Another day, another shooting in the US

[MintyTheCat]

"Still, says Harvey, this paints a disturbing portrait of gun violence in the US today.
"It's become such the norm," she says. "That's a sad state of affairs if someone kills three people and it's just not that big of a deal.""

"There have been more "mass shootings" than days of the year so far in 2015"

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34428946

[rancor]

I find it difficult to get as worked up as several of the non-citizens seem to be. I suppose it's because there is literally nothing you can do with the current technology to solve the problem. Maybe the closest thing would be better funding and support for mental health. I suppose another reason is that I'm from Texas (probably the gun capital of the US) and I've never known anyone that's been shot, or the victim / perpetrator of a gun crime. I know literally dozens of people that own guns (myself included), but when I hear about these things they may as well be happening in a foreign country. Is it tragic that these things happen? Of course - but human tragedy is inevitable. There are 300 million people in America now - of course bad shit is going to happen every now and again in a culture that is expressive rather than repressive (like the country I'm in now)... But that's another story.

[MintyTheCat]

I suppose it's because there is literally nothing you can do with the current technology to solve the problem.

That's correct. The matter is concerned with policy and law and is not influenced by technology.

I suppose another reason is that I'm from Texas (probably the gun capital of the US) and I've never known anyone that's been shot, or the victim / perpetrator of a gun crime.

You have been fortunate. The issue though is that this does take place at an alarming rate due to the US' policy on gun ownership in part and some other factors.

Is it tragic that these things happen? Of course - but human tragedy is inevitable.

There is a saying: "you make your own luck". I agree with this to some extent.
But in the US' case it could argued that you guys make your own tragedies.

There are 300 million people in America now - of course bad shit is going to happen every now and again in a culture that is expressive rather than repressive (like the country I'm in now)... But that's another story.

Yes, that is correct: crime will often occur.
The main issue though is the type of crime and the effects it has. The unwanton loss of innocent life for fickle and callous reasons.
For it to be happening on a daily basis highlights some underlying issues.

The UK has very little gun related killings in stark contrast to the US.
I will not go so far as to say the UK has it right but I can say that substantially fewer innocents lose their life due to guns and the gun ownership policies.

[rancor]

I suppose it's because there is literally nothing you can do with the current technology to solve the problem.

That's correct. The matter is concerned with policy and law and is not influenced by technology.

I was careful in using the word "technology" there because many are hoping for some magic system in which all guns are known, accounted for, and regulated. This will never work due to the sheer amount of unregistered firearms already out there. I am equally unconvinced that any laws passed will do anything significant. You say you want a law passed to regulate gun purchases? That's fine for the future legal purchases, but what about the 310 million + guns that are already out there? What about private, person-to-person sales? What about theft? Do you think making all guns illegal would work? The day that law passes I can tell you that I, along with millions of others will march down to the police station and report our guns as "stolen" after they've been wrapped in plastic, sealed in a drum and buried in the back yard.
I honestly don't think the solution to this problem has the word "gun" in it. Simply because there are too many, there are literally millions of people who will never follow any regulation passed, and finally because the country is just too big. Easier solutions would either be better awareness and care of metal health issues, or a complete cultural shift (i.e. people no longer kill other people ).

[MintyTheCat]

I suppose it's because there is literally nothing you can do with the current technology to solve the problem.

That's correct. The matter is concerned with policy and law and is not influenced by technology.

I was careful in using the word "technology" there because many are hoping for some magic system in which all guns are known, accounted for, and regulated.

Well, law and culture are a form of technology, rancor.
Typically this is down to over over-reliance on magic technology and quick fixes that this way of thinking arises. It will not, the only option you guys have is policy.
This does work and is has worked in the past. Look back to the opium problems the US and UK had and how it decimated China. they helped to reduce that problem by reducing the availability which is exactly what they did in the US to reduce the use of tobacco in the US too - they changed policy and over time society responds. The US has a substantially better standing as far as reducing tobacco use than most of Europe all due to policy and reducing availability through tax, placement, etc.

This will never work due to the sheer amount of unregistered firearms already out there.

Not immediately perhaps, no. All mechanical systems fail eventually and are usually the first to go.

I am equally unconvinced that any laws passed will do anything significant.

But reducing availability will have a marked improvement in limiting who can get their hands on them. Maybe that nut job on his way home has had a bad day and instead of ordering that assault-rifle on the way home and taking his frustrations on the next batch of innocents he would have to come up with another solution and that limits the effects.

You say you want a law passed to regulate gun purchases? That's fine for the future legal purchases, but what about the 310 million + guns that are already out there?

I feel the best option would be to ban purchase by all private citizens.

What about private, person-to-person sales?

Yes, that loop-hole needs to be closed which can be effected through law and policy.

What about theft?

Well for a start if you have less guns available in your society should theft occur at the very least it would entail that a stolen gun would quickly be noticed; at present it would be a needle in a haystack problem for police to determine which guns are legal and illegal due to the sheer volume.

Do you think making all guns illegal would work? The day that law passes I can tell you that I, along with millions of others will march down to the police station and report our guns as "stolen" after they've been wrapped in plastic, sealed in a drum and buried in the back yard.

I do think it would work. Let the services used to provide security do their job. Let the army, the fire brigade, the water authority and the police handle your nation's safety. That's what it is there for. If it is not working out and they are not doing their job ask why and sort it out.

It has worked for most other civilised nations and one day it will work for yours too.

I honestly don't think the solution to this problem has the word "gun" in it.

It is sad that you feel that way, rancor. Very sad.
I liken this to the alcoholic with the bottle in his hand, the opium addict with his pipe in hand and the gun lover with his gun in hand.

The problem with aggression and force is that it is not a long-term solution. Eventually something else will overthrow any position. You solve civil issues through civil channels otherwise you end up with strife as you guys have at present.
No one feels safe and trusts. You end up getting more guns out of fear for your own safety. This sounds far too much like the wild west to me.

Simply because there are too many, there are literally millions of people who will never follow any regulation passed, and finally because the country is just too big. Easier solutions would either be better awareness and care of metal health issues, or a complete cultural shift (i.e. people no longer kill other people ).

Yes, your culture is obsessed with guns. Quite odd really, the UK has been invaded many many times more than the US but try to find a gun per capita and you will find very few. What is it that we know that you guys don't?

Regs are regs: follow them and live, don't follow them and end up with some kind of penalty be that jail or a charge. Eventually people work it out for themselves once you have the policies in place.

I would say that China is substantially bigger that the US and they manage.

Mental health provision would be a circular-argument, rancor.

A cultural shift would be in order and it would not require people to simply cease to kill one another; removing the availability of guns is the first step, finding other ways to solve issues without aggression is the next and all this begins by comprehending that as a nation you have problems with guns.

My god, this sounds like some kind of Alcoholics-Anonymous step plan that I am describing to you here

As an aside: I get on pretty well with the Americans that I have met and worked with.
I have never been to the US myself and have only had friends and family go there for holidays and work.

I do not hate or dislike Americas just to be clear here. I just would wish that you could take this unnecessary violence out of your society.

[Xyga]

I was thinking US citizens are champions at killing themselves with their food habits and all sorts of other unhealthy products way more than with guns.
(The most people USA-made weapons kill live outside of the country I believe)
Not that I want to defend guns, but there are many other kinds of 'morally acceptable violence' that Muricans (also pretty much everyone on the planet anyway) are almost completely desensitized to, if not completely ignorant about.
I have to admit it's more difficult to bear watching a kid eating a bullet than a hamburger...

[DEL]

GaijinPunch wrote:

Where is Del to tell us it's a Zionist hoax?

I don't need to. You already know.
All I can add is that they will run more of these constantly until they get what they want.

[brokenhalo]

GaijinPunch wrote:

Where is Del to tell us it's a Zionist hoax?

I don't need to. You already know.
All I can add is that they will run more of these constantly until they get what they want.

I don't see how more mass shootings are going to have any effect, though. I think back to columbine and everyone went batshit crazy about that event. Even nowadays you say columbine and everybody says "yeah that was terrible." These more recent mass shootings maybe last a week on the news cycle and don't really have any impact on the general psyche anymore. It's just a blip and it's gone. So even i it were some kind of hoax (and I don't belive it is), it just seems to become more ineffective the more it happens.

[Strider77]

I don't need to. You already know.
All I can add is that they will run more of these constantly until they get what they want.

Okay.... I'll foolishly bite. Explain this to me?

[neorichieb1971]

Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people.

Don't regulate the guns, regulate the bullets. Let Americans have their guns in their display cases and let them remain ornaments.

[Xyga]

Yes, that or the ZORG ZF-1 with its 'replay' function.

[MintyTheCat]

Another two dead :

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34487997

[Skykid]

On the edge of this little American timber town, a few hundred [gun rights] protestors gathered to tell their president he was not welcome. Many were openly carrying handguns to hammer home their message.

The demonstrators blamed the massacre here last week on two things: a failure to treat mental health problems and the designation of Umpqua Community College as a gun-free zone.

Many of those we spoke to said they had travelled to Roseburg from elsewhere in Oregon to make their voices heard.
They had no shortage of complaints. Mr Obama wanted to take away their guns, they said. He was interfering in state business. He favoured "Muslim immigration".

Several signs said he should go home "to Kenya". One proclaimed "Christian Lives Matter", an apparent reference to the Black Lives Matter campaign against police brutality.

I didn't think stupidity could reach these heights.

[MintyTheCat]

On the edge of this little American timber town, a few hundred [gun rights] protestors gathered to tell their president he was not welcome. Many were openly carrying handguns to hammer home their message.

The demonstrators blamed the massacre here last week on two things: a failure to treat mental health problems and the designation of Umpqua Community College as a gun-free zone.

Many of those we spoke to said they had travelled to Roseburg from elsewhere in Oregon to make their voices heard.
They had no shortage of complaints. Mr Obama wanted to take away their guns, they said. He was interfering in state business. He favoured "Muslim immigration".

Several signs said he should go home "to Kenya". One proclaimed "Christian Lives Matter", an apparent reference to the Black Lives Matter campaign against police brutality.

I didn't think stupidity could reach these heights.

Generally they have less education than many of us in Europe as it is and that most likely will continue. Their student loan and debt situation is very bad. There's nothing like equality as far as education goes sadly.

Still, you cannot help but notice that the number one obvious factor is completely ignored: less guns means less people able to shoot people.

The idea of arming up your civilians is completely cowboys and indians.

Typical brawn over brains methodology.... It is like having naive teenagers without a clue making policy decisions.

Violence never solves violence but begets violence.

[BulletMagnet]

Generally they have less education than many of us in Europe as it is and that most likely will continue. Their student loan and debt situation is very bad. There's nothing like equality as far as education goes sadly.

As bad as college debt and the like is around here, I would honestly chalk up that level of ignorance to a deeper-seated cultural factor, namely a long-established aversion to being "too smart" - I don't know how it is in European schools, but pretty much the whole time I was a student (in a well-off, high-rated district, too) the kids at the top of the social ladder were almost invariably the ones with low grades and thick permanent records, and would even brag about how badly they'd done on a test or how barely they'd managed to fake their way to a passing grade. Years later, we wonder how the people in charge managed to get where they are.

Some time back I read a book which attempted to place anti-intellectualism into a historical context, though it wasn't the first to do so - I couldn't comment in depth on it at this point, but having been raised religious I can attest that one of the things most constantly drilled into my head was the idea that anything written negatively against the faith was to be avoided like the plague, that exposure to it would somehow corrupt your thinking. You hear much the same rhetoric on the secular side of things - those scientists/researchers/etc. are pawns of "the other side", they're just saying what they're paid to say, they're using fancy words and jumbled numbers to tempt you, to mess with what you already know in your heart to be right.

You can attend as many years of school as you want, but as long as that "philosophy" is what truly informs your thoughts and actions it's not going to matter. It's the same reason that so many of the most popular political candidates are the ones whose numbers, if they've even bothered to present any, make absolutely no sense; what they say sets off more knee-jerk pleasure receptors in your brain than the others, and if you attempt to deconstruct what they're actually saying you're just playing into the opposition's hands.

[Xyga]

Education -if effectively delivered and used- favors intelligence...yeah...but it doesn't prevent people from becoming stupid assholes.

[BryanM]

Are the latest shooters forever alone virgins like the Oregon guy was? It's hard to keep up.

but having been raised religious I can attest that one of the things most constantly drilled into my head was the idea that anything written negatively against the faith was to be avoided like the plague, that exposure to it would somehow corrupt your thinking.

You don't want to be so open-minded that your brain'll fall out.

... yeah it's a form of child abuse. You're drilling into an innocent little mind to accept things without evidence, and it just sets you up for a bad, bad life. Is it as bad as pretending that unweighted sit-ups do anything? Possibly.

As with most things there's a matter of degree. Those ACE schools Jeb supported were basically cult camps abusing children in more of a physical manner.

[ED-057]

On the edge of this little American timber town, a few hundred protestors gathered to tell their president he was not welcome. Many were openly carrying handguns to hammer home their message.

The demonstrators blamed the massacre here last week on two things: a failure to treat mental health problems and the designation of Umpqua Community College as a gun-free zone.

Many of those we spoke to said they had travelled to Roseburg from elsewhere in Oregon to make their voices heard.
They had no shortage of complaints. Mr Obama wanted to take away their guns, they said. He was interfering in state business. He favoured "Muslim immigration".

Several signs said he should go home "to Kenya". One proclaimed "Christian Lives Matter", an apparent reference to the Black Lives Matter campaign against police brutality.

I didn't think stupidity could reach these heights.

They're just repeating Fox news talking points. Have you ever watched Fox news? It contains a lot of BS deliberately spread to fuel the partisan flames, and make sure the people stay at each others' throats instead of noticing that the ruling class are steering toward an ice berg.

Then when this protest happens, the non-Fox media report on the most outlandish comments and signs that they found there, in order to fire up their own audience.

And the cycle continues. From now until the end of time.

Sadly, people are too susceptible to propaganda. The media themselves tacitly admit this when they equate campaign spending with "buying" votes from the electorate.

[Lord Satori]

This is why I don't watch the news. Youtube news bloopers is enough for me.

[neorichieb1971]

You can't educate the self educated.

From where I'm standing.. If another country invents something, America reinvents it and makes a bigger version. If a country invents a law that follows structured logic based on the time and place that it is needed, America will likely ignore it in favor of staying American. If someone outside America commits a crime against America there are successful extradition orders put in place. If an American commits a crime against another country and wants an extradition they get the bird. If a country invades another country Americans force sanctions. If America invades another country its because there are terrorists there.

I could go on and on. But with this bullying attitude Americans have got towards someone going against the grain, education is not the answer. I would have to say you would literally have to eliminate them. Americans are born into set ways, you cannot change who they are or whom they want to be.

If the real reason for these shootings is mental health. Then the average person in America is dropping a few points where mental health is concerned. When they all lose their minds the cowboys and indians scenario will play out. I mean, eventually its got to right?

[neorichieb1971]

This is the kind of education you get in America -

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/withou ... f-fr-33221

Although, I am not sure if that website is serious or not. I am guessing its not.

[trap15]

>the onion
>is not sure if it's serious

ok richie, you've just lost your opinion privileges.

[BryanM]

>the onion
>is not sure if it's serious

ok richie, you've just lost your opinion privileges.

Yep, the Onion is one of the few reliable outlets still doing real journalism. Not like those satire outfits like CNN.

Wolf B. >> "Alright, let's see what our twitter feed has to say about this!"

haha, they crack me up

[Skykid]

>the onion
>is not sure if it's serious

ok richie, you've just lost your opinion privileges.

I think this should have given it away:

If I lose my gun rights, I lose my right to self-defense against those who live closest to me, right here in my own home—my wife and three children.

Funny article, gave me a chuckle.

You can't educate the self educated.

From where I'm standing.. If another country invents something, America reinvents it and makes a bigger version. If a country invents a law that follows structured logic based on the time and place that it is needed, America will likely ignore it in favor of staying American. If someone outside America commits a crime against America there are successful extradition orders put in place. If an American commits a crime against another country and wants an extradition they get the bird. If a country invades another country Americans force sanctions. If America invades another country its because there are terrorists there.

I could go on and on. But with this bullying attitude Americans have got towards someone going against the grain, education is not the answer. I would have to say you would literally have to eliminate them. Americans are born into set ways, you cannot change who they are or whom they want to be.

If the real reason for these shootings is mental health. Then the average person in America is dropping a few points where mental health is concerned. When they all lose their minds the cowboys and indians scenario will play out. I mean, eventually its got to right?

This is really heavy-handed, you're looking at America as if it were only a tabloid headline.

Not all Americans are a product of their government, and they're certainly not uneducated. The pertinent news stories that fuel these threads identify society's idiots and/or mentally unwell - arguably byproducts of ultra-capitalism - but that doesn't mean the entire populace is ignorant of pressing issues.

[BryanM]

They were also the first newspaper to report on the Iraq war and financial crisis.

They had a nice bookend to that hard-hitting report.

[MintyTheCat]

Richie, you cannot condemn an entire population and label them one thing or another.

Look back not too far into the past and pretty much all the issues you raised with the US the British empire committed. It does not mean that the man on the Street in the UK or the US is evil, uneducated or an all round nasty piece of work.

There is a great deal of inequality in the US, we agree on this but please spend some time meeting real Americans. Most are pretty positive people. Most are hard working and civil. Humour varies a bit but I tend to laugh the most with the people from the north east as they seem to understand irony more than in the south - no offence to the southerns here and it is the same in Germany.

I have worked with, met and done sport with Americans. No problems at all.

You know many Brits were against the UK invading Iraq with the US years back and people demonstrated as such as no one wanted a protracted conflict but our governments decided to go ahead any way. You cannot blame the individual citizens for what the governments do, please be reasonable.

I raised the issue of high student loans and debt over in the US as it is a real problem and it is not tied to earnings like in the UK and the debt is not written off after a duration. The interest starts whilst the student is still in education - which is very different to what the UK has.

Also, the US does not have free higher education which is the same as the UK. Many countries in Europe offer this so of course plenty more people who can get into higher education will be able to do so.

It is worth noting too that education and intelligence are not the same thing. You can speak several languages and be completely stupid which I have witnessed several times even at Cambridge. Money is a greater predictor of education in many parts of the world but intelligence is universal.

[neorichieb1971]

I am related to Americans through my son who is also American. All very nice people indeed. I am friends with an American Lawyer and he is the most awesome friend ever. But...

There are very few issues the USA brings up that anyone gives a crap about. But gunning people down in broad daylight highlights a very big problem. I'm of the opinion that the US public went to sleep on this one. As the people without guns don't want to fight those with guns on principles of gun ownership.

Was I being a bit heavy handed putting all Americans in the same patriotic basket? Perhaps. But until diversity has a chance in the American world I don't see America being able to deal with issues.

[GaijinPunch]

There are very few issues the USA brings up that anyone gives a crap about. But gunning people down in broad daylight highlights a very big problem. I'm of the opinion that the US public went to sleep on this one. As the people without guns don't want to fight those with guns on principles of gun ownership.

The gun nuts are just that... nuts. I always tell my gun-toting friends to always vote to decriminalize drugs (all of them) when it comes up on the ballot, b/c it is the exact same argument. Actually, it's a more sound argument. Drugs are far safer than guns and usually only kill the person using them (if that). You should see the looks I get... like I'm the devil reincarnate.

[BryanM]

The gun nuts are just that... nuts. I always tell my gun-toting friends to always vote to decriminalize drugs (all of them) when it comes up on the ballot, b/c it is the exact same argument. Actually, it's a more sound argument. Drugs are far safer than guns and usually only kill the person using them (if that). You should see the looks I get... like I'm the devil reincarnate.

But James you don't understand. Things I like are good. Things other people like are evil.

[Ed Oscuro]

Another Presidential debate, another opportunity to come back to the argument
edit: https://twitter.com/bobvulfov/status/654104329511526400

Despite everything we've been hearing about how Bernie doesn't care about gun violence, he did tout a NRA "D-" voting record and commit to some common-sense legislation. (Come to think of it, during the debate he also became the first candidate of the '16 cycle to commit to decriminalizing marijuana). He also used the phrase "assault weapons," which is sure to have some folks seeing red. In step with one of the recurring minor themes of the night's debate, he also mentioned that any reforms would be helped along through the consensus-finding process. I am not sure that you really ever could bring the most paranoid anti-government people into the discussion, but it is interesting to note that drawing shut loopholes in background checks seemed to get unanimous consent from the candidates, unless Jim Webb or That Guy To The Far Left of Hilary didn't agree.

GaijinPunch makes one of the points I have been mulling for a while - not the background issue of who writes the laws for whose benefits, which always concerns me, but rather of whether the so-called Second Amendment fans actually believe in what they're saying enough to follow it through to a conclusion. For a long while there's been a school of thought (more this - edit 10/16 to fix the link - or this, not so much this) that holds that you split up the opinions of nations by people who believe in authoritarian policies vs. those who are literally less violent (i.e., they don't spank their kids). You certainly will find some people who are committed Libertarians who hold the same position all the time, but a lot of people must buy a gun because they think something like "the police aren't punishing these punks enough, so I gotta do it myself." Mall ninjas and "ex-BUD/S trainees," need I say more? Many of these people have a more authoritarian worldview, which holds punishment and the use of violence as an important public aim to maintain order. Not surprisingly, many of these people seem more likely to approve of the execution of criminals, or the shooting of the same, even in cases that many of the rest of us might not see as being clear-cut self-defense. Of course, they aren't libertarians (unless they use libertarianism as a fig leaf).

This is, of course, the entirely wrong way to go about things. Having a firearm in your possession only should be there for various purposes - training yourself, hunting, or real self-defense. In the words of foreign policy:

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

That's John Adams speaking about the role of the United States in the world, but you can and probably should say the same thing about somebody with a firearm at home or exercising concealed carry at the 7-11. There is a difference between protecting yourself, and going out looking for trouble. George Zimmerman got pretty unanimous support from online firearms communities, not just in the murder charges which I think he was rightly acquitted of as the law stands, but many even rejected that We The People had any interest in finding out the truth about whether he had gone out looking for trouble. There is a recurrent thread of stories about poor defensive gun owners being subject to judicial proceedings that turn people's lives upside down, and I could cite a few, but I do not think that we should carve out an exception protecting a certain class of homicides from being scrutinized by fellow citizens. Even if it is to some degree "armchair quarterbacking," it is still a fundamental aim of democracy that this be studied and judged, just as we have been judging many police lately for shooting people. To be fair to gun owners, I think that part of this common reaction is due to the public pressure coming from people who don't have any idea what happens in a defensive gun use situation, which seems to paint all gun owners as unprincipled and all shooters as mercenaries and murderers. On the other hand, though, juries are already clearly informed that defendants in the American system don't have to prove their innocence, and some of the harms I've read about being visited upon gun owners were the result of failings in the legal system or the legal climate - not with the concept that if you shoot somebody, a jury might reasonably want to have the "why" of it explained.

Likewise, I was just reminded that research on firearms and mortality in the US is almost totally defunded. You thought the politicization of climate change is bad? Well shit, at least we have a healthy debate there! I strongly oppose any attempts to whitewash things or reduce the amount of information available.

A prominent problem here is that the Bill of Rights is being treated as a set of stone tablets, rather than as a set of prescriptions written by the Framers for setting up a good government. I don't have much faith we'd be able to come up with a better prescription for firearms law than is in the Constitution, but we at least should all understand what it is you do and don't get in a Democratic society. You do get the presumption of innocence and (I would maintain) the right to defend yourself from apparently deadly threats (this was established, for example, in the aftermath of Ruby Ridge, despite the strong feelings of the law enforcement community after the death of one of their own in a situation that was as much the result of official high-handedness and incompetence as it was the responsibility of the cabin holdouts).

You don't, however, get a free ticket to do whatever you want. Just the other day, I saw somebody ask this:

Can someone please point out to me, where in the U.S. Constitution it proscribes for the taking away of ANY rights, including, but not limited to, the individuals right to keep and bear arms? I seem to recall the Bill of Rights coming about as a restraint on govco.

It shows sad ignorance of the context in which the Constitution was envisioned operating, even back in the time of the Federalist Papers, to assume that nobody ever thought that certain rights could be curtailed given the right circumstances, or that the founders had decided that anybody should be free to do anything without there being a legal or public discourse about those developments. Does Benny think that "the Constitution says" would mean that we can't stop a felon from owning a handgun? Or that jail is out of the question? How many felons does Benny want electing his representatives? Does Benny think that he is not depriving somebody of their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" when he shoots them dead for trampling in his hydrangea bed?

I could roll along like this for a while, but there's one final hypocrisy in the line GaijinPunch mentioned that I wanted to lay off my chest: Many of who I think of as the leading voices on firearms ownership online are pretty strict about The Rules, which include not only the "rules of firearms safety" but also rules of engagement and just self-defense. Don't follow the rules and you are a foolish gun owner, and a liability to yourself and others. Yet there's that creeping sense the rules come from somewhere mysterious. Is a libertarian happy to follow something when it is his idea, but not when it is somebody else's? Do two people casting a vote a third doesn't like "oppress" the minority? Yet when you follow through descriptions of the rules for a conscientious firearms owner, you find that you're not supposed to go looking for trouble, but if you do and are called to task about it, suddenly it's "repressive government," rather than your concerned peers exercising an important curb on your foolishness.

During my earlier posts, it was troubling me that I could not really give a compelling enough argument for gun ownership to sway others, because we want to have a fairly robust set of principles. But on writing this, I'm reminded that the Second Amendment is just set up like the First Amendment, where we can say "I will defend to the death your right to say it"? We don't have to hold that every use of a right will be wise or even helpful for it to be a right worth defending for when it is helpful. Oh hey, there's a copy of Agache's "The Sword" at the link, too.