There have been more than 200 mass murders in the United States since the beginning of the year, and we have not yet reached the halfway mark. For mass killings, the sociopath’s gun of choice is the AR-15. It’s a guaranteed killing machine, used most recently in Buffalo to murder 10 innocent people who were grocery shopping. It will kill many more people this year. You are not safe anywhere after you leave your home. Not safe in a school, a grocery store, a place of worship, a nail salon, a music festival.
As states enact laws permitting concealed carry and open carry of guns, try not to get involved in a road rage incident. The other person might shoot you dead. Avoid all disputes. Put your hands up in the air and walk away quickly.
Life in America in these times will begin to resemble the Shootout at the OK Corral. Tourists beware. Parents, grandparents, and children, beware. Death could come anywhere, at any time.
A writer called Democracy points out that there are still some limits on guns, even though AR-15s seem to be easy to buy. In New York, a teenager who had recently had a mental evaluation (and was quickly cleared) after threatening murder and suicide. He said he was joking but he wasn’t. After killing 10 people, he didn’t have the guts to kill himself. Since he’s likely to go to jail for the rest of his life, he can count on his fellow prisoners to give him the Justice he deserves.
Democracy writes:
It’s important to note here what Antonin Scalia said in his Heller decision, the one in which he essentially REWROTE the Second Amendment to his liking. Even in Heller, Scalia made it a point to say this:
“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Scalia went on to say this: “that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’ ”
Assault-style rifles like the AR-15 are, in fact, very “dangerous,’ military-grade weapons.
PBS described what the AR-15 is:
“the AR-15 is America’s rifle because it’s what America’s military carries…even those who don’t serve feel that they’re part of that effort when they carry the AR-15… It’s a military rifle. It’s designed to deliver masses of bullets to a very specific target…This is a weapon designed to kill…It’s a military weapon…What’s different on the civilian versions is, it only allows semiautomatic fire…It’s very easy to reload. It’s very easy to get more ammunition in there and continue to shoot at your target…The ammunition for the M-16 or the AR-15 is a 5.56-millimeter bullet. It’s a very small and very fast bullet that does a lot of tissue damage… because it’s so small and moves so fast, it tends to tumble…when it hits a person, and so it tends to create a very large wound and very difficult-to-treat wounds. Again, it’s a military weapon. It’s not designed for hunting…It’s designed to wound or kill soldiers in combat…”
The Trump judges erred, badly, and likely, on purpose.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Demilitarize the police too.
And…please retrain the police in deescalation strategies, and weed out those with associations to white supremacist groups. Bring back neighborhood policing in urban areas so the police get to know members of the community.
Deescalation strategies. Yes, yes, yes
We cant demilitarize the police until we demilitarize the lunatics that are not police. And, that ain’t going to happen as long as the Fascist Republican Party has enough votes to stop it.
The Tampa PD has a TANK, an actual tank. It has military devices that can see and hear through walls. There are surveillance cameras with facial recognition everywhere.
Tampa must be the safest place on earth.
We have a wonderful progressive gay female mayor who is constantly ducking incoming from Tallahassee.
The chance that a person will become a victim of a violent crime in Tampa, such as armed robbery, aggravated assault, rape or murder, is 1 in 179. High. However, rates have been going down steadily.
Trump 2024.
But, my Republican Representative here in Colorado, Ken Buck, says we can’t ban assault weapons, because farmers in his district use AR-15s to shoot raccoons that threaten their chickens! The depth of Republican immorality and selfishness is breathtaking and depressing to this retired elementary school educator!
Farmers using AR-15s to shoot raccoons is not only overkill but insane. A bolt action rifle firing a 22 caliber long round would be enough, if the idiots could shoot straight. And even not being able to shoot straight is not an excuse because they can attach a laser to the weapon and use that to shoot straight.
When the 2nd Amendment was written, US citizens shot rabbits, raccoons, and deer with musket balls, one ball at a time before reloading.
“Most muskets were muzzle-loaders. Early muskets were often handled by two persons and fired from a portable rest. Such a weapon was typically 5.5 feet (1.7 m) long and weighed about 20 pounds (9 kg). It fired a 2-ounce (57-gram) ball about 175 yards (160 m) with little accuracy. Later types were smaller, lighter, and accurate enough to hit a human-sized target at 80–100 yards (75–90 m). These weapons had calibres ranging from 0.69 to more than 0.75 inch (1.75 to more than 1.90 cm).”
So, if we read the 2nd Amendment literally, based on the historical facts of the time it was written, the only firearms Americans should legally be allowed to own are muskets. That would also include double barreled shotguns, not a pump shotgun or semi-auto shotguns that have clips like AR-15 do.
Firing an AR-15 at raccoons threatening their chickens will probably get some of those chickens killed too while riddling any equipment and buildings in the line of fire with bullet holes.
Ken Buck is apparently another one of those idiots.
Ar15s come in .22. “everything that isn’t a bolt action is overkill” is debatable, plus what if the gun is also for other things? A bolt action is under kill when it comes to defence, so you would require another firearm, and you could argue having so many firearms would be more overkill. You want an AR-15 or bolt action if you’re around a bear or a wolf, or trespasser/home invaders?
Lasers don’t negate the need to aim
Using a semi automatic AR-15 doesn’t mean you “riddle” chickens and the sorroundings with holes. You do know they are 1 shot 1 pull? Also more accurate than a smoothbore rifle/ball.
3.a decade prior to the second amendment a rifle (girardoni) existed with a 22 round magazine. Lewis and Clark carried one. Also, the “lorenzoni platform” circa 1650, and particularly the cookson repeater of 1750, had magazines with varying capacities, Often 12. The colthoff repeater of 1650, with up to 30 Rd magazines. Aka a “high capacity magazine”
If you take your sentiment towards our rights and apply it to the first amendment, we don’t have a constitutionally enshrined right to talk on the internet, or over phones, just via spoken word, print, etc.
Don’t be calling people idiots as you display complete ignorance about firearms, and lie.
Farmers hunting racoons with AR15’s?
I think we have now officially entered Caddyshack World.
Javelin missiles are also quite effective against raccoons, I hear.
As is C4 shaped into little 🌽 cobs
NO weapons should be sold to civilians – NONE. Always the same ‘blah, blah, blah’…always the same indignations and more ‘blah, blah, blah’ …and still NOTHING is done. Don’t interfere with profits…no matter how many are made to pay with their lives.
Where do you live?
Pesky writes from a server in Switzerland
Odd that she’s so interested in U.S. firearms policies.
Most of Pesky’s comments are in support of Putin and his invasion. She criticizes the US as a way of saying we are no better than Russia.
Sorry you’ve only heard “blah blah blah.”
Human beings have a right to a government that secures our rights, that derives it’s power from the consent of the governed. A few of those rights include self defence, defence of others, the security of our free state, and the ability to affect the government that derives it’s power from our consent. Firearms are critical to this all. That’s the idea behind America’s existence. May be foreign to you, may be outdated to you, but it’s religious to many of us.
If a person has an ar-15, merely has one. do you think it is the role of the government to send armed men to arrest him using appropriate force? Which would often mean deadly force? Are people bound to follow unlawful orders? If not they have a right to use Force against those committing the unlawful act, aka the men you send. Regardless, a lot of them will be killed anyway.
End of the day, law is force and force is exerted at gunpoint ultimately, and leads to a certain amount of deaths.
Forget the civil war, imagine all civilian firearms vanish overnight. Lack of a firearm saved a person from being shot. Your policy saved a live, right?I know you’d love to take credit. Imagine a person doesn’t have a firearm because it vanished, and they are murdered because they lack the ability of self-defense. Do you take that into consideration when crafting policy? are you as eager and hellbent to take responsibility for that as well?
We don’t do this for profit.
How did you like the massacre of little children in Uvalde? 17 babies and two teachers? Make you proud?
How did you feel when 10 people were killed at a supermarket in Buffalo by a gun but with an AR15?
Did you smile?
How did you feel when that guy with several assault weapons killed dozens of people at a music festival in Las Vegas?
That must have made your buttons burst with pride.
Then there was that day a decade ago when a demented young man burst into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and blew away 21 babies and five staff.
What a great day for people like you.
I hope that every night when you try to sleep, the souls of hundreds, thousands of victims of gun violence hover over your bed. Hear them. Especially the babies. See their beautiful faces, shredded by high-powered weapons.
How about a buy back of AK-15’s and send them to Ukraine?
Annette, love that idea
yes yes yes yes yes
Support the war effort! Sell back your assault weapon!
Ukraine needs, with an emphasis on needs, way better and more lethal weapons than AR-15s.
The government can’t “buy back” something it never owned. That’s just called buying. On a policy note, I don’t want MY taxdollars going to buy weaponry that isn’t for OUR military defence. Be it FROM citizens, or FOR Ukrainians.
Also, it can’t buy something that doesn’t exist, period. Ak-15s don’t exist.
“There have been more than 200 mass murders in the United States since the beginning of the year, and we have not yet reached the halfway mark. For mass killings, the sociopath’s gun of choice is the AR-15.”
I’m not sure that’s correct, assuming you’re defining a “mass killing” as shootings in which at least four people are shot and killed (which is how the Gun Violence Archive defines it). I believe the handgun is by far the most popular weapon used in such shootings.
The AR15 is an efficient machine for mass murder, far more so than a handgun.
That’s true (once the shooter has made it to his destination—handguns are easier to conceal) but it doesn’t make it the primary weapon of choice for masks shootings. It’s the handgun.
FLERP!,
The Republicans seem to forbid any studies of gun violence. However, I suspect a deep dive into “mass death” from handguns would find that those deaths were either someone wiping out their own entire family (i.e. personal) or criminals killing criminals (mafia shooting mafia, gangs shooting gangs).
AR15 seem to be a favorite weapon for those who want to kill strangers — death for death’s sake. They may have a target, but those people could have killed that target elsewhere. They want to kill that target and other strangers as well, because they are angry and like the idea that other people will suffer.
AR15s can also be used in family deaths or criminal deaths, but the opposite is far less common. Someone using a handgun to shoot a lot of strangers. It is also harder since a handgun has fewer bullets.
Handguns could also be limited to revolvers, no semi auto handguns with magazines.
The AR-15 is an excellent weapon for home self-defense…lightweight, accurate, low recoil, high ammo capacity.
Stop thinking about criminals and start thinking about law-abiding citizens who need to protect themselves from criminals.
NYC public school parent
“handgun has fewer bullets”
Handguns han be loaded with 100+ bullets via a drum, an ar-15 could have 1 round in the chamber, no mag, or a 7 round mag. Try again. Your ignorance on firearms is painfully obvious.
But if your assertion is that you care more about random acts of violence, so that’s why your focus on long guns, but somehow murdering families with pistols, or murdering others in drug/gang related crimes, is not as important, that’s weird.
Every year about 300 murders are marked as being committed by rifles, compared to 6000 by handguns, per the fbi. 5x as many people die by knives. Your response to rifles isn’t proportionate to their misuses.
Am I the only one who believes this comment is sick, demented, and pointless? Is that civil enough?
You don’t like me much, do you?
FLERP, I like you and that’s all that matters on this blog. I don’t always agree with you but who cares?
I don’t think Greg’s comment was directed at you.
So you find pointing out facts to be “sick, demented and pointless”. That’s very telling and explains a lot. I suspect you’re not alone on this blog.
Dienne,
I’m still waiting for you to condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the indiscriminate killing of civilians and his leveling of entire cities.
I know you think that all Ukrainians are Nazis, but do you approve of Putin’s war on Ukraine? Do you think he is “liberating” the Ukrainians from their Nazi Jewish president and prime minister?
That hilarious coming from you, Dienne! Ms. Putin is just conducting exercises. He’s liberating Ukraine from Nazis.
I assume You meant Mr. Putin, the great liberator, who is liberating Ukraine by a program of mass destruction.
Yes, ofc. The Great Liberator, Vladimir the Squat, Tsar of All the Russias (including a whole lot of imaginary ones drawn across a map in his vicious, murderous, thieving, criminal, cancerous, Chekist little brain)
Exactly, Diane! ROFL!!!
I want to point that the ORIGINAL sentence was:
“For mass killings, the SOCIOPATH’S gun of choice is the AR-15.”
I would challenge anyone to provide evidence that this is not true. A sociopath is killing only for killing’s sake. Killing children has no purpose but to destroy. If the “mass killings” with handguns are about fighting over riches or property or power, that is not the same category of a killing that is ONLY about someone who is killing random strangers (even if one happens to be familiar) because they want other people to suffer, not because they have anything to gain except the joy of the kill (or to express their anger).
dienne77,
I actually did some fact checking to find out how many neo-Nazis live in Ukraine. There were about 44 million Ukrainians living in that country when rasPutin the Terrible invaded and started mass killing civilians by the thousands as his barbarian army leveled cities, targeting hospitals, et al.
I learned that there were about 1,000 known neo-Nazis in the country and none of them held public office. Yea, they run for public office during elections but never win.
So, Ukraine has/had less than 1,000 known neo-Nazis. Guess how many Americans support or are neo-Nazis and/or white supramcsists
The answer is about 22 million and they make up the core of Traitor Trump’s support base.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-neo-nazi-support-american-public-charlottesville-white-supremacists-kkk-far-right-poll-a7907091.html
The evidence also reveals that Putin’s support base in the United States and in Russia are neo-Nazis and white supremeacists.
“A member of the neo-Nazi terror network the Base told a federal prosecutor in December that he believed the group’s leader, known then as Norman Spear, was a Russian spy. One month later, the Guardian revealed Spear’s true name to be Rinaldo Nazzaro and presented evidence that Nazzaro lives in Russia. BBC subsequently reported that Nazzaro was listed as a guest at a 2019 Russian government security exhibition which “focused on the demonstration of the results of state policy and achievements.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/68420/confronting-russias-role-in-transnational-white-supremacist-extremism/
So, rasPutin and Traitor Trump both use the same propaganda and BS lies claiming their enemies are Nazis but it is rasPutin and Traitor Trump that are fascists, not their enemies.
I also think anyone that avoids condemning rasPutin and Traitor Trump is just another fascist.
Oh no, Diane, it was very much directed at the person who posted this, the same one who calls any Black intellectual with an idea a grifter, the one who reflexively shrieks at anything having do with tolerance for transexual people, the one who believes standardized testing is good despite all evidence to the contrary, the one who thinks systemic racism is a joke as he enjoys all its benefits, one who asks questions but never justifies his own “opinions,” and one who I don’t believe has read of word that Diane has published outside of this blog yet still has an authoritative opinion not tethered to reality. Other that than he’s fine. But don’t misread me at all Diane, if you really believe what you write, I don’t understand your view on this at all. This guy is is far right of center despite his protestations. He knows life will be now worse and likely far better under American fascism. He is the Duke Effect personified. He’s fooled you too.
NYCPSP, a sociopath with use whatever is available, An AR-15, a handgun, a knife, a bat, or a seemingly reasonable statement on a blog.
Best wishes to you, too, Greg!
Diane, thanks for the kind words.
I know you like Greg. This is a guy who has written comments to me that are the vilest things I’ve ever seen on this blog. I won’t go into specifics because I’ve said I put it behind me, and I take care not to engage in petty, personal insults. But it’s challenging, given that he constantly engages in petty, personal insults and flies off the handle whenever he disagrees with a comment or something rubs him the wrong way. But as you say, who cares.
Not only “so what” and “who Cares,” but in this instance, he was not responding to you.
He clearly was (it was a direct response to my comment), and he went out of his way to tell you that he was responding to me.
But fine, who cares. We all have bigger problems than the internet comments of an angry, little man. (Broke my own rule there.)
GregB, I love your excellent input to blog issues & hope you never leave again. I do not love it when you direct your wrath against an individual commenter, apparently in hopes of drumming him off the blog, never to re-appear. I want to hear from you, AND from FLERP– regularly.
In answer to your Q, no I do not find FLERP’s question sick demented and pointless. Simply seeking facts, probably thinking about what kind of laws might work best. Lloyd has already provided some good input on that.
Thank you, Ginny. On all points.
Greg’s comments in total reveal that he actively seeks opportunities to increase humanity’s progress and that he understands political means and roadblocks.
Conclusions about Flerp are also formed from the sum of his comments. As example, one question he asked me was which I hated more, men or (a specific religious sect). A researcher described the sect as a, “nerve center of influence (that) owes its strength to decades of investment in a sophisticated suite of tools including data, media and messaging that drive voter mobilization.” My response to Flerp was, I wouldn’t belong to an organization that discriminated against men and worked to take their rights from them.
In an unfortunate (but, evidently necessary) nod of personal approval to Flerp, he has refrained from employing the words, ignorant or stupid, in addressing me.
I appreciate the unfortunate nod, Linda.
Bethree5
With regard to what laws might work, I would say that it’s at least somewhat context sensitive (sensitive to where the shootings occurred and on and by whom they were perpetrated)
For preventing mass shootings in schools, the worst (by shear number killed in a shooting, to say nothing of what was done to the children’s bodies) of which actually HAVE been perpetrated with AR15 type guns, a ban or maybe even just an age restriction on sale and/or possession of ARs (given that the vast majority were carried out by those under 21) might very well be effective at mitigating if not eliminating the most extreme carnage.
And there is good reason to believe that even for mass shootings outside schools, controlling ARs would make a significant dent in the problem. One need only look at mass shooting stats in places where this was done. But , of course, one has to look at facts to see that, to which many Americans seem to be averse.
.
While it is strictly true that most “mass shootings” here in the US were done with handguns when one defines mass shooting as one that kills at least 4 people, that only tells part of the story and not even the most important part (not even close) when it comes to the worst school shootings.
Words (description of the guns and possibly ammunition that are covered) are obviously very important when it comes to the gun laws themselves, but essentially getting hung up on definitions like the specific (arbitrary?) FBI definition of “mass shooting” can actually make one miss the forest for the trees.
And focussing on the technical definition of “mass shooting” to “challenge” Diane’s statement that ” for mass killings , the sociopaths gun of choice is the AR15″ strikes me as less than helpful, not least of all because we all know Diane’s main point*: that ARs are military style killing machines specifically DESIGNED and proven to inflict extreme damage (death) on humans in a short period of time, which has led directly to the kind of carnage we have seen at schools like Sandy Hook, Columbine, Parkland and now Uvalde. (*Or at least anyone who frequents this blog regularly should certainly know that by now)
“ARs are military style guns DESIGNED and proven to inflict extreme damage (death) on large numbers of humans in a short period of time”
SDP, to be clear, I was using the same “technical” definition of mass shooting that Diane was using when she wrote there had been more than 200 this year.
I tend to harp on the handgun point because I find most people to be unaware what a small percentage of gun violence, including what gets classified as “mass shootings,” is carried out with semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15, as opposed to the handgun. This obviously doesn’t lead to the conclusion that AR-15s should not be more tightly regulated or that mass school shootings are not horrific.
Unfortunately for you, if you are going to play the technical word game, Diane could do the same because (as NYCSP already pointed out), what Diane actually said was
“For mass killings, the sociopath’s gun of choice is the AR-15.”
Now, we could get into an endless (and vacuous) debate about whether all or even most mass shootings are committed by sociopaths, but technically speaking, what Diane said and what you claim she said are not necessarily the same thing.
In the same vein, it is at least possible that the handgun was not actually the gun of (first) choice of all those shooters who used it, but that they simply used what they had. Perhaps they would have preferred an AR15 and used it if one had been available.
Dumb argument, you say?
Perhaps, but that is what can happen when one focuses on technicalities.
But this is all a bit too lawyerly for my taste.
SDP, I’m not trying to play a technical word game. I was trying to point out that most mass shootings (the overwhelming majority) use handguns, not rifles.
As a side note, I’m not aware of any research showing what percentage of mass shootings, school shootings, or any other kind of shootings are committed by sociopaths versus non-sociopaths. But of course Diane wasn’t trying to make an argument about sociopaths. She just generally meant that there is a particular kind of psycho that chooses to commit mass murder for no specific reason and that the weapons they seek to use are semiautomatic rifles.
Linda says:
“Greg’s comments in total reveal that he actively seeks opportunities to increase humanity’s progress and that he understands political means and roadblocks.
Conclusions about Flerp are also formed from the sum of his comments.”
Linda, you nailed it. Thank you.
If the so-called liberal media understood that it is the SUM of what the Republicans say that matters then the media would not be giving any credibility to Republicans who be so sympathetic to the whining by Republicans with a long history of fomenting hate with lies, when that Republican whines that a critic is being “too mean”.
It is a failure of the media that someone like Elise Stefanik or Ted Cruz has ANY credibility even if once in a while they say something that isn’t hateful and a complete and utter lie.
GregB doesn’t post here to mislead readers, to distract them from the subject at hand, or to make false equivalencies between those who are dishonest and reprehensible and those who have views that he may sometimes not entirely agree with.
GregB posts to inform us, and he sometimes becomes too angry when he calls out those who do not seem to be here to inform or discuss truthfully. But GregB is never disingenuous. It’s a shame that the folks who are disingenuous get any credibility here. This blog should be about being honest.
I respect those who disagree with me — there are many here who do and we have interesting discussions. I don’t respect those who are disingenuous and I believe our democracy is in grave danger because the media presents disingenuous folks as if they are credible, and attacks honest folks for their “style”. This blog doesn’t have to fall into that trap.
To be clear, what Linda is saying is “Greg may be intemperate, but his comments as a whole show that he is a good person. Flerp’s comments, on the other hand, show that he is not a good person. Therefore, Greg’s intemperance is ok.”
Flerp-
Yes to the first and third sentences. About the 2nd sentence, I don’t know you well enough to make an assessment about the totality of your character.
Anticipating a charge of pandering, no, not to the religious nor anyone else.
Been outta touch, but damn, Linda and NYCPSP, I couldn’t have written it better myself. And SDP gets it immediately. Who care about the category of gun when people are dying? This kind of word game is beneath the dignity of this blog. As are random questions that one would think anyone who reads the paper can figure out for themselves. As are postings that have nothing to do with Diane’s original post that then hijack the discussion? It is unfortunate that so many of you smart people fall for it.
But let’s talk about being vile and a little man. The only time I have been personal about the fact that this individual knows who I am, where I live, and where I work. I can’t be personal with him because I don’t know who he is nor do I want to. But think about this. This individual room my name and first initial, because with that one piece of information he actually spent time researching how I was. He gave it away a long time ago in a comment he made about my job. Bethree, how would you feel about that? Anyone else here? How little does a person have to be to do something like that? And here’s an irrational person who has threatened to kill himself in part because of comments made on this block. Would you want him to know who you were? He claims to be an attorney, but based on the comments I read–I have other source–I have a hard time believing it.
Let’s talk about what’s to like and what you’d like to hear regularly. Is the immediate predictable comments about an Black intellectual or elected officials with ideas a “grifter” and worse? Do you like that and want to read about it regularly? Or the constant pithy comments and questions that denigrate others but never answer a question or explain? Is it the fact that all domestic public policy should be directed by his view of the world, that crime is rampant and an existential threat? I think Joel put that one to bed. Please let me know what you like and look forward to. Is it droning on the same policy since almost day one of the pandemic that teachers’ lives were expendable? Or is it another, predictable knee-jerk reaction to any child who may have identity issues they are sorting out for themselves? Or was it the recent proclamation that using test scores to determine admission in college? I think the least we should expect, given the voluminous evidence that indicates the contrary, is an explanation of why that is a good thing.
I find all those views much more vile than anything I have ever written. I find his actual behavior to me much more vile and small than anything I have ever written. I’m assuming because he has an online personal of being a white attorney is southern Manhattan who claims to be centrist when all evidence demonstrates anything but, must be what some like about him and can’t wait to hear more. If you’re such a big man, quit hiding and playing the hurt fool.
Greg,
I have been otherwise occupied all day and was not able to check the comments. You are a brilliant man and I look forward to your comments. I do not like your feud with FLERP. I wish that both of you would ignore the other and refer only to the issues that are vital for our future. I say the same to him.
You just can’t stop, can you?
Which came first, the idiocy of this individual or my responses to it? Who cares about the stated purpose of this blog and who has a petty agenda? And this petty, little man who uses this blog to validate his racist, transphobic, NYC-centric (based on his cowardice, not even sure if he might well be some obese conservative who needs a lift to get out of bed). And why would any “attorney” avoid answering relevant questions that highlights their experitise? And answer a question for a change. You pose stupid ones that many people on this blog like and look forward to. Have some guts and temerity to answer one once in a while. Otherwise the snarky questions you post only display your frustrations and none of your self-proclaimed expertise.
Greg, direct me to the comment I made about your job. I’ve never “researched” you. I think you’ve talked about your job here (you’re a consultant? something medical related?), so if I knew your job, it’s because you mentioned it yourself. I know your full name (actually I’ve forgotten it but I could find it again if I wanted it) because Diane put it in the title of one of her blog posts.
Also please direct me to where I threatened to commit suicide because of comments on this blog. I don’t remember that one. I have and do continue to suffer from depression, I have been open about that.
If you’re not inclined to direct me to these comments, I could direct you to comments where you’ve told me that I should kill myself, and also that you wished I were dead, and also where you actually challenged me to a fight. Which it appears you’re close to doing again here, by asking for my identity? Are you serious? You actually want me to identify myself? What would you do with that information? I have to say you do make me a little nervous, Greg. I think you’re a bit cracked in the head and have some serious rage issues, and I’m not sure you don’t want to act on your impulses.
(Diane, your favorite commenter here is once again laying into another commenter personally for several paragraphs on end. Heck of a living room atmosphere, I must say.)
Here’s a public service announcement for Greg and for any other commenters here who wish I were dead and/or want to physically assault me:
I do not agree with you about everything. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. I’m not a right-winger or even a Republican. But I have views that you don’t like. For example, I’m against affirmative action. I’m in favor of the SAT and ACT. I am concerned about budgets and deficits and national debt. I think the national discourse on race and identity is divisive and poisonous.
On the other hand, I am pro-choice. I support national healthcare (although I do think cost is an issue). I am in favor of more restrictive gun control. I am opposed to anti-CRT laws. I consistently vote for Democrats at the national level.
In my view, there are things that people can disagree about without causing them to be arch-enemies. In the big picture, I think I am your ally. But because of the things that I disagree with you about, you quite literally see me as your enemy, and believe that I am a stupid, right-wing racist who you would rather see destroyed (literally wishing me dead) than heard.
I really hope you aren’t indicative of the direction of Democratic politics. We need a big tent where people with common interests can unite.
As for wishing you to be dead, that is incorrect. What I wrote is that I hoped you would be a victim of the reckless policies of which your were sure of. If your advice had been taken, hundreds of thousands of additional Americans would have died. If that were the policy and you were one who strongly advocated, I do wish you would have been one to have suffered the worst consequences.
Now, if you have any guts, you must admit you have researched who I am. Since you know there is no specific search engine with this blog, you well know I am correct and your defense is that I can’t provide specific documentation. You know and I know you did.
Did you refer to Ibram Kendi as a grifter? Google search can be amazing. Did you not write “People just lap this crap up.” in response to a blog post that headlined, “Ibram X. Kendi: How to Dismantle Racism”? Where did you explain why people are “lap[ping] this up”? What exactly is “this crap”? You do the same with Hannah-Jones and others. You find one narrow statement or issue to hone in on and then use that as justification to ignore the entire argument. At the Jesuit school I attended, that would be considered just plain lazy and gotten a big fat F. NYCPSP explains and your only response is to ridicule and denigrate. And then you act like your insulted when people point it out.
This is not about who “likes” whom (how fucking juvenile is that?). This is about who can explain their views. NYCPSP does it. Linda does it. Joel does it. Bob does it. Duane (bless his heart) does it. Bethree does it. Lloyd does it. Joe Jersey does it. Actually virtuallly everyone who comments on this blog does, Except you. You are a sophist and a coward. Rather than defend your positions, you’d rather do anything you can to try to make it “personal.” And since no reputable lawyer would use this in any case, it convinces me that what you do is review contracts. Where anal retentiveness trumps accomplishment seems to be your happy spade.
Greg, you can search this site by using the “site:” syntax. Here’s the search string you can use in google: site:dianeravitch.net FLERP!
Go for it. Get back to me when you can actually point me to any of the things you’re alleging.
I probably did call Kendi a grifter. I think his books are terrible and I think he’s a lightweight who’s running a wonderful consulting grift for big-dollar speaking fees. I also think Nikole Hannah-Jones’s work is generally shoddy. Sorry, but that’s my opinion and as much as it enrages you, you can’t do anything about it.
I explain my views often. If you don’t like how I explain them, tough luck. You’re not my boss, Greg.
You think I’m disingenuous, fine. I think you’re a bully and a bloviating jacka$$ with anger problems. But I don’t go out of my way to insult you personally, although I do it on occasion when you go out of your way to personally attack and insult me, which lately is multiple times a day.
I can only assume you’re furiously googling me (although luckily you seem to be of the age that isn’t very good with the Internet) and trying to dox me, since you keep reciting details about my life. I can’t stop you, but at least please cut out the requests that I meet up with you and fight you. It’s weird and it does make me nervous. Although I suppose that’s the point.
“I can only assume you’re furiously googling me”
Nope. Never have except for last example. Won’t ever again. Once again. You know who I am. I don’t know who you are. Who’s the bully?
You’re a bully, Greg. You like to attack people you dislike, and you really like it when you have support from others who join in. You probably think you’re a really good guy.
FLERP, I love you too. Please stop arguing with Greg. State your views and don’t engage
And while you’re at it. Explain why you think standardized tests to determine admission are good. Explain why you think systemic racism is a myth. Explain why crime is the existential issue of our time. Explain your ideas about Covid from day 1. Explain why you think you, if you really are a white person, you are discriminated against when people who are not white succeed. Demonstrate how the house in which you live, the one you claim to own, was never subject to redlining or covenants. The area you supposedly live in was subject to many of the worst of these. That’s what helped lead to the establishment of Harlem. You demand answers from others. Try answering a question yourself.
Greg, if you weren’t such an aggressively hostile a$$hole, I might try explaining some of those things, although I don’t think I’ve said that “systemic racism is a myth” (although some versions of it that some people invoke are on the level of myth, and I think the term always needs to be carefully defined) or that “crime is the existential issue of our time.” But alas, you are, so I won’t be “doing your homework for you.”
Do you stand by your comments on Covid from March/April 2020?
You still have not explained any specific examples of why Kendi is a “grifter” or examples of Hannah-Jones’ shoddiness? Is that request considered to be bullying?
Again, yoiu ignored your comment on standarardized testing. Is my asking about this bullying? If you think it is, you obviously have no understanding to the concept of bullying.
You’ve never explained why the view from your porch should be the priority of all policy making and political debate. Now’s your chance. Was that bullying?
Suffering from depression is one thing. Using it as a pathetic excuse to give you a pass on other things you choose to comment about is quite another. Be ready for a response from a rational person.
Do you believe whites face discrimination? Do you believe there are remedies to be negotiated by present and future generations for past injustices? Or do you think history begins now, race means nothing, and we should only adhere to MLK Jrs.’ “content of our character” from this day on?
And have you ever read any of Diane’s books? Not reviews, the actual books. You keep ignoring that one,.
That’s beautifully legalistic AND petty! Touché! “I’ve never explained my views, never will, and now surely won’t because you’re a meanie!” At least thank me for giving you another reason to explain your views.
…not explain…
It seems you’re not much on making written arguments. Why start now?
Since this is a blog about education, at least have a little integrity and explain why you thing standardized test are good. Or at the very least, why it’s a good thing for MIT to use them again. Now you really can’t acuse me of bullying now. Although I’m sure you will as you find your next excuse not to explain one of your pithy comments. Just one!! Not that I care, but would like to see if it’s even possible.
I explained why I think it’s good that MIT is going back to considering SAT and ACT scores in the same thread in which I made that comment. You may have missed it because of all the steam coming out of your ears after you saw the original comment. But I’ll refer you back to that thread for my reasoning, as well as to the MIT letter that announced the decision. The MIT letter is also in that same thread. I’m sure after reading my reasoning and the MIT letter, your mind will be completely changed and we will both agree that this has been a totally productive discussion. That was sarcasm.
What else can I do for you, friend?
Even if we were to eliminate the sale of AR-15s, we would have to outlaw the sale of parts as well. It is possible to buy the barrel of the gun and manufacture the rest on a 3D printer. In Europe organized crime is making their own ghost guns on 3D printers because they cannot buy guns so easily.
Ghost guns are becoming increasingly common in the U.S.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ghost-gun-bust-reveals-arsenal-at-nyc-apartment-prosecutors/3658618/
If the shooter in Uvalde had needed to start with parts, he could not have done what he did — go to a store buy two rifles and 375 bullets, then go to the school and shoot children. He would have needed to assemble the weapons. He likely would have required assistance.
Kyle Rittenhouse wouldn’t have been able to simply drive to the next state and shoot innocents. He would have needed to take additional steps. Starting with parts would at least slow people down.
Steve, I’m not opposed to a ban on the sale of AR-15s. I don’t think it would help much, but it might help some.
Let’s not add to some mantra of how hopeless it all is. Study up on Australia’s gun laws & their effects. They didn’t just have one “silver bullet” law in 1996. It was a comprehensive set of laws which implemented federal minimums allowing for state variations—followed up by periodic synchronization so that all states met the minimum federal reqts— and continually updated.
They’ve had no mass shooting since the original [post-PortArthur massacre] laws. But there have been shootings since then which revealed weakness in the law or need to catch up to latest tech/ criminal schemes, which have resulted in additional restrictions. The first set of laws was followed by a year-long buyback which removed prox 1/3 of privately-owned guns from circulation. Each additional restriction has been followed by periods of amnesty for those who find they no longer qualify to be licensed to hold certain of their guns.
Australia & other countries have already applied brains to how to specify/ license restricted guns, so we do not need to parse it out. These countries have had laws & amendments in place for decades—long enough to study their effects and modify them. Australia has published a dozen studies analyzing the effects over the last 26 yrs. We can read their studies and make informed decisions/ legislation.
As Lloyd points out above, the issue is not semi-automatic assault rifles but semi-automatic assault weapons generally, including, alas, most handguns sold today.
Because of flaws, guns made with 3-d printers can be more deadly to the shooter than the target.
But if someone wants to take their chances, who am I to stop them?
What might the legal definition of “don’t think it would help much, but it might help some” be? At what number of lives does it go from helping some to helping a lot?
Greg, I don’t understand what you’re asking
“I don’t think it would help much” implies that the shootings will continue unabated and that assault gun ban will not “help much.” That means just about as many people will die as would have, but an assault gun might help, but “not much.” So my question is what’s not much? One life? Two lives? Twenty lives? Fifty lives? What number is “not too much?” If it’s only one person and that person happens to be your child, does that fall under “don’t think it would help much”?
Greg, if just one school shooting were averted, that would qualify as helping “some.” That would be a good thing. But it would not be helping very “much,” given how many mass shootings (and suicides, which are #1 category of deaths from gun violence in the U.S.) happen each year with firearms other than AR-15s.
As for where the line between “some” and “much” lies, I don’t know.
And as for why I’m giving honest responses to someone who relentlessly attacks and threatens me, I don’t know the answer to that, either.
FLERP– how would we know? The Dickey amendment in early ’90’s scared our govt health agencies off doing any research on gun violence lest they lose massive funding. The Tiahrt amendment in early 2000’s prohibited ATF from tracking weapons electronically…
It’s this kind of crap that infuriates me. If he doesn’t know, he truly is not worth the time of day given how much he’s tried to prove that he’s infallible. These “rules” are between 30-40 years old. If you’re that stupid about these vents, No Soup for You!
Greg, by all means, write more words about how you feel about me.
Seriously, how Is it that your are ignorant of this? This is not top secret.
Greg,
I love you dearly.
Please stop arguing woth FLERP.
Data is collected by local police and aggregated by the FBI, bethree. It’s not perfect data but it’s instructive. E.g.,
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
“In 2020, handguns were involved in 59% of the 13,620 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available, according to the FBI. Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” – were involved in 3% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%. The remainder of gun homicides and non-negligent manslaughters (36%) involved other kinds of firearms or those classified as “type not stated.””
Thanks, Flerp. Personally I think it’s silly to claim there isn’t enough data to make wise decisions. It just irks the hell out of me that we let stand those absurd amendments deliberately undermining our public health institutions to support public health, and making the job of policing gun crimes more difficult.
Update: I had completely missed the fact that Congress restored some funding to research on gun violence about 2 yrs ago. It was not much: Dems wanted $50million, compromise with Reps who wanted to keep it at $0 resulted in a $25million appropriation. This came about from a joint effort by Dickey himself and the CDC’s former chief researcher on gun violence. Details on that, as well as info on some of the research projects underway here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/us/politics/gun-violence-research-cdc.html
There’s nothing about bullets in the “holy” 2nd amendment, limit the sale of bullets to one or two per month. But seriously, why do we have so many people who resort to these weapons of death to resolve whatever pathologies are circulating in their brains? I guess because we are drenched in guns and there is a strong gun culture in this country? We will be truly lucky to get even the mild proposals offered by Biden.
The Second Amendment does not say that anyone can own any gun. It’s about the importance of a well-regulated militia.
exactly
The US Supreme Court has ruled in recent years, the latest in Heller vs Washington DC, that the right to own is an individual right and NOT a collective one. So, their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is different than yours, but theirs is the only one that counts.
Bob Carlson, I’ll have something on that down under general comments shortly.
“Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist.”
– Robert Heinlein
I wonder why Russia apologist/coward/democracy disrupter Dienne never answers a simple and oft-repeated question….
I’ve never owned a gun and I wish that the gun culture – a culture that has been part of America since its founding era – had never come into being. Firearms make it too easy to kill and injure other people and the country would be better off if way fewer people had access to firearms.
But a close reading of U.S. history shows that the Second Amendment can plausibly be interpreted to establish the right of individual citizens to own guns – albeit with limitations, as even the conservative Justice Scalia believed. The essay linked below fleshes out this concept in greater detail, and the links embedded in the essay are also worth reading, especially the op-ed published in the NY Times. The basic principle being advanced is that the right to bear arms – to own guns – is inherent in the right to self-defense – a right that is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution but is widely understood to be an unenumerated right based on common law.
I’ve read a lot of serious U.S. history, and despite my personal aversion to guns that reasoning strikes me as far more solid than the idea that the Second Amendment applies only to state militias. Absent repeal of the Second Amendment we’re stuck with the gun culture and its pernicious effects. Would that it were otherwise.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/stop-lying-about-the-historical-understanding-of-gun-rights/
Jack Safely,
The Constitution also says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” but that doesn’t prevent states from making a law against human sacrifice.
The Constitution also says “Congress shall make no law respecting an … or abridging the freedom of speech..” but that doesn’t prevent states from making it illegal to yell “fire” in a crowded theater if there is no fire but you just get your jollies watching people trampled to death.
The Constitution also says “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble”, but that didn’t stop President Trump from ordering peaceful demonstrators in front of a church to be tear gassed for his photo op.
Conservative Republican Chief Justice Warren Burger said it best:
“the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
Today’s mainstream Republican party is no longer conservative. They have become neo-fascist haters of democracy who are spewing ideology that was last heard in Nazi Germany.
but that doesn’t prevent states from making a law against human sacrifice
What?!?!? This is a denial of religious liberty!
At the time when the 2nd Amendment was written, its authors had just been through a Revolutionary War that started with British soldiers being sent to confiscate a cache of weapons by the citizens militia in and around Concord. So, this they had in mind. The U.S. Army, at the time when the Bill of Rights was first passed, was a paltry thing, and war would have required calling upon militias. Furthermore, at the time of the writing of the 2nd Amendment, many people walked away from duels having failed to hit one another at a distance of ten yards or less–the weapons were that inaccurate. It’s insane not to think that subsequent developments, including the VAST increase in capability of these weapons, has no bearing on this issue.
I remember reading about a state that still had on its books a law that required that anyone driving a motorcar stop every 100 yards or so and send up a warning flare.
The 2nd Amendment reminds me of that law. It’s a creature of another time.
In other words, times change, and unforeseen developments occur. We have a choice, now. We can pass sane gun legislation, or we can continue to see our kids, our babies, die. Here’s Admiral James, Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO:
Nothing about our access to weapons is remotely “well regulated.” It is a dangerous, chaotic free for all.
Amen
Maybe states should make a law that says for every bullet you fire with a gun, you have to send up a warning flare.
That would make mass shootings more difficult , at a minimum.
lol
If Congress wants to allow any adult without a history criminality or mental illness to purchase and own a 1789 musket or handgun, I am totally fine with that. I would venture the following: what “arms” refers to isn’t the same as it was then, so what they, the founders, were talking about wasn’t the same thing. QED.
My brother was in a Revolutionary War reenactment group for many years. He had a musket that shot a single ball and a ramrod, but, of course, he only used gun powder. It took about a minute to shoot another round. That is why the soldiers had two front lines in those days. The front line fired and moved back to reload while the rear line advanced to the front. The so-called originalists should only support this type of weapon.
Entirely agreed. Thank you, RT!
Let’s get originalist about this. LMAO.
As Olivia Newton John liked to sing,
Let’s get original, original
Let’s get original, original
Let me hear your musket talk
Musket talk
Let me hear your musket talk
Now that’s a blast from the past!
The National Review is a Republican publication, very conservative. Not a reliable source.
The U.S. banned assault weapons for 10 years, from 1994-2004, and the Second AMENDMENT did not end the ban. Republicans and the NRA did. Even Justice Scalia in the Heller decision said that the Second amendment did NOT confer an unlimited right to buy guns.
Ms. Ravitch,
I regret that I have to disagree with you about National Review. Your criticism of the essay I linked to is purely ad hominem. There are links in that essay that cite liberal legal scholars in support of what Mr. Cooke wrote (I link the NYT op-ed below for easy reference). You can’t claim that a publication is unreliable merely because you disagree with some of their opinions. NR agrees with you about helping Ukraine, and all of their writers strongly disapprove of how Donald Trump conducts himself, as well as having disagreed with some his policies while he was President. In 2016 NR published an entire print edition of anti-Trump essays under the headline “Never Trump”. National Review is a thoughtful and carefully written conservative publication, not purely polemical like Breitbart or Sean Hannity.
From the NYT article: “Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he had come to believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right.
“My conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise,” Professor Tribe said. “I have always supported as a matter of policy very comprehensive gun control.”
You may consider my view of National Review to be ad hominem, even though there is no individual hominem here, but it’s a fact that NR was founded by William Buckley and has always been a conservative journal. It is certainly not a dispassionate scholarly journal.
“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”
– Robert Heinlein
It’s true that the Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that there are limits on the First Amendment and on other parts of the Bill of Rights. As noted previously, Justice Scalia recognized such limits for the Second Amendment as well. But the principles undergirding those rights also apply to new technologies; it is against all constitutional precedent governing personal rights to claim that the Second Amendment applies only to the weapons of the founding era. The First Amendment which protects free speech – with some limitations – applies not only to newspapers, pamphlets, and books which were the only means of mass communication in the 18th century. It also applies to the relatively new medium we’re on here: the Internet. No government officials can shut down this blog because they disagree with the opinions expressed by the host and the commenters. What’s written here is protected speech – emphatically so.
The real controversy is over which limits to gun ownership don’t violate the Second Amendment and – even more critically – don’t violate the common law, unenumerated right to self-defense. What is a reasonable means of defending yourself and what is excessive? President Obama indirectly touched on this matter early in his Presidency when he commented on a recent trip his wife had taken to rural Iowa. Michelle told Barack that she could see why people out in the sticks might want to own guns because law enforcement (police, sheriff) were likely to be too far away to protect rural inhabitants against would-be criminals (that’s actually true almost everywhere). This is a very sticky issue, not amenable to simple Rational Guy vs. Irrational Guy thinking.
No civilian needs an automatic or semi-automatic assault weapon for self defense. Not even in rural areas. If you are prepared to see your own loved ones killed by a disgruntled person, then your position makes sense. If you can look at the pictures of the babies killed in Uvalde without remorse, then you believe that the right to own a gun is more important than their right to life. Not I.
We agree about automatic and semi-automatic weapons not being needed for self-defense anywhere other than a battlefield; I never stated or implied otherwise. No need to lash out at me personally – read my first comment for what I think about guns and the gun culture.
I didn’t lash out at you. I disagreed with you.
This is the REAL world, and why so many people own guns:
Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.
Robert A. Heinlein
This is YOUR world, where you feel so comfortable and self-righteous while you’re disarming ordinary citizens:
In a mature society, ‘civil servant’ is semantically equal to ‘civil master.’
Robert A. Heinlein
Jack Safely,
The 2nd Amendment reads:
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.
Let’s face it, the founders don’t mention GUNS, the say “arms”, and if the hypocritical originalists are now arguing that we MUST take into account new technology, then “arms” MUST include fully automatic weapons. In fact, “arms” can include not just fully automatic weapons but any weapons at all, including bombs, etc.
The writers of the Constitution could have just said “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. Because that seems to be the interpretation the originalists give it. If not, those Justices would understand that there is a reason that a “well REGULATED Militia” is mentioned.
Why are the words well REGULATED in the 2nd Amendment if the interpretation is that gun ownership can’t be regulated?
For decades, when the Republican Party was sane and led by people like Eisenhower and Ford, guns were regulated.
In 1791 the civilian population and the US military both had the same firearms which were muzzleloading flintlock rifles and pistols. Then for over the next century the civilian population and military were equally the same as firearm technology improved; to percussion rifles and pistols, then rimfire and center fired cartridges, lever-action rifles and then bolt-action rifles. Actually, as I stated previously, only in 1907 did the civilian population have a better rifle than the US military. The 2nd Amendment wasn’t about hunting and target shooting but about defense, and to defend yourself you must be equally armed.
Where do you read anything in the 2nd amendment about defense of oneself and one’s individual home?
“Well regulated” could have meant “well-trained” and “prepared to fight,” as opposed to “subjected to a lot of regulations.”
Also, regarding “arms,” the amendment refers to arms that are “borne,” i.e. carried on one’s person. So I think a nuke would not be protected under the 2nd Amendment under either an originalist or a textualist reading (not to mention other readings).
Rocket launchers are “borne”. So are fully automatic weapons.
And frankly, so are nukes.
And really? Your “well-regulated” definition goes directly along with “militia”. Like the originalists you want it both ways. You ignore militia as a requirement, but then say that the “well-regulated” PREVENTS whatever regulations the right wing doesn’t want.
Either that first phrase is completely meaningless as the right wing says, because bearing any and all things that are called “arms” must be allowed period. Or that first phrase means the entire 2nd amendment is about MILITIAS.
I also love how the far right says that any new weapon that was invented because of technology must be included as long as it can be “borne”. Can you hold a nuke in your arms? If you can, the originalists and textualists demand that you be allowed to do so. Period.
There was a time when the idiocy of these arguments would be called out, as Warren Burger did. Like we used to treat members of the John Birch Society. Now we bend over backwards to present these as perfectly reasonable ideas — which is exactly how fascism begins.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
And it is absurd to interpret the 2nd Amendment the way that the far right now says is correct, and it is absurd that folks here legitimize it.
But it is also absurd that every single country that strongly regulates guns has little mass murder and our country still debates teachers being armed and having only a single door in all schools as if this were normal.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Nothing is more absurd that the US being the only country in the world with regular school shootings and no gun control and folks wanting to debate whether arming teachers or having only one door is a good solution.
No need to get riled up. I’m just offering you potential alternative ways of reading the language.
“Well regulated” could have meant “well-trained” and “prepared to fight,” as opposed to “subjected to a lot of regulations.”
There’s a little thing called the public record ofs the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention. Any first semester Con Law undergrad knows how irrelevant this statement is. The teacher would advise the student to drop the class and consider taking up another course of study. Is that less vile? This is the type of comment that should have a home on a FOX blog.
Greg, please enlighten me about what the records of the Constitutional Convention makes obvious about the meaning of the phrase “well regulated.” In your response, try not to threaten me.
Not threatening you, never have. All I’ve asked for is reciprocity. I’m sure that definition can be found in your Funk & Wagnail’s law library. Also not doing your homework for you. This is elemental an issue in Con Law as there is. If I have to explain it to you, you most definitely are a contract reader and not an actual attorney.
Greg, you have asked me to identify myself and agree to meet you in person to fight. I consider that a threat. At the very least, it’s f*cking weird, aggressive behavior.
Also, should I be outraged that you haven’t adequately “explained” your opinion here? Will you be satisfied the next time I respond to one of your nasty personal attacks with “I’m not doing your homework”?
The second amendment no longer really matters, except as a legal debate. Guns (approximately 350-400 million of them) are part and parcel of these United States, and there are tens of millions of Americans who will die before giving them up.
And you should be glad they’re so passionate about owning guns…just look at history and see what happened to the people in countries that disarmed the populace. Not good.
A hundred and twelve years ago, in 1907…our great grandparents were first able to purchase a semi-auto Winchester Model 1907.
This is a gun they could buy from a Sears catalogue and have delivered via US Post. It was/ is a semi-automatic, high powered centerfire rifle, with detachable, high-capacity magazine.
About 400,000 semi-automatic rifles were produced before WW2. Civilians had hundreds of thousands of these for 40 years, while US soldiers were still being issued old fashioned-bolt action rifles, so in other words, the US populace had far better rifles and more firepower than the US Army.
The 1907 fired just as fast as an AR15 or AK47 and the bullet (.351 Winchester) was actually larger than those fired by the more modern looking weapons.
The ONLY functional difference between the 1907 and a controversial and much feared AR15 is the modern black plastic stock.
The semi-auto, so-called “assault rifle” is 110 years old. It isn’t NEW in any way.
The semi-auto rifle was not a weapon of war. The government MADE IT a weapon of war 40 years after civilians had them.
The semi-auto can be safely owned by civilians. The proof is that literally 3 generations of adults owned and used them responsibly and no one ever even noticed, and no schools were shot up.
Want to fix the horror of mass shootings? Fix the things that have changed for the worse in the last 50 years: Family values, prayer from schools, Ten Commandments from court houses, spanking kids, morals, what is socially acceptable, political correctness, no fathers involved, confusion on genders, Left Wing Liberalism, etc.
We have a crisis in parenting.
We have a crisis in fathering.
We have a crisis in mental health.
Because the rifle technology in question was here long before this insanity. GOD SAVE THE USA.
Counties with gun control in western Europe are far more liberal AND they don’t have people killing each other all the time.
You seem to want the US to look like Afghanistan under the Taliban. I hear the Taliban believes in family values and lots and lots of prayers in schools and making sure that religious folks get to order everyone else to do what they say. And lots of violence, too.
I repeat, countries with gun control in western Europe (and Australia and New Zealand) are far more liberal AND they don’t have mass murders all the time.
I saw a video where people from western Europe were laughing at the idiocy of folks like Bob Carlson telling them what would reduce their non-existent problem with mass killings in their countries. Make sure lots more people 18 and older are heavily armed and have better parents and more religion. Lock children into school buildings with only one door.
They truly believe you are a joke. Unfortunately you are a joke that doesn’t care about the lives of the children of this country, and those folks who live in countries without mass murder know that what you really want “saved” is not the USA but crazy gun nuts and the gun industry. The children of the USA are completely expendable to people like Bob Carlson.
The children aren’t expendable to countries in Western Europe where they have gun control.
Mr. Carlson:
Let’s get all Originalist about this
If Congress wants to allow any adult member of a state militia without a history of criminality or mental illness to purchase and own a 1789 musket or handgun, while making other firearms illegal, I am totally fine with that. I would venture the following: what “arms” meant to the authors of the 2nd Amendment wasn’t remotely what the term refers to today. So, they weren’t talking about what we are talking about when they wrote about “arms,” and they couldn’t even imagine, much legislate about, “arms” of the kinds that we have today. If they could have imagined those, they would have invented them.
DUH
In other words, I am totally fine with a right to bear “arms” as that term was understood in 1789.
QED.
One caveat: As long, of course, as those 1789-style, are used only by members of a militia well organized by the state, LMAO.
The US Supreme Court ruled twice, and recently in Heller vs Washington DC, that the right to own firearms is an individual right and not a collective one. So, their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is contrary to yours, but theirs is the only one that counts.
Justice Scalia ruled in the Heller case that the 2nd Amendment was not unlimited. It was about keeping a handgun in one’s home. It was not about assault weapons.
They were wrong in Plessy, and they are OBVIOUSLY wrong about this. You have not addressed my argument, which is rock solid. What the founders meant by arms is not what is meant by arms today. Duh.
Suppose that you read in one of Thomas Jefferson’s letters that he was feeling quite gay on a particular afternoon. You would not therefore conclude that Thomas Jefferson was a homosexual or occasionally had homosexual feelings. That’s because gay, like, arms, meant something completely different then.
That ought to be quite obvious.
Laurence Tribe wrote in 2018 to disagree with retired Justice John Paul Stevens; Stevens had called for a repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Tribe thought this was inflammatory and would make it harder to pass gun control. Tribe pointed out that the Parkland students who organized rallies across the nation after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre had reasonable goals:
Tribe wrote:
“The kids have been savvy enough to know better. They have reminded everyone that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, even as interpreted by a conservative Supreme Court and the right-leaning lower federal courts, is far from absolute: It permits Congress and the states to outlaw what the court in District of Columbia v. Heller called “dangerous and unusual weapons” and those “not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” and to comprehensively regulate gun sales and the places guns can be carried. Over the past decade, the court has let stand bans on semiautomatic assault rifles, limits on the sale of large magazines and restrictions on the number of guns a person can stockpile. It has left no doubt that Congress can require universal gun registration, that states can forbid gun sales to anyone under 21, and that government can red-flag potentially dangerous purchasers, ban concealed carry and enact sweeping safety measures. Relying on that legal reality, the young have reassured Americans fearful of confiscation that they do not seek the repeal of the Second Amendment.”
Laurence Tribe:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/repealing-the-second-amendment-is-a-dangerous-idea/2018/03/28/ab194138-32af-11e8-8bdd-cdb33a5eef83_story.html
Mr. Carlson:
We must respect the wishes of the founders of our country. Therefore, I propose that we allow adult citizens to own 1789-style “arms” and not things that the founders obviously did not envision and could not have envisioned.
As in weapons that enable an 18-year-old to murder 19 ten-year-olds in a few minutes’ time.
I have one more response, Mr. Carlson, and it’s a really quick one because it consists of a single word:
complicity
Arguing against sane gun legislation is complicity.
Ofc, I mean moral complicity, not legal complicity.
The AR-15 is ideal for self-defense in the home…it’s lightweight, compact, low-recoil, accurate, and has high ammo capacity. Why is all this important? During a break in/home invasion, you’ve been woken up suddenly, you grab your lightweight compact loaded gun, you walk around with it, and you’re much more likely to hit what you aim at when tired/nervous/scared than you would be with a revolver or shotgun. And, if you miss in the dark and there are multiple intruders, you have 10-30 chances to defeat your enemy.
You keep harping on CRIMINALS using guns of all types to commit crimes…the real reason for the second amendment is twofold: to ensure that law-abiding citizens can defend themselves against criminals, and to prevent a totalitarian government from taking away our freedom. Just think of how many governments have disarmed their people — I’ll bet there are a bunch of Christian Nigerians who wish they had weapons to defend themselves against the Muslims who keep mowing them down in remote villages.
Oh, hey, this makes sense. We need a whole lot more people who have been woken up suddenly and are tired, nervous, and scared stumbling around with a weapon that can make a person’s insides look as though a grenade went off in there.
And good luck, with your shotgun, defending yourself against a government armed with Predator drones with Hellfire missiles. That should work out well for you.
The 2nd Amendment mentions nothing about criminals, ofc. It was written at a time when the standing army was a paltry thing and the government needed to be able to rely upon calling up citizen’s militias in a time of war. And, ofc, when the founders wrote this, they couldn’t have imagined modern weaponry, and so that’s definitely NOT what they were referring to when they wrote of “arms,” just as when Thomas Jefferson wrote that he was feeling gay one afternoon, he didn’t mean that his homosexual tendencies were asserting themselves. The word simply didn’t have the meaning, at that time, that it does today.
Ofc, the founders weren’t stupid. If they had meant to assert an individual right to have weapons, they could EASILY have said that. And they didn’t. They didn’t say that.
And then there are the many transparently fallacious arguments made by gun nuts. For example, we’ve been hearing a lot, in the last week, about how “Chicago has strict gun laws and really high rates of gun violence.” A classic example of false attribution. The fact is that states with lax gun laws have high rates of gun violence, and states with strict gun laws have much lower rates of gun violence. Why is there so much gun violence in Chicago? Well, there are a lot of desperately poor people there, jammed closely together; there is a culture that glorifies gansta life; and any fool can drive half an hour to Indiana or Michigan and buy a type of weapon that can be owned in saner countries only by SOME police and by members of the armed forces.
The second Amendment does not assert the right that ANY individual can own ANY weapon. It just doesn’t.
Retiredbutmissthe kids probably has this figure on the tip of her tongue; I believe I read that at least half the guns confiscated in Chicago have been traced to out of state locations. We are surrounded by states with fewer gun restrictions.
And absolutism about rights is absurd. Yes, you have free speech, but you can’t yell “Fire” in a crowded theatre in which there is no fire. The reason for that is obvious enough. Those other people in the theatre have a right not to be trampled to death. So, competing rights. Well, we have a right not to have a mass shooting every day in America. We have a right to send our kids to school, go to church or temple or a mosque, go to the grocery, go to a nightclub, or whatever, without being mowed down by a deranged 18-year-old who just legally bought a weapon that can kill great numbers of people in a couple minutes’ time. Those kids in Uvalde, those grandmothers in Buffalo, had a right not to have their lives taken from them. They were denied that right. And gun advocates denied it to them.
No doubt; it’s the man who’s bought and fired the weapon who’s the perpetrator. Not the weapon itself.
And an AR-15 is a much much much more effective killing machine than a pistol or knife. You’ve said as much in previous posts, Mike.
So the man who is the killer now has a much much much more efficient and accurate killing tool at his disposal because it is so easy to obtain.
Why allow for that? Want to protect your home? A pump action shotgun will do the trick quite well. And how often are multiple (or just one) intruders entering your house, btw? Why not lock your bedroom door, call the cops, and wait with a Glock or shotgun in hand for the intruder to try to break in? Lots of dead people who went in search of an intruder, weapon in hand. Not everyone’s a warrior, Mikey. Not everyone’s a killer.
Second Amendment:
“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.”
Bob’s right about the authors’ intent. We were a loose confederacy at the time and Native Americans were at war with us (and we with them). Just as important as the historical intent are the first four words:
“A well regulated militia…”
Does this element of the amendment apply in our present day situation?
I understand that there are many who believe they need weapons available to engage in guerrila warfare, should the government become authoritarian. And for protections’ sake vs people and wild animals. Whether we agree on this or not is secondary to using the Second Amendment as a defense to so obtaining them along with unlimited rounds of ammunition. I think we need to move that defense out of the equation and focus more on the other issues you’re concerned about.
I believe I read just recently that people who have guns in their home are more likely to experience gun violence. i glanced at an article this morning about a toddler who shot and killed his father. Then I think of the teenagers sneaking in late at night…
There is reason to believe from Madison’s accounts that he was concerned about citizens being able to organize and use the arms they privately owned against a tyrannical government, but this was not reflected in the wording of the adopted amendment, which is at least vague enough to have engendered a lot of debate over the intervening centuries. And certainly, the circumstances of those times do not exist today. We no longer depend upon drawing soldiers to protect our country from citizens’ militias, and the power differential between armed citizens and the armed government is completely, overwhelmingly in the favor of the latter. It simply is no longer the case that a privately armed citizenry is a match for the armed forces of local, state, or federal governments. That ship sailed long ago. This notion that people need guns to protect against the government persists today only among rightwing extremists. Unfortunately, there are very large numbers of those in the US now–kooks who believe or are sympathetic to the view that they are participating in preparation for rising up against that oh-so-tyrannical government that sends them social security checks and paves their roads.
And I bet Bob noticed that I spelled “guerrilla” incorrectly. 🙂
I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve accidentally posted a spelling or grammar error in one of these posts. If I did, I could buy myself a Republican Congressperson, maybe even a Senator.
speduktr:
I have a friend who was once a world-champion marksman with both pistols and rifles. Incredible shot. He wrote articles in outdoor magazines about firearms.
I was talking to him about how I wanted to get a license down here in New York City so I could have a firearm at home for protection. He asked me where I would keep the firearm, where I would keep the ammo (separately), and whether I have the killer mentality that’s required when hunting down an intruder. If you wait for just a split second, chances are you’re dead.
He cited exactly what you’re saying in terms of ownerz making the firearms too easily accessible to others; saying how a gun safety course should be mandatory prior to acquiring a weapon.
He also told me that, should I decide to arm myself, I should lock the door, call the cops, and have the pistol ready…as I said in my previous post.
Your last sentence is a 100% spot on. I read an op-ed some years ago where the writer stated that one night there was an intruder outside his home. He had a licensed handgun and would have been legally in his right to go outside and shoot the intruder. But he didn’t as he was safely in his locked home. He took a deep breath and called the police and they handled the situation. He also remarked that he didn’t want someone’s death on his conscience.
He obviously knew what it took to be a responsible gun owner.
And I spelled “owners” incorrectly, too. That’z wut 2+ yearz of retiremeant will do too yu
Lol. Same here. Yesterday was particularly bad. My posts were freaking full of errors. I like to attribute these to haste rather than to becoming increasingly doddering.
From one retiree to another…keep on keeping on.
“He also remarked that he didn’t want someone’s death on his conscience”
Not a small thing to kill another person. Even when you’re in the right.
Forgot to mention in my original post: that pump action shotgun, Glock, or whatever “smaller” weapon that’s being used for protection should be officially registered as well. These are serious weapons.
Imagining someone going to buy a 10 ton truck:
“Sorry sir, but your standard automobile license won’t do for a 10 ton truck. And, besides: you’ve got two DUI convictions”.
Why so different with firearms; state to state?
Such a great point, Gita!
Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist.
Robert A. Heinlein
“Dada. Goo goo.” –Robert Heinlein
So you suggest that the “real solution” to gun violence and massacres is to somehow @fix@ parenting, fathering, and mental health. That should be easy.
Do you have some specific ways to do these things?
Ideas? Programs? Policies?
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Believing that the “real solution” to gun violence and massacres is better parenting and fathering” — when every other western democracy with gun control has the same kind of parenting and fathering except those countries do NOT have massacres regularly — is an absurdity.
Democracy can survive anything except Democrats.
Robert A. Heinlein
Gun nuts who say they aren’t gun nuts might not be the nuttiest of them all, but . . . let’s just say that one finds among gun advocates mixed nuts.
God so loved the world that he sent his only gun…
And it was semi-automatic.
Surely He has quite the collection.
And, yeah, I bet Jesus is way into AKs and ARs. Your post makes ZERO sense.
What would Jesus Say?
What would Jesus say?
’bout AR and AK?
I bet he’d say “No way”
“To follow me, Oy vey”
Two summers ago, I was in Marysville, OH, and friends dragged me to the 4th of July fireworks (I detest fireworks–they are an environmental nightmare). So, I wandered off to the vendors’ tents, and the first one I came to was selling plates with pictures of Jesus holding an assault rifle. I wish I were making this up. Morons. We are a nation of armed morons.
Jesus A Khrist
Jesus A Khrist
Was very very nice
Except when he was cross
Cuz Jesus was The Boss
And armed to Seventh Heaven
With AK 47
Yeah, bizarrely, these people claim to be followers of the radical who said this:
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. –Matt. 5:38–42, ESV
Should be
“Jesus AK Christ”
Was very very nice
Don’t cross me”
Jesus Christ was cross
When hanging on the cross
And said to Father boss
“I’m really at a loss
At why you want to toss
Your son upon the dross”
Turn the Other Freak
I’ll turn the other cheek
When slapped on either one
But call me fashion freak
But tunic have I none
Advice, SD, from Enlightened Master Bob:
There’s impact, you, know,
in a proper trousseau–
tunic and sandles
and carrying candles,
but a real special glow
requires a halo.
OK. It’s 1762, and the city of Boston passes a law “regulating leeches.” It isn’t referring to the legal and illegal actions of “parasitic or predatory worms that comprise the subclass Hirudinea within the phylum Annelida.” It’s referring to the actions of doctors. At that time, doctors (and barbers) were often referred to as “leeches.”
In other words, the word “leech” has shifted in its range of signification.
Same with the word “arms.” What the founders meant by “arms” is not what is meant by “arms” today.
We should, the conservatives INSIST, care about original intent, about what the founders actually meant. By “arms,” they clearly did not mean assault weapons, hollow-point ammunition, or Hellfire missiles, for that matter, though these are all “arms” today. No, they were referring to technologies of the time. You could stand a few yards away from someone, then, in a duel, fire one of those pistols, and totally miss him. LOL. So, it’s just stupid, ignorant, thick as a brick to imagine that “arms,” as used in the 2nd Amendment, refers to a class of things that includes semi-automatic weapons. That’s as anachronistic as would be a film about the murder of Julius Ceasar in which Brutus and Cassius are synchronizing their digital watches.
By your reasoning, schools where all those things you cite above should be free of violence, unfortunately, this is not the case.
You may be correct that society is breaking apart due to changes that are recent, but I would point to problems in religious institutions themselves to suggest we need to consider creating a more redemptive society and one less judgmental as a part of our efforts to stem the tide we all hate. Meanwhile, let’s make it difficult for children to buy firearms.
Bob Carlson– technology changes swiftly. Technological changes typically run way ahead of laws; there is always a period of lawnessness in the interim. For example, between 1907 and 1947, we saw plenty of lawnessness employing the guns you cite. Sure, schools weren’t shot up. Plenty of other places were. Laws are always playing catch-up. But they do catch up eventually. None of what you say has anything to do with the 2nd amendment.
Violence has been around since Adam threw the apple at Eve because she wouldn’t put out.
Too bad Eve didn’t have an AR. She could have prevented all the carnage.
The Birth of Violence
Adam had his say
When Eve would not obey
And violence today
Resulted from the fray
There would have been a way
To keep it all at bay
If Eve had had AK
And Adam had to pay
God’s Laxity
If God had paid attention
There wouldna been dissention
Twixt Adam and his spouse
Cuz Eve would rule the house
God could sure have acted
If God were not distracted
By Facebook and the Twitter
And Red Sox heavy hitter
Scalia went on to say this: “that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’ ”
The Constitution’s 8th amendment also forbids cruel and unusual punishment, but that has not stopped the Supreme Court from allowing capital punishment that in many implementations is nothing short of torture.
Let’s face it, the Supreme Court rules however the hell they please and the laws and Constitution have little if anything to do with it.
The Court regularly makes a mockery of the law, of the Constitution and of our democracy.
Above the West Entrance to the Supreme Court are carved the words, Equal Justice Under Law.
Where is the justice for the 10-year-olds blown to pieces? For the 10-year-olds who watched their classmates blown to pieces? For the Moms and Dads of those 10-year-olds?
No, here’s your “Equal Justice” in America: 30 million dollars in Russian money funneled to the Donald Trump campaign via the NRA, and nothing whatsoever done about this. If you or I had done a tiny fraction of the illegal crap that Trump has done throughout his life, we would have been in prison lickety split. We have two systems of law in the U.S., one for the wealthy, and a completely different one for everyone else.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/764879242/nra-was-foreign-asset-to-russia-ahead-of-2016-new-senate-report-reveals
But, of course, this is just another “hoax” in a career of “hoaxes,” from the hoax that Trump and Daddy Trump used to write “C” at the top of lease applications by black people to the hoax that Trump said we ought to consider injecting disinfectant to cure Covid to the hoax that the crowd at the Capitol on January 6th was anything more than tourists and sightseers. Thousands and thousands of hoaxes, as though Trump University weren’t a real institution of higher learning and Trump didn’t actually start with a small loan from his father, as opposed to north of half a billion dollars. This must be the most hoaxed man in human history! Nobody does being the object of hoaxes like Donald Trump!
Equal justice? Ha!
Hunter Biden LIED on a federal form to obtain a gun…never investigated, never charged, I’ll bet he owns more than one gun now.
But hey, he’s Joe Bidumb’s son, so he’s good.
Yeah, that Hunter Biden. Sure is an enormous threat to the U.S. and the world! But Mr. Manic, you totally forgot to mention Benghazi! And Obama poisoning the wells to turn high-school kids trangender! And Jewish space lasers! And the great CRT conspiracy of 2021-22 to make poor little white kids hate themselves and America! And the George Soros plot to replace white people! And the reptilian alien space ports under the Vatican! Better make sure you’re locked and loaded!!!
The major thing that abets a bad guy with a gun is a guy who thinks he’s a good guy with a gun.
The most pathetic part of the current Court is that Roberts actually believes he is the Chief Justice.
The 2nd amendment was adopted in 1791. “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.”
Both DC Circuit courts and SCOTUS decode the grammar as follows: “the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one ‘prefatory’ and the other ‘operative.’
It does no such thing.
The punctuation is not ambiguous, it is true to grammar of the era, which still pertains today. Today we would eliminate the 1st & 3rd commas, which were the sort of thing inserted for ‘taking a breath’ while orating– & the amendment would read like this: “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.” It makes sense in historical context: the govt needs to be able to call up well-trained militias in its defense [since the need for a standing army is still being debated]; militias are made up of trained ordinary citizens; they need to be allowed to keep (at home) arms they can bear (carry) when called up.
Grammatically speaking, the sentence is called “the absolute construction,” where a clause consisting of a nominative noun [“militia”] and a participle [“being”] is placed alongside a 2nd clause, indicating their meaning is linked in a whole. Absolute construction does not mean 1st clause “prefatory,” 2nd clause “operative.” The two clauses are syntactically linked. [For exhaustive discussion/ detail/ backup, see http://faculty.las.illinois.edu/debaron/essays/guns.pdf
Consider two examples of the absolute construction given in widely-used grammars of the period when the 2nd amendment was adopted:
1.From Noah Webster, “Rudiments of English Grammar” (1790): “They all consenting, the vote was passed.”
2.From Lyndley Murray’s popular school grammar (1790): “His father dying, he succeeded to the estate.”
In both sentences, two clauses are grammatically independent, but linked semantically: the second cannot happen without the first. (Semantics is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.)
Somehow in the Heller case, the DC Circuit courts & SCOTUS [including originalist Scalia who wrote the decision] got away without researching the grammar at all– they just arbitrarily decided that the 1st clause was “prefatory” and the 2nd “operational.” (Not English grammar!)
So much for the SCOTUS-determined irrelevance of the “well regulated militia”—conveniently interpreted by Scalia to focus only on what arms individuals may carry to defend selves or homes.
The rest of the Heller decision is rigorously “originalist”– with one major exception (covered by Breyer’s dissent). Scalia jumps straight to firearms in common use in 2008 , with no scrutiny on whether they are in fact “lineal descendants” of those in common use in 1791 or 1868 [14th amendment] for the purposes described. It’s arguable that semi-automatic handguns and rifles would not meet strict or even medium scrutiny on that score. That is a weakness in Heller that could be tested in future.
Exactly, Ginny. Would that those “justices” were as skilled as readers as you are.
To those not following Ginny’s argument, an absolute construction modifies an entire clause and not just a specific word. So
Participial phrase: Used for cleaning chains and sprockets before lubricating them, a degreaser is a necessary part of any bicycle maintenance kit. (The participial phrase “Used for . . . them” modifies the noun “degreaser.”)
Absolute construction: A degreaser being necessary for cleaning chains and sprockets prior to lubricating them, you should have one in your bicycle maintenance kit. (The absolute construction consisting of a noun phrase (“a degreaser”) and a participial phrase (“being . . . them”) modifies the whole of the following clause (“you . . . kit”).
Absolute constructions get their name from the fact that they don’t have a typical syntactic relation to specific words (e.g., an adjective or determiner or quantifier modifying a noun, and in that sense are absolute (i.e., stand on their own). However, the “stand on their own” part emphatically DOES NOT mean that absolutes are unrelated to the rest of what is going on in a statement. In fact, they generally refer to the time, cause, or circumstances of an action as a whole, as in, the keeping and bearing of arms is a necessary circumstance for having a well-regulated militia.
I was today years old when I first heard about absolute constructions. Thanks.
When it comes to gun control, there is far too much parsing of laws and far too little action.
One could debate the meaning of the second Amendment until the cows come home and never reach a consensus because it is just very ambiguous and people will never agree what the framers originally meant.
Hell, I bet many of them didn’t even themselves know.
In fact, maybe like much of the other wording in the Constitution, it was actually intended to be vague so that different framers could read it different ways — ie. The way they liked.
When trying to get people with divergent views to agree, there is no better way than through ambiguous language. If agreement for the sake of agreement is what you are after, it’s great. But if your purpose is clarity of meaning, not so much.
Not incidentally Henry Kissinger was a master of this technique as shown by his shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Palestinians. Which is why his diplomacy never accomplished anything (other than getting Henry “power is the great aphrodisiac” Kissinger bedded.
But it’s clear enough that the framers could NOT have meant because there simply weren’t automatic and semiautomatic weapons in whose days, so they could not have been referring to those when they wrote about “arms.”
I suspect that the language is more ambiguous to us if it ever was to the framers. Absolute constructions still make my head hurt. I remember sitting in on an eighth grade English class as a special ed teacher while the teacher was trying to teach the construction. I felt like one of my students.
Moreover, even without Ginny’s excellent research on not only the grammar but the operation of the militias, the Bill of Rights was sent to the states October of 1789, so we had no standing army at the time. The term militia could have only referred to the state militias and their necessary role in the defense of the state. No one had to legislate the right to own a gun for hunting or protection. They were a normal part of life.
Most mass shooters are not usually diagnosed as sociopaths.
Serial Killers are diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder where sociopaths and psychopaths are a part of.
“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”
WELL REGULATED
Left that part out, thus far.
I have to say here, that anyone who claims to have read lots of American history cannot say with any credibility that the Second Amendment has always conveyed an individual right to own firearms, rather than what it actually does, which was to ensure that individual states could maintain a “well-regulated militia” for the security of “the people.” To choose to believe otherwise is to idly swipe away more than two hundred years of American history, which is, of course, what Antonin Scalia did in Heller.
Gun control does keep criminals from legally purchasing “dangerous weapons.” Since its inception, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has kept about 1.8 million criminals from legal purchases. Unfortunately, they often find other ways (gun shows and other private sales) to circumvent the law.
Gun control has long been practiced in the United States and in the colonies. As Robert Spitzer, professor at SUNY and author of The politics of Gun Control, noted: “In 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law making the transfer of guns to Native Americans punishable by death. Other laws across the colonies criminalized selling or giving firearms to slaves, indentured servants, Catholics, vagrants and those who refused to swear a loyalty oath to revolutionary forces. Guns could be confiscated or kept in central locations for the defense of the community.”
And, as constitutional scholar Adam Winkler pointed out in The Secret History of Guns: “we’ve always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.”
Moreover, on the American frontier in the so-called “wild west,” gun control was practiced too: “to stave off violence, new towns and cities enacted laws to bar carrying guns. In fact, the typical western town had stricter gun laws than many 21st-century states.”
The NRA used to agree.
The NRA was originally created to improve “marksmanship,” not to lobby against gun control or any kind of reasonable limitations and regulations of guns. In fact, as constitutional scholar Adam Winkler notes, “In the 1920s and ’30s, the NRA was at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control.” Its president, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in pistol shooting who was called “the best shot in America” helped to “draft the Uniform Firearms Act, a model of state-level gun-control legislation.” As Winkler points out, “Frederick’s model law had three basic elements. The first required that no one carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit from the local police. A permit would be granted only to a “suitable” person with a “proper reason for carrying” a firearm. Second, the law required gun dealers to report to law enforcement every sale of a handgun, in essence creating a registry of small arms. Finally, the law imposed a two-day waiting period on handgun sales. The NRA today condemns every one of these provisions as a burdensome and ineffective infringement on the right to bear arms.”
And, “When Congress was considering the first significant federal gun law of the 20th century—the National Firearms Act of 1934, which imposed a steep tax and registration requirements on “gangster guns” like machine guns and sawed-off shotguns—the NRA endorsed the law.”
And, “In the 1960s, the NRA once again supported the push for new federal gun laws. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald, who had bought his gun through a mail-order ad in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine, Franklin Orth, then the NRA’s executive vice president, testified in favor of banning mail-order rifle sales. ‘We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States’.”
Most importantly, the 2nd amendment was not written to “protect” the individual from government. It clearly had a military (state militia) purpose. And indeed, the Constitution is quite specific about militias, and armed insurrection.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 of the Constitution states that “Congress shall have the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia.” Moreover, the federal government is given the power in the Constitution to “discipline” state militias. Members of state militias (National Guard) take an oath to ” support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and to ” bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” And the U.S. Constitution –– in Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 –– defines treason as “levying war” against the United States.
In DC v. Heller, Antonin Scalia wrote that there is an individual right to own guns. He simply made that up. It’s a huge deviation from Scalia’s supposed belief in an “original intent” of the Constitution.
Scalia wrote for the conservative majority that interpreting the Constitution – in this particular case, the 2nd amendment – means the Court is …”guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” Not far after, Scalia says that the term “bear arms” was most frequently used in a military context.
Then Scalia veers abruptly – inconsistently – from his earlier statement that the Constitution was to be interpreted in light of its “normal and ordinary” meaning to say that “Of course, as we have said, the fact that the phrase was commonly used in a particular context does not show that it is limited to that context.”
In other words, the “normal and ordinary” meaning is that “bears arms” applies to a military context, not to individuals, but since that doesn’t work for Scalia’s predetermined outcome, he’ll simply ignore an avowed philosophy of “original intent, and just make it up.
Which is what he did.
Conservative jurist Richard Posner – appointed to the federal courts by Ronald Reagan – says it’s clear that the 2nd amendment does not have anything to do with an individual right to bear arms, but ““That didn’t slow down Scalia. He loves guns.” Posner cites Scalia’s decision as an example of the “real deterioration in conservative thinking.”
Still, even Scalia, at the end of the Heller decision, notes that nothing in it should “be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
We now have a conservative majority on the Court that is much like Scalia. They say they are “originalists.” That’s just a lie. They are in the mold of Scalia, but worse.
To be clear, Posner said Scalia loved guns because he was a hunter. But it’s still an amazing quote from Posner, who’s become even more interesting in the last decade.
Posner also said – about Scalia’s Heller decision, that “The idea behind the decision may simply be that turnabout is fair play.”
In other words, Scalia played the part of a petulant 13-year-old because the adults on the Court kept on getting in the way of Scalia’s getting HIS way.
And even Scalia said this in Heller:
“…like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited” [it is] “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
“Posner, who’s become even more interesting in the last decade.”
Seems to me Posner is the same very conservative person he has always been.
The difference is that the mainstream Republican party has been taking over by far right radical John Bircher neo-fascists.
And the danger to our democracy is that even the so-called liberal media and many of us still get propagandized into believing that those that oppose he far right radical John Bircher neo-fascist mainstream Republican party are any different than they always were — there are some who are very conservative and some who are moderate (which is the mainstream Democratic party) and some who are progressive (which is the far left of the Democratic party). They have in common that they believe in truth and democracy. Not policy.
There are a small number of folks who claim to be on the far, far left and they are far outside the mainstream Democratic party. And they are not part of the opposition to the far right radical John Birchers in the Republican party but instead work to enable them by demonizing the party that opposes the far right radical John Bircher neo-fascists.
Let’s remember that Roe V. Wade was a 7-2 decision — it was bipartisan and well-reasoned. And what seems to be overlooked is that RvW always said that the right to an abortion is not absolute throughout the end of her pregnancy, but is absolute in the early stages. When it is repealed, it will be an absolute repeal with only a group of far right Republican Justices signing on.
Posner is reacting to a Supreme Court that has become so radicalized on the far right, that it is no longer a trustworthy Supreme Court anymore. It believes in extremes, strikes down laws completely by finding rights that don’t exist that benefit the very rich, while it then objects to the kind of common law interpretations of the Constitution that were bipartisan before politics got in the way (assault weapons bans, etc.).
Posner is the same. It is the Supreme Court and the Republican Party that are now becoming neo-fascists. And no matter how neo-fascist they go, the mainsteam media keeps normalizing it. Trump was right that he could shoot someone on Fifth Ave., and the NYT would report it as if there were two sides to the issue, each equally valid, of whether it was okay for him to do so.
Well, I find him more interesting at least. You may know a lot more about him than I do.
FLERP!,
Can you elaborate? In what way do you find Posner “more interesting”? Since you specifically said he became “more interesting in the last decade”, I just made a random guess that you were referring to his legal views being more interesting because he was suddenly critical of some right wing Justices. You must have been referring to something, and if you explain it would help all the readers understand what you mean. (Presuming here that your intention wasn’t to keep us all guessing.) I may even agree with you.
I agree, NYCSP, Posner has remained a conservative, and the Republican Party has become a party of racism, white supremacy, “Christian” nationalism, and seditionist treason.
Bravo, Democracy!!! THIS!!!
Outstanding summary of this history. Truly outstanding.
“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.”
– Robert Heinlein
Tell that to the children, years later, who accidentally step on a landmine that didn’t get cleared from a war years earlier.
It’s interesting how all these slogans that make the rounds of gun advocacy are so stupid prima facie. I can think of no clearer examples than those provided by gun slogans of the fact that people will toss reason out completely in order to rationalize something they are emotional about. I love guns. They go boom boom. I’m so powerful. Such a big man. Boom boom. You will have to pry my good guy with its just a tool from my molon labe! Protection! Boom boom. Guns don’t kill people [drools on self].
Sorry, I’m not a “gun nut”. I have a B.A. in Economics, so I’m at least as smart as that media savvy darling you all love, AOC. I’m 5’11”, 150 lbs, I feed homeless cats, trap neuter spay release, I recycle, etc. I’ve never fired my home protection shotgun (I test fired the model I bought at the range — too loud!), and hope I never have to. A gun is a tool, like a fire extinguisher, always at the ready for a specific use.
I, and millions of Americans like me, am not the problem.
Criminals are the problem.
And, if you try to take guns away from law abiding citizens, you’re going to have a real problem.
Did I mention AOC? Once?
So, what sort of problem, exactly? Inquiring minds want to know.
According to The American Bird Conservancy, homeless and feral cats kill 2.4 billion birds each year in the United States–this in a time when all the major songbird populations are plummeting. TNR helps reduce the cat population, so that’s a good thing.
Your last sentence is also another one that is spot on.
You might be a very nice guy. It’s a shame you have so much hate for people who disagree with you. They don’t hate you. I know you despise Democrats. It’s a shame you stereotype people you don’t know.
Do you think 18-year-olds should own AR-15s? Are you opposed to raising the age of purchase to 21? Are you opposed to background checks? Are you opposed to a waiting period before a purchase? Wondering.
Come and take them, indeed. Millions of Americans own guns; there won’t be a “problem” unless you try to take them. And if you do, I assume you’re not gonna ask nicely, right? You’re going to show up with overwhelming force and firepower to disarm me. Depending on the situation, weighing the chances of survivability, I will make a decision on whether to surrender and live to fight another day or fight to the death.
Again, you need to stop thinking the guns, and the millions of LAW-ABIDING citizens who own them and don’t ever want to have to use them, are the problem.
CRIMINALS are the problem…that’s why so many of us own guns, we know that when seconds count, the police are minutes away.
Yes. I am familiar with the phenomenon of conservatives being afraid of their own shadows.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793824/
https://www.wired.com/2008/09/fearmongering-h/
https://www.businessinsider.com/psychological-differences-between-conservatives-and-liberals-2018-2#being-scared-can-make-you-more-conservative-1
Look, I get it. The world is just SO scary! All those nonwhite people! Lesbians. Gay people. Transexual people. Nonbelievers! Socialists who want poor children to be able to get medical care! You turn on F.O.X. (Fearmongering or Xenophobia) News, and there they are! Young women with purple hair and pride flags! Moms in yellow shirts! Send out the border patrol! The citizens’ militias! The Proud Boys! Such a frightening world. So scary. Better stock up on that ammo! CRT is coming to trample your flower beds and clog your gutters with leaves! I saw a brown person at my 7-11 just yesterday! I know, right! Just scary. What’s the world coming to.
And just why is it we are to take Heinlein as the ultimate authority on guns?
Interesting how Heinlein, who was a poster boy for the left in the ’60s/’70s is now being cited by the right in the 2020s.
It’s like people deifying The Beatles. Greatness in music, writing, the arts in general doesn’t always translate into political and social expertise. Sometimes they get it wrong.
We tend to look for validation through established and successful public sources. I liked Heinlein…but he’s not the be all and end all.
Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
Robert Heinlein
An armed man need not fight.
Robert Heinlein
“He’s an honest politician – he stays bought.”
– Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Haaaa! Now that’s a great line!
https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2019/01000/Changes_in_US_mass_shooting_deaths_associated_with.2.aspx
Wow. Definite article for fear mongering and anti-gunning, specifically against a ARma-lite style rifle. Death can come at any time, even when you get out of bed, or take a bite of oatmeal.
Every gun is equally deadly. Just like all knives are when compared against themselves, which by the way are used by People to kill more People than guns are used for. I tried to get my ar rifle to murder me, or others by bribing, annoying and even threatening it, it never said anything and never killed anyone… Oh Wait, it’s a inanimate object!!! For that matter, cars are used to kill more people then guns, we should ban cars… and alcohol, and cigarettes and already illegal drugs like fentanyl!
(Lot of good that did, turns out criminals don’t follow laws, only decent people do, wonder why they want us unarmed, couldn’t be so we can’t defend ourselves against tyranny… Isn’t this what happened in Germany with the Nazis and Russia and every where else communism and dictatorships rose.up?!)
The ar style of rifles were made for hunting, as every rifle is, because it was designed to shoot a cartridge, the military armed forces hunt other militaries, civilians hunt rodents and deer, etc.
The worst thing about this article is the person who wrote it, get educated and compare relative things against the whole picture. Stop looking down a tunnel.
Your absolutely right! I’m going to petition the government to allow citizens the right to own javelin missiles. The amendment never limited what type of gun we could own. There were never any restrictions stated within. When the automobile was invented, it was rather archaic. Seeing how driving is a privilege and not a right, the government should limit our mode of transportation. These cars today travel at high speeds and a staggering amount of people die in car accidents. We should be limited to an automobile that is no more advanced than the Model T. After all, speed kills.
Butch,
I read the Second Amendment the old-fashioned way. That the right to bear arms pertains not to every individual but to the necessity of having a “well-regulated militia.” That’s the language in the amendment. The thugs, schizophrenics, and killers that now bear arms are not part of a “well-regulated militia.” They should not have the right to bear any arms other than the two with which they were born.