The "yes, we can ban guns" assholes. Like this one. Or this frightening moron, who is advocating for a totalitarian police state.
Not going to happen, folks. Not now, not in the far foreseeable future. There is nothing about a gun that isn't replicatable, these days, with a set of decent shop tools. Making ammunition requires some knowledge of basic chemistry. Look, for example, at the Sten gun, a weapon designed mainly of sheet metal. Get a steel or even heavy brass rod or bar stock, drill it out, and you've got the barrel. If you're not worried about using it much beyond room-clearing ranges (or you don't care), it doesn't even have to be rifled.
Beyond that, the sheer quantity of guns in private hands means that tens of millions wouldn't be turned in. Americans are not like the Brits or the Aussies, passing a law does not mean people will obey it. If that were so, we'd be using the metric system today.
Didn't Prohibition, as well as the Futile War on Drugs have taught us anything?
The cops, from CBP and DEA (motto: "What Stinking Constitution?") down to the local po-po can't keep drugs off the streets. Over four decades of being able to track guns back to their original sellers and purchasers haven't done much to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Using a gun in a violent crime is a Federal beef, but like a lot of other laws, that one rarely seems to be enforced.
But I digress.
Arguing for confiscation of all firearms will make it impossible for any negotiation. Why would the people on my side enter into discussions with someone whose bottom line is "we want it all"?
Then, how would it be possible? You'd need to change the Constitution. Which requires 3/4ths of the states to agree. If 13 states don't agree, an amendment is dead. You can probably name states that would never ratify such an amendment right off the top of your head. Even if you got over that hurdle, you'd have to send raiding parties into millions of homes and likely dig up millions of acres of land looking for stashed weaponry.
All that assumes, of course, that there would be no opposition to the confiscations. There would be. There would be on a multi-state level. And it takes no great leap of prognostication to foretell what would happen next.
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9 comments:
I'm a great fan of your blog and, even though I'm not a gun guy by ANY stretch of the imagination, I totally support individual gun ownership... within reason. I wrote an essay about this subject and what I think can be reasonably accomplished with clear thinking and no legitimate drama, would like to know what you think of my meanderings: http://gortnation.blogspot.com/2015/12/rules-of-road.html. Don't worry, I'm no wuss and can handle both subjective and objective criticism. I just think we're handling it all wrong, while the obvious (to me) answer is right there, looking at us cross-eyed, wondering why we aren't already doing it? Irrespective on anything, THANKS for your excellent observational humor and writing, makes me filled with happy happy joy joy!
Blogger ate my response on your blog. So here it is, in short:
Your analogy is not workable. Registering a motor vehicle is a privilege granted by the state. So is the legal permission to operate one.
Owning a firearm is a right. It is a right so basic that, when the Bill of Rights was proposed, there was some argument that "of course we have rights to own guns, what chowderhead would think otherwise?"
You don't have a right to drive, hence the state has the power to make you do things. You do have a right to own a gun, so the state has to show why you can't. And saying "you didn't do X or Y" is not enough.
You know I generally like you and cheer what you say — except when it comes to firearms. Regardless of what the Supreme Court ruled, the 2nd Amendment clearly begins with the words, "A well-regulated militia...."
Some lone jerk with an AR-15 and a 30-round clip of ammo is just a lot of innocent dead bodies waiting to happen. As they do. Every day.
Sorry, but if the founding fathers with their single-load ramrod rifles and two-ball pistols knew what was coming, they'd have shot themselves before writing the Second Amendment. I don't personally favor confiscating handguns and some long guns from law-abiding people with a need for one.
But we may have to take a "confiscated 'em all" position to force a compromise, because otherwise, even when proposals to prevent "No fly" listed potential terrorists from buying guns come along, the gun nuts manage to get it killed. Notice I said gun nuts. A willingness to see 30,000 or more Americans a year, including little kids in classrooms, killed by firearms is about as nuts as it gets. We don't need no stinking' jihad. We grow our own at home with the gun culture.
Yours very crankily,
The New York Crannk
@ Comrade Misfit: thanks for the response!!! The thing is... while the SCOTUS ruled that yes indeed, us bloodthirsty Amerikkans do indeed have a right to own a weapon, they also said that right is tempered by the government's ability to regulate them and issue laws pertaining to the use of those weapons. So there's that. Our real problem is that there is NO POLITICAL WILL to calmly make the changes we need to end the bloodshed while still maintaining the right to own, because The Armed Ones will go all berserker. My perspective is to try and avoid the nonsense of confiscation, which I agree will likely never happen, and anyone who thinks so is simply not paying attention to reality. Just because this 'right' is so enshrined in people's minds doesn't mean our modern laws cannot adjust to fulfill the needs of us all, the armed and the unarmed. We gotta live together, but it cannot be a one-sided deal where the guns exist without measure. It's a conundrum, to be sure. And once again, THANK YOU for being so bad-ass!!!
Look, owning a gun is a RIGHT. The same pesky Constitution that lists that RIGHT lists some others as well. One of those is that we will not have "Life Liberty or Property" taken without "Due Process of Law"
Using a "Terrorist Watch List" as a means to strip you of a Constitutional Right is not going to fly.First of all, if the people who have been placed on the list are SO dangerous that their rights are to be abridged for the "safety" of the public, why are they walking around free? Shouldn't they already be in jail? Second, there is no "due process" method that people are placed ON the list, and there is no method of due process to be removed from it. No un elected government functionary has the power to unilaterally strip you of your RIGHTs.
Finally why are all the proposed "Gun Safety Laws" ALWAYS aimed squarely at the law abiding gun owners that are NOT THE PROBLEM. There are somewhere around 100 MILLION gun owners in America today, with over 300 million guns. If we as a group were near as dangerous as we are portrayed, there would be no anti gunners left. There is not a "gun" problem, there is a crime problem. Go after the criminals, stop trying to turn the rest of us into them.
Last thing, how many of your fellow Americans are you willing to kill to achieve the "gun free" status? I don't want to be like Europe. My family left there prior to the revolution. No one, and I mean NO ONE has the right to prevent me from defending myself and my loved ones. And I see anyone trying to disarm me as my enemy, as only an enemy would want me to be defenseless.
the 2nd Amendment clearly begins with the words, "A well-regulated militia...."
But equally clearly, it affirms "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". The reference to the militia is a statement of the reason why the right exists. It isn't a subcategory of people to whom the right is limited.
"The right of the people" means the whole people in the Second Amendment, just as it does in the First and Fourth.
infidel..
Now go to the CFR and read what is the militia both organized and unorganized...
To copy>>> The reserve militia are part of the unorganized militia defined by the Militia Act of 1903 as consisting of every able-bodied man of at least 17 and under 45 years of age who is not a member of the National Guard or Naval Militia.
In short we are they.
The constitution has funny wording but its clear the aim is to regulate not "we the random people" but what the government can or cannot do.
Cherrypicking parts of sentences is not a complete thought or argument.
In the day "well regulated" meant well trained, skilled or in the case of a time piece correctly adjusted to keep good time. The founders were very good wordsmiths.
Eck!
EBM, you deserve kudos. Every week or so, I read some lament about how the Internet is fracturing the electorate, so that people in one fragment never even hear opinions from people in another.
The comment threads here show that there are still a few places where we talk to each other, and maybe the Web is fulfilling its promise.
Brava!
AGREED!!!! This is a very touchy subject, what with rights and guns and stuff, but something that can and must be discussed with clear eyes and a wee bit of snark for good measure. THAT is the reason I ping the EBM blog every single day: smart observation, cogent analysis, scathing opinion, snark to the moon, and STEAM ENGINES!!!! Thanks, Joe.
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