. The only solution that will work is one every American agrees to. It's called direct democracy, and there's no better form of government.
Remember, if you find yourself wondering what to do about gun control, just ask yourself who your real friends are.
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.
Hey -- why didn't we think of this before? What a way to reduce crime and stop the bloodshed!
Well, that is an excellent idea. The Feds can also introduce a virus to shut down DNS servers. That way, no one will be able to download any speech condemning DMCA or showing the source of DeCSS. We can shut down the 1st Amendment without actually passing any laws! We could also 'accidently' have the IRS start doing 'innocent' tax audits of all defense attourneys. That way, they would be too busy to actually write motions to dismiss evidence obtained from illegal searches. We can shut down the 4th too! And we can...
You get my point.
I recognize that a number of people believe that the right to keep and bear arms is not simply unwise, but even morally reprehensible. But if we begin disregarding the Constitution for the public good, simply because 'Those Nasty Gun Companies Have Too Much Power!' They would use the NRA to prevent you from actually amending the constitution to correct this problem legally. But if we use that as an argument to subvert the Bill of Rights, then we open a whole can of worms.
People argue that a majority of people want gun control. They argue that to deny that majority what they want is undemocratic. I will use a counter example to show that the rule of the majority is not necessarily a good thing, when it comes to preserving life and liberty. In the 1950's, Joe McCarthy could conceivably gotten a majority of Americans to believe that it was necessary to jail anyone who espoused support for the Communist Party. Who now would argue that that would be blatantly unconsititutional?
Let's not use technology to take away a constitutionally protected right, no matter what we think about the right itself. If you dissagree, we have a method for amending the constitution. If you can't convince 2 thirds of the people that you are right enough to change it, then you probably aren't right enough to change it.
Now lets all go and arm bears!!
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
You may have a point against differences in gun control from place to place (criminals may move, within a certain radius of course, to places where gun control is greater). But I do not see a case against uniform gun control throughout the country / continent / planet(?).
As you point out, statistics can be made to say anything. Evidently criminality rates are much lower in Canada, which has gun control similar to that of Europe, than in the States, but I do not thing this is significant. I would be very prudent before giving any comparison of any sort, in fact.
When you state "Everyone doesn't have to own guns, but everyone should have the right to own guns", you should be careful: in essence, if some people are allowed to have guns, then everyone has to have one. This is a form of prisonner's dilemma (with defect = owning a gun, and cooperate = not owning a gun). It is a plain fact that people do not cooperate in prisonner's dilemmata unless they are forced to. (For more information about the prisonner's dilemma, read Metamagical Themas by Doug Hofstadter.)
One possible answer is that owning a gun is a "natural right" which should be upheld at all costs, no matter what the statistics say. I simply do not think it is so.
A republic -- as we know it in America -- is not the same as a democracy. But let's assume they are. So what? You still the responsibility, as a citizen, to keep yourself free. You have the responsibility to keep your family free. You have the responsibility to keep your family safe. No one else has these responsibilities. Only you do.
I think the other poster was trying to make the point that in a "modern" society we have nothing to fear. You even say we have nothing to fear. I am not sure how someone could think that. I don't know how someone can look at the various corrupt governments in the world, including the US, and say "I trust this goverment to protect my liberties. I trust that this government will never attempt to take away my liberties."
As to corporations, what power do they have over me? None at all. Like a government, they have only what power we give them or allow them to take. Except with corporations, this is even more the case. A bank only has power because I choose to do business with it. An OS maker in Redmond or Cupertino only has power because I use their software, willingly. I can choose to close my accounts and turn off my computers any time I want to, and their power over me disappears.
And you know, I am sick of replying to ACs. I am not going to do it anymore. This is the last time.
Sounds like a very intelligent book. Wish we had that here in Ireland since gun ownership is severely restricted (even most of the police don't have guns) and we have sooooo much violent crime.
Ahem.
I wonder if you're aware that even at the height of Troubles in the North, it was safer in Belfast then in most U.S. cities.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Go to [local city/county agency] and apply for a background check. They do the check and give you a certificate with your name, SSN, maybe even your photo (so other ID by you is not needed when you use the certificate later), or whatever on it that says you're a clean, upstanding citizen.
It's good for 48 hours or so. Show it to buy 1 or many guns. The seller verfies the cert and your ID (visually only, no logging of info). Or don't use the cert at all and let it expire.
This way, background checks get performed. But no one has to collect information from you to write down or relay to local agencies about how many and what type of guns you bought, if any.
This achieves the purpose of backgrounds checks, thus "stopping criminals" as much as the current system does, right? I'll say it again because this is what the left keeps harping. My plan as described above WILL DO THE BACKGROUND CHECKS AND STOP CRIMINALS FROM BUYING GUNS JUST AS MUCH AS THE CURRENT SYSTEM (which democrats support) DOES!
Will politicians on the left accept this? No. Background checks aren't what they really want. That's just a ruse to dupe the public into supporting the mandates. What they really want to know is exactly who owns what, right down to the serial number so that when the bans come later (like they have so many times before), they can show up at your door and demand [banned make/model of the day].
Did you really think only criminals were being targeted?
IANAL, but I do follow the Bill of Rights pretty closely and have performed a fair bit of scholarship on the issue. In the spirit of disclosure, let me say that I possess three firearms and I enjoy participating in the shooting sports.
The overall intent of the Second Amendment is clear: that the citizenry is meant to possess the right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and of the community. This view is fairly universally shared by everyone in the gun control debate, save for those few who claim it only protects sporting purposes. (I cannot grant any credibility to these claims; in all my scholarship on the Bill of Rights, I have never found any hint from any of the Founding Fathers which suggests that any portion of the Bill of Rights is meant to ensure continued sporting activity.)
The real interesting portion comes in how you interpret that original intent. The more militant members of the pro-Second Amendment community (such as the poster I'm originally responding to) claim that all gun control is illegal; the more militant members of the anti-Second Amendment community (such as Sarah Brady) maintain that guns are inherently regulable.
Neither opinion is, in the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, worth a bucket of steaming excrement.
The pro-2A crowd fails to notice US v Miller (I think that's the proper cite), where a man convicted of possessing a sawed-off shotgun appealed to the Supreme Court on grounds that it unlawfully violated his rights. The Supreme Court said that it was unable to see how the possession of a sawed-off weapon contributed to the "well-regulated militia" and therefore received no Second Amendment protection.
Sarah Brady and HCI take US v Miller as proof that all weapons are subject to regulation. This is incorrect; a reading of US v Miller indicates that only those weapons which serve no useful purpose to a well-regulated militia can be arbitrarily regulated. In a strict interpretation of the Court's decision, Miller is actually a vindication of the Second Amendment in that the Court comes very close to outright stating that weapons with military applications (such as fully automatic assault rifles, etc.) possess Second Amendment protection.
So. According to Miller, weapons are regulable if they possess no utility to a militia. It's not as clear a victory for the anti-2A crowd as they make it out to be, and it's not a defeat for the pro-2A crowd, either.
That's the most recent Supreme Court cite which addresses the original poster's "all gun control laws are unconstitutional" argument. Now to take the flip side:
The anti-2A crowd likes to forward the idea that the Second Amendment is a collective right; that is to say, that the use of "the people" refers to the State or Nation as a collective whole and not the people individually. This fails both legal and historical tests.
Legally, to interpret the Second Amendment's use of "the people" in a collective sense would force the Supreme Court to interpret every other instance of "the people" in the Constitution similarly. The Court has refused to do this on multiple occasions, and as recently as a few years ago has referred in passing to the Second Amendment as a right which belongs to individuals.
On the historical side, George Mason (I believe) famously stated "Who, then, is the militia? Now it is the whole of the people." That by itself is a fairly clear statement from the Founding Fathers; considering that no-one at the convention spoke after Mason to condemn that assertion, we may assume it enjoyed widespread popularity.
Moreover, national and state militias composed of citizen-soldiers were known to the Founding Fathers. They were referred to as either "elite corps" or "select corps", depending on which authority they were chartered under (ref: Tennessee Law Review. If the intent was to guarantee the national and state rights to assemble armies and National Guard units, the Amendment would have read "Well-regulated select and elite corps being necessary to the security of a free state..."
So the anti-2A argument that the Second Amendment only protects the Army and National Guard units is obviously, blatantly incorrect.
There is still a great deal of litigation going on in an attempt to clarify exactly what the Second Amendment means. For recent Court decisions, I'd suggest you look at Lopez v US, in which the Court found that Congress had overstepped its Constitutional authority by restricting the possession of firearms near schools. This wasn't a Second Amendment case, per se, but it was a clear indication from the Court that it thought Congress had significantly overstepped its mandate.
Also, check out Emerson v US, coming out of Texas, where the Lautenberg Amendment (which strips people of their Second Amendment rights if they have any misdemeanor domestic-abuse conviction or restraining order filed against them) was overturned. In Emerson, a Federal judge found that misdemeanor convictions and restraining orders were insufficient process of law to strip someone of rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
And who was the militia? All the people who had guns and were ready to use them to prevent the lawful gov't from exceeding in it's domain.
BTW, well-regulated then meant well-trained and well equipped. And without a standing army or police force, it was up to the militia to protect the community.
Now let's also remember the Bill of Rights is more properly understood as a list of limitations on government power. Check the preamble and the 9th and 10th amendments. So "shall not be infringed" is a pretty potent clause.
So I understand the 2nd to mean I should be able to keep and use all the good quality weapons I think are necessary to secure freedom, it's important for me to know how to use them well and be able to get them when I decide I need them, and most importantly:
No agent of the federal gov't should interfere with me with respect to the above.
A later amendment (the 13th I think) goes on to extend my privileges and immunities (rights and the freedom from having rights interfered with) to protection from the individual states. Some Southern states had to adopt the Bill of Rights in order to be re-instated into the Union after the War Between the States.
Oh, yeah, one more thing:
The consitution doesn't say you should be allowed to buy SR-71 at Walmart
This is a straw dog. When the 2nd amendment was adopted, individuals most certainly possessed the heavy weaponry of the day - cannon, grenades, rocket launchers, and of course, warships. Especially warships. Just who do you think Letters of Marque were issued to, anyway?
OOG!!!! My studly Open Source Caveman. Nobody can get my petrified like you. Oh how I miss you.
I'll always treasure the Open Source CD you gave me to hit my crazed fans over the head with.
Thinking of you OOG
Natalie
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.
Translates to,
The People have a right to bear arms, because the ability for form militias are nessesary in protecting a free state.
Think old english, its kinda backwards sometimes.
BTW you missed a comma between militia, and being nessessary (Well the guy before you did that is)
Laws against Automatic and Semiautomatic weapons in California didn't stop two criminals, armed to the teeth with illegal weapons, from robbing a bank and then going on a rampage in a suburban area near Los Angeles a few years ago.
Now since a few government computers go down, our right to buy a gun is totally lost for a few days? The second ammendment doesn't say "Right to Bear Arms ... when the FBI computers are up."
Criminals will get guns no matter what. The average gun owner is not a vicious criminal. A gun owner who is responsible and trained with their firearm should be allowed to own any type of gun they want. And we shouldn't be inhibited by computer glitches at any time, no matter for how long.
I'm wondering what Eric S. Raymond has to say about this ordeal. ^_^
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
"A few million people will not make any difference: for moving and coordinating a million people you need a communication infrastructure that is hard to aquire and maintain: you will march with your SUVs on the Interstate highway? You will use cell phones? Geez: YOU NEED TO FEED A MILLION PEOPLE.
Too many macho guys..."
The notion that an armed populace is useless against a modern army, and only useful as an army itself misses the point.
Remember that the armed citizens are interspersed thoughout all segments of society and the country. Meanwhile, those who would suppress the rights of the people have to live somewhere too. They have to live among the armed citizenry.
Consider this scenario: you are a member of a powerful, modern occupation force suppressing self-government in a foreign country. Now, consider that there is one private gun somewhere for every resident of the country.
How safe would you feel knowing that your missiles won't stop a tiny bullet? How long would such an occupation last? Are you 'macho' enough to be a member of the occupation force?
Geeky modern art T-shirts
When was the last time you saw someone going door to door, turning each knob to see if it was unlocked? Doesn't happen to much; you might say that for 99% of your life, it is not useful to lock your door, and is actually detrimental: Maybe you'll lose your keys and be locked out. Maybe your friend will have left something at your place and will have to wait for you to get back instead of just opening the door.
Do you (or your parents if you're young) have life insurance? When was the last time you died? While life insurance may be useful at some point in one's life, it is in fact detrimental the rest of the time, as you must pay for it.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
My street cornier homie wasn't complaining about any problems while he was selling me two shotguns and an Uzi. Maybe he did a background check on me during my previous purchases out of his fine storefront in the back of a van. He would surly be offended were we to suggest that he was not following the regulations quite thoroughly...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Life is but a mist upon the horizon.
http://www.warroom.com/ausguncontrol.htm
Check out that link to see what disarming the honest citizens has done. Did you really think the criminals who break laws will turn in their guns? Armed robberies are up 44%. Numbers don't lie.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Under Iowa law (interesting fact--yes, I am a citizen of Iowa and yes, this law is still on the books), as an armed citizen of fit body and legal voting age, I am a member of the armed citizen militia.
The last time I had to use a gun to preserve the security of my free state was August, 1998. Someone was being beaten to death by a teenager with a tire iron. I called 911 and grabbed a shotgun. The perp decided that my 12-gauge beat his tire iron both in damage and in range, and he made the intelligent, rational decision.
No shots were fired, and for that I will always be deeply thankful. Most frightening experience of my life, let me tell you. Afterwards I had the shakes and vomited myself into the dry heaves.
Despite the fairly shocking title, it's a fascinating book. In fact, the real conclusion is that guns seem to reduce *violent* crime - but that non-violent crime may even increase in areas where more people are armed, presumably because people who are desparate for cash have to think of *something*.
I recommend the book, even if you plan to debunk the politically-incorrect conclusion; it's well researched, and has one of the broader ranges of statistics ever collected.
The author is John Lott, and he's written also about the ways in which pro-gun-control people have tried to discredit him. A fascinating study in propaganda.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Brit here, for what it's worth.
I understand the reasons why some Americans are so attached to guns, but I can't say I agree.
You'd be hard pushed to find a country with tighter gun control than the UK. Handguns of any form are basically illegal. So, what does this mean? Well, clearly less guns are going to be in circulation and, by definition only the criminals have them, outside military and law enforcement - who, incidentally, aren't routinely armed simply as they don't have to be.
This also means that it's a lot harder for the criminals to get the guns. If they can't get them legally then we're talking about smuggled weapons so it's a lot harder. You have to _really_ want a gun and know who to ask as you just can't get them from an ordinary shop.
Even if the population wants it - which is far from certain - disarming the USA will be a huge challenge due to the massive pre-existing arsenal. But I'd certainly consider it worthwhile and it's not as bad as that. Take away the guns of law-abiding private citizens and you take a lot away from minor criminals, too.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I was going to point out that DC's problems stem from a lot of things other than their gun regulations.
I would have pointed out that Virginia (which is just across the river, for those who aren't up on their geography) had soe of the loosest gun sales regulations in the country at the time DC was the murder capital.
I would have pointed out that while most of the shooting in DC take place in Southeast, most of the hospitals are in Northwest, where the politicians and journalists live (the salience of which point is proved by the fact that in the 80s Baltimore had an equivalent assaults-with-a-deadly-weapon rate to DC's, but a murder rate half of DC's).
I would also have pointed out that at the time DC was the murder capital, its police force also had one of the highest turnover rates in the country, thanks to the hiring policies instituted by the city's crackhead mayor.
I would have further pointed out that assault rates have been historically highest in the South, where gun ownership is highest.
But then I thought, what would be the point? The kneejerk response has already been moderated up to five, so my comments will just get buried.
Ah, well...
Don't rewrite history - at least in Vietnam vs US, the Vietnamese were armed by the russian. They didn't bought their guns and grenades at their local grocery store.
The NVA, yes. Which, speaking of re-writing history, you might want to check out a tad, before running your mouth. The Viet Cong, the "real" guerillas in the south were much more spottily armed, many times with less than AK-47's. They did a fair amount of damage - and massive amounts to morale - with Punji sticks (sharpened bamboo with the tips smeared with feces), and other technologial wonders. Mines were especially effective - and those are very easy to make.
'm sorry but I live in Europe, and all those crazy Americans so in love with their guns are gun-nuts to me. A gun sole purpose is to kill - plain and simple. You can't use it to repair your car or to cook. Professing the widespread availability of killing-devices is completely insane.
Europe.. Europe. Oh, right, that's the place where my Grandfather went to save your non-gun-owning asses from those gun-toting Germans, right? Are you from the half who's ass we kicked or the half who's ass we saved?
You're missing the entire point of the Second Amendment. Its to keep the government in line. (not invoking Godwin, as I'm not calling anyone a Nazi) - That's why Hitler's first acts were to disarm (especially Jews) the citizenry.
Unlike Europe, we don't put our leaders on a god platform. Most of us anyway. We got our freedom not via royal decree, but by fighting for it, against an opressive, tyrannical government. (Actually, we're taxed more now than then, and the government has far more restrictions).
Well now they do - so the situation CHANGED. And the 2nd amendment is obsolete.
Typical Eurotrash thinking. "I don't understand it, it must me worthless". It wasn't so worthless in 1914-15 and then AGAIN in the 40's, when England was running ads in papers over here, BEGGING for those guns for their defence.
So, its OK to ask/demand that we supply guns when its convient to you - but call us barbarians when you don't.
The right to bear arms was to achieve a goal - it is not a basic human right like free speech.
Again, you misunderstand. Go read some. The "Bill of Rights" is essentially what any _legitimate_ government cannot do. That was the point behind it. It can't censor, remove the ability to resist, imprison without trial... And if you remove those - then according to the thinkers of those who wrote and signed the Consititution - you no longer have a legitimate government.
Well I think hunting is nut too, I mean which mentally sane human could enjoy killing - even animals ?
Somebody damn well better - its impossible for EVERYBODY to be a vegetarian (especially with the animals unchecked)
Are you a vegetarian? If not. SOMEBODY had to kill your fish/chicken/beef/goat/lamb/whatever.
Oh, so if its a low paying job, that's OK? (Never let it be said that most Europeans are enlightened, class-free people)
Disclaimer: I hunt. If you weren't so insulting about something you know nothing about (and so incorrect as to the math behind it) - I'd be willing to explain why.
Again I live in Europe. I'm anti-gun like 99,9% if my fellow citizens. I've never been afraid of getting shot in the streets - the chances of me dying from a gunshot is so close to 0 it is negligeable. I bet you can't says as much...
Which twice now, we've had to wade our troops over there and fight for - and spend a shitload tax money - mine included - keeping armed troops over there so the USSR wouldn't decide that gee, those pesky European countries are making too good an escape haven.. or have things that we want.
Armed Troops. Gee, Golly. Us Crazy Americans.
They think we're barbarians, and we're STILL helping them.
As for the defense of our free stats, we have armies and nukes, and that's enough, thank you.
Oh, well, in that case, mind paying us for your defenses for the last 50 years? Or is that idea obsolete as well?
Addison
The converse happens.. I guess it's just the Freudian inferiority complex/human survival instinct kicking in, but several studies have shown that you are least likely to fire upon someone you think has a weapon. Even belief of the victim wielding a knife drops the incidence by over 70%!!
I will admit that all of the information I have on the matter came from rather pro-gun sources, but the studies were trustworthy and meaningful.
Yes, criminals will always have that 'edge'. They did before guns, they will after guns. But the one time the robber doesn't know Grandma has a derringer in her mu-mu is good enough for me!!!
.sig: Now legally binding!
A few posts from people outside the U.S. are wondering how gun sales work here.
The Brady Bill five day waiting period has apparently been replaced with a computer-based background check. Coincidentally, I bought my second firearm in 6 years last month and was a little surprised by the new procedure. I provided the store with quite a bit of personal info, including driver's license data and, IIRC, my social security number. They made a phone call, passed the information along, and had the result within a few minutes.
Please understand too that the United States is just that -- a collection of states. Each of these states has its own laws pertaining to firearms. Different states have different attitudes towards guns and there is no guarantee that what is legal in one state is legal in another.
I'm afraid the popular worldview of the United States leans towards a free-for-all Wild West where you can buy handguns out of vending machines. It's not like that. We all want to make sure that guns don't get into the wrong hands, there's just disagreement about whose hands are "wrong" and how we accomplish this. The aforementioned instant background check was actually championed by the NRA as an alternative to the five day waiting period (which had no background check at all).
Also, the same restrictions do not apply when guns are transferred from one person to another without dealer involvement. The Clinton administration considers this a loophole because it allows private individuals to buy and sell guns without much in the way of federal regulation. FWIW, my state has some strong laws against making firearms accessible to minors and known felons. I imagine most other states are similar.
The timing for this could not be worse. Given the weekend's planned demonstrations and the Clinton administration's professed desire to pass additional gun legislation, this will get a lot of media attention. I imagine a lot of people will have a hard time believing this is just a computer glitch. I tend to believe it, but I also remember that this same administration was caught "accidently" accessing secret FBI files on political opponents. Ask me in a week if I still believe it.
I'm not a lawyer and not nearly as up on firearms laws as I used to be, so corrections/clarifications would be most appreciated.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Luckily, this has all started to change, and the change is accelerating. DC, today, is a very nice city to live in, if you can put up with the torturous DMV. We're still recovering in some areas. Now if only Congress would recognize that we are taxpaying citizens of this country, and give us Federal Representation. For the Americans reading this: Did you know that residents of DC do not have a vote in congress, despite paying federal taxes? We have one non-voting delegate (currently Eleanor Holmes Norton). Remember in elementary school when they taught you that "Taxation without representation is tyranny"? Welcome to your nations capital.
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There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
I am from Europe. Maybe that is the reason why I don't really understand the American obsession with guns.
I asume that you then know that there is at least one country in Europe where gun ownership per capita is higher that the US; that being Switzerland. Perhaps you should ask the Swiss why they are so obsessed with guns.
guns are simply tools.
in the proper hands, they do good -- what they are designed to do -- coerce a person to your point of view ("No, I won't let you kill my family. In fact, I kill you before I let that happen.")
in the wrong hands, they are trouble. "I said, "Give me yo wallet, Muthuh Fuckuh". Or, as can be seen in Los Angeles, they make great evidence when the police plant them in and around a parollee's home.
Guns sometimes kill people. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. The question is not whether or not they should be legal -- only a person with a very poor understanding of the world around us would advocate outlawing handguns -- the real question is : "What steps can be taken to increase the percentage of "Good" outcomes vs. "Bad" outcomes?
Because when you start thinking in absolutes, you are using simple solutions to solve a complex problem. And we know where that path leads. Utter failure and grotesque unanticipated consequences.
Unfortunately, the only solution I can see is stiff sentences and long probation periods for handgun offenders. That's all the technology we have right now.
Maybe in the future we can make smart weapons. For example, everyone could have a subcutaneous chip in their neck that could be queried by the weapon. "Does this person have a propensity to crime? A history of violence? Is the target armed? Do they have a propensity to violence? What is the probability that I am being used to commit a crime? What is the probability that I am protecting a good person?" If the proper equations are triggered, the weapon fires.
But human rights and the global situation, not to mention the technology, would have to progress significantly before I'd let anyone put a chip in my neck.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
The problem being that it's difficult to find a study you can trust (almost all studies are paid for by one side or the other, c.f. Mindcraft). I've seen studies which "proved" that even relatively minor crimes have greatly increased chance of turning lethal in states which have concealed weapons laws.
I know what you mean.. I'm a gun owner, but I rarely believe what the NRA chooses to feed me, and I almost never believe the opposition. I honestly wish there were a non-profit 'third party' that would dare publish non-political studies.. There is far, far too much bull-shit out there on anything remotly political to believe either side.
The old west? Gah, what a total societal breakdown.. It's inevitible though.. If you remove consequences, you remove inhibition. The Spanish did it during the days of exploration, the English did it during the days of commercialization..
Let us not forget the first rule of Tech Support: Most people are stupid. I'd rather not be around a bunch of stupid people with lethal weapons (moreso). If it would thin out the [l]user contingent, I'd give everyone in Marketing a machine-pistol. If they're dumb enough to use it, they deserve to die!! Then again, I'd kind of miss pulling pranks on them, so prolly not..
I'll wait for it to become 'on-topic' before sharing my luser prank stories!!
.sig: Now legally binding!
In a nation governed by laws, who else is going to determine how the laws apply besides judges?
I also dispute your underlying assertion; namely, that judges have no background in firearms and/or military conduct. I know of one Federal judge, one small step below the Supreme Court, who served as an Army Ranger in the European Theater in World War Two and participated in the D-Day invasion. Another judge I know is a retired Navy SEAL from the Vietnam era.
Personally, I think either of those two would have almost ideal qualifications to judge which weapons are deserving of Second Amendment protections and which are not.
(Went white-water rafting with the SEAL in '91. You could tell he was a SEAL... he jumped out of the boat just before the waterfall, just for kicks.)
No, I'm not going to tell you who they are. They both operate in the 8th Circuit. If you're really interested, you can check the bios of all the Federal judges in the 8th Circuit and find out exactly which two I'm referring to.
I'll try as best as I can to answer your questions. Again, remember: IANAL.
.45, I had to present the county sheriff with a copy of my lease agreement (to prove I was a resident of the State and county from which the permit would be issued), my driver's license and passport, I had to be fingerprinted, I had to wait a month, and I was interrogated for half an hour by the Sheriff (he said he just wanted to make sure I could handle difficult social situations without losing my cool). After going through all that, my permit was issued to me--but at any time the Sheriff likes, he can revoke my permit to purchase.
:) I already answered your question in part. To summarize, it is extremely clear that the Second Amendment is not meant to preserve the right of the nation to create an FBI or Army, the States to create State Troopers and National Guard, or communities to create police forces.
:)
Registration of firearms in no way infringes anyone's ownership of a firearm as long as anyone could register a firearm.
The problem is that no other right enumerated in the Constitution requires registration in order for its exercise. The courts have ruled that it is forbidden to require registration to run a newspaper; it's forbidden to require registration to run a church; it's forbidden to require registration to keep the Army from quartering soldiers in your home.
To phrase things in Net terms, registration is an "opt-out" system. It's the Government saying "we're going to deny you this right, unless you specifically inform us that you intend to exercise it".
The Federal courts have historically been extremely harsh when the government has tried these things. If the courts let the government require registration for the exercise of the Second Amendment, then there is no lawful reason to prevent the government from requiring registration for the exercise of the First Amendment.
There are laws on the books requiring permits for large assemblies of crowds. These laws have been upheld only so long as they impose no significant inconvenience and they exercise no prior restraint. That is to say, the permits have to be issued extremely quickly, and the government is not permitted to deny permits to any organization. This is not the case with firearms registration. When I purchased my
That counts in my book as a significant inconvenience and an unlawful Government control over a Constitutionally-protected activity. It isn't at all in the same ballpark as permits for large assemblies.
There was a case recently in which the Court decided that the right to assembly didn't include the right to anonymously assemble (thus requiring large Klan gatherings to be hoodless), and I'm still trying to decide how I feel about that.
So what is meant by a well-regulated militia? It may refer to groups organized by states or communities and drilled for the common defense of the people.
If you'd read my previous post, you'd have noticed the references to "select and elite corps".
Exactly what the "well-regulated militia" means is still being hammered out in court. Check out Emerson v US, coming out of Texas.
Also, the Supreme Court has frequently curtailed "rights" given by the Constitution to "the people". Free speech, rights to a jury trial, rights of a defendant to confront their accusers, unfair seizures, etc.
Not in recent years. Lopez v US put significant restraints on Congress' power to pass law, for instance. Free speech has consistently been upheld by the Supreme Court; the right to a jury trial has never been abrogated, to the best of my knowledge; the right to cross-examine has been sacrosanct. The seizure provisions of the IRS and drug code may be morally repugnant, but I am unable to provide Supreme Court citations which affirm their Constitutionality. I strongly suspect that if they ever go to the Supreme Court, that the Supreme Court will strongly and viciously cut them down on Constitutional grounds. If I were the United States Solicitor General, I'd live in quaking fear of the grilling I'd get from Scalia or Thomas on those issues.
If you're going to rake the Court over the coals for being asleep at the switch, then you're going to have to provide me citations. On the whole they do extremely good work; the problem is that Congress churns out laws by the thousands and the Court can only give in-depth review to a few dozen cases per year.
Personally I'm of a mind that everyone should be armed and that we should bring back the dueling code. However, guns make dueling both too deadly (Often both parties die) and too easy. Therefore in addition to a gun for insuring that anyone getting out of hand is rapidly dealt with, we should also all carry whatever swords suit us, in case we get challenged to a duel. I think society would be a much more polite place.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?